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More "Unintelligible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dangers), addressed him in these words. The learned Vidura, conversant with the jargon (of the Mlechchhas), addressed the learned Yudhishthira who also was conversant with the same jargon, in the words of the Mlechchha tongue, so as to be unintelligible to all except Yudhishthira. He said, 'He that knoweth the schemes his foes contrive in accordance with the dictates of political science, should, knowing them, act in such a way as to avoid all danger. He that knoweth that there are sharp weapons capable ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... matter and of space are inseparable. We derive the notion of space from matter and form. But we have no adequate conception either of matter or space. Matter in its ultimate resolution is as unintelligible as what men call mind, spirit, or by whatever other name they may express the power which makes itself known by acts. Anaxagoras laid down the distinction between intelligence [Greek: nous] and matter, and he said that intelligence impressed motion on matter, and so separated ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... not here examine how much truth there may be in my friend's contention. But one fact must certainly strike the readers of M. Bourdon's book. The present position is as ominous as it is bewildering and unintelligible. ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... wild speech and rude song were unintelligible to his stupid, drink-bemused audience; but the keen brain of the schemer lurking near the door picked up their sense at once. Dr Pendle was the priest who was to drop the money on Southberry Heath, and Jentham the knave who was to pick it up. As certainly as though the man had given chapter ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... at her lover, and murmured some unintelligible words, but they did not save her. Montgomery crossed himself over the stool, and, after running his fingers ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... desire was to quit the field she had so rashly ventured upon. Her answer to Mr. Stoutenburgh, if made, was too unintelligible to be understood or remembered; and meanwhile she was as the Squire had hinted, looking very well, and a picture of dainty confusion. It might not help the confusion, though it did put her face more out of sight, to be rescued from the Squire's ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... so, a resonant meaning, or a meaning resonance. If you read the line, 'The sun is warm, the sky is clear,' you do not experience separately the image of a warm sun and clear sky, on the one side, and certain unintelligible rhythmical sounds on the other; nor yet do you experience them together, side by side; but you experience the one in the other. And in like manner when you are really reading Hamlet, the action and ...
— Poetry for Poetry's Sake - An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on June 5, 1901 • A. C. Bradley
... which we may be again identified. It may be by a pug nose, a hare lip, red hair, no hair or squint eyes. They never ask one's name, for they can neither pronounce nor write it when it is given. The ticket is an unintelligible tracery of lines, curves, dots and dashes, made by a brush dipped in India ink on a shred of flimsy Chinese paper. It may teem with abuse and ridicule, but you must pocket all that, and produce ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... is supposed to have been made for this great occasion. Songs, we know, were chanted at religious festivals of Rome from an early period, indeed from so early a period that some of the sacred verses were popularly ascribed to Numa, and were utterly unintelligible in the age of Augustus. In the Second Punic War a great feast was held in honor of Juno, and a song was sung in her praise. This song was extant when Livy wrote; and, though exceedingly rugged and uncouth, seemed to him not wholly destitute of merit. A song, as we learn from Horace, was part ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... cottage—my own four walls. They simply admit that I am Herr im Hause, and act on this conviction. There is no grumbling about my habitudes and whims. If I choose to dine on fire and brimstone, they will cook it for me to their best skill, thinking only that I am an unintelligible mortal, facheux to deal with, but not to be dealt with in any other way. My own ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... unintelligible how a man should prefer being the slave of blind helpless Law to being the child of living Wisdom, should believe in the absolute Nothing rather than in the perfect Will, were it not that he does not, can not see the Wisdom or the Will, except he ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... with Lambernier, but the consideration due Mademoiselle Gobillot's honor imposed numberless circumlocutions and concealments which ended by making his story rather unintelligible to his auditors, and in the midst of it his head became so muddled that he was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... thoughts in the dead language that befitted one cut off from life, to whom Dutch was never aught but the unintelligible jargon of an unspiritual race, he was leaving his house on a bleak evening when one clapped him on the shoulder, and turning in amaze, he was still more mazed to find, for the first time in fifteen years, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... was his complacency to woman that caused his first debasement; let him not, therefore, glory in his shame; let him not worship the fountain of his corruption." Learning and accomplishments were alike discouraged; and women confined to a knowledge of cooking, family medicines, and the unintelligible theological discussions of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... important—the condition in which the ingredients are present. Since these facts can alone be determined by a chemical analysis, it is obvious that manures should always be purchased with a chemical analysis. It is unfortunate, however, that very often a chemical analysis, even when procured, is unintelligible. It may be of advantage, therefore, to say a word or two on the correct interpretation of the significance of the data furnished in the ordinary ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... Episode henceforth. What to do with such a War; how extricate the Episode, and leave the War lying? The War was at first a good deal mad; and is now, to men's imagination, fallen wholly so; who indeed have managed mostly to forget it; only the Episode (reduced thereby to an UNintelligible state) retaining ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... we have characteristic unintelligible dispatches from Mississippi. They say, up to third instant, yesterday, everything is encouraging; but the Memphis papers say Grant's losses have not been so large as was supposed. Then it is reported that Grant has retired to ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... commission of treason. Despard made a speech on the scaffold, declaring himself innocent, and that he was put to death simply for being a friend to truth, liberty, and justice. How he could have made this declaration after the evidence that had been given, is wholly unintelligible except on the ground of insanity, though of that there was no symptom, except in the design itself. What prompted the design except narrow circumstances, bad habits, and the temptations of a revengeful ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... string, he carried a little monkey, perched upon his shoulder. George was eager to join the group and see the antics of Jacko, who sat grinning and holding a little cap for money, into which a boy flung a halfpenny, and then asked the Italian where he came from. But the answer was unintelligible to him, for it was given in a strange tongue, and George was soon tired of listening to the music ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell
... that, although it was the view almost universally entertained of the subject by the Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to the former notion, he confessed his inability to comprehend it; and here I agreed with him—for, however conclusive on paper, it becomes altogether unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... architecture, or more sharply distinguished their varying moods from period to period in their palaces and temples. He believed that he could not only supply that brief historical sketch of Florence which Mrs. Bowen had lamented the want of, but he could make her history speak an unintelligible, an unmistakeable tongue in every monument of the past, from the Etruscan wall at Fiesole to the cheap, plain, and tasteless shaft raised to commemorate Italian Unity in the next piazza. With sketches from his own pencil, illustrative ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... as she heard this jargon. It was quite unintelligible to her, but she felt sure it conveyed extreme approval. She turned to look at Truesdale just as he ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... "general science" of grammar, or "the philosophy of language," the author seems to exempt, and in some sort to commend; and at the same time his proposition of exclusion is applied not merely to the school-grammars, but a fortiori to this science, under the notion that it is unintelligible to school-boys. But why should any principle of grammar be the less intelligible on account of the extent of its application? Will a boy pretend that he cannot understand a rule of English grammar, because he is told that it holds good in ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... transposing various passages in his latest score. Now and then he would hesitate, finger the carefully thought out bar on his knee, and again his stub of a pencil would fly on through a maze of hieroglyphics that were to the cure and myself wholly unintelligible. ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... liked to have wandered about Oxford with you, if I had been well enough; and how still more I should have liked to have heard you triumphing over the Bishop. I am astonished at your success and audacity. It is something unintelligible to me how any one can argue in public like orators do. I had no idea you had this power. I have read lately so many hostile views, that I was beginning to think that perhaps I was wholly in the wrong, and that — was right ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... was for his chum. Charley was tossing restlessly on his blanket, his face and hands flushed and hot with fever. All of Walter's attempts to rouse him met only with unintelligible words and phrases. The exertion of the previous day in his weak state, the opening of his wound afresh, and the unhealthy river water he had drank, had all combined to bring him to ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... alien tongues of Continental streets that reminded them of their own polyglot cities. In England all men spoke one tongue, speciously like American to the ear, but on cross-examination unintelligible. ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... took back her hand at once and stammered some unintelligible words. Orso thought he ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... little injuries of that sort there should be no end of bearing on the part of a husband. Sometimes he would endeavour to explain to her the motives which actuated him; but he had come to fear that they were and must ever be unintelligible to her. But he credited her with less than her real intelligence. She did understand the nature of his work and his reasons for doing it; and, after her own fashion, did what she conceived to be her own work in endeavouring to create within his bosom a desire for higher things. "Surely," she said ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... in Jesus Christ's own words. The silence is not as absolute as is alleged, as the quotations which I have made, and which might have been multiplied, do distinctly enough show. Even if it were more absolute than it is, the silence is by no means unintelligible. Christ had to offer the Sacrifice before the Sacrifice could be preached. He Himself warned His disciples against accepting His own words prior to the Cross, as the conclusive and ultimate revelation. 'I have many things to say unto you, but you cannot carry them now.' There was need that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... that aesthetic, social, and intellectual mean, in which single women are thought soonest to wither and decline. With a little more power, and in our later era, they would be writing stories full of ambitious, unintelligible, self-devoted and sudden collapsing young girls and amazing doctors; but as they are, and in their time, they must do what they can. A sentimentalist may discern on these vases not only the gay designs with which they ornamented them, but their own dim faces ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... that supposed lie of Raleigh's, had not taken the trouble to find out what the words mean. In their virtuous haste to prove him a liar, they have overlooked the fact that the words, as they stand, are unintelligible, and the argument self-contradictory. He wants to prove, we suppose, that he does not go to sea for fear of being forced to marry Miss Throgmorton. It is, at least, an unexpected method of so doing in a shrewd man like Raleigh, to say that he wishes to marry no one at all. 'Don't ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... way up-stairs. The Sergeant went softly all over the Indian cabinet and all round the "boudoir;" asking questions (occasionally only of Mr. Superintendent, and continually of me), the drift of which I believe to have been equally unintelligible to both of us. In due time, his course brought him to the door, and put him face to face with the decorative painting that you know of. He laid one lean inquiring finger on the small smear, just under the lock, which Superintendent Seegrave had already noticed, when ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... of that growing proportion of readers who belong entirely to the new order, who are growing up with only the vaguest early memories of the old world, I find the greatest difficulty in writing down the unintelligible confusions that were matter of fact ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... violence and revenge which we are hearing from the little villages the young footman's knees doubled right up and nearly let him down while he was serving the table and he is getting greener and greener from day to day. He becomes absolutely petrified when the officers address him and whispers out an unintelligible something as he vanishes ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... spirits there is one speech, which flows from thought, and consists of ideas which are heard as vocal expressions in the spiritual world. I was told that those spirits have a certain method of forming ideas, expressed by the lips and face, unintelligible to others, and that they at the same instant skilfully withdraw their thoughts, guarding particularly lest anything of the affection should manifest itself, because if anything of the affection were perceived, the thought would appear, ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg
... deplores his inability to get on terms with his author. The English public indeed is curiously ready to accept whatever is said to be funny and comes from America as being in truth humorous even if largely unintelligible; but few Americans would give credit for the existence of humour in those parts of an English book outside their ken. Yet I think, if it were possible to get the opinion of an impartial jury on the subject, their verdict would be that the number of humorous writers of approximately ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... said my father. An unintelligible sound was heard; but Catalina understood and her eyes moistened with happiness. "Oh, father," she said, "I know; she's crying on my account, she doesn't want to leave me alone here." "Is that it, Paula?" questioned my father. "Yes, please leave me here, uncle, I shall be so happy ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... of human improvement, it is probable, that that calamity will be in a manner unintelligible, which in the present instance contributed to tarnish and wither the excellence of one of the most elevated and amiable of human minds. If Mr. Falkland had reflected with perfect accuracy upon the case, he would probably have been able ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... aspect. His eyes were downcast; he was motionless; his respiration became hoarse, like that of a man in the agonies of death. Carwin seemed unable to say more. He might have easily escaped; but the thought which occupied him related to what was horrid and unintelligible in this scene, and not to ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... that Mr. Grandcourt had returned to Diplow; knowing no more than she did that Leubronn had been the goal of her admirer's journeying, and feeling that it would be unkind uselessly to revive the memory of a brilliant prospect under the present reverses. In his secret soul he thought of his niece's unintelligible caprice with regret, but he vindicated her to himself by considering that Grandcourt had been the first to behave oddly, in suddenly walking away when there had the best opportunity for crowning his marked ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... but few words, for his ideas are few. He learns even these few with difficulty, and employs the same to express many different things; he generally articulates them indistinctly, often indeed so imperfectly as to be almost unintelligible. ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... rendered obscure by our not being acquainted with the local circumstances to which they applied at the time they were used, have been erected into prophecies, and made to bend to explanations at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries, expounders, and commentators. Every thing unintelligible was prophetical, and every thing insignificant was typical. A blunder would have served for a prophecy; and a ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... devours and destroys, I shut myself up in solitude and seem to delight only in myself and to be sufficient for myself. Pride and delicacy of soul, timidity of heart, have made me thus do violence to all my instincts and invert the natural order of my life. It is not astonishing that I should be unintelligible to others. In fact I have always avoided what attracted me, and turned my back upon the point where secretly I desired ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 172 (308, 8) [ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me] Though this be perhaps not unintelligible, yet it is an odd way of confessing his dejection. I should ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; 24 languages spoken by a million or more persons each; numerous other languages and dialects, for the most part mutually unintelligible; Hindi is the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people; English enjoys associate status but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindustani, a popular variant of Hindi/Urdu, is spoken ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... words upon the thought, I felt that I loved them both. The tenth day (since our removal to Mr. Hanson's) arrived, and then came our departure. I cried every minute, and only because I was glad. Mr. and Mrs. Hanson and Louis thought it due to over-exertion, and when I tried to explain I made an unintelligible murmur, and only succeeded in bringing out one thought—my gratitude to them and the hope that I might one day repay it. Oh, how kind they were! Everything to make the transit easy for Hal was cared ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... sought Carroll's face. Both men knew that something vitally unexpected was about to be disclosed. They waited for the girl to speak—and when she did her voice was so low as to be almost unintelligible. ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... never, at that period, grew weary of watching my fellows, for it was my constant idea that some day one of them would be able to raise me to a higher level, and to bring me to an understanding of this unintelligible and complicated existence of ours. Hence I kept asking myself ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... he redescended the steps at the back of the Green Box, to enter the inn, Master Nicless let fall this profound reflection, so deep as to be unintelligible,— ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... of human problems, but in the individuals who face the problems. In this point Browning is sharply distinguished from his poetic contemporaries as a class. They felt deeply "all the weary weight of this unintelligible world," so deeply that while they gave much thought to ideals of social amelioration, few of them presented individuals with any dramatic distinctness. Browning stands practically by himself in ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... kisses and caresses. Presently he said to her, "By Allah, O Princess, my uncle Salih set forth to me not a fortieth part of thy charms; no, nor a quarter-carat[FN331] of the four and twenty." Then Jauharah pressed him to her bosom and pronounced some unintelligible words; then spat on his face, saying, "Quit this form of man and take shape of bird, the handsomest of birds, white of robe, with red bill and legs." Hardly had she spoken, when King Badr Basim ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... domain of its inquiries, much knowledge has been acquired regarding the nature and condition of those bodies, forming, it might be said, a science apart, and disembarrassed from immediate dependence upon intricate, and, except to the initiated, unintelligible formulae. This kind of knowledge forms the main subject of the book now offered to ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... of the things stood guard with the mysterious tubes, another unbound them. A whole shower of high pitched, piping syllables was hurled at them, speech which sounded threatening and contemptuous but was otherwise, of course, entirely unintelligible, and then the creatures withdrew. The heavy metal door was slammed shut, and they ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... the city were strange. The shops on the narrow streets were plain and unattractive, and the signs unintelligible. The windows of the lower floors of the dwellings were grated with iron bars like a prison. Beneath a bridge over a walled ravine that kept a rushing stream within bounds in the rainy season, women washed clothes and spread them ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... all unintelligible to me," answered Mabel. "What is right in King George, it would seem, ought to be right ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... guttural language these people spoke was unintelligible to the boy, but he could guess they were intensely curious about him from the way they pointed and stared. It seemed to him that some of them could never have seen a white child before, they were so excited, especially the children, ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... Anaximander, and, like him, one of the great founders of mathematics. He held that the only permanent reality in the cosmos was the principle of order and harmony, which prevented the universe from becoming a blank, unintelligible chaos; and he expressed this idea in his mystic doctrine: "Numbers are the cause of the material existence of things." The movement which he spread by means of a vast, secret confraternity ended, however, in a barren symbolism, and it is impossible ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... mythological, in the true sense of the word, is what is utterly unintelligible, absurd, strange, or miraculous.' But he explained these blots on the mythology of Greece, for example, as the result practically of old words and popular sayings surviving in languages after the original, harmless, symbolical meanings of the words and sayings were lost. What had been ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... system of the mental fabric is exceedingly obscure, and without more attention than will be willingly bestowed, is unintelligible. The Ideas of Beauty will be more easily understood, and are often charming. I was delighted with the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... the church were bitter-sweet indeed. It belonged to the Methodist denomination, and Holcroft had been taken, or had gone thither, from the time of his earliest recollection. He saw himself sitting between his father and mother, a round-faced urchin to whom the sermon was unintelligible, but to whom little Bessie Jones in the next pew was a fact, not only intelligible, but very interesting. She would turn around and stare at him until he smiled, then she would giggle until her mother brought ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... fifty men, and had but ten to do it, himself and Mr. Skead making twelve, Smart and Benjie fourteen. And yet every voice pronounced, "we must go and explore." The good captain was sorely puzzled, and in his perplexity talked Scotch to an unintelligible degree. Every day was of consequence until he had discovered what injury the ship had received. We, on our parts, declared it was impossible to sleep or rest in peace while we were subjected to any unknown enemy rushing ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... followed by some words unintelligible to Peleg, though he concluded that they were spoken ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... young Mortimer wince, and his nerve palpably weakened. He muttered some unintelligible reply—whether a threat or ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... of those discussions in which words were used that were unintelligible to the mother. The dinner was already at an end, but they still continued a vehement debate, flinging at each other veritable rattling hailstones of big words. ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... my furniture until she left the centre of the room clear; she squatted down, and hanging her head began muttering in an unintelligible dialect. Presently her voice ceased and we heard from beside her a most peculiar whistling sort of voice, to which she responded, evidently interrogating. Again the whistling voice from further away. Bootha then told me she had ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... clothed with fresh beauty in their sight. They tasted as it were for themselves and us, of all that there ever was pure in human bliss. "In them the burthen of the mystery, the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened." They stood awhile perfect, but they afterwards fell, and were driven out of Paradise, tasting the first fruits of bitterness as they had done of bliss. But their pangs were such as a pure spirit ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... this time, Locke Morgeson, Jr., took Mary Warren from her father's house as his wife. Grandfather Warren prayed a long, unintelligible prayer over them, helped them into the large, yellow-bottomed chaise which belonged to Grandfather Locke, and the young couple drove to their new home, the old mansion. Grandfather Locke went away in the same yellow-bottomed chaise a week after, and returned in ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... to Hermas. They disturbed him a little, but they took no hold upon him. It seemed to him as if the messengers spoke in a strange language. As he read the letters there were words blotted out of the writing which made the full sense unintelligible. ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke
... shook out the canvas, and they scudded off up the river like mad. The great difficulty was the steering; but it was rip-roaring fun, the Boy said, and very soon there were natives running down to the river, to stare open-mouthed at the astounding apparition, to point and shout something unintelligible that sounded like "Muchtaravik!" ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... differences still exist. Take, for instance, their language, from which ours has so far departed and become so much more pure English, and has been enriched by so many clean-cut and descriptive adjectives that certain sentences in English and in American will be totally unintelligible to each other. On one occasion, going with a party of eight English people to the races, Bee looked out of the car window ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell
... pronunciation and the quantity, and disusing many words and terms of great significance. In consequence of these innovations, the works of our best poets, such as Chaucer, Spenser, and even Shakespeare, were become, in many parts, unintelligible to the natives of South Britain, whereas the Scots, who retain the antient language, understand them without the help of a glossary. 'For instance (said he), how have your commentators been puzzled by the following expression in the Tempest — He's gentle and not fearful: ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... resistance but sank down limply where Jarrold left her and watched him as he slouched over to the fire. She sought to hear their words, to read the looks on their faces. But she caught only a monotonous mutter, unintelligible but evil, and saw only the bottle passing from one to the other. Brodie finished it and hurled it from him so that it broke noisily. A few times she heard them laugh; she could distinguish Brodie's throaty, bull tone and Benny's nervous cackle. Jarrold did not appear made ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... act of theirs, with their rulers, or elders, or chief sorceresses—all three titles seem to apply. They ask questions, I answer as best I can, but sometimes we appear to have no common meeting ground. Then I ask some questions, they evade gracefully, or reply in a kind of unintelligible double-talk, and that's as far as our communication has progressed ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Bishop of Meaux that Margaret of Angouleme was first drawn into sympathy with the reformatory movement. Unsatisfied with herself and with the influences surrounding her, she sought in Briconnet a spiritual adviser and guide. The prelate, in the abstruse and almost unintelligible language of exaggerated mysticism, endeavored to fulfil the trust. His prolix correspondence still exists in manuscript in the National Library of Paris, together with the replies of his royal penitent. Its incomprehensibility may perhaps forever preclude the publication ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... half an hour Jolnes had collected a few seemingly unintelligible articles—a cheap black hat pin, a piece torn off a theatre programme, and the end of a small torn card on which was the word "left" and ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... in the boldest and most enduring sense, to have imagination. But it is immeasurably easier to pretend to have imagination than to pretend to have wit. A man may indulge in a sham rhapsody, because it may be the triumph of a rhapsody to be unintelligible. But a man cannot indulge in a sham joke, because it is the ruin of a joke to be unintelligible. A man may pretend to be a poet: he can no more pretend to be a wit than he can pretend to bring rabbits out of a hat without ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... he added something unintelligible about them all going to a terminus not on that road, while Captain Champion, coming to his rescue, proclaimed that the Suez section would be brought back, "expectin' to arrive hyeh an hou' by sun. An' now, ladies and gentlemen, I propose ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... shook his head angrily, but lifted the picture from the shelf and examined more closely the doctor's delicately-cut nose, and the noble arch of the brow. While so doing, he muttered unintelligible words, and when at last, with little show of care, he restored the modest work of art to its old place, Ulrich awoke, and, with a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... contrary, after having received the presents, we cannot avoid expressing our approbation of his conduct in bringing them to the credit of the Company,—yet we must confess the statement of those transactions appears to us in many points so unintelligible, that we feel ourselves under the necessity of calling on the Governor-General for an explanation, agreeable to his promise voluntarily made to us. We therefore desire to be informed of the different periods when each sum was ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... star chamber, the king's power of binding the people by his proclamations was indirectly abolished; and that important branch of prerogative, the strong symbol of arbitrary power, and unintelligible in a limited constitution, being at last removed, left the system of government more consistent and uniform. The star chamber alone was accustomed to punish infractions of the king's edicts: but as no courts of judicature now remained except those in Westminster Hall, which take cognizance ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... with R. H. C. as to the importance of correct punctuation; and it may easily be supposed how it must puzzle readers of works whose language is in great part obsolete, to meet with mistakes of this kind, when we find modern writers frequently rendered almost unintelligible by similar errors. To take those whose works have, perhaps, been oftener reprinted than any others of this century, Byron and Scott, the foregoing passage in Childe Harold is a signal instance; and as another, the Sonnet translated ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... cast in the same heroic mold. They formed a massive pair of children indeed, and, as in her case, a sullen distrust of strangers was inherent in him. He stared coldly, resentfully, at Gray, mumbled an unintelligible greeting, then rudely turned his back upon the visitor and ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... the king himself. Hence, notwithstanding her struggle to keep her heart to its allegiance, such a rapid change took place in her feelings, that ere long she began to confess to herself that if the puritans could have known what the king was, their conduct would not have been so unintelligible—not that she thought they had an atom of right on their side, or in the least feared she might ever be brought to think in the matter as they did; she confessed only that she could then ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... right down," cried the Steel King. "Here, Jack,"—this to the aged garcon, "smoke up! and ask the ladies what they'll have"—all of which was unintelligible to the two little Parisiennes and the garcon, but quite clear in meaning ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... said, stooping lower to catch the unintelligible answer. "You ought to go home to bed; little boys have no business out of doors at night; you'll be quite frozen! Give me your hand and jump up like a man! Where do ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... emphasis, 'We are the working classes! we are the lower orders!' It was exactly what Hewett would not bring himself to understand. What! His Clara must be robbed of chances just because her birth was not that of a young lady? Nay, by all the unintelligible Powers, she should enjoy every help that he could possibly afford her. Bless her bright face and her clever tongue! Yes, it was now a settled thing that she should be trained for a schoolteacher. An atmosphere of refinement must ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... tongues I don't know something about—I shouted loudly to attract their attention. On this, two men, dressed in skins, came out of the hut, and answered me in so extraordinary a dialect, that even I did not comprehend what they said. I then hailed them in Russian, but their answers were perfectly unintelligible. I next tried French, but they shook their heads, as was, I thought, but natural for Esquimaux who were not likely to have been sent to Paris for their education. I then spoke a little Spanish to them, but I was equally at a loss to understand their answers. Portuguese was as great ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... and in some cases tragic. A crew that had aged only six weeks would return to find that Earth had grown nine years older. Customs had changed; new slang words made language unintelligible. ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... which pleases us in foreign women is their accent. As soon as a woman speaks our language badly we think she is charming, if she uses the wrong word she is exquisite and if she jabbers in an entirely unintelligible jargon, she ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... steep rise. The driver with some trouble started the engine, but soon after they had crossed the crest of the hill it stopped again, and he looked grave as he supplied Bland with some details that Sylvia found unintelligible. ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... future communication, it far more nearly meets the difficulty, than abstruse speculations respecting the Deity, which can scarcely be apprehended even by philosophers, and which are to the mass wholly unintelligible. ...
— Thoughts on a Revelation • Samuel John Jerram
... sorts indeed. He accepted his mother as he accepted everything else, with a simple-heartedness which never looked below the surface nor concerned itself with motives; and if any one had suggested to him that she was inexplicable he would have considered such a judgment quite unintelligible. He enjoyed a visit to her more than almost anything else in the world. She had always been devoted to him ever since he was a boy, and for the life of him he could not see that she ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... old haunting voices whispered to him out of the river shadows—deeper, different, strangely more unintelligible than ever before, ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... this book is the worst of all. It is simply this: that if all goes well this book will be unintelligible gibberish. For it is mostly concerned with attacking attitudes which are in their nature accidental and incapable of enduring. Brief as is the career of such a book as this, it may last just twenty minutes longer than most of the philosophies that it ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... And now, unintelligible from sheer breathlessness, Roy's voice is heard. The grave, silent Rajput leaps out to ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... instrumentation would have seemed less surprising to Sally had she known the lengths her mother had gone in the proffer of a substantial guarantee for Fenwick's personal honesty. This seeming rashness did not transpire at the time; had it done so, it might have appeared unintelligible—to Sally, at any rate. She would not have been surprised at herself for backing the interests of a man nearly electrocuted over her half-crown, but why should her mother endorse ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... conversation which prevented her enjoying it, was not now even in her power: for these gentlemen, though as negligent as the young ladies had been whom they disturbed, were much more cautious whom they instructed: their language was ambiguous, and their terms, to Cecilia, were unintelligible: their subjects, indeed, required some discretion, being nothing less than a ludicrous calculation of the age and duration of jointured widows, and of the chances and expectations of ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... records upon earth can furnish an example of more unintelligible jargon; yet these attributes are believed to be indisputably true by the Malays and others residing at a distance from his immediate dominions, who possess a greater degree of faith than wit; and with this addition, that he dwells in a palace without covering, free ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... the main use of the outline is to affirm the whole more clearly; to do away with little accidental roughnesses and excrescences, and especially to mark where boughs cross, or come in front of each other, as at such points their arrangement in this kind of sketch is unintelligible without the outline. It may perfectly well happen that in Nature it should be less distinct than your outline will make it; but it is better in this kind of sketch to mark the facts clearly. The temptation is always to be slovenly and careless, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... from the social impulse, in which, as much as Mr. Darwin, he recognises the base and foundation."—"Pall Mall Gazette," April 12th, 1871.) How the mistake which I have made in speaking of greatest happiness as the foundation of morals arose, is utterly unintelligible to me: any time during the last several years I should have laughed such an idea to scorn. Mr. Lecky never made a greater blunder, and your kindness has made you let me off too easily. (242/2. In the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... could not be understood, as we are assured by [1062]Plutarch? He says, that in the reign of Agesilaus of Sparta, a written tablet was found in the tomb of Alcmena, to whom it was inscribed: that the characters were obsolete, and unintelligible; on which account they sent it to Conuphis of Memphis in Egypt, to be decyphered. If these characters were Phenician, why were they sent to a priest of a different country for interpretation? and why is their date and antiquity ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... perfectly regular Hexagons, to find myself in the midst of a crowd of rotating Polygons of the higher classes, is occasionally very perplexing. And of course to a common Tradesman, or Serf, such a sight is almost as unintelligible as it would be to you, my Reader, were you suddenly transported to ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... and even to maintain that hearty sympathy with them and that kindly interest in their temporal welfare which its best men in its earlier days had shown. It continued to have its services in a language which had for ages been unintelligible to the bulk of the laity, and was but partially intelligible to not a few of its ordinary priests. It had no catechisms or hymn books bringing down to the capacities of the unlettered the truths of religion, and freely circulated among them.[4] It did not, when the invention of printing put ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... attempt to deduce a settled scheme of philosophy from these discourses among the mountains. I would urge only that as a guide to conduct Wordsworth's precepts are not in themselves either unintelligible or visionary. For whereas some moralists would have us amend nature, and others bid us follow her, there is apt to be something impracticable in the first maxim, and something vague in the second. Asceticism, quietism, enthusiasm, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... Bois offered any counsel (which his guest pretended to imagine he did), the impediment in his speech increased to such an extent that his suggestions were unintelligible. His perturbation might have passed for surprise at the startling intelligence so abruptly communicated; but it could hardly be translated into sorrow or sympathy, and was a ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... No part of the name of our Church, peculiar to our denomination, can be translated and applied to the church in Chinese without inconvenience or great detriment. The words, Protestant and Reformed, would be to the Chinese unintelligible, consequently inconvenient. The only translation we can give to the name Dutch Church, would be Church of Holland. This, besides conveying in part an incorrect idea, would be very detrimental to the interests of the Church among the Chinese. The Chinese know but little ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg
... is this same publication. He hasn't the remotest idea of what it is. Not a word uttered by the adjutant is understood by him. He stands and wonders what it is. A perfect jargon of words, unintelligible and meaningless to him! I remember distinctly how I used to wonder, and how I was laughed at when I asked for information concerning it. We "plebes" used to speak of it often, and wonder if it was not French. When we were better acquainted with the rules and customs of the ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... It must be remembered that the dominant race in Esthonia is German, and that the gentry, even if not fairies, would be expected to speak a language unintelligible to the people. It is significant that the very word for lady in Esthonian is proua, a corruption of Frau. Everything particularly fine is ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... merely, but also of darkness or ignorance respecting all stable facts. That darkening of the foreground to bring out the white cloud, is, in one aspect of it, a type of the subjection of all plain and positive fact, to what is uncertain and unintelligible. And, as we examine farther into the matter, we shall be struck by another great difference between the old and modern landscape, namely, that in the old no one ever thought of drawing anything but as well as he could. That might not be well, as we have seen in the case of rocks; ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... amused myself in the best way I could. I helped Mademoiselle Madeleine in her poultry-yard and dairy, looked in on the old lady employed in her culinary affairs, walked over the farm with the old man, and chatted in my somewhat unintelligible French, with every one I met. Happening to go into my own room in the evening, I found the window open, and looking out, I saw that the height from the sill to the ground was not more than ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... consolidated stratum, arising from the contraction of the mass, distended by heat, and contracted in cooling. It is not an argument of greater or lesser probability; it is a physical demonstration; but, so far as I see, it would appear to be for most mineralists an unintelligible proposition. Time, however, will open the eyes of men; science will some day find admittance into the cabinet of the curious. I will therefore now give another proof,—not of the consolidation of mineral bodies by means of fusion, for there ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Abbe says is that he is sure the money would have been well spent, because the translation was carefully done, and he knew the subject better than any of the other translators. Everything that was abstract in the theory of Smith was, he says, quite unintelligible in Blavet's translation, and even in Roucher's subsequent one, and could be read to more advantage in his own; but after a good translation was published by Garnier in 1802, the Abbe gave up all thought of ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... the Mohammedan conquest of Northern Africa from Egypt westwards, is unintelligible until it is seen how great a part sea-power played in effecting it. Purely land expeditions, or expeditions but slightly supported from the sea, had ended in failure. The emperor at Constantinople still had at ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... not disturb me; his voice was low, though tense, and his words unintelligible. Gradually his murmurings became a familiar sound, as the call of the lark ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... offered to reward him if he would act as my guide. The man kept his gleaming eye fixed upon me, but answered not a word. Beginning to look at the matter in rather a serious light, I mounted my horse, when he grunted at me in an unintelligible way, which showed me plainly that he was without the power of speech. He turned in the direction I had asked him to take, and we started off at a breakneck speed, which his fiery horse kept up. I cannot say he followed his ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... the "unintelligible authorised version," I must premise that no version has yet had so large an amount of learning bestowed on it as the English one; indeed it has fairly beaten out of the field all the versions of all other sections of Christians. The difficulty of the English version ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... a minute before I was able to understand that such an unintelligible and astounding thing had happened, as that our community had actually chosen me—me, of all people!—to execute the highest office in the house, next to my Lady Prioress herself. Mother Gaillarde and Mother Ada came up to me, to lead me ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... on board the Francesca, demanded to know what they wanted. I saw Mendouca rise in the stern-sheets of his boat, and heard him make some reply, but I could not distinguish what it was, perhaps because he had intentionally made it unintelligible. Whatever the words may have been, they were clearly unsatisfactory; for the figure in the rigging waved its hand ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... Washington concoction, and does not at all bear the marks of Parisian origin. I find in it whole phrases which, for months past, I have repeatedly heard from the French minister here. Perhaps Mr. Mercier, in his turn, may have caught many of Mr. Seward's much-cherished generalities, unintelligible, very probably, even to himself, and quite certainly so to every one but himself. Perhaps, I say, Mr. Mercier may have caught up some of them, and making them up at hap-hazard into a macedoine, a hash, a hotch-potch, has served up the second-hand ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... touching to see the untiring devotion of her father, and the pleasure he took in every new evidence of mental growth. He went over the alphabet with her, letter by letter, many times each day, encouraging her and holding her thought down to the unintelligible signs with a patient tenderness sad yet beautiful to see; and when she began to combine letters into words, and at last to put words together, his delight ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... of des aram, we find "veult dire en francois Diex Terrien," or Terrestrial God. This may have been substituted, in the correction of the original rough dictation, from a perception that the first expression was unintelligible. The new phrase does not indeed convey the meaning of Mulahidah, but it expresses a main characteristic of the heretical doctrine. The correction was probably made by Polo himself; it is certainly ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... and invisible, unintelligible!! Surtur, according to Fin Magnusen, the invisible, unintelligible being whom the ancient Scandinavians regarded as "the great First Cause least ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... And then, all at once, abject terror leapt into his eyes. His mouth opened and the cords of his neck stood out. He threw both arms before his face as if to ward off somebody or something. He began to scream out quick, unintelligible words in a high-pitched, staccato voice. I looked fearfully at the others to see if his terror would be communicated to them. But they were apparently oblivious of each other, wrapped up in their separate lives and experiences. One middle-aged man, with a rough, reddish beard, was smiling ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... English, and the cross, and the candles, and the pictures, and the living faces that gave such a ghastliness to the picture. Mrs. McCarty brought him a basin of water, over which he muttered, and made it holy. Then he again muttered some unintelligible sentences, and sprinkled the water over the dying child, over the body of poor English, and over the living-warning Mrs. McCarty and her daughters, as he pointed to the coffin. Then he knelt down, and they all knelt down, and ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... halted midway; halted in a gasp and an unintelligible muttering in the throat. Of a sudden, darkening, ominous, fateful, the shadow within the entrance had silently advanced until it stood beside them, paused so with folded arms. Simultaneously the wife and the invader ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... destiny and the fit measure of his achievements. It is that sense of the eternity of consequences—and that sense only—which can satisfy the human heart. Time is too short, this planet is too small, and this mortal body is too weak for the surging thoughts, the unintelligible desires of the soul. Nothing less than infinity can hallow emotions: their passingness—which seems the rule in the fever and turmoil of city life—is not their abatement but their degradation. Change they must, but perish ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... all situations have their drawbacks, was greatly annoyed by the unearthly noises made by the sentries during the night. Not a person could pass, but he was hailed, and every half hour I was awakened by the guard yelling out some unintelligible words, which were caught up in every direction, in the most discordant tones, until echo herself grew hoarse and disgusted with the repetition. I was well guarded to be sure, but could have dispensed with the attention, ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... are all one race, including the Shom Pen, for long a mysterious tribe in the centre of Great Nicobar, but now well known. They speak dialects of one language, though the dialects as spoken are mutually unintelligible. There is no Negrito tribe in the Nicobars. A detailed grammar of the language will be found in the Census ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was a considering Cap, almost as large as a Grenadier's, but of three equal Sides; on the first of which was written, I MAY BE WRONG; on the second, IT IS FIFTY TO ONE BUT YOU ARE; and on the third, I'LL CONSIDER OF IT. The other Parts on the out-side, were filled with odd Characters, as unintelligible as the Writings of the old Egyptians; but within Side there was a Direction for its Use, of the utmost Consequence; for it strictly enjoined the Possessor to put on the Cap, whenever he found his Passions begin to grow turbulent, and not to deliver a Word whilst ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... minute descriptions can be very imperfectly translated; indeed they are unintelligible without microscopical ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... the night, and all the voices of India seemed to answer her in a mad discordant jangle of unintelligible sound. An owl hooted, a jackal yelped, and a chorus of savage, yelling laughter broke hideously across the clamour, swallowing it as a greater wave swallows a lesser, overwhelming all ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... scene—after a rather woolly and unintelligible interlude—we see Joseph retiring to his couch in an alcove behind the place where the banqueting-table had been. You will judge how urgent was the lady's keenness to probe the mysteries of his divine nature when I tell you that she could not wait till the morning to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... it could not resolve. And I said to myself as I went along: How in the world can a queen like her, who laughs all other women to utter scorn, for beauty and understanding and gentleness and sweetness, and some unintelligible magic charm that is somehow spread all over her, and echoes in the tone of her delicious voice that makes every fibre of my heart tremble every time I hear it; how can such a queen as she show such extraordinary favour to such a thing ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... of the School of Political Science of Columbia University; Mr. Joseph FitzGerald, of Mamaroneck, New York; and Rev. Jose Algue, S.J., of the Manila Observatory. The passages allow for the most part, of only conjecture, while some portions are unintelligible. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... poets, with the eyes of those who lived perchance their next-door neighbors, and sold them beer, and mutton, and household stuffs, had access to their kitchens, and took note of the fashion of their wigs and the color of their breeches. Without some such light, all history would be just about as unintelligible and unreal as a dimly ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... reasoning or other, she had cajoled herself into the notion, that whoever steered the brigantine, for that period was captain. Wherefore, she gave herself mighty airs at the tiller; with extravagant gestures issuing unintelligible orders about trimming the sails, or pitching overboard something to see how fast we were going. All this much diverted my Viking, who several times was delivered of a laugh; a loud and healthy one to boot: ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Redivivus; containing the First Book of the 'Faery Queene.' His Essential Design Preserved, but his Obsolete Language and Manner of Verse totally laid aside. Delivered in Heroic Numbers by a Person of Quality." The preface praises Spenser, but declares that "his style seems no less unintelligible at this day than the obsoletest of our English or Saxon dialect." One instance of this deliverance into heroic numbers ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the stage, who picks up pocket-books and never looks into them, and who is too simple even to know that honesty has its opposite, represents the still lingering mistake, that an unintelligible dialect is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition. It is quite true that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical cheating, but he is not the less likely ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... then; I must be at Asnieres early; I am afraid my brother Martial will suspect something." And the rogues, after having held this conversation, quite unintelligible to those who might have heard it, directed their steps toward the ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... singular that the language of the few people that inhabit the cluster of islets, known under the name of Tubai or Toobae, is unintelligible to the natives of the other Society Islands. The supposition hence arises, that they are of a different race; but no satisfactory information can be given respecting them. The island is said to abound in turtle, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... and left to tell its tale—for it would not be silent like the river at Blenheim—to naked fields and the planted trees on the hills. We were disgusted with the stables, outhouses, or farm-houses in different parts of the grounds behind the Castle: they were broad, out-spreading, fantastic, and unintelligible buildings. ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... see with what smirks and grimaces, and ejaculations in Piedmontese French, he complimented the Marchioness on her appearance, and exclaimed at the magnificence of the castle, which must doubtless have appeared to him little better than a cattle-grange. His talk was unintelligible to Odo, but there was no mistaking the nature of the glances he fixed on Donna Laura, who, having fled to her room on his approach, presently descended in a ravishing new sacque, with an air of extreme surprise, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Butler I am now writing with the gold pen he gave me before I left England, which is the reason my scrawl is more unintelligible than usual. I have been at Athens, and seen plenty of these reeds for scribbling, some of which he refused to bestow upon me, because topographic Gell had brought them from Attica. But I will not describe,—no—you must be satisfied with ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... on the last word was unintelligible to the hidden listener, who knew only that it veiled an insult and drew nearer to the door. The girl remained silent and Baudouin presuming on this continued in a tone still more aggressive, "Times are changed, mademoiselle, ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... drawings, plans of buildings scratched over Madonna heads, single flowers upside down next to flayed arms, calculations, monsters, sonnets, a very chaos of thoughts and of shapes, in which the plan of the artist is inextricably lost, which mean everything and nothing, but out of whose unintelligible network of lines and curves have issued masterpieces, and which only the foolish or the would-be philosophical would exchange for some intelligible, hopelessly finished and finite illustration out of a Bible or a book ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... watchfulness, the adjustment of our small portmanteaux, writing case, &c., in a wheelbarrow, which, from its formidable length of handle, bespoke its foreign manufacturer. On we jogged, but jogged not long; for before this accumulating procession could disperse we were arrested by a whiskered soldier, who in unintelligible terms announced himself a searcher of baggage. So to the custom house we went, when each trunk was opened and submitted to a slight inspection; the chief difficulty consisting in putting myself in 2 places ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... understood, as we are assured by [1062]Plutarch? He says, that in the reign of Agesilaus of Sparta, a written tablet was found in the tomb of Alcmena, to whom it was inscribed: that the characters were obsolete, and unintelligible; on which account they sent it to Conuphis of Memphis in Egypt, to be decyphered. If these characters were Phenician, why were they sent to a priest of a different country for interpretation? and why is their date and antiquity ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... consist. And from plain figures are derived solid bodies, and from these sensible bodies, of which there are four elements, fire, water, earth, and air. The world results from a combination of these elements." [Footnote: Diog. Laert., Lives of Phil.] All this is unintelligible or indefinite. We cannot comprehend how the number theory will account for the production of corporeal magnitude any easier than we can identify monads with mathematical points. But underlying this mysticism is the thought that there prevails in the phenomena of nature a rational order, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... circumstances you ought not to be here. How often have I told you that!" His moderation swept over into the feverish irritation she knew so well how to kindle in him, and his lisp became so marked that he was almost unintelligible. "You won't have a rag of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... pipestem, and discoursing of the glorious times before the great war, 'when there was more food than there were mouths, and more work than there hands.' 'Poor human nature,' thought Lancelot, as he tried to follow one of those unintelligible discussions about the relative prices of the loaf and the bushel of flour, which ended, as usual, in more swearing and more quarreling, and more beer to make it up: 'poor human nature! always looking back, as the German sage says, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... went singing away, following up the current of the brook, and striving to mingle a more lightsome cadence with its melancholy voice. But the little stream would not be comforted, and still kept telling its unintelligible secret of some very mournful mystery that had happened—or making a prophetic lamentation about something that was yet to happen—within the verge of the dismal forest. So Pearl, who had enough of shadow in her own little ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... himself together, attempt the gentleman, and devote himself to his young lady guest. But in the midst of their conversation he would hear something at the other end of the table, and suddenly there would come a burst of fierce unintelligible speech between him and the mistress of the house, while the labourers sat silent and sly, and Polly's loud laugh would break ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with fiddlers. Tri. I am clear out of that scrape now, sir. Old F. Then from a fiddler you are metamorphosed into a philosopher; and for the noise of drums, trumpets, and hautboys, you substitute a vile jargon, more unintelligible than was ever heard at the tower of Babel. Tri. You are right, sir, I have found out that philosophy is folly; so, I have cut the philosophers of all sects, from Plato and Aristotle down to the puzzlers of modern date. Old F. How ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... thought whether she was a Christian or not. She had not even once put her finger on her spiritual pulse, to gauge the evidences of her faith. A system of theology would have been unintelligible to her. She could not have defined one doctrine so as to have satisfied a sound divine. She had not even read the greater part of the Bible, but, in her bitter extremity, the Spirit of God, employing the inspired guide, had brought her to Jesus, as the troubled ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... while the Maliseets, who are an offshoot of the Abenaki (or Wabenaki) nation, spread eastward from the Kennebec to the Penobscot and thence to the St. John. The Indians who are now scattered over this area very readily understand one another's speech, but the language of the Micmacs is unintelligible to them. ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... the position that if they became predominant they would be entitled to enforce their own views no less rigidly. No one thought of protesting against the burning of one Joan Bocher, in 1550, for affirming a peculiarly unintelligible heresy concerning the mode ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... written by Mr. Lynx; and shall treat the reader to a taste of it—giving him sufficient to enable him to appreciate the very ticklish position of affairs with Mr. Titmouse. To make it not altogether unintelligible, let us suppose the state of the pedigree to be something like this, (as far as concerns ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... that joint resolution, and it certainly ought to be committed to a committee to correct its English. It is unintelligible. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... that we would recollect this—that our duty is, among other things, to preach the Gospel; and consider firstly whether what we commonly preach be any Gospel or good news at all, and not rather the worst possible news; and secondly, whether we preach at all; whether our sermons are not utterly unintelligible (being delivered in an unknown tongue), and also of a dulness not to be surpassed; and whether, therefore, it might not be worth our while to spend a little time in studying the English tongue, and the art of ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... shivering and uneasy as they were, were content to shiver if only they might not lose sight of her. Their reply was unintelligible; neither would look at the others; yet their mumbled response was understood, and the girl laughed again, loud, ringing, and full ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Parliament was as eager as the Government to satisfy the North and to avoid friction. The only actual "notice" taken by Bruce at Washington of the "piracy proclamation" was in fact, to report it to Russell, commenting that it was "unintelligible" and probably a mere attempt to frighten foreign ship-owners[1315]. Russell instructed Bruce not to ask for an explanation since Galveston had been captured subsequent to the date of the proclamation ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... that the crown of France was become an appendage to that of England; and that a prince, who by any means got possession of the latter, was, without further question, entitled to the former. So that, on the whole, it must be allowed that Henry's claim to France was, if possible, still more unintelligible than the title by which his father had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... go up-stairs soon to her reading in her aunt's room. It was even more unintelligible, the reading, this time than before; because Matilda's head was running so busily on ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... these various requisites? And then there was the disheartening fact that the situation was not a permanent one, but terminable from day to day, according to the terms of the advertisement. The more I pondered over it the more unintelligible did it become; but at the end of my meditations I always came back to the ground fact that, come what might, I had nothing to lose, that I was completely at the end of my resources, and that I was ready for any adventure, however desperate, which ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of trams and 'buses of different colours bewildered him, as he stood opposite to the White Horse, and watched them go by: and the accents of the conductors, when they called out their destinations, were unintelligible to him. He heard a man shouting "Beng, Beng, Beng, Beng, Beng, BENGK!" in a voice that sounded like a quick-firing gun, but the noise had no meaning for him. He saw names of places that were familiar to him through his reading or his talk with Uncle Matthew, ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... nation and another, whether in intellect, commerce, art, morals, or general temperament, ultimately depend, not upon any mysterious properties of race, nationality, or any other unknown and unintelligible abstractions, but simply and solely upon the {236} physical circumstances to which they are exposed. If it be a fact, as we know it to be, that the French nation differs recognizably from the Chinese, and the people of Hamburg differ recognizably from the people of Timbuctoo, then ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... of a knoll I stopped and looked back. With my afflicted eyes I could barely make out George ascending another knoll. He also stopped and looked back. I waved my hand to him, and he waved his hand to me and shouted something unintelligible. Then he disappeared in the snow, and as he disappeared a silence came on the world, to ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... passed similarly. But, early on the following day, the third day before the Kalends of July, not long after sunrise, my new valet came to me his face ashen. He babbled some unintelligible syllables and before I could comprehend him, my bedroom was entered by a Pannonian sergeant, grim as the centurions from Britain who had liberated Agathemer and me from the ergastulum at Placentia. Behind him were four legionary ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... however, may often be taken as a test of the intellectual capacity of their tellers. For in style the folk-tale changes greatly as it travels. A story which we find narrated in one country with terseness and precision may be rendered almost unintelligible in another by vagueness or verbiage; by one race it may be elevated into poetic life, by another it may be degraded into the most ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... The words were unintelligible. The language was totally unlike anything ever heard on the earth. And yet, deliberately if somewhat cringingly, the voice proceeded with what was apparently a recitation. There were modulations, ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... He gave a sudden cry. Yes, there it was—a hasty memorandum; part of the writing was unintelligible to him, but the main ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... savage. No. Lost in thought, the captain of the woods turned the curious paper again and again between his fingers. With the cipher, of which he had the secret, he assigned to each letter its true value. He read, he verified the sense of those lines, unintelligible to all but him, and then he smiled—and a ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... becomes here unintelligible, unless he here means the range of mountains which bound Hindostan, particularly on the north-west, including Cashmir and Cabul; which seems probable as immediately followed in the text by the Punjab, or country on the five ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... the current fashion in short stories. For there are fashions in literature just as surely as in matters of dress, and short stories are peculiarly subject to such changes. A few years ago dialect was all the cry, and a story was judged and valued according to the amount of unintelligible gibberish that it contained; before that romantic adventure was most in demand; and still earlier it was bald realism; at the time of writing (Spring of 1900) war stories hold first place in popular esteem. The reason for the present style is obvious, but in ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... pause, more hurried, unintelligible whispering, then footsteps drew near the door, and outside a ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... movement of her hand stopped and the automatic writing ceased, her powers of thought seemed suddenly to reassert themselves. Probably what she had been writing was mere unintelligible scribble. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... who is wearied by King Mark's long address when he comes on the guilty pair, has failed to catch the drift of the whole opera—failed to see that two souls like Tristan and Isolda, wholly swayed by love, must find Mark's grief wholly unintelligible, and have no power of explaining themselves to those not possessed with a passion like theirs, or of bringing themselves into touch with the workaday world of daylight, and that all Mark's most moving appeal means to them is that this world, where such annoyances occur, is not the land ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... kings, could Vritra (who was an Asura) comprehend it (so well)? Thou hast spoken of Vritra's acts. I too have listened to thee in full faith. In consequence, however, of my seeing that one point (in thy discourse) is unintelligible (and that, therefore, it requires explanation), my curiosity has been roused for questioning thee again.[1387] How, indeed, was Vritra, who was virtuous, devoted to Vishnu, endued with knowledge of truth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... The Carthaginians were the first nation the Romans were connected with out of Italy. Polybius informs us, that in his time (about 140 years before Christ) this treaty, written in the old language of Rome, then nearly unintelligible, was extant on the base of a column, and he has given a translation of it: the terms of peace between the Carthaginians and their allies, and the Romans and their allies, were to the following purport. The latter agreed not to sail beyond the fair promontory, (which lay, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... wife with a black-eyed, curly-headed little creature, who called him papa, and climbed on his knee, nestled under his coat, rifled his pockets, and woke him every morning by pulling open his eyes with little fingers, and jabbering unintelligible dialects ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... eigh:—I wish, Mr. Worthnought, you had been at my school a while, before you scrawl'd this wretched epistle:—but the subject is still more unintelligible. ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... close I could see his face clearly. It was a narrow face, with dull gray eyes, and a black moustache. He had a scar on his upper lip, and he was dirty and unshaven. He kept shouting unintelligible ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the first he had ever had, for his shin-bone had served him hitherto, and his delight was unmistakable. An hour later I saw him still at his everlasting polishing, and with the new pipe in full blast; and now he was crooning not only its praises, but my own. Half his improvised song was unintelligible to me, but I understood enough to learn that when the "dogs of Bushmen" had failed, he, Inyati "The Snake" would lead me to a land where there were magic stones in abundance, and by means of which, I gathered, we should both ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... be fashioned by his own peculiar mind and talent. Doubtless the leaves of the Cumaean Sibyl have suffered distortion and diminution of interest and excellence in my hands. My only excuse for thus transforming them, is that they were unintelligible in ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... comfortable children's clothing. We came presently to where the boys were reciting their catechism. An ecclesiastic was hearing them;—they seemed ready enough with their answers, but were allowed to gabble off the holy words in a manner almost unintelligible, and quite indecorous. They were bright, healthy-looking little fellows, ranging apparently from eight to twelve in age. They had good play-ground set off for them, and shady galleries to walk up and down in. Coming from their quarter, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... out of the city, on warm summer evenings. He ran his own car, and was never so happy as when Mary was on the driver's seat beside him, where he could amuse her with the little news of the day, or repeat to her long and, to Mary, unintelligible business conversations in which ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... This was all very unintelligible to Hester, and she would dearly have liked to question Sylvia; but Sylvia sate a little apart, with Bella on her knee, her cheek resting on her child's golden curls, and her eyes fixed and almost trance-like, as if she ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... she received as though they were both expected and welcome; greeting them with the unintelligible exclamation, "Imagine speaking the only language in the world worth speaking with an ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... St. Gildas was little less than slow martyrdom. The country was wild, the inhabitants were half barbarous, speaking a language unintelligible to him; the monks were violent, unruly, and dissolute, openly living with concubines; the lands of the monastery were subjected to intolerable burdens by the neighboring lord, leaving the monks in poverty and discontent. Instead of finding a home of God-fearing ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Voices rose from below—unintelligible words in maddeningly familiar accents. A black boy in one blue garment climbed, using his toes as fingers, the tipped mainyard of a Nile boat and framed himself in the window. Then, because he felt happy, he sang, all among the wheeling kites. And beneath our ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... Australian squatter, if he have any well-grounded claim to the character of a bushman, has eyes which are not ordinary, and he has, probably, nurtured within himself, unconsciously, topographical instincts which are unintelligible to the inhabitants of cities. Harry, too, was near his own home, and went forward through the thick gloom without a doubt, Jacko following him faithfully. In about half an hour they came to another ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... man to do? He murmured some unintelligible assent, and bent forward to kiss her. But not until that moment had he positively realized the fact that there would be ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... us, although their names and powers have passed into oblivion. In one of the Saxon spells which Mr. Kemble has inserted in the Appendix, we at once recognised a rhyme which we had heard an old woman in our childhood use,—and in which many Saxon words unintelligible ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... and spoke a few words in a language which was quite unintelligible to Dick, who replied, in the little Pawnee he could muster, that he ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... anchor, a-ho-oy!'' In a short time every one was in motion, the sails loosed, the yards braced, and we began to heave up the anchor, which was our last hold upon Yankee land. I could take but small part in these preparations. My little knowledge of a vessel was all at fault. Unintelligible orders were so rapidly given, and so immediately executed; there was such a hurrying about, and such an intermingling of strange cries and stranger actions, that I was completely bewildered. There is not so helpless and pitiable an object ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... Lippo Lippi draws all existence into his art; an enemy of all asceticisms and abstractions, who drives his meaning home through vivid concrete example and drastic phrase, rather than by enunciating the impressive moral commonplaces of tragic poetry.[59] Aristophanes, too, had been abused for his "unintelligible" poetry,—"mere psychologic puzzling,"[60]—by a "chattering" public which preferred the lilt of nursery rhymes. The magnificent portrait of Aristophanes is conceived in the very spirit of the riotous exuberance ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... prayed in English, and then his grandson might have joined in his petitions, but the thought of such a thing would never have presented itself to him. Nay, although, understanding both languages, he used that which was unintelligible to the lad, he yet regarded himself as the party who had the right to resent the consequent schism. Such a conversation as now followed was ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... wronged him; and to the divineness of Shakspere's love is added that of forgiveness. Such love as this between man and man is rare, and therefore to the mind which is in itself no way rare, incredible, because unintelligible. But though all the commonest things are very divine, yet divine individuality is and will be a rare thing at any given period on the earth. Faith, in its ideal sense, will always be hard to find on the earth. But perhaps this kind of affection between man and ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... instant there was a start, and a low growling voice asked what was apparently a question as to what was the matter. The response came from the man who had struck the blow; but what he said was unintelligible to the listeners, who had immediately shrunk flat upon the deck, conscious as they were that two of the crew had been sleeping within touch, while for aught they knew others might ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... and the dialect spoken by the red-handed and red-cheeked maiden who received them was not very intelligible. However, by dint of nodding of heads and pointing out items on the bill of fare, they came to an understanding, Wentworth taking for granted that something quite unintelligible that she had said about the table was an inquiry as to whether they would sit at it, which indeed it was. But it was further an inquiry as to whether they were of the party that was coming to sit at it, which he also quite cheerfully and ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... occasionally transliterated, and passages can be explained only on the hypothesis that the wrong alternative meanings of certain Greek words were followed by the translator. The Greek in turn is derived from the Hebrew, for unintelligible expressions in the Syriac can be explained and the text restored by retranslation into Hebrew. Thus in xxi. 9, 11, 12, xxiv. 2, lxii. 7 we have an unintelligible antithesis, "those who sin and those who are justified." The source of the error can be discovered by retranslation. The Syriac in these ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... full of naval slang, and sometimes their talk was utterly unintelligible to the landsmen. At the end of the third inning the Giants had three runs to their credit, while the boys from ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... but, after all, it did not tell young Captain what he wanted to know. So he continued to question the strange wight, and finally, after eliciting many unintelligible sounds, was able to make out the single ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... his faded eyes, and fixed them upon his nephew's face. He tried to speak, but his voice was thick and his words were unintelligible. ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... to the smallest fry of the town. Few things during our trip amused me more than the antics of a brown, bare-foot, dirt-begrimed little mite not more than two or three years old, who seized my wife's skirts and hung on for dear life, pouring out earnestly and volubly her unintelligible jargon. We were at first at a loss to understand what our new associate desired, and so grimly did she hang on that it seemed as if another accession to our party was assured—but a light dawned suddenly on us, and, as the brown little hand clasped ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... known to transgress the narrow limits prescribed by his friends. In more respects that one, was this a good resolve; for so completely had he identified himself with college habits, things, and phrases, that whenever he conversed, he became little short of unintelligible to the vulgar—a difficulty not decreased ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... question? Alas! alas! it was so in the time of Peter; it is but too much so in our days too. Alas! how many Christians there are to whom the very word Holy, though it be the name by which the Father, in His New Testament, loves to call His children more than any other, is strange and unintelligible. And again, alas! for how many Christians there are for whom, when the word is heard, it has but little attraction, because it has never yet been shown to them as a life that is indeed possible, and unutterably blessed. And yet again, alas! for how many are there not, even workers ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... had uttered more unintelligible words, every one sat down; and the financier again ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... his mind in any way; and the long years of mental idleness have produced a sluggishness which makes it extremely difficult for him to acquire anything new that requires thought. After enlisting, he picks up a species of unintelligible English, but that is the most that he can do. It is pitiful to see these men, some of them now old, struggling day after day, according to regulation, in the regimental school, to learn their letters. It is to them the greatest punishment that could ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... "consommations"—he loves saying this word—at his expense. The Countess at first objects, as also does Madame METTERBRUN; but, on PULLER'S explaining that he belongs to "The Two-with-you Society," they accept this explanation as utterly unintelligible but perfectly satisfactory; and so, accepting PULLER'S al fresco hospitality, we form a cheerful group round two tables put together for our accommodation. PULLER'S hospitality has taken the form of grenadines, chartreuses, and "sherry-gobblers,"—he ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... unbent, and is lying on his back. Thus he offers his face like a mirror to the moon's pallor, and shows hideously that he is wounded in the neck. I feel that he is going to die. His words are hardly more now than the rustle of wings. He has said some unintelligible things about a Spanish painter, and some motionless portraits in the palaces—the Escurial, Spain, Europe. Suddenly he is repelling with violence some beings who are ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... there had been no collusion. Several others volunteered their negative services; but with no one of them did he succeed so well; and in one case the failure was evident. The lecturer pretended to account for this, in making some confused and unintelligible remarks about the state of the weather, the thunder-storm, electricity, &c., of which things he evidently did not understand the ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... had come upon him, this rumour about his son's wife; very vague, a shadow dodging among the palpable, straightforward appearances of things, unreal, unintelligible as a ghost, but carrying with it, like a ghost, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... notice the obscure hints by which the author refers from one passage to another, and thus promises to reveal what he conceals, and to mark down on the margin the number of the page where such passages as should explain each other were to be found. But even thus the book still remained dark and unintelligible enough, except that one at last studied one's self into a certain terminology, and, by using it according to one's own fancy, believed that one was, at any rate, saying, if not understanding, something. The work mentioned before makes very honorable mention of ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... a grave, solid people, who understand a joke even less than the Scotch, while such a thing as chaff is absolutely unintelligible to them. Life to the Finns seems a serious matter which can be only undertaken after long thought and much deliberation. They lose much pleasure by their seriousness. They sing continually, but all ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... might be to wind the clock—of which he perceived that the only visible specimen had stopped. He knew that the southern races communicated with each other in the language of pantomime, and was mortified to find her shrugs and smiles so unintelligible. At length she returned with a lamp; and Archer, having meanwhile put together a phrase out of Dante and Petrarch, evoked the answer: "La signora e fuori; ma verra subito"; which he took to mean: ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... doorway of our building a strange surprise awaited me. A warrior approached bearing the arms, ornaments, and full accouterments of his kind. These he presented to me with a few unintelligible words, and a bearing at ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... from the east.' In his letter of Jan. 14 (ib. p. 497), the allusion to Mrs. Vesey's Babels is explained: 'Mrs. Montagu is one of my principal entertainments at Mrs. Vesey's, who collects all the graduates and candidates for fame, where they vie with one another, till they are as unintelligible as the good folks at Babel.' 'Lady Spencer,' said Samuel Rogers, 'recollected Johnson well, as she used to see him often in her girlhood. Her mother, Lady Lucan, would say, "Nobody dines with us to-day; therefore, child, we'll go and ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... from a table, or a chair had overturned. It was from the end of the hall—almost opposite his room. At his own door he stopped again and listened. This time he could hear voices, a low and unintelligible murmur. It was quite easy for him to locate the sound. He moved across to the other door, and hesitated. He had already disobeyed Josephine's injunction to remain with her father. Should he take a further advantage by obeying ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... 8) [ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me] Though this be perhaps not unintelligible, yet it is an odd way of confessing his dejection. I ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... came forward and made some unintelligible remarks concerning Santa Claus. It was with some difficulty that they went through their parts, for Mr. Rothchild kept getting in the way as he calmly and uncompromisingly continued to hang cornucopias on the tree. Songs and recitations followed, but ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... one! I fear the Uniform Script Association will cherish a grievance against us for this. It is fortunate however that the plant-script bears, after all, a certain resemblance to the Devanagari—inasmuch as it is totally unintelligible to any but ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... sorrowed, like the "British," over the encouragement given to the follies of astrology. The "Critical Review" "must lament that 'Guy Mannering' is too often written in language unintelligible to all except the Scotch." The "Critical Monthly" also had scruples about morality. The novel "advocates duelling, encourages a taste for peeping into the future,—a taste by far too prevalent,—and it is not ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... them Brazilians. As they passed, Martin hailed them in an unsteady voice. They pulled up suddenly and drew pistols from their holsters; but on seeing only a fair youth armed with a bow, they replaced their weapons, and with a look of surprise rode up and assailed him with a volley of unintelligible Portuguese. ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Judge, after we had waited some fifteen minutes. The conversation behind the arras, at first low and murmuring, was becoming animated. I distinctly heard the Parsee say, 'Who are the blaggards ye've brought here wid ye?' followed by an unintelligible reply. ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... modern Greek, with which Vendramin and Emilio were familiar, as many Venetians are, was unintelligible to the Duchess and to the Frenchman. Although he was quite outside the little circle that held the Duchess, Emilio and Vendramin together—for these three understood each other by means of Italian glances, by turns arch and keen, or veiled ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... there, and told them what had just happened. They searched about in the garden for the bag and the strings, and, opening it, they found it to contain two toads' feet holding a heart wrapped up in a bat's wing, and round the whole a paper inscribed with unintelligible cyphers. The Marquis was seized with horror at the sight. He told me this story with his own mouth. Mdlle. de La Force after this fell in love with Baron, but as he was not bewitched, the intrigue did not last long: he used to give a very amusing ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... will. I wish you had been more critical, and had pointed out the faults and defects of the book, of which there are no doubt some, if not many, to be found. I flatter myself that I have made more clear some passages utterly unintelligible in our A.V., such as, "He shall deliver the island of the innocent, yea," etc., chap. xxii. 30, and chap, xxxvi. 33, and the whole of chap. xxiv. and chap. xx. What a fierce, cruel, hot-headed Arab Zophar is! How the wretch gloats over Job's miseries. Yet ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... during the miracles of his nativity. His reply, "How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business," or, at my Father's? [15] would upon any other supposition, seem strange and unintelligible; and, accordingly, his parents did not comprehend him, being at present imperfectly versed in the mysteries of his kingdom. It was, however, perfectly in point, and full of meaning. Mary complained of having been so troubled to find him, and at the same time called Joseph ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... they, enthralled by elemental love, are indifferent—detest, indeed, as interfering with their love. When he ends Tristan knows he has no explanation to offer—none that Mark could possibly understand: human affection and elemental human passion are unintelligible to one another. He replies that he cannot answer Mark's "Why?" and turning to Isolda asks whether she will follow him whither he is now going—the land of eternal night. He, not Mark, plans his death. Isolda answers straightway that she will ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... generally uneducated, speak the Spanish language much more corruptly than the whites. The Negroes have a very bad accent. Their tongues seem quite unfitted for the pronunciation of the Spanish language, which many of them render unintelligible by transposing ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... the feet of a large body of men. I remembered the smugglers; but it was as if I had remembered them only to forget them forever. Old Rangsley, who steered with the sheet in his hand, kept up an unintelligible babble. Carlos and Castro talked under their breaths. Along the gunwale there was a constant ripple and gurgle. Suddenly old Rangsley began to sing; his voice was ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... Egbert, the first Saxon King of England, on to Edward the Confessor, the last, being everywhere completely interwoven with that of their mysterious, continually invasive "Danes," as they call them, and inextricably unintelligible till these also get to be a little understood, and cease to be utterly dark, hideous, and mythical to ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... appearance of the swarthy stranger, and at the uncouth dress and arms of his Eastern attendants. It is probable, too, that the language in which the benediction was conferred, and the information asked, sounded ungracious, though not probably unintelligible, in the ears ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the Boy are numerous and striking. In most cases, the two animals have an equally pleasing exterior. They both have the ability to climb giddy heights, inaccessible to any other wingless biped. Their language is not dissimilar, the same unintelligible chatter being characteristic of both. As the argument proceeds, it will be seen that distinctive traits belonging to lower classes of the animal kingdom are totally extinct in the Gorilla, while they are emphatically visible in ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... looked like one turned to stone at the sight of the nobleman standing before him. He was the first Edomite who had ever crossed his threshold—the first he had ever seen closely, and the first time he had heard the sonorous language, which sounded strange and unintelligible to his ears. If the angel Matatron, the heavenly patron and defender of Israel, or even the foremost of the evil spirits had stood before him, he would have been less appalled: with supernatural beings ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... that baby had not been winning; they had seemed reminiscent of the commonest and coarsest things of life, rather than of heavenly innocence. Maria gazed at the young man on the platform, who presently bent his head devoutly, and after saying, "Let us pray," gave utterance to an unintelligible flood of supplication intermingled with information to the Lord of the state of things on the earth, and the needs of his people. Maria wondered why, when God knew everything, Leon Barber told him about it, and she also hoped that God heard better than most of the ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... me to Heathbridge, and we were dining in the little sanded inn-parlour, I took the opportunity of Mr Holdsworth's being out of the room, and asked the questions which I was bidden to ask of the rosy-cheeked maid. I was either unintelligible or she was stupid; for she said she did not know, but would ask master; and of course the landlord came in to understand what it was I wanted to know; and I had to bring out all my stammering inquiries before Mr ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... whispering unintelligible warnings in a voice so low that it sounded like the drone of insects. Fred thrust the rifle forward inch by inch and, taking his time about it, settled himself comfortably for the shot. It was no easy shot in that uncertain light at a downward angle. ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... stricken with an ague, the prospector stood. His face had gone chalk white under its dirty stubble of beard. He looked sick and even more unwholesome than usual. From his slack jaws poured a constant whining of words, unintelligible. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... greeting with a few unintelligible words, and seemed altogether to be labouring under some restraint, till Winnie said with a ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... Orphism—a great wave of religious reform which swept over Greece and South Italy in the sixth century B.C.—says: (1) "A curious relic of primitive superstition and cruelty remained firmly imbedded in Orphism, a doctrine irrational and unintelligible, and for that very reason wrapped in the deepest and most sacred mystery: a belief in the SACRIFICE OF DIONYSUS HIMSELF, AND THE PURIFICATION OF MAN BY HIS BLOOD. It seems possible that the savage Thracians, in the fury of their worship on the mountains, when they were possessed by the god and ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... as it largely consisted of coining long and almost unintelligible words. This he laid great store by, and he speaks wrathfully of one who translated his "Piers Penniless," into what he calls "maccaronical language." In his "Lenten Stuffe or Praise of the Red Herring," i.e., of Great Yarmouth, he calls those who despised Homer in his life-time ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... variation, natural selection, and struggle for existence. Science tries to explain through these three laws the physical, mental, intellectual, moral and spiritual evolution of mankind. But the theory of Evolution will remain unintelligible until science can trace the cause of that innate "tendency to vary" which exists in every ...
— Reincarnation • Swami Abhedananda
... with which to land at this ancient city, founded by Velasquez. From the moment one touches the shore a sense of being in a foreign land forces itself upon the new-comer. The half-unintelligible language, the people, the architecture, the manners, the vegetation, even the very atmosphere and the intensity of the sunshine, are novel and attractive. It is easy to convey our partial impressions of a new place, however unique it may be, but not our inward sensations. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... dramatist has been by excess of material—like a Tarpeia by the gifts of the enemy—by difficulty in selection, and in transformation, and recollect that the product has almost always been an inconsecutive story, unintelligible to those unacquainted with the book, destitute of the peculiar atmosphere of Dickens, irritating to lovers of the novel because pet characters have been entirely suppressed or cut down nearly to nothing, and only recognisable in many cases as a version of the original on account ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... up into at least eight dialects, each so strongly marked as to constitute eight languages as different to the ear, one from another, as English, Dutch and German, or French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. A Shanghai man, for instance, is unintelligible to a Cantonese, and so on. All officials are obliged, and all of the better educated merchants and others endeavour, if only for business purposes, to learn something of the dialect spoken at the court of Peking; and this is what is popularly known as "Mandarin." The written language remains ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... be lasting in its effects, must be enforced and sustained by a constant supply of pure and interesting Gaelic books, both native and translated. Religious books there are in abundance, thanks to the zeal of the Protestant clergy. Needless to say, the compilations of the Dean of Lismore are as unintelligible to the modern Gael as Cynewulf is to a London cab-driver. I should like to see a round dozen of good English novels put into Gaelic by translators ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... and enjoy," he says, "those of Ibsen's dramas which are sane and clear, but those generally termed symbolic have been unintelligible to me, and I have never found the pleasure in them which those may who can disentangle their intricate meaning." What a curious statement, in the light of the other preface, written eight years later! "Symbolism," he there wrote, "would not be beautiful if it were clear, with a solution which can ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... untaught in the rudiments of ultimate thought, and some were still sceptical of the bona fides of our purpose, and our power to achieve its object. To them, in their then ineptitude, what I shall say now would have been unintelligible. For in the same way that the waves of light or sound exceeding a certain maximum can not be transferred to the brain by dull eyes and ears, my thought pulsations would have escaped those auditors by virtue of their own irresponsiveness. To-night I am free from the ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... shifted his head wearily on the pillow. Johnston Smyth murmured something muffled and unintelligible in his sleep. Selwyn placed some new lumps of coal on the fire, the flames licking them eagerly as the sharp crackle of escaping ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... so many unfriendly faces the night before. It was empty now. The stillness of the place began to fill him with uneasiness, and he hurried out into the day. A low tumult of sound was in the air, unintelligible and yet thrilling. A dozen steps brought him to the end of the building and he looked toward the cage. For a space after that he stood without moving, filled with a sudden, sickening horror as he realized his helplessness in this moment. ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... certain signs are unintelligible. Musical treatises of that time say that it is impossible to describe them, and that to understand them it was necessary to have heard them interpreted by a ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... the nearest we can take. In German philosophy, the brilliant epoch of Kant was immediately followed by a period which aimed rather at being imposing than at convincing. Instead of being thorough and clear, it tried to be dazzling, hyperbolical, and, in a special degree, unintelligible: instead of seeking truth, it intrigued. Philosophy could make no progress in this fashion; and at last the whole school and its method became bankrupt. For the effrontery of Hegel and his fellows came to such a pass,—whether because ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... according to Buloz, the whole of "Seraphita" was never offered to the Revue de Paris. The truth, however, appears to have been that Buloz at last completely lost his temper at Balzac's continual failures to fulfil his engagements, and declared that "Seraphita" was unintelligible, and was losing subscribers to the Review. Balzac, furious at this insult, paid Buloz 300 francs, to defray the expenses already incurred for the printing of "Seraphita," and took back his work. Buloz's receipt for this ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... inconceivable that it is wrong to dwell upon it, but which allows of indefinite expansion? Putting aside our own personal interest, do we care more for the fate of our grandchildren whom we shall never see, or for the condition of spiritual beings the conditions of whose existence are utterly unintelligible to us? If sacrifice of our lower pleasures be demanded, should we be more willing to make them in order that a coming generation may be emancipated from war and pauperism, or in order that some indefinite and indefinable change may be worked in a world utterly inscrutable to our imaginations? The ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... up, lo! there was my friend with the foot, standing within a yard of me, his hand stretched out for alms! I was so frightened, that for a moment I thought of giving him my watch, to get rid of him. However, I glided past him with a few unintelligible words, and rushed to call the servants; sending him some money by the first person who came. The porter, who had not seen him pass, is now dispersing the crowd. What vociferous exclamations! A—— has ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... suffered so that he had not slept. It was plain to her in the droop of his eyelids, and in the drawn lines about his eyes and mouth and nostrils. She was touched with tenderness and pity, and a certain unintelligible awe. And she knew her hour. She knew that if she closed her heart now, it would never open to him. She knew that it was his hour as well as hers. She felt, reverently, that it ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... thousand horse, with a navy of five hundred armed vessels. Little now remains of a place once so populous and so powerful, save the shrunken modern city of Syracusa, containing about nine thousand inhabitants, and a few almost unintelligible ruins scattered among vineyards, olive-groves, and fields of corn, or over the high wastes of the barren Epipole, on the summit of which the curious will find ruined walls and fortresses of massive and beautiful masonry. From these the eye commands the ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... a few minutes, with the assistance of Silvine and Prosper, to put the room in order; then she had Jean brought in and they laid him on a cool, clean bed, he giving no sign of life during the operation save to mutter some unintelligible words. He opened his eyes and looked about him, but seemed not to be conscious of anyone's presence in the room. Maurice, who was just beginning to be aware how utterly prostrated he was by his fatigue, was drinking a glass of wine and eating a bit of cold meat, left over from ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... back, and with it a strangely tender dream which had all night long haunted his slumbers. The captain rose hurriedly, dressed himself and inquired for the child, who had been resigned to the care of the cook. She was brought to him, a bright, cheerful little thing, just beginning to lisp unintelligible words. For a few days she missed her mother and wore a look of expectation on her infantile face, occasionally crying out; but anon this passed away, and she became cheerful and happy. The captain spent as much of ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... grander interpretation than his own royalty or his hopes for his house can yield. Of course, if prophecy is impossible, there is no more to be said, but that in that case a considerable part of the Old Testament, including many of David's psalms, is unintelligible. ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... reply as unintelligible as the preceding words. Desnoyers again said mentally, "He is drunk," but his curiosity forced him to ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... cogent to say, but the dentist felt an impalpable obstruction of will, unintelligible and persistent. His enthusiasm grew as he perfected the details of his plan. It was a new kind of scheme, in which he took the artistic delight of the incorrigible promoter. His imagination once enlisted for the plan, he held to it, arguing, counselling, bullying. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... volubility is rather a contradiction to the yea and nay appellation of the country. A respectable Frenchman informed us, that the peasants of Languedoc were considered to possess much wit and ingenuity by those who could understand their patois, which he frankly owned was unintelligible to himself. Their liveliness and animal exuberance are as strong a contrast to the immoveable form into which they are swathed when infants, as the flutter of a butterfly is to its torpidity as a chrysalis; indeed a fanciful person might be apt to suppose, ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... eyebrows, bared its rabbit teeth and, wildly waving its arms, poured a stream of unintelligible jargon in the ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... assailed by a loud scream followed by the peremptory voices of two white-coated, fiercely moustached operators, one of whom seemed to be holding Emma in the chair, had started from her sofa in the background. "Brutes!" she had declared and reached the chair-side voluble in unintelligible German to find Emma serenely emerging from unconsciousness. Once she had taken Gertrude to the dentist—another dentist, an elderly man, practising in a frock-coat in a heavily-furnished room with high sash windows, the lower sashes filled with stained glass. ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... garden! In my presence!" cried the stranger, stamping up and down the gravel and choking with laughter, "whether there is a God!" And he went stamping up and down the garden, making it echo with his unintelligible laughter. Then he came back to them more composed and wiping ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... most extraordinary and unintelligible communication he began to feel his pockets and his person all over, as though searching for something. I felt myself at liberty to resume my study ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... and I must say offended me so much, that I do not yet know what answer to return. You say I have thrown you into a quandary, Mr. Henley; and I can very sincerely return your compliment, Mr. Henley; for nothing can be more unintelligible than your whole letter is to me, Mr. Henley. And I must say, I think it not very grateful in you, Mr. Henley, nor in my opinion very proper, to write me such a letter, Mr. Henley; that is as far as I understand its meaning, Mr. Henley. I have no desire, Mr. Henley, to quarrel with you, if I can ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... whose religio-philosophical judgment is entirely expressed in that parable. We saw ourselves compelled to make a choice either of accepting or of rejecting ends in the world, and found that the world resolves itself into a senseless game at dice, and that the phenomena become more unintelligible the more important they are, if we ignore or even reject teleology. The acknowledgment of the latter prevented us from seeing in the world and its events merely the eternal stream of planless coming and going; it prevented us from accepting such an endless stream ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... give Christianity a Trial? Why Jesus more than Another? Was Jesus a Coward? Was Jesus a Martyr? The Gospels without Prejudice The Gospels now unintelligible to Novices Worldliness of the Majority Religion of the Minority. Salvationism The Difference between Atonement and Punishment Salvation at first a Class Privilege; and the Remedy Retrospective Atonement; and the Expectation of the Redeemer Completion ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... This sniffing at the moon and the sun, these filigree phrases and unintelligible fancies—There must, at least, be a point, ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... this book is to review the political, economic and social progress of the provinces of Canada under British rule, yet it would be necessarily imperfect, and even unintelligible in certain important respects, were I to ignore the deeply interesting history of the sixteen hundred thousand French Canadians, about thirty per cent of the total population of the Dominion. To apply to Canada ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... few unintelligible words, and then remained silent for a long while. His eyes were wide open. Suddenly he ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... discrepancy, as may fairly be said of the difference between Imperial Germany and its like on the one hand, and the English-speaking nations on the other hand, there the difference in everyday conceptions may readily make the two peoples mutually unintelligible to one another, on those points of institutional principle that are involved in the discrepancy. This is the state of the case as between the German people, including the Intellectuals, and the peoples against whom their preconceptions of national destiny have arrayed them. ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... in being unintelligible in discourse and uncomeatable in business. But he, having no understanding in his polite way, brought in upon us, to get in his money, ladder-dancers, rope-dancers, jugglers, and mountebanks, to strut in the place of Shakespeare's ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... only sought to amuse, the second had a political object, the third a religious object.(131) We gather this simply from the opinions we had previously formed of the authors. (132) Thus it is evidently necessary to know something of the authors of writings which are obscure or unintelligible, if we would interpret their meaning; and for the same reason, in order to choose the proper reading from among a great variety, we ought to have information as to the versions in which the differences are found, and as to the possibility of other readings ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... not more or less hate and fear England, an Englishman who does not regard France with a more or less good-humored impatience, is usually "either a god or a beast," as Aristotle saith. Balzac began with an odd but not unintelligible compound, something like Hugo's, of Napoleonism and Royalism. In 1824, when he was still in the shades of anonymity, he wrote and published two by no means despicable pamphlets in favor of Primogeniture and the Jesuits, the latter of which was ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... In which the burden of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... this age; and however the asserters of them seem sometimes to value themselves much upon sheltering their neighbors from spectral accusations, they may deserve as much thanks as that Tyrant, that having industriously obtained an unintelligible charge against his subjects, in matters wherein it was impossible they should be guilty, having thereby their lives in his power, yet suffers them of his mere grace to live, and will ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... the past been wholly strange language to us. Indeed, to such extent has man's nonsensical interpretation perverted and weakened it that I, though a learned doctor of the holy Scriptures, failed to understand it altogether, and I could find no one to teach me. And to this day it is unintelligible to all popedom. In fact, even the old teachers—Origen, Jerome and others—have not caught Paul's thought. And no wonder, truly! For it is essentially a doctrine far beyond the power of man's intelligence to comprehend. When human ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... A very unintelligible account of the manner in which this article, so precious in the eyes of the Canadians, is procured, has been already given in this chapter; but there are no data on which even to conjecture what it is. Belts of wampum, a kind of rudely ornamented ribbons or girdles, are universally ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... legitimately speak of a fifth dimension, but the profitlessness of any discussion of a fifth and higher stages lies in the fact that they can be intelligently approached only through the fourth, which is still largely unintelligible. The case is like that of a man promised an increase of wages after he had worked a month, who asks for his second month's pay before he ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
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