"Unutterable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... astonishing words fell from the judge's lips—words that branded De Ganache with unutterable infamy—the miserable man looked around him like an animal at bay; and then, a madness coming upon him, he broke out into peal after peal of harsh, mirthless laughter—laughter that seemed to come from the grave and beyond; and, laughing thus, they led him away. When he was gone ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... a fixed regard; his countenance changed; a torrent of tears gushed down his cheeks; his head sunk upon his bosom; he heaved a profound sigh, and remained in silence with all the external marks of unutterable sorrow. The company were, in some measure, infected by his despondence, concerning the cause of which, however, they would ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... an existence to be prolonged only by such frightful means, which induces me to become a terror to you or to others. Believe me, that if my victims, those whom my insatiable thirst for blood make wretched, suffer much, I, the vampyre, am not without my moments of unutterable agony. But it is a mysterious law of our nature, that as the period approaches when the exhausted energies of life require a new support from the warm, gushing fountain of another's veins, the strong desire to live grows upon us, until, in a paroxysm of wild insanity, which will recognise no ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... but enjoyed peeps at the little party as they sat under the chestnuts, Nanna and Fay doing the honors of the garden to their guests with Italian grace and skill, while the poor mother folded her tired hands with unutterable content, and the boy looked like ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... of his joy from the communion. He gave to the sacrament of the eucharist that worship imbued with unutterable emotion, with joyful tears, which has aided some of the noblest of human souls to endure the burden and heat of the day.[19] The letter of the dogma was not fixed in the thirteenth century as it is ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... shall be obeyed. [He retires into another apartment.] What is this horror unutterable? 'Tis no mere passing fit of anger. What shall I do?—Ah! I have it! I have it! I will take upon myself to contrive some plan for his escape. ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... on her arm; it was cold, but not colder than her hand on the day when it touched mine at the portals of the church. I resumed my position, bending my face above her, and bathing her cheek with the warm dew of my tears. Ah, what bitter feelings of despair and helplessness, what agonies unutterable did I endure in that long watch! Vainly did I wish that I could have gathered all my life into one mass that I might give it all to her, and breathe into her chill remains the flame which devoured me. The night advanced, and feeling the moment of eternal ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... a welcome order to these two Khaki Boys and they started back over the ground won at such terrible cost. Already, though, gallant stretcher-bearers were searching among the dead to succor the living. And then, to their unutterable delight, Roger and Bob saw Franz limping toward them, using his rifle ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... tremendous passions are expressed, its triumph is in either case decided. The whole wall swarms with ascending and descending, poised and hovering, shapes—men and women rising from the grave before the judge, taking their stations among the saved, or sinking with unutterable anguish to the place of doom—a multitude that no man can number, surging to and fro in dim tempestuous air. In the centre at the top, Christ is rising from His throne with the gesture of an angry Hercules, hurling ruin on the guilty. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Choctaws and had found them surprisingly responsive to his machinations. They were nothing loath to confess that they were thoroughly disgusted with the southern alliance. It had netted them nothing but unutterable woe. Among those that Phillips approached, although not personally, was Colonel McIntosh, who communicated with Phillips through two intimate friends. McIntosh was persuaded to attempt no immediate demonstration in favor of the ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... the Edict of Nantes.—The immense loss sustained by France in all her great interests, as affecting her civil and religious liberties, her commerce, trade, arts, sciences, not to speak of the unutterable anguish inflicted upon hundred of thousands of individuals (among whom were the writer's maternal ancestors,—their name, Courage), by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, has lately called into action the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... But what unutterable amazement fell upon the two people! Both had felt a vague dread of evil from the presence of this siren in the house; but their darkest, wildest fears had never shadowed forth this unspeakable folly. The Iron King, a man of seventy-seven, ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... and placed in their stead her own Virtue, erect, with a helmet on her head, a spear in her hand, and a fallen crown at her feet, and that ever dear and ever living sentiment, "SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS," and especially and touchingly, with unutterable and inextinguishable affection, as the beneficent parent who had rocked his cradle, who had held out to him in youth the helping hand, who had honored his meridian and his setting years with her greenest bays, and ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... lead a mere animal existence, in itself not peculiarly cruel or distressing, but with a constant element of fear and uncertainty, "and the trifling evils of unrequited labor, ignorance the most profound (to which they are condemned by law), and the unutterable injustice which precludes them from all the merits and all the benefits of voluntary exertion, and the progress that results ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... clang that it sounded into Arthur's heart, his sense of weakness returned. It was a toilsome journey up-stairs to his room, and he re-entered its dark solitary precincts in unutterable misery. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... to dignity into an honored old age! Alas! circumstances are too much for us all, and here I am, in my seventieth year, poor old Daddy Dan, with no great earthly trouble, indeed, and some few consolations,—my breviary and the grand psalms of hope,—my daily Mass and its hidden and unutterable sweetness,—the love of little children and their daily smiles,—the prayers of my old women, and, I think, the reverence of the men. But there comes a little sting sometimes, when I see young priests, who served my Masses long ago, standing in cathedral stalls in all the glory ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... does its blessedness end? O poverty-stricken, weary ones! how well ye are recompensed! O unutterable happiness! O soul! what a gain thou hast made in exchange for all thy losses! Couldst thou have believed, when thou wast lying in the dust, that what caused thee so much horror could have procured thee so great a happiness as that which thou now possessest? If it had been told ...
— Spiritual Torrents • Jeanne Marie Bouvires de la Mot Guyon
... own voice inspired unutterable terror; which was augmented by a heavy and long confined groan, proceeding from the woman. She had retained her breath, fearing the return of the assassin. The answer that followed her groan was, 'If you are a Christian soul, get me some help.' I told her I was lost, benighted, and did not ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... unhappy circumstances was very mean, and such as fully showed what difference there is between courage and that resolution which is necessary to support the spirits and calm our apprehensions at the certain approach of a violent death. I forbear attempting any description of those unutterable torments which the exterior marks of a distracted behaviour fully showed that this poor wretch endured. And as I have nothing more to add of him, but that he confessed his having been guilty of a multitude of ill acts, he submitted at last with greater cheerfulness than he had ever shown during ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... and came to her; but it was not Michael Penfold—it was Robert. A faint scream, a heavenly sigh, and her head was on his shoulder, and her arm round his neck, and both their hearts panting as they gazed, and then clung to each other, and then gazed again with love unutterable. After a while they got sufficient composure to sit down hand in hand and compare notes. And Helen showed him their weapons of defense, the prayer-book, the expert's ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... where it drinks from a jeweled cup and eats daintier food than it could obtain in its own rude haunts. It pines for that precarious life; its very dangers and privations fill its breast with desire. I began to long with unutterable impatience to see once more the wild, rough scenes of my own nativity. Memory began to recall them with softening touches. My heart yearned for my own; debased as compared with Mizora though they be, there was the congeniality of blood between ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... beloved husband in this distress without discovering herself, to the unutterable joy of Posthumus, who was thus relieved from a weight of guilt and woe, and restored to the good graces of the dear lady ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... those words sounded in the deep silence of the black woods. Never did he forget the sensation of unutterable horror that they brought with a shock to his soul. He stared at Frank, his jaw dropping, while awful thoughts ran riot in ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... little at first, and tried to take her hands away. But when she found that Brian's clasp was firm, she drew herself up and looked him in the face with eyes that were full of an unutterable sadness, but also of a resolution which nothing ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... action for which she threatens to denounce me as a murderer. I do not say she intended to bring it about; but none the less was she the consciously wicked and wilful cause of it.—And you will marry her son, and be her daughter!" he added, with a groan as of one in unutterable despair. ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... emphasis of the passage "the lightnings shone upon the ground," and the irresistible impulse of "The earth was moved." And the supremacy of Purcell's art is shown not more in these than in the succession of simple harmonies by which he gets the unutterable mournful poignancy of "Thou knowest, Lord," that unsurpassed and unsurpassable piece of choral writing which Dr. Crotch, one of the "English school," living in an age less sensitive even than this to Purcellian beauty, felt ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... halls, and knights, and feats of arms display'd; Or merry swains, who quaff the nut-brown ale, And sing enamour'd of the nut-brown maid; The moonlight revel of the fairy glade; Or hags, that suckle an infernal brood, And ply in caves the unutterable trade, [3] 'Midst fiends and spectres quench the Moon in blood, Yell in the midnight storm, or ride ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... to finish my speech, for with a look of unutterable horror in her eyes, which pierced me to the heart and seemed to sever it in twain, ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... ruined Ambulam, as it is called; and here, thoroughly tired but sleepless, I lay for some hours and watched the innumerable stars creep out and crown that sublime head which rose at first into a fathomless blue that was almost black, and then as the moon swept up, flashed into unutterable radiance. Nothing, I am told, can compare with the moonlight of Ceylon, and I can well believe it. That night I read clearly once again by the light of its rays my father's manuscript, that no point in it should escape my memory; then sank down upon my rugs ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... started. An overpowering, yet unutterable awe crept over him—a fearful but undefined sensation—a presentiment that something terrible was about to happen. He strove to shake it off, but could not—like an icy thrill it ran, slow and curdling, through his veins. A low rustling, as of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... and stood looking down upon her bowed head, her slender figure shaken by sobs. Whatever it might prove to be, this mysterious shadow of a dead man, there could be no doubting what it now meant to her. His eyes were filled with a love unutterable. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... brave words, but the Emperor was in the last stage of exasperation. The letters he wrote at the time betray something of the unutterable pain he felt. No one but himself could really know the difference to him: his glory was smirched, his Oriental plans and his scheme for peace with England were indefinitely postponed, his impatient ally was again ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... of 1805-15,—nay, of 1825? For twenty years after the date of that letter to Mr. Wordsworth above referred to, language was exhausted, ingenuity was put on the rack, in the search after images and expressions vile enough—insolent enough—to convey the unutterable contempt avowed for all that he had written, by the fashionable critics. One critic—who still, I believe, edits a rather popular journal, and who belongs to that class, feeble, fluttering, ingenious, who make it their highest ambition not to lead, but, with a slave's ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... which did not come from the fossilised officials of the Foreign Office, and which impressed so cool an old soldier as Captain Sarrasin with a sense of serious danger. As far as regarded all the ordinary affairs of life, Rivers looked down on Sarrasin with a quite unutterable contempt. Sarrasin was not a man to get in the ordinary way into Soame Rivers's set; and Rivers despised alike anyone who was not in his set, and anyone who was pushed, or who pushed himself, into it. He detested eccentricities of ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... eyes met, methought a celestial ray shot from those dark and smiling orbs at once into my soul. Never, my Clodius, have I seen mortal face more exquisitely molded: a certain melancholy softened and yet elevated its expression: that unutterable something, which springs from the soul, and which our sculptors have imparted to the aspect of Psyche, gave her beauty I know not what of divine and noble; tears were rolling down her eyes. I guessed at once that she was also of Athenian lineage; and that ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... their pulses seem audible followed this confession. A heavy shadow descended upon both hearts, and a sudden dreary sense of an unutterable and ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... made The Starlight of his Boyhood;—as he stood Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock That in the antique Oratory shook His bosom in its solitude; and then— As in that hour—a moment o'er his face, The tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced,—and then it faded as it came, And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke The fitting vows, but heard not his own words, And all things reel'd around him; he could see Not that which was, nor that which should ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... like to say how long; and when it was over, the recollection of its horrors was almost as bad as their endurance. When George set himself again to work, it was with nerves unstrung and unutterable forebodings, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... of the unutterable loneliness I would feel without any companion that led me to this rash declaration. The town was only a mile distant, but it would require hours to make the journey there and back, and I could not bear the thought of being without the society of any one for that time. I ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... not a parrot, it is a white cockatoo, that the chief of (something unutterable) brought down on his wrist like a hawk to the mission-ship; and that mamma sent as a ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what else would have been very obscure, the undue emphasis which Christ allowed men to place upon his sanatory miracles. His very name in Greek, viz., Ιησδς, presented him to men under the idea of the healer; but then, to all who comprehended his secret and ultimate functions, as a healer of unutterable and spiritual wounds. That usurpation, by which a very trivial function of Christ's public ministrations was allowed to disturb and sometimes to eclipse far grander pretensions, carried with it so far an erroneous impression. But then, on the other hand, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... excess of suffering her faculties were numbed, animation itself were suspended. She leaned against the wall, staring with wide, tragic eyes at the flame of the lamp that stood in the window. Her arms hung stiffly at her sides, and the hands were clenched. She seemed to be gazing upon unutterable things. ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... structure of Christian character upon the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ, Himself, being the chief corner-stone. What a model of patience is Jesus. What difficulties He encountered. What trials clustered around Him. What provocations he meekly endured. All through His life, and even amid His unutterable agonies on the Cross on Mount Calvary, when His body was shedding the last drop of blood to seal the mysterious work of redemption, even then, amid mockings and scoffings, and tortures, the sacred lips of ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... her breast against them. "Why—why wasn't I with him?" he heard her whisper. Then he saw the tottering word "Irene" pencilled on the open page, and broke down himself. It was his first sight of human death, and its unutterable stillness blotted from him all other emotion; all else, then, was but preliminary to this! All love and life, and joy, anxiety, and sorrow, all movement, light and beauty, but a beginning to this terrible white stillness. It made ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... contaminated; as she accompanied the lovers to the lonely arbors, and would walk with them by the clear light of the moon. She wondered her husband did not stay at home. She was jealous—why did he not love her, sit by her side, squeeze her hand, and look unutterable things? Gentle reader, I will tell thee; they neither of them felt what they could not utter. I will not pretend to say that they always annexed an idea to a word; but they had none of those feelings which are not ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... real crown of thorns was upon his head, which was bowed downward, as if in the death agony; and drops of blood were falling down his cheeks, and from his hands and feet and side. The face was haggard and ghastly beyond all expression; and wore a look of unutterable bodily anguish. The rude sculptor had given it this, but his art could go no farther. The sublimity of death in a dying Saviour, the expiring God-likeness of Jesus of Nazareth was not there. The artist had caught no heavenly inspiration from his theme. All was ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... too purely personal to warrant its introduction here, yet the experience is one which should not be without its value to others. Its effect upon myself has been to give me an unutterable longing to save others from sufferings like my own; I know so well where it is that, to use a homely metaphor, the shoe pinches. And it is chiefly here—in the fact that the unbeliever does not feel as though we really wanted to understand ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... would she keep faith with an adventurer gone for an indefinite quest? The desponding, self-distrusting side of his nature said, "No. Why should she?" Then, to go was to give up Diana—to make up his mind to have her belong to some other. Then there was his mother. An unutterable reverential pathos always to him encircled the idea of his mother. Her life to him seemed a hard one. From the outside, as he viewed it, it was all self-sacrifice and renunciation. Yet he knew that she had set her heart on an education for him, as much as ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of her face, so full sometimes of life's pain, so strong too in the overcoming of it, and her little hands—oh what pretty little hands they were—he had held them once only for a moment, but she must have felt the love that throbbed in his touch, and he had thought that perhaps—perhaps Oh, unutterable ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... aloud Throughout all Paradise, that with the song My spirit reel'd, so passing sweet the strain: And what I saw was equal ecstasy; One universal smile it seem'd of all things, Joy past compare, gladness unutterable, Imperishable life of peace and love, Exhaustless riches and unmeasur'd bliss. Before mine eyes stood the four torches lit; And that, which first had come, began to wax In brightness, and in semblance such became, As Jove might be, if ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... after launching me on my medical career,—and my darling mother, two years later. In my unutterable loneliness, I lost all heart for my studies, and breaking away from ecole and hospitals, wandered in Italy, seeking to quench a quenchless grief. There I married an Italian girl, whose hair and eyes reminded me of my mother, but who expended on the dream of Italian unity such enthusiasm ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... turned his back to the window and gazed at the western sky with a wealth of unuttered and unutterable exultation in his heart. Far off a rooster gave a long, clear blast—would it be answered in the barn? Yes; some wakeful ear had caught it, and now the answer came faint, muffled, and drowsy. The dog at his feet whined uneasily as if suspecting something wrong. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... sombre, his pulse weakened, and he longed to return to her side to tell her something he had forgotten. He did this several times, and hesitated in his speech, reddened, and left her, stumbling over the grass like a lame man. Never such a crazy wooer, never a calmer maiden. She looked unutterable sentiment, but spoke ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... lord, for if Sam did mean to be impertinent, as he unquestionably could be, the colonel she knew would be merciless in his discipline and social amenities would be at instant end. Waring had covered her with maternal triumph and Margaret with bliss unutterable by leading the ante-Lenten german with the elder daughter and making her brief stay a month of infinite joy. The Rounds were ordered on to Texas, and Margaret's brief romance was speedily and properly forgotten in the devotions of a more solid if less fascinating fellow. To do Waring justice, he ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... 873. vast, immense, enormous, extreme; inordinate, excessive, extravagant, exorbitant, outrageous, preposterous, unconscionable, swinging, monstrous, overgrown; towering, stupendous, prodigious, astonishing, incredible; marvelous &c 870. unlimited &c (infinite) 105; unapproachable, unutterable, indescribable, ineffable, unspeakable, inexpressible, beyond expression, fabulous. undiminished, unabated, unreduced^, unrestricted. absolute, positive, stark, decided, unequivocal, essential, perfect, finished. remarkable, of mark, marked, pointed, veriest; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... saw that she was in her right mind, and had been healed by the Lord, and his soul was filled with unutterable emotion. ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... Nellie, gasping and swallowing her tears, began describing to the doctor her husband's illness, her unutterable terror. Her sufferings would have touched the heart of a stone, but the doctor looked at her, blew into his open ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... had now arrived at the door. Joseph Haydn lifted his weary head once more; his spirit gleamed once more in his eyes; an expression of unutterable love beamed from his mild face; he stretched out his arms toward the orchestra as if to bless it, and greeted it with his smile, with the nodding of his head, and the tears which filled his eyes. [Footnote: "Zeitgenossen," third series, vol iv., ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... over, examining her offspring in all the eloquent silence of pride unutterable. After a little while she said: "I've got to feed him. Go back to the others, Louis, and say I'll be down after ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... the king's son, and followed by the wretched Adrastus himself, who was wringing his hands, and crying out incessantly in accents and exclamations of despair. He begged the king to kill him at once, over the body of his son, and thus put an end to the unutterable agony that he endured. This second calamity was more, he said, than he could bear. He had killed before his own brother, and now he had murdered the son of his greatest benefactor ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... habits—that is, he had been all this when Rathburn found him six months before and championed his cause in a quarrel with a crowd of roughs in Mike Swaney's saloon. Since then he had developed into a well-behaved little beast with a pair of wistful eyes that looked unutterable love, and a tail that beat the ground, the floor, or the air in joyous welcome whenever Rathburn came in sight. He was part collie, sharp-nosed and prick-eared, and his undersized little body still ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... would have rendered him a proud and happy painter,—but if he was, all that can be said was that he certainly did not look it. He accepted the most effusive tributes with the same ghastly and conventional smile; from feminine glances of unutterable gratitude and admiration he turned away with an inarticulate mumble and an averted eye; at times he almost seemed to be suppressing a squirm. If expression is any index to the thoughts, he was neither grateful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... the ticket, intending to take it from Tommy when primed with the necessary tale. So they parted until evening, and Tommy returned to Elspeth, secretive but elated. For the rest of the day he was in thought, now waggling his head smugly over some dark, unutterable design and again looking a little scared. In growing alarm she watched his face, and at last she slipped upon her knees, but he had her up at once and ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... instead of a sunset. It ill became such miserables to be insolent, and Carmichael taught them humility when he began to sound the praises of Drumtochty; but he could not make townspeople understand the unutterable satisfaction of the country minister, who even from old age and great cities looks back with fond regret to his first parish on the slope of the Grampians. Some kindly host wrestles with him to stay a few days more in civilisation, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... generation and another region, when so many men who lived the same life and fought on the same side have themselves lost the point of view not only of the beginning of the war, but also of the end of the war, not only of the inexpressible exaltation, but of the unutterable degradation? They have forgotten what a strange world the survivors of the conflict had to face. If the State had been ours still, the foundations of the earth would not have been out of course; but the State ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... choleric, and we all dreaded his wrath, but passion never mastered him.... Man's face he did not fear: God he always feared. His reverence was, I think, considerably mixed with fear—rather awe, as of unutterable depths of silence through which flickered a trembling hope.... Let me learn of him. Let me write my books as he built his houses, and walk as blamelessly through this shadow world.... Though genuine and coherent, living and life-giving, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... him from our vision. Thus was it when the Eumenides in their final triumph swept the stage, and victory seemed all in the hands of invisible Powers, with no human participant: even as throughout the Homeric epos there runs an undercurrent of unutterable sadness; because, while to the Gods there ever remains a sure seat upon Olympus, unshaken by the winds, untouched by rain or snow, crowned with a cloudless radiance,—yet upon man come vanity, sorrow, and strife; like the leaves of the forest he flourisheth, and then passeth ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... long-winded tale; And halls, and knights, and feats of arms, displayed; Or merry swains, who quaff the nut-brown ale, And sing, enamoured of the nut-brown maid; The moon-light revel of the fairy glade; Or hags, that suckle an infernal brood, And ply in caves the unutterable trade, 'Midst fiends and spectres, quench the moon in blood, Yell in the midnight storm, or ride ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... rain. As I watched it steadily increasing the first voices of the night began to call—a 'possum squealed from the branches of a blue gum in the creek, and was answered by another somewhere near; and then the long, long mournful wail of a curlew cried out from the sunbaked plain beyond. Oh, the unutterable sense of loneliness that at times the long-drawn, penetrating cry of the curlew, resounding through the silence of the night amid the solitude of vast Australian plains, causes the solitary bushman or traveller to feel! I well remember on one occasion camping ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Bep looked unutterable things at her twin. "Just you make men's clothes for a while, Fom Madigan, and see how 't is ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... she has been indulging in these historical romances—excessively. Excessively. Even to the neglect of her philosophy. Filled her mind with unutterable nonsense about soldiers who fight—what ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... more ignorant of geography, arithmetic and good breeding than a child. One day Mrs. Lyons passed through the room where he was teaching Mr. L. and he turned his head away from her and spat towards her with a look of unutterable contempt. It was the last time he did it, and he has now become so civilized that he can say good morning to the wife of a missionary, and even consent to teach the sacred, pure and undefiled Arabic to a woman! I believe that he has not yet given his assent to ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... pass, And struggle and give battle to his heart, Standing as motionless as pillar set To guide a wanderer in a pathless waste; But all his strength went from him, and he strove Vainly to trample out and trample down The misery of his love unsatisfied,— Unutterable love flung ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... whether she betrayed herself by some glance of the eye or tremor of the voice, or whether some instinct had enabled him to read her, of a sudden he burst into a wild, hollow laugh of disdain, threw her from him, and cried, with unutterable contempt: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and then he looked thoughtful. And then he gave me some orange syrup. And then—O, I don't want to say!" A look of unutterable concern displacing the ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... with horror at the bare idea of their perpetration; and we are uncertain whether most to loathe at the claim of those who habitually commit them to companionship with human nature, or to marvel that the unutterable wrath of heaven doth not scathe and blast them in the midst of their enormities. Let the father look upon the dawning intelligence of the boy that prattles around his knee, the pride of his fond heart, and the hope and ...
— The Trial of Reuben Crandall, M.D. Charged with Publishing and Circulating Seditious and Incendiary Papers, &c. in the District of Columbia, with the Intent of Exciting Servile Insurrection. • Unknown
... matter very lucidly in his short but comprehensive introduction to the poem: "As long as Job, solicitous for his understanding, demanded an explanation of his unutterable suffering, whereby the mysterious, piteous condition of mankind is shadowed forth, his seeking was vain, and he ran the risk of loosing himself in the problems of eternal justice, the worth of upright living, and even the existence ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... thing that strikes one in such definitions is their unutterable triviality. They are absolutely true, of course, but absolutely insignificant until you handle them pragmatically. What do you mean by 'claim' here, and what do you mean by 'duty'? As summary names for the concrete reasons why thinking in true ways ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... nothing, simply looked unutterable melancholy, and let her hand lie listlessly in his until he dropped it. He looked back at her when he reached the door. She seemed so sad that he was about to return to her side. She sighed heavily, gazed at him, and said, "Good-by, Arthur." After that he had no alternative. He went. "I must ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... disgracefully alone as the one civilized country in the world having a divorce law for the husband which was not also a divorce law for the wife. The writer in the Times boldly and eloquently exposed this discreditable anomaly in the administration of justice; hinted delicately at the unutterable wrongs suffered by Mrs. Duncan; and plainly showed that she was indebted to the accident of having been married in Scotland, and to her consequent right of appeal to the Scotch tribunals, for a full and final release from the tie that bound her to the vilest of husbands, which the English ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... are blinded as those Jews' eyes were; when a great temptation comes on him, and he thinks it no temptation at all; when hell is opening beneath him, with the devils trying to pluck him down, and heaven opening above him, with God's saints and martyrs beckoning him up, looking with eyes of unutterable pity and anxiety and love on a poor soul; and that poor soul sees neither heaven nor hell, nor anything but his own selfish interest, selfish pleasure, or selfish pride, and snaps at the devil's bait as easily as a silly fish; while the devil, instead of striking to frighten him, ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... thoughts on thoughts—the words, so musical because so rich with the heart's truth; and so I fancied love and its fulfilment, marriage. Well knew I of the contract: yet still I dreamed and hoped, yes, slept and dreamed; but to be awakened thus—to such unutterable horror! Thank God, my mother is in heaven!—that is the solitary drop of comfort in my life's poison-bowl.—My mother's ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... that building that morning feeling like a man bowed down with age, for the depths of unutterable horror into which I had had glimpses during that one night made me very feeble, and my steps ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... was to-day as one stricken dumb. She could not think of this man walking by her side, so unconscious of evil, without unutterable humiliation. If he had been an altogether commonplace man—pompous, underbred, ridiculous in any way—the situation would have been a shade less tragic. But he came too near her ideal. This was the kind of man she had ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... this, he clasped his hands, and looked upwards, in unutterable supplication. The ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... journeying to Burgundy. Max might yet win this peerless princess, this priceless girl; or, reverse it if you choose, Mary of Burgundy might win this peerless man, and might at the same time attain the unutterable joy of knowing that she had won him for her ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... May 4, 1878. MY DEAR HOWELLS,—I only propose to write a single line to say we are still around. Ah, I have such a deep, grateful, unutterable sense of being "out of it all." I think I foretaste some of the advantages of being dead. Some of the joy of it. I don't read any newspapers or care for them. When people tell me England has declared war, I drop ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that is all church, and nothing but church, built without hands, despised and desecrated through unbelief! church of God's building! thou alone in thy grandeur art fitting type of a yet greater, a yet holier church, whose stars are the burning eyes of unutterable, self-forgetting love, whose worship is a ceaseless ministration of self-forgetting deeds—the one real ideal church, the body of the living Christ, built of the hearts and souls of men and women out of every nation and every creed, through all time and over ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... with his hands clasped over his face in unutterable grief, Columba threw herself into the arms of her betrothed, Marina tore ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her "style" was herself, there is a passage from one of her early letters describing her experience at Niagara which burns with her own fire. "Let me tell you," she says, "if I can, what is unutterable.... I did not once think if it were high or low; whether it roared or didn't roar.... My mind whirled off, it seemed to me, in a new strange world.... That rainbow, breaking out, trembling, fading, and again coming like a beautiful spirit walking the waters. Oh, it is lovelier than ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... Pharisee is said to pray with himself: God and the Pharisee were not together, there was only the Pharisee and himself. Paul knew not what to pray for without the Holy Ghost joined himself with him, and helping him with groans unutterable; but the Pharisee had no need of that; it was enough that he and himself were together at this work; for he thought without doubting that he and himself together could do. How many times have I heard ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... us in the face; no human skill could avert it any longer. We saw the moment approach when we must bid farewell to earth, yet without feeling that unutterable horror which must have been experienced by the unhappy victims at Cawnpore. We were resolved rather to die than yield, and were fully persuaded that in twenty-four hours all would be over. The engineer had said so, and all ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... fancied him dead, lying on the floor of the workshop, or buried in a dark corner of the cellar, that the idea of meeting him, calm and well as ever, had something refreshing in it. It was like the waking from a hideous dream of evil to find that the harm is still undone, to experience that sense of unutterable relief which every one knows when the dawn suddenly touches the outlines of familiar objects in the room, and dispels in an instant ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... and imagination, in contrast with philosophical rules and forms of reasoning, as taught by the school-men. They excused their fanaticism, by appealing to the words of St. Paul: {85} "The spirit prays in us by sighs and groans that are unutterable." Now, if the spirit, say they, prays in us, we must resign ourselves to its motions, and be swayed and guided by its impulse, by remaining in mere inaction. Hence, passive contemplation they considered the highest state of perfection. The number of the mystics increased in the fourth century under ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... eyes in a stare of surprise and reproof at the infraction of the rules of ceremony which she had brought with her. John of Bedford had never seemed to her either beau or courtois, and she looked unutterable things, to which he replied by an elevation ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beginning of this fragile little life begin the anxieties and sorrow of poor Godwin. The blank lines drawn in his diary for Sunday 10th September 1797, show more than words how unutterable was his grief. During the time of his wife's patient agony he had managed to ask if she had any wishes concerning Fanny and Mary. She was fortunately able to reply that her faith ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... the average baby. He had crossed the Atlantic in fear and trembling, and did not apparently enjoy the new world. His utter helplessness and the great care taken of him by his mistress, his ill-health and the unutterable woe of his countenance greatly excited my father's pity. After he went away, he often spoke of him, and referred to him, I find, in one of his letters. During this trip to America, Edward and his wife, carrying the wretched "Duckie" with ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son
... in the future. And he wound up by declaring that Mr. Gammon probably knew what he was talking about—a statement that Mr. Gammon indorsed with a spirited tale of how his ox-chains had been turned into mighty serpents in his dooryard, and had thrashed around there all night to his unutterable distress and alarm. Again he demanded investigation of his case, and ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... stand back there till the train starts, but do not you notice me. God bless you, Phineas." She held his hand tight within her own for some seconds, and looked into his face with an unutterable love. Then she drew down her veil, and went and stood apart till the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... bearer of a sealed letter, in which document he entreated King Ptolemy to take an early opportunity of destroying one who was a despiser and uprooter of their ancient belief. Summoning Saint George, with expressions of great esteem, while Almidor stood at his right hand, glancing unutterable hatred from his large eyes, the King informed him that to do him honour he would send him as an ambassador to the court of the magnificent Sovereign of Egypt, a country in which he was sure to meet with adventures ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... sunset I stood in the meadow above my house, and watched the red orb sink into purple mist, whilst in the violet heaven behind me rose the perfect moon. All between, through the soft circling of the dial's shadow, was loveliness and quiet unutterable. Never, I could fancy, did autumn clothe in such magnificence the elms and beeches; never, I should think, did the leafage on my walls blaze in such royal crimson. It was no day for wandering; under a canopy of blue or ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... works which we do, and the words which we speak. And the work which we collective children of God do, our grand centre of life, our city which we have builded for us to dwell in, is London! London, with its unutterable external hideousness, and with its internal canker of public egestas, privatim opulentia,—to use the words which Sallust puts into Cato's mouth about Rome,—unequalled in the world! The word, again, which we children of God speak, the voice ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... furlough and carrying him off, was blessed from the deepest heart of the ward nurses. He had a kind of feeling that this his first illness was a matter in which the universe should be concerned, and with that fretful self-exaggeration came that other unutterable yearning that attends the first proof that we are coheirs with others to the ills flesh is heir to, weary homesickness and childish ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... box, when I beheld her pause and slowly turn her head around and peer eagerly—and with what divine anxiety in her eyes—back over the heads of those thronging about her, until her gaze rested fully and sweetly on mine. My heart leaped, then sank down, down into unutterable depths; for in that instant her face changed, horror seized upon her beauty, and shook her frantic hold ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... of Raphaelle's favourite mistress, and his own child by her sate for the Bambino:—is it then wonderful that it should want that heavenly expression of dignity divine, and grace unutterable, which breathes through the school of Caracci? Connoisseurs will have all excellence united in one picture, and quarrel unkindly if merit of any kind be wanting: Surely the Madonna della Seggiola has nature to recommend it, and ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... was not any desire for my own salvation; to this I have never given so much as two thoughts. It was the irresistible attraction of our marvellous and beautiful God. He lured, He drew me with His loveliness, His holy perfections, His unutterable purity. I longed to please Him. The whole earth was filled with the glamour of Him, and I filled with horror to see how utterly unlike—apart from the glorious Beloved—I was. How frightful my blemishes, which must stink in His nostrils! Think of it! To stink ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... gloss and brilliancy, and gives to the faded golden tress the sunny flashes of youth." Grandpa was dyed. "Our world-renowned setter completes and perfects the whole process by adding tone and permanency to the efficacious qualities of the lotion, potion, and dyer, etc.;" while on Grandpa's head the unutterable dye was set. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... could safely offer a large prize for a group of ten commencement orations, or political platforms, at least a third of which did not announce this momentous fact. Either we are facing it or it confronts us, and unutterable things will happen unless we "gird up our loins," and vote the right ticket. An interesting feature about these loudly heralded crises is that they hardly ever "crise." The real crisis either strikes us so hard that we never know what hit us, or is over before ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... back with joy and thankfulness and give thanks to God for having granted you this occasion of laying the first foundation of a pious honourable zealous christian life. And if, as may so happen, there be at this moment in these benches any poor soul who has had the unutterable misfortune to lose God's holy grace and to fall into grievous sin, I fervently trust and pray that this retreat may be the turning point in the life of that soul. I pray to God through the merits of His zealous servant Francis Xavier, that such a soul may be led to sincere ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... witnessed, but you witness them no more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives and children and countrymen in distress and terror, and looking with unutterable emotions for the issue of the combat, have presented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... from his work, to the home over which Viola presided with such pathetic housewifely care, no smile of welcome was on her face, no greeting on his. Ephraim, 'tis true, told his sister where he had been, and what he had done, but in the simplest words there vibrated that tone of unutterable sadness which has its constant ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... arrival. But the time slowly wore on, and yet he did not come. Ten, eleven twelve, one o'clock came and went, and the boy was still absent from his mother, whose heart yearned to see his fair face, and to hear his voice, so pleasant to her ear, with unutterable longings. But still the hours went by—two, three, four, and then the dusky twilight began to fall, bringing with it the heart-aching assurance that her boy would not come home. The tears, which she had restrained all day, now flowed freely, and her over-excited feelings gave way to ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... mathematics. And doubtless these are set- offs. But they cannot change the fact that Professor Blackie has retired, and that Professor Kelland is dead. No man's education is complete or truly liberal who knew not Kelland. There were unutterable lessons in the mere sight of that frail old clerical gentleman, lively as a boy, kind like a fairy godfather, and keeping perfect order in his class by the spell of that very kindness. I have heard him drift into reminiscences in class time, though not for long, and give us glimpses ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... times low, plaintive, despairing; then swelling exultantly, only to die away in tremulous, minor undertones. The man's pent-up feelings had at last found expression,—his alternate hope and despair, his unutterable loneliness and ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... Angeles—have brought gold and kith and kin to the one, with an enfeebled constitution and an uncertain temper. To the other, they have brought the glory of health for his manhood's crown, content and peace unutterable. To learn to subdue the ground is to learn one great lesson. So the strange meeting is soon over. The Christmas spell may not always last and the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... barn and garden, all this pleased his enterprising nature. Only one anxiety troubled his mother; his unresigned and mutinous attitude about exchanging popular and fashionable Eastover for Beulah Academy, which seat of learning he regarded with unutterable scorn. He knew that there was apparently no money to pay Eastover fees, but he was still child enough to feel that it could be found, somewhere, if properly searched for. He even considered the education of Captain Carey's eldest son an emergency vital ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the slope of the mountain, closed her eyes and relaxed, breathing deeply. Her chest expanded deeply to the long indrawn breath which filled her lungs with the rare air. She felt suddenly a little sleepy, dreaming longingly of the unutterable content one could find in just going to sleep with the cliff-scarred mountainside ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... you?" exclaimed Hill, striking Barthelemy on the shoulder. The latter started at the touch, and a look of profound, unutterable sadness drove the ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... occasion, and is pleased with his new view" (p. 269); he then rests in "Samaria" before he finds his way over to Rome. For the time every one of these transient tabernacles seems to accomplish its purpose. He finds certain repose for his spirit. Whilst sheltered by it, all the great unutterable phenomena of the external world are viewed by him in relation to himself and to his home of present rest. The gourd has grown up in a night, and shelters him by its short-lived shadow from the tyrannous rays of the sunshine. But some sudden irresistible change in his own inward preceptions alters ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... me is to commit myself and you to the protection of that beneficent Being who, on a former occasion, hath happily brought us together, after a long and distressing separation. Perhaps, the same gracious Providence will again indulge me. Unutterable sensations must then be left to more expressive silence; while from an aching heart, I bid you all, my affectionate ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... looked at her with unutterable astonishment: it was very odd that the old woman did not seem to ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... fill the whole measureless void of upper air, and then looked round on the calm, dead-calm face of the man beside me—without one human emotion of any kind even faintly pictured on it—I felt strange, unutterable sensations creeping over me; our silence grew oppressive and sinister; I began to wish, I hardly knew why, for some third person in the room—for somebody else to look at and ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... hill, where bald stones break through sandy earth, camels come and go, passing from south to north, from north to south, marching slowly with rhythmic gait, as if to the sound of music which only they can hear, glancing from side to side with unutterable superciliousness, looking wistfully here and there at some miniature oasis thrown like a dark prayer-carpet on the yellow sand. Two or three in a band they go, led by desert men in blowing white, or again in a long train of twelve or twenty, their legs a moving lattice, their heart-shaped ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... press with violence in his nervous hand, and once more extended himself at his length; "in me you behold the uncle of your husband. Yes, Ellen Clayton, you have been the wife of two Reginald Mortons. Both," he pursued with unutterable bitterness, while he again started up and shook his tomahawk menacingly in the direction of the fort,—"both have been the victims of yon cold-blooded governor; but the hour of our reckoning is at hand. Ellen," he fiercely added, "do you recollect the curse ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... God the Maker of us all, I declare it is a scandal to see such a life kept in you, by the sweat and heart's-blood of your brothers; and that, if we cannot mend it, death were preferable! Go to, we must get out of this—unutterable coil of nonsenses, constitutional, philanthropical, &c., in which (surely without mutual hatred, if with less of 'love' than is supposed) we are all strangling one another! Your want of wants, I say, is that you be commanded in this world, not ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... me!' I murmured, as the empty glass fell from my hand. I threw myself upon the bed, and awaited the awful termination. An age of unutterable misery seemed crowded into a brief moment. All the events of my past life, a life, as it then seemed to me, made up of folly and crime, rose distinct before me, like accusing witnesses, as if the recording angel had unrolled to my view the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... times, himself, but without words—less clearly. He had told her and she had listened in silence. She had listened leaning over the rail till at last her breath was on his forehead. He remembered this and had a moment of soaring pride and of unutterable dismay. He spoke, ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... of the dog disappeared from my view: the lonely scene round me disappeared—excepting the light from heaven, the tree that sheltered me, and the grass in front of me. A sense of unutterable expectation kept my eyes riveted on the grass. Suddenly, I saw its myriad blades rise erect and shivering. The fear came to me of something passing over them with the invisible swiftness of the wind. The shivering advanced. ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... record penned in 1831 as follows: "A melancholy and heart-moving impression has Overbeck made upon me: I beheld a tall, spare man, with thin, light hair, shadowed by a black cap, whose eyes looked forth sadly, as with an expression of unutterable suffering. His mouth contracted at each word into a forced yet sweet smile. He looked just as a timid prisoner, who dreads in every corner to see a spy. Yet in all his speech and ways appeared wondrous humility, modesty, and kindly geniality, which, however, did ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... seated figure was projected against the sky; Simon's face was turned toward the west; the West that, for him, was the future, but which for Linda represented all the past. This conviction flooded her with unutterable sadness. A sense of failure weighed on her, no less heavy for the fact that it was perpetually vague. Her thoughts gathered about Dodge himself; and she recalled the curious vividness of his vision of her as a child, perhaps ten. She, ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer |
