"Ineffably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with power as he lay there, apparently lax; it seemed to him he could hear the blood leaping in his veins and the beating of his pulses all over his body, could hear the faintest sound of calling lamb or far-off owl, could catch, with ears refined to a demigod's, the ineffably quiet rubbing of the millions of grass-blades, as though he could almost hear the evening falling.... From afar came the babble of the others as to what they might think they were going to be; for himself ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... at Godfrey Cradlebow's, but Grandpa Keeler was within the Ark, and Madeline caressing her children with a new fondness. There were a few of the neighbors present; they looked neither frightened nor curious, but ineffably exalted. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... vulgar, was the immediate vehicle of communication with the God. She was cut off from all intercourse with the world, and was carefully trained by the attendant priests. Spending almost the whole of her time in solitude, and taught to consider her office as ineffably sacred, she saw visions, and was for the most part in a state of great excitement. The Pythia, at least of the Delphian God, was led on with much ceremony to the performance of her office, and placed upon the sacred tripod. The tripod, we are told, stood over a chasm in the rock, from ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... the dramas in the lives of other women of their class less famous and infamous. When, however, they are put upon the stage they cease to be remarkable, and the characters introduced to support them have the same fate; for instance, the Louis XV. at the Savoy does not give the faintest idea of the ineffably vile monarch, whilst no glimpse is shown of the quality which enabled a Du Barri ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... laden with it so heavily, that the horses appeared to stagger beneath their trappings and the riders, having white tips to their noses, white lumps on their heads and shoulders, and white patches on their cheek-bones and chins, looked ineffably ridiculous, and miserably cold. Everything, in fact, was covered and blocked up with snow, and Londoners felt as if they had muffled ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... eyes to the reading, the quiet rhythm of the sentences, and the calm, deep music of his voice, sounding ineffably soothing, when a quaver, then a break in his voice, just as he repeated the last words, made me look toward him. The calm, strong man was weeping silently; and just then he broke into a paroxysm of sobs that shook ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... referred to—was particularly small and shy, ineffably stupid, and remarkably fat. It was the last quality which induced Solomon to call her Dollops. Her hair and garments stuck out from her in wild dishevelment, but she was not dirty. Nothing belonging to Mrs Flint was allowed to ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... Inaugural address. He simply said that "the progress of our armies is reasonably satisfactory and encouraging. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured." The tone of the address, so far from being jubilant as the mass of his hearers felt, was ineffably sad. It seemed to bear the wail of an oppressed spirit. The thought and the language were as majestic as those of the ancient prophets. As if in agony of soul the President cried out: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the emotion with which I gazed upon the exquisite, living, palpitating picture beside me. A composite photograph of all the Madonnas ever painted, from the Sistine to Bodenhausen's, could not have been more lovely, more ineffably womanly than that young girl, radiant with the divine glow of artistic delight—at least, that is my opinion, which, by the bye, I should, perhaps, have stated a little more gingerly, inasmuch as you are yourself acquainted with the young lady. Now, don't look incredulous [noticing my surprise]. ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... was dead, and would come again Never, though she might honor ineffably The flimsy wraith of him she conjured Out of a dream with his ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... air was ineffably sweet and keen—penetrant, tonic, with moist, racy smells, the smell of the good brown earth, the smell of green things and growing things. The dew was spread over the grass like a veil of silver gossamer, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... Irish parliament had not been brought home to the masses of the population; and the United Irishmen could only speak to them secretly, in whispers. But here were addresses glowing, and bold, and tender, brimful of native humour, scathing in their sarcasms, terrible in their denunciations, ineffably beautiful in their pathos—addresses that recalled the most glorious as well as the saddest memories of Irish history, and presented brilliant vistas of the future—addresses that touched to its fullest and most delicious vibration every chord ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... of such set trash of phrase, Ineffably, legitimately vile, That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise, Nor foes—all nations—condescend to smile. Not even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil, That ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... and more ineffably grateful. So crossing over, she again said, with warm protestations of thankfulness, good bye to lady Feng; after which, she repaired to dowager lady Chia's quarters on this side, where she slept, with one sleep, during the whole ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... mean to come," said Laurence Fitzgibbon. Phineas was of course bound to go, though Lady Glencora was still talking Radicalism, and Violet Effingham was still smiling ineffably. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... by pedigree and education," wrote Eugene Field to Alice Morse Earle, the author of "The Sabbath in Puritan New England," and other books of the same flavor, "but I was born in that ineffably ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... people. She flashed an especial smile at Florian. Her hand went out as though to touch him, in an unforgotten gesture. "Old people do not understand," said Sylvie de Nointel in tones which took this handsome young fellow ineffably into confidence. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... she might come in, and, as she slowly advanced, she thought she had never seen anything so ineffably mournful as the affectionate look on her father's face. She held his hand and ventured—for it was with difficulty she spoke—to hope he was ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... an arm-chair in the Vicar's bedroom. The Revd. Howel said nothing more about grandchildren; often—with a finer sense—spoke to him not as though he were a son, but as a beloved daughter. At last he died in his sleep one night, holding David's hand, looking so ineffably happy that the impostor inwardly gloried in his imposture as in one of the best ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... he caught a glimpse of blue sky and lilac-coloured cloud, touched with gold by the risen sun. He could guess the rest. A perfect morning!—clean and crisp, with the sea a translucent blue, and sunlight glittering on the Island beaches; the air still, yet bracing, and withal ineffably pure—a morning mysterious with the sense of autumn, but of autumn rarified by its passage over the salt strait, deodorised, made pure of marsh ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... mysterious, melancholy, beautiful—a vision of dignity and of grace, made sublime by suffering, made weird and awful by "thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls." Sorrow never looked more wofully and ineffably lovely than his sorrow looks in the parting scene with Ophelia, and frenzy never spoke with a wilder glee of horrid joy and fearful exultation than is heard in his tempestuous cry of delirium, "Nay, I know not: ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... to exhibit the qualities of the original picture, with delight to the eye in the method of translation; and the language of engraving, when once you begin to understand it, is, in these respects, so fertile, so ingenious, so ineffably subtle and severe in its grammar, that you may quite easily make it the subject of your life's investigation, as you would the scholarship of ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... the photograph of the tennis-court at Guise—she remembered the handsome girl at whom Guy Dawnish looked up, laughing. A gust of tears shook her, loosening the dry surface of conventional feeling, welling up from unsuspected depths. She was sorry—very sorry, yet so glad—so ineffably, impenitently glad. ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... words of comfort, and of soothing, and of love. Ah, how I would love you, care for you, shield your ear from ever being hurt by a discordant word! And I would draw your heart within mine to rest there, and would feel life all too blissfully, ineffably sweet to live." ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... those obscure diseases which change the whole colour of life to the sufferer, which distort all actions however simple and ordinary, which render diminutive trials monstrous, and small evils immense and ineffably tragic. It seemed to Uniacke to be his duty to combat Sir Graham's increasing melancholy, which actually bordered upon despair. At the same time, the young clergyman could not hide from his mind—a mind flooded with conscience—that the painter was ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... my walk up this majestic ice-river, charmed by the pale-blue, ineffably fine light in the crevasses, moulins, and wells, and the innumerable azure pools in basins of azure ice, and the network of surface streams, large and small, gliding, swirling with wonderful grace of motion in their frictionless channels, calling forth devout admiration ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... of vision, an arresting way of making objective his thoughts by a sort of nervous battering emphasis of repetition. And he has things to say. A curious theme and painful. One Wriford, editor and novelist, breaks down from overwork and hovers about the ineffably dread borderline, crossing and recrossing. And first that grotesque tramp, Puddlebox, drunken, devout, affectionate optimist, with his "Oh, ye loonies of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise Him and magnify Him for ever;" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... "Each particular straw of this dank, damp bed was elastic with delight, at bearing such angelic pressure; and, as our heroine cast her ineffably beaming eyes about the dark void, lighting up with their effulgent rays each little portion of the dungeon, as she glanced them from one part to another, she perceived that the many reptiles enclosed with her in this narrow tomb, were nestling to her ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... satirising German ways, but to some extent perhaps inspired by German literature. Very commonly Pigault falls into a sort of burlesque melodramatic style, with frequent interludes of horse-play, resembling that of the ineffably dreary persons who knock each others' hats off on the music-hall stage. There is even something dreamlike about him, though of a very low order of dream; he has at any rate the dream-habit of constantly attempting something and finding that ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... even a more voluptuous content abroad: for the twilight was wrapping about the landscape its poppied dusk of gloom and shadow. Above, the birds were swirling in sweeping circles, raining down the ecstasy of their night-song; still above, far beyond them, across a zenith pure, transparent, ineffably pink, illumined wisps of clouds were trailing their scarf-like shapes. It was a scene of beatific peace. Across the fields came the sound of a distant bell. It was the Angelus. The ploughmen stopped to doff their hats, the women to bend their heads ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... to open! I am as empty as a chrysalis-case, that the butterfly has gone out of to dwell amid sunshine and flowers. Yet I believe I had one once"—in ineffably mournful accents—"but two men killed it; and yet, neither intended the blow! O Miriam! I understand at last what Coleridge meant by his "life in death." There is such a thing—and that great necromancer found it out! I am the breathing impersonation of that loathly thing, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... sublime consistency in scenes of the most extraordinary character and the most touching pathos, and utter moral truth in the most exquisite fictions in which such truth was ever embodied; and that again they succeeded; that so ineffably rich in genius were these obscure wretches, that no less than four of them were found equal to this intellectual achievement; and while each has told many events, and given many traits which the others ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... face and washed his hands again and again at the basin in the corner, as though there were something on them which was ineffably unclean. The little one, who had been weeping again, stared at him with two big tears drying ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... silence of the woods for the strife and noise of cities, learning to share the burdens of my fellows. See you not, my father, see you not the way of it?" So spake Beltane, hot and passionate, striding to and fro upon the sward, while Ambrose sat with bitterness in his heart but with eyes ineffably gentle. ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... that dwell in thy house; they will always be praising thee." For him, whom with their heart they believe unto righteousness, and with their mouth confess to salvation, him they shall see with their heart to light, and with their mouth shall praise to glory, when they behold how ineffably he is begotten of the Father, with whom he liveth and reigneth, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God to all ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... early age. But this is a fable, and not in the least to the point: which is that if, for once in my life, I have wished to make things nicer for anybody but the Elephant (see fable), do not suffer me to have made them ineffably more embarrassing, and ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Trinidad politics knows very well the ineffably low dodges and subterfuges under which the Arima Railway was prevented from having its terminus in the centre of that town. The public was promised a saving of Eight Thousand Pounds by their high-minded Governor for a diversion of the line "by only a few yards" from the originally ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... asked himself. Would he not again be able to share with her, as far as one human being can share with another, his hopes and his fears, or rather his renunciations? Would she never be able to take part in his life with the sweet, smiling sympathy which had always been so ineffably precious to him? Those days that she had lost were just those that had branded themselves indelibly into his consciousness: the afternoon that Stamfordham had come with the map, the morning following when it had appeared in the newspaper, the scenes with Gore, with Stamfordham,—all those days he ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... was a wintry gleam but it ineffably softened her face. I became conscious of a movement of ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... dinner he retired to his room with the evening papers, wedged a chair against his bed, and, hoisting his feet upon the wash-stand, absorbed the news of the day. It was ineffably sweet and satisfying to be thus identified with the profession of letters, and it was immeasurably more dignified than "tugging" on the Saginaw River. Once he had schooled himself in the tricks of writing, he decided he would step to higher things ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... disclaimed any great ambition for himself in this line. "Oh, I always could think up imitations of animals; things like that—but I hardly would care to—to adop' the stage for a career. Would—you?" (There was a thrill in his voice when he pronounced the ineffably ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... an evening when the sky was clear, Ineffably translucent in its blue; The tide was falling, and the sea withdrew In hushed and happy music from the sheer Shadowy granite of the cliffs; and fear Of what life may be, and what death can do, Fell from us like steel armor, and we ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... little salt being its only preparation. They seem to buy or catch haili by the ton, and then keep them for months in the cellar. We were always seeing them eat these haili, which looked something like sprats, and tasted ineffably nasty. On high days and holidays they partake of them accompanied with baked potatoes; but potatoes are somewhat rare, and therefore the fish on black bread alone constitutes the usual meal. Sometimes better-class folk eat haili, but then they have them grilled on charcoal; these are rich ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... the whole orb is not incandescent, there is such intense heat in its central portion as to generate gases, which, being thrown up through its atmosphere, to a height at least as great as the whole diameter of our globe, condense there again with an ineffably brilliant combustion. The solid crust of the sun, he thinks, may be comparatively cool,—as cool, perhaps, as our tropical climates,—by the favor of cloud-curtains, which operate as screens, and reflect off into space the heat of the combustion overhead. He might have given more reasons ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... the casement of the tower, from which might be seen the glorious landscape of woods, and vales, and orange groves—a strange garden for such a palace! As she leant her face upon her hand, with her profile slightly turned to Montreal, there was something ineffably graceful in the bend of her neck,—the small head so expressive of gentle blood,—with the locks parted in front in that simple fashion which modern times have so happily revived. But the expression of the half-averted ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... time I was trying specially to make speeches which no one could call empty noise, and was therefore specially and peculiarly heavy, there was something amusing to lovers of contrast in that between the stormy heartiness of my reception at most of these meetings, and the ineffably dry orations which I delivered to them—between cheers of joy when I rose and cheers of relief ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... spirit within him was near to fainting. Because he knew fully the depraved nature of Hodges, he could not blind himself to the frightful peril of Plutina in the outlaw's power. The girl's plight was one to inspire horror in any decent breast; to the lover, worshiping her as something ineffably holy, the possibility of her pollution by the brute who had stolen her away was a thing too monstrous for belief, yet not to be denied. He strove to drive the hideous thought from his mind, but, ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... the path, was confidence in the happiness promised by his errand; the anticipation in his eyes could have been read by a stranger. His look at the door of Isabel's house was the look of a man who is quite certain that the next moment will reveal something ineffably charming, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... could have been worse. Suffering by their own fault would have rent them asunder more harshly, and Louis's freedom from all fierceness and violence softened all ineffably to Mary. James Frost's letter of fiery indignation, almost of denunciation, made her thankful that he was not the party concerned; and Louis made her smile at Isabel's copy of all his sentiments ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... us; but he was held there by something so hard that it was fairly grim. This was not the discomposure of last night; that had quite passed—such discomposures were a detail; the real coercion was to see a man ineffably adored. There it was again—it took women, it took women; if to deal with them was to walk on water what wonder that the water rose? And it had never surely risen higher than round this woman. He presently found himself taking ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... stood there, clad in her male attire, hand on hip, all glowing, insolent beauty; but as I stared she changed, and I saw her as I had beheld her last, her gown and white bosom all dabbled with her blood, but on her lips was smile ineffably tender and in her eyes the radiance of a joy great ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... princess, who was the embodiment of all the virtues of the unknown goddess of his fancy. She was proud yet humble, aloof yet compassionate, and above all ineffably beautiful. And ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... young voices, throbbing and proclaiming through the summer night some joyous, ever-ascending message. Lydia felt her pulses loud at her temples. Almost a faintness of pleasure came over her. There was something ineffably sweet about the disembodied voices sending their triumphant ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... I 'neath the constant thrall Of mine own vile heart, and the false world's taint, That much I fear while on the way to faint, And in the hands of my worst foe to fall. Well came, ineffably, supremely kind, A friend to free me from the guilty bond, But too soon upward flew my sight beyond, So that in vain I strive his track to find; But still his words stamp'd on my heart remain, All ye who labour, lo! the way in me; Come unto me, nor let the world detain! Oh! that to me, by ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... of gorgeous green beetles' wings flaming like fiery emeralds.—A family dress, my dear, and worn by my aunt before me,—only that individual must have been frightened out of her wits by it. A cruel, savage dress, very like, but ineffably gorgeous.—So I wore her aquamarina, though the other would have been better; and when I sailed in, with all the airy folds in a hoar-frost mistiness fluttering round me and the glitter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... fashion. Could a sensuous age invent an order of beings, which, touching the earth from a heavenly height on its most momentous occasions, could still, after ages of culture had refined the human taste and moral appreciation, remain ineffably superior in delicacy, in pure spirituality, to the demands of criticism? Their very coming and going is not with earthly movement. They suddenly are seen in the air as one sees white clouds round out from the blue sky, in a summer's day, that melt back even while one looks upon them. They vibrate ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Little Pickle, in the spirit of that mischief-loving character, had fastened to my collar, where, unknown to me, it kept making the queerest gestures of its own in correspondence with all mine. The audience, supposing that some enormous joke was appended to this long tail behind, were ineffably delighted, and gave way to such a tumult of approbation that, just as the story closed, the benches broke beneath them and left one whole row of my admirers on the floor. Even in that predicament they continued their applause. In after times, when I had grown a bitter ...
— Passages From a Relinquised Work (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cajoleries that the two women directed upon him. And then, without any warning, he burst into terrible tears, and, staggering, leaned against the wall. He was half carried to the sofa, and sat there, ineffably humiliated. One after another looked reproachfully at Edwin, who had made light of his father's condition. And Edwin was abashed ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Snelgrove, could see from her little table that young Newton was neither abject nor triumphant in his manner. He had not received nor had he even asked when he got up to take his leave. Lady Eardham could have boxed his ears; but she smiled upon him ineffably, pressed his hand, and in the most natural way in the world alluded to some former allusion about riding and ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... active brain almost ceased to work, stilled by the reverie that is born of certain night visions. Without these motionless boats the Pool of the Saint would have been calm. With them, its stillness seemed almost ineffably profound. The hint of life bound in the cores of sleep, prisoner to rest, deepened Nature's impression and sent Vere into reverie. There were no trees here. No birds sang, for although it was the month of the nightingales, none ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... flight of courtesy, Born of despair Of better lodging for his Spirit fair, He adores as Margaret, Maude, or Cecily? And what this sigh, That each one heaves for Earth's last lowlihead And the Heaven high Ineffably lock'd in dateless bridal-bed? Are all, then, mad, or is it prophecy? 'Sons now we are of God,' as we have heard, 'But what we shall be hath not yet appear'd.' O, Heart, remember thee, That Man ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... devoted to sufferings, experience griefs of which the world knows naught, they sometimes, too, are cheered by humble and timid joys, of which the world is equally ignorant. The least word of true tenderness and affection, which elevates them in their own estimation, is ineffably blissful for these unfortunate beings, habitually consigned, not only to hardships and to disdain, but even to desolating doubts, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... with internal struggles. At length she could resist no longer. Doubt gave way; and she left her home for ever in order to present herself at the dauphin's court. The education of this poor girl was mean according to the present standard: was ineffably grand, according to a purer philosophic standard: and only not good for our age because for us it would be unattainable. She read nothing, for she could not read; but she had heard others read parts of the Roman martyrology. She wept ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... her brows at him, but with eyes still ineffably soft and tender, "what do you mean by ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... that he might get one of the two taxis in sight for the Eager Soul. She followed him, but she made him let the Doctor come along. And so the drinks—lemon squash and buttermilk—were equally on Henry and me. We hurried down the gang plank after the happy trio. They were young—so infinitely and ineffably young, it seemed to us. And the girl's face was flushed and joyous, and her hair—why it didn't shake out and drown her we never knew; certainly it surged out from under her hat like ripples of youth incarnate. We saw them stacking their valises in the taxi and over the taxi and around the ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... oh how joyful it was to be once more in the deep woods of Aescendune, to hear the sweet song of the birds, and to fear no evil! Sweet, ineffably sweet were those days to Alfgar ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... her left eyebrow with an ineffably droll look, which encouraged Charlie to say, "Such fierceness can only be prompted by personal experience. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... just five feet, a height he never passed. His skin, as transparent and satiny as that of a little girl, showed a delicate tracery of blue veins; its whiteness was that of porcelain. His eyes, which were light blue and ineffably gentle, implored the protection of men and women; that beseeching look fascinated before the melody of his voice was heard to complete the charm. True modesty was in every feature. Long chestnut hair, smooth and very fine, was parted in the middle ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... predominated over all. You could not have wished her more cheerful than she was. Her face was a melody which you cannot quarrel with for being sad—which you could not desire to be otherwise than sad—whose very charm it is that it has made the tone of sorrow ineffably sweet. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Here, too, were those grotesque faces which always grin at you from the projections of monkish architecture, as if the builders had gone mad with their own deep solemnity, or dreaded such a catastrophe, unless permitted to throw in something ineffably absurd. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... almost invisible, could be dimly divined. The moonlight fell on the calm smile and on the hands palm upwards in the lap, with finger-tips and thumb-tips touching in the attitude of meditation. That ineffably peaceful, smiling face seemed to look down from the very height of heaven upon Geoffrey Barrington and Yae Smith. The presence of the God filled the valley, patient and powerful, the Creator of the Universe and ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... wattled boughs, the emanations of the Divine filled her with transports so contagious that they affected even Thomas, who was skeptical by birth; and when, after the descent from Hermon, two or three of the disciples mused together over the spectacle which they had seen, the rhyme of her lips parted ineffably. She too had seen him aureoled with the sun, dazzling as the snow-fields on the heights. To her it was ever in that aspect he appeared, with a radiance so intense even that there had been moments in which she had veiled her eyes as from a ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... She lay there, so quiet, as if the angel of death had claimed her for His own. A sweet smile of satisfaction spread over her face. It seemed some angel voice had whispered something ineffably sweet to her. Robert hardly knew what to do or to say. She lay there so motionless, so still, yet there was such a sweet, holy awe, such a spiritual atmosphere, just as ii the room were full of angels, that it seemed he could not cry. Kate Newby was greatly affected. Her ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... upon his shoulders, his eyes full of compassion, and with such majesty of face and mien that all were awed to silence ere he spoke. Stepping slowly forward toward the throng and raising his right hand from the elbow, the index finger extended upward, he said, in a voice ineffably sweet and serious: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... patter, and the sound of the reef become faint. The land breeze had awakened, and in a while, as if it had blown them away, looking up, you would find the stars gone, and the sky a veil of palest blue. In this indirect approach of dawn there was something ineffably mysterious. One could see, but the things seen were indecisive and vague, just as they are in the gloaming of an ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... familiar scenes to which they have been accustomed from infancy, they have no conception; still less, if that is possible, have they any idea of a division of the world of the dead into a realm of bliss and a realm of woe, where the spirits of the good live ineffably happy and the spirits of the bad live unspeakably miserable. To their simple minds the spirits of the dead dwell all about them in the rocky gorges, the barren plains, the wooded dells, the rustling trees, the still waters ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... dreams, or like such tapestry as Eastern queens, in ancient days, wrought for the pavilion of an empress. Forth from this maze of mingling tints, indefinite in shade and sunbeams, lean earnest, saintly faces—ineffably pure—adoring, pitying, pleading; raising their eyes in ecstasy to heaven, or turning them in ruth toward earth. Men and women of whom the world was not worthy—at the hands of those old painters they have received the divine grace, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... literature more ineffably dreary than the parcelling out of these wild and glorious visions, the attaching of them to this and that petty human fulfilment. That is not the secret of the Apocalypse! It is rather as a painter ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... craved and which the little coterie of clever, brilliant people who had been her intimates in town had given her in full measure. The Trenbys' circle of friends interested her not at all. The men mostly of the sturdy, sporting type, bored her ineffably, and she found the women, with their perpetual local gossip and discussion of domestic difficulties, dull and uninspiring. Of the McBains, unfortunately, she saw very little, owing to the distance, between the Hall and ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... amongst us who have not, at one time or another, experienced that ineffably exquisite sensation caused by the sudden cessation of intense and wearing pain. For a minute or two Isidore could, only look down complacently on his ministering angel, giving forth more than one deep and long drawn sigh of relief; then naturally enough pity for ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... around, beheld a very noble figure of a man appear upon the margin of a thicket and stroll nonchalantly near. The nonchalance was visibly affected; it was plain he came there to arouse attention, and his success was instant. He was introduced; he was civil, he was obliging, he was always ineffably superior and certain of himself; a well-graced actor. It was presently suggested that he should appear in his war costume; he gracefully consented; and returned in that strange, inappropriate and ill- ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... swinging their tassels, and the swelling buds of the oaks and aspens showed that they were almost ready to burst into leaf; the air was full of bird calls and fluttering wings, and the breeze, although chill, seemed ineffably soft in comparison with its ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... were still rocking in swings suspended from the lintels, and where the same ruddy-faced septuagenarians sat smoking short pipes and playing nap on trays in the sun. From several doorways came the reek of fish frying. The houses looked ineffably petty and shabby. Esther wondered how she could ever have conceived this a region of opulence; still more how she could ever have located Malka and her family on the very outskirt of the semi-divine ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... comfortable, isn't it?" she inquired, and with the words she bestowed a final little pat to the bandage, a touch so light—so ineffably gentle that it might almost have been the hand of that long-dead mother whom I had never known. "That is better, isn't it?" ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Mother of God!" she gasped in a long-drawn, quivering sigh as she bent a dishevelled head over the little one, and, between intervals of silence, fell to uttering soft, abrupt exclamations. Then, opening her ineffably beautiful blue eyes, the hallowed eyes of a mother, she raised them towards the azure heavens, while in their depths there was coming and going a flame of joy and gratitude. Lastly, lifting a languid hand, she with a slow movement made the sign ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... the stage is lit up with an ineffably pure, divinely roseate, harmonious and ethereal brightness. The heavy ornaments in the foreground, the thick red hangings become unfastened and disappear, revealing an immense and magnificent hall, a sort of cathedral of gladness and serenity, tall, innocent ...
— The Blue Bird: A Fairy Play in Six Acts • Maurice Maeterlinck
... his habitual thin, shrill laugh and fall to making his insipid jokes and witticisms. I had been preparing for them ever since the previous day, but I had not expected such condescension, such high-official courtesy. So, then, he felt himself ineffably superior to me in every respect! If he only meant to insult me by that high-official tone, it would not matter, I thought—I could pay him back for it one way or another. But what if, in reality, without the least desire to be offensive, that sheepshead had a notion ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... confirmed this opinion, and an angry chorus of shouts and cries, with suggestions as to gagging the reader or knocking him off the barrel, rose from every side. In spite of roars and hoots, however, Elias B. Hopkins plodded away at the Apocalypse with the same serene countenance, looking as ineffably contented as though the babel around him were the most gratifying applause. Before long an occasional boot pattered against the barrel or whistled past our parson's head; but here some of the more orderly of the inhabitants interfered in favour of peace and order, aided ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... not to," she told him, her dark eyes ineffably beautiful with their luster of tears. "I don't see why I should try—why I should try to do anything you ask me ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... arm with a tragic forlornness that seemed to leave her very wan and helpless. And he had found it ineffably sweet to enfold that warm mass of wan helplessness in ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... how they fade away, these ghostly and unsubstantial pageants, when they "scent the morning air"! How they leave in our hearts nought but the dim consciousness that we are capable of an existence ineffably deeper and vaster than that which we lead in the visible world! Nought but this? Alas, poor human nature! do we leave the casket of Pandora open in wanton carelessness, and let all escape but the mere scent of the roses? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... army of St. David, the rich sunset-hued army of St. Denis, the striped armies of St. Anthony and St. James. When he lay awake in the golden light of the morning, as golden in Lima Street as anywhere else, he felt ineffably protected by the Seven Champions of Christendom; and sometimes even at night he was able to think that with their bright battalions they were still marching past. He used to lie awake, listening to the sparrows and ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... that before Ida had been in the house a week it was no longer as a mystery, or, at least, as an awe-inspiring mystery, but as an ineffably dear and precious reality, that her presence was felt. Had a stranger chanced to come there on a visit, at that time, he would doubtless have been struck with the fact that a young girl was the central figure of the household, around whom its other members revolved; but it ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... was when he first loved her, the pretty little candy-store clerk, the lissome, living marble in her Greek tunic, the quaint, sweet girl who came to him in the Grand Central Terminal, lugging her suit-case, the shy thing at the License Bureau, the ineffably exquisite bride he had made his wife. He saw her at the gas-stove and loved her very petulance and the pretty way she banged the oven ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... a deep sullen intolerance, rose in him at the thought of an assault on his personal liberty, his rights, or on his connections and belongings. A deeper red burned in his fresh young cheeks; his smiling lips were steady; his candid blue eyes, ineffably gentle, gazed widely against the candlelit gloom where he was making his simple preparations for bed. The last feeling of which he was conscious was a wave of sharp admiration, of love, for everything and everybody that ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... as the Zara's gaze, ineffably softened now, held Blaine's. Unconsciously he was drawn to the steps of the dais. Unwillingly, yet inexorably, his lagging footsteps brought him to her side. Cool white fingers touched his arm and he saw that the red ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... his eyes that the young man in white had listened to her quiet talk, for you could nowhere have found a nature more readily sensitive than his to all the beauty and wonder which life, as if it were haphazardly, produces every day. He pitied this betrayed child quite ineffably, because in her sorrow she was ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... my work called "Theism," in which (without withdrawing my objections to the popular idea of future Retribution) I have tried to reason out a doctrine of Future Life from spiritual considerations. I have no doubt that my critic would find them highly aboard, and perhaps would pronounce them ineffably ludicrous, and preposterous feats of logic. If I could hide their existence from him, I certainly would, lest he misquote and misinterpret them. But as I cannot keep the book from him, I here refer to it to say, that ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... verse which he had ordered because the name had attracted him: "The House of Life." He took it up, and found himself plunged in an atmosphere unlike any he had ever breathed in books; so warm, so rich, and yet so ineffably tender, that it gave a new and haunting beauty to the most elementary of human passions. All through the night he pursued through those enchanted pages the vision of a woman who had the face of Ellen Olenska; but when ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... the slightest rein to a feeling which might, on very slight provocation, run away with her. She was the kind of girl which one does not readily think of in connection with the tender passion; and whose love, perhaps, for this very reason, seems so ineffably precious to him who is trying to ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... rush and drive and boom of the town's specialty. Benares is the sacredest of sacred cities. The moment you step across the sharply-defined line which separates it from the rest of the globe, you stand upon ineffably and unspeakably holy ground. Mr. Parker says: "It is impossible to convey any adequate idea of the intense feelings of veneration and affection with which the pious Hindoo regards 'Holy Kashi' (Benares)." And then he gives you ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... parents liked young Graye, and having few friends (for their equals in blood were their superiors in position), he was received on very generous terms. His passion for Cytherea grew not only strong, but ineffably exalted: she, without positively encouraging him, tacitly assented to his schemes for being near her. Her father and mother seemed to have lost all confidence in nobility of birth, without money to give effect to its presence, and looked upon the budding consequence of the ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... something awful in the aspect of this mysterious being—something ineffably grand and imposing in her demeanor—as she thus suddenly rose from her almost recumbent posture, and burst into the attitude of ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... exercises. We saw no better, and we saw no worse. Toward the end we stood on the seats, with the same result. We behaved in exactly the child-like manner of an Italian audience at a fashionable concert. And to crown all, an aviator had the ineffably bad taste and the culpable foolhardiness to circle round and round within a few dozen ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... Grey, in Lincoln's Inn, was much troubled on the matter. By degrees facts had made themselves clear to his mind, and he had become aware that the captain had been born before his client's marriage. He was ineffably shocked at the old squire's villany in the matter, but declared to all to whom he spoke openly on the subject that he did not see how the sinner could be punished. He never thought that the father and son were in a conspiracy together. Nor had he believed that they had arranged the young man's ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... the heavy bars. Three men were dining at the table: a freckled redheaded man with the high cheekbones of the Scot, a dissipated young Italian of a most romantic air, and a small, round, vivacious man, ineffably French. ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... safe, Marie," he whispered. "It'll be only for a little while, now. You'll be safe till I come." An ineffably peaceful smile flickered across his face. "We couldn't forget—why, of course, ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... near presence of Margaret's spirit, of which I had that night been conscious. But the note had reached me by no supernatural method, as I was at first half inclined to believe. It was, probably, the touch, the atmosphere, the ineffably fine influence which surrounded it, which had penetrated my unconscious perceptions, and brought her near. The paper, the glove, were full of Margaret,—full of something besides what we vaguely call mental associations,—full of emanations ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... overwhelming opposition (mainly on account of race prejudice) in the first place because she was as beautiful and authoritative as any of the European queens—and secondly because Ah! Ah! for me stands for something ineffably noble, inspiring—not perhaps for what she has done—maybe more for ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... was afterward King of England) had inherited the squint that distinguished this family. To-day Gloucester was gnawing at his finger nails, big York seemed half-asleep, and the Earl of Derby appeared patiently to await something as yet ineffably remote. ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... not want a profusion of excited caresses from him. It was this realisation that gave her a jerk of dismay. It was not that she shrank from him. It was that with her cold little brain she imagined him in a fever about her, fretful, tantalised by her coolness, rebuffed, sulky, ineffably tedious.... As she knew all this her eyes darkened. It was all very well to play with Gaga; but he was now her husband, and that meant an association so constant that in future, so far from tempting ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton |
