"Inexplicable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the etiquette of a subject leaving a crowned head—that is, nearly backwards; but when he came to the door he paused a moment, turning upon her one long, dark, inexplicable gaze, whilst the muscles of his hard, stony mouth were drawn back with a smile that contained in its expression a spirit that might be considered complacent, but which Alice interpreted as derisive ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... steam upon its summit, stood Vesuvius above us in the twilight. Something in the recent impression of the dimly-lighted supper-room, and in the idyllic simplicity of this lantern-litten journey through the barley, suggested, by one of those inexplicable stirrings of association which affect tired senses, a dim, dreamy thought of Palestine and Bible stories. The feeling of the cenacolo blent here with feelings of Ruth's cornfields, and the white square houses with their flat roofs ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... application to her grandfather, that she had set out on her journey feeling as though it were a challenge to fate; and this was the answer? The vague distrust, the subtle sombre presentiment, the haunting shadow of an inexplicable ill, had all meant this; this bloody horror, dragging her fair name down to the loathsome mire of the slums of crime. Had some merciful angel leaned from the parapets of heaven and warned her; or did her father's spirit, in mysterious communion ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... action of caprice; it was beyond all visionary, and above all changeable feelings. It was founded on nothing extraneous; not upon what he had said or done, but upon what he was. They saw something in the man, which gave them assurance of a nature and destiny of the highest elevation—something inexplicable, but which inspired a complete satisfaction. We feel that this reliance was wise and right; but why it was felt, or why it was right, we are as much to seek as those who came under the direct impression of his personal presence. It is not surprising, that the world, recognizing in this man a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... An inexplicable anxiety, a tormenting uneasiness, came over him; he had hardly strength and recollection sufficient to enable him to accompany Corilla, who was discussing in verse the question, "Which Rome was the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... grows wilder, and has ramifications striking boldly across the peninsula through rough moorland and among great ledges of rock, where you may ramble for hours, out of sight of all but some sportsman with his gun, or some truant-boy with dripping water-lilies. There is always a charm to me in the inexplicable windings of these wayward tracks; yet I like the path best where it is nearest the ocean. There, while looking upon blue sea and snowy sails and floating gulls, you may yet hear on the landward side the melodious and plaintive ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... infinite depths, lay the hidden point which drew it to itself and determined its magnificent and overwhelmingly vast orbit. These men witness to Jesus Christ, even by their half excuse, half reproach, that His was a life unique and inexplicable by the ordinary motives which shape the little lives of the masses of mankind. They witness to His entire neglect of ordinary and low aims; to His complete absorption in lofty purposes, which to His purblind would-be critics seem to be delusions and fond imaginations ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... swaddled in black, the minister had a fine sweep of all the congregation except those in the back pews downstairs, who were lost in the shadow of the laft. Here sat Whinny Webster, so called because, having an inexplicable passion against them, he devoted his life to the extermination of whins. Whinny for years ate peppermint lozenges with impunity in his back seat, safe in the certainty that the minister, however much he might try, could not possibly see him. But his ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... inexplicable human heart! My lawyer sends me more good news; he writes: "The picture's sale will reach ten thousand copies, And for the first year only! We shall have A big bill to send in; and do not fear But the 'old ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... was indifferent. But with the more moderate weather that began with March and continued until May the harvest was a rich one, for it was one of those seasons, after a year of unusual scarcity, as the previous two years had been, when the fur bearing animals come in some inexplicable way in great numbers, and food game also ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... at the whir of pigeon-wings behind him. His skin was smooth all over, and nowhere on it were the dark scarlet maps which the child found so interesting on the arms, face, and breast of the burned man. He did not strangle every little while, or shiver madly, and scream at a sound. It was truly inexplicable, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... make me regard it with detestation. Why should I wait the lingering process of an unfeeling tyrant that is slowly tearing me to pieces, and not dare so much as die but when and how the marble-hearted thing decrees? Still, some inexplicable suggestion withheld my hand, and caused me to cling with desperate fondness to this shadow of existence, its mysterious attractions, and its hopeless prospects—appetite, fiendish thirst, a burning, ever-crying demand for a poison that is ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... Many phenomena, formerly inexplicable, are satisfactorily explained by these recently discovered properties of porous bodies. The metamorphosis of alcohol into acetic acid, by the process known as the quick vinegar manufacture, depends upon principles, at a knowledge of ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig
... was therefore thought to be at its most southerly point. On the 17th of December, however, Bradley observed that the star was moving southwards, a motion further shown by observations on the 20th. These results were unexpected, and, in fact, inexplicable by existing theories; and an examination of the telescope showed that the observed anomalies were not due to instrumental errors. The observations were continued, and the star was seen to continue its southerly course until March, when it took up a position some 20" more southerly ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... on, after a few minutes' pause, "presents an enigma which at present I cannot hope to solve. The fact that she received her husband back again, knowing what he was and what he was capable of, is inexplicable to me. The woman herself is a mystery. I do not know what lies behind her extraordinary immobility. Feeling she must have, and courage, or she would never have dared to have ridded herself of the scourge of her life. But beyond that my judgment tells me nothing. ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... upon earth, as it is that your material bodies cannot occupy two portions of space at one and the same time. Dismiss, therefore, all expectations of being able to accomplish an impossibility. Put not your mind to sleep with the opiate, that in some inexplicable manner you will be able to live the life of a worldly man upon earth, and then the life of a spiritual man in heaven. There is no alchemy that can amalgamate substances that refuse to mix. No man has ever ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... all these messages flowed, there was one inexplicable silence. Charlotte neither wrote nor telegraphed; nor did she return home. That portent dawned upon their Majesties as they breakfasted late the next morning with correspondence and ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... for many reasons. Since the polynuclear cells circulating in the blood are all under the same conditions of nutrition, it is a priori inconceivable why only a relatively small portion of them should undergo the transformation in question. And it is quite inexplicable why in infectious leucocytosis, where the number of the polynuclears is increased so enormously, their ripening to the eosinophils should remain ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... So a search was instituted in the girl's room, and to their relief Grizzel's garden hat was missing—somehow, even to Mollie, it seemed less alarming to be missing with a hat than without one. In fact, if it had not been for the mystery of the tree—which certainly was very inexplicable—Mollie would not have disturbed herself. Grizzel had gone out, wearing her hat, carrying her basket, and accompanied by the large and capable Laddie. Most likely she would come back presently with some simple explanation to account ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... in its place; but, if it assumes to be the sole means of gaining Religious Truth, it goes beyond its place. We are putting it to a larger office than it can undertake, if we countenance the usurpation; and we are turning a true guide and blessing into a source of inexplicable difficulty and interminable doubt. ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... uncomfortable. As Jack proceeded with his narrative, Dick and Tom looked nervously about them. Even the boys' two elders looked grave. The presence of a man on the island was almost inexplicable. But Jack's story was so circumstantial that there was no room to suppose that he might be mistaken. Besides, he had the bit of canvas to show, the scrap that he had taken ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... enemies not a few, and it may be that he had gradually contracted something of that "naughty-boy" temper, as we may call it, for which the deliberate and ostentatious repetition of offences has an inexplicable charm. It seems clear, too, that, growth for growth with this spirit of bravado, there had sprung up—in somewhat incongruous companionship, perhaps—a certain sense of wrong. Along with the impulse to give an additional shock to the prejudices ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... the people took in the combats, and especially that of the thirty, seemed to him a strange and inexplicable phenomenon. It did not excite him in the least; he could turn his back upon it without hesitation. He would, indeed, have left the crowd, and spent the day in the forest, or on the hills, but he could not leave Aurora. He must be near her; he must see her, though he was miserable. Now he feared ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... list is too large; too large and too contradictory. The Variations of Genius would be as profound and as vast a book as Lord Acton's projected History of Human Thought. The truth is that genius is the sacrificial goat of humanity; through some inexplicable transposition genius bears the burdens of mankind; afflicted by the burden of the flesh intensified many times, burdened with the affliction of the spirit, raised to a pitch abnormal, the unhappy man of genius is stoned because he staggers beneath the load of his sensitive temperament or wavers ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... party. I had thought, at the beginning of the cruise, that Vail and she were incipient lovers. But she had taken his death with a calmness that was close to indifference. There was something strange and inexplicable in her tigerish championship of Turner—and it remains inexplicable even now. I have wondered since—was she in love with Turner, or was she only a fiery partisan? ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... turned his head away. The sense of his disturbance trembled on the air and Susan's smile died. She dropped the branch, trailing it lightly across the water, and wondering at the confusion that had so abruptly upset her self-confident gayety. Held in inexplicable embarrassment she could think of nothing to say. It was he who broke the silence with a ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... to affirm that no shade of remorse had ever crossed his mind previous to the vision near Damascus. But waiving this point, I do maintain that, granting Paul's feelings to have been as Mr. Rogers thinks they were, his conversion is inexplicable, even on the hypothesis of a miracle. He that is determined not to believe, will not believe, though one should rise from the dead. To make Paul a believer, it was not enough that he should meet his Lord ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... rested in his arms,—a wonderful moment, inexplicable, voluptuous, stirring him to the very depths. Then she slipped away. Her fingers sought the wall once more and the place was ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... top of which were fluttering a few remnants of red cloth. The shape of the smaller mounds naturally led them to infer that they were the graves of white men who had died there, but the large mound was inexplicable until Nazinred recollected having seen a flag hoisted on a pole at the ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... still to a great extent in ignorance as to the inexplicable combination of events which has made it necessary for me to return this affirmative answer to the message of which you are the bearer. I am, however, fully aware that the Earl of Alanmere, whose name I have seen at the foot of this document ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... point," agreed Marsden. "I certainly think I could. And, since I can't, I feel it my duty to report it as a mysterious and, to me, inexplicable death." ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... fain would the evil city reflect itself in my calm soul, its commerce take up a place within the temple of my being. I had left God's handiwork and come to the man-made town. I had left the inexplicable and come to the realm of the explained. In the holy temple were arcades of shops; through its precincts hurried the trams; the pictures of trade were displayed; men were building hoardings in my soul and posting notices of idol-worship, and hurrying throngs were reading books ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... has been said—a residuum does remain of inexplicable misery and distress, and there are times when we are all of us constrained to cry out with Darwin that it is "too much," and to ask whether there is not some further clue to the mystery. And then it may well be that there comes ...
— God and the World - A Survey of Thought • Arthur W. Robinson
... order of nature as this has been set forth through the fundamental work of modern investigation." He does not consider such a position can be held without overwhelming evidence, and does not feel the traditional fact to have this degree of certainty, or to be inexplicable in another way. He considers that the explanation of the miracle probably lies in the psychic state of ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... which they were first conjoined. If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I. There is, beyond all that I am able to say, I know not what inexplicable and fated power that brought on this union. We sought one another long before we met, and by the characters we heard of one another, which wrought upon our affections more than, in reason, mere reports should do; I think 'twas by some secret appointment of heaven. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... irreconcilable instincts, they have also inherited and indoctrinated into them a proper mastery and subtlety for carrying on the conflict with themselves (that is to say, the faculty of self-control and self-deception), there then arise those marvelously incomprehensible and inexplicable beings, those enigmatical men, predestined for conquering and circumventing others, the finest examples of which are Alcibiades and Caesar (with whom I should like to associate the FIRST of Europeans according to my taste, the Hohenstaufen, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... he would not have the least interest in denying that the brain, though we know not how, is the only seat for us of thought and mind and spirit. Let him have never so firm a faith in life immortal, yet this immortal has, he knows, put on mortality, through an inexplicable contact with matter; and his faith is not in the least shaken by learning that this point of contact is the brain. He can admit with the utmost readiness that the brain is the only instrument through which supernatural life is made at the same time natural life. He can ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... account the prejudice against the number thirteen was especially familiar to me," replied Edward. "We also dislike it; and we retain a consideration for many supernatural, or at least inexplicable things, which I have met with again in ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... Beyond knowledge comes the intuitive feeling which is enriched by knowledge. Through it we may feel the breath of life, the spiritual appeal, which belongs to every great work of art and which must forever remain inexplicable. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... the castings were simply humming with energy, and when they entered the nearest door they were amazed. Double the number of men that were at work the day before were now engaged and were working with an intensity that seemed inexplicable to Max. ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... which seemed momentarily to increase in volume. What could it be? She stared around with puzzled eyes, but there was no hint of alarm in her bewilderment. A child of the city, she was inured to sudden and inexplicable noises; it was only when the punt swung heavily round a bend that she realised the seriousness of her position. The mill was working! One of the infrequent experimental trials of which she had heard was even now in ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... imaginable, comprehensible, action, but in that action by which it abandoned its power of true agency, and willed its own fall. This is, indeed, a mystery. How can it be otherwise?—For if the will be unconditional, it must be inexplicable, the understanding of a thing being an insight into its conditions and causes. But whatever is in the will is the will, and must ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... in order to show you that what happened to me could not have happened in the natural order of things, and to enable you to understand that I was the victim of an inexplicable fascination. ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... explain the inexplicable victory of the coup d'etat in a hundred ways. A true balance has been struck between all possible resistances, and they are neutralized one by the other: the people were afraid of the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie were afraid of the people;—the ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... says: "The malady of Leopardi was indefinable, for having its spring in the most secret sources of life, it was like life itself, inexplicable. The bones softened and dissolved away, refusing their frail support to the flesh that covered them. The flesh itself grew thinner and more lifeless every day, for the organs of nutrition denied ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... nervous hand went up to his bent face for a minute and hid it, but I did not speak. There was so much of strange grief in his simple movement that I felt words would be out of place. It was not my dogged, inexplicable "hand" who was sitting before me in the bright moonlight on the baby's grave; it was a man with a hidden history of some tragic sorrow long kept secret in his homely breast,—perhaps a history very few of us could read aright. I would not question him, though I fancied he meant ...
— "Surly Tim" - A Lancashire Story • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... steam, the source of the mechanical forces and how they operate, he may not have occasion to mention the engineer. But, the orderly and special results accomplished, the why the movement is in this or that particular direction, etc., are inexplicable without him. If Mr. Darwin believes that the events which he supposes to have occurred and the results we behold were undirected and undesigned, or if the physicist believes that the natural forces to which he refers phenomena are uncaused and undirected, no argument is needed to show that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... supper tasted delicious to the boy although every muscle in his body ached. Bacon and flap jacks, coffee and canned peaches he devoured with more appetite than he ever had brought to ministrone and red wine. A queer and inexplicable sense of comfort and a desire to talk came over him after the meal was finished, the camp in order, and ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... me, Peregrine! An ordinary young man falls in love with an ordinary young woman because, for some inexplicable reason, she appears to him a mystery, bewitchingly incomprehensible. Suffering under this strange hallucination, he wooes, whereupon our ordinary young woman, shutting her eyes to the ordinariness of our very ordinary young man, now deliberately deludes herself into the firm belief that he is ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... testify. While I had the words upon my lips, even as the group of women broke and left a space about me while they scattered on their ways, there on the corner of the thoroughfare, in the heart of the town, by an invisible force, by an inexplicable barrier, I, the dead man fleeing to my living wife, was ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the others—" He rested his hands on his sword hilt and gazed broodingly into the deepening night. "The court could only find as it did. I myself, sitting there, listening to that testimony.... It is inexplicable!" ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... life not only to her excellent nursing, but even more to her strong moral support—her gentle but unspoken sympathy. I knew she understood me, and that her mercy was infinite for my almost mortal weakness; for now that the inexplicable buoyancy which that chief of earthly hopes imparts was gone, I sank into an abyss of despondency from which I feared I could never escape. Her wisdom and intuitive delicacy led her to select Reuben ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... spectacle of the European army with their horses, their guns, bright swords and helmets of steel, a metal to them unknown; their weird and mysterious music—the whole formed to the Aztec populace an inexplicable wonder, combined with those foreigners who had arrived from the distant East, "revealing their celestial origin in their fair complexions." Many of the Aztec citizens betrayed keen hatred of the Tlascalans who marched with the Spaniards in ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... that the allies had been seated at a long oak table, of which their end was covered with scribbled papers, flanked with whisky and cigars. Through the whole of its remaining length it was occupied by detached objects arranged at intervals; objects about as inexplicable as any objects could be. One looked like a small heap of glittering broken glass. Another looked like a high heap of brown dust. A third appeared to be a ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... taking them in his arms, and kissed the beautiful boys once more on their telling him that they must go back to their play-ground again, or they should be punished. Within, he found his favorite wife playing with their youngest child, a sweet little girl. Again the same strange, inexplicable feeling of tenderness. He overcame it this time for fear of betraying his secret to his young wife, and retired to his own ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... stumps who have dodged you round a Roman corner, not a ragged baron who has levied toll for passage through the public squares, a privileged robber who has shut up for you a pleasant street or waylaid you at an interesting church, but he is sure to be there. How they got there is as inexplicable as how the apples got into the dumplings in Peter Pindar's poem. But at the first ring of a festa-bell, they start up from under ground, (those who are legless getting only half-way up,) like Roderick Dhu's men, and level their crutches at you as the others did their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Serviss. "We admit that any material substance remains inexplicable. The molecule lies far below the line of visibility. We only push the zone of the known a little farther into the realm of the unknown; but how does that ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... that city. As the confusions of the state increased, so do the confusions in its story. The empire had masters, whose names are only known from medals. It is uncertain of what princes several empresses were the wives. If the jealousy of two antiquaries intervenes, the point becomes inexplicable. Oriuna, on the medals of Carausius, used to pass for the moon: of late years it is become a doubt whether she was not his consort. It is of little importance whether she was moon or empress: but ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... constitutional right to exclude slavery. And I have argued and said that for men who did intend that the people of the Territory should have the right to exclude slavery absolutely and unconditionally, the voting down of Chase's amendment is wholly inexplicable. It is a puzzle—a riddle. But I have said that with men who did look forward to such a decision, or who had it in contemplation, that such a decision of the Supreme Court would or might be made, the voting down of ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... entertained for a moment, half in jest, become iron laws to them, they know not why. They will be led by the nose by these vague reports of which I spoke above; and the mere fact that their informant mentioned one village and not another will compel their footsteps with inexplicable power. And yet a little while, yet a few days of this fictitious liberty, and they will begin to hear imperious voices calling on them to return; and some passion, some duty, some worthy or unworthy expectation, will set its ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Messiah's lowliness, contains, in addition, a special designation of it which is found again in the nomen and omen of his native place. This appears especially from the circumstance that, if it were otherwise, the quotation: in [Greek: hoti Nazoraios klethestai], would be inexplicable, since it is very forced to suppose that "Nazarene" here designates generally one low and despised.[2] But he chose the general formula of [Pg 112] quotation (comp. Gersdorf, Beitraege zur Sprachcharacteristik 1. S. 136), in order thereby to intimate ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... had caused the strange reaction and seeing the other was suffering tremendously for some reason or other unexplained and perhaps inexplicable was profoundly sorry. His friendship for the man who had saved his life was altogether too strong and deep to be shaken by this temporary lapse into brutality which he had known all along was there although held miraculously in abeyance these many weeks. The man was a ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... strange and weird enough in all conscience; but it was no more inexplicable on natural grounds than what follows. Among Lord Lyttelton's boon companions was a Mr Andrews, with whom he had often discussed the possibilities of a future life. On one such occasion his lordship had said: "Well, if I die first, and am allowed, I will come ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... in tears. Panpan himself lay with rigid features, and his wiry hands spread out upon the counterpane. Madame was at first inconsolable and inexplicable, but at length, amid sobs, half suppressed, related the nature of their new misfortune. Would Monsieur believe that those miserable nurse-people, insulting as they were, had sent from the country to say, that unless the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Marie Exili home with him, and installed her in his household, where his wife soon died of some inexplicable disease which baffled the knowledge of both the doctor and the curate, the two wisest men in the parish. The Sieur Corriveau ended his widowhood by marrying Marie Exili, and soon died himself, leaving his whole fortune and one daughter, the image ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... come to pass! As Clement bent down and took her hand and looked into her eyes his heart seemed to stop death-still for a few seconds—then something new and inexplicable took possession of him, and he stood before her calm and clear-eyed. "Don't move," he commanded, "I will draw ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... in His kingdom, should have been occasioned by, and have followed immediately upon, our Lord's solemn and pathetic announcement of His sufferings. But the connection is not difficult to trace. The disciples believed that, in some inexplicable way, the sufferings which our Lord was shadowing forth were to be the immediate precursors of His assuming His regal dignity. And so they took time by the forelock, as they thought, and made haste to ensure their places ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... day when he could resume work, he went early to his studio; but the visit he undoubtedly had a right to pay to his neighbors was the true cause of his haste; he had already forgotten the pictures he had begun. At the moment when a passion throws off its swaddling clothes, inexplicable pleasures are felt, known to those who have loved. So some readers will understand why the painter mounted the stairs to the fourth floor but slowly, and will be in the secret of the throbs that followed each other ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... into silence now, for talking seemed to be impossible. We had to think of the past and of the future. One minute I felt in despair, and the next I was filled with a strange kind of hope that was inexplicable. ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... participate in the nature of everything physical; that they are real, and always real; that they cannot be unreal, fictitious, and mendacious, and that, consequently, the fictitious character of ideation becomes inexplicable. ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... on the day following upon that strange murder, vague, inconsistent discoveries to which the subsequent inquiry imparted neither consistency nor certainty. The movements of Antoinette Brehat remained as absolutely inexplicable as those of the blonde lady, nor was any light thrown upon the identity of that mysterious creature with the golden hair who had killed Baron d'Hautrec without taking from his finger the fabulous diamond from the royal ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... the bulk of which they were composed I considered to be fine loam-soil layers, if I may trust my imperfect mineralogical knowledge. Some of these mountains were topped by large isolated lava rocks, real giants; and it seemed inexplicable to me how they could stand ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... having long considered the feasibility of further exploration of the interior of Australia voted 5000 pounds for the purpose, and offered the command of the expedition to A.C. Gregory. As the inexplicable disappearance of Leichhardt was then exciting much interest in Australia, search for the lost expedition was to form one of its ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... the reality that the cablegram and the letter had brought definite results. They had lifted Stuart out of his place in the past and drawn him into the present. He had not been guilty of desertion, but was, like herself, the victim of a hideous and inexplicable mistake. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... that I spent among the Battas, at first all alone and afterward with my wife, were so hard that it makes me shudder even now when I think of them. Often it seemed as if we were not only encompassed by hostile men, but also by hostile powers of darkness; for often an inexplicable, unutterable fear would come over us, so that we had to get up at night, and go on our knees to pray or read the Word of God, in order to ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... were slipping away and the problem of the world was becoming more and more inexplicable, he clung with pathetic anxiety to the doctrines which contained a solution. Oh, if he could only be so honest and upright that the Lord might have no excuse for ruling him out. He trembled not only for himself, but for his wife and children. Would he not some day be held ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... we are, a great world hides in us; And in us clouds of care and dales of grief You may descry: the sky's tranquility; The heaving of the sea about the ships At evenings; tears that roll not down the cheeks; And something else inexplicable. Oh, What prison's kin are we? Who would believe it? One, damned and godlike, dwells in us; and ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... which accompanies perfect innocence. Elizabeth's admitting that she would not say neither to the queen nor to others, that she had been unjustly punished, was in direct contradiction to what she had told Gardiner, and must have arisen from some motive at this time inexplicable.—King Philip is supposed to have been secretly concealed during the interview, and to have been friendly ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... buffer in scarlet and gold who periodically takes an inexplicable interest in Tommy's belt and brass buttons. An excuse for his sergeant's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 14, 1917 • Various
... carpeted with sod-grass, gave no warning of the approaching horseman, who had seen the tiny fire and had ridden toward it. Just within the circle of firelight he reined in and was about to call out when that inexplicable sense inherent in animals, the Indian, and in some cases the white man, brought Pete to his feet. In that same lightning-swift, lithe movement he struck his gun from the holster and stood tense as a buck that scents danger on ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... quite share Gordon's sense of security. Barry was different. He was a dear, and trying so hard; but Jerry had always had some power to sway him from his best, a sinister inexplicable influence. ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... Inexplicable fate! That coined His lofty purpose and effort, staunch, Into the very ill, for whose Opposite good he sought; in death, Closed his lips, still undelivered Of their message, and left instead A gaping wound to ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... so very uncommon, though less common in prose fiction than in poetry. The not so very rare "single-speech" poems are also not real parallels. It is of the essence of poetry, according to almost every theory, that it should be, occasionally at least, inexplicable and unaccountable. I believe that every human being is capable of poetry, though I should admit that the exhibition of the capability would be in most cases—I am sure it would be in my own—"highly to be deprecated." But with a sober prose ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... appeared extraordinary and inexplicable to those who did not know his inner motives, but for Prince Stepan Kasatsky himself it all occurred so naturally that he could not imagine how ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... by one of those inexplicable connections of the brain or soul, he found himself living over an ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... rule the night,' is touching to the verge of pathos; and the additional remark which he throws in, as it were casually,—'He made the stars also,' cannot but move us to admiration. How childlike the simplicity of the soul which could so venture to deal with the inexplicable and tremendous problem of the Universe! How self-centred and sure the faith which could so arrange the work of Infinite and Eternal forces to suit its own limited intelligence! It is easy and natural to ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... notwithstanding the very inhospitable treatment which they had received, that those commissioners should return to their labours. Ogle and Fairfax still remained as hostages in camp, and of course professed entire ignorance of these extraordinary proceedings, attributing them to some inexplicable misunderstanding. So on Monday, 24th, December, the quartermaster and the governor again repaired to Ostend with orders to bring about the capitulation of the place as soon as possible. The same sergeant-major was again appointed by Vere to escort the strangers, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... conduct had seemed inexplicable to him. Everything had been going well, he had been just about to be free from the whole entanglement, when an impulse of primitive jealousy and fierce masculine egotism had suddenly brought him to New York and bound him hand and foot. It had not been an agreeable prospect—to live ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... smiling her thanks to all present. And then there ensued one of those strange impressions—one might almost call them telepathic instead of atmospheric effects—which, subtly penetrating the air, exerted an inexplicable influence on the mind;—the expectancy of some word never to be uttered,—the waiting for some incident never to take place. People murmured and smiled, and looked and laughed, but there was an evident embarrassment among ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... destruction. Omnipotence cannot confer holiness upon them; they do not choose to acquire it; and hence, they are compelled to endure the awful wages of sin. To those who reject this view of the nature of holiness, the world in which we live must forever remain an inexplicable enigma; and that to which we are hastening must present still more terrific subjects of contemplation. To their minds the eternal agonies of the lost can never be made to harmonize with the infinite perfections of God, by whom the second death is appointed. ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated, for some purpose now forgotten, with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that, as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. Soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... Highness might be compelled to conduct his examination of it at the right distance. This had the desired effect, and, as he now gazed at it, he found the likeness excellent and to use his words "just like a living other-self." It seemed to him a most inexplicable circumstance that when he got his nose close to the canvas the picture appeared so different from what it was when inspected at the right distance. This sitting also ended with a feast, and everything passed off in ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Foster—the second distinguished landscape artist who may be said to have been raised upon Punch. Of the first-named, nothing need be said, but that he contributed a single sketch and no more. William Harvey, however, stands on a different footing, yet his employment on Punch is inexplicable. He had no real humour, and, what is perhaps more to his credit, he pretended to none; nor did he take pains, as so many do, to prove it. Kenny Meadows, we are told, used to rally him on his excessive ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... landed on the cabin on the Point, burying both father and son. By some inexplicable means little Snjolfur managed to scratch his way out of the drift. As soon as he realised that for all his efforts he could not dig his father out single-handed, he raced off to the village and got people out of their beds. Help came too late—the old ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... language "waxed olde and out of common usage," he says, the Bible "was again translated into the newer language." There has never been any means of testing these statements, which were probably due to some inexplicable error. Abundant evidence exists relating to many Saxon and later translations of various parts of the Bible before the time of Wycliffe. Among the most notable of the early translators were the Venerable Bede and Alfred the Great. Some portions of Scripture ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... A wild and inexplicable resentment against this complacent historical outrage suddenly took possession of Peter. He knew that his rage was inconsistent with his usual calm, but he could not help it! His swarthy cheek glowed, his dark eyes ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... has her reward. 'Whosoever gives up husband or child for my sake and the gospel's, shall receive them back a hundredfold in this present life,' as Elizabeth does. Her reward is an adoration from high and low, which is to us now inexplicable, impossible, overstrained, which was ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... cold supper arouses no ungrateful emotions. I would rather have a four-pound loaf and a shoulder of mutton for supper now than a smaller quantity of extra choice viands; and I manage to satisfy the cravings of my inner man before leaving the table. But what about a place to sleep. For some inexplicable reason these people refuse to grant me even the shelter of their roof for the night. They are not keeping hotel, they say, which is quite true; they have a right to refuse, even if it is twenty miles to the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... difficulties to light, and some sort of answer must be given to them. Mr. Newman, as we have seen, has made use of those difficulties much as the Romanists have used the doctrine of the Trinity when arguing with Trinitarians[19] in defence of transubstantiation. The Romanists said,—"Here are all these inexplicable difficulties in the doctrine of the Trinity, and yet you believe it." So Mr. Newman argues with those who hold the plenary inspiration of Scripture, that if they believe that, in spite of all the difficulties which beset it, they ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... England, from all I'm used to-driving to-what?' Could he face it? Could he face all that he had been through that morning; face it day after day, night after night? Looking up, he saw Rozsi at her open window gazing down at him; never had she looked sweeter, more roguish. An inexplicable terror seized on him; he ran across the yard and jumped into his carriage. "To Salzburg!" he cried; "drive on!" And rattling out of the yard without a look behind, he flung a sovereign at the hostler. Flying back along the road faster ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... de Maulincour, who had given some ground for it during his former intimacy with Monsieur de Ronquerolles' sister, the Comtesse de Serizy. That lady, the one who detested German sentimentality, was all the more exacting in the matter of prudery. By one of those inexplicable fatalities, Auguste now uttered a harmless jest which Madame de Serizy took amiss, and her brother resented it. The discussion took place in the corner of a room, in a low voice. In good society, adversaries never raise their ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... withdrew, closing the door behind her. She felt an inexplicable elation as she went down the stairs; yet she felt that she stood face to face with calamity, too. Her man was a fighting man, then—only he was not a madman. He was the sort of fighter who did not lose his head. But she could ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... received all she needed out of life, and she threw herself into her husband's promotion-hunger; understanding it, because she, too, wanted to reign, and it gave her an inexplicable feeling of respect for him, for Clarice knew that had she been born a man, she, too, would have worked and schemed and pushed herself out into the front of the ranks. She combined with him as only an ambitious woman ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... sometimes it is torn out by angry hands, but always some spark remains; it contrives to unite about its victim, and in the end has its way. It is a cancerous disease, but it cannot be cut out like a cancer. It is more deadly; it is inexplicable. All good things, wealth and honour, are forfeited for it; long years of toil, trouble, privation of all kinds, are willingly accepted; on one side all the sweetness of the world, on the other nothing of worth, often vice, meanness, ill-temper, all that go to make life a madness and a terror; ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... horse, throughout the long sieges of Athlone and Limerick, except only upon the occasion of the raid upon the siege train, is almost inexplicable. They had nothing to fear from the enemy's cavalry, to whom they proved themselves immensely superior, whenever they met during the war, and they had it in their power, for months, to cut the British communications and so oblige them, either to detach ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... unobstructed navigation before them, they had time to improve their acquaintance with Vilcamapata, who was never tired of expressing his gratitude to Dick and Stukely for having saved him from a terrible death. But it soon became apparent that, for some inexplicable reason, he regarded Stukely as much the more important personage of the two, his devotion to Phil being of such a pronounced character that it almost amounted to worship. This, of course, might have been accounted for to some extent ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... his snout straight up in the air and emitted one shrill squeal; but the sight of Ananias-and-Sapphira, perched coolly beneath his captor's ear, in a measure reassured him, and he made no further protest. He could not, however, appear reconciled to the inexplicable and altogether undignified situation, so he held his snout rigidly as high aloft as he could and shut his little eyes tight, as if anticipating some ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... nation's infant steps. He looks as if he might control the energies of nature as well as shape the mould in which the character of his people should be formed. That any one should stand before this statue in a scoffing mood is to me perfectly inexplicable. My own emotions were more nearly akin to absolute bodily fear. At an irreverent word, I should have expected the brow to contract into a darker frown, and the marble ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... Clarence had borne the revelation; and she grew more nervous with every hour. It was absolutely necessary now to dismantle the house, and she found a certain relief in keeping exceedingly busy. Somehow the break-up had lost its inexplicable pain, and a glad little voice sang all the time at her heart, "I shall come back; I shall certainly come back. Papa will let me, I am sure, when he knows Geoff, ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... no opportunity of talking alone with Jane since we left the carrier. The incident with Tolla was to us wholly inexplicable. But that it was significant of something, we knew—by Jane's tense white face and the furtive glances she gave us. Don and I were ready to seize the first opportunity to ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... descriptions of other rivals of Buddha, that these, in order to gain esteem, copied the Nirgrantha and went unclothed, or that they were looked upon by the people as Nirgrantha holy ones, because they happened to have lost their clothes. Such expressions would be inexplicable if Vardhamana's community had not become of great importance. [Footnote: See for the history of Siha related above, Spence Hardy, Manual of Budhism, pp. 226, 266, and Jacobi, Ind. ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... not long after that the murders began—strange, inexplicable deaths, all the victims found with their heads crushed as if their skulls had ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... writings, and letters to the magistrates and everywhere these words, repeated so often, were only received with a painful incredulity. The fact was that, besides the singular character which Peytel's appearance, attitude, and talk had worn ever since the event, there was in his narrative an inexplicable enigma; its contradictions and impossibilities were such, that calm persons were revolted at it, and that even friendship itself ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... struck the lighthouse with such force that it trembled distinctly. Forsyth started up, for he had never felt this before, and fancied the structure was about to fall. For a moment or two he remained paralysed, for he heard the most terrible and inexplicable sounds going on overhead. In fact, the wave that shook the building had sent a huge volume of spray right over the top, part of which fell into the lighthouse, and what poor Forsyth heard was about a ton of water coming down through story after story, ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... Bishop Aberkios. Voyage of Saint Brandan. Connection of Fish with goddess Astarte. Cumont. Connection of Fish and Dove. Fish as Fertility Symbol. Its use in Marriage ceremonies. Summing up of evidence. Fisher King inexplicable from Christian point of view. Folk-lore solution unsatisfactory. As a Ritual survival completely in place. Centre of action, and ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... development of the helicopter principle was published in France in 1868, when the great French engineer Paucton produced his Theorie de la Vis d'Archimede. For some inexplicable reason, Paucton was not satisfied with the term 'helicopter,' but preferred to call it a 'pterophore,' a name which, so far as can be ascertained, has not been adopted by any other writer or investigator. Paucton ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... wintry coat and rubbed off great tufts of hair against the chaparral bushes. Then one night his mother, without a word of farewell, forsook him, and it was several months before he saw her again. But he had the speckled heifer yet for a companion, when suddenly her dam disappeared in the same inexplicable ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... for the opening words of the service. He felt himself strangely affected by the gentleness of her face and the slender beauty of her form. When she knelt down he could not take his eyes off her. There came over him an inexplicable softening, a relaxation of the tense excitement of the morning. He thought of her kneeling there in the faded shabby church Sunday after Sunday for years and years, when he was working at hot pressure ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... is dependent on that first, and then upon an amount of practice, of science,—and of imagination disciplined by thought, which the true possessor of it knows to be incommunicable, and the true critic of it, inexplicable, except through long process of laborious years. That journey of life's conquest, in which hills over hills, and Alps on Alps arose, and sank,—do you think you can make another trace it painlessly, by talking? Why, you cannot even carry us up ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... memory!—the most mysterious and inexplicable in the great riddle of life; that plastic tablet on which the Almighty registers with unerring fidelity the records of being, making it the depository of all our words, thoughts, and deeds—this faithful witness ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... cover the case, and Lattimore seems doomed to the acme of prosperity. This is the age of great cities, saith the Captain, and that Lattimore is not already a town of 150,000 people is one of the strangest, one of the most inexplicable things in the world, in view of the distance we are lag of the country about us, so far as development is concerned. And as our beginning has been tardy, so will our progress be rapid, even as waters long dammed up rush out to devour the plains, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... my lord; rendered more vivid—or, as you say, "real"—by your present disturbed state of health. As to that part of it which you find so inexplicable, I can at least point toward where the explanation lies. It reduces itself to this: primroses had become associated for you—in a way which you have forgotten—with something you wished to avoid. And so they became the ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... astonishment of the first moment brought to her mind that of which she never thought before. At the first moment she hazily recalled that new, wonderful world of feeling and thought which had been opened to her by that charming young man who loved her, and whom she loved, and then his inexplicable cruelty and the long chain of humiliation and suffering which followed as the direct result of that enchanting bliss, and it pained her. But being unable to account for it all, she did the customary thing for her—banished all these recollections ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... psychic faculty (as you know, Mr. O'Donnell, some people are born with the faculty) to enable me to detect the presence of the superphysical. I generally feel the latter incorporated in some inexplicable manner in the ether, or see it ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... and his verses are so perfect, so harmonious, so tasteful, so soft, that it seems really surprising that he should ever have been able to have brought the German language to this state of suppleness. The charm of the book is inexplicable; it is a votive nosegay sent from the West to the East, composed of the most precious and curious plants: red roses, hortensias like the breast of a spotless maiden, purple digitalis like the long finger of a man, fantastically formed ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... indeed inexplicable, to one unacquainted with the nature of a dust-storm, or unaware of the incidents which have preceded. But to Gaspar, the gaucho, everything is as clear as daylight; and, after a short inspection of the "sign," he ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... Calmness with regard to Winny and to the issue taken out of his hands and decided for him; calmness, and yet a pain, a distinct pain that he was not subtle enough to recognize as remorse for a disloyalty. And, under it all, that nameless, inexplicable excitement, as if for the first time in the affairs of sex, he had a sense ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... for inexplicable meanings, my lord. In some things science cajoles us. Now, what is undeniable of the Polyp some physiologists analogically maintain with regard to us Mardians; that forasmuch, as the lining of our interiors is ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... and well. Institutions and politicians, we have all known, possess this power of ignoring their own decease. Judaism has been dead these eighteen hundred years; yet here are Jew synagogues in New York and Boston. Were the like true of individuals, it might explain to us some lives which seem inexplicable on any other hypothesis. I think, for example, of some editors, who are evidently post-dating their decease; and when these go on writing leading articles, and being sweet upon "our brethren of the South," one does not say, "Disloyal," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... a trouble to them? They were much older than she, and her home sympathies had always been more particularly with Maria and her mother in the old days; yet the family had been affectionate and harmonious. The strange barrier which her prosperity had built up between her and them was quite inexplicable to Matilda. At the same time she was filled with sorrow for the contrast which she knew they felt between her circumstances and their own. She mused, how she could give them comfort or do them good in any way; but could not find it. She was a weak ...
— Trading • Susan Warner
... the last glimpse we have of him. An inscrutable mystery covers the rest of his history. His manner of leaving the Scituate parish shows him to have been an eccentric person, leaves an unfavorable impression of his character, and is as inexplicable as the only other reference to him that has thus far been found. Calamy, in his "Continuation of the Account of Ejected Ministers," published in 1727, has a notice of Thomas Lawson, whom he describes as minister of Denton in the county of Norfolk, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... unreasonable. The problem of evil is to them absolutely incapable of solution. We know that beyond our horizon stretches the infinite universe. We grasp only one link of a chain whose beginning and end is eternity. So we readily adjust ourselves to mystery, and are content. We apply to everything inexplicable the test of partial view, and maintain our tranquillity. We fall into the ranks, and march on, acquiescent, if not jubilant. We hear the roar of cannon and the rattle of musketry. Stalwart forms fall by our side, and brawny arms are stricken. Our own hopes bite the dust, our own hopes bury ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... house to die." And next morning the poor beast was found lying dead not twenty yards from the gate; although he had not appeared ill when I stroked his nose on the previous evening; but when I saw him lying there dead, and remembered the old native's words, it seemed to me as marvellous and inexplicable that a horse should act in that way, as if some wild creature—a rhea, a fawn, or dolichotes—had come to exhale his last breath at the gates of his enemy ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... shorter time, had not the country been one sheet of ice, which rendered progression both difficult and dangerous. Each person of whom I enquired the distance told me more than the one before, until I thought that a Bosnian 'saht' (hour) was a more inexplicable measure than a German 'stunde' or a Scottish 'mile and a bittoch.' At length, however, the lights of Brod proclaimed our approach to the Turkish town of that name. On the left bank of the Save stands Austrian Brod, which, like all the Slavonic ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... of Belgian violinists of to-day is Eugene Ysaye, who possesses that magnetism which charms alike the musician and the amateur, because of his perfect musical expression. He possesses the inexplicable and inexpressible something which takes cold judgment off its feet and leads ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... course of life that we are driven by some inexplicable fatality to suffer those very afflictions we dread the most. We are told of persons who trembled for a lifetime at the horrid anticipation of being one day mad; it was the shadow of the judgement that ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... ebb of the store advertising occurred a lapse in circulation, inexplicable to the staff until an analysis indicated that the women readers were losing interest. It was young Mr. Surtaine who solved the mystery, by a flash of that newspaper instinct with which ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... it not been for the strange and unpleasant dream which had somehow gifted him with an artificial importance in my mind, I should have cherished few regrets at his sudden flitting. As it was, I had a curious sense of uneasiness, and an inexplicable impression that in some undefined way I had done him an injustice, or been careless of his interests, though in reality I was very sure I had done ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... Reddin climbing slowly and still some way off. They did not know who it was, nor what destiny was pacing silently towards them with his advancing figure, nor why he rode up and down this road and other roads every day; but an inexplicable sense of urgency came upon Edward. To his own surprise, he ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... had grown in proportion as so many other affections were crushed out. Well, it is in this part of my being that duty exacts from me the most painful sacrifice. My leaving the seminary will be an inexplicable enigma to my mother; she will believe that I have killed her out ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... uncaressed in her father's arms. Astonished and grieved she turned to Grey Eagle; the light had fled from his face, and his soul apparently; he seemed petrified and lifeless as the rock he stood upon. Even the poor wolf, missing his usual attention, or from some inexplicable cause, commenced to howl pitifully as he leaped ...
— Birch Bark Legends of Niagara • Owahyah
... social utility of customs, taken generally, is easily apparent, yet there are many customs which seem inexplicable upon such a principle. Why, for example, should the king of a primitive community be prohibited from sleeping lying down? or why should it be forbidden that he gaze upon the sea? [Footnote: Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh edition, article "Taboo."] The origin of such customs ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... the pieces of the puzzle began to fit slowly together in his mind. But the partial answer at which he arrived seemed too fantastic for belief. Could it be possible that when he had stopped at the roadside stand he had blundered, in some inexplicable ...
— Made in Tanganyika • Carl Richard Jacobi
... that height many strange things about the flood that appear inexplicable from below are perfectly plain. How so many houses happened to be so queerly twisted, for instance, as if the water had a whirling instead of a straight motion, was ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... covered her face with her hands; perhaps she was praying; if so, it was unconsciously; but she still listened for the detectives, the police-officers who might be coming. The strain was almost unendurable, and it was with a strange, inexplicable relief that her suspense was brought to an end by the sound of someone approaching the opposite door and knocking. She rose, trembling, and listened, as she had listened so many times that eventful night. The knock was repeated three times; she heard the visitor—a detective, she didn't ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... degree of amazing extravagance, the Epicureans have had the assurance to explain and account for what we call the soul of man and his free-will, by the clinamen, which is so unaccountable and inexplicable itself. Thus they are reduced to affirm that it is in this motion, wherein atoms are in a kind of equilibrium between a straight line and a line somewhat circular, ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... issued on to the Place de Greve the crowd was still excited and in a state of consternation at the inexplicable collision that had occurred an hour before. The body of a wounded man who had just expired was carried past me. They told me that it was the fifth. It was taken, as the other bodies had been taken, to the Salle Saint Jean, where the dead of the ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... feeling of discontent or cheerlessness should be regarded as occasioned by an accession of the attribute of Passion into the mind. Whatever state, as regards either the body or the mind, exists with error or heedlessness, should be known as indicative of Darkness which is incomprehensible and inexplicable. The organ of hearing rests on space; it is space itself (under limitations); (Sound has that organ for its refuge). (Sound, therefore, is a modification of space). In perceiving sound, one may not immediately acquire a knowledge of the organ of hearing and of space. But when ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... these upper drawers? So many laces, and half-worn collars that don't belong there, are always getting in; loose coppers have such a way of accumulating in the crevices; all your wandering pins and hair-pins make it a rendezvous by a species of free-masonry utterly inexplicable; then your little boxes fit in so tightly, and never have room to open, and are always getting their covers caught when you shut the drawer, and, when you try to keep them down, you pinch ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... who betray supernatural power in foreseeing the future as well as in performing sundry inexplicable feats. They are looked upon as magicians and are invariably associated with the influence of the evil one. It had been the fate of Alphonse de Maistre's wife to incur the inveterate displeasure of one of these persons, and on the day on which her first and only ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... figure in the doorway was glancing from table to table, nodding here and there to an acquaintance. His eyes traveled the length of the room. Now they were nearing us. I felt a sudden, inexplicable tightening at heart and throat, as though fingers were clutching there. Then his eyes met mine, and I felt the blood rushing to my face as he came swiftly over to our table and ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... I ever knew," he said again and again, both to Dolly and to Mr. Barry. But yet he did not regard him as an honest man regards a rascal, and was angry with himself in consequence. He knew that there remained with him even some spark of love for Mr. Scarborough, which to himself was inexplicable. From the moment in which he had first admitted the fact that Augustus Scarborough was the true heir-at-law, he had been most determined in taking care that that heirship should be established. It must be known to all men that Mountjoy ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope |
