"Unspeakable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sharper salt, which, arriving when we least expect it, and least—heaven knows—deserve it, makes any final opinion upon the stuff of this world vain and false; and any condemnation of the opinions of others foolish and empty. It destroys our assurances as it alleviates our miseries, and in some unspeakable way, like a primrose growing on the edge of a sepulchre, it flings forth upon the heavy night, a fleeting signal, "Bon espoir y ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... recent meetings with Redgrave—at the Crystal Palace and elsewhere; and, but for her innocence, she would have felt herself at the woman's mercy. That she had not transgressed, and was in no danger of transgressing, enabled her to move with head erect among the things unspeakable which always seemed to her to be lurking in the shadowed corners of Mrs. Strangeways' house. The day was coming when she might hope to terminate so undesirable an acquaintance, but for the present she must ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... vision before them. They did not philosophise about it; and though they were filled with terror, I do not think it was terror that held them from speaking about it, but a vague feeling that what they had beheld was obscene, unspeakable, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... but did not answer. And after an instant, during which Della surveyed him with scorn unspeakable, she strode stiffly to a chair in a far corner of the ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... in promise of that delicious weather which in the lagoons lasts half the year, and which makes every other climate seem niggard of sunshine and azure skies. I know we have beautiful days at home—days of which the sumptuous splendor used to take my memory with unspeakable longing and regret even in Italy;—but we do not have, week after week, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Metta in the Red Front grocery buying olives and sardines in an excited way. I suppose it's for one of her unspeakable orgies, but she tells me it's something special and I must ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... thousand men at Mers-el-Keber; and the same heroic story is repeated at Malta, when the enemy, after firing sixteen thousand cannon shots in one month against the Christian forts, abandoned the siege in despair. Meanwhile the unspeakable bigot, Philip, was wasting his time in processions, rogations, and fasts, for the relief of the town, while he stirred no finger to help it ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... at her in unspeakable surprise. For an instant a wild hope awoke within him, only to die. She had come but to save her brother, as she had said, and the painfulness of her duty was ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... of the Sixteenth, though it comes every year, takes as long to prepare for as Holy Communion. The senoritas have each a new dress apiece, the senoras a new rebosa. The young gentlemen have new silver trimmings to their sombreros, unspeakable ties, silk handkerchiefs, and new leathers to their spurs. At this time when the peppers glow in the gardens and the young quail cry "cuidado," "have a care!" you can hear the plump, plump of the metate from the alcoves of the vines where comfortable old dames, whose experience ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... scheme of an Oriental Empire; of the British occupation of Basra; and of the sinking of the Emden, thanks to the "good hunting" of the Sydney—the first fruits of Australian aid. A new enemy has appeared in Turkey, but her defection has its consolations. It is something to be rid of an "unspeakable" incubus full of promises of reform never fulfilled, "sick" but unrepentant, always turning European discord to bloody account at the expense of her subject nationalities: in all respects a fitting partner ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... this unspeakable happiness you will help me! Oh, no! Tell me, can I accept such an ...
— The Lady From The Sea • Henrik Ibsen
... O solitude unspeakable! to be For ever with oneself! never to see An equal face, or feel an equal hand, To sit in state and issue reprimand, Admonishment or glory, and to smile Disdaining what has happened the while! O to be breast to breast ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... sometimes thought that Ellen shook them about much more than was absolutely necessary; but at the same time they excited my warmest admiration. I felt as though I could do anything—go through with all sorts of difficulties to have my hair curl naturally; and with a feeling of unspeakable rapture I listened to Ellen one day as she told me in a mysterious whisper that the nurse had said eating crusts made her ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... abandonment of girlhood, for the black shadow of anxiety and dread has fallen even on their young hearts; the tiny children, who, young as they are, know that some great sorrow has come to every one; the children of the war countries, with their terror-stricken eyes and pale faces; the unspeakable, unforgivable wrong that has been done to ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... on love and education, is a sort of Tudor tract upon animated nature. It should be a source of joy unspeakable to the general reader if only for what it teaches him in the way of natural history. How much of what is most gravely stated here did John Lyly actually believe? It is easy to grant so orthodox a statement of physical ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... and regular respiration throughout the night. As the dawn came and the lamplight grew pale, his pulse began to fail; but his face, even then, was scarcely more haggard than those of the sorrowing men around him. His automatic moaning ceased, a look of unspeakable peace came upon his worn features, and at twenty-two minutes after seven he died. Stanton broke ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... help you by and by; now there will be no bread for them, and for you no populous city in the flowery earth and a great crowd of children to rise up each day, when days are long, to call you blessed! And he who did this thing, the unspeakable oxeye with his black and yellow breast—"catanic black and amber"—even while I made my lamentation was tinkling his merry song ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... his memorized list of poison antidotes that if one drinks arsenic he will be seized with agony unspeakable and die in slow and utter torture. The more he thought about it, the more the cold, steady eye of the unseen sniper and his felling ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... more pretentious than any we had seen outside of Manila, and its altars, for it boasted several, were unspeakable combinations of cheap gaudiness and some little beauty. Common tinsel was cheek by jowl with handsome silver, and while a few of the many mural decorations and paintings were good, most of them were atrocious—glorified chromos of simpering saints with preternaturally large ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... successful. For they "combined their will, their knowledge, and their manifest force in political unions, whence they sent forth will, knowledge, and influence over wide districts of the land. And the electors, seeing the importance of the crisis—the unspeakable importance that it should be well ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... of Christabel and Kubla Khan: "When it has been said that such melodies were never heard, such dreams never dreamed, such speech never spoken, the chief things remain unsaid, unspeakable. There is a charm upon these poems which can only be felt in ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... Allan Mowbray had scoured the country in search of his trade. His outfit was known to every remote Indian race, east and west, and north—always north. His was a figure that haunted the virgin woodlands, the broad rivers, the unspeakable wastes of silence at all times and seasons. Even the world outside found an ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... looked up. A cold, unspeakable terror filled her heart, and she tried to read the secret which her mother's calm face hid from her. Mrs. Costello delayed no longer to tell her ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... John Ward was a John Ward that few people in Millsburgh knew. But Captain Charlie knew him. Captain Charlie had seen him tested in all the ways that war tests men. In cold and hunger and the unspeakable discomforts of mud and filth and vermin—in the waiting darkness when an impatient whisper or a careless move to ease overstrained nerves meant a deluge of fire and death—in the wild frenzy of actual conflict—in ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... school in this state,[204] the deaf are said to be in "entire and invincible separation from the vast stores of knowledge which human talent has accumulated—ignorant of the truths of Revelation, her glorious assurances and unspeakable consolations," all being "among the bitter ingredients which fill up the vast measure of the affliction to the deaf and dumb;" and that "among the various efforts of philanthropy and learning to enlarge the ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... which brought him such blessing. We may be sure that as at their first meeting the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul, so at this first meeting the soul of John was knit with the soul of Jesus in a holy friendship which brought unspeakable good to his life. There was that in Jesus which at once touched all that was best in John, and called out the sweetest ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... were of all ages; and, it might be added, of all nations. Several European tongues mingled in the melee of sounds; but the one which predominated was that language without vowels—the jargon of the Welsh Principality. The continual clacking of this unspeakable tongue told that the sons and daughters of the Cymri mustered strongest in the migration. Many of the latter wore their picturesque native costume— the red-hooded cloak and kirtle; and some were unspeakably fair, with the fine ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the bodies of the Three Nephites, so that, while they remained in the flesh, they were exempt from the usual effects of physical vicissitude. The heavens were opened to their gaze; they were caught up, and saw and heard unspeakable things. "And it was forbidden them that they should utter; neither was it given unto them power that they could utter the things which they saw and heard." Though they lived and labored as men among their fellows, preaching, baptizing, and conferring the Holy Ghost upon ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... Crown by this statement. War they were ready to face. But to go back to every-day life once again bowed down with the shame of a moral Majuba, to meet the eyes of the Dutch once more aflame with the light of victory, to hear their words of insolent contempt—was ignominy unspeakable and unendurable. The Uitlander Council at once cabled an emphatic message of protest[115] to Mr. Chamberlain, and every loyalist that had a friend in England telegraphed to beg him to use all his influence ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... for herself, and even endeavouring to take up her employment of sewing: the servants looked on, and knew what the catching, rattling breath, and the glazing of the eye too surely foretold; but she kept at her work; and Charlotte and Anne, though full of unspeakable dread, had still the faintest spark of hope. On that morning Charlotte wrote thus—probably in the very presence ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... thrill of delight that I experienced at his touch. Nothing took place that all the world might not have seen, but I remember being taken between his knees as he sat, and his arms being put around my neck, and the warm, soft pressure of his thighs had an unspeakable effect ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... dozen steps from us, sat Dannevig between two gaudily attired women; another man was seated at the opposite side of the table, and between them stood a couple of bottles and several half-filled glasses. The sight was by no means new to me, and still, in that moment, it filled me with unspeakable disgust. The knight of Dannebrog was as charmingly free-and-easy as if he were nestled securely in the privacy of his own fireside; his fine plumes were deplorably ruffled, his hat thrust back, and his hair ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... figure in the shadow of a tree near by as she came from the tailor's door. She had not heard a smothered cry behind her. She was not aware that in unspeakable agony another woman knocked softly at the door of the tailor's house, and, not waiting for an answer, opened it and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of any kind. The old Tartar blood and Tartar sympathies of the First August Emperor must surely re-appear in a policy so incompatible with all orthodox teaching? In one sense the blight upon Chinese civilization was akin to the blight cast upon that of Eastern Europe 500 years ago by the "unspeakable Turk." The new ruler boldly said: "The world begins afresh, with me. No posthumous condemnatory titles for me! My successor will be 'August Emperor Number Two,' and so on for ever." It was like the Vendemiaire ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... the man's appearance it seemed impossible. I wondered what sort of complicated debauch had reduced him to that unspeakable condition. Captain Giles' benevolence was spoiled by a curious air of complacency which I disliked. I ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... could not have been imposed Than I to speak my griefs unspeakable: Yet, that the world may witness that my end Was wrought by nature, not by vile offence, 35 I'll utter what my sorrow gives me leave. In Syracusa was I born; and wed Unto a woman, happy but for me, And by me, had not our hap been bad. With her I lived in joy; our wealth increased ...
— The Comedy of Errors - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... her pile of rags, did not recognize the limp burden carried in by the larger of the two men, whom she had learned to dread with unspeakable terror. When he threw it down in the middle of the room, the pale face was turned toward the child, and she recognized, Warren. She commenced to scream. Shriek after shriek left her pale lips, and the man started over ...
— The Boy Scouts in Front of Warsaw • Colonel George Durston
... news indeed, and the boys hastened round to the house of M. Desplaine's friend. To their unspeakable regret, however, he was absent on a fishing expedition in ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... all the time seethed deep in Keith welled up at those words. His brother—son of his mother, a gentleman—the property of this girl, bound to her, body and soul, by this unspeakable event! But she had turned up the light. Had she some intuition that darkness was against her? Yes, she was pretty with that soft face, colourless save for its lips and dark eyes, with that face somehow so touchingly, so unaccountably good, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Robert II. by his second marriage), led a force against the King in the monastery of the Black Friars at Perth, surprised him, and butchered him. The energy of his Queen brought the murderers, and Atholl himself, to die under unspeakable torments. ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... got mine," said Garrison quietly. "You're the very best friend I've seen for weeks. Fairfax, the man who has done this unspeakable wrong, is a lunatic, somewhere between here and up country, at this moment. He was here in town for a couple of days, and I thought you ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... moments to view the beauties of Nature as it came fresh from the hand of Omnipotence. The sunlight was streaming from the western skies, kissing each mountain top, clad with crimson and gold, like the morning light that dances on the heaven-kissed hills of Paradise. Mayall viewed the scene with unspeakable delight, as he thought how rich he was in everything that made life desirable to him. From this lofty eminence over the valley forest he could mark the smoke curling from his quiet home, where his lovely companion rested. Youth, beauty, wealth, love, all seemed to be his. All ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... than that. He is unspeakable." As he looked into her eyes a deep anxiety or disturbance appeared beneath the superficial gaiety of his smile. "The fellow had evidently had a quarrel, perhaps a permanent break, with Vetch. He was in a kind of cold rage; and do you know what he said ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... imagination returning by some back-lane to contemplative thought. But as a casual traveler, may I say that the first experience I had of the gorges made me modest, patient, single-minded, conscious of man's significant insignificance, conscious of the unspeakable, wondrous grandeur of this unvisited corner of the world—a spot in which blustering, selfish, self-conceited persons will not fare well? Humility and patience are the first requisites in traveling on the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... to promote peace and welfare among these Republics, efforts which are fully appreciated by the majority of them who are loyal to their true interests. It would be no less unnecessary to rehearse here the sad tale of unspeakable barbarities and oppression alleged to have been committed by the Zelaya Government. Recently two Americans were put to death by order of President Zelaya himself. They were reported to have been regularly commissioned officers in the organized forces of a revolution which had continued many weeks ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... those of their early married life, this strain of happiness often overflows in her letters like a flood of sunshine. "All that ground," she writes of the neighborhood of the Old Manse, "is consecrated to me by unspeakable happiness; yet not nearly so great happiness as I now have, for I am ten years happier in time, and an uncounted degree happier in kind. I know my husband ten years better, and I have not arrived at the end; for he is still an enchanting mystery, beyond the region I have ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... "that he had grace enough to whisper. Yes, my poor boy, it is only too true. I was sent for to find your father dying of delirium tremens-you just born, your mother nearly dead, the desolation of your sisters unspeakable. He was only thirty-six, and that vice, together with racing, had devoured him and all the property that should have come to his children. I think he tried to repent at the very last, but there was little ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... e'en I stand gazing On the grave where she now lies low, And muse with unspeakable sadness On ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... without a parting shaft from those murderous blue eyes at the handsome cavalier. Venus and Adonis! but she was going in his direction. So, bowing politely to the household, he immediately followed, and to his unspeakable delight—for this was an adventure he certainly had not looked for—he caught up with her at the first turn of the road. When he came alongside, he pulled in his reins, took off his cap and bowed. The salute was returned with a superb yet easy grace. His ardent ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... in the best manner we could, we conveyed her to the foot of the ladder, where she gradually began to recover and breathe more freely. This was now the third day of our confinement. The storm had almost subsided, as we could feel from the vessel lying more steady in the water; and, to our unspeakable joy, the hatch was opened, and a supply of water and biscuit given to us. Next to the water, the pure air of heaven was most welcome to us. I wet the parched lips of the pale sufferer, then held the beverage to them. She swallowed a few mouthfuls, blessed ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... be supported to the window, and might look once again upon the rising sun. After looking steadily at it for some time, he cried out, "Oh! if the appearance of this earthly and created thing is so beautiful and so quickening, how much more shall I be enraptured at the sight of the unspeakable glory of the Creator Himself!" That was the feeling of a man whose sense of earthly beauty had all the keenness of a poet's enthusiasm; but who, withal, had in his greatest health and vigour preserved the consciousness that his life was hid with Christ in God; that the things seen, how ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... her eyes to the little bridling figure in front of her for a moment and dropped them again. She had had an unspeakable thought, that Mrs. Pembrose wasn't a gentlewoman, and that this sort of thing was a business for the gentle and for nobody else in the world. "I'm only anxious not to hurt anyone if I can ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... out a wavering clew. The day had gone, and a few stars dotted the vault of the sky. Tatsu threw back his head. There was no pain in the gesture now; he was trying to make room in his soul for an unspeakable visitor. The arch of heaven had grown trivial. Eternity was his one boundary. The stars twinkled in ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... our admiration is, that in the teeth of all precedent and likelihood, he succeeded by one mistake in making another: because he fancied that by sailing west he could find the Indies, he blundered upon a land whose identity he never discovered. Doubtless his blunder was of unspeakable value; but a blunder not the less it was; while as to his courage and perseverance, as much has been shown by a thousand other scientific and philosophical heretics, whose names have not survived, because the thing they imagined turned ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... complaining of her temptations—even temptations of sense. And chiefly and continually she complained of past guilt and present sin, by reason of which she felt as if 'remission of sins in Christ Jesus pertained nothing to her.'[48] This was not a case for the 'sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort' which the Church of England ascribes to the doctrine of Predestination rightly used. Nor does Knox deal with it—at least in his letters—by the simple and peremptory preaching of the Evangel. He recognised it as a case calling for sympathy, ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... to be idle, humbly requested of the King to fit him with a horse and money to travel; "for," said he, "there are many Giants alive in the remotest parts of the kingdom, to the unspeakable damage of your Majesty's liege subjects; wherefore, may it please your Majesty to give me encouragement to rid the realm of those cruel and devouring monsters ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... been in love with Larry for years: that she'd kept Pat under her thumb in France, hoping to keep Larry, too. It occurred to me that things said by the girl in letters to Adrienne—things about Mrs. Shuster, or Idonia, or both—had probably brought the Marquise flying to the rescue. Or else, that unspeakable maid of Pat's—Angele—was engaged by the Marquise to let her know what was "doing" at Kidd's Pines.) Larry's face was a study! Not a study of "detected guilt." Nothing like that. He looked sheepish, yet relieved. I read in his beautiful eyes of a boy, "Hurray! ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... dinner, for he had publicly dined with Lucas before. All day he had been abstracted, listless, and utterly desolate. All day he had gone over again and again the details of the interview with Mr. Haim, his telegram to Marguerite and her unspeakable telegram to him, hugging close a terrific grievance. Only from pique against Marguerite had he accepted Lucas's invitation. The adventure in Piccadilly Circus had somewhat enlivened him, and now the fluttering prospect of acquaintance with the ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... easier for us to appreciate in the case of the Zeus than of the Athena, though we are better provided with copies of the latter. We are accustomed in our own religious art to the attempt to express divinity in the form of a mature man of unspeakable majesty and benignity. To the Greeks, indeed, the human figure of Zeus was not merely an incarnation, but the actual form of the god himself; the god was not thought of as having taken upon himself the sorrows and the weaknesses ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... a letter to my brother George, to-day, I said:—It would be superfluous for me to tell you that the letter I received from you gave me unspeakable pleasure. Your fears with respect to my injuring my health are groundless, for I must confess I don't possess half that application and burning zeal in these all-important pursuits that I ought to have. For who can estimate the value of a liberal education? Who can sufficiently prize that ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... of the buildings was unspeakable, and they projected enough to make a cool shade—only a narrow fragment of deep blue sky being visible above them. The party did not, however, ascend the whole 497 steps, as the abode of the Dey was then not the citadel, but the palace of Djenina in ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... genii create worlds in such spaces of the infinite where none at present exist, and organise them at their will. It distracts them momentarily from their principal business, which is to unite among themselves in unspeakable love. Only last night I turned my telescope on the Sign of the Virgin and saw on it a far- away vortex of light. No doubt, my son, that was the still unfinished work of one of ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... always tried to forget it. Yet she was not without a good many very small and unessential resources for sleepless moments. Often she wrote vague comments on matters with which she was not familiar, in an exercise-book, always eventually mislaid. She would awake from dear and unspeakable dreams full of hope, and tell herself stories about herself, trying on various lives and deaths like clothes. The result was never likely enough even to ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... lustrous, melancholy eyes, swimming in tears, were then lifted up to mine. Ages of eloquence were contained in that one look. In it, I read the whole story of her life, the depth of her love, the fealty of her faith, and the deep, the unspeakable prayer for sympathy, for love, and for protection. The mute appeal was unanswerable. It seemed to be conveyed to me by the voice of destiny, to my mind, louder and more awful than thunder. At that moment, I pledged myself eternally to her; and, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... though M'Vicar declares that nothing vital has been touched. Be it as it may, the boy has been in all respects, even more than I dared to wish, and the comfort he has been ever since he came out to me has been unspeakable. We must not grudge him such a soldier's death after his joyous life. But for you, my poor girl, I could only wish the same for myself to-morrow. You will, at least, if you lose a brother's care, have a memory of him, ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time; he beheld it close to him, illuminated, speaking; he again beheld the most fleeting motions of her eyes, and of her lips, all her attitudes, all the shades of her thoughts; and urged on by these pursuing recollections, he hastened his steps; and a new affection, an unspeakable tenderness, grew in him, grew in his heart, making sweet and quiet tears to flow down his face; and as he advanced through the gloom, he spoke to her, he said to her the words which he would murmur in her ear ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... look round," said Horace, and began to poke about with a sinking heart, and a horrid dread that he might have come to the wrong shop, for the big pot-bellied vessel certainly did not seem to be there. At last, to his unspeakable joy, he discovered it under a piece of tattered drugget. "Why, this is the sort of thing I meant," he said, feeling in his pocket and discovering that he had exactly a sovereign. "How much do ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... wronged you?" cried Arvina, in a paroxysm of almost unspeakable despair. "In what, that you should take such ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... fair woman Ilion suffered unspeakable tortures. But to us a single song of Homer is worth more than all these Hebrew writings. And yet a Trojan war of the intellect has been kindled concerning them. Here freedom of investigation, yonder with Hoogstraten and Tungern, fettering of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... character-drawing, and the European importance of the events and people described, would have my vote for the second place. It is the father of all those sword-and-cape novels which have formed so numerous an addition to the light literature of the last century. The pictures of Charles the Bold and of the unspeakable Louis are extraordinarily vivid. I can see those two deadly enemies watching the hounds chasing the herald, and clinging to each other in the convulsion of their cruel mirth, more clearly than most things which my ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... should feel an almost unspeakable sense of responsibility in having to select and present matter: but the problem should be solved on the one hand by her own high standard of story material, and on the other by her knowledge of the child's needs. According to his experiences ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... he inspired no pity in the Duke of Wharton, who considered him with an eye of unspeakable severity. "If Mr. Caryll dies," said he coldly, "I shall see to it that you hang, my lord. I'll not rest until I bring you to ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... India is not to be won for Christ by a campaign of ignorance and noise, however largely it may be enforced by altruistic fervour. And it should not be forgotten that the army officers have not scrupled to enter territory already occupied by Christian missions, to cause unspeakable annoyance to workers on the field, and to fill up more than half the ranks of their "soldiers" with people who already claimed allegiance to Christ in connection with ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... without regaining consciousness. Hers had been the unspeakable privilege of leaving life swiftly and painlessly without knowing that the moment had come. She had passed unconsciously into that awful gulf, without having had to stand for a moment shuddering on the brink. She had never dreaded death itself, but she had dreaded intensely the thought ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... your conduct is heartless. Here you find a family enjoying the unspeakable peace and freedom of being orphans. We have never seen the face of a relative—-never known a claim except the claim of freely chosen friendship. And now you wish to thrust into the most intimate relationship with us a ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... acrid or bitter in their very deeds of charity, and carry into every society a certain porcupine selfhood, which makes their mere presence annoying and baneful. Such persons, besides the suffering they inflict on individuals, are of unspeakable injury to their respective circles or communities, by making their very virtues unlovely, and piety, if they profess it, hateful. On the other hand, there is no truer benefactor to society—if the creation of happiness be the measure of benefit—than ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... rehearse the opening processional and to rebuke his dearest foe, the unspeakable "camuel," bestridden by Mrs. Horan as Fatima, Queen of the Desert. Speed followed, squatted on the head of the elephant, ankus on thigh, shouting, "Hout! Mail! Djebe Noain! Mail the hezar! Mail!" he thundered, triumphantly, saluting Byram with ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... confidence; but their cheeks have been pale, their lips have quivered, and oh, the agony depicted in their eyes. The soul was speaking through them, and told of its secret dread. Let no one be deceived by the outward show, the gallant bearing of a man. Too often, all within is terror, horror unspeakable of the near-approaching unknown future. We had still a long way to drive before we could reach the neighbourhood of the dreaded shoals and reefs. Most of the men probably were ignorant of the risks we were ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... could any one say the peace which might then be ordered without hindrance was not a mission worthy a son of God? Could any one then deny the Redeemership of the Christ? And discarding all consideration of political consequences, what unspeakable personal glory there would then be to him as a man? It was not in the nature of any mere mortal to refuse such ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... screech-owls and crickets and adders— These were the guides of the witch through the dank deeps of the forest. Then, with her roots and her herbs, back to her cave in the morning Ambled that hussy to brew spells of unspeakable evil; And, when the people awoke, seeing the hillside and valley Sweltered in swathes as of mist—"Look!" they would whisper in terror— "Look! the old witch is at work brewing her spells of great evil!" Then would they pray till the sun, darting his rays through the vapor, Lifted the ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... warning." But the cause of philosophical reform will not be stayed by him or by them: the world's heart is hungry for higher truth than idealism can discover, and will be grateful in the end to any philosophy which shall show what mighty moral conviction, what unspeakable spiritual invigoration, must needs grow out of ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... restored the case to the place provided by law for its concealment on his glittering person. He then took out his cigarette case, and after selecting a cigarette, he gently tapped it on the gold cover, glaring all the time quite through and beyond the unspeakable American. With more absurd contortions the cigarette case was disposed of, and matches produced. Then, stretching out his beautiful patent-leather boots, ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... than Roman descent), and probably better educated than their masters, who had absolutely no rights as human beings, and could be tortured or killed just as cruelty or caprice might suggest. To Tiro, man of culture and acute intellect as he was, there must have been an unspeakable bitterness in the thought of servitude, even under a master so kindly and affectionate as Cicero. One shudders to think what the feelings of such a man must have been when he was the chattel of a Verres, a Clodius, or a ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... Cronus and the Vedic Tvashtri and Poseidon made love as horses, and Apollo as a dog. Not less wild are the legends about the births of gods from the thigh, or the head, or feet, or armpits of some parent; while tales describing and pictures representing unspeakable divine obscenities were frequent in the mythology and in the temples of Greece. Once more, the gods were said to possess and exercise the power of turning men and women into birds, beasts, fishes, trees, and stones, so that there was scarcely a ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... said of it: for first, its being declined only with three cases, did expressly point out the trinity of persons, then that the nominative ended in S, the accusative in M, and the ablative in U, did imply some unspeakable mystery, viz., that in words of those initial letters Christ was the summus, or beginning, the medius, or middle, and the ultimus, or end of all things. There was yet a more abstruse riddle ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... was to be done? Must they wait patiently till George grew weary of his exile, and returned to his friends who loved him? or were there any means to be taken by which his return might be hastened? Robert Audley was at fault! Perhaps, in the unspeakable relief of mind which he had experienced upon the discovery of his friend's escape, he was unable to look beyond the one fact of ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... is rather uninteresting; it has about 1,500 inhabitants, all Montenegrin, for the Turk has almost entirely disappeared. Only in a ruined mosque and one or two dilapidated Turkish houses is the traveller reminded that once the Unspeakable was master here. The houses are all built with the afore-mentioned high conical roof and ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... of those glorious October days, when every breath quickens the blood and when simply to live is a joy unspeakable, that Darrell first walked abroad into the outdoor world. Several times during his convalescence he had sunned himself on the balcony opening from his room, or when able to go downstairs had paced feebly ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... nothing to such outbursts except a soothing exhortation to wait till summer, when she would find the benefit of the fresh air, not to speak of the early vegetables; and he himself found the garden an unspeakable resource. At first, indeed, he would stroll up to the shop of a morning, especially if any new consignment of first-rate York hams, or cheese, was coming in, which he loved to turn over and test by smell and touch; but by and by the ancient butterman made a discovery, such ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... very kind, and she will be coming to help you with your dresses, Flora, for we will be wanting you to look well this day, and here iss some small thing to keep you warm," and Lachlan produced with unspeakable pride a jacket lined with flannel and ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... classes with moderate incomes, and of the middle classes with small incomes. The abodes for the large incomes were called "mansions," and were fortified strongly against the rest of the suburb by being all built in one wide row, shut in at either end by ornamental gates, and called a "park." The unspeakable desolation of aspect common to the whole suburb, was in a high state of perfection in this part of it. Irreverent street noises fainted dead away on the threshold of the ornamental gates, at the sight of the hermit lodge-keeper. The cry of the costermonger and the screech of the vagabond ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... paved streets which they had seen in many a day. They did not get out of the way of people at all; they let the people scurry out of their way and were very bold and high and mighty and unmannerly, and truly German in all the nice little particulars which make the German such an unspeakable beast. ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... seeing. Even at a small party, the company was a pleasure to behold; the richly varied hues of the assembly in a church or theatre are said to have more than once proved too distracting for our greatest teachers and actors; but most ravishing of all is said to have been the unspeakable magnificence of a ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... the future! Exalted visions! Beautiful, unspeakable hopes! Deep, inarticulate longings that fill the conscious soul! Ah! so sweet, so harmonious, so delightful, like an angel, like the bride of the pure and bright soul adorned for the nuptials, do I see the future beckoning me with ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... reached the fort. Some of the men jumped into the river, swam to the other shore and escaped. Some swam to a little island called Monocacy, and hid, but the Tories and Indians hunted them out and slew them. One Tory found his brother there, and killed him with his own hand, a deed of unspeakable horror that is yet mentioned by the people of that region. A few fled into the forest and ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... led to eternal damnation. No, no: not to damnation: further than that, there and back again, back to that unspeakable circle, where feelings of honor remain in the background, and moral insensibility rules the day. That thought was able to drive out of Lorand's heart the conviction, that when an honorable man has given his life or his honor into the hands of an adversary, ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... animal world and raised his voice against the unspeakable doings of the vivisectors, and the whole anti-vivisection movement was started and built up under his wise and benign guidance, as first President of the ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... introduced me to him; but, as he had not been sober at the moment, he had missed any intellectual pleasure my acquaintanceship might have afforded him. Like everybody else who moves about in London, I knew all about him. To sum him up, he was a most unspeakable little cad, and, if the drawing-room had not been Mrs Drassilis's, I should have wondered ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... with a purpose; he wanted to have his bones buried. The Highlands, in spite of Culloden, were not entirely pacified in the year 1749. Broken men, robbers, fellows with wrongs unspeakable to revenge, were out in the heather. The hills that seemed so lonely were not bare of human life. A man was seldom so solitary but that eyes might be on him from cave, corry, wood, or den. The Disarming Act ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... indignation and fiery protest. Kingston cursed, raved, stormed and resoluted, then stormed, raved and resoluted some more. Kingston was tricked, betrayed, cheated, defrauded, insulted and mocked. And the unspeakable villain, the sordid wretch, the miserable gamester who had ruined Kingston ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... a considerable time; but, being again molested, she ventured once more to peep out, when, to her unspeakable astonishment, she saw a phantasm stand by the side of her bed, almost as high as the ceiling: a kind of glory encircled its head, and the whole was in the form of a crucifix, except that it seemed to have several hands, one of which again ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... their arms against the Spanish-American republics, it gave the people of our country the gravest concern. In the meantime our relations with Great Britain had grown cordial. That they may grow ever stronger and more cordial should be the prayer of every man of the English speaking race. An unspeakable blessing to mankind of the struggle from which we are now emerging is the genuine brotherly sympathy for the people of the United States flowing ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... had hardened her sensibilities to endurance of all the grimy uncleanness of the place, but to Moira the appearance of the house and especially of the dining-room filled her with loathing unspeakable. ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... limed almost instantly by the honey of Rudin's language, and her virgin soul expands at his declaration of love. Despite the opposition of her mother, despite the iron bonds of convention, she is ready to forsake all and follow him. To her unspeakable amazement and dismay, she finds that the great orator is vox, et ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... cut-throat that you are! how dare you kill another man's daughter without provocation? Such unspeakable villany is unworthy a Samurai's son. Know, that the duty of every Samurai is to keep watch over the country, and to protect the people; and such is his daily task. For sword and dirk are given to men that they may slay rebels, and faithfully serve their prince, and not that ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... from the rarity of the atmosphere was plain. It seemed as though the envelope of breathable air surrounding the earth had suddenly become vastly rarified. If the. atmosphere had been so changed all over the globe it would be a catastrophe unspeakable. ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... foot of a high hill, nearly destitute of wood on one side; and expecting that some discovery might be made from the top which might be of use to me, I resolved on attempting the ascent—an undertaking of no small difficulty in my enfeebled state. I succeeded in gaining the top, and to my unspeakable joy, perceived a chain of lakes within about two miles of me, exactly corresponding to the description given me by the Canadian hunter. I also heard the reports of guns, but so indistinctly that I could not determine the direction ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... her seat, tense and white, and both young men sprang out and rushed to the shore of the little lake, leaving a stream of unspeakable language behind them. Myrtle began ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... about this gloomy landscape. After a man has seen it once, he never forgets it—the recollection of it seems to me to follow him like a remorse, as it were to implicate him in the awful deed which was done there. Oh! with what unspeakable shame and terror should one think of that crime, and prostrate himself before the image of ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the air, shouted for help, and tried to raise his friend. At the sound of the shot, the strange lady, who had stood motionless by the gate, fled away, crying out like a wounded wild creature, circling round and round in the meadow, with every sign of unspeakable terror. ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... thereby in the utterances of the boatmen. Sometimes the burden of this sulphurous profanity is aimed at me, sometimes at the inoffensive bicycle, or both of us collectively, but oftener is it directed at the unspeakable mule, who is really the only party to blame. A mule scares, not because he is really afraid, but because he feels skittishly inclined to turn back, or to make trouble between his enemies - the boatmen, his task-master, and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... police agent. "As she passed me her eyes met mine, and I thought I saw a strange fixed kind of glare in them—the look of a woman filled with some unspeakable horror." ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... he had been subjected to the same infamous proposals as I had, and that he had received them in the same spirit. His lips were sealed to me, as mine were to him, by the promise which we had taken, but I contented myself with muttering 'Atrocious! Unspeakable!'—so that he might know that I was ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the effect all this would have on him, in the unspeakable misery it would inflict upon his vain, insolent, self- indulgent organization; and she marveled how ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... an impossible dream? No one could be blamed for so regarding it before 1914. I, myself, would have agreed with them. But since the nightmare of 1914-1918, since we have seen the impossible happen and the unspeakable become so common as to cease to stir us; in a day when Russia has dethroned her Czar, England has granted the suffrage to women and is in the act of giving Home Rule to Ireland; when Germany has adopted parliamentary government; when Jerusalem has been delivered from the Turks; and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... To go and work and work and work, and drive my men and all the machinery for months and months to make a ship and put in the engines and send it down and load it, and all for some"—a gesture expressed his unspeakable thought—"of a German to blow it to hell and gone, with a little clock-bomb ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... mother-in-law's insinuations, Ruyler felt lighter of heart as he left the hotel and walked toward his office than he had since Sunday. Of two things he was certain: there was no ugly understanding between the mother and daughter over that unspeakable past, and Madame Delano's new attitude toward her daughter was merely the result of an over-sophisticated mother's apprehensions: those of a woman who was looking in upon smart society for the first time and found it ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... partly understand how they arrived at it. It is quite true that the nearer we approach to God, the wider seems to yawn the gulf that separates us from Him, till at last we feel it to be infinite. But does not this conviction itself bring with it unspeakable comfort? How could we be aware of that infinite distance, if there were not something within us which can span the infinite? How could we feel that God and man are incommensurable, if we had not ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... with flexile face, With bagman smartness and batrachian grace. Is he not sweet and winning? Mime of the gutter, mimic of the slum, Muse of the haunts unspeakable, else dumb, A ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not without their meanings. But Faith, like a jackal, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... blood suffused her neck in a sudden wave, and was imperceptibly absorbed in the paleness of her skin, like a dying ember. Hanne's blood came and went in the same way for the merest trifle. Johanna had inherited her mother's bashfulness and unspeakable charm, and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... grace is sufficient for thee; my strength is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore may we glory in our infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon us. Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gifts. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... trained for the work by a medical man—my friend Mr. James Hinton—first in his own branch of the London profession, and a most original thinker. To him the degradation of women, which most men accept with such blank indifference, was a source of unspeakable distress. He used to wander about the Haymarket and Piccadilly in London at night, and break his heart over the sights he saw and the tales he heard. The words of the Prophet ground themselves into his very soul, with regard to the miserable wanderers of our streets: "This is a people ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... his friends strode into the enclosure, and came upon these good people rather suddenly, their amazement was unspeakable at finding they had bagged a party of giants along with their deer. Even scraggy Sam Sorrel looked ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... the nation owed, in Kentucky, at least, to the passionate allegiance that was broadcast through the State to Henry Clay? It was not in the boy's blood to be driven an inch, and no one tried to drive him. In his own home he was a spectre of gnawing anguish to his mother and Margaret, of unspeakable bitterness and disappointment to his father, and an impenetrable sphinx to Dan. For in Dan there was no shaking doubt. He was the spirit, incarnate, of the young, unquestioning, unthinking, generous, reckless, hotheaded, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... burglary. He got off with a two year sentence; but it was the end of his attempt to reform. "Crooked or straight, I'll end in jail," he said to me, with that strange convict smile which means such unspeakable things. "I've got two years more here; if I last it out, they'll get ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... convulsion of irony] Let us seize this unspeakable moment. Let us march to the great meeting at once. Excuse me just an instant. [He rushes into the shelter. Jenny takes her tambourine ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... the Balmoral stay was greatly saddened by the news of the Sepoy rebellion, of the tragedies of Cawnpore, and the unspeakable atrocities of Nana Sahib. Young people nowadays know little about that ghastly war, except as connected with the pretty poetical story of the relief of Lucknow, and Jessie Brown; but, at the time, it was an awfully real thing, and not in the least ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... Newgate, which have hidden so much misery and such unspeakable anguish, not only from the eyes, but, too often and too long, from the thoughts of men, never held so dread a spectacle as that. The few who lingered as they passed, and wondered what the man was doing who was ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... the buddings of reason and religion, praying daily that she should be increased in wisdom as in stature. He had become so used to the look of her mother in her face that it now and then gave him an instant of unspeakable joy. But the sound of his own voice calling her "Prudence" would shock him from this as with an ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... all who would know what the "concert of European powers" means to a struggling kingdom and people used as a "buffer state" between the unspeakable Turk and civilized "Westerns." The historical chapters of the work are a revelation of the intricacies of "the disgraceful deals of the great powers whose victim the kingdom of Greece has been." The story is simply told with great candor and quiet reserve, ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... little, and with growing anguish, he had seen that the nation must take another step. Little by little, as the inhuman frenzies of warfare had grown in savagery, inflicting unspeakable horror on non-combatants, women and children, he had realized that his cherished dream must be laid aside. For the first time in human history a great nation had dared to waive pride, honour, and—with bleeding heart—even the lives of its own for the hope of humanity ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... heroes of the elder days. If the Egyptologist or the archaeologist could revive within him one-hundredth part of the elusive romance, the delicate gaiety, the subtle humour, the intangible tenderness, the unspeakable goodness, of much that is to be found in his province, one would have to ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... he tried to beguile us into a drawing-room, Livy drew the line; she wouldn't go in. And she wouldn't stay up there, either. She said the princess might come in at any moment and catch us, and it would be too infernally ridiculous for anything. So we went down stairs again—to my unspeakable regret. For it was too darling a comedy to spoil. I was hoping and praying the princess would come, and catch us up there, and that those other Americans who were expected would arrive, and be taken for impostors by the portier, and shot by the sentinels—and then it would all go into the papers, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that time, what an unspeakable comfort a poor, weak, and sorrowful conscience might have and receive, if it could but believe that such words and comforts were the words and comforts of God himself, as in truth they are; therefore we conclude, short and round, that God through the Word worketh, ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... yet. Alp calleth unto Alp! That stately old Scriptural wording is the right one for God's Alps and God's ocean. How puny we were in that awful Presence, and how painless it was to be so! How fitting and right it seemed, and how stingless was the sense of our unspeakable insignificance! And Lord, how pervading were the repose and peace and blessedness that poured out of the heart of the invisible Great Spirit of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... enormous body, the scaly surface of which scratched him as he passed. He thought himself lost and swam with desperate energy. Then he rose again to the top of the water, took breath and dived once more. Thus passed a few minutes of unspeakable anguish, which all his philosophy could not overcome, for he thought, all the while, that he heard behind him the sound of those huge jaws ready to snap him up forever. In this state of mind he was striking out under the water as noiselessly as possible ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... compelling, Should our paths unite or our pathways sever, In the Mays to come I shall feel forever The wildflowers thinking, the wildbirds telling The same fond love that my heart then knew, Love unspeakable, deep and true,— But what of you? Whatever befalls ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... told him tales. Some talked of gray, bewhiskered hordes who were advancing with relentless curses and chewing tobacco with unspeakable valor; tremendous bodies of fierce soldiery who were sweeping along like the Huns. Others spoke of tattered and eternally hungry men who fired despondent powders. "They'll charge through hell's fire an' brimstone t' git a holt on a haversack, an' sech stomachs ain't a-lastin' long," he was told. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane |
