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More "Indefinable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as they greeted him. His clothes, a neat business suit and light colored shirt, were soiled, his face was streaked with dust but in his eyes there was that indefinable gleam that marks the soul of an adventurer. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... Ayrshire was not Eden. And though Mary had not been able to witness the happiness she had planned, she felt it. It seemed to pervade the house like some quicker atmosphere. She had even a better appetite, and the servants also seemed conscious of a new joy, and indefinable promise of festivity—something far more subtle than a bird in the air had carried the matter to ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... Mr. Jackson looked in vain for the heavy, foreign faces, the greasy canvas jackets and blanket trousers he was accustomed to see. Not that these men seemed to be landsmen—each carried in his face and bearing the indefinable something by which sailors of all races may distinguish each other at a glance from fishermen, tugmen, and deck-hands. They were all young men, and their intelligent faces—blemished more or less with marks of overnight dissipation—were as sunburnt as were those of the ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... awakened in a delicious excitement on the morning of a fox-hunt, and have dressed as eagerly as if she were going to a ball; but to-day, while she lit the oil-stove in the hall room and put on the kettle of water, she was supported not by the hope of pleasure, but by a dull, an almost indefinable sensation of dread. The instinct of woman to adjust her personality to the changing ideals of the man she loves—this instinct older than civilization, rooted in tragedy, and existing by right of an unconquerable necessity—rose superior at the moment to that more stable maternal ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... whenever he did speak to her she felt miserably constrained and unable to appear like herself. Why was it?—she asked herself in a very vexed state of mind. No doubt partly from the remembrance of that overheard conversation which she could not help applying, but much more from an indefinable sense that at these times there were always eyes upon her. She tried to charge the feeling upon her consciousness of their having heard that same talk, but it would not the more go off. And it had no chance to wear off, for somehow the occasions never lasted long; something ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... wrap and seated herself at the dressing-table, studying her face critically. She saw that she was somewhat pale and that she had an indefinable air of dishevelment. Also she detected shadows beneath her eyes, the pupils of which were curiously contracted. Automatically, as a result of habit, she unlocked her jewel-case and took out a tiny phial ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... back of it. No boy in the house, so Mr. Dupre said, grudged the sixpence which had been stopped from his pocket money to pay for the bat. Then, passing to graver matters, Mr. Dupre spoke warmly of the tone of the house, that indefinable quality which in the eyes of a faithful schoolmaster is more precious than rubies. It was Mannix, prefect and member of the lower sixth, who more than any one else deserved credit for the fact that Edmonstone stood second to no house in the school in the matter ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... not even pretty, but for all that distinctly good-looking. Her hair and eyebrows were black, her eyes a deep pansy-blue. A clear complexion, usually pale but decidedly flushed now, and, for the rest, somewhat irregular features which might have been almost plain, but for that indefinable expression of combined gentleness and strength which only the careful selection of long descent ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... evidence of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an indefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... disjointed descriptions, had dimly fancied clamour and confusion bursting upon eyes and ears on the instant of entering the gambling-rooms. But the silence of the place was as haunting and mystery-suggesting as the indefinable odour, and more thrilling to the imagination than the ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is no moral quality in a good temper—that change of principle could not much affect it. And then she was never more winning; perhaps her beauty had taken on a more refined quality from her illness abroad; perhaps it was that indefinable knowledge of the world, which is recognized as well in dress as in manner, which increased her attractiveness. This was quite apart from the fact that she was not so sympathetically companionable to us as she once was, and it was this very attractiveness ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... by a gentle hand presently, and Marian came into the room. Percival Nowell rose from his seat hastily and stood facing her, surprised by her beauty and an indefinable likeness which she bore to her mother—a likeness which brought his dead wife's face back to his mind with a sudden pang. He had loved her after his own fashion once upon a time, and had grown weary of her and neglected her after the ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... the towering big Lofty establishment, which occupied half the block, and at the dingy little ladies' tailoring shop, down around the other corner, with speculative curiosity. About both, as widely different as they were, there was the same indefinable appearance of prosperity, as if the solid worth from ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... was as difficult to read as Colonel Carter's voice had been. It might have meant pleasure at the thought of rest, or anger, or contempt, or almost anything. It was undefined and indefinable. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... me out of the library, and sat down in a convenient position so that I could scratch it gently behind the ear if I wanted to. I was smoking a pipe that had just reached the right stage of maturity, and, in some indefinable way, made life seem richer and better. Everything was well arranged for the ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... the half-fainting woman as though she alone held the key of the mystery that resulted in Joan's disappearance. His impassioned eyes sought to peer into her very soul, and his nostrils quivered with the frenzied eagerness of one who awaited an answer to the implied question. In some indefinable way he had already begun to suspect the truth; for when the poor woman made no reply, though more than once her terror laden eyes met his in mute appeal, he whirled ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... wood, the laughter and talking before it growing louder. Each grey marksman twitched his cartridge box in place, glanced at his musket, glanced toward his immediate officer. Across the intervals ran an indefinable spark, a bracing, a tension. Some of the men moistened their lips, one or two uttered a little sigh, the hearts of all beat faster. The step had quickened. The trees grew more thinly, came down to a mere bordering fringe of sumach. Cleave motioned to the bugler; ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... it were all herself, or if there really were a peculiar, indefinable constraint in everybody with everybody else. Certainly she felt it, and she thought she saw evidences that the others felt it, too. As for the cause of it all—unhesitatingly she attributed it to that last day at camp with its ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... Pagan. His mind was of decidedly antique structure. He had the virtues of paganism: its sanity, its calmness, and its probity; but of the tenderness of Christianity, and its quenchless aspirations after an indefinable ideal, of that feeling which has incarnated itself in Gothic cathedrals, masses and oratorios, he exhibited but scanty traces. His intellect was above all things self-consistent and incorruptible. He had that imperial good-sense which might have formed the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... It is this indefinable brilliancy, which, in war, in love, in gaming, and in the various stages of a long life, has rendered the Count de Grammont the admiration of his age, and the delight of every country wherein he has displayed his engaging wit, dispensed his generosity and magnificence, or practised his inconstancy: ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... or two amongst those present in the Council room at Westminster that evening, who noted and never forgot a certain indefinable dignity which seemed to come to Stenson's aid and enabled him to face what must have been an unwelcome and anxious ordeal without discomposure or disquiet. He entered the room accompanied by Julian and Phineas Cross, and he had very ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of an indefinable interrogation in Owen's mind made her, as she spoke, fix her eyes steadily ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... a very powerful influence over his destiny, nevertheless. There was a strange fascination in the society of the Austrian widow—a nameless, indefinable charm, which few were able to resist. A bitter experience of vice and folly had robbed Reginald Eversleigh's heart and mind of all youth's freshness and confidence, and for him this woman seemed only what she was, an adventuress, dangerous to ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... great, old hall; there were spacious chambers, and broad stairways; there were panelled corridors; sudden flights of steps that led up, or down again, for no apparent reason; there were broad, and generous hearths, and deep window-seats; and everywhere, within, and without, there lurked an indefinable, old-world charm that was the ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... Bovary been so beautiful as at this period; she had that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances. Her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure, and her ever-young illusions, that had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers grow, gradually developed ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the religion of reason. It is this, but it is also the religion of the soul. It recognises the value of that mystic insight, those indefinable intuitions which, taking up the task at the point where the mind impotently abandons it, carries us straight into the presence of the King. Thus it has found room both for the keen speculator on theological problems ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... his air and attitude; while the abbe gathered himself together, as it were, to be nearer his plate, with his right hand curved inward like the paw of a cat drawing chestnuts from the fire, whilst in every feature was shown enjoyment and an indefinable look of close attention. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... meeting for a moment in honest grief. In some indefinable way, this parting marked the end of ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Hugh Carew began. He was a man uninteresting to look upon, save that his face wore a certain indefinable expression of a man who has been a stranger in many places; a man habituated to loneliness and to silence. But he was evidently a man also accustomed to speak, for he addressed his ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... the immortal whiff, indefinable, of a fine ship just off the high seas, trod the beatified club. A ship, the last abiding place in a mannerless world of good old-fashioned caste, and respect paid upward with due etiquette and discipline through the ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... containing her belongings on the counter and registered. He saw in Kate only a woman peculiarly dressed, with a tanned and not too clean face, dishevelled hair, weary-eyed, and alone at a late hour. He missed altogether the indefinable atmosphere of character and substantiality which a more discerning and experienced person would have ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... An indefinable excitement possessed Linda, accompanied by a sudden acute fear of what Arnaud might say. She wanted more than anything else in life to go quickly, inattentively, past Bailey Sandby and up to her room. Nothing ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of the third afternoon May had completed the best sketch she had ever done. Just as she was putting the finishing stroke to it, a gondola went gliding by, an old and shabby one, and in the tall figure at the stern she recognised Nanni. An indefinable shadow crept over the bright elation of a moment ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... too; so was the bulldog, and, through a certain unconfessed and indefinable vigilance they both felt called upon to exercise in behalf of their beloved ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... manner she was the successful woman of business, but she was the woman of business with something added. Though she spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, her voice had a vibrating quality; though she wore only the plainest clothes, her grace, her good-breeding, her indefinable ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... a subtle, indefinable malaise began to take possession of him. I once saw a very young foal trying to eat some most objectionable refuse, and unable to make up its mind whether it was good or no. Clearly it wanted to be told. If its mother had seen what it was doing she ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... could not see each other in the gloom, she knew his lips sought hers. By an indefinable instinct she turned from him twice before their lips met in a long kiss of passion and content. They kissed each other again before he drew her down beside him on the garden ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... future. She saw in a dream, a grave, venerable-looking man, dressed like an ecclesiastic, standing silently before her. The form and features of the man, who was not then known to her, remained distinctly imprinted on her imagination, and she had an indefinable inspiration that he was to be in some way connected with the work for which God intended her. She related the dream to some of her friends, and three days afterwards M. de Maisonneuve arrived at Troyes. He called at the Convent, when as usual the subject ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... Presently she saw them, the lower ones: the waters of the little stream beside her broke the black bonds of ice and raced over the rapids; the engine was puffing and groaning on the grade. Then the sun crept out, slowly, from the indefinable margin of vapor that hung massed over the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to be exact we mention, as this particular author seems to have done, that she had an "elusive expression," or a penetrating fragrance. Or we say that she moved, the centre of an indefinable nuance. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... silence for some little while, my heart full of joy at being so near to her, and the friendliness which she evinced for me, and my mind casting o'er my joyous heart a cloud of some indefinable evil presage. ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... with a sense of satisfaction that he viewed the affair with such abhorrence. For, much as she liked George, her hesitation to become his wife and renounce the bachelor-girl career to which, since her last birthday—her twenty-fifth—she had felt herself committed, was a sort of indefinable suspicion as to the real integrity of his standards. He was an excellent talker, of course; his ideals of public life and private ethics, as expressed in drawing-rooms, or during pleasant dialogues when they were alone together, were exemplary. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... have given the world to know what lay behind the teeming word at which Jasper hesitated; but the indefinable and controlling sense of womanly diffidence made her suppress her curiosity. She waited in silence for him to explain his ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... surface, that I should hesitate to tell it, were it not for its Inwardness, what one might call the symbolism of the thing. Frankly, I do not clearly see what that symbolism is, but I feel it hovering in some indefinable way whenever I recall his case. It is one of those things that make a man extend his arm and twiddle his fingers, and say, blinking, "Like that, you know." So do not imagine for one moment that this is a shallow story, simply because it is painted, so to speak, not ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... hangers-on telling of a flight upward on a fiery chariot, as well as a predicted disappearance and reappearance after three days. Such were the stories being gulped down by the thousands who still clung with an indefinable fascination to the memory of the charlatan. Meantime the soldier Wilkes had died of his injuries, and the coroner's inquiry was to ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... pleasure or pain, for while his posteriors were of a burning heat, the warmth flew to the opposite part, which was so deliciously clasped in the doctor's caressing hand. He ground his teeth with pleasure and pain, he ceased to cry out, but sobbed and moaned with the excess of indefinable feelings. The doctor never ceased lecturing him, dwelling continually on the beauties of his lovely young cousin and the scene in the arbour. He thought but of her, of her lovely pink little slit so sweetly shaded with soft downy short curls; how she had so charmingly ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... all this, there was a mysterious and indefinable sentiment with which Dionysia had inspired him; for he had succumbed to her charms, like everybody else. It was not love, for he who says love says hope; and he knew perfectly well that altogether and forever Dionysia belonged to Jacques. It was a sweet and all-powerful sentiment, which made him ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... little something of the commencement of the larger life of the awakened soul might be conveyed before they themselves experience it. The lovers of nature, of music, of the beautiful and romantic, and of poetry: in the highest moments reached by such they are aware of an indefinable Something—an expansion, a going out towards, a longing—yearning, subtly composed of both joy and pain, which goes beyond the earth, beyond the music, beyond the poetry, beyond the beautiful into a Nameless Bourne. ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... caught but a glimpse of her face. There was in it, and particularly in her eyes,—which, perhaps, on account of her dramatic cultivation, had the faculty of concentrating in a wonderful manner the most powerful as well as the most indefinable expressions,—a peculiar light, which then I did not understand, but afterwards, oh, too well. Fool, fool, that I was, after all my anxious scrutiny of her moods through two years of intensest agony, not to understand this one. The alchemist, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... become acutely aware on making his acquaintance, is that he is a Londoner. "Nearly a pure-blooded London Saxon" is his characterization of himself. And so it is. He could have sprung from no other stock. In person and speech, in the indefinable quality of the man, in the humour which continually tempers his tremendous seriousness, he belongs to London. Among the men of our time who have done creative writing I can think of no other about whom this can ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... world was talking about, and who had answered the King's mandate with a bland refusal to obey. Joan charmed them every one with her sweetness and simplicity and unconscious eloquence, and all the best and capablest among them recognized that there was an indefinable something about her that testified that she was not made of common clay, that she was built on a grander plan than the mass of mankind, and moved on a loftier plane. These spread her fame. She always made friends and advocates that way; neither the high nor the low ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the novels, Scott has given a very full account of the genesis of Waverley. These introductions, written before the final inroad had been made on his powers by the united strength of physical and moral misfortune, animated at once by the last glow of those powers, and by the indefinable charm of a fond retrospection, displaying every faculty in autumn luxuriance, are so delightful that they sometimes seem to be the very cream and essence of his literary work in prose. Indeed, I have always wondered why they have ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... sunny rooms, tastefully furnished, with the usual French lavishness in mirrors and clocks,—all for two hundred francs a month, which was hardly more than they had paid for the dreary Grosvenor Street lodgings in London. Mrs. Browning was very responsive to that indefinable exhilaration of atmosphere that pervades the French capital, and the little Penini was charmed with the gayety and brightness. Mrs. Browning enjoyed the restaurant dining, a la carte, "and mixing up one's dinner with heaps of newspapers, and the 'solution' ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... is not so important?" said Louise, raising her head, and looking towards the hall with some uneasy but indefinable feminine instinct. ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... up at the beautiful face in a conflict of emotions, among which the tears that name awakened, struggled for a moment with surprise, interest, admiration, and an indefinable sort of fear. Then she cried out, 'Oh, Papa, may you be happy! may you be very, very happy all your life!' and then fell weeping ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... this, along with the portentous change, rather felt than visible, in mademoiselle's conduct toward her, invested the beautiful Frenchwoman, in the eyes of her former friend and patroness, with an indefinable character that was not only repulsive ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... an event of the most tremendous import—one that must shake the earth to its centre. The reason of the onlooker may rebel against this portentous version, yet he is dominated all the same, is overwhelmed with something of the indefinable awe that has seized upon the bystanders who are witnesses of ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... forty miles at least from the base of Ararat, the magnitude of the mountain, of about the centre of which our elevated position now placed us abreast, caused it to appear contiguous to our route, and produced that indefinable thrill and sense of humility which the immediate presence of any vast and overpowering object is so eminently calculated to generate. I continued to gaze until the decline of day warned us to seek ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... he is making war, and we are on terms of war, and more or less bound by them. At least, that is one's general notion. But who can tell? The ethical boundaries, and the borders of honour, are indefinable and intangible." ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... They were convictions, maintained and defended by the supreme logic of passion. That penetrating fire ran in and roused those primary instincts that make their lair in the dens and caverns of the mind. What is called the great popular heart was awakened, that indefinable something which may be, according to circumstances, the highest reason or the most brutish unreason. But enthusiasm, once cold, can never be warmed over into anything better than cant,—and phrases, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... that much for granted. Herbert Spencer no doubt talked of the unknown and unknowable, but not in this sense as an element of inexactness running through all things. He thought, it seems to me, of the unknown as the indefinable Beyond of an immediate world that might be quite ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... and listening to the brief colloquies he had with other men at Jonah Winch's store, when she went there to buy things for the parsonage; and it seemed to her that Jock had not been altogether wrong, and that there was in the man an indefinable but very compelling force. And when a woman begins to admit that a man has force, her curiosity usually increases. On one or two of these occasions Cynthia had been startled to find his eyes fixed upon her, and though the feeling she had was closely akin to fear, she found something distinctly ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... first time I felt that, with Evelyn Howard, something indefinable had gone from the atmosphere. Her presence had spelt security. Now that security was removed—and the air seemed rife with suspicion. The sinister face of Dr. Bauerstein recurred to me unpleasantly. A vague suspicion of every one and everything filled my mind. Just for a moment I had a premonition ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... afterward an added firmness in the repose of the lips. Immada moved a step forward. She looked at Lingard with terror in her black and dilated eyes. She exclaimed in a voice whose vibration startled the hearts of all the hearers with an indefinable sense of alarm, "He will perish, ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... of a certain poverty-stricken nobleman had driven a car. This young Mitchell was exceptionally good-looking in a nice, boyish, fresh-faced way, and she saw in his manner a youthful reflection of the courtliness which distinguished Mr. Chadwick Champneys. He had a great deal of that indefinable something we call charm, and before she knew it Mrs. MacGregor was won over to him, and looked upon his presence as a distinct addition to ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... and fallen almost immediately into a peaceful sleep, from which I awoke with that indefinable sense of peril which is, I think, a common experience in that other, earlier life. Of its unmeaning character, too, I was entirely persuaded, yet that did not banish it. My husband, Joel Hetman, was away from home; the servants slept in another part of the house. But these were familiar conditions; ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... While this may be disputed, nobody can fail to see some truth in Adams's assertion. Hay had not only the manners of a gentleman, but also the special carriage of a diplomat. He was polite, affable, and usually accessible, without ever losing his innate dignity. An indefinable reserve warded off those who would either presume or indulge in undue familiarity His quick wits kept him always on his guard. His main defect was his unwillingness to regard the Senate as having a right to pass judgment on his treaties. And instead of being compliant and ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... to speak. The note of sympathy in her voice allured him, and sympathy was to him as drink to one who perishes of thirst. A passionate, indefinable longing impelled him to pour out the story that in Worcester he had related unto Kenneth, and thus to set himself better in her eyes; to have her realize indeed that if he was come so low it was more the fault of others than his own. The ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... of dirty trucks stopped with an abrupt jerk and noisy jarring of impact. Then it came! Grumbles ceased as if by common consent. There was something indefinable but pregnant, and in tense silence ears were strained intently. Was it only the rumble of a distant cart on hard cobbles or...? Faintly over the damp air came a long, insistent murmur. ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... slow steps was returning to his solitude, the very picture of melancholy, and each time I saw him—as the plain was wide and clear of obstructions—I felt my eyes stream, and my heart swell with a vague, indefinable feeling of ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... splendidly. It was jubilant, did not contain a single minor note of apology and the country will visualize you at the head of the column. You know this country, and every country, wants a man to lead it of whom it is proud, not because of his talent but because of his personality,—that which is as indefinable as charm in a woman, and I want to see your personality known to the American people, just as well as we know it who sit around the Cabinet table. Your speech glows with it, and that is why it gives me such joy that I can't ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... evening dress toward us. It was like a lantern-picture thrown upon a screen. There were only the pair of them, but the table was brilliant with silver and gay with flowers, and the maid waited with the indefinable air of a good servant. It certainly seemed a ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... but he did not particularly affect the society of Henry Dunbar. The millionaire was very courteous, very conciliating: but there was something in his stiff politeness, his studied smile, his deliberate speech, something entirely vague and indefinable, which had the same chilly effect upon Sir Philip's friendliness, as a cold cellar has on delicate-flavoured port. The subtle aroma vanished under ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was of that peculiar quality that foretells the twilight. Something of its mysterious and significant solemnity had imparted itself to the man's mood. In the spiritual, as in the material world, are signs and presages of night. Rarely meeting her look, and whenever he did so conscious of the indefinable dread with which, despite their feline beauty, her eyes always affected him, Jenner Brading listened in silence to the story told by Irene Marlowe. In deference to the reader's possible prejudice against the artless method of an unpractised historian the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... women were shut up in harems and wore veils if they stirred out of doors? Such customs could scarcely make a whole country mysterious. But now, though he had not yet landed, he knew that he would be compelled to acknowledge the indefinable mystery at which he had sneered. Already he fancied an elusive influence, like the touch of a ghost. It was in the pulsing azure of the sky; in the wild forms of the Atlas and far Kabyle mountains stretching into vague, pale distances; in the ivory white of the low-domed roofs that gleamed ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... description is more often introduced than either argument or exposition, it follows that the writer of fiction must always reckon with the factor of style. It is true that stories may be written without style; it is even true that many of the greatest stories have been devoid of this indefinable quality: but it is not therefore logical to argue that the factor of style may be neglected. How much it may be made to contribute to the attainment of the aim of fiction will be recognized instinctively upon examination of ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... curved sori of youth to become straightened and even confluent with age, although such changes are rather unreliable. Possibly the suggestion of the poetic Davenport may be helpful to some that there is "An indefinable charm about the various forms of the lady fern, which soon enables one to know it from its peculiarly graceful motion by merely gently swaying a frond in the hand." Spores ripen ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... his own long, thin legs. Possibly no boy ever had hair of such a homely red. Certainly few could have been found with bigger freckles. But it was his eyes which accented the plainness of his features. You know the color of a ripe gooseberry, that indefinable faint purplish ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... his pen to describe a campaign, or any great historic scene, we feel that we shall have something worthy of the occasion, that we shall be carried swiftly and grandly through it all, without the suspicion of a breakdown of any kind being possible. An indefinable stamp of weightiness is impressed on Gibbon's writing; he has a baritone manliness which banishes everything small, trivial, or weak. When he is eloquent (and it should be remembered to his credit that he never affects eloquence, though he occasionally ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... what a name ought to be. As the characteristic quality depends upon a hundred indefinable, subconscious associations, it is clearly impossible to suggest any principle of choice. The only general rule that can be laid down is that the key of the nomenclature, so to speak, may rightly vary with the key of the play—that farcical names are, within ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... sanction, being applicable to numberless cases which that sanction does not, and, in fact, cannot reach; secondly, the legal sanction, even in those cases which it reaches, is greatly reinforced by the social sanction, which adds the pains arising from an evil reputation, and all the indefinable social inconveniences which an evil reputation brings with it, to the actual penalties inflicted by ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... closed the door. A faint perfume stole to my nostrils—a vague, elusive breath of the East, reminiscent of strange days that, now, seemed to belong to a remote past. Karamaneh! that faint, indefinable perfume was part of her dainty personality; it may appear absurd—impossible—but many and many a time ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... sleep. Her fortitude nearly deserted her. The tears had their way. She lay curled in her seat, a wretched, disconsolate little heap, when a brown-bearded man, muffled in furs, entered, flashing the light of his lantern here and there, eagerly scrutinizing the faces. He paused at Ruey's seat, an indefinable something attracting him, though the face was covered by two hands. Suddenly she looked up, and there were Philip's dear eyes gazing into hers. No questions were asked or answered just then. She was gathered in his arms for an instant; then he wrapped her in blankets, brought ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... brick, which still subsist. It was not until after the conquest of Sicily that the Romans for the first time made use of marble for their monuments; but it is sufficient to behold places where great actions have occurred, to experience an indefinable emotion. It is to this disposition of the soul that we must attribute the religious power of pilgrimages. Celebrated countries of every kind, even when stripped of their great men and of their monuments, preserve their effect ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... friends, his sister among them, is journeying to the north. A hope of meeting them—scarce acknowledged as an intention—spurs you on. The eye rests dreamily and vaguely on the beauties that appear at every turn: they are beauties that charm you, and charm you the more by an indefinable association with that fairy object that floats before you, half unknown, and wholly unclaimed. The quiet towns with their noonday stillness, the out-lying mansions with their stately splendor, the bustling cities with their mocking din, and the long ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... her cause, he was a little surprised to notice an indefinable but evident change in the rustic beauty's manner. Perhaps she disliked to hear a stranger accuse her father—however truly—of horribly bad taste, but this did not occur to Ferdinand, who had intended to show her that a gentleman was certain to sympathize ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... Jim Blake sold his farm, and took his family to New Mexico. He had not been prospering in the valley, and things had gone from bad to worse. Pan did not get home in time to say good-by to Lucy—something that hurt in an indefinable way. He had not forgotten Lucy for in his mind she had become a steadfast factor in his home life. She left a little note of farewell, simple and loyal, hopeful, yet somehow stultified. Not so childish as former notes! Time flew by and Lucy might be ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... the moisture from his eyes. The glare from the unprotected boulevards was terrific. Under these somewhat unfavourable conditions he was occupied in studying the monument of Egypt's past magnificence when he felt a slight dragging sensation. It was indefinable and had no visual concomitant. But it was as though the brakes were being gently applied to a Pullman train. He was the only human being in the neighbourhood; not even a policeman was visible; and the experience gave him a creepy feeling. Then to his amazement ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... awoke, he was for some time in a sort of stupor. Through the bright sunlight that filled his room he seemed to scent the fumes of tobacco and of liquor. The place was filled, he imagined, with that indefinable aroma that proceeds from a convivial company made up of both sexes. He half believed that Jennie Pelham and Mrs. Delavan were sitting by his bed, more brazen than the bell which, from a neighboring steeple, ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... individual through the need which he feels of uniting himself with another individual of the same species, but who is a polar opposite to him, in order to preserve the two in a new individual. The blood rushes more vigorously; the muscular strength becomes more easily roused into activity; an indefinable impulse, a sweet melancholy takes possession of the being. This period demands a special ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... desk of the Special Reports Officer. The SR Officer was a lieutenant also, a combination of psychologist and writer, whose business it was to make sure that Special Reports on morale matters were presented in the properly dramatic fashion so that that indefinable aura of reality, customarily omitted from official historical documents, could be included. The Evaluation Division, back on Earth, was ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... some brilliant shrubbery which seemed to light up the whole picture with the effect of a sweet and melancholy smile. I felt as if spirits were there,—or as if these shrubs had a spiritual life. In short, the impression was indefinable; and, after gazing and musing a good while, I retraced my steps through the Irish hamlet, and ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... grammatical phrase which covers in turn a whole series of contributors. But any writer in a paper, however free a course may be conceded to him, finds as a fact that the 'we' means something very real and potent. As soon as he puts on the mantle, he finds that an indefinable change has come over his whole method of thinking and expressing himself. He is no longer an individual but the mouthpiece of an oracle. He catches some infection of style, and feels that although he may believe what he says, it is not the independent outcome of his own ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... other great preachers of our denomination,—Dr. Channing, for example, Dr. Nichols, and Dr. Walker,—he spoke as one standing within the all-encompassing and divine presence. He awakened in us a sense of that august and indefinable influence from which all that is holiest and best must come. He brought us into communication with that Light of life. He showed us how our lives, our thoughts, and even our every-day acts, may be sanctified and inspired by it, as every plant and tree is not only illuminated by ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... I would have cried my eyes out with disappointment if Ida had come home with bad news," returned the pretty girl in a plaintive tone which impressed Grace with a curiously uncomfortable feeling that this attractive young woman would have done nothing of the sort. There was that indefinable something about her that contradicted, flatly, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... describes his ideal in poetry, although it is not his own verse of which he is speaking. He described—in 1845, when his ripe genius had just brought forth "The Raven"—the poetic faculty as producing "a sense of dreamy, wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight." This shadowy but absorbing and mastering pleasure impregnated his own best writings to such a degree that it gives us the measure of his unlikeness to his contemporaries, and states the claim of his individuality. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... police patrol the tropical forests. But consider the legends on a chart even of the North Sea, of the world beneath the fathoms—the Silver Pits, the Dowsing Ground, the Leman Bank, the Great Fisher Ground, the Horn Reef, the Witch Ground, and the Great Dogger Bank! Strange, that indefinable implication of a word! I remember that, when a child, I was awake one night listening to a grandfather's clock talking quietly to itself in its long box, and a brother sat up in bed and whispered: "Look, the Star in the East." I turned, and one bright eye of the night ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... with Luisina. I was in no haste to let her go. Her presence pleased me in some subtle, quite indefinable manner; and my sense of beauty, which, always strong, had hitherto lain dormant within me, was awake at last and was finding nourishment ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... change in her? The vicar perceived something indefinable; and before they had walked half the distance to the road he had forgotten his own grievance. She looked ill. Janet Leighton, meeting him in the village a few days before, had talked of her partner as "done up." Was it the excitement of falling in love?—combined ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her big, wondering eyes, her shy, hesitating French and childish curiosity, in some indefinable way gave back to Diana the self-control that had slipped from her. Her pride reasserted itself, rigidly suppressing any sign of feeling or emotion that could be noticed by the gentle, inquisitive eyes ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... Nancy was the prey to indefinable anxieties and vague forebodings. Everybody had noticed her sadness. Mr. Campbell had spoken of it with concern and had promised to take them all on another ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... even more notice than the limb of the law; a gigantic, well-groomed man, with keen, close-set eyes, and that indefinable easy movement and polished bearing that come from confidence, health, and travel. Unlike the others, he did not dally on the beach nor display much interest in his surroundings; but, with purposeful frown strode through the press, up ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... if he would give her their names, she would save him the trouble. For, despite his affability, there was something about him she distrusted and disliked,—an indefinable air of insincerity, and a look out of his eyes ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... entering the Finnish harbour of Helsingfors were very pleasing; there was a certain indefinable charm about the scene as we passed in and out among the thickly-wooded islands, or dived between those strong but almost hidden fortifications of which the Russians are so proud. Once having passed these impregnable mysteries, we found ourselves in more open water, and before ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... other was no less indicative of coldness. Fair, even to paleness, were her cheek and forehead, which wore an appearance of almost marble immobility, save when, in moments of oft recurring abstraction, a slight but marked contraction of the brow betrayed the existence of a feeling, indefinable indeed by the observer, but certainly unallied to softness. Still was she beautiful—coldly, classically, beautiful—eminently calculated to inspire passion, but seemingly ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... constituents for the final struggle between Freedom and Despotism. He obtained a furlough to go home and mount the stump for the Union. He was about to set out, his private secretary was ready, and the carriage waiting at the gateway, when an indefinable feeling took possession of him, holding him back, and warning him of coming danger. It would not be shaken off, and reluctantly he postponed the journey till the morrow. Before the morrow facts were developed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Even at the moment he had swallowed the poison the motive prompting him to it had been so intensely material that it had started but the most momentary questions. It was the thought of Mrs. Wentworth, the sight of the baby, the indefinable boundaries of his own love—it was love that pressed the question in upon him. Now the other extreme embodied in the sight of the man before him, capped by the acute query of what the sin of murder might mean, sharpened it to a real concern. If such love as ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the most welcome of all refreshments. She wore a smartly cut tweed coat and skirt, and a soft felt hat with a pheasant's wing, and her brown shoes looked quite preposterously small and bright. In some indefinable way she looked older and more responsible than the Pixie of two years before, and Stephen noticed the change and ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... became more fully aroused, an indefinable terror struck to his heart. At all costs he must take some action. He rose suddenly to his feet but before he reached his full height his head struck the roof. The blow was so violent that he fell back again in ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... of incipient but ill-understood classicism that belongs the only work of Domenico Neroni—at least the only work still extant nowadays—which possesses, over and above its artistic or scientific merit, that indefinable quality which we must simply call charm; to this time, with the one exception of the famous woodcuts done for Filarete. Domenico began about this time, and probably under the stress of necessity, to make frontispieces for the books with which Florentine ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... did not endeavor to relieve himself by separating himself from that infinite; but, knowing he was a part of the whole, not divisible from the remainder, he was content to aim at perfecting his knowledge of existence rather than at dogmatising upon an indefinable word, which, if it represented anything, professed to represent an incomprehensible existence far ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... gorgeous of person and attire. He was dressed in a suit of black cloth. A long coat was buttoned close around his tall and robust form. He was dead black, from his shiny top hat to his not less shiny boots, and about him there was the indefinable air of distinction. He stood looking about the platform for a moment, and then stepped briskly and decisively toward the group that was staring at him with wide eyes. There was no hesitation in that step. He walked as a man walks who is not in the ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... old bachelor, confounded the village gossips by bringing home a young bride. The birth of a son and heir was the nephew's undoing. While the uncle regarded Stephen with undiminished affection, he was now much more emphatically in loco parentis. An indefinable something had come between them. The subtle change in relationship was brought home to both when Stephen proposed that he should go to the academy in Brandon, to prepare for college. That he was to go to college, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... vision into the actuality of the hour and who also exalts this actuality of the hour to the universality of the vision. In the creation of portrait busts and of the statues and monumental memorials of great men he infuses into them the indefinable quality of extended relation which relegates his work to the realm of the universal and, therefore, to the immortality of art, rather than restricting it to the temporal locality. Louis Gorse observes that it is not the absence of faults ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... "An indefinable something tells me," she announced coldly, "that henceforth you needn't be so DRASTICALLY fearful of being dragged to the chateau for dinner, nor ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... directions, they came into Union Street, and without further mishap gained the Hill. From the brow they looked down into the Pit, whence arose that steady, indefinable hum which comes ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... astonishment I gave him provoked the first and only sneer I have ever seen on his face. What was I to say—what could I say, in response to such a declaration, following so immediately upon his warm assertion of her innocence? Nothing. With that indefinable chill between us, which had come I know not how, I ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... kills us, without deepening the shadows that surround us. But where is the man who has lived who will deny woman's power over us, if he has ever taken leave of a beautiful dancer with trembling hands. If he has ever felt that indefinable enervating magnetism which, in the midst of the dance, under the influence of the sound of music, and the warmth that makes all else seem cold, that comes from a young woman, that electrifies her and leaps from her to him as the perfume of aloes from the swinging censer? I was struck with ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... is one of a great personality, strong in purpose, deep in feeling, open always to the highest inspirations, a certain indefinable something gets into his pages that makes them breathe forth a vital, living power, a power so great that each reader gets the same inspirations as those that spoke through the author. That that's written between the lines is many ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... i.e., does not originate or proceed from Him, but has its source in the world itself. We might reverse this proposition and say: "All that does not emanate from the Father, which you cannot trace back to His purpose in creation, is that mysterious indefinable influence or spirit which makes the world." The world, in this sense, is not primarily a thing, or a collection of people, but a spiritual influence poured out into the very atmosphere of ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... geological time rises before the student of this, as of all other, fragments of the history of our earth—springing irrepressibly out of the facts, like the Djin from the jar which the fisherman so incautiously opened; and like the Djin again, being vaporous, shifting, and indefinable, but unmistakably gigantic. However modest the bases of one's calculation may be, the minimum of time assignable to the ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... atmosphere was that of a great conservatory. A dozen tropical growths mingled their odors into an indefinable whole; and the effect was akin to that of a subtle exotic drug, lulling the senses, filling the whole being with a languor, a relaxation, a pleasant enervation which it seemed well not to throw off. Outside on the prairie the sun burned harshly; within, the scented shadows shielded ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... watching it, taking it all in, as though he had never seen it before. A policeman on point duty eyed him curiously, yet with no hint of suspicion. Most men, and practically every woman, remembered Jimmy's face when they met him a second time. He was not handsome, far from it; but, in some indefinable way, his grey eyes suggested sympathy, whilst the poise of his head spoke of ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... the extremest boundary of the buildings in the suburbs. Before him lay an uninterrupted prospect of smooth, shining fields, and soft, hazy, indefinable woods. At one side of him were some vineyards and cottage gardens; at the other was a solitary house, the outermost of all the abodes in his immediate vicinity. Dark and cheerless as it was, he regarded it for some time with the mechanical attention of a man more occupied in thought ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... spoke in the West of England dialect; but whenever he became interested, this instantly slipped from him, as did his still more ineffective attempt to move and act the rustic. Indeed, the ease of his movements and the straightness of his carriage, with a certain indefinable precision of manner, led to a common agreement among his fellow-labourers that he had earlier in life accepted the king's shilling. Granting him to be but one and twenty years of age, as his covenant stated, and as ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... families, but the mother was tender-hearted, and had a poor memory for sins that were past, and Friedrich saw her fill one shoe after another with cakes and sweetmeats. At last she came to his, and then she stopped. He lifted up his head, and an indefinable fury surged in his heart. He had been very tiresome since the ballad was begun; was she going to put rods into his shoes only? His! He could have borne anything but this. Meanwhile, she was fumbling in the basket; and, at last, pulled out—not ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... been almost painful. In one sense these people were to her simply a means to an end. She cared so little for them that she was not afraid, and had merely to acquire the ease which results from usage. Diffidence soon passed into a shy grace that was indefinable and yet became a recognized trait. The least approach to loudness and aggressiveness in manner was not only impossible to her, but she also possessed the refinement and tact of which only extremely sensitive natures are capable. A vain, selfish woman is so preoccupied with herself that she does ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... power of research. In him what mines of instruction, what sources of undiscovered delight, what philosophy yet to be grappled with, to be laid to the heart! Charles Lamb has with a quaint melancholy depicted the pain of parting from his books, and from the indefinable delights laid up in each dear folio. Yet after all, what is the literature of one age but the reproduction, the remoulding, the condensation of the literature of another; the loss and destruction of its waste ore, but the re-setting of its gems, and the renewed investiture of all ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... wits of these ladies. At first he was inclined thoroughly to sluice himself inwardly. The water was deliciously cool to the outer person on this hot day. But on approaching the bucket to his mouth there was an indefinable nauseating something about it that made him hesitate. Again he tried to drink. Decidedly it was bad, this water; offensive for drinking. With a sigh he diverted the stream from his gullet to his ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... roasted like sweet potatoes when these trees catch," returned the sheriff grimly. "No." Even as he spoke, a dropping rain of fire spattered through the leaves from a splintered redwood, before overlooked, that was now blazing fiercely in the upper wind. A vague and indefinable terror was in the air. The conflagration no longer seemed to obey any rule of direction. The incendiary torch had passed invisibly everywhere. They scrambled out of the hollow, and ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... dismissal with an indefinable air of irony, and Joe went unhappily out of his office. He telephoned his father at length. His father did not share Joe's disappointment at being removed to a place of safety. He undertook to begin the castings for an entire new set of ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... please," Bertram put in, half-pleadingly, it is true, but still with that same ineffable and indefinable air of a great gentleman that never for a moment deserted him. "The duke would never have heard of my ancestors, I'm sure, and I particularly don't want to be mixed up with the ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... odds on the main point at issue, that he had as yet no intention of sharing his solitude with her for any length of time. As the days went by she perceived something else. She was not long in discovering that he was extremely poor, and she became aware in some indefinable wise that he held existence very cheap. Had her penetration been guided by a form of experience which she happily lacked, she might have suspected still another factor in the situation which had an unacknowledged influence ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... everything, for some purpose or some effect on his sinful associate. Do you know that he is so like in every lineament, look, and gesture, that, against the clearest light of reason, I cannot in my mind separate the one from the other, and have a certain indefinable expression on my mind that they are one and the same being, or that the one was a ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... from my hands as I read the last words, and a tumultuous rush of feelings made my heart throb with indefinable emotion. In my most sanguine moments I had not perhaps anticipated so favourable an answer, nor hoped that Henry would have exerted himself so earnestly in my behalf; and yet I felt more afraid ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... shafts went true. Moreover, although harboring no suspicion of Susan's dissimulation, she instinctively held aloof from her and remained coldly unresponsive. Perhaps in the depths of Susan's past lurked something indefinable which threw its shadow between them, an inscrutable impediment; and her inability to penetrate the young actress' reserve, however she might wound her, awakened Susan's resentment. But she was too world-wise to display her irritation. She even smiled sweetly now, as confidante ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... with the crocheted coverlets. It is a curious thing about rooms. There was no change in the bedroom apparent to the eye, save that for Marie's tiny slippers at the foot of the wardrobe there were Mrs. Boyer's substantial house shoes. But in some indefinable way the room had changed. About it hung an atmosphere of solid respectability, of impeccable purity that soothed Mrs. Boyer's ruffled virtue into peace. Is it any wonder that there is a theory to the effect that things take on the essential qualities of people who ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... disguising the grim determination of lips and jaw, and the face somehow conveyed an impression of transparency, almost of light, so delicately were the features refined away. On the fine forehead was that indefinable touch of peace that comes from identifying the mind with what is permanent in the soul, and letting the impermanent slip by without power to wound or distress; while, from his manner,—so gentle, quiet, sympathetic,—few could have guessed the strength of purpose ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... indefinable, unmistakably Gallic flavor or piquancy savors the life of the people; it disappears only when they cease to be their own natural selves. A woman novelist, American by birth, but a resident of several years in Paris, told me a story ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... composure belonging to unconscious youth—no fidgeting or fussing—modest, unassertive—his big brown eyes under their heavy lashes studying everything about him, his face brightening when you addressed him. I discovered, too, a certain indefinable charm which won me to him at once. Perhaps it was his youth; perhaps it was a certain honest directness, together with a total lack of all affectation that appealed to me, but certain it is that not many minutes ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... king, my old master, must be relieved.' That when all is done will be found to contain some hints as to the manner in which 'charities' of this kind have need to be managed, under a government armed with powers so indefinable. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the Nibelungs and Volsungs, of Sigurd and of Siegfried,—whether we follow the older versions or the mote recent renderings,—there is, as it were, an ever-present but indefinable shadow of coming fate, "a low, inarticulate voice of Doom," foretelling the inevitable. This is but in consonance with the general ideas of our Northern ancestors regarding the fatality which shapes and controls every man's life. These ideas are embodied ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... hauteur of manner that distinguished her at the outset of our acquaintance; but if the weather was fine, the wind fair, the men upon their best behaviour—as sometimes happened—in short, if things were going well with me in other respects, she invariably kept me at arm's-length by a certain indefinable, but none the less unmistakable, coolness, indifference, and distance of manner just sufficiently pronounced to suggest a desire to be left to herself. But in proportion as difficulties, anxieties, and vexations ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... of cheer hang in order against the walls or line the worn wooden shelves,—many of them strange in shape and of unconjectured use. Over all, there is that deft, subtle knowledge of place displayed by its busy inmate, a lifelong wontedness to surroundings, indefinable and unconscious, which fascinates us, and which reminds us that the same scene may be to one habituated to it the most iterated of commonplace and to new-comers often alive ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... most people like a fearful spectre—the good as well as the bad—is a very foolish thing? We are taught, from childhood, to look forward to death as the greatest of all calamities; as a change attended by indefinable terrors. Teachers and preachers ring in our ears the same dread chimes, thrilling the strongest nerves and appalling the stoutest hearts. Death is pictured to us as a grim monster; and we shudder as we look at the ghastly apparition. Now, all this comes from what ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... and for a single swiftly passing instant the velvety eyes were deep wells of soberness with an indefinable underdepth of sorrow in them. Griswold had a sudden conviction that for the first time in his knowing of her he was looking into the soul of ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... their hands; all of them trembling like aspen leaves; the chief looked up full in their faces, kneeling on the ground; light seemed to flash from his dark rolling eyes; his body was convulsed all over, as though he was enduring the utmost torture, and with a timorous, yet indefinable expression of countenance, in which all the passions of human nature were strangely blended, he drooped his head, eagerly grasped their proffered hands, and burst into tears. This was a sign of friendship, harmony followed, and war and bloodshed were thought of no more. Peace and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... brother had outlined for her. Sometimes in writing these letters she asked Dorothy to sit beside her and would frequently look at the girl as if she were studying her features or her manner. At such time Dolly felt a little awkward and perplexed, yet always, in some indefinable manner, as if this scrutiny were for her own good. Then Auntie Lu would laugh and call the girl her "Inspiration," and write ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... thick, insensible glove absorbed the kindly pressure and the warmth. When little Pansie was the companion of his walk, her childish gayety and freedom did not avail to bring him into closer relationship with men, but seemed to follow him into that region of indefinable remoteness, that dismal Fairy-Land of aged fancy, into which old Grandsir Dolliver had ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gazing out; above the impenetrable, velvety dark of the western range the stars gleamed like drops of water. He felt unsettled, ill at ease; dissatisfaction irked his thoughts and emotions. His unrest was without tangible features; it permeated him from an undivined cause, oppressed him with indefinable longing. He got, he dimly realized, but a limited amount of satisfaction from the money now at his command. He was totally without financial instinct—money for itself, the abstraction, was beyond his comprehension. He had bought ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... for a quiet dinner at which there was much good talk, and after which Sue and Sam sat for half the night, continuing some vein of thought brought to them. Among the people who came to them, Sam shone resplendent. In some indefinable way he thought they paid court to him and the thought flattered him immensely. The college professor who had talked brilliantly through an evening turned to Sam for approval of his conclusions, a writer of tales ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... rain had ceased; overhead the clouds, without form or colour, seemed to conceal that latent light that could not be explained; the eye could see clearly, yet one was still conscious of the night; this dimness was all of an indefinable hue. ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... such a substitution may be unconsciously made, but to express a religious life which cannot be expressed without the aid of aesthetic symbols. The work of the intellect is to analyze and define. But the infinite is in the nature of the case indefinable, and it is with the infinite religion has to do. All that theology can hope to accomplish is to define certain provinces in the illimitable realm of truth; to analyze certain experiences in a life which transcends all complete analysis. The Church must learn to regard not with disfavor or suspicion, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Sangster spoke deliberately now. In spite of his calm assertion that there was no harm in Kettering's visit to Upton House, his anxious eyes had noticed the indefinable something in Kettering's manner towards Christine that had struck Gladys Leighton that first evening. Sangster knew men well, and he knew, without any plainer signs or telling, that it was not the house itself that took Kettering there so often, but the little mistress of the ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... the king, my old master, must be relieved.' That when all is done will be found to contain some hints as to the manner in which 'charities' of this kind have need to be managed, under a government armed with powers so indefinable. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... rush of cool air with which mingled an indefinable perfume, and, like a bird taking momentary rest in the passage, she stood poised on the threshold. A beautiful woman is a tangible enchantment; and fame and fortune had made Katherine Challoner beautiful, roguishly, ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... the wheels. There was something even more than dignity, an indefinable something, a superiority which Fitzgerald's present attitude of ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... came up clearly and distinctly to him, and softened his heart with the indefinable and exquisite pathos of the refrain whenever it is sung by ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... drew me towards her and gave me a warmer kiss than she had ever before bestowed upon me. The contact of her easy lips to mine sent an indefinable thrill through my body which I had never experienced before. In the evening she informed me that she had spoken to Mrs. B—and that the latter had consented that we should sleep together. I was overjoyed at this news and longed for night to come so that ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... ignorant human savage than an elephant, it is also more culpable to kill an elephant than an echinoderm. Many men are both morally and intellectually lower than many quadrupeds, and are, in my opinion, as wholly destitute of that indefinable attribute called soul as all the lower animals commonly are ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... experience; they would soon end, at any rate, and it did not matter whether their remnant of life was dark or bright. But this child had a right to a long stretch of unbroken sunshine. As I stood and looked at her I felt the heart-burning, the indefinable indignation that we feel in the presence of death when it is the young and fair who have died. Here is a miscalculation, a mistake. It ought not ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... warmed nor the imagination awakened by it. In spite of the perfection of the features, or possibly because of this perfection, the whole countenance had a cold look, as cold as the sculpture it suggested; and, though incomparable in pure physical attraction, it lacked the indefinable something which gives life and meaning to such faces as Mayor Packard's, for instance. Yet it was not devoid of expression, nor did it fail to possess a meaning of its own. Indeed, it was the meaning ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... to imagine the position of an old bachelor lying on his bed of pain, seriously ill for the first time in his life. Pons felt that he was alone in the world; the days that he spent by himself were all the longer because he was struggling with the indefinable nausea of a liver complaint which blackens the brightest life. Cut off from all his many interests, the sufferer falls a victim to a kind of nostalgia; he regrets the many sights to be seen for nothing ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... feeling—this indefinable factor exercises a great influence on conception and interpretation. It is much more wonderful than even the march of events, or of fate itself. Everybody knows what attitude (stimmung) is. Everybody has suffered from it, everybody has made some use of it, but nobody can altogether define it. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... trace of the Breton accent nor of any accent which I knew, and yet there was something in it I seemed to have heard before, something quaint and indefinable, like the theme of an ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... indeed come for action, they are ready to make good the bold words spoken at many a town meeting and private chat for weeks past. They have been comrades all their lives, and know each other; and yet now, perhaps, they gaze at one another curiously, conscious of an indefinable change that has come over them, now that death may be marching a ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... little boys, and one of the least happy of young men. He was born with an uncomfortable and awkward and unwieldy character, as some men are born lame, or scrofulous, or dyspeptic. The child of a father over sixty, and of a very young mother; there was in him some indefinable imperfection of nature, some jar of character, or some great want, some original sin of mental constitution, which made him different from other men, disabled him from getting pleasure or profit ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... the hall together, she turned to him, an indefinable smile curving her lips; then, with a little nod, friendly and sweet, she left him standing at the open door of ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... approve these words. There was a silent feeling of agreement manifest among them; their looks responded with that indefinable expression which always follows when a speaker has uttered the thought that has been slumbering in the hearts of his listeners. But Artaban turned to Abgarus with a glow on his ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... but they contented themselves with rising on tiptoe to peer into the room. About them, worn over black cassocks, hung their spotless cottas. Choir boys they were, but on every small countenance was written the indefinable mark of ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... itself almost paralysing. His eyes searched the face of the woman before whom he stood, almost eagerly, as though he were conjuring up to himself pictures of her in some former state and trying to reconcile them with her present appearance. She, on her side, seemed to be realising some secret and indefinable pleasure. The lines of her beautiful mouth, too often, nowadays, weary and drooping, softened into a quiet, almost mysterious smile. Her eyes—very large and wonderful eyes they were—seemed to hold some other vision ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... table was perfect, but in a man's fashion, like the rest of the house. It lacked the atmospheric charm, the otherwise indefinable grace, which a woman's taste gives. It was in fact Elbridge Mavering's taste which had characterised the whole; the daughters simply ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... outward-bound, deep-water American ship. Mr. Jackson looked in vain for the heavy, foreign faces, the greasy canvas jackets and blanket trousers he was accustomed to see. Not that these men seemed to be landsmen—each carried in his face and bearing the indefinable something by which sailors of all races may distinguish each other at a glance from fishermen, tugmen, and deck-hands. They were all young men, and their intelligent faces—blemished more or less with marks ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... perceived with a kind of shock that the heroines of the matrimonial court were real persons, everyday creatures of flesh-and-blood, she thought, again like the rest: 'Ah! But my affair is different from all the others. There is something in it, something indefinable and precious, which ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... he touches. He cannot escape communicating it. He must be content with that silent witness, and not try to let the virtues shout out from his pictures. The fact is, art is essentially a spiritual thing, and its vision is perpetually turned to Ultimates. It is indefinable as spirit is. It perceives in life and nature those indefinable relations of one thing to another which to the religious thinker suggest a master mind in nature—a magician of the beautiful at work from hour to hour, ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... for this purpose is almost equivalent to taking his head; and it is well to guard against this possibility. No doubt also it is vaguely felt that if the hair of one's head should come into the possession of any other person, that person would acquire some indefinable power over one. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... not know that anyone could ever hope to be as beautiful as was she who stood before him. Violet eyes were no deeper—lips no more red—teeth no whiter—nor was the perfect oval of her sun-kissed cheek any the more perfect. Yet, there was something—the indefinable something that marks the transition of a beautiful girl from beautiful girlhood to glorious womanhood.... He felt a strange emptiness within him; it was almost as though he were appalled by ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... Simmons is the idealist who translates his vision into the actuality of the hour and who also exalts this actuality of the hour to the universality of the vision. In the creation of portrait busts and of the statues and monumental memorials of great men he infuses into them the indefinable quality of extended relation which relegates his work to the realm of the universal and, therefore, to the immortality of art, rather than restricting it to the temporal locality. Louis Gorse observes that it is not the absence ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... of their blunder in not retreating on Mezieres during the night; but as yet the consequences were not clear to him; he could not foresee all the disaster that was to result from that fatal error of judgment. Moved by some indefinable instinct of danger, he looked with apprehension on the adjacent heights that commanded the plateau de l'Algerie. If time had not been allowed them to make good their retreat, why had they not backed up against the frontier and occupied those heights ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... to enter the compartment. It was his extraordinary quickness of intuition that made him know this, and the sudden shade that crossed her face when he addressed her. Underneath Mrs. Blake's smooth speeches and charm of manner he had always been conscious of some indefinable antagonism to himself; as he had once told Geraldine, there was no love lost between them. 'In a ladylike way, she certainly hates ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... older people—but with the composure belonging to unconscious youth—no fidgeting or fussing—modest, unassertive—his big brown eyes under their heavy lashes studying everything about him, his face brightening when you addressed him. I discovered, too, a certain indefinable charm which won me to him at once. Perhaps it was his youth; perhaps it was a certain honest directness, together with a total lack of all affectation that appealed to me, but certain it is that not many minutes had passed before I saw ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... forward and closed the door. A faint perfume stole to my nostrils—a vague, elusive breath of the East, reminiscent of strange days that, now, seemed to belong to a remote past. Karamaneh! that faint, indefinable perfume was part of her dainty personality; it may appear absurd—impossible—but many and many a time I had dreamt ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... "Marian Blessington." Whatever its original aspect, the coarse mesh of the reproducing process had blurred it to a vague presentment of the head and shoulders of almost any young woman with fair hair and regular features: only a certain, almost indefinable individuality in the pose of the head remotely ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... note-the full meaning of the admonition which my friend had thus attempted to convey, that admonition, even although it should have revealed a story of disaster the most unspeakable, could not, I am firmly convinced, have imbued my mind with one tithe of the harrowing and yet indefinable horror with which I was inspired by the fragmentary warning thus received. And "blood," too, that word of all words—so rife at all times with mystery, and suffering, and terror—how trebly full of import ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... done, some time elapsed in mutual and profound silence. My friend's thoughts were involved in a mournful and indefinable reverie. From this he at ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... of Mr. Dewey's preaching. In common with other great preachers of our denomination,—Dr. Channing, for example, Dr. Nichols, and Dr. Walker,—he spoke as one standing within the all-encompassing and divine presence. He awakened in us a sense of that august and indefinable influence from which all that is holiest and best must come. He brought us into communication with that Light of life. He showed us how our lives, our thoughts, and even our every-day acts, may be sanctified and inspired by it, as every plant and tree is ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... of the door, swaggering a little. His kpi was cocked defiantly. His legs, in the cavalry boots, showed a faint bend. He unconsciously fell into a sort of indefinable, flat, stumping gait, barely noticeable to one who had never seen it before, but recognizable, instantly, to any one who had ridden the Western ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... State. While this may be disputed, nobody can fail to see some truth in Adams's assertion. Hay had not only the manners of a gentleman, but also the special carriage of a diplomat. He was polite, affable, and usually accessible, without ever losing his innate dignity. An indefinable reserve warded off those who would either presume or indulge in undue familiarity His quick wits kept him always on his guard. His main defect was his unwillingness to regard the Senate as having ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... unscathed to a maturer age. But Nedda had seduced him, partly by the appeal of her touchingly manifest love and admiration, and chiefly by her eyes, through which he seemed to see such a loyal, and loving little soul looking. She had that indefinable something which lovers know that they can never throw away. And he had at once made of her, secretly, the crown of his active romanticism—the lady waiting for the spoils of his lance. Queer is the heart of a boy—strange its blending of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... imposing occasion. Pen and pencil can describe but faintly the majestic order, the admirable regularity, the blaze of diamonds, the beauty of a brilliant illumination, the gorgeous dresses, and above all the noble ease, the indefinable grace, and perfect elegance which have always ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... the door herself, and her woman's eyes took in immediately the creased trousers and the certain slight but indefinable change in him for the better. Also, she was struck by his face. It was almost violent, this health of his, and it seemed to rush out of him and at her in waves of force. She felt the urge again of the desire to lean toward him for warmth, and marvelled ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... rather an early hour they were ushered into the breakfast-room, where were most of the family. Sir Thomas soon appeared, and Maria saw with delight and agitation the introduction of the man she loved to her father. Her sensations were indefinable, and so were they a few minutes afterwards upon hearing Henry Crawford, who had a chair between herself and Tom, ask the latter in an undervoice whether there were any plans for resuming the play after the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... this indefinable brilliancy, which, in war, in love, in gaming, and in the various stages of a long life, has rendered the Count de Grammont the admiration of his age, and the delight of every country wherein he has displayed his engaging wit, dispensed his generosity ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... evening when she had spoken to him, for the first time in her life, of the dismal shadow which rested upon their names, Mary Potter felt that there was an indefinable change in her relation to her son. He seemed suddenly drawn nearer to her, and yet, in some other sense which she could not clearly comprehend, thrust farther away. His manner, always kind and tender, assumed a shade of gentle respect, grateful in itself, yet disturbing, because new ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... find people to whom the beautiful has been a study, and art a world in which they could live, move, and have their being! And yet it was impossible to prevent a shade of deep sadness from resting on all things—a tinge of melancholy. Why?—why this veil of dim and indefinable anguish at sight of whatever is most fair, at hearing whatever is most lovely? Is it the exiled spirit, yearning for its own? Is it the captive, to whom the ray of heaven's own glory comes through the crevice of ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... restless pulses. He was ruminating the full-flavored verdict of culture. Rowland felt an irresistible kindness for him, a mingled sense of his personal charm and his artistic capacity. He had an indefinable attraction—the something divine of unspotted, exuberant, confident youth. The next day was Sunday, and Rowland proposed that they should take a long walk and that Roderick should show him the country. The young man assented gleefully, and in the morning, as Rowland at ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... days I never remember looking at the forests that skirt the horizon without an indefinable questioning as to what lay beyond. It was easy to picture stretches of landscape and quiet homes like our own, but the query was ever the same, what ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various
... flew to the opposite part, which was so deliciously clasped in the doctor's caressing hand. He ground his teeth with pleasure and pain, he ceased to cry out, but sobbed and moaned with the excess of indefinable feelings. The doctor never ceased lecturing him, dwelling continually on the beauties of his lovely young cousin and the scene in the arbour. He thought but of her, of her lovely pink little slit so sweetly shaded with soft downy short curls; how she had so charmingly caressed ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... drew in gasping stridulation like liquid fire in his throat; on, the calm stars of the unemotional universe above his head; on, the wind of the wide prairie lands striking his face with their indefinable sweet scents which even clutching death did not deny his turbulent senses; on, pain in every nerve; on, joints straining and starting in their sockets; on, dragged, whipped, lashed from ditch to ties' end, flung from rocking car to crumbling bank, where jagged rocks cut his face and freed his blood ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... now above the indefinable horizon, looming blood-red through the smoky haze. All objects, even in the middle distance, showed vague and shadowy; but, knowing which way the marauders had taken their prey, we went after them, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... and stared at the white satin scrolls on the wall-paper, and listened for noises. She heard a great many, but they were all mysterious and indefinable, till about ten o'clock. Then she sat straight up in bed and her heart beat fast. She certainly heard sleigh-bells; the sound penetrated even to the dark bedroom. Then came a jarring pounding on the side door. Ann Mary got up, unfastened the bedroom ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... might be," was the widow's reply; not that Mr. Pen ever doubted that he was; and a feeling of indefinable pleasure and self-complacency came over him as he thought over this proposal, and imaged Laura to himself, as his memory remembered her for years past, always fair and open, kindly and pious, cheerful, tender and true. He looked at her with brightening ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... immortal monuments? So far, our Democratic society, (estimating its various strata, in the mass, as one,) possesses nothing—nor have we contributed any characteristic music, the finest tie of nationality—to make up for that glowing, blood-throbbing, religious, social, emotional, artistic, indefinable, indescribably beautiful charm and hold which fused the separate parts of the old feudal societies together, in their wonderful interpenetration, in Europe and Asia, of love, belief, and loyalty, running one way like a living weft—and picturesque ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... be looked upon as a merit appertaining to the authors of the poems. Almost every devout admirer of the old bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions, would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy, wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general handling. This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct to ideality, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... permitted to address either Mrs. Maynard or her daughter on the subject. There are some who seek to be confidential and who cautiously feel their way for an opening, but the mental sparring is vain: there is an indefinable something that tells the intruder, "Thus far, and no farther." Mrs. Maynard is courteous, cordial, and hospitable, Alice sweet and gracious and ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... Clochegourde, conversing by fits and starts. Once in the salon an indefinable uncertainty and dread took possession of us. The count flung himself into an armchair, absorbed in reverie, which his wife, who knew the symptoms of his malady and could foresee an outbreak, was careful not to interrupt. I also kept silence. As she ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... and incisive. He does not waste words or revel in bombastic diffuseness. Every phrase of his narrative is a definite contribution towards the vivification of his realistic effects. His concise, laconic periods are pregnant with deep meaning, and instinct with that indefinable Norse essence which almost eludes the translator—that vague something which specially lends itself to the treatment of weird or ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... three lines removed from it: nor does there seem to be any rule for this, since apparently similar repetitions do not always offend, and may even be agreeable. The relation of the sound to the meaning is indefinable, but in homophones it is blatant; for instance the common expression It is well could not be used in a paragraph where the word well ( well-spring) had occurred. Now, this being so, it is very inconvenient to find the omnipresent words no and ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... apologists are reduced in their endeavours to reconcile antiquarian statements in Scriptures and theologies with the authenticated facts of mental and physical science, are not such as to encourage us to attempt a definition of the Indefinable, or the comprehension of the Infinite within the exiguous limits of human thought and speech. We are too young by some centuries to so much as think about the formulation of ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... dingy, mysterious room was somewhat high, he had no need to lift his voice to the shrill impetuous discord that is said to characterize his speeches in Commons or Lords. He was carried away by some indefinable atmosphere. What it was he scarcely knew. After the dinner he shook hands with people, delivered himself of a number of snappy brusqueries, laughed a good bit and, almost the last to leave the charmed precinct ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... him altogether the air of a man just recovering from some serious illness. That he was a gentleman no one would have doubted for a moment, nor would they have been surprised to hear that he was a great man in the sense of being a peer or something of that kind, for there was that indefinable something in his look and bearing which people call aristocratic, and his manner was calm and assured like that of a well-bred man of the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... not unlike scores of pieces similarly intituled, but it is made significant by its introduction of the theme of Thas in a chastened mood, in the garb of solemn gravity; and the melody of the violin solo, borne up by almost indefinable harmonies, and floated by harp arpeggios, recurs again before the death scene of Thas to delineate her ecstasy and Athanal's despair. Though the intermezzo, thus admirably motived, marks the highest flight of Massenet's genius in this opera, there are many other pages in ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the ingenuous expression of his feelings: in dictating, he pronounced them with that indefinable charm, that was impressed on his words when they ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... above the wall, between two black cypresses, a slender brown Campanile—furthest of all a glimpse of Sabine mountains. The air was heavy with the scent of the roses, with the heat that announced the coming June, with that indefinable meaning and ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... coquette, venturing upon flirtation for the mere excitement of it? The calm self-possession of her nature, her marked pride and strength of character, stamped this as impossible. Honesty and pure, true womanhood were woven into her every word and act; that indefinable something which all men feel and respect was about her like an atmosphere; to doubt her for an instant was beyond my power. Yet she had made me feel I was more to her than a mere friend. I longed to go back, to pour forth those words I had struggled so hard not to ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... Sunnyside oppressed with a homesick longing for Patrick. The two years which had elapsed since his death had blunted the edge of her sorrow—as time inevitably must—but she still missed the shrewd, kindly, worldly-wise old man unspeakably, and just now, thrown back upon herself in some indefinable way by Miles's attitude, her whole heart cried out for ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... he would give her their names, she would save him the trouble. For, despite his affability, there was something about him she distrusted and disliked,—an indefinable air of insincerity, and a look out of his eyes ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... instead of putting it down to their own want of knowledge. The idea is true. Thought is the great power of the Universe. But to make it practically available we must know something of the principles by which it works—that it is not a mere vaporous indefinable influence floating around and subject to no known laws, but that on the contrary, it follows laws as uncompromising as those of mathematics, while at the same time allowing unlimited ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... her for a few moments in silence, his countenance assumed an indefinable expression, and seemed to read in the countenance of the young girl an infinitude of memories and dreams. Finally, completely carried away by a feeling he could not control, he folded Aminta in his arms and clasped her to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... is what a name ought to be. As the characteristic quality depends upon a hundred indefinable, subconscious associations, it is clearly impossible to suggest any principle of choice. The only general rule that can be laid down is that the key of the nomenclature, so to speak, may rightly vary with the key ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... Had such a character as we have endeavoured feebly to sketch, met an individual enveloped in a shapeless cylindrical tube of pale Macintosh—impossible for taste—incapable of pockets—indefinite and indefinable—we question whether he would have regarded him in the light of a maniac, an incendiary, or a foreign spy—whether he would not have handed him immediately over to the exterminators of the law, as a being too depraved, too degraded for human sympathy. And yet—for our prolixity warns us to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... just as well as if she had spoken the words, that she had been on the point of asking him what he was doing in the yellow-striped breeches and scarlet jacket of a Mounted Policeman. Whatever had parted them, she hadn't held it against him. There was an indefinable something in the way she spoke his name and looked at him that told me there was still a soft spot in her heart for the high-headed ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... may search in vain for the "house to let" sign. When no more houses were needed, no more houses were built. This compactness of form, cleanliness, and the elimination to a great extent of the rectangular block, contribute in no small measure to that indefinable suggestion of the Old World—a charm that haunts the memory and ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... will choose an indefinable subject, for he can then set down his theory of what it is; and next, at length, his conception of what it is not—and lo! his paper is covered. Therefore let us follow the prolix and unmapable trail into that ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... entered such a room in my life before. My master had taken me through the show apartments of great houses and palaces, but they were uninhabited, wanted the human touch. It had not occurred to me that men and women could have such wonder as their daily environment, or could invest it with the indefinable charm of intimacy. I turned and looked at Joanna as she sat by the Della Robbia chimney-piece, gracious and distinguished, and Joanna became merged in the Countess de Verneuil, the great lady, as far removed from me as my little bare attic from this treasure ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... dreamed that the mere joy of living would appeal to him as it did now; that the act of breathing, of seeing, of looking on wonders in which his hands had taken no part in the making, would fill him with the indefinable pleasure which had suddenly become his experience. He wondered, as he still stood gazing into the infinity of that other world beyond the Saskatchewan, if romance was really quite dead in him. Always he had laughed ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... customary dispatch. There was something indefinable about his young mistress that made him wish his master were at hand. He made his way to ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... in technical perfection may be laid to their charge, the works of this period are full of the indefinable fascination of promise. They are marked, moreover, by a simplicity and sincerity of purpose, an absence of all ostentation, a conscientious and loving devotion on the part of those who made them. And in many of them we are touched by great ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Stael was anything but beautiful, but she possessed that indefinable something before which mere conventional beauty cowers, commonplace and ashamed. Her hold upon the minds of men was wonderful. They were the creatures of her will, and she shaped careers as if she were omnipotent. Even the Emperor ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Naturforscher, delivered at Leipzig, three years ago, Du Bois-Reymond speaks thus: 'What conceivable connection subsists between definite movements of definite atoms in my brain, on the one hand, and on the other hand such primordial, indefinable, undeniable, facts as these: I feel pain or pleasure; I experience a sweet taste, or smell a rose, or hear an organ, or see something red ... It is absolutely and for ever inconceivable that a number of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... reason did not want to lunch with him, a reason indeed so indefinable that she dismissed it, and Ramage went through the outer office with her, alert and attentive, to the vivid interest of the three clerks. The three clerks fought for the only window, and saw her whisked into a hansom. Their subsequent conversation is outside ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... largely built, with massive head, dark hair beginning to turn grey, sanguine, embrowned complexion, very dark eyes, fine, soft, yet penetrating. 'Quel bel homme! quel homme magnifique!' the French would exclaim in talking of him. In his features might be remarked that indefinable expression which belongs to the practised advocate. He had an exceedingly winning smile, an harmonious voice, and deliberate utterance. His manners, I need hardly say, showed all that simplicity and perfection ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... importunate she took as mere masculine characteristics, and the fact did not anger her against him; but what roused her secret indignation almost as often as they met was his half-hidden air of sanguine confidence. He was humble in a way, always the patient lover, but in his manner she detected an indefinable, irritating self-confidence—the demeanour of one who already knows himself a conqueror before ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... raging at myself in a defiant scorn, struck dumb at the folly that will let a man who loves one woman go sweethearting with another. Her eyes stabbed me, the while I stood there dogged yet grovelling, no word coming to my dry lips. What was there to be said? The tie that bound me to Aileen was indefinable, tenuous, not to be phrased; yet none the less it existed. I stood convicted, for I had tacitly given her to understand that no woman found place in my mind save her, and at the first chance she found another in ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... burning bright upon the Christmas tree; I can see the presents handed round, and hear the shouts of glee, And from the buried years there comes a-stealing on the heart A something indefinable which bids the tear-drop start; I can see the blue smoke curling, through the little strip of wood Between the winding turnpike road and where the farmhouse stood; I can see the colts a-playing, I can hear the cattle low— ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... of her being one of the Rich People had never worked its way into his head. She was just herself, different it is true in some indefinable way from anyone he had ever met, speaking differently, acting differently, but made used to his mind by struggle and adversity. He scarcely thought of her as a woman, yet he was hugely fond of her, a fondness that had begun in pity and had been strengthened and made to grow by her pluck. He liked ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... persons in the carriage. Mr. Hornblower sat with his back to the horses, and two women were on the opposite seat. Both were dressed in black and heavily veiled, but there was about them the indefinable distinction of mistress and maid. It would be difficult to tell precisely in what the distinction consisted, but it was there. Mr. Hornblower glanced ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... unmistakable quality of anxiety. Over the purple under-garment came a complex garment of bluish white, and Graham, was clothed in the fashion once more and saw himself, sallow-faced, unshaven and shaggy still, but at least naked no longer, and in some indefinable unprecedented way graceful. ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... neighbors attended, and there were, perhaps, half a dozen women—motherly old souls who had known Nan intimately in the days when she associated with their daughters and who felt in the presence of death a curious unbending of a curious and indefinable hostility. Sam Carew, arrayed in the conventional habiliments of his profession, stood against the wall and closed his eyes piously when Hector McKaye, standing beside old Caleb, spoke briefly and kindly of the departed and with a rough eloquence that stirred none present—not ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... been his fate. Among these persons there were wild-eyed hangers-on telling of a flight upward on a fiery chariot, as well as a predicted disappearance and reappearance after three days. Such were the stories being gulped down by the thousands who still clung with an indefinable fascination to the memory of the charlatan. Meantime the soldier Wilkes had died of his injuries, and the coroner's inquiry was ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... seaman. Discarding, instantly, every suspicion of his prisoner's honor, as alike unworthy of them both, Barnstable summoned him, in a cheerful voice, to the boat. There was a flashing of the features of Dillon, at this call, which gave an indefinable expression to his countenance, that again startled the sailor; but it was so very transient, and could so easily be mistaken for a smile of pleasure at his promised liberation, that the doubts it engendered passed away almost as speedily as the equivocal ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... dogwood and wiped the moisture from his eyes. The glare from the unprotected boulevards was terrific. Under these somewhat unfavourable conditions he was occupied in studying the monument of Egypt's past magnificence when he felt a slight dragging sensation. It was indefinable and had no visual concomitant. But it was as though the brakes were being gently applied to a Pullman train. He was the only human being in the neighbourhood; not even a policeman was visible; and the experience ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... I wrote that a man belonged, in these days, to a variety of countries; but the old land is still the true love, the others are but pleasant infidelities. Scotland is indefinable; it has no unity except upon the map. Two languages, many dialects, innumerable forms of piety, and countless local patriotisms and prejudices, part us among ourselves more widely than the extreme east and west of that great ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... harsh and ugly. Now he remembered that the Judge had said "the man was not half bad to look at if you caught him smiling." Yes, he had a charm of his own, and that charm had swept him forward over every obstacle to the place he had reached. A single gift, indefinable yet unerring—the ability to make men believe absurdities, as John Benham had once said—and the material disadvantages of poverty and ignorance were brushed aside like trivial impediments. A strange ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... all schemes for several hours, in vain, to drown his remorse in sleep, at last, at daybreak, sank into an uneasy slumber. The image of Louis, and his mute expression of patient sorrow that evening, haunted him, and he felt an indefinable longing to be like him, and a horror of himself in comparison with him. He remembered Louis' words, "Pray to God;" and one murmured petition was whispered in the stillness of the night, "Lord have mercy on a ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... twenty-four or twenty-five, lithe and alert. By no means bad looking, he lacked that indefinable suggestion of animalism which distinguished the majority of ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... reception room, with its blue walls, the high vases of flowers, the faint odour of incense, its indefinable ascetic charm, Prince Shan sat in his high-backed chair whilst Li Wen, his trusted secretary talked. Li Wen was very eloquent. His tone was never raised, he never forgot that he was speaking to a being of a superior world. He had a great deal to say, however, and he ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... little flutter of apprehension, indefinable, cold, passing through her nerves in spite of ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... rather than heard, the little stir which ran through the room. There was an indefinable horror in the story and in the conclusion to which ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... things being unutterable and indefinable and impalpable and unnamable and subtly indescribable, then elevate your aristocratic nose towards heaven and snuff up the smell of decay. It is perfectly true that there is something in all good things that ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... had been lighted to his bed, and the good parson himself was carrying to his own tranquil closet a head full of the great world's dust and noise. Greta was still sitting before the dying fire, her heart heavy with an indefinable sensation of dread. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... came into Union Street, and without further mishap gained the Hill. From the brow they looked down into the Pit, whence arose that steady, indefinable hum which comes from crowded ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... sister among them, is journeying to the north. A hope of meeting them—scarce acknowledged as an intention—spurs you on. The eye rests dreamily and vaguely on the beauties that appear at every turn: they are beauties that charm you, and charm you the more by an indefinable association with that fairy object that floats before you, half unknown, and wholly unclaimed. The quiet towns with their noonday stillness, the out-lying mansions with their stately splendor, the bustling cities with their mocking din, and the long ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... with us was a Chinese, on the back of a pony not more than eleven hands high, sitting as usual with his paraphernalia lashed to the back of the animal. He laughed at me because I was not riding, whilst I tried to solve the problem of that indefinable trait of Chinese nature which leads able-bodied men with sound feet to sit on these little brutes up those terrible mountain sides. Some parts of this spur were much steeper than the roof of a house—as perpendicular as can be imagined—but still ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... exact we mention, as this particular author seems to have done, that she had an "elusive expression," or a penetrating fragrance. Or we say that she moved, the centre of an indefinable nuance. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... relation to these that light bears to the mingled elements that make up the orb of the sun. And style, after all, rather than thought, is the immortal thing in literature. In literature, the charm of style is indefinable, yet all-subduing, just as fine manners are in social life. In reality, it is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some single irradiating word. "But Shadwell never deviates into sense," for instance. Young Roscius, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... incidents, such a business of cheap feathers and bits of ribbon on the surface, that I should hesitate to tell it, were it not for its Inwardness, what one might call the symbolism of the thing. Frankly, I do not clearly see what that symbolism is, but I feel it hovering in some indefinable way whenever I recall his case. It is one of those things that make a man extend his arm and twiddle his fingers, and say, blinking, "Like that, you know." So do not imagine for one moment that this is a shallow story, simply ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... introspection. Neither she nor Grantly had ever referred to the night of young Rabbich's dinner at the Moonstone, but since that night she had been distinctly conscious of a slightly more respectful quality in his manner towards her. The tendency was indefinable, illusive, but it was there, and simple-minded Mary only reflected gratefully that Grantly ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... slowly on, as people naturally would who were about to be overwhelmed in a calamity that threatened their annihilation, while an indefinable sensation of sleepiness and inertia seized the whole of the party. Vultures and other birds of prey screamed dismally, as they hovered round our heads in the greatest excitement, arising either from terror or the anticipation of a rich repast, we could not tell which. These voracious creatures, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... feeling of reality. He actually thought himself the mariner,—so I am persuaded,—while he was reading. As the poem proceeded, and we plunged deeper and deeper into its mystic horrors, the actual world receded into a dim, indefinable distance. The magnetism of this marvellous interpreter had caught up himself, and me with him, into Dreamland, from which we gently descended at the end of Part VI., and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... Girard, an indefinable stiffening change instantly coming over him. "By the way, I mustn't forget what I came for, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... rather distinguished society. Indeed, it is more than whispered, that when the question of admitting Mr. and Mrs. Grabguy to the membership of a very select circle, the saintly cognomen of which is as indefinable as its system of selecting members, or the angles presented by the nasal organs of a few ladies when anything short of the very first families are proposed, there were seven very fashionable ladies for, and only three against. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... how undressed a Spaceforce man looked without his blaster. I balanced it on my palm for a minute while Regis Hastur came out of the shadows. He was tall, and had the reddish hair and fair skin of Darkovan aristocracy, and on his face was some indefinable stamp—arrogance, perhaps, or the consciousness that the Hasturs had ruled this world for centuries long before the Terrans brought ships and trade and the universe to their doors. He was looking at me as if ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... to girls participating in the benefits of the Irish Intermediate Education act, which was being restricted to boys; she has organized and has won friends and votes not only over her own district of Ulster, but in many other quarters of Ireland; and often when in England some indefinable torpor has crept over a meeting—as will happen at times—a few eloquent and heart-stirring words from her have been sufficient to raise the courage and revive ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... witless farce-comedy and trite melodrama, the brooding idealist climbed one night to the gallery to overlook a gloomy, empty auditorium. Concealing himself as best he could, he sat through the performance, tortured by some indefinable appeal in Helen's voice, hearing with cold and sinking heart the faint applause from the orchestra chairs which used to roar with bravos and sparkle with the clapping of white ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... on the pommel of his sword, and his right clasping a roll of parchment. The expression of his face was grave, majestic, and noble; and yet between those handsome features and the attenuated face of the dying pauper Faith soon perceived one of those resemblances, strong, yet indefinable, which are so apparent to some persons, so ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... face there was a nameless cloud, so on his manner there was a shadow equally indefinable. It was not that he was embarrassed, as on that first night with the Wilfer family; he was habitually unembarrassed now, and yet the something remained. It was not that his manner was bad, as on that occasion; it was now very ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... be no less interesting because he was unsuccessful. Stories ... love stories: and to-morrow she would know the joy of reading them! It was almost unbelievable; it was too good to be true. It filled her with indefinable fear. Until now none of her prayers had ever been answered. Why should God give particular attention to such a prayer, when He had ignored all others? Certainly ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... else, he began to be very fond of her himself. He did not make up his mind that he wished to have her for his wife; he had never thought of her, and did not know how to think of her, in connection with himself; but he experienced an inward indefinable feeling of deep regret, a gnawing sorrow, and unconquerable depression of spirits, and also a species of self-abasement that he—he Mr Arabin—had not done something to prevent that other he, that vile he, whom he so thoroughly despised, from ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... her a type had crossed his path-had driven him from it, in truth-that seemed unique and inexplicable. He had been little more than amused at first, but a keen interest had been growing in him with every thought of her. There was an indefinable charm about the girl. She gave a new and sudden zest to his interest in mountain life; and while he worked, the incidents of the encounter on the mountain came minutely back to him till he saw her again as she rode away, ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... satisfactory than the first cause of the naturalist, or the 'great unknown' of the evolutionist, or even than some forms of the absolute, is itself admittedly outside the pale of reason—inexplicable, indefinable, and incalculable. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... feet. The demon has the body of a man, covered with a wolf's rough, shaggy hair, his fingers and toes ending in sharp claws, a long tail, rough and scaly, like the tail of a rat, coiled snake-like above his legs, the head and ears of a wolf, the horns of a goat, and on his back an indefinable outgrowth, perhaps the framework of a horrible pair of wings, its long tongue thrust out from between its bloody teeth. He was certainly ...
— The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches • David Starr Jordan
... remember remarking, in the course of my narrative, that toward the latter part of my acquaintance with Miss Merrivale—dating particularly from the capture and recapture of the ship at the treasure island—that very charming young lady's demeanour toward me underwent a certain subtle, indefinable, puzzling, but exceedingly agreeable change; and after we had left China and were on our homeward voyage—when, in short, I had leisure to give a proper amount of thought and attention to so important a matter—I determined to ascertain what ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... subjects relating to individual and social well-being. The desire of acquiring this knowledge would quicken the faculties of the children, augment their industry, and lighten the labors of the teacher to an indefinable extent. The teacher who should fail to impart a moderate degree of skill in these arts to most, and of excellence to many, at the same time that adequate progress was made in the study of the sciences we have named, should be deemed ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... an admirable talker, quick, suggestive, amusing, and with an indefinable charm. He was then a tall, thin, active man, with flashing eyes, a sanguine complexion, and a mobile face; he wore his hair rather luxuriantly, and had a picturesque, pointed beard. I shall never forget the delight ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... very early, because Mr. Granger and Elizabeth had to catch the train. Beatrice sat through the meal in silence, her calm eyes looking straight before her, and the others, gazing on them, and at the lovely inscrutable face, felt an indefinable fear creep into their hearts. What did this woman mean to do? That was the question they asked of themselves, though not of each other. That she meant to do something they were sure, for there was purpose written on every line ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... and his wife were to dry themselves and that of the sheets between which their housemaid was to lie, were matters of black and awful indifference, gave my more worthily applied attention to one of a new brand of cigars, a corona corona, that had its merits but lacked an indefinable soul-satisfying aroma; and I was on the pleasurable and elusive point of critical formulation, when Jaffery's voice, booming down the terrace, knocked the discriminating nicety out of my head. I lazily shifted my position ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... profound unconcern. There for a time, to the tune of "Men of Harlech," he contemplated the receding possibility of kicking Mr. Rumbold hard. It would be splendid—and for the moment satisfying. But he decided not to do it. For indefinable reasons he could not do it. He went indoors and straightened up his dress ties very slowly and thoughtfully. Presently he went to the window and regarded Mr. Rumbold obliquely. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... a hundred years," he answered. She did not believe it; he might be seventy, eighty, or even ninety—indeed, there was about him that indefinable sense of age—some shadow of endless living; ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the window grew stronger and stronger, and, all at once, a feeble shaft of moonlight crept across the floor. I was watching this most welcome beam when it was again obscured by a something, indefinable at first, but which I gradually made out to be very like a human head peering in at me; but, if this was so, it seemed a head hideously misshapen—and there, sure enough, rising from the brow, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... illuminating when it is modified in various ways is obviously no explanation of our experience. Hanslick has but shown what music is not; Edmund Gurney's eloquent book, "The Power of Sound," is completely agnostic in its conclusion that music is a unique, indefinable, indescribable phenomenon, which possesses, indeed, certain analogues with other physical and psychical facts, but is coextensive with none. Spencer's theory of music as glorified speech is not only in a yet unexplained ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... supplies the missing link to many separate chains of circumstances which, until now, have seemed to lead to no definite point. It sheds new light upon the frequently reported but indefinable movements of the Mexican Government to couple its situation with the friction between ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... became a peer she had to take his rank, and it was one of those indefinable sacrifices associated with noble birth, that, as a Viscountess, she had to give precedence to the wives of Marquises ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... were surging up in him; Magdalen's crystal love for him, her indefinable charm, her gaiety, her humility, ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... afar, had not wasted his time in making inquiries from the messenger. In fact, Barrios, talking with Nostromo, assumed that both Don Martin Decoud and the ingots of San Tome were lost together, and Nostromo, not questioned directly, had kept silent, under the influence of some indefinable form of resentment and distrust. Let Don Martin speak of everything with his own lips—was ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... awful silence succeeded, broken only by the convulsive respiration of Luke. The sexton stood by, apparently an indifferent spectator of the scene of horror. His eye wandered from the dead to the living, and gleamed with a peculiar and indefinable expression, half apathy, half abstraction. For one single instant, as he scrutinized the features of his daughter, his brow, contracted by anger, immediately afterwards was elevated in scorn. But otherwise you would have sought ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... uninterested about the building; on the contrary, I often sat in this place wondering how the rooms ranged and whether any echo like a footstep really did resound at times, as the story said, upon the lonely Ghost's Walk. The indefinable feeling with which Lady Dedlock had impressed me may have had some influence in keeping me from the house even when she was absent. I am not sure. Her face and figure were associated with it, naturally; but I cannot say that they repelled me from it, though something did. For whatever reason or no ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... him also. He was wont to say that Bernard was the most likable fellow he had ever met. An indefinable barrier had grown up between him and his brother-in-law, which, desperately though he had striven against it, had made the old easy intercourse impossible. Bernard was in a fashion the link between them. Strangely they were always more ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... nebulous potentiality, through endless growths of sun and planet and satellite; through all varieties of matter; through infinite diversities of life and thought; possibly, through modes of being of which we neither have a conception, nor are competent to form any, back to the indefinable latency from which they arose. Thus the most obvious attribute of the cosmos is its impermanence. It assumes the aspect not so much of a permanent entity as of a changeful process in which naught endures save the flow of energy and the ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... an indefinable air of irony, and Joe went unhappily out of his office. He telephoned his father at length. His father did not share Joe's disappointment at being removed to a place of safety. He undertook to begin the castings for an entire new set ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... of the return of Bonaparte from Elba. Wonder at his temerity was the impression made by the news, but wonder unmixed with apprehension. This inactivity of foresight was universal. A torpor indescribable, a species of stupor utterly indefinable, seemed to have enveloped the capital with a mist that was impervious. Everybody went about their affairs, made or received visits, met, and parted, without speaking, or, I suppose , thinking of this event ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... I fell to uneasy speculation regarding this woman, her fierce, wild beauty, her shameless tongue, her proud and passionate temper, her reckless furies; and bethinking me of all the manifest evil of her, I felt again that chill of the flesh, that indefinable disgust, insomuch that (the moon being bright and full) I must glance back, more than once, half-dreading to see ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
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