"Unintelligible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fact, when we had afterwards occasion to say Phrygum and Phrygibus, it was rather absurd to adopt the Greek letter without adopting their cases, [Footnote: This passage, as it stands in the original, appears to me unintelligible: I have therefore taken the liberty to give it a slight alteration.] or at least not to confine it to the nominative; and yet (in the accusative) we say Phryges, and Pyrrhum, to please the ear. Formerly ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... measured rhetoric a charm of which her careless colloquial speech was incapable. Even the "Fifth Reader," with its imposing passages from the English classics carefully selected with a view of paralyzing small, hesitating, or hurried voices, in Cressy's hands became no longer an unintelligible incantation. She had quietly mastered the difficulties of pronunciation by some instinctive sense of euphony if not of comprehension. The master with his eyes closed hardly recognized his pupil. Whether or not she understood what she read he hesitated to inquire; no doubt, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... at Edinburgh, at a school, without distinction or expectation, till at the usual time he performed a probationary exercise by explaining a psalm. His diction was so poetically splendid, that Mr. Hamilton, the professor of divinity, reproved him for speaking language unintelligible to a popular audience; and he censured one of his expressions as indecent, if not profane. This rebuke is reported to have repressed his thoughts of an ecclesiastical character, and he probably cultivated with new diligence his blossoms of poetry, which, however, were in ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... letter, Mr. Salame says, that it is the worst of the African papers which he had seen, both as to its ungrammatical and unintelligible character. Indeed, his Yaourick majesty seemed to be sadly in need of words to make himself intelligible. It must be remarked, that the words between parentheses are not in the original, but supplied by the translator for the ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... in his sleep when Gwyn reached his side, but for a time his words were unintelligible. ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
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