"Unutterable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... twenty who knows how to carve; and as to ladies, though they did know once on a time, they do not now. What can be more pitiable than the right-hand man of the lady of the house, awkward enough in himself, with the dish twisted round to him in the most awkward possible position, digging in unutterable mortification for a joint which he cannot find, and wishing the unanatomisable volaille behind a Russian screen with ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... and gave him a look of unutterable gratitude. "Besides this hand of mine, are there not the gentler hands of Amelie to intercede for you with ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... out, when a match grated, a little glow leaped up, and Ibrahim, looking strangely tall and vast in the black woollen abayeh which he had put on as a protection against the cold, was partially revealed, she sprang towards him with a feeling of unutterable relief. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... responsibility, it might seem to be out of the question; and so, verily, it was; for her little body, acted on by the big thoughts, was moved from one side to another all night, so that she never slept a wink, still thinking and thinking, in her unutterable grief, of poor Mary, her father's criminal passiveness, and that most occult remedy which so completely ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... of summer kiss in flame and rain, And are not found again; But the heavens themselves eternal are with fire Of unapproach'd desire, By the aching heart of Love, which cannot rest, In blissfullest pathos so indeed possess'd. O, spousals high; O, doctrine blest, Unutterable in even the happiest sigh; This know ye all Who can recall With what a welling of indignant tears Love's simpleness first hears The meaning of his mortal covenant, And from what pride comes down To wear the crown ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... for his strength. Since it was not to be supposed that this was a mere flying visit to the frontier, undertaken for a purpose, it must have all the characteristics of a royal progress, court, zenana, troops, elephants and guns, all accompanying their lord. The trusted councillors looked unutterable things at all Gerrard's suggestions, and military and civil officials combined to defeat all his arrangements by means of the dead weight of their inertia. The Rajah was willing to go, provided he had not to take any trouble, but he criticised freely all the points submitted ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... the Count of Monte Cristo, hearing of the dilemma in which you are placed, has sent to offer you seats in his carriage and two places at his windows in the Palazzo Rospoli." The friends looked at each other with unutterable surprise. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... having added new elements to music, originated means of expression for the communication and discrimination of moods and emotions, and shades of moods and emotions, that up to his time had belonged to the realm of the unuttered and unutterable. Notwithstanding the high estimation in which Chopin is held, it seems to me that his importance for the development of the art is not rated at its full value. His influence on composers for the pianoforte, both as regards style and subject-matter, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... governed him, and all that He has done to him and for him, and what He has enabled him to be and to do on earth. The sackcloth and ashes of every patient Job will be turned into garments of praise; and the lamentations of every mourning Jeremiah into songs of gladness: and in adoring wonder and unutterable joy, every head will be bowed down, every crown cast at Christ's feet, and every heart will feel, and mouth confess, "He hath done all things well!" What an amazing disclosure will this be of the wisdom and love with ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... one thought about this time which caused me unutterable grief and shame, perhaps more shame than grief. It was that my father, who was gone to heaven, and was there daily holding communion with his God, was by this time aware of my crime. I imagined ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... swept over Anna a feeling of unutterable joy as she thought of what the end might be; then, as she remembered Lucy, her heart seemed to stop its beating, and, with a moan, she stretched her hand toward Thornton, who had risen as ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... only, is the part of fools. He said, but him sway'd not, who thus replied. 40 Now, even now, Atrides! thou shalt rue My brother's blood which thou hast shed, and mak'st His death thy boast. Thou hast his blooming bride Widow'd, and thou hast fill'd his parents' hearts With anguish of unutterable wo; 45 But bearing hence thy armor and thy head To Troy, and casting them at Panthus' feet, And at the feet of Phrontis, his espoused, I shall console the miserable pair. Nor will I leave that service unessay'd 50 Longer, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... a far more interesting object than Enoch and Elijah, who never died. "For now is Christ risen from the dead, and is become the first fruits of them that slept." This sight, of Christ in heaven, must have had unutterable interest for Paul, from the assurance that Christ will "change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body;" for "we know that when he shall appear," Paul himself tells us, "we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." This ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... By the side of the arm-chair, in which the king was reclining, wrapped in his wide silk mantle, stood his wife and the prince royal. His hands rested in theirs, and when he raised his weary eyes, he always met their tear-stained faces, their looks of unutterable love. Death, that would so soon separate them forever, had at last united in love father and son. Weeping loudly, Frederick William, folded the prince royal in his arms, and with a voice full of tears, exclaimed: "Has not God in his great mercy given me a noble son?" Prince Frederick bowed his head ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Anne rebuked her, yet half believing it was true, while Jimbo, holding hammer and chisel ready, looked unutterable contempt. 'Can't you be serious for a moment?' said his staring ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... the 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 ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... apparently nothing extraordinary in what she said, but what unutterable meaning there was for him in every sound, in every turn of her lips, her eyes, her hand as she said it! There was entreaty for forgiveness, and trust in him, and tenderness— soft, timid tenderness—and promise ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... lay upon the sward, meditating unutterable things, and as far as ever from any conclusion. Of one thing alone I was satisfied—that I was unutterably miserable; that my destiny was written in sable; that I was a man foredoomed to wo! Were my speculations strange or unnatural! ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... winds sighing from leagues of forest over the red roofs in the moonlight; he heard the Brothers' voices talking of the things beyond this life as though they had actually experienced them in the body; and, as he sat in the jolting train, a spirit of unutterable longing passed over his seared and tired soul, stirring in the depths of him a sea of emotions that he thought had ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... 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 the visions ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... energy; she fell across his arm in a sheer weight of satin-covered body. He moved back in a momentary uncontrollable repulsion when Kate Vollar threw herself past him onto the bed. "Nettie!" she cried, "Nettie! Nettie!" Brevard was chilled by the possibility of an unutterable tragedy, when with a faint suffusion of color the girl gave a gasping sigh. Her voice stirred in a terror ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... should say I was ill, and stop at home with Aunt Jeannie. Darling, if you look shocked I shall be sick! Every girl wants to see the man she intends to marry as often as possible. But most girls don't say so; that is why, as a sex, we are such unutterable humbugs. Men are so much more sensible. They say, 'She's a ripper!' or 'a clipper!'—or whatever is the word in use—'and I shall go and call on that cad of a woman with whom she is dining on Thursday next, in order to be asked to dinner.' That's sensible; there's no nonsense about it. But girls ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... dead man from the grave, yet no way can it defend a living man from death; and in imagination he underwent some part of death's horrors, and felt in his living body a taste of those dying pangs which he had dealt to others; that with the strong conceit, tears (the true interpreters of unutterable emotion) ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... men about her were musical critics: they listened intently. Low, uncultured, yet full, with childish grace and sparkle; but now and then a wailing breath of an unutterable pathos. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... closed doors, the short peremptory tones of the surgeons, fearing she heard more and worse sounds than those. They were hurting him, sorely, sorely, dismembering and disfiguring the dear, living body which she loved. A tempest of unutterable woe swept over her. Breaking fiercely away from her brother and Denny—who strove to comfort her—she beat her poor, lovely head against the wall. But that, so far, had been her one moment of weakness. Since then she had fought steadily, with a certain lofty cheerfulness, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... has (if anything) only too much weight with the person who employs it. There is nothing in the whole relation of England to Ireland about which politicians are so well assured, as that the presence of a body of Parnellites at Westminster is an unutterable nuisance, and works intolerable evil. Of the reality of their conviction we have the strongest proof. The sufferings of Irish tenants, the difficulties or the wrongs of Irish landlords, the evils of coercion, the terror of assassination, but ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... foot of that tree that I had the unutterable bliss of catching a beauty. She had horns so long...and enormous claws, full of meat, for I got her just at ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... 1835; but what were those 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 ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to our unutterable joy, the old man turned and moved off with us towards the harbor. He walked so slowly, muttering to himself all the way and watching the man in blue out of the corner of his eye, that I wanted to bite his finger to make him ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... by, Feathertop paused, and throwing himself into an imposing attitude, seemed to summon the fair girl to survey his figure, and resist him longer, if she could. His star, his embroidery, his buckles, glowed, at that instant, with unutterable splendor; the picturesque hues of his attire took a richer depth of coloring; there was a gleam and polish over his whole presence, betokening the perfect witchery of well-ordered manners. The maiden raised her eyes, and suffered them to linger upon her companion with a bashful and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... theory was in the amplest manner illustrated, for the unfortunate bucket perished in the conflict; but the blazing countenance of Professor Von Poddingcoft emerged from amidst the waters, glowing fiercer than ever with unutterable indignation, whereby the students were marvelously edified, and ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... 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
... became ineffably dear to her. He had seen it, and praised it; it was again retouched by her, each stroke of her pencil was as a chord of thrilling music, and bore to her the idea of a temple raised to celebrate the deepest and most unutterable emotions of her soul. These contemplations engaged her, when the voice of Raymond first struck her ear, a voice, once heard, never to be forgotten; she mastered her gush of feelings, and welcomed him with ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... stars would seem to breathe to him "Galatea" ... and on those days when the tempests blew across the sandy wastes of Arabia and churned up the fierce white surf on the rocks of Cyprus, the very spirit of the storm seemed to moan through the crash of waves in longing, hopeless and unutterable—"Galatea!... Galatea!..." For her he decked a couch with Tyrian purple, and on the softest of pillows he laid the beautiful head of the marble ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... strange voice. "Oh! what an unutterable coward you must be to speak that word. Call what is proposed by any foul title which you will, but at least leave the holy ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... transfixed, then turning abruptly about leaped to the ground, and, breaking into a run, hurried back to his friend, who noticed that his face was more ghastly than before, while his eyes stared as if they still looked upon unutterable things. ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... direction of Marsa's, which were still riveted upon the piano with a dumb look of unutterable agony. ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... is right that we should remember, Antony, the life-long agony and the unutterable despair of the victims of that remorselessly cruel system which the ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... 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 separation approach, I could not deny ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... that these hands, hard with innocent toil, should be reddened with assassination! Oh! bitter, bitter grief, that the loving breasts of Munster should pillow heads wherein are black plots, and visions of butchery and shadows of remorse! Oh! woe unutterable, if the men who abandoned the sin of drunkenness should companion with the devil of murder; and if the men who, last year, vowed patience, order, and virtue, rashly and ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... For all the importunate questionings he pursues In his big, violent voice, Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude, The Trees—God's sentinels Over His gift of live, life-giving air, Yield of their huge, unutterable selves. Midsummer-manifold, each one Voluminous, a labyrinth of life, They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreams That haunt their leafier privacies, Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed still With blank full-faces, or the innocent guile Of laughter flickering back ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... when they would be old enough to understand it; the other to his patron, Sir George Saville, afterwards Lord Halifax. 'My drooping spirits', he says, 'are much refreshed with her joys, which I assure myself are unutterable.' He wrote both these letters in the belief that he should soon follow her, speaking of himself to Sir George as 'his dying chaplain', commending to him his 'distressed orphans', and begging that a 'humble pious man' might be chosen to succeed him in ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... extremely difficult to feign either myopia, hypermetria, or astigmatism if you are not acquainted with the necessary symptoms, and have not decided beforehand which (if any) of these diseases you are suffering from. In five minutes the afflicted M'Sweir is informed, to his unutterable indignation, that he has passed a severe ocular examination with flying colours, and is forthwith marched back to his squad, with instructions to recognise all targets in future, under pain of special instruction in the laws of optics during his leisure ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... bosom; dancing up and down like a little elf whenever she hit the scarlet letter. Hester's first motion had been to cover her bosom with her clasped hands. But whether from pride or resignation, or a feeling that her penance might best be wrought out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse, and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly into little Pearl's wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... remembered her lover's refusal, and that she only needed to allude to it to release herself from the wailing old woman, but an invisible power sealed her lips. She was filled with an ardent desire to help, to avert this unutterable misery, to bring aid to this child, devoted ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... eyed him for some moments with an unutterable expression of melancholy and tenderness. All her pride seemed to have gone; the very character of her face was changed: grave severity had become soft timidity, and stately self-control was broken into the unmistaken struggle of hope ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... you?" exclaimed Hill, striking Barthelemy on the shoulder. The latter started at the touch, and a look of profound, unutterable sadness drove the smile ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... sacredness? On which ground, too, it was well said there lay in the Acknowledged Strongest a divine right; as surely there might in the Strongest, whether Acknowledged or not,—considering who made him strong. And so, in the midst of confusions and unutterable incongruities (as all growth is confused), did this of Royalty, with Loyalty environing it, spring up; and grow mysteriously, subduing and assimilating (for a principle of Life was in it); till it also had grown world-great, and was among the main Facts of our modern ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... mother knelt beside him with arms closely folding him to her heart, unable to soothe, save with loving caresses, her child's unutterable anguish. ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... ([Greek: epipeson]) on (or close to) His Master's chest ([Greek: epi to stethos]), he says softly,—'Lord, who is it?' ... The moment is perhaps the most memorable in the Evangelist's life: the position, one of unutterable privilege. Time, place, posture, action,—all settle so deep into his soul, that when, in his old age, he would identify himself, he describes himself as 'the disciple whom Jesus loved; who also at the Supper' ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... drank it in enormous quantities, and smothered without quenching the scorching, blazing fires of hell which were making cinders and ashes of every hope and energy of my being. I made my bed among serpents; I fed on flames and poison; I walked with demons and ghouls; all unutterable and slimy monsters crawled around and over me; every breath that I drew reeked with the odor of death; every beat of my fast-throbbing heart sent the hissing, boiling blood through my veins, which returned and froze about it. I have neither ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... might be unable to add Fiume to those secured by the secret treaty. But he was not left to himself. He had to reckon with his Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was as mute as an oyster and almost as unsociable. Baron Sonnino had his own policy, which was immutable, almost unutterable. At the Conference he seemed unwilling to propound, much less to discuss it, even with those foreign colleagues on whose co-operation or approval its realization depended. He actually shunned delegates who would ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... XV, who was too feeble to maintain even the poor decent restraint imposed by Louis XIV; so the serf-mastering caste became active in a new way, and their leaders in vileness unutterable became at last Fronsac and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... after verse, telling never one fact, yet hinting unutterable things in a language that was made for hint and metaphor and parable and innuendo. What tongue did not hint at was conveyed by subtle gesture and a smile and flashing eyes. It was perfectly evident that she knew ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... retribution comes after death would demand that Napoleon should by unutterable torments pay the penalty for all the numberless calamities that he caused. But he is no more culpable than all those who possess the same will, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... more tempting fruits, wider plains, drearier deserts, sunnier fields than are found in nature, overspread our enchanted globe. What a moon we gaze on before that time! How the trembling of our hearts at her aspect bears witness to its unutterable beauty! As to our sun, it is a burning heaven—the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... broad-arch'd cavern is Where thou wast wont to offer to the nymphs 420 Many a whole hecatomb; and yonder stands The mountain Neritus with forests cloath'd. So saying, the Goddess scatter'd from before His eyes all darkness, and he knew the land. Then felt Ulysses, Hero toil-inured, Transport unutterable, seeing plain Once more his native isle. He kiss'd the glebe, And with uplifted hands the nymphs ador'd. Nymphs, Naiads, Jove's own daughters! I despair'd To see you more, whom yet with happy vows 430 I now can hail again. Gifts, as of old, We will hereafter at your shrines ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... not certain that the mighty soul Doth err, when far above the narrow groove In which man walks from childhood to the grave It rises, murmuring things unutterable, And spurns as lies the outward forms of sense, And, like a shooting star, enfranchised seeks The spaces ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... exclusive privilege. Some say He has prepared a Hell for all wicked people, others that Hell will receive many good as well as tricked, while others cannot believe either the just or the unjust, the faithful or the unfaithful, will be consigned to perdition and made to endure torments unutterable by a God 'whose tender mercies are over all his works.' Some affirm His omnipotency, some deny it; some say He is no respecter of persons, some the reverse. Some say He is Immensity, others that He fills Immensity; others ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... as the coloring of this picture may appear, it is but a taint and imperfect sketch of the original. You must remember a thousand unutterable calamities; a thousand instances of domestic as well as national anxiety and distress; which mock description. You ought to remember them; you ought to hand them down in tradition to your posterity, that they may know the awful price their fathers ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... people from under their unutterable wrongs, and the tardy burst of day upon them after the long long night of oppression that has darkened their beautiful country, have naturally caused my mind to dwell often of late on my own small wanderings in Italy. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... sandstorm, failure and famine, toil unutterable, these had been Oscar Ames' portion. When at last he had won his acres, had brought the barren sand to bearing, had made three hundred acres of desert a thing of breathing beauty from January to January, the ranch meant ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... stared 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 knew the worst. We women strove ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... not resumed; and, as we walked back to the hotel, I was completely convinced that I had been an unutterable cad ever to allow a single doubt concerning him to enter my mind, ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... love, scorch the fountains of tears, curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall he be accomplished in the furnace, so shall he see the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abominable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies. And so shall our commission be accomplished which from God we had,—to plague his heart until he had unfolded the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... "I am through with it all, quite through. The task was never of my choosing, as you know. When the dead hand reached forth from the grave to taunt you, Ronador, I was willing at first to stoop to unutterable things to save you—and Houdania—from dishonor, but more and more there has been distaste in my heart for the blackness of the thing. Days back I warned you by letter that I would not see Miss Westfall coldly sacrificed for a muddle of which she knew absolutely nothing. ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... with this thing?" asked Davidson, whom suddenly he saw standing by his side and holding up Ricardo's dagger to his sight. Heyst uttered no word of recognition or surprise. He gave Davidson only a dumb look of unutterable awe, then, as if possessed with a sudden fury, started tearing open the front of the girls dress. She remained insensible under his hands, and Heyst let out a groan which made Davidson shudder inwardly the heavy plaint of a man who falls clubbed ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... sigh, of a whisper circling through the planet, of the light growing thick with the unimaginable charge, and the purple eclipse of Death throwing a penumbra; that may, but nothing else ever can, equal the unutterable sublimity of that buzz—that rumour, that susurrus passing from mouth to mouth—nobody knew whence coming or whither tending, and about a being of whom nobody could tell what he should be—what he should resemble—what he should do, but ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... called her, because the name suited her, they said; but Maddy they called her at home, and there was a world of unutterable tenderness in the voices of the old couple, her grandparents, when they said that name, while their dim eyes lighted up with pride and joy when they rested upon the young girl who answered to the name of Maddy. Their only daughter's only child, she had lived ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... voice wherein was both cold constrainedness, and bitterness, and stern determination—yet under them all something else— I think it was the sorely bruised yet living soul of that deep unutterable tenderness which had been ever his for the mother of his love, but could be the same never more. Man is oft cold and bitter and stern, when an hour before he hath dug a grave in his own heart, and hath therein laid all his hopes and his affections. And they that look on from afar behold the sheet ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... poor helpless fellows to this cover and dressed their wounds. One of these was William —— of the Seventh New York Infantry, a noble-looking boy, to whose parched lips she had held the cooling draught, and had bound up his wounds, receiving in return a look of unutterable gratitude from his bright blue eyes, and his faintly murmured "God's blessing on you," when a shot from the rebel battery tore him to pieces under her very hands. She discovered at the same moment that the rebels ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... too, but I noticed that although he endeavoured to appear gay, his happiness was feigned, and there was in his dark eyes a look of unutterable sadness. Our conversation drifted to a local cricket match that was to be played on the morrow, and soon the gloomy thoughts that seemed to possess him ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... lips, darkening the sky To the extreme azure of all its cloudless cope With starless horror: nor the God's own eye Whose doom bade smite, whose ordinance bade hope, Might well endure to see the adulteress die, The husband-slayer fordone By swordstroke of her son, Unutterable, unimaginable on high, On earth abhorrent, fell Beyond all scourge of hell, Yet righteous as redemption: Love stood nigh, Mute, sister-like, and closer clung Than all fierce forms of threatening ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... modern travellers are often learned, more often flimsy, and from the universality of locomotion, much given, like the prayers of the old Pharisees, to tedious repetitions. A tour in Greece or Italy now affects us with unutterable weariness. A journey from London to York affords more real novelty than many of these excursions. Sir Charles Fellows or Mr. Layard write in the spirit of the old travellers, and we would willingly ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... Vulgar, more Persons have been deterr'd from doing Evil, by what they had heard of the Torments of Hell, than have been made virtuous by what had been told them of the Joys of Heaven, tho' both had been represented to them as equally infinite and unutterable. ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... "With unutterable anguish the mother looked upon her two lovely daughters in the early bloom of womanhood, the babe sleeping upon her breast, the little ones clinging to her skirts, her aged and infirm parents, all apparently doomed to a speedy, violent death—and worse than ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... I told myself, this was but a morbid fancy of mine. If I could have known the true motive of the glance I should have interpreted what appeared like unutterable sadness as mere boredom. ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... was not my chief trouble, and I daresay many of my readers will guess what I am going to speak of-namely, the myriads of fleas which held high holiday over me. These small insects drank my blood with unutterable voracity, their incessant bites gave me spasmodic convulsions and ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... their nature. A mother's life is bound up in that of her child. There center all her hopes and ambitions. But the slave-mother in her degradation rejoices not in the future promise of her daughter, for she knows by experience what her sad fate must be. No pen can describe the unutterable agony of that mother whose past, present and future all are wrapped in darkness; who knows the crown of thorns she wears must press her daughter's brow; who knows the wine-press she treads those tender feet must tread alone. ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... which the whole race entertains for their spiritual rulers, and their unutterable confidence in their high prerogatives. In prosperity as in adversity, in freedom or in subjection, they always preserve an instinctive faith in the unseen power which Christ conferred on those whom He chose to be his ministers. This feeling, which is undoubtedly ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... and rules, Sancho, thy days will be long, thy fame eternal, thy reward abundant, thy felicity unutterable; thou wilt marry thy children as thou wouldst; they and thy grandchildren will bear titles; thou wilt live in peace and concord with all men; and, when life draws to a close, death will come to thee in calm and ripe old age, and the light and loving hands of thy great-grandchildren ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... with seriousness and great zeal, as their prayer-books show, and He has not for the whole time noticed them with a word. If I could pray as they do I would give books worth two hundred florins for the gift. It must be a great unutterable wrath. O, good Lord, punish us with pestilence rather than with ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... stopped before some glittering shrine. What then? Who would question the reality of a miracle, or doubt that sublime revelations might be made to any holy monk as he wrestled in prayer with a rapture of the soul, and found himself lifted to the seventh heaven in ecstasy unutterable? ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... shame and dread kept him silent. His wife, of whom he always spoke so tenderly in all his letters to him! The very spot where he was listening to this charge against her, David's vestry, seemed to deepen the shame of it, and the unutterable sorrow, if ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... But that unutterable weariness was still upon her. She was not pressed for time, thank goodness. She had been given food in abundance and unwonted warmth and, for some hours, the wonderful sharp tingling air of the forest had driven the blood more swiftly through her veins. Moments ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... of all that is worthy to be known—which indoctrines the rude in civility, the dull in intellectuality, the heavy in jocosity, the blunt in gentility, the vulgar in nobility, and all of them in that unutterable perfection, of human utterance, that eloquence which no other eloquence is sufficient to praise, that art which, when we call it by its own name of Euphuism, we bestow ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the background by a little waxen figure wrapped up in embroidery, and reclining upon an embroidered cushion, which rested upon another of pink satin. This was supposed to be the manger where he was born. Behind the image two paper bulls' heads looked unutterable things. On the right was the Virgin Mary, and on the left one of the eastern Magi. Paper clouds, in which the paper heads of numberless cherubs appeared, enveloped the whole; while from a pasteboard cottage stalked a wooden monk, with dogs, and sheep, and camels, goats, lions, and lambs; here ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... his orders, whereupon a judge said it was not sufficient to shave the body of the prisoner, but that his nails must also be torn out, lest the devil should hide beneath them. Grandier looked at the speaker with an expression of unutterable pity, and held out his hands to Fourneau; but Forneau put them gently aside, and said he would do nothing of the kind, even were the order given by the cardinal-duke himself, and at the same time begged Grandier's pardon for ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... established by reconstructionary legislation were overthrown. It was these things that so blinded the eyes of a whole people that they called this bloody masquerading, this midnight warfare upon the weak, this era of unutterable horror, ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... word—that's the horror. She kept it to herself! The child of eight, THAT child!" Unutterable still, for me, was the ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... 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 ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... intimate, immediate woes. Beyond and around them lay others many others. To be sure, Bertram and happiness were supposed to be somewhere in the dim and uncertain future; but between her and them lay all these other woes, chief of which was the unutterable tragedy of ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... comes after it—that wonderful, wonderful, wonderful world into which Death ushers us. Turn away from the face of your dead. Turn away from the house of clay which held him an hour ago. The house is empty, the tenant is gone. He is away already, gasping in the unutterable wonder of ...
— The Gospel of the Hereafter • J. Paterson-Smyth
... Macready. The downhill part of the road is before us now, and we shall travel on to midsummer at a dashing pace; and, please Heaven, I will be at Liverpool when you come steaming up the Mersey, with that red funnel smoking out unutterable things, and your heart much fuller than your trunks, though something lighter! If I be not the first Englishman to shake hands with you on English ground, the man who gets before me will be a brisk and active fellow, and ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... cell by the matron and looked in, his emotions quite overcame him, the tears rolled down his cheeks and his voice trembled so that he could hardly speak. Washington was unable to say anything; he looked from Laura to the miserable creatures who were walking in the corridor with unutterable disgust. Laura was alone calm and self-contained, though she was not unmoved by the sight of the grief ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 6. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... He fills the whole hemisphere, pouring forth a flood of glory, in which I seem to float like an insect in the beams of the sun, exulting yet almost trembling while I gaze on this excessive brightness, and wondering, with unutterable wonder, why God should deign thus to shine upon a sinful worm. A single heart and a single tongue seem altogether inadequate to my wants; I want a whole heart for every separate emotion, and a whole tongue to express that emotion. But why do I speak thus of myself and my feelings? why not speak only ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... passengers in that lifeboat there was only one whose visage expressed nothing but unutterable woe. ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... has smiled serenely, a million times in this world, while her life and all its earthly expectations were in ruins. Patient sufferers upon beds of pain have forgotten childhood years ago, and, feeding their souls on prayer, have looked forward with unutterable joy to the transition from womanhood to angelhood. Men, utterly forsaken by friends— contemned, derided, proscribed, persecuted—have stood by their convictions with joyful heroism and calm content. Nay, great multitudes have marched with songs upon their tongues to the rack and the stake. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... flight, brushed by me, accustomed to my presence. I had entered betimes upon the pernicious study of nursery tales, as they then were, and without having the smallest actual belief in the existence of fairies, goblins, or any such things, I took unutterable delight in surrounding myself with hosts of them, decked out in colors of my own supplying, gorgeous or terrible beyond the conception of my classic authorities. The faculty of realizing whatever ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... his hand on high; over his lofty brow and royal features there came an expression of unutterable solemnity ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... as fainting under the weight of the cross, while the Virgin sits on the ground by the way-side, gazing on him with fixed eyes and folded hands, and a look of unutterable anguish.[1] ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... 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. He is such as ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... started from his seat. He was about to launch his battle-axe through the air in search of the daring minstrel, when the same dread expression of unutterable agony we have before mentioned passed over his face; he trembled as an aspen, and sank, as one paralysed, into his chair, while his glaring eyes seemed to behold some horrid apparition unseen by all beside. The warriors now turned in their wrath to seek the daring or unfortunate ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... is that possible, Sir?" said John involuntarily, "the date on the picture is 1646." "You have seen it,—you have noticed it," said his uncle. "Well,"—he rocked and nodded on his bolster for a moment, then, grasping John's hand with an unutterable look, he exclaimed, "You will see him again, he is alive." Then, sinking back on his bolster, he fell into a kind of sleep or stupor, his eyes still open, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... over-feeding. There is suffering for lack of food. There is ten to one more suffering by gouty and dyspeptic gourmands. The beggar shivers in the cold for lack of clothing; there is ten to one more suffering from over-swathing. For pain, actual, excrutiating; for pain invincible, somber and unutterable, one proud woman reduced to a last season's frock suffers more than twenty arrayed in customary rags and tatters. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, but not to the dowdy woman. The occupant of the cottage or cabin as he ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Then, as below a philosopher in his tower, the city spreads its web of streets, and its lights gleam in answer to the lights above. Galileo in his tower—Teufelsdroeckh at his far-seeing attic window—saw this glistening pageantry and had thoughts unutterable. ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... had gone. All were asleep in the tembe but myself, and an unutterable loneliness came on me as I reflected on my position, and my intentions, and felt the utter lack of sympathy with me in all around. It requires more nerve than I possess, to dispel all the dark presentiments that come upon the mind. But probably what I call ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... that was made of Wisdom by her pilgrim: "Meanwhile as I lay in my deep struggle, came there a spirit of prayer down, who made an earnest supplication and unutterable sighing, rise towards heaven, [The lamentation at the grave of the Master.] which as I felt most clearly, penetrated and broke through the gate of the eternal profound, so that my spirit had an entrance to the secret chamber ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... All is indifferent to me—poverty or riches, life or death. I am loosed. But do not on this account think I am sorrowful; nay, for I have nothing to sorrow for. Is there no bright hope at a distance which cheers me onward and beckons me to speed? I dare not say. Sometimes I feel so—it is the unutterable. Yet I remain contented to be without spring or autumn, youth or age. One tie has been loosened after another; the dreams of my youth have passed away silently, and the visions of the future I then beheld ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... down the slopes of Fuji are a cheap source of electricity, and, though the guide book may not stress the fact, it is possible that the first glimpse of the unutterable splendours of the sacred mountain may be gained in the neighbourhood of a cotton, paper or silk factory. The farmers welcomed the factories when they found that factory contributions to local rates eased the burden of the agricultural ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... silently, a moment, his face wearing a look of unutterable love and sadness; then he put her down on the grass, and brought water in a large leaf from the stream. He bathed her forehead, tenderly as a mother might, murmuring over her words of ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... dream? When you are seasick? When you are in love? When you have colic? When you have a cramp in the leg? When you are smitten abruptly with the fear of death? When you are angry? When you are exalted with the sense of the beauty of the world and think you think all inexpressible unutterable thoughts? ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... unknown. As in Homer's Iliad, the voice we hear is not that of any individual poet, but of an age and of a people—a voice simple, almost monotonous, in its rhythmic rise and fall, but charged with meanings multitudinous and unutterable. ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... Thou! whose fancies from afar are brought; Who of thy words dost make a mock apparel, And fittest to unutterable thought The breeze-like motion and the self-born carol; Thou Faery Voyager! that dost float In such clear water, that thy Boat May rather seem To brood on air than on an earthly stream; Suspended in a stream as clear as sky, Where earth and heaven do make one imagery; 10 O blessed Vision! ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... one knee, his back in the angle of the wall, his shoulders elevated to the level of his ears, his hands before his face, palms outward, the fingers spread and crooked like claws; the white face turned upward on the retracted neck had an expression of unutterable fright, the mouth half open, the eyes incredibly expanded. He was stone dead. Yet, with the exception of a bowie-knife, which had evidently fallen from his own hand, not another object was ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... of pressing forward, how wanting he had been in that single heart that thought only of doing the work committed to him regardless of the approbation of men—that only desired to know what was right in order fearlessly to follow it; and unutterable were the tearful desires of his heart that he might be strengthened for the time to come to walk more worthy of the vocation wherewith ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... sits upon the emerald throne; For he hath heard Elohim speak from heaven. Still thunders in his ear the peal; Still blazes on his front the seal: And on the soul of the proud king No terror of created thing From sky, or earth, or hell, hath power Since that unutterable hour. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... details. Listen to it, O Dhananjaya! One who speaks truth is righteous. There is nothing higher than truth. Behold, however, truth as practised is exceedingly difficult to be understood as regards its essential attributes. Truth may be unutterable, and even falsehood may be utterable where falsehood would become truth and truth would become falsehood. In a situation of peril to life and in marriage, falsehood becomes utterable. In a situation involving the loss of one's entire property, falsehood becomes utterable. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... sending to you, with that object, the General-in-Chief of the armies of the Peloponnesus, Theodore Kolokotrones, Messrs. Kanaris, Botazes, and Bulgaris, General Zavella and Count Metaxas, who will tender to you the thanks of all for your zeal on behalf of their cause." "The Government is seized with unutterable joy at your auspicious arrival," wrote the members of the rival assembly at Egina, on the same day: "the Government wishes you happy success in all your enterprises, and hopes soon to find in you a ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... man gave a kind of crow expressive of an otherwise unutterable relief and comfort. "Well, if it ain't Captain Jenness! I be'n so turned about, I declare for't, I don't believe I'd ever known you if you hadn't spoke up. Lyddy," he cried with a child-like ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... air was rent by a cry of unutterable woe, caught up by each voice around, and coming back in echoes from far and near long after Joan lay a senseless heap on the stones upon which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... with me. I cannot conceal from you that my astonishment is profound and unutterable at your new religion—your new faith in this pseud-Ossian—and your desecration, in his service, of the old Hellenic altars. And by the way, my own figure reminds me to inquire of you whether you are not sometimes struck with a want ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... wishes to shout and to sing. He is one with the birds that have begun singing and with all wild Nature waking refreshed after the night. But looking out at evening of the same day over the grey sea he is failed with unutterable sorrow. ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... I that he had discovered me, and was leveling his piece to fire, that I could scarcely restrain myself from springing up and dashing away to avoid the shot. Then I heard him take a step, and to my unutterable surprise and relief, he walked off farther from the Creek, evidently to speak to the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... heart is fixed upon the Great Peace, shall his soul come to it at last. Weary of the earth, it shall come into the haven where there are no more storms, where there is no more struggle, but where reigns unutterable peace. It is not death, but the ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... a mound of snow and watched his comrades as they busied themselves in dragging their sleeping-bags and cooking utensils from the cavern they had just quitted. O'Riley seemed to be in a contemplative mood, for he did not venture any further remark, although he looked unutterable things as he proceeded quietly to fill his little ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Vau, He) of the name Jehovah are differently pointed, so as to furnish a word for each degree. In the degree of Perfection, the candidate is sworn not to pronounce the word but once during his life, hence it is termed INEFFABLE, or unutterable. The ordinary mode of giving it in that degree consists in simply repeating the names of its letters, "Jod, He, Vau, He." On receiving that degree, the candidate is told that he is to become acquainted with the true pronunciation of the ineffable name of God, as it ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... "Oh, that's the unutterable laziness that I get from my—from the other side of the house," interrupted Eleanor. "It's an uncomfortable combination, I assure you," and taking the book she had come for, ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... in silence. Possibly he felt that he had stood for one instant upon the verge of a precipice, and that miraculously her face had saved him, he knew not how, where words would only have dragged him down to unutterable ruin. ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... very bad case, he humbled himself so far as to send for Nalini, whom he implored with folded hands to save him from destruction. Nalini was deeply moved by his appeal. He heartily despised the fellow's unutterable baseness, but reflected that he had been an old friend of his father's. He undertook ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... blessed truths of which he was even then reaping the fruition; but the gag prevented him. One prayer he breathed from the depths of his soul for her, and as he passed he cast at her a look of such unutterable agony, yet of such loving reproof and regret, that, like the lightning's flash, it went to her heart. Well she understood its meaning. "Oh, my beloved Leonor," it seemed to say, "why did you not ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston
... be for the sake of having something truly horrible to shudder at and to frighten children with: and so a certain school of philosophers exhaust their rhetoric in convincing us that the objects known to science are artificial and dead, while the living reality is infinitely rich and absolutely unutterable. This is merely an ungracious way of describing the office of thought and bearing witness to its necessity. A body is none the worse for having some bones in it, even if they are not all visible on the surface. They are certainly not the whole man, who nevertheless ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... scholar and a gentleman. Te voila. I knew that my long pilgrimage would ultimately lead me to the Inner Shrine. Isn't all this," he waved his pipe in a circular gesture, "the Holy of Holies of the Real? Is there any illusion in the unutterable poetry of the night? Is there anything false in this promise of the fruitful earth? My God! Asticot, I am happy! When the soul laughs tears come into the eyes. I have all that the heart of man can desire—the love ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... silent glance from Miss May Danvers. Where had been my eyes? She was tall, stately, twenty-five, had large dark eyes, and long dark lashes! Again the changes of the dance brought her near me; I threw (or strove to throw) unutterable meanings into my eyes, and cast them upon hers. She seemed startled, looked suddenly away, looked back to me, and—blushed. I knew her for what is called "a nice girl"—that is, tolerably frank, gently feminine, and not dangerously intelligent. Was ...
— Who Was She? - From "The Atlantic Monthly" for September, 1874 • Bayard Taylor
... lasts much longer and reshapes the world much more than the actualities by which he attempted to suggest it. What perishes is the letter, which he thought so practical. What endures is the spirit, which he felt to be unattainable and even unutterable. It is exactly his schemes that are not fulfilled; it is exactly his vision that is fulfilled. Thus the ten or twelve paper constitutions of the French Revolution, which seemed so business-like to the framers of them, seem to us to have flown away on the ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... from the Flat Hat men greeted this wholesale condemnation. The Puffington men looked unutterable things, and there is no saying what disagreeable comparisons might have been instituted (for the Puffingtonians mustered strong) had not his lordship and Jack cast up at the moment. Hats off and politeness was then ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... he threw himself in agony at her feet. She was too faint to rise—she attempted to extend her trembling hand—her lips moved as if she spoke, but no word was articulated; she looked down upon him with a smile of unutterable tenderness, and closed her ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... are vanishing,—since not one of our great institutions possessed, a few years since, a file of any Southern newspaper of the year 1800,—yet the little which I have gained may have an interest that makes it worth preserving. Three times, at intervals of thirty years, did a wave of unutterable terror sweep across the Old Dominion, bringing thoughts of agony to every Virginian master, and of vague hope to every Virginian slave. Each time did one man's name become a spell of dismay and a symbol of deliverance. Each time did that name eclipse its predecessor, ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... his left hand to his forehead, and mused,—his right clasped his daughter's shoulder. The phantom slowly raised its head, and gazed at him with a look of unutterable tenderness. ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... 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 blind fool that ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... quite different from Beaumarchais' Cherubin does not affect this question. He is a new creation, just because Mozart could not, or would not, conceive the character of the page in Beaumarchais' sprightly superficial spirit. He used the part to utter something unutterable except by music about the soul of the still adolescent lover. The libretto-part and the melodies, taken together, constitute a new romantic ideal, consistent with experience, but realised with the intensity ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... girl!" said Juliet, and a shudder ran through her frame. "How can I forget her? Her pale face—her sunken eyes—her look of unutterable woe. Oh, she haunts me continually; and I—I—may have been the cause of all this misery. My head aches sadly. I will go to bed. I long to ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... Music, heart-breaking lamentations, and pitiful echoes recurred frequently in the most magnificent of these nightly pageants. One of the most distressing features of the dreams was their vastness. The dreamer lived for centuries in one night, and space "swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity." ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... magical power in the noblest verse that ever sought to contain and express it; he who has once looked with clear, unflinching gaze into the depths of human life will find only vague shadows of the mighty realities in the greatest drama and fiction. The eternal struggle of art is to utter these unutterable things; the immortal thirst of the soul will lead it again and again to these ancient fountains, whence it will bring back its handful of water in vessels curiously carven by the hands of imagination. But no cup of man's ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... and pliant ribs and heart, Incapable of acting out the part Assigned to them by nature, prove a prey To premature diseases and decay. We talk with pious horror and regret, Of the unwise Chinese, who will not let The feet of their poor female children grow, Entailing thus unutterable woe; But when unprejudiced the reason acts, And we together scan th' appalling facts, Resulting from tight lacing, and tight shoes, We cannot conscientiously refuse, To say that of the two vile customs, ours Is certainly more culpable than theirs, While we too are not guiltless ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... The curiosity of the queen was excited to know what the mysterious coffer might contain. She ordered it to be opened; and the guests gathered around, each eager to obtain the first glimpse of the contents. The lid was removed, and a cloth beneath it was raised, when, to the unutterable horror of all who witnessed the spectacle, there was seen the head and hands of Cleopatra's beautiful boy, lying among masses of human flesh, which consisted of the rest of his body cut into pieces. The head had been left entire, that the wretched ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... A cry of unutterable distress broke upon the air, and the woman sprang back quickly into the room. Mr. Grim hurried after her. By the feeble light of a single poor candle, he saw a half-clothed man crouching fearfully in a corner of the room, with his hands raised ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... had died standing, her face devoid of blood even to the lips. Misery, deep and unutterable, rested upon the white face. When she raised her eyes and saw Letts at her side, and Griggs with an open book in front of her, she ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... 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 put off, while Austria and Prussia were encouraged to revolt. Was the vast ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... present even affected to deny, or attempted to repress, the unutterable, shuddering horror which these few words, thus uttered, were so well calculated to convey. Mr. L—l (the student) swooned. The nurses immediately left the chamber, and could not be induced to return. My own impressions ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... continued Sobieski, "that as the first cannot happen until all virtue be dead in this land, I should regard his last gasp as the expiring sigh of that virtue which, by him, had found a triumph even under the axe. But for the second, it would be joy unutterable to behold the victory of justice over rapine and violence! But, either way, Thaddeus Sobieski is still the same—ready to die or ready to live for his country, and equally worthy of the sacred halo with which posterity would encircle ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... dilated and her face grew pitifully pale. As though fascinated, she continued to gaze at the poor soiled little boots. Her laboring heart at last threw off its torpor and drove the rich color once more back to her face, and then with a cry, full of unutterable love she caught up the precious little things, kissed, cooed, wept and fondled them passionately. "My dear, dead darling," she sobbed. Sinking on her knees by the side of the chair, she fondled them afresh and pressed ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... He saw other things too. Oh, there was no warmth in the sunlight, and the sky was a drabby gray, and he was filled with bitterness unutterable. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... "To my unutterable relief, I found I was mistaken, and that whatever he knew of Mr. Mervyn's suspicions or discoveries, he did not intend to converse with me on the topic. Coward as I was, I was inexpressibly relieved, though if he had really investigated the reports which may have come to his ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... Indeed, few had found opportunity to give more than admiring glances to the little nun, who thus far had been secluded almost continuously in the safest of all cloisters—a country home. It was a decided novelty that a young man, almost six feet in height, should be looking unutterable things in her direction whenever she was present. She wished he wouldn't, but since he would, she could not help thinking about him, and how she could manage to ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... and shuddering form; yet, withal, could not have shown that terrific look of utter, incurable despair! His fingers, talon-like in their horny paleness and rigidity, clutched his breast, as if to tear some mortal anguish thence, and his glassy eyes were fixed in unutterable reproach upon her face! Thrice he essayed to speak, but a gurgling noise in his throat was the only result. With a last great effort to articulate, the blood suddenly filled his throat and gushed from his ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Griselda sat swelling with unutterable rage.—"Heavens! have you no feeling left?" exclaimed she, snatching the book from his hand; "have you no feeling left, Mr. Bolingbroke, for ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... that it selects the predigested food-ration from its unutterable lower bowel involvements; sending it pure and undefiled as ready-made flesh into the blood, only requiring it to be placed as bricks to a wall. Fortunately, these lower stomachs are not subject to nausea no matter how capable ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... up in to-night's boat. I'll send Rosey with them," said Nott with a cunning twinkle. Renshaw nodded. Nott seized his hand with a wink of unutterable significance. ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... group of outcasts and spoken straight to their hearts. They bandied, pleasantries no more, but lighting the cigars—the Lady Sarah boldly charging a small clay pipe—they fell to an expressive silence, of introspection, it may be, or even of unutterable despair. The woman alone amongst them had not been cast down from a comparative altitude to this very abyss of destitution. For the others life was a vista far behind them; a vista, perchance, of a cottage and ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... fashioner of all that is, older than the Sun or the Sky, greater than time and eternity and all the flow of being, is unnameable by any lawgiver, unutterable by any voice, not to be seen by any eye. But we, being unable to apprehend His essence, use the help of sounds and names and pictures, of beaten gold and ivory and silver, of plants and rivers, mountain-peaks and torrents, yearning for the knowledge of Him, and in our weakness ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... song of triumph and delight; the music, at first rapid and joyous, became slower and more solemn, as the inspiration seized on me, until at last, in spite of myself, it grew into a wild and indescribable dirge, fading away in a long wail of unutterable sadness and regret. When it was over I felt exhausted and unstrung, as though virtue had gone out from me. I had played as I had never played before. The young man had turned away, and was looking out of the window. The lady on the sofa was transfigured. The languor ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... It recognizes only the extremes, as if, after the first rude face of the phenomenal world in all its particularity, nothing but the supreme in all its perfection could be found. First, you and I, just as we are in this room; and the moment we get below that surface, the unutterable absolute itself! Doesn't this show a singularly indigent imagination? Isn't this brave universe made on a richer pattern, with room in it for a long hierarchy of beings? Materialistic science makes it infinitely ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... I leaned back in a large cushioned chair; we looked at each other in silence—a silence that throbbed with the heavy pulse of an unutterable and complex emotion—pleasure, pain, apprehension, even terror. What had I done? Why had I, with a word—nay, without a word, with merely a gesture and a glance—thrown my whole life into the crucible of passion? Why did I exult in the tremendous and impetuous act, like ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett |
