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More "Undecipherable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... She had always a greasy volume tucked under her while her nose was bent upon the pages in hand. She scarcely looked up even when Miriam lifted her voice to show their benefactor what she could do. These tragic or pathetic notes all went out of the window and mingled with the undecipherable concert of Paris, so that no neighbour was disturbed by them. The girl shrieked and wailed when the occasion required it, and Mrs. Rooth only turned her page, showing in this way a great esthetic as well as a ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... and a very clean Chinaman, who appreciated his privilege, since it included a seat, a lamp, and a noise, though his perception of it possibly went no further. The other odds and ends were of the mixed country blood, like the girls, dingy, undecipherable. They made a shadow for the rest, lying along the benches, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... of a little chateau on the soft elevation of a mound not sufficient for the name of hill—which are scattered everywhere through those level countries, like places which have never been built, which have grown out of the soil, of undecipherable antiquity—perhaps, one feels, only a hundred, perhaps a thousand years old—yet always inhabitable in all the ages, with the same names lingering about, the same surroundings, the same mild rural occupations, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... contemporary figure is perhaps Don Miguel de Unamuno. I am merely setting down that intuitional fact for what it may be worth, though I do not hide my opinion that such promptings of the inner, untutored man are worth more than cavefuls of bones and tombfuls of undecipherable papers. ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... pretend that you've just slowly pulled away the envelope that was so useless because of poor old Marthy's undecipherable handwriting and that you've kissed the inner wrapping that reads "Please send this to Miss Trenton (if that's her name). At once." And then—oh then, you can pretend you are reading the first letter you ever had in all this ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... receding; brows contracted; eyes small, deep-set, venomous; lower part of face banded black, and undecipherable; neck long, skinny, vulture-like; rest ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... Sumatran and the Egyptian, the Briton and the native of Borneo. When a medical written charm is wholly unintelligible, its curative virtue is thereby much enhanced. The Anglo-Saxon document known as the Vercelli manuscript by some means found its way to Lombardy. Its text being undecipherable, the precious pages of the manuscript were cut up, to serve ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... knew how to handle his ship, but as a navigator he was nowhere. Incredible as it may seem, his general chart of the North and South Pacific was thirty years old, and was so torn, stained and greasy as to be all but undecipherable. As the weary weeks went by and they went from island to island, only to be turned away by the inhabitants, they at last began to realise the folly of the venture, and most of them wanted to return to San Francisco. But Richards clung ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... who is done with hope and fear;[17] how short-lived soever he be in comparison with the world through which he passes, yet no less through time Fate dries up the holy springs, and the mighty cities of old days are undecipherable under the green turf;[18] it is the only wisdom to acquiesce in the forces, however ignorant or malign in their working, that listen to no protest and admit no appeal, that no force can affect, no subtlety elude, ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... Notes) that Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, quotes the story from this miscellany of the miller's eels, and enabled us, before the Goettingen copy was brought under notice, to complete the text, which is almost undecipherable in the Conybeare ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... pulsates with buoyancy and desire. It suggests all things strong and beautiful and joyous, and gives me a sense of physical happiness. I wonder if others observe that all infants have the same scent—pure, simple, undecipherable as their dormant personality. It is not until the age of six or seven that they begin to have perceptible individual odours. These develop and mature along with their ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... eyes cast upon the undecipherable letters of the tomb by which we sat, she told me how that once, near before dawn, she had awoke in the twilight to find their places empty where the children had lain at her side, and had sought on, at last to find them even here, weeping and ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... every newspaper should print twice, in successive numbers. At the same time all the newspapers should be told to print inspiring articles, and an article of this kind should be sent in for approval by the Government and the military command. The signature at the bottom of this note is undecipherable.] ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... and of gold, the locket small; inside two painted miniatures but very diminutive, and both of them young. One would hardly be able to identify a middle aged person from them. There was no mark or initials, save an undecipherable monogram. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... MS. in my possession is blurred and undecipherable, full of erasures, random stage-directions and marginal notes, amongst which occasional passages such as the following "emerge" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... Over the whole surface of this tumbled plain rise, at intervals, great masses of rock, some natural, but others artificially up-tilted cromlechs and dolmens, menhirs and cairns—whitened by lichen scrawls, giving them often in uncertain light the effect of so many undecipherable inscriptions, written ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... the perpetual rattle of the abacus making a deafening din, for apparently the smallest sum cannot be added up under Eastern skies without the assistance of this wire frame with the ever-shifting marbles. Cramped fingers move wearily over the yellow parchments, with their long lists of undecipherable hieroglyphics, and the turbaned heads are scarcely raised until the entrance of the Prince necessitates the time-honoured salute of the dodok, the crouching posture assumed in the presence of a superior. The ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... close more tightly upon the rifle stock, while his heart, trained for the Wee Kirk, sent a wordless prayer winging its way to heaven. Both tracks, he saw, had undergone a change, and this change, so far as it concerned the footsteps of the man, was in some undecipherable manner—appalling. ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... by Prince there is a line or two of writing, marked over in ink so carefully as to be wholly undecipherable. On the reverse page of this leaf and on the first page of the next are written Hebrew words, with definitions. These are all in Governor Bradford's handwriting. On the next page appears ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... were omitted, probably through telegraphic error. In the official text of the note the State Department calls attention to the stars by an asterisk and a footnote saying "apparent omission." In the French note the same thing occurs, and is indicated by the footnote "undecipherable group," meaning that the cipher symbols into which the French note was put by our Embassy in Paris could not be translated back into plain language by the State Department cipher experts. From the context it is apparent ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... and were replaced by German-type beer halls, schools with courses advertised in their posted schedules whose titles were completely unintelligible to him, and second hand bookstalls selling battered technical books and journals whose titles were undecipherable in any tongue Bryce could think of. The lunch hour crowds were beginning to pour out into the arcades from elevators and tube trains in a rush to get first place in their favorite ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... moreover, in every country of the globe, and their system of intercommunication is so perfect that even birds and flying things can learn from it. They prove their breeding by their perfect taste in dress, the well-bred ever being inconspicuous; and their simplicity conceals enormous, undecipherable wonder. One daisy out of doors is worth a hundred shelves of text- books in the house. Their mischief, moreover, is not revenge, though some might think it so—but a natural desire to be recognised and thought ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... some distance from the post-office as I read this, for Mr. ——'s chirography was almost undecipherable, even to one accustomed to it. I was just folding the letter to replace it in the envelope, when I heard heavy footsteps hurrying behind me. I turned my head and saw Wilson, quite red in the face with trying to overtake me. "Beg pardon, Miss," he said, ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... give myself to his monument with such cordial affection as I felt for that of the versatile and volatile old letter-writer James Howell, which also I found in that triforium, half-hidden behind a small organ, with an epitaph too undecipherable in the dimness for my patience. It was so satisfactory to find this, after looking in vain for any record of him at Jesus College in Oxford, where he studied the humanities that enabled him to be so many things to so many ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... in which only this confused and shaggy country at my feet has any title to the name, and in this sense the peasantry employ the word. These are the Cevennes with an emphasis: the Cevennes of the Cevennes. In that undecipherable labyrinth of hills, a war of bandits, a war of wild beasts, raged for two years between the Grand Monarch with all his troops and marshals on the one hand, and a few thousand Protestant mountaineers upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had foreseen the question. He did not believe that Wilhelmine de Naarboveck had been Captain Brocq's mistress; but he knew there was an undecipherable mystery in this girl's life, and he had an intuition that the discovery of this secret would probably throw light on certain points which, as far as he was concerned, had remained obscure. Was this ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... trousers pocket the water soaked lump that had been the New York newspaper. The page containing the sensational announcement of the engagement in high life was quite undecipherable. Being on the outside of the folded paper, it had rubbed to a pulpy blur. However, he told her about it, and she agreed that his judgment of the character of the future Baroness ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... A few antique newspapers lay on the table beside an inkstand containing some black lacquer-like substance, and a collection of quill pens twisted into stars. Sundry dirty scraps of paper, covered with almost undecipherable hieroglyphs, proved to be manuscript articles torn across the top by the compositor to check off the sheets as they were set up. He admired a few rather clever caricatures, sketched on bits of brown paper by somebody who evidently had tried to kill time by killing something ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... was generally ignorant of the charges against him, for the so-called act of accusation was in most cases, a scrap of paper covered with cramped and illegible hand-writing that frequently proved undecipherable. The president read a name. The person designated, rose and replied to such questions as were addressed to him. If the responses were confused, the prisoner's embarrassment was regarded as a conclusive proof of his guilt; if they were long, he was imperiously ordered ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... submitted to him a large manuscript. Glory be to God, for this means a large amount of work to do. Yet, though the copy is wanted in haste, the original is so carelessly written that I hardly know how to set about my task. Indeed, certain parts of the manuscript are almost undecipherable. I have agreed to do the work for forty kopecks a sheet. You see therefore (and this is my true reason for writing to you), that we shall soon be receiving money from an extraneous source. Goodbye now, as I must begin upon my ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Martha, he will eat no more. No one in the house is to eat anything at all. Uncle Liedenbrock is going to make us all fast until he has succeeded in deciphering an undecipherable scrawl." ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... chief actors! The Queen, who is always good and noble, was averse to such ignominious flight; she preferred staying and taking what came, and if Madam Adelaide had lived, they would never have made such a [word undecipherable] figure. Her pride and courage would have inspired them. With her seemed to fly Louis Philippe's star, as Napoleon's with Josephine. . . . Mr. Emerson has just come to London and we give him a dinner on Tuesday, the 14th. Several persons wish much to see ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... his handwriting difficult to read at the best of times, and undecipherable in hard pencil on thin paper, handed the letter over to the faithful Bakkus, who read it aloud with a running commentary of ironic humour. This Andrew did not know ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... by some of his contemporary readers, former owners of our copies. Scholars plainly confess inability to decipher Apicius by groans inscribed on the fly leaves and title pages in Latin, French and other languages. One French scholar of the 16th century, apparently "kidded" for studying an undecipherable cook book, stoically inscribes the title page of our Lyon, 1541, copy with: "This amuses me. Why make fun of me?" This sort of message, reaching us out of the dim past of bygone centuries is among the most touching ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... beings, but I knew not by whom,—a battle, a strife, an agony, was traveling through all its stages,—was evolving itself, like the catastrophe of some mighty drama; with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. I (as is usual in dreams, where of necessity we make ourselves central to every movement) had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... ripples of undecipherable sound struck some equally inarticulate chord of sense, and fell full-fraught with association. The breeze, murmurous amongst the branches, set the leaves rustling like silk attire. Did I imagine it, or was there really ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... ran out to find his name for me, and returned with the news that it was Cobie (Scobie, I suspect); and during his absence the rest were pouring into my ears the fame and acquirements of my countryman. He was, in some undecipherable manner, connected with the Queen of England and one of the Princesses. He had been in Turkey, and had there married a wife of immense wealth. They could find apparently no measure adequate to express the size of his books. In one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... impounded travellers congregated together. There was then a mighty production of papers on the part of the cocked hats, and a calling over of names, and great work of signing, sealing, stamping, inking, and sanding, with exceedingly blurred, gritty, and undecipherable results. Finally, everything was done according to rule, and the travellers were at liberty ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... postmark Undecipherable, bearing a Victorian stamp, addressed to "Miss Mon-" (rest ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... memory of the hieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck with a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the famous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi. Like those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains undecipherable. This allusion to the Indian rocks reminds me of another thing. Besides all the other phenomena which the exterior of the Sperm Whale presents, he not seldom displays the back, and more especially his flanks, effaced in great part of the regular linear appearance, by reason ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... controversies, such puerile ideas of God and His thought toward man, and such religious hatred and bigotry, bloodshed, suffering, and material stagnation throughout the so-called Christian era. He would approach the Gospels, not as books of almost undecipherable mystery, not as the biography of the blessed Virgin, but as containing the highest human interpretation of truth ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... was also the most inviting. It was this which lent an overwhelming interest to certain problems of history that presented the most labyrinthian mazes to be disinvolved: for the demon that was in him sought after hieroglyphics that by all others had been pronounced undecipherable; and not unfrequently it was to his eye that for the first time there seemed to be an unknown element that must be supplied. Such a problem was presented by the religious sect among the Hebrews entitled the Essenes. Admitting the character and functions of this sect ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in autographs. Most bygone celebrities wrote undecipherable hands. I have been equally puzzled in trying to read the handwriting of GUY FAWKES and Mr. GLADSTONE. But this collection was different. It had letters from nearly every one distinguished in the world to-day—good, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... framing and kaleidoscopic and patchworky glass, is withal effective beyond many more gracefully formed openings, where the glass is either too severely plain, or worked into a supposed design, which, by reason of its minute particles, is undecipherable. The design and arrangement of a series of lancets supporting the lozenge would be remarkable, were it in company with the best glass of the middle ages. It depicts an "Adoration" in which kings, saints, and bishops are modelled brilliantly, and with evidence of ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... and told him to tie the letter to it. He did so. I pulled up a large sheet of dirty wrapping-paper. There were some lines scrawled upon it, in lead-pencil, in the large hand of a schoolboy—almost undecipherable. With some study I ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... Aztec and Maya writing. These pictographs are still in the main undecipherable, and opinions differ as to the exact stage of development ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
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