"Undefinable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... indistinct chords from the organ, melancholy harmonies from some undefinable hymn, actual pleadings from a soul trying to sever its earthly ties. I listened with all my senses at once, barely breathing, immersed like Captain Nemo in this musical trance that was drawing him beyond the bounds ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... its little heralds sweeping across the face of night. First came a little motion of cold air—it was dead-still before; then an undefinable freshness; then a very slight but rather grateful smell from the soil of the conscious earth. Next twittered from the bush ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... about her, too, an undefinable something, like the shadow of future fate, a something almost impossible to describe, and yet distinctly appreciable to all who saw her and lived with her. It came upon her especially when she was silent and abstracted, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... are really very admirable things; and the morality is as pure as the literary merit is conspicuous. I am not sure that I have read all that you have given us; but what I have read has really that rare and almost undefinable quality, genius; that is to say, it seizes on the mind and commands attention, and on the heart, and ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... through and chilled to the bone. The mist was so dense that objects six feet away were almost invisible. After some difficulty we managed to gather twigs from the tree sufficient to make a "billy" of tea. The light waxed; a strange and undefinable sensation thrilled me. I seemed to be near some surprise. For a considerable time the air was perfectly still. Then, suddenly, a movement became noticeable; a sudden breeze sang out of the west, and the mist-shroud rolled away, leaving a perfectly ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... of the sonorous verses, and wondering why it was that, when each line had seemed so perfect in itself, and every thought so pure and noble in its purport and conception, the whole should have left upon her mind such an undefinable impress of dissatisfaction. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... inexplicable scene, engrossed the inventive faculties of all there, till they were thoroughly tired of their wild and aimless guesses. Eight o'clock chimed—nine—ten—and they were all, Edouard especially, working themselves into a complete panic of undefinable apprehension, when, to their great relief, M. de Veron's carriage drew up before the door. The first person to alight was M. Bourdon, a notary of eminence; next M. de Veron, who handed out Madame Carson; and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... men-at-arms rubbed their eyes and looked on in silent wonder: for one of the pair was none other than the fairy maiden who had lived so long amongst them, and had endeared herself even to these rude spirits by her grace and sweetness and undefinable charm; the other, that youth with the wonderful eyes and saint-like face who had been captured and borne away to Saut after the battle before St. Jean d'Angely, and whose body they all believed had long ago been lying beneath the sullen waters ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... interesting man I had ever seen, but the most accomplished, and his heart seemed the seat of every graceful feeling. He was the first man for whose society I felt a lively preference. I used to smile at this strange delight, or sometimes weep; for the emotions which agitated me were undefinable, but they were enchanting, and unheedingly I gave them indulgence. The hours which we passed together in the interchange of reciprocal sentiments, the kind beaming of his looks, the thousand sighs that he breathed, ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... will ever come back down the line. In the daylight, the excitement drives away these thoughts—there are songs to sing and sights to see—but as the train jolts on through the night, there seems to be an undefinable feeling of fear. What will it be like to be shelled, ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... somehow or another Gammon had been too much for him, and always gained his purposes without giving Quirk any handle of dissatisfaction. In fact, Quirk was thoroughly afraid of Gammon, and Gammon knew it. In the present instance, an undefinable but increasing suspicion and discomfort forced him presently back ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... as emphatically made, thrills the hearts of those hearing it with fear. Not fear of the common kind, but a weird undefinable apprehension. ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... more happy lately; a little more used to her new life. And day by day something undefinable began to draw her towards her husband. It was in fact the dawning spirit of love, which should and might have come before marriage, instead of being, as now, an after-growth. Beneath its influence Nathanael's very likeness altered; his face grew ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... 'Again the undefinable spell that seemed to attach to the fascinating Adele, filled my mind with reveries of wondrous interest. What was her part in this drama that was enacting so close beside me? Was she the victim or the enchantress? During the long ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... even with the literary style of that early composition,—you will see extravagance and bombast, where once you saw only eloquence and graphic power. And as for the graver and more important matter of the thought of the discourse, I think you will be aware of a certain undefinable shallowness and crudity. Your growing experience has borne you beyond it. Somehow you feel it does not come home to you, and suit you as you would wish it should. It will not do. That old sermon you cannot preach now, till you have entirely recast and rewritten it. But ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... unknown; and, after her arrival, he would have been well content could he have been assured of an early opportunity of attending her obsequies and certain of a long-postponed resurrection; well content, and often wildly happy (with Lucille) ... but for the curious undefinable fear of Something ... Something about which he had the most awful dreams ... Something in a blue room with a mud floor. Something that seemed at times to move beneath his foot, making his blood freeze, his knees smite together, ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the good, the true and the beautiful, is already extant and manifest in the object of his love. Most observers would have held it more than equally accountable that a girl should have like impressions about Rex, for in his handsome face there was nothing corresponding to the undefinable stinging quality—as it were a trace of demon ancestry—which made some beholders hesitate in ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... drowsy time of stillness and shadow. I seemed to have fallen in some deep well of delicious oblivion and obscurity. Dream-like images still flitted before my fancy—these were at first undefinable, but after awhile they took more certain shapes. Strange fluttering creatures hovered about me—lonely eyes stared at me from a visible deep gloom; long white bony fingers grasping at nothing made signs to me of warning or menace. Then—very gradually, there dawned upon my sense of vision a cloudy ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... of the argument. It was surely easy enough to show against the great preacher, on the one hand, that time in such a question is but a mere word that means simply a certain limited or definite period which had a beginning, whereas eternity means an unlimited and undefinable period which had no beginning;—that his seeming argument was no argument, but merely a sort of verbal play on this difference of signification in the words;—further, that man could conceive of an infinite series, whether extended ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... In some undefinable way she had become aware, without turning her head, that he was steeped in the sense of her nearness, absorbed in contemplating the details of her face and dress; and the discovery made the words ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... certainly hope we do not!" exclaimed Tom, as he turned back to his work, with an undefinable sense of fear in ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... heard his fathers step upon the stairs. She knew instantly, by its unsteadiness, that he was intoxicated. She did not disrobe, but, sitting down beside the bed, listened with painful anxiety to hear him go quietly to rest in his own room. She sat almost breathless, while a thrilling and undefinable dread crept through her whole frame. The steps went slowly on, she heard them pass into Della's chamber, linger there a moment, and then, oh, horror! they were directed straight toward her door. They came on, in their wavering unsteadiness, and, with a sudden impulse, Minny sprang to the ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... read as requested. The Cardinal raised himself in his chair,—a sense of lightness, and freedom, and ease, possessed him,—the hopeless and tired feeling which had a few minutes since weighed him down with an undefinable languor was gone,—and his voice had gained new strength and energy when he ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... bookcases filled with sombre volumes, and the busts of Moliere and Shakespeare attempt to justify the appellation. But there is in the character, I was almost going to say in the atmosphere of the room, that same undefinable, easily recognizable something which proclaims the presence of non-readers. The traces of three or four days, at the most a week, which John occasionally spent at Thornby Place, were necessarily ephemeral, ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... irrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and to follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the real one in the summer-house. The longing was with him day and night, an incessant undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man for food or drink once tasted and long since forgotten. He could not see beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to, for he was not conscious of any wish to speak to Madame Olenska or to hear her ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... get to sea again. There is an undefinable feeling of relief, almost of joy, when the regular throbbing of the engines begins and the ship rolls and heaves to ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... long he had been asleep, when he started up in bed with an undefinable impression that something was wrong. He sat rubbing his eyes, and but half awake—a confused sound, he knew not what, fell upon his ear; it seemed as if some dreadful strife was going on outside his window, something seemed in ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... had always felt that, on the day when she showed too open a preference, Mr. Royall might, as she phrased it, make her "pay for it." How, she did not know; and her fear was the greater because it was undefinable. If she had been accepting the attentions of one of the village youths she would have been less apprehensive: Mr. Royall could not prevent her marrying when she chose to. But everybody knew that "going with a city fellow" was a different and less straightforward affair: almost every ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... a wild, remorseful flood. The girl swayed upon the couch, torn by the emotions that lashed her cruelly. Thornly stood apart. Something undefinable held him to his place. He recalled the first day he had met this strange girl upon the Hills and her tears then; but these were different. In a subtle, unspeakable way he realized that something startling ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... a time then," said Jack, and there was an undefinable, strange air about his chum which cooled Jack's first impulse of gladness. "Whatever happened to you, Mark? ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... did most of the people present a little good, undefinable as the faint influences of starlight, to sit under that "high embowed roof," within that vast artistic isolation, through whose mighty limiting the boundless is embodied, and we learn to feel the awful infinitude of the parent space out of which it is scooped. I dare also say that ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... which cannot be methodically proved for want of a precise principle by which they may be tested; and they, therefore, depend upon Immethodical Induction, that is, upon the examination of as many instances as can be found, relying for the rest upon the undefinable principle of the Uniformity of Nature, since we are not able to connect them with any of its definite modes enumerated in chap. xiii. Sec. 7. To this subject we shall return in chap. xix., after treating of Methodical Induction, or the means ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... before many times since their travels had commenced; but they both of them felt that there was something to them in the present moment different from any other period of their journey. There was something that each felt to be sweet, undefinable, and dangerous. Alice had known that it would be better for her to go up-stairs with Kate; but Kate's answer had been of such a nature that had she gone she would have shown that she had some special reason for going. Why should she show such a need? ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... one from reason, and the other from levity, were not sensible of that effect which the country about Rome produces upon the imagination, when it is impressed with the recollections, the sympathies, the natural beauties and the illustrious misfortunes which spread over these regions an undefinable charm. ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... experience could suggest, for the honour and comfort of her companion. He would fain have resisted this; for while it was impossible not to be gratified with the eager and alert kindness which was so active in his service, he felt an undefinable pain in seeing Mysinda engaged in these menial services, and discharging them, moreover, as one to whom they were but too familiar. Yet this jarring feeling was mixed with, and perhaps balanced by, the extreme grace with which the neat-handed maiden executed these tasks, however ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... eyes on the dim outlines of the object as he stealthily approached And he stepped as noiselessly as possible, notwithstanding he meditated an encounter with nothing more than an inanimate object. But his imagination was always on the alert, and as he often feared dangers that arose undefinable and indescribable in his mind, it was not without some trepidation that he had separated himself from the horses and groped his way toward the object that had so much terrified his pony. He paused within a few feet of ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an undefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed with my wife, silly woman though she be,—and allowed, after the third ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... was overcome by the almost blasphemous frivolity of suggesting to any living being that Kerfol was the place for him. "Is it possible that any one could NOT see—?" I wondered. I did not finish the thought: what I meant was undefinable. I stood up and wandered toward the gate. I was beginning to want to know more; not to SEE more—I was by now so sure it was not a question of seeing—but to feel more: feel all the place had to communicate. "But to get in one will have to rout out the keeper," I thought reluctantly, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... her father's out to the summerhouse. First she opened the book of her father's. It was a translation of a Russian book, very deep and moving and sad and incomprehensible. A perfectly fascinating book! It always filled her with vague, undefinable emotions. She read: "O youth, youth! Thou carest for nothing: thou possessest, as it were, all the treasures of the universe; even sorrow comforts thee, even melancholy becomes thee; thou art self-confident ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... experienced; and which frequently, I think, results from a kind of cumulative evidence of uncongeniality or unworthiness, made up of a number of slight indices of character, which, separately, may appear of little moment, but altogether, produce a strong, if undefinable, feeling of aversion. Mr. Harlowe's manners were bland, polished, and insinuating; his conversation was sparkling and instructive; but a cold sneer seemed to play habitually about his lips, and at times ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... of these evenings that I suddenly understood what was the cause of the undefinable change that I had noticed in her manner some time before. In the previous week the company had held a court dinner, and that was the evening when the alderman introduced his son—"My son, the captain," as he called him—a captain by purchase, and with the right to wear a brilliant ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... like the apparition of the viper in the sandy lane, it dwelt in the mind of the boy, affording copious food for the exercise of imagination. From that moment with the name of Dane were associated strange ideas of strength, daring, and superhuman stature; and an undefinable curiosity for all that is connected with the Danish race began to pervade me; and if, long after, when I became a student, I devoted myself with peculiar zest to Danish lore and the acquirement of the old Norse tongue and its dialects, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... going to say "With Aline Joyeuse," but a feeling of restraint stopped him, an undefinable sentiment, a sense of shame at pronouncing her name in the studio which had heard so many others. There are things that do not go together, one scarcely knows why. Paul preferred to reply with a falsehood, which brought him at once to the object of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... little weight—in some, resemblance seems to go for nothing, and Creation the reigning idea—in some, descent is the key,—in some, sterility an unfailing test, with others it is not worth a farthing. It all comes, I believe, from trying to define the undefinable. I suppose you have lost the odd black seed from the birds' dung, which germinated,—anyhow, it is not worth taking trouble over. I have now got about a dozen seeds out of small ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... well enough," replied Malcolm hurriedly. "If we come to that, you have rather a weedy appearance yourself;" for Cedric looked decidedly thinner, and his eyes were almost unnaturally bright. He seemed older, too, and changed in some undefinable way; but he had never looked handsomer. Malcolm forgot his own troubles in his anxiety to prevent his protege falling into the hands of the adventurer, Saul Jacobi. For the moment his own soul seemed to yearn over the boy who was his sisters' darling and the object of their ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... his own heart throbbing with a keen pang of something undefinable as he listened to her stormy weeping. What did ail her? he wondered. Could it be that the evil against which he was providing had really come upon her? Was Maddy more interested in him than he supposed? He hoped not, though with a man's vanity he felt a slight thrill of satisfaction ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... natural place in the museum named from the great sculptor whose genius had flung into the clay the features of a character so unlike his own. The bust, says the Danish critic, at first sight impresses one with an undefinable classic grace; on closer examination the restlessness of a life is reflected in a brow over which clouds seem to hover, but clouds from which we look for lightnings. The dominant impression of the whole is that of some irresistible power (Unwiderstehlichkeit). ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... yearning for something, I knew not what. My whole spiritual being seemed exalted to the clouds, yet restrained by some galling chain from the heaven it sought to enter. And then I asked myself, What is the secret of this mysterious power of music; where shall we look for the cause of those undefinable yet overwhelming emotions which it never fails to excite? A hopeless question it seemed, one which the philosophers of all ages have failed to solve, perhaps because they have not troubled themselves ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... been something in his face that night That thrilled our hearts with fear, An undefinable, mysterious light, Which told us Heaven was near. He had a deeper lustre in his eyes, His smile had seemed more bright, Till, looking in his face, all Paradise Seemed opened to ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... proclaimed it to be fiercer and bolder, formed to wrestle with rough winds, and to laugh at the coming tempests. For the first time since she was, she turned away to tremble, her soul filled with a new and undefinable feeling, for which she could not account. After shading her eyes a moment from the vision, she looked again, and though her trembling increased, and her brain became giddy, she did not wish the being away, nor did she motion it to go. Why ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... this faith I have been baptized. And I acknowledge and glorify and worship One God in Three persons, of one substance, and not to be confounded, increate and immortal, eternal, infinite, boundless, without body, without passions, immutable, unchangeable, undefinable, the fountain of goodness, righteousness and everlasting light, maker of all things visible and invisible, containing and sustaining all things, provident for all, ruler and King of all. Without him was there nothing ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... is rare, and anyway the characteristics are so significant that a mistake in recognition can hardly be made. Darwin says that the conviction of one's own guilt is from time to time expressed through a sparkling of the eyes, and through an undefinable affectation. The last is well known to every penologist and explicable in general psychological terms. Whoever knows himself to be guiltless behaves according to his condition, naturally and without constraint: hence the notion ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... every moment. He had been in the mountains but once since the war began. It was only George he came to see? She brought out her work and began to sew. He would not come: only George was fit to be his friend. Why should he heed her poor old father, or her?—with the undefinable awe of an unbred mind for his power and wealth of culture. And yet—something within her at the moment rose up royal—his equal. He knew her, as she might be! Between them there was something deeper than the shallow kind greeting they gave the world,—recognition. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... you, my beloved Helen, introduced me to the acquaintance of your family. You may remember the backwardness with which I first received their approaches; the very name of Percy had become ominously painful to me, and yet it inspired me with a strange and undefinable interest. A spell appeared to attract me towards you, and in spite of my first resolution to the contrary, in spite of the melancholy reserve that still dwelt upon my mind, I became an acquaintance, and at length the favoured inmate and friend, of your father. Could I imagine the dangers that lurked ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... any others. Quite naturally. There is more artistry in Poe, and the tales about the Frenchman, Arsene Lupin, are ten times more ingenious than Doyle's; but Doyle has infused the adventures of Sherlock Holmes with the undefinable something known as romance, and that has preserved them. The great majority of detective stories are ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... Sam, I reckoned I'd seen enough of the kitchen arrangements; so I left them scraping the General—that is, getting off the injured outside, in order to see what really he was made of, and what he had beneath the undefinable cover. When in Washington, there's nothing like going ahead; and if you can look a man into respect for you, so much the better. Dignitary or no dignitary won't do; you must always profess to be a distinguished individual. Well, on the strength of the invitation extended by Jeff—to ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... returning life. His lips moved slowly at last, as if he would speak; and Maggie, bending low to catch the faintest sound, heard him utter the name of "Rose." In Maggie's bosom there was no feeling for the stranger save that of pity, and yet that one word "Rose" thrilled her with a strange undefinable emotion, awaking at once a yearning desire to know something of her who bore that beautiful name, and who to the young man was undoubtedly the one in ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... evil fell upon the woman's soul. It was like a heavy nightmare weight that might only be felt, not seen, and could not be shaken off. But the Countess de Mattos had experienced this undefinable misery before, when the reaction came after taking too large a dose of chlorodyne with her "solace." She hoped that it was merely this now—that it was no real warning of ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... remembered the masterpiece of poesy he had written in his seeming trance, the manuscript of which would soon be in the hands of the London publishers, his heart swelled with a growing and irrepressible sense of pride. For he knew and felt—with an undefinable yet positive certainty—that however much the public or the critics might gainsay him, his fame as a poet of the very highest order would ere long be asserted and assured. A deep tranquillity was in his soul ... a tranquillity that seemed to increase the further he ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... consideration." The morning after I received this message, I arose and resumed my usual occupations; but, from whatever cause it may have proceeded, I felt a sense of approaching evil hang heavily upon me; the beats of my pulse were languid, and an undefinable feeling of anxiety pervaded my whole spirit; even my face was pale, and my eye so heavy, that my father and brothers concluded me to be ill; an opinion which I thought at the time to be correct, for I felt exactly that kind of depression which precedes a ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... with a laugh that, in spite of all his efforts at self-control, betrayed nervous agitation and an undefinable dread. "The sky is clear, the moon is shining brilliantly and the sea is altogether tranquil; if a storm were coming it would not be so. Banish your fears and reassure yourself; the lightning is ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... and she trembled. But no; Demorest, who had already taken such extreme measures, could not consistently listen to any suggestion for delay. As her only danger lay in Demorest's presence, the absence of her husband caused her more undefinable uneasiness than ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... her undefinable position kept her from much repose on the second night also; but the following morning brought an unexpected letter from Swithin, written about the same hour as hers to him, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... close-cropped, his face ruddy and wrinkled like a withered apple, his eyes a misty blue, his big nose marked like a network of veins, his hands glazed and reddened, like his face, by wind and weather; standing, even under his mayoral robes, like a jockey. Of course he had the undefinable air of breeding; no one could have mistaken his class. But he was an undistinguished, very ordinary looking little man; and indeed he had done nothing for the past half century to distinguish himself above his fellows. There are thousands of his type, masters of English country ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... recesses of human nature hitherto sealed up in darkness. Along that border-line by which the glimmerings of consciousness are, as by the thinnest, yet the most impervious veil, separated from the regions of the unexplored and the undefinable, De Quincey walked familiarly and with privileged eye and ear. Many a nebulous mass of hieroglyphically inscribed meanings did he—this Champollion, defying all human enigmas, this Herschel, or Lord Rosse, forever peering into the obscure chasms and yawning abysses of human astronomy—resolve ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... immensity of one and unravel the formation of the other, is hardly less wonderful than either. Still the great mystery remains unriddled; our researches have brought us no nearer the beginning, and the first cause of all continues unapproachable and undefinable as ever. Instead of explaining physical creation, we begin with it; we take the existence of matter for granted, and its attributes for granted, and forthwith begin to fabricate a universe, without first ascertaining whence was matter, or whence the laws by which ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... the open attentions of others, the truly loyal one will not allow herself to cherish a secret feeling or preference toward any other. Her every affection will be true as steel to the magnet. She will know no wayward inclinations, nor give way to whims and fancies, and undefinable emotions, to feelings, which she would blush ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... to the amazing author of the Comedie humaine, Des Esseintes had reached a point where he no longer opened Balzac's books; their healthy spirit jarred on him. Other aspirations now stirred in him, somehow becoming undefinable. ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... "Miseries of Opium," I had most unaccountably always neglected to read. Again and again, when my increasing debility had threatened to bring my studies to an abrupt conclusion, I had meditated this experiment, but an undefinable and shadowy fear had as often stayed my hand. But now that I knew that unless I could by artificial stimuli obtain a sudden increase of strength I must STARVE, I no longer hesitated. I was desperate; I believed that something horrible ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... quality or power is not enough to arouse my enthusiasm. It is possible that no master ever painted a buttercup like this one, or the fringe of a robe like that one; that this poet has a unique subtlety, and that an undefinable music. I am still unconvinced, tho the man who can not see it, we are told, should at once retire to the place where there is wailing ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... the hero of 'Contarini Fleming,' is distinctly not a poet; and the incapacity is most evident when he endeavours to pass the inexorable limits. The distinction between poetry and rhetoric is as profound as it is undefinable. A true poet, as possessing an exquisite sensibility to the capacities of his instrument, does not try to get the effects of metre when he is writing without its restrictions and its advantages. Disraeli shows occasionally a want of this delicacy of perception by breaking into ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... pleasant evening towards the close of April, and the low descending sun was shedding the mellow light of his parting beams over the joyful face of reanimating nature. The invalid, during all the fore part of the day, had suffered greatly from pain—that general and undefinable distress which is so frequently found to be the precursor of approaching dissolution. To this had succeeded a sort of lethargic sleep, from which it was not easy to arouse her, so that she could be made to take any notice of what was passing around her. ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... passed by the cemetery, and an undefinable hope made me enter there again. I knelt once more on the spot that is worn by our knees, and I prayed there for a ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... South Audley Street nursing home and was at once surrounded with the hush, the shaded rooms, the scents of medicine and flowers, and some undefinable cleanliness that belongs ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... pathological form, it may indicate a want, and even develop an unconscious appetency, but it can not, itself, reveal an object, any more than the feeling of hunger can reveal the actual presence, or determine the character and fitness, of any food. An undefinable fear, a mysterious presentiment, an instinctive yearning, a hunger of the soul, these are all irrational emotions which can never rise to the dignity of knowledge. An object must be conjured by the imagination, or conceived by the understanding, or intuitively apprehended ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... commenced her walk towards it in dread unutterable, an undefined sense of evil filling her sinking heart; mingling with which, came, with a rush of terror, a fear of that other undefinable evil—the evil Mrs. Hare had declared was foreboded ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... succession of his principal rajahs who aspired to be his ministers, and each of whom raised himself a step nearer the summit of his desire upon the butchered body of his predecessor. A glow, perhaps, of undefinable pleasure may have warmed the heart of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... own blacksmiths and carpenters, as well as splint pounders and shingle weavers. The walls are raised high enough to make the chamber sufficiently lofty, and the roof is neatly shingled. As we enter, an air of that undefinable English ideality—comfort—seems diffused, as it were, in the atmosphere of the place. There is a look of retirement about the beds, which stand in dim recesses of the inner apartment, with their ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... this and similar journeys, by means of the Diary, enthuses my soul with an undefinable longing to have been with him. The excitement, and danger, and hurry and bustle constantly incident to travel at the present day were all unfelt and unfeared by ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... irradiated her face, and touched with gold the delicate brown hair, the nosrtils, lips, chin, and the lilac of her throat. Her features were clear-cut, flawless; the expression exquisitely grave and pure; the large grey eyes had that steady glow which shows a firm and undisturbed will. In some undefinable way he found himself thinking of the vague objects of his dreams, delicate and subtle things, dew, starlight, and transparencies rose up by some affinity. He rejected them—not those—then a strong warrior with a look of pity on his face appeared ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... better. I had caught a look now and again—an undefinable glance, which told me the whole pitiable tale. She did not love Rochez; and in the drama which we were preparing to enact the curtain would fall on ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Margaret watched the tall, lonely figure sweep up the hall to the lift. As the glass doors closed on it she had the sense of an imprisonment. The beautiful head disappeared first, still buried in the muff, the long trailing skirt followed. A woman of undefinable rarity was going up heaven-ward, like a specimen in a bottle. And into what a heaven—a vault as of hell, sooty black, ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... uneasy in the old man's presence. There was a change in his manner, most marked. Again and again that remark occurred to him, and again and again, in the compradore's presence, Withers was conscious of a feeling of undefinable hostility. He holds me responsible, he thought, absurd, but that's what it is. Because I did not prevent him from going to America. Therefore Withers was very glad to go to Peking from time to time, for he liked the excitement of the barbaric capital, and besides, he thought it ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... but to me there was a change in his expression which, as it were, warned and startled me. A deep shadow of anxiety in his eyes made them look more sombre and less keen; his smile was not so sweet as it was stern, and there was an undefinable SOMETHING in his very bearing that suggested—what? Defiance? Yes, defiance; and it was this which, when I had realized it, curiously alarmed me. For what had he, Heliobas, to do with even the thought ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... gazes on the scene, and listens to the notes of the birds, he gradually relapses into one of those tender and undefinable reveries, which fill the youthful bosom in this delicious season. He wonders what this love may be of which he has so often read, and which thus seems breathed forth in the quickening breath of May, and melting all nature into ecstasy ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... strange, and yet it is true, that one sometimes finds even in the most commonplace countenance an undefinable something, which fascinates the attention, and forces it to recur again and again, while it is impossible to tell whether the peculiarity which thus attracts us lies in feature or in expression, or in ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... is because this representation is artistic and dramatic, and not simply historical, and the Poet must seek to condense, and sum and exhibit in dramatic appreciable figures, the unreckonable, undefinable historical suffering of years, aad lifetimes of this vain human struggle,—because, too, the wildest threats which nature in her terrors makes to man, had to be incorporated in this great philosophic piece; and because, lastly, the Poet would have the madness of the human will and ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs. Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the room ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... I heard the distant strains of the organ, a sad harmony to an undefinable chant, the wail of a soul longing to break these earthly bonds. I listened with every sense, scarcely breathing; plunged, like Captain Nemo, in that musical ecstasy, which was drawing him in spirit ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... in its form and dimensions. It wore an immense hat, of the shape of a cullender, and with almost as many holes, through which protruded little wisps of straw instead of feathers. The face was perfectly undefinable, having neither dimensions nor shape, resembling nothing of the live human species, and consisting apparently entirely of a nose which projected several inches beyond the brim of his hat; his shirt-collar was tied with a piece of rope; his jacket was as much too short as his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... not surprising that when he got within sight of her windows, his cheeks aflame with the crisp air, his eyes snapping with the joy of once more hearing her voice, her heart should have throbbed with an undefinable happiness and pride as she realized that for a time, at least, he was to be all her own. And yet when he had again taken her hand—the warmth of his last pressure still lingered in her palm—and had looked into her eyes and had said how he hoped he had not kept her ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... An undefinable instinct led the man's footsteps to that lonely height. He skirted the temple and anon stood looking down on the panorama of Rome stretched out at his feet: the Palatine sloping downwards in a gentle gradient—covered with the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... sultry. Seating herself on the threshold of the door, she leaned her tack against the doorpost, and closed her eyes. Perhaps the poor child's thoughts were wandering back to her far-off, never-to-be-forgotten home, or she might be thinking of the hunters and their game. Suddenly a vague, undefinable feeling of dread stole over her mind: she heard no steps, she felt no breath, she saw no form; but there was a strange consciousness that she was not alone—that some unseen being was near, some eye was upon her. I have heard of sleepers starting from ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... and excited cheek among them. To leap into the bows of the canoe, and disappear under the foliage, was the work of a single instant. All listened breathlessly for the slightest sound; and then every heart throbbed with the most undefinable emotions, as his lips were heard giving utterance to the deep emotion of his ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... there was something wanting, as I've said— That undefinable "Je ne scais quoi" Which, for what I know, may of yore have led To Homer's Iliad, since it drew to Troy The Greek Eve, Helen, from the Spartan's bed; Though on the whole, no doubt, the Dardan boy Was much inferior to King Menelaues:— But thus ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... some have an offensive and others an agreeable odor; some contain asphalt in large quantity, others paraffine, etc. Thus they form a heterogeneous assemblage of liquid hydrocarbons, of which naphtha and maltha may be said to form the extremes, and which have little in common, except their undefinable name. The causes of these differences are but imperfectly understood, but we know that they are in part dependent on the nature of the organic material that has furnished the petroleums, and in part ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... the consciousness of so gentle, so helpless and so heavenly a form, sleeping in innocent security, confiding in the protection of man, and that very helplessness of her nature, awakens a sentiment of sympathy and tenderness, as undefinable as it is thrilling and transporting. And such was the sleep of Theodora: she was young and replete with charms, and, alas! but too helpless and in need of protection. Her beauteous form was displayed to the greatest advantage; the sportive breeze now playing amidst her luxuriant hair, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... sped up into the hills, his mind alight with eagerness to meet Jane and to learn the developments of the last few days. Her non-appearance at the railway station filled him with an undefinable anxiety. It would have been so like Jane to have been there, prompt to seize the chance of a talk with him alone before he reached the house. He had called up, in anticipation, such a vivid picture of her, waiting on the platform,—bright, alert, vigorous, with that fresh and healthy ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... and other like facts, they gave her no shock—they left the reflex of the man in her mind still unspotted, unimpaired. How could this be? Simply because they left unaltered the conviction that this man believed in God, and that the desire of his own heart brought him into some real, however undefinable, relation to him who was yet nearer to him than that desire itself, and whose ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... to Dahlia's room; he put her Bible under his arm, and looked about him sadly. Time stood at a few minutes past eleven. Flinging himself into a chair, he thought of waiting in that place; but a crowd of undefinable sensations immediately beset him. Seeing Edward Blancove in the street below, he threw up the window compassionately, and Edward, casting a glance to right and left, crossed the road. Robert went ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... indeed undefinable; strong and weak by turns, indiscreet, dissembling, they are capable of anything.' 'Without doubt,' said M. de Lille, distressed that nothing had yet been said to him, and with a familiarity which was not likely to succeed; 'Without ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... a conference in the recess of a window. We three remained seated round the table from which the dark maid was removing the cups and the plates with brusque movements. I gazed frankly at Dona Rita's profile, irregular, animated, and fascinating in an undefinable way, at her well-shaped head with the hair twisted high up and apparently held in its place by a gold arrow with a jewelled shaft. We couldn't hear what she said, but the movement of her lips and the play of her ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... Neave had so wondrous a field for the exercise of his perfected faculty; and I saw then how in the real, the great collector's appreciations the keenest scientific perception is suffused with imaginative sensibility, and how it's to the latter undefinable quality that in the last ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... by her herbalist business; however, the sharpness of rhubarb, the bitterness of elder-seed, and the warmth of peppermint clung to her; and as soon as she crossed the drawing-room, it was filled with an undefinable smell like that of a chemist's shop, relieved by an acute odour ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... I.," for De Tonbridge, (or Earl Clare, as he had been created,) espoused the cause of Robert Curtoise, in opposition to William Rufus, who had seized the crown. The castle is described by Mr. Britton with interesting and not dry-as-dust minuteness, although only some dilapidated and almost undefinable fragments remain. Tunbridge Priory and the Free Grammar School are next mentioned, the latter in connexion with Dr. Vicesimus Knox, who was master of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 551, June 9, 1832 • Various
... be precipitating itself upon the brig; there was a moment of undefinable anguish; the men forsook their poles and flocked to the stern in ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... because it did not then need mending. But it would seem the part of wisdom to perfect the military system so far as practicable in time of peace rather then continue a fruitless controversy over the exact location of an undefined and undefinable line supposed to separate the military administration from the command in the army, or the functions of the Secretary of War from those of the commanding general. The experience of many years has shown that the Secretary was sure to get on both sides of that line, no matter ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... fashionable is peculiar and characteristic. From the toe of his boot to the crown of his hat, there is that unostentatious, undefinable something about him distinctive of his social position. Professional men, every body knows, have an expression common to their profession. A purblind cyclops could never mistake the expression of an Independent preacher, an ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... fastened on the top of her head like a crown, was very striking. Besides this, she was remarkable for her elegant, tasteful dresses, and a bearing which united to the dignity of a lady of rank that undefinable something which makes actresses and women who belong to the higher classes of the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... better than the European breakfast, but it has its faults and inferiorities; it does not satisfy. He comes to the table eager and hungry; he swallows his soup—there is an undefinable lack about it somewhere; thinks the fish is going to be the thing he wants —eats it and isn't sure; thinks the next dish is perhaps the one that will hit the hungry place—tries it, and is conscious that there was a something ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sages, whose thoughts were profound, saluted them all with reverence and gave them a comprehensive answer, saying: Be it heard! This universe existed only in the first divine idea yet unexpanded, as if involved in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable by reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep; then the sole, self-existing power, himself undiscovered, but making this world discernible, with five elements and other principles of nature, appeared ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... I can pass any order that may come," proposed Hal, who, truth to tell, felt an undefinable something that made him too restless to like the idea of ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... unbounded power, for undefined and undefinable purposes, the evil of a moral and almost physical inaptitude of the man to the function must be the greatest we can conceive to happen in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... even more deeply in the paper. Poor Mary Kitson, alas! found that, in some undefinable manner, the glory had departed from her dolls. Adrian and Emily were, of a sudden, glassy and lumpy abstractions of sawdust and china. Very timidly she raised her large, stupid eyes and regarded Sarah. Sarah ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... time Felicite was giving him music-lessons. To him the grand apartments on the lower floor, and her private rooms above, so coquettish, so artistic, were vivified, were animated by a light, a spirit, a supernatural atmosphere, strange and undefinable. The modern world with its poesy was sharply contrasted with the dull and patriarchal world of Guerande, in the two systems brought face to face before him. On one side all the thousand developments of Art, on the other the sameness of uncivilized Brittany. No one will therefore ask why the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... speaking she had gone to the door, and she went out without looking back. A moment later, she was by Gianluca's side. She saw that what Don Teodoro had said was true. There was an undefinable change in his features since the previous day, and at the first sight of it her heart stood still an instant and the blood left her face, so that she felt very cold. She kept her back to the light, that he might not see that she was disturbed, and while she asked him how he was, her hands touched, ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... There was no sunrise. It merely seemed as if all of Nature—very gradually—was soaking itself full of some light; it was dim at first, but never grey; and then it became the whitest, the clearest, the most undefinable light. There were no shadows. Under the brush of the wild land which I was skirting by now there seemed to be quite as much of luminosity as overhead. The mist was the thinnest haze, and it seemed to derive its whiteness as much ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... material particles can act as a bridge by which we can cross over into the domain of intelligence.... What imaginable link is there between certain movements of certain molecules in my brain, on the one hand, and on the other hand primitive, undefinable, undeniable facts such as: I have the sensation of softness, I smell the odour of a rose, I hear the sound of an organ, I ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... the existence would have been unbearable, but humanity can grow used to anything by degrees. A stranger finding himself unexpectedly at the castle would have felt that the sweet air of the forest was poisoned at that one point by some subtle and undefinable element, that appealed to none of the senses in particular, but oppressed them all alike. The sensation was not like that caused by a vague anxiety, or by the shadow of a coming event creeping mysteriously onward, a mere uneasiness as to the result which must soon be apparent, but of which it ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... them in a nosegay, when a rustling among the bushes attracted her attention. She hastily advanced towards the spot, exclaiming "Frederic!" when the Baron, the man whom of all others she most hated, and, for some undefinable reason or ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... (sat), for 'being' is only Brahman; nor can it be called 'non-being' (asat) in the strict sense, for it at any rate produces the appearance of this world. It is in fact a principle of illusion; the undefinable cause owing to which there seems to exist a material world comprehending distinct individual existences. Being associated with this principle of illusion, Brahman is enabled to project the appearance of the world, in the same way as a magician ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... wrack of clouds streams across the awful sky, and the rain sweeps almost parallel with the horizon. Beyond, the heath stretches off into endless blackness, in the extreme of which either fancy or art has conjured up some undefinable shapes that seem riding into space. At the base of the huge oak stands a shrouded figure. His mantle is wound by the blast in tight folds around his form, and the long cock's feather in his hat is blown upright, till it seems ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... appeared impossible that anything uncanny should hide beneath that lovely mirror; and yet when some floating wisp of reeds suddenly coiled itself around my neck, or some unknown thing, drifting deeper, coldly touched my foot, it caused that undefinable shudder which every swimmer knows, and which especially comes over one by night. Sometimes a slight sip of brackish water would enter my lips,—for I naturally tried to swim as low as possible,—and then would ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... others were thoughtless and full of joy, the sun's rays were hidden from my sight and I groped hopelessly forward, praying in vain for an end of misery. Out of such a boyhood there came—as what else could come?—a manhood all imperfect, clothed with gloom, haunted by horror, and familiar with undefinable terrors which have weighed upon my heart until I have cried to myself that it would break—until I have almost prayed that it would break and thereby free me from the bondage of my pitiless master, Woe! To-day walled within a prison for madmen, ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... wildly as he came up, bowed, and asked if he could have the pleasure of a dance. I readily consented, and before the party broke up I had given the stranger all my heart. I had never loved before, much as I had enjoyed men's company. Yet, although I gave my heart away, I had some undefinable dread of this dark, daring stranger, with the remorseless though beautiful eye, and that dare-devil step and bearing. Many times, again, we met; frequently in the meadows when the gloaming came; and ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins |
