"Ineffable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the midst of the obscurity. But the fragrance which ascended from the grass, fresher and more penetrating than that which exhaled from the trees around him; the warm and balmy air which enveloped him for the first time for many years past; the ineffable enjoyment of liberty in an open country, spoke to the prince in so seducing a language, that notwithstanding the great caution, we would almost say the dissimulation of his character, of which we have tried to give an idea, he could not restrain his ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... as baby says," responded Cricket, with decision. "Think I'm going to waste this glorious day, knitting washrags?" with ineffable scorn. "You two old grandmothers can knit and read all you want to. I've too much else ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... problems for his pupils—if a man walks two strides of one and a half feet a second round a lake fifty acres in area, in how many turns will he overtake a lady who walks half as fast and isn't there?—but the moment her pink parasol loomed on the horizon, all his long misery vanished in an ineffable peace and uplifting. He hurried, bare-headed, to clasp her little gloved hand. He had forgotten her unpunctuality, nor did ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... float, while a dense red ring lay around the base of each of them as a fitting border. The peaks, too, in the distance, and the snow-fields and glaciers and fleecy rolls of mist that lay in the hollows, were flushed with a deep, rosy alpenglow of ineffable loveliness. Everything near and far, even the ship, was comprehended in the glorious picture and the general color effect. The mission divines we had aboard seemed then to be truly divine as they ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... confusion of rescuing the fluffery, the owner of the suitcase had to sacrifice her hauteur and help her husband and son block up the aisle, while the other matron had the ineffable satisfaction of being kept waiting, at last being enabled to say, sweetly and with the ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... hereafter when the world needs them; the handiwork, in short, of a living and loving Mind, perfect in His own eternity, but stooping to work in time and space, and there rejoicing Himself in the work of His own hands, and in His eternal Sabbaths ceasing in rest ineffable, that He may look on that which He hath made, and behold it is ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... England, and this had likewise been the case with William the Silent. And even now that the Spanish matrimonial alliance was almost a settled matter at the French court, while with the English king it was but a perpetual will-o'the-wisp conducting to quagmires ineffable, the government at Paris sustained the policy of the Advocate with tolerable fidelity, while it was constantly and most ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the long sealed book of mystery shall be unfolded, when the "fountains of the great deep shall be broken up," "the channels of the waters seen," and all discovered to be one vast revelation of unerring wisdom and ineffable love! Here we are often baffled at the Lord's dispensations; we cannot fathom His ways:—like the well of Sychar, they are deep, and we have nothing to draw with. But soon the "mystery of God will be finished;" the enigmatical "seals," with all their ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... not of the seed of man, nor of the will of man, nor by carnal union, being conceived in the Virgin's undefiled womb, of the Holy Ghost; as also, before his conception, one of the Archangels was sent to announce to the Virgin that miraculous conception and ineffable birth. For without seed was the Son of God conceived of the Holy Ghost, and in the Virgin's womb he formed for himself a fleshy body, animate with a reasonable and intelligent soul, and thence came forth in one substance, ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... with a piercing cry, he lifted himself on his bed, as if by some superhuman force: his hair stood upright, his whole body shook with a fevered trembling, his hand seemed endeavouring to push something from him, an ineffable horror was expressed on his countenance.... "Your name!" he cried at length, addressing the artilleryman. "Who are thou, stranger ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... back the ample folds of the cloak she wore, and lifting her brother's cap from her head, her beautiful hair fell into its accustomed place, and with a slight blush tinging either cheek, she stood before the young soldier in his cell, an object of ineffable interest and beauty. ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... by a sail. It is these deep waters which have that green tint so lustrous and subtle, and as unlike the heavy green seen in most sea pictures as it is unlike grass; it is in more sheltered nooks that the sea assumes that sapphire sheen more ineffable than the sky which imparts it. As the color of the sea depends greatly upon the disposition of the surrounding lands and the prevailing condition of the atmosphere, each little inlet has some tint or effect of light ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a tone of ineffable tenderness, "here is your coffee. I am sure that you will find it nice to-night. The water was boiling well, and I poured it on drop ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... The movement has its excesses, and the gain has not been without loss. "When we turn to modern literature," writes Mr. Money, "from the pages in which Fenelon speaks of the education of girls, who does not feel that the world has lost a sacred accent—that some ineffable essence has passed out from ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... imagined it; they have blurred the faces and figures in passing till their features are scarcely distinguishable; and the sleeping apostles seem to have dreamed themselves back into the mother- marble. It is of the same tradition and impulse with that supreme glory of the native sculpture, the ineffable tabernacle of Adam Krafft, which climbs a column of the church within, a miracle of richly carven story; and no doubt if there were a Nuremberg sculptor doing great things today, his work ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... such companions as those around him. The sweet, kind face of Agatha disturbed him most. It almost unmanned him; he thought that it would be happiness enough for a life to be allowed to remain unseen where he might gaze on her. He felt that such beauty, such ineffable loveliness as hers could almost make him forget his country and his countrymen; and then he shuddered and turned his eyes away from her. But there she sat close to him: and she would speak to him, and ask him questions; she asked after his friends in St. Florent, after the women who were wounded, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... with the brilliancy of the sun. With the speed of lightning he plunged far down the purgatory fire; his brightness was so great that Alvira could follow him even through the flames. There the angel found a young, beautiful soul, deep in agony, clothed with crimson fire. A smile of ineffable joy lit up the countenance of the sufferer—the message from heaven was understood. The angel lifted this soul from the fire, and, pausing for a moment on the peak of a lambent flame, the angelic deliverer and the liberated soul, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... bending them in lusty exercise, stimulating their growth, plucking off a leaf or limb as required, or removing an entire tree or grove, now whispering and cooing through the branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean; the winds blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with ineffable beauty and harmony as ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... being who has not felt them can conceive. My first impulse was to suicide; with the next I cried from the depths of my despair, "God deliver me from the body of this death!" It was but a moment,—and there came, in the place of the cold questioning voice of my daemon, one of ineffable music, repeating words familiar to me from childhood, words linked to everything loved and lovely in my past:—"Ye believe in God, believe also in me." The hot tears for another moment blotted out the world from sight. I said ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... "long," you must bear in mind the enormous extension of time that had occurred in my brain. For centuries I trod space, with the tip of my wand and with unerring eye and hand tapping each star I passed. Ever the way grew brighter. Ever the ineffable goal of infinite wisdom grew nearer. And yet I made no mistake. This was no other self of mine. This was no experience that had once been mine. I was aware all the time that it was I, Darrell Standing, who walked among the stars and tapped them with a wand of glass. In short, I knew that here ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... the Fathers (ix, cap. 11, seqq.) we read: "Supplication is bewailing one's sins; prayer is vowing something to God; intercession is praying for others; thanksgiving is offered by the mind to God in ineffable ecstasy." The first explanation, however, is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... a valley, walking quickly, with her elastic English step; and I would go toward her, attracted by I know not what, simply to see her illuminated visage, her dried-up features, which seemed to glow with an ineffable, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... with the Spirit as a Christian, and daily receiving grace more largely, as he became more and more ripe for glory; endowed with the Spirit's extraordinary gifts most eminently; favoured also with an abundance of revelations, disclosing to him things ineffable and inconceivable,—are not his writings to be most truly called inspired? Can we doubt that, in what he has told us of things not seen, or not seen as yet,—of Him who pre-existed in the form of God ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... down as four-and-twenty. In the Ceylon legend all turns upon the inexhaustible series of ages which this pillar guarantees. But, as one inexhaustible is quite enough for one race of men, and you are sure of more by ineffable excess than you can use in any private consumption of your own, you become generous; 'and between friends,' you say, in accepting my apologies for the doubtful error as to the four cubits, 'what signifies an infinity ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... coming into contact with the name of God. These good butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers of the Seine really believe, like certain more academical persons of higher social pretensions in England and America, that the ineffable simpletons and scoundrels who for three or four years during the last decade of the last century made ducks and drakes at Paris of the public fortune and the private rights of the French people, were inspired harbingers of a new era. Outside of France ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... bauble,' he repeated in a low voice of ineffable sweetness, 'and deposit it in the upper compartment of my bureau. You know the spot. The bauble has ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... immediately felt, resting upon my shoulder like a benediction, the soft, firm hand of the Father of his Country. "Washington!" I exclaimed, fervidly grasping his hand. "At length we have met!" he responded, and a smile of ineffable joy lighted his countenance. He then spoke of the many changes through which the United States had passed since his removal to the spirit land. I was surprised at the extent of knowledge he displayed. Not the slightest variation in the scale of political economy had escaped ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... up!" she cried, and resting her chin in her cupped hands gazed over the sparkling, shimmering plain, where all unshadowed day-beams seemed to gather as pure light and then, as if fused in some magic alembic, became color. There, the ineffable command: "Let there be light!" included all. It is only in the silence and light of the desert that men may fully realize that the universe is one, that light is music and music is color and color is fragrance, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... instead of the future. Her blond hair, which in turning gray had got a creamy instead of a silvery lustre, like her old lace, was looped softly and disposed in half-curls over her ears. When she smiled it was with the grace and fine dignity of ineffable ladyhood, and yet with the soft ignorance, though none of the abandon, of childhood. Camilla was like a child whose formal code and manners of life had been fully prescribed and learned, but whose vital copy had ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... have scarce ever admired a person in the islands but what he has sought my particular acquaintance. So it was with Te Kop. He led me to the ocean side; and for an hour or two we sat smoking and talking on the resplendent sand and under the ineffable brightness of the moon. My friend showed himself very sensible of the beauty and amenity of the hour. 'Good night! Good wind!' he kept exclaiming, and as he said the words he seemed to hug myself. I had long ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him a profound Reverence, thank'd him for his charitable Admonition, and told him I hoped nothing should win me from the Performance of a Duty which carry'd with it such ineffable Rewards. That if no greater were promised, than those indulged to the Selenites, I would refuse no Misery attending the most abject Life, to be enrolled in the Number of the ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... prosaic enough, could always be re-illumined if someone let fall the word 'Oxford' or 'Cambridge,' so that they themselves came to surmise an aura about the name as of a land very far off; and then say if the ineffable spell of those two words do not lie somewhere in the conflux of generous youth with its rivalries and clash of minds, ere it disperses, generation after generation, to the duller business of life. Would you have your mother ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... frontier. Something within her breast cried out for those shining, gone-by moments, something seemed to close down on her throat, something flooded her eyes with a softness that rolled up from her entire being. Their line! Their insurmountable barrier! An absurd yet ineffable longing to fall down and kiss that line came over her with ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... systems of human philosophy have made them, but as different endowments—the one of nature, the other of grace. “Behold the new and surprising union which God alone could teach and alone accomplish, and which is only an image and an effect of the ineffable union of two natures in the one person ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... like this cannot be altogether gay; and as each fresh romance decays into routine, and each aspiring passion goes out under the spell of a vulgar environment, or submits to the bitter salvation of a final parting, the ringing laughter grows harsh and hollow, and notes of ineffable sadness escape from ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... the benches sat a khaki-clad soldier and a girl, hand-in-hand; they stared before them unsmiling, in ineffable speechless contentment. The King's Messenger glanced at the pair as he limped past, and for an instant the girl's eyes met his disinterestedly; they were large round eyes of china blue, limpid ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... and of all questions the most proper, from a mistress to her slave! Know you not, that from the hour in which you discovered your ineffable baseness, you have made me mistress of your lot? While you seemed but a demon of vengeance, you commanded terror, and to good purpose; but such a foul fiend as thou hast of late shown thyself—such a very worthless, base trickster of the devil—such a sordid grovelling imp of perdition, can gain ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the last of these days it happened that this admirable lady appeared to me, clothed in purest white, between two gentle ladies, who were of greater age; and, passing along a street, she turned her eyes toward that place where I stood very timidly, and by her ineffable courtesy, which is to-day rewarded in the eternal world, saluted me with such virtue that it seemed to be then that I saw all the bounds of bliss.... And since it was the first time that her words came to my ears, I took in such sweetness ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... her friend, "that a youth of his complexion should be sensible to the charms of your grace! but I dare say he would not presume to entertain any but the most honourable and respectful sentiments."—"Respectful sentiments!" cried my lady, with a look of ineffable disdain; "if I thought the fellow had assurance enough to think of me in any shape, I protest I would forbid him my house. Upon my honour, such instances of audacity should induce persons of quality to keep your small gentry at a greater distance; for they are very apt to ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... ardently pursues his immediate object by sophistical arguments which convict himself but could never convince a correspondent, and which astonish and amuse the calm reader of after days. 'A kind of ineffable, sickening disgust seizes my mind when I think of this most despotic, most unrequired fetter which prejudice has forged to confine its energies.... Anti-matrimonialism is as necessarily connected with scepticism as if religion and marriage began their course together,' for both ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... next to be lifted on board, merely whimpering now in ineffable agony. After him came the man in the velvet jacket, who was maundering, Doctor Wilhelm, Max Pander, and the other two sailors. Lastly the little corpse of Siegfried Liebling ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... stature. He wore a brown holland suit, with grey stockings and square-toed shoes; and at first I mistook him for a Quaker. His snow-white hair was gathered back from his temples, giving salience to a face of ineffable simplicity and goodness—the face of a man at peace with God and all the world, yet touched with ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... himself for 'illumination'—the stage in which the glory and beauty of the spiritual life, now clearly discerned, are themselves the motive of action and the incentive to contemplation; while the possibility of a yet more immediate and ineffable vision of the Godhead is not denied, even in this life. There is reason to think that this conception of religion appeals more and more strongly to the younger generation to-day. It brings an intense feeling of relief to ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... employed, and where God has chosen to show himself in the most magnificent manner? What must be the Architecture of Infinite Power under the Direction of Infinite Wisdom? A Spirit cannot but be transported, after an ineffable manner, with the sight of those Objects, which were made to affect him by that Being who knows the inward Frame of a Soul, and how to please and ravish it in all its most secret Powers and Faculties. It is to this ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... thy breast; turn thine eyes and thy thoughts towards the middle of thy belly, the region of the naval; and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will be dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and night you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart, than it is involved in a mystic and etherial light.' This light, the production of a distempered fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an empty ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... of April the 23d, from New York, and am sorry to find you have had a relapse. Time and temperance, however, will cure you; to which add exercise. I hope you have long ago had a happy meeting with your friends, with whom a few hours would be to me an ineffable feast. The face of Europe appears a little turbid, but all will subside. The Empress endeavored to bully the Turk, who laughed at her, and she is going back. The Emperor's reformations have occasioned the appearance of insurrection in Flanders, and he, according to character, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... Chevalier," laughed she, "but I would prefer the father to the daughter." Angelique gave him a look of ineffable meaning. "I do not desire a king to-night, however. Grant me the lettre de cachet, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... without her, and grew homesick for heaven. His loving flock had crowned him with their grateful benedictions; he waited only for the good-night kiss of the Master he served, and he awoke from a transient slumber to behold the ineffable glory. On the previous day his illustrious Andover instructor, Professor Edwards A. Park, had departed; it was fitting that Andover's most illustrious graduate should follow him; now they are both in the presence of the infinite ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... here. But the superiority of manners in all classes is very striking. One rarely meets a man on a Virginia road who does not raise or touch his hat, and this not in a servile way either, but simply as politeness. The bearing of the men toward each other generally, too, has the ineffable charm, which Northern manners are so apt to want, of indicating a recognition of the fact that even if you are no better than any other man, you are different, and that your peculiarities are respectable, and that you ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... by the summing-up, as he said, 'And when you are "in for it," Master Cecil, and some precious scrape it will be, if I move hand or foot to pull you through it, call me a Major of Marines, that's all—just call me a Major of Marines!' The ineffable horror of such an imputation served as matter for reverie ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... was very poor. Papa thought all evil of him. Violet had refused him over and over again. He quarrelled with you, and all the world seemed against him. Then of a sudden you vanished, and we vanished. An ineffable misery fell upon me and upon my wretched husband. All our good things went from us at a blow. I and my poor father became as it were outcasts. But Oswald suddenly retricked his beams, and is flaming in the forehead of the morning sky. He, I believe, has no more than ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... at in the Koran (chaps. xxxviii.), and commentators have extensively embroidered it. Asaf, son of Barkhiya, was Wazir to Sulayman and is supposed to be the "one with whom was the knowledge of the Scriptures" (Koran, chaps. xxxvii.), i.e. who knew the Ineffable Name of Allah. See the manifest descendant of the Talmudic Koranic fiction in the "Tale of the Emperor Jovinian" (No. lix.) of the Gesta Romanorum, the most popular book of mediaeval Europe composed in England (or Germany) about the end of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... and from the vastest of all desolations does our Lady lead her children in the loftiest of all flights,—even from all sorrow and solitude,—from the wastes of earth and the desolation of AEons, to ineffable ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... certain ineffable light such as we sometimes see in the eyes of those newly in love came to shine from the face of the widow, who did not hesitate to affirm, looking into space ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what. The earth gave forth a fainting warmth, stealing up through the chilly garment in which winter had wrapped ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that stood arrayed against their crumbling walls and dwindling garrison. Noon came, and their worst fears seemed about to be realized. But when the drums began beating, it was to a parley, not to arms. A sigh of ineffable relief went up from the whole of Louisbourg, and every eye followed the little white flutter of the flag of truce as it neared that terrible breaching battery opposite the West Gate. A Provincial officer came out to meet it. The French officer and he saluted. Then both moved into ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... her eyes, and abandoned herself to an ineffable sentiment of weakness, of ravishment; and then, imagining that she was his, Lennox took her in his arms and kissed her rudely. But quick, angry thoughts rushed to her head at the first movement of his arms, and obeying an impulse in contradiction ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... lumberingly on its axis—a faint shaking which did not affect me. Still, I was in the bedroom, near the windows. And I had a glimpse.... The heralds of a new vitality swept trumpeting through me, and a calm, intense, ineffable joy followed in their train. I had a glimpse.... And my eyes were not dazzled. I yearned and strained towards what I saw, towards the exceeding brightness of undreamt companionships, hopes, perceptions, activities, and sorrows. Yes, sorrows! But what noble ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... looked up as if he saw into the ether beyond, and there saw a spirit vision of ineffable radiance. But Dong-Yung watched him. She saw him transfigured with an inner light. His eyes moved in prayer. The exaltation spread out from him to her, it tingled through their finger-tips, it covered her from head ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... realized my delusion when, on rounding the point of the Giudecca, the murmur of a voice arose from the midst of the waters, a thread of sound slender as a moonbeam, scarce audible, but exquisite, which expanded slowly, insensibly, taking volume and body, taking flesh almost and fire, an ineffable quality, full, passionate, but veiled, as it were, in a subtle, downy wrapper. The note grew stronger and stronger, and warmer and more passionate, until it burst through that strange and charming veil, and emerged ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... bliss ineffable to see flowery pastures and wooded hills after this pest-haunted town; but oh, Angela, mine angel, why dost thou linger in this poisonous chamber where every breath of mine exhales infection? Why do you not fly while you are still unstricken? Truly the plague-fiend ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... standing, in a deep voice answered: "Drusilla," borrowing quite unconsciously Suzanna's way of name, "Drusilla, I have taken upon myself this day the great responsibility of a woman's happiness—" he paused and bent a look of ineffable tenderness upon his wife—"and please God I shall keep that responsibility ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... Its murmur recalled the whisper of the ocean waves. And through the depths it seemed as if she saw into that strange, half—remembered world of palm-trees and white robes and dusky faces, and amidst them, looking upon her with ineffable love and tenderness, until all else faded from her sight, the face of a fair woman,—was it hers, so long, long dead, or that dear young mother's who was to her less ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the Godhead was praised with ineffable praise by the Trinity—the three divine Persons. The angels from the first moment of the creation sang God's praises. Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus, Dominus Deus, Sabaoth. Plena est omnis terra gloria ejus (Isaias ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... within the furtive fervent gaze, Heating his arrows at their beauteous rays, For war with Pallas and with Dian cold. Fairer than mortal mould, She moved majestic with celestial gait; And with her hand her robe in royal state Raised, as she went with pride ineffable. Of me I cannot tell, Whether alive or dead I there was left. Nay, dead, methinks! since I of thee was reft, Light of my life! and yet, perchance, alive— Such virtue to revive My lingering soul possessed thy beauteous face, But ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... broken ejaculations escape her lips, and she 'starts' away 'to deal with grief alone.' The same trait reappears with an ineffable beauty in the stifled repetitions with which she attempts to answer her father in the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... my letter over to myself, Berenice, and I fear that it must sound to you very commonplace, even perhaps cold! Yet, believe me when I tell you that I have passed through a very fire of suffering, and if I am calm now it is with the calm of an ineffable despair! In my life at Oxford, and later, here in London, women have never borne any share. Part of my scheme of living has been to regard them as something outside my little cycle, an influence great indeed, but one ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gentleman with a presence and a manner so graceful, courteous and princely in her life. He was a tall, finely proportioned, handsome man, with a superb head, an aquiline profile, and fair hair and fair complexion. The great charm, however, was in the broad, sunny forehead, in the smile of ineffable sweetness, in the low and singularly mellifluous voice, and the manner, gentle ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... a gentleman from Burlington Arcade waited next day upon Mr. Pendennis, and had a private interview with him in his bedroom; and a week afterward the same individual appeared with a box under his arm, and an ineffable grin of politeness on his face, and announced that he had brought 'ome Mr. ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... spacious, luxurious room, thronged with well-dressed aristocrats, her husband the stateliest, most honored of them all, yet her fond thrall; the splendid apparel in which his wealth had bedecked her, the queen of the scene—more reasons, I say, for the ineffable thrill of pleasure that coursed, a rapid, intoxicating stream, through her veins, than grateful affection for the author of all these goods. With a Sybarite's dread of pain and loneliness, she seldom trusted herself to look at the dark curtain in the ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Quaintly yet from lips forgetful of lips that have kissed them; Loud they sang the songs of the Sacrifice and Atonement, And of the end of the world, and the infinite terrors of Judgment:— Songs of ineffable sorrow, and wailing, compassionate warning Unto the generations that hardened their hearts to their Savior; Songs of exultant rapture for them that confessed him and followed, Bearing his burden and yoke, enduring and entering with him Into the rest of his saints, ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... her, and at last they saw that what she wanted was the old christening robe. It was brought to her, and she unfolded it with trembling, exultant hands, and when she had made sure that it was still of virgin fairness her old arms went round it adoringly, and upon her face there was the ineffable mysterious glow of motherhood. Suddenly she said, 'Wha's bairn's dead? is a bairn of mine dead?' but those watching dared not speak, and then slowly as if with an effort of memory she repeated our names aloud in the order in which we were born. Only one, who should have ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... from her lips, over which crept a smile of ineffable love. But it faded out quickly, and left in its place a ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... its field. Everlasting life is its subject. The Ancient of Days is its awful familiar. It has to do with the righteous conduct of individual men and women here on earth and of their eternal felicity in the world to come. The Ineffable One whose crucifixion has made the cross a symbol of all good and the emblem of our highest hope is its ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... golden splendour, that the eye can scarcely endure; those still softer clouds which floated above, wreathing and curling into a thousand fantastic forms as thin and changeful as summer smoke, defined and deepened into grandeur, and hedged with ineffable, insufferable light. Another minute and the brilliant orb totally disappears and the sky above grows, every moment, more varied and more beautiful, as the dazzling golden lines are mixed with glowing ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... Lord was pleased to command a certain dish, or that my Lady had condescended to approve a particular sauce. She had noticed, moreover, that two of the grey shadows at the very top of the hall, and therefore among the most distinguished persons, were smaller than the rest; she inferred that these ineffable superiors had at least two children, and she often longed to inspect them within comfortable seeing distance. But no such good fortune had as yet befallen her. Their apartments were inaccessible fairy-land, and themselves beings scarcely to be gazed ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... God spake, ambrosial fragrance fill'd All Heavn, and in the blessed Spirits elect Sense of new Joy ineffable diffus'd. Beyond compare the Son of God was seen Most glorious, in him all his Father shone Substantially expressed, and in his face Divine Compassion visibly appeared, Love without end, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... upon earth more than another which at this particular time of my life I abominated with unmitigated and ineffable disgust, it was the frequent recurrence of these eternal church-meetings. Nothing, however trifling, could be carried forward without them; no man's affairs, however private and worldly, were too uninteresting for their investigation. My connexion with the church had hardly commenced, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... account was given of special services, gratifying mention was invariably made of Miss Buff as having presided at the organ with her usual ability. Bessie hardly knew whether to laugh or cry as she listened. Lady Latimer wore a countenance of ineffable patience. She had fought the ground inch by inch with the choral party in the congregation, and inch by inch had lost it. The responses went first, then the psalms, and this prolonged the service so seriously ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... week, one day, one hour of life, one hour of life now that her eyes were open, one moment only—even one moment. She felt that she had had nothing, that every other human being must have known the dolcezza, the ineffable, the mysterious ecstasy, the one and only thing worth the having, that she alone had been excluded, when she was beautiful, from the participation in joy that was her right, and that now, in her ugliness, she was irrevocably cast ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... little creature lying, with upturned face, against the woman's knee, Blythe felt a sharp pang of compunction and pity. The child looked even more pathetic than when seen from above, and the young girl involuntarily stooped in passing, and touched the wan little cheek. Whereupon one of those ineffable smiles which are the birthright of Italians lighted the little face, and the small hand was lifted with so captivating a gesture that Blythe, clasping it in her own, dropped on ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... experience. Scores of critics have dwelt on the terrible traits he has given to Delilah in "Samson Agonistes," where one has called attention to the breathing emotion, the celestial coloring, the ineffable sweetness and grandeur he has lavished on the Lady in "Comus." For imperishable monuments of his friendships with the selectest women of that age, behold his Italian lines to Leonora Baroni, his sonnets "To a ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... who have seen Nature in those rare, ineffable moments when she appears to be asleep—when the stars, large and white, bend stilly over the dreaming earth, and not a breath of wind stirs leaf or flower. On such a night James Lorimer sat upon his south verandah smoking; and his ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... flushed and her eyes dropped a little in the face of my appearance of sternness, but she answered with the same ineffable sweetness, as though she were seeking to impress upon me that persecution could not ruffle the temper of one of her faith. "I should have to give up the plan, of course. But," she murmured, "I should still be a Christian Scientist. I could not help ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... up after securing his twelfth victim, and saw four figures sauntering down the hill. Three were young ladies in print morning gowns; the fourth was the ineffable dude, Lamb. At once he went back, and put himself into socks and boots, turning down his trouser legs, as if innocent of the childish amusement. "Haw," brayed Mr. Lamb, "is thot you, Cawrstine? Been poddling in the wotter, to remind yoursolf ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... and with a gesture of ineffable contempt, Good swept his hand across his mouth. Then he grinned again, and lo, there were two rows of ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... breath of the sea, The sound of its myriad waves. And in nights when I lay on the lonely sands Stretching mine arms to thee, Thou gavest me something—faint and vast and sweet, Something ineffable, ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope
... opinion and Truth, regards all men with the eye of charity, and does not seek to defend his opinions against theirs, but sacrifices those opinions that he may love the more, that he may manifest the spirit of Truth, for Truth in its very nature is ineffable and can only be lived. He who has most of charity ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... that the saint can rise above all difference and plurality, transcend the distinction between subject and object and that nirvana is the absolute (Bhutatathata). The Buddha would doubtless have objected to this terminology as he objected to all attempts to express the ineffable but perhaps the thought which struggles for expression in such language is not far removed from ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... himself. To the delight of the congregation, his doctrine proved decidedly Nicene. It was a test for his hearers as well as for himself. He carefully avoided technical terms, repudiated Marcellus, and repeatedly deprecated controversy on the ineffable mystery of the divine generation. In a word, he followed closely the lines of the Sirmian creed; and his treatment by the Homoeans is a decisive proof of their insincerity. The people applauded, but the courtiers ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... before the fall, possessed the principles of both sexes, that, in an ecstasy, God represented Adam to her mind in his original state, as also the beauty of the first world, and how he had drawn from it the chaos; and that every thing was bright, transparent, and darted forth life and ineffable glory, with a number of other wild ideas. She dressed like a hermit, and travelled through France, Holland, England, and Scotland. She died at Franeker, in the province of Frise, ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... I. W. W. is not to be read in books of the intellectuals. It does not flash in phrases. It is written in the hearts of strong silent men. It can be read in the ineffable tales of anguish which ring from the prisons of the land. It can be read in the tragic sacrifices of the Littles, the Joe Hills, the Barans, the Looneys, the Jonsons, the Rabinowitzes, the Gerlots, the Jack Whytes whom destiny ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... the light returned to his eyes, and a look of ineffable beatitude overspread the face which could be so ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... had better bring your money, because it may be many months before you can revisit Paris, or disclose our place of residence to anyone: and our passports—arrange all that; in what names, and whither, you please. And now, dear Richard" (she leaned her arm fondly on my shoulder, and looked with ineffable passion in my eyes, with her other hand clasped in mine), "my very life is in your hands; I have staked all ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... these bodies of ours could be made capable of such union, were it not that, in the man Christ Jesus, we see our corporeal nature capable of such transformation as to make it compatible for his human mind, and indwelling Deity, to receive it into their ineffable union. ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... the sparkling fountains and purple skies of fruitful Campania! Looking on nature with a poet's eye, as did these poets, one and all of them, is it not a psychological mystery that none of them should have detected the ineffable beauty of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... her. Her scorn of Marcia was ineffable, and I think the girl at the tea-urn had a sense of being at a disadvantage, for the idea of Una's frank admission had never entered Marcia's pretty intriguing head. She was hoist with her own petard and covered her confusion by a light laugh which ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... of the august national representation, the great encomiums with which it favours me, putting me at the same time in possession of these precious gifts, my soul overflows with ineffable pleasure, and is overwhelmed with the deepest gratitude. My satisfaction and my glory are immense. What could I have done, that thus the generous hand of the representatives of the Mexican people should load me with honours? Have my trifling services been able to ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... of him, a cluster of gables and of chimneys shown in relief by the snow. The reverse of a silhouette—a city painted in white on a black horizon, something like what we call nowadays a negative proof. Roofs—dwellings—shelter! He had arrived somewhere at last. He felt the ineffable encouragement of hope. The watch of a ship which has wandered from her course feels some such emotion when he ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... stood spellbound, regarding with ineffable rapture this inspiring spectacle. "How manifold are thy blessings, O Bibliomania," thought I, "and how graciously they are distributed in this joyous circle, wherein it is permitted to see not only the maturer members, ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... (for in this dream he seemed to himself waking and watching) he saw a hovering spirit, the incarnate shape of Light, gazing at the sleeping child with ineffable tenderness; but its keen eyes caught the aspect of Roger's Shadow; the pure lineaments glowed with something more divinely awful than anger, and with levelled lance it assailed that evil Presence and bore it to the ground; but the Shadow slipped aside from the spear, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... then," continued Dalrymple, "and having enjoyed the ineffable satisfaction of returning it, you can go on with me to the house of a lady close by, who receives every Monday evening. At her soirees you will meet pleasant and refined people, and having been once introduced ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... is the interest of all." Early in the 12th century the jurist Irnerius, distinguished for his learning and for his zeal in promoting the revival of the study of law and jurisprudence, and also as the reputed founder of the famous Law School at Bologna, imaged justice as "clothed with dignity ineffable, shining with reason and equity, and supported by Religion, Loyalty, Charity, Retribution, ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... upwards, and spread it self in a free heaven: and when once the Soul hath shaken off these, when it is once able to look through a grave, and see beyond death, it finds a vast Immensity of Being opening it self more and more before it, and the ineffable light and beauty thereof shining more and ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... indignation at the role played by these dogmas in obscuring, perverting, and preventing the religious life of mankind. After this warning such readers from among the various Christian churches and sects as are accessible to storms of theological fear or passion to whom the Trinity is an ineffable mystery and the name of God almost unspeakably awful, read on at their own risk. This is a religious book written by a believer, but so far as their beliefs and religion go it may seem to them more sceptical and more antagonistic than blank atheism. That the writer cannot ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... would be difficult to express our thoughts without them. However, we must understand that they are not strictly and exclusively true. God is everywhere; and wherever he is there is heaven to the spirits that are like him and, consequently, see him and enjoy his ineffable blessedness. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... lay sick, but save that Masouda seemed to tend him in his sickness he knew no more, for all the past had gone from him. There she was always, clad in a white robe, and looking at him with eyes full of ineffable calm and love, and he noted that round her neck ran a thin, red line, and wondered how ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... him to let him have all the cheap editions of all your novels for the next five years, at his own terms. If, in spite of the advice I have given you, you somehow manage to succeed, to become wildly popular, you will still have reserved to yourself, by this ingenious clause, a chance of ineffable pecuniary failure. A plan generally approved of is to sell your entire copyright in your book for a very small sum. You want the ready money, and perhaps you are not very hopeful. But, when your book is in all men's hands, when you are daily reviled ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... permitting." She gave him her hand. "Au revoir! Or good-by, if you prefer it." He held the little gloved fingers; let them drop. There was a suggestion of hopelessness in the movement that fitted oddly his inherent vigor and self-poise; she started to draw away; an ineffable something ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... each other's bosoms the ineffable balm of friendship's purest tenderness, the eyes of Wallace insensibly closed. "Your gentle influence," gently murmured he, "brings that sleep to my eyelids which has not visited them since I first entered these walls. Like my Marion, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Nevertheless I should have been thrown into some little doubt, if some one had asked me which of them I should choose, if I must part from three of the four and keep only one for myself. But could we only have remained together, without death to separate us or disturb our sweet contentment, until ineffable eternity, in such a case I had chosen for my constant companion only my brother. He was so good to me. For he was terribly strong. I thought there could not be a stronger fellow in the whole town. His school-fellows feared his fists, and never dared to cross his path; yet he did not look so powerful; ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... indeed a hill of vision, that church hill at Lenox. Sparkling far to the south, the blue Dome lay, softened and shining in the September sun. There was ineffable peace in the faint blue sky, and, stealing up from the valley, a shimmering haze that seemed to veil the bustling village and soften ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... the Church fell into the background and the individual came to the fore, religious music took on the dramatic character which we find in the "Passion Music" of Bach. Here the sufferings and death of the Saviour, none the less an ineffable mystery, are depicted as the most poignant experience of each individual believer, and with an ingenuousness that must forever provoke the wonder of those who are unable to enter into the German nature. The worshippers do not hesitate to say: "My Jesus, ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... my will to Thine, O my God, and this ineffable presence was so sweet and powerful, that I was compelled to yield to its delightful power, power which was strict and severe to my ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... spoken, or whether she read them as in a book, or whether it was only a remembrance of what she knew to be true, she could not tell, but it brought peace ineffable. ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... Bundas crouched at her feet, pricking up their ears, and watching these winged denizens of the farmyard, which Marsa forbade them to touch. Finally the Tzigana would slowly wend her way home, enter the villa, sit down before the piano, and play, with ineffable sweetness, like souvenirs of another life, the free and wandering life of her mother, the Hungarian airs of Janos Nemeth, the sad "Song of Plevna," the sparkling air of "The Little Brown Maid of Budapest," and that bitter; melancholy romance, "The World ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie |
