"Inexplicably" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... translate into wild and broken sounds the language of unearthly beings, breathed around her from her birth. Thus you might have said that her whole mind was full of music; associations, memories, sensations of pleasure or pain,—all were mixed up inexplicably with those sounds that now delighted and now terrified; that greeted her when her eyes opened to the sun, and woke her trembling on her lonely couch in the darkness of the night. The legends and tales of Gionetta only served to make ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... playing a game with fate, and he used them as the stake. Marius understood that probably, judging from their flight on the evening before, from their breathless condition, from their terror and from the words of slang which he had overheard, these unfortunate creatures were plying some inexplicably sad profession, and that the result of the whole was, in the midst of human society, as it is now constituted, two miserable beings who were neither girls nor women, a species of impure and innocent monsters ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... of the Committee of Safety, and the Salicetti party no love was ever lost. It was a general feeling that the refugee Corsicans on the Mediterranean shore were too near their home. They were always charged with unscrupulous planning to fill their own pockets. Now, somehow or other, inexplicably perhaps, but nevertheless certainly, a costly expedition had been sent to Corsica under the impulse of these very men, and it had failed. The unlucky adventurers had scarcely set their feet on shore before Lacombe secured Buonaparte's appointment ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... ground was smooth and green, planted as if by art with flourishing young silver pines and once in a while a hemlock, some standing in all their luxuriance alone, and some in groups. With now and then a smooth grey rock, or large boulder-stone which had somehow inexplicably stopped on the brow of the hill instead of rolling down into what at some former time no doubt was a bed of water,—all this open strip of the table-land might have stood with very little coaxing for a piece ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... policeman touched his arm. At first their nervous, proud, restive airs reminded me constantly of that strange person; and not only the colts, but some times it was some drifting shadow of cloud, some color or some sound, that inexplicably brought him up to mind; and I would plague myself with wondering what was going on in the city, and what was to become of him. But as the days passed and no newspapers came from the city—at least I saw none—and ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... Inexplicably, sheer mind-force prevailed, without the need for formulating the threat the poor grief-maddened woman might have uttered—she moved unresisted to a swing door which opened on to a kind of verandah. Here was drawn up the firing party, and in front of them, fifteen feet away on snow-sodden, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... her own life, and hopes, and ambitions. And there were even more thrilling moments, when the talk ceased, and they sat side by side, silent, yet absorbed, acutely conscious of each other's presence; delightfully, inexplicably confused. ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... inhabited by a colony of gophers that instantly engaged Frank, the dog, now free of his leash, in futile dashes. They stood erect, with languidly drooped paws, until he was too near; then they were inexplicably not there. Frank at length divined that they unfairly achieved these disappearances by descending into caverns beneath the surface of the earth. At first, with frantic claws and eager squeals, he tore at the entrances ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... before Caterham came. He walked out of a shadow towards the middle of the platform, the most insignificant little pigmy, away there in the distance, a little black figure with a pink dab for a face,—in profile one saw his quite distinctive aquiline nose—a little figure that trailed after it most inexplicably—a cheer. A cheer it was that began away there and grew and spread. A little spluttering of voices about the platform at first that suddenly leapt up into a flame of sound and swept athwart the whole mass of humanity ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Skarphedinn is rightly rendered, and furthermore that it is impossible to deal with him except as an individual character, impressing the mind through a variety of qualities and circumstances that are inexplicably consistent. It is impossible to take his character to pieces. The rendering is in one sense superficial, and open to the censures of the moralist—"from without inwards"—like the characters of Scott. But as in this latter case, the superficiality and slightness of the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... head of the legislature. But it was in His personality, in the atmosphere that flowed from Him, that the marvel lay. It was as the scent of the sea to the physical nature—it exhilarated, cleansed, kindled, intoxicated. It was as inexplicably attractive as a cherry orchard in spring, as affecting as the cry of stringed instruments, as compelling as a storm. So writers had said. They compared it to a stream of clear water, to the flash of a gem, to the love of woman. They lost all decency sometimes; ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... not pretend that his mind felt flattered by this scientific outlook. Every fabulist has told how the human mind has always struggled like a frightened bird to escape the chaos which caged it; how — appearing suddenly and inexplicably out of some unknown and unimaginable void; passing half its known life in the mental chaos of sleep; victim even when awake, to its own ill-adjustment, to disease, to age, to external suggestion, to nature's compulsion; doubting its sensations, and, in the last resort, trusting ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... assure you they do! And a pretty amount of adoring and waiting upon your husband will require. I wouldn't for the whole universe have my Duke such an awfully exacting, particular, provoking, disagreeably good, or inexplicably naughty animal as ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... not attempt to restrain her. Perhaps he realised that tears such as those must have their way. But the touch of his hand was in some fashion soothing. It stilled the tempest within her, comforting her inexplicably. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... an achievement, wonderful enough in its way, in unglazed earthenware. The only gleam perhaps that one could find on her was that of her teeth, which one used to get between her dull lips unexpectedly, startlingly, and a little inexplicably, because it was never associated with a smile. She smiled with compressed mouth. It was indeed difficult to conceive of those two birds coming from the same nest. And yet . . . Contrary to what generally happens, it ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... endowed with an uncommon portion of good sense; but her mind was accessible, on this quarter, to wonder and panic. That her voice should be thus inexplicably and unwarrantably assumed, was a source of no small disquietude. She admitted the plausibility of the arguments by which Pleyel endeavoured to prove, that this was no more than an auricular deception; but this conviction ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... consciousness, but apart from these no rational conception of them can be formed. Thus it is impossible to say anything about the ajnana (for no knowledge of it is possible) save so far as manifested in consciousness and depending on this the D@r@s@tis@r@s@tivadins asserted that our experience was inexplicably produced under the influence of avidya and that beyond that no objective common ground could be admitted. But though this has the general assent of Vedanta and is irrefutable in itself, still for the sake of explaining our common sense view ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... and stared incuriously up into a blank, indeterminate expanse of white. It was quite without interest—conveyed no meaning to her whatever. Moreover, her eyelids felt inexplicably heavy, as though they were weighted. So she let them fall again, and the placid, reposeful sense of nothingness which had been momentarily interrupted enveloped her once more. She was conscious of no particular sensation of any kind, neither painful ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... is inexplicably corrupted; and nothing more can be said of it than is contained in the text, which indeed ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... But I was inexplicably thrilled by his words. They brought a clear picture of myself roaming about India as a monk. Perhaps they awakened memories of a past life; in any case, I began to see with what natural ease I would wear the garb of ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... yourself, from gratitude, to respond to my love, would try to rouse in your heart a feeling which was perhaps absent, and I did not wish that ... because it would be tyranny ... it would be indelicate (in short, I launch off at that point into European, inexplicably lofty subtleties a la George Sand), but now, now you are mine, you are my creation, you are pure, you are good, you are ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... that we should read Si-lan, our Ceylon. Both Ma and the Sung-shi say that 2500 li south-east of Chu-lien was 'Si-lan-ch'i-kuo with which it was at war. Of course the distance mentioned is absurd, but all figures connected with Chu-lien in Chinese accounts are inexplicably exaggerated." ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Mr. Agricola Fusilier," answered Joseph in the same tone, his heart leaping inexplicably as he met her glance. With an angry flush she looked quickly around, scrutinized the old man in an instantaneous, thorough way, and then glanced back at the apothecary again, as if asking him to fulfil her request ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... relative who had been brought to the Doran house on Rose's death; but all sorts of inconvenient questions began to be asked about Max Doran, into whose house and fortune the strange-looking, half-beautiful, half-terrible, red-haired girl had suddenly, inexplicably stepped. ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... the warmth at her heart remained. She went back to Isabel, and slipped down into the shelter of her arm, feeling oddly shy and also inexplicably happy. Her disappointment had shrunk to a negligible quantity. She even wondered at herself for having cared so greatly about ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... noticed that the lamps throughout the village were lighted an hour earlier than usual. A sense of insecurity settled upon Stillwater with the falling twilight,—that nameless apprehension which is possibly more trying to the nerves than tangible danger. When a man is smitten inexplicably, as if by a bodiless hand stretched out of a cloud,—when the red slayer vanishes like a mist and leaves no faintest trace of his identity,—the mystery shrouding the deed presently becomes more appalling than the deed itself. There is something ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... he heard Miss Thorne ask if there wasn't something she could do. Lynch's reply was indistinct, but the tone of his voice, deferential, yet with a faint undercurrent of honey-sweetness, irritated him inexplicably. With a scowl, he spurred forward, exchanged a brief greeting with Bud Jessup as he passed, and finally joined Kreeger, who was having considerable difficulty in keeping the herd ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... B. She had sailed from Portland, Maine, had swung up the northern route past Newfoundland Banks as if going to England. On this portion of her voyage her average run was a little less than two hundred knots a day. On the fifth day out, the Minnie B inexplicably deserted the normal trade course, turned from "E. NE." and sailed directly "S. SW." At the same time her speed was accelerated to a trifle over three hundred knots a day. Her last reckoning left the pin sticking in the exact longitude ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... Fido strikes a modern reader as inexplicably severe. Yet it is certain that the dissolute seventeenth century recognized this drama as one of the most potent agents of corruption. Not infrequent references in the literature of that age to the ruin ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... to being slightly offended, I was childishly fond of chocolate, and the act seemed so inexplicably discourteous. We walked to the house in silence, neither of us speaking, until we reached the side entrance. Here the princess paused by the nail-studded oaken door, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... at his empty hand. It seemed to him that the spray of flowers had inexplicably vanished. There was an elusive sense of disorientation, a feeling of something overlooked. There was the tag-end of a remembered grief. ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... appetites, as he sat by the window of the restaurant car, guzzling new potatoes and such Burgundy as could be had in a train. But he was noticeably less garrulous than usual, and his companion also had very little to say until the train was held up inexplicably outside Willesden, when ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... in many respects the Australia of to-day resembles the America which Charles Dickens saw on his first visit. There is an eager desire to ascertain the opinion of the passing English visitor, and this exists inexplicably enough even amongst the people who despise the visitor, and the land from which he comes. They ask for candour, but they are angry if you do not praise. A good many of them, whilst just as eager for judgment as the rest, resent praise as patronage. It is certain that, ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... they heard, sharp and sudden, with something inexplicably fearful about it, the patter of running feet. They had heard that sound often enough that night and the night before; but these feet stopped at their own door, and came up the steps, and the runner beat and pounded on the ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... at her, and somehow his brown eyes made her lower her own. They held a mastery, a confidence, that embarrassed her subtly and quite inexplicably. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... perhaps, the very same mind at different times. 'Thought itself may be matter modified,' says one. 'Rather,' says another of the same perplexed species, 'matter is thought modified; for what you call matter is but a phenomenon.' But are independent and totally distinct substances, mysteriously, inexplicably conjoined,' says a third. 'How they are conjoined we know no more than the dead. Not so much, perhaps.' 'Do I ever cease to think,' says the mind to itself, 'even in sleep? Is not my essence thought?' 'You ought to know your own essence best,' all creation will reply. 'I am confident,' says one, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... against me and that I should get to school late. I tried rather desperately a street that seemed a cul de sac, and found a passage at the end. I hurried through that with renewed hope. 'I shall do it yet,' I said, and passed a row of frowsy little shops that were inexplicably familiar to me, and behold! there was my long white wall and the green door that led to the ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells |
