"Inexpressive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Fra Damiano was very successful in thus suggesting the texture of much veined and coloured marble and of rocks, but directly the human figure enters into the design these expedients are felt to be insufficient and inexpressive, and inner lines have perforce to be introduced. The opposite extreme is such work as the panels by the brothers Caniana in the Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo, in which the composition and drawing of the figures recall the designs of the Caracci, and the technique of the shading reminds one of a copper ...
— Intarsia and Marquetry • F. Hamilton Jackson
... de l'Allemagne:' Schulgen, Dusseldorf and Paris. Overbeck had an aversion to the heavy and mechanical schools of engraving; he objected to meaningless masses of shadow and to the multiplication of lines inexpressive of form. Accordingly these engravings from the Gospels, in common with other plates from the master, possess merits the opposites to such defects. Like the original drawings, they are chiefly dependent on outline, and even their slightness is not without the advantage of suggestiveness. ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... deadly conflict; not a sound was to be heard but the hoarse cry of the vulture, flapping her wings and mounting into the air, alarmed at the intrusion of man. Those countenances, which had so lately beamed with daring and defiance, were unmeaning and inexpressive; and what with the effect produced on the dead bodies, by the excessive heat and the mangling and disfiguration of the tomahawk and scalping knife, scarcely one could be distinguished from another. Friends tortured themselves in vain, to find friends, in the huge mass of slain,—fathers ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... difficult to pronounce decidedly on their original workmanship: but, judging by what appears, it would seem to have been of a ruder and coarser character than that of the slabs or of the royal statues. The Nebo images are heavy, formal, inexpressive, and not over well-proportioned; but they are not wanting in a certain quiet dignity which impresses the beholder. They are unfortunately disfigured, like so many of the lions and bulls, by several lines of cuneiform writing inscribed round their bodies; but this artistic ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... slow or quick death, to prolong the toiling, bitter existence—pilgrims of eternal hope; born in the belief, in the sane and wholesome creed that, no matter what the horror is, no matter what the burden's weight must be, one must live! It takes a great deal to wake in these inexpressive, indifferent faces illumination of interest. At what ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... his back, his feet slightly apart, stood very straight and stiff by the side of the compass stand. His face, now hardly visible, was as inexpressive as the door of ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... itself in his appearance. In figure he was about the middle height, and strongly though sparely built. The head was well-proportioned; the face a lean oval; the complexion sallow; the hair and small moustache very dark; the brown eyes inexpressive and close-set, revealing a tendency to suspiciousness—Bancroft prided himself on his prudence. A certain smartness of dress and a conscious carriage discovered a vanity which, in an older man, would have been fatuous. ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... length, I have seen sisters who would never caress each other, or, by any but the most formal and dignified methods, express their affection for each other. I have seen them live together for months and years as inexpressive of affection for each other as cattle in a stall,—more so: for I have seen a cow affectionately lick her neighbor's ear by the half-hour, while among these girls I have failed to see a kiss, or hear ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... Raleigh, in his "In Memoriam: James McNeill Whistler," insists, truly enough, on the strong streak of an eccentric honesty in matters strictly pictorial, which ran through his complex and slightly confused character. "He would destroy any of his works rather than leave a careless or inexpressive touch within the limits of the frame. He would begin again a hundred times over rather than attempt by patching to make his work ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... was impossible to transgress, the picture of a little girl with reddish hair, and a skin freckled with tiny pink marks, who held a trowel in her hand, and smiled as she directed towards me a long and subtle and inexpressive stare. And already the charm with which her name, like a cloud of incense, had filled that archway in the pink hawthorn through which she and I had, together, heard its sound, was beginning to conquer, to cover, to embalm, to beautify everything with which it had any ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... her,—and then only by sending her maid in quest of her. He did get her at last into his own sitting-room and then, having placed her in a chair near the fire, gave her Lord Rufford's letter to read. "What can it be," said she looking up into his face with her great inexpressive eyes, "that has required all this solemnity?" She still looked up at him and did ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... state of the roads), it is impossible to say. As it was my only reply was by a glance, which, if it failed to convince her that I pitied her with a depth and intensity which approached alarmingly near the kindred emotion, love, must have been singularly inexpressive. And the evening came to an end, as all evenings, however long, are sure to do at last; and in due course I went to bed, but not to sleep, for Clara Saville and her forebodings ran riot in my brain, and effectually banished the "soft restorer," ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... form, The grace of motion, or the bloom of light, Thrills through Imagination's tender frame, From nerve to nerve; all naked and alive 120 They catch the spreading rays; till now the soul At length discloses every tuneful spring, To that harmonious movement from without Responsive. Then the inexpressive strain Diffuses its enchantment: Fancy dreams Of sacred fountains and Elysian groves, And vales of bliss: the intellectual power Bends from his awful throne a wondering ear, And smiles: the passions, gently soothed away, Sink to divine repose, and love ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... collections of syllables, such as "locate," "operate," "antagonize," "transportation," "commutation," and "proposition," is an irony of civilisation. These words, if words they may be called, are hideous to the eye, offensive to the ear, and inexpressive to the mind. They are the base coins of language. They bear upon their face no decent superscription. They are put upon the street, fresh from some smasher's den, and not even the newspapers, contemptuous as they are of style, have reason to be proud of them! Nor ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... separate great toes make no noise; nothing is heard, as they glide by, but a 'froufrou' of silken stuffs. I find them all pleasant to look upon; their dollish air pleases me now, and I fancy I have discovered what it is that gives it to them: it is not only their round, inexpressive faces with eyebrows far removed from the eyelids, but the excessive amplitude of their dress. With those huge sleeves, it might be supposed they have neither back nor shoulders; their delicate figures are lost in these wide robes, which float around what might be little marionettes without bodies ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... them his fancy seems to be imprisoned in the labyrinths of hair; in others the eyes deep with feeling or hard with gemlike brilliancy have caught it, or the lips that tell and hide so much, or the nostrils quivering with momentary emotion. Beauty, inexpressive of inner meaning, must, we conceive, have had but slight attraction for him. We do not find that he drew "a fair naked body" for the sake of its carnal charm; his hasty studies of the nude are often faulty, mere memoranda of attitude and gesture. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... (BLACK FISH).—I give the popular fishermen's names for all these fish, for generally they are the best. Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so, and suggest another. I do so now, touching the Black Fish, so-called, because blackness is the rule among almost all whales. So, call him the Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... uncomplainingly,—many of them even without a thought of complaint,—and die at last with their hearts full of love for the brutes who have trampled upon them. Mrs. Stilton was perhaps forty years of age, of middle height, moderately plump in person, with light-brown hair, soft, inexpressive gray eyes, and a meek, helpless, imploring mouth. Her voice was mild and plaintive, and its accents of anger (if she ever gave utterance to such) could not have been distinguished from those of grief. She did not often attend ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... pageant of amours! The thousand heartaches; the fingers clutching hungrily at keys that might be other fingers; the fiddler with his eyelids clenched while he dreams that the violin, against his cheek is the satin cheek of "the inexpressive She;" the singer with a cry in every note; the moonlit youth with the mandolin tinkling his serenade to an ivied window; the dead-marches; the nocturnes; the amorous waltzes; the duets; the trills and trinkets of flirtatious scherzi; the laughing ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... fear, perhaps with pain; for, this mode of tying, which seems to be an absolute superstition with the peasantry, can hardly fail to cause great suffering. Here, they lie, patiently in rows, among the straw, with their stolid faces and inexpressive eyes, superintended by men and women, boys and girls; here they are inspected by our friends, the butchers, bargained for, and bought. Plenty of time; plenty of room; plenty of good humour. 'Monsieur ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... bent on achieving the job which he had set himself to perform; and the faces, although somewhat tense and set and grave, were inexpressive of emotion. I noticed only three persons overcome, two Italian women, very poor, embracing an aged fellow countrywoman, and all weeping. Physical fatigue and seriousness were the only inner states that ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... her husband. To her surprise his usually sensitive face did not show her what was passing in his mind. Indeed she thought it looked peculiarly inexpressive as ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... turned away, he said, in his gentle, inexpressive voice, that hadn't been raised in anger once, "Can I lend ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... sisters crossed the hall, where the 'very high tea' was being laid; hearing from the regions above sounds of exquisite glee and merriment, as perfect and almost as inexpressive of anything else as the singing of birds, so that they themselves could not help answering with a laugh, before they vanished ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as long as he could over his barn-work. Somehow it seemed lonely in the barn, and as long as he could see or feel his way about, he kept himself busy over the old horse and cow, accepting their inexpressive companionship, and serving their suppers with unusual generosity. His sensations, even of grief, were not very distinct to him; there was only a vague sense of discomfort, of being disturbed in his quiet course. ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... rather short hair, and thin lips that were at times curved into something between a sneer and a smile. He looked about forty. His face would have been pleasant, if it had not been for his eyes, which, in themselves small and inexpressive, were set remarkably close together, with only the thin, long nose as a dividing line between them. In fact, there was something strikingly birdlike about his face. He was in evening dress ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... shaped to the rasp of ropes, in every attitude of their bodies, the ineradicable hall-mark of the sea which was the arena of their lives; they salted the barren place with its vigor and pungency. Pausing within the door, Tom Mowbray sent his pale inexpressive glance flickering along the faces ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... moved emptily in air. He was always better with his hands than words, but this time even they seemed inexpressive. ...
— The Last Place on Earth • James Judson Harmon
... the same time, I am lucky enough to possess certain advantages. I have, for instance, managed to preserve the ability to speak dialect in spite of all the efforts of my pastors and masters to make me talk the stereotyped, comparatively inexpressive compromise which goes by the name of King's English. Tony is hard of hearing, catches the meaning of dialect far quicker than that of standard English, and I notice that the damn'd spot sir seldom blots our conversation when it is carried on in dialect. Finally there is ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... struck Carroll as singularly inexpressive, but he made an effort to gather his courage when his companion broke off with a groan ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... Anne's wooden, inexpressive countenance was a great comfort to Sir Charles, in some moods. Though she was clever enough, she did not have that superfluity of sympathy and responsiveness that makes one go away regretting one has said so much, ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... a certain plain tightness which Zachariah admired. She had exquisitely white and perfect teeth, a pale, clear complexion, and the reputation of being a most sensible woman. She was not a beauty, but she was good- looking; the weak points in her face being her eyes, which were mere inexpressive optic organs, and her mouth, which, when shut, seemed too much shut, just as if it were compressed by an effort of the will or by a spring. These, however, Zachariah thought minor matters, if, indeed, he ever noticed them. "The ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... ease than Val, in spite of the disadvantage of his evening dress, Lawrence stood looking down at him with brilliant inexpressive eyes. "Is it your own idea that I stayed on at Wanhope ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... wonderful that—as he had learned in the Mission garden at St. Augustine—such depths of feeling could coexist with such absence of imagination. But he remembered how, even then, she had surprised him by dropping back to inexpressive girlishness as soon as her conscience had been eased of its burden; and he saw that she would probably go through life dealing to the best of her ability with each experience as it came, but never anticipating any by so ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... test of publication. Then his communications became comparatively hurried and matter-of-fact. His boy's return home for the holidays was always rather a stirring time for his private feelings, but he became more and more inexpressive. He would sometimes lay a hand on those growing shoulders and then withdraw it. They felt braced-up shoulders, stiffly inflexible or—they would wince. And when one has let the habit of indefinite feelings grow upon ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... sometimes to speak of very indifferent characters with the most extravagant applause. With such, the hyperbole is a favourite figure; and every degree of comparison but the superlative is rejected, as cold and inexpressive. But this habit of exaggeration greatly weakens their credit, and destroys the weight of their opinion on other occasions; for people very soon discover what degree of faith is to be given both to their judgment and veracity. And those ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... week, a month, an entire season, in which "the flighty purpose" has never been overtaken. The calendar has the inexorableness of fate. The day, the month, goes by, unrelenting. It may be shattered with feeble and inexpressive demands, but all the same it is gone, and it is unreturning. Whether freighted richly with the essential, or merely burdened with the ineffectual, it is ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... it's a wery inexpressive word, that's all,' said Sam. 'It may be, but I ain't much in the chimical line myself, so I can't say.' And here, to the great horror of Mr. John Smauker, Sam Weller ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... indeed the pie named in the list quoted; and not only so, but that it was made out of the "umbles" or entrails of the deer, a dish of the second table, inferior of course to the venison pasty which smoked upon the dais, and therefore not inexpressive of that humiliation which the term "eating humble pie" now painfully describes. The "umbles" of the deer are constantly the perquisites ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... therefore worthy of the name of thoughts. But as every thought, or definite exertion of intellect, implies two subjects, and some connection or relation inferred between them, the term "ideas of relation" is not incorrect, though it is inexpressive. ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... nakedness of their eyebrows, of which the movements are thus rendered less conspicuous. When, however, they raise their eyebrows their foreheads become, as with us, transversely wrinkled. In comparison with man, their faces are inexpressive, chiefly owing to their not frowning under any emotion of the mind—that is, as far as I have been able to observe, and I carefully attended to this point. Frowning, which is one of the most important of all ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... nurtured mind. He had early distinguished himself at Oxford by his scornful attitude towards democracy. There was something that appealed to the imagination in his fine antagonism to the crowd—on the one hand, was the brilliant young nobleman, picturesquely alone; on the other, the ugly, inexpressive multitude, dressed inelegantly in shop-clothes, under-educated, under-fed, envious, base, and with a wicked disinclination for work and a wicked appetite for the good things it could so rarely get. For ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... Feversham, as he rose briskly from his chair. He was a small wiry man, and, in spite of his white hairs, alert. But the alertness was of the body. A bony face, with a high narrow forehead and steel-blue inexpressive eyes, ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... irrelevancy; of a note of injury that one who could profess so little equipment beyond good will should so disappoint the expectation her first appearance had aroused. The background was a room—it seemed to have been in every case the same—expensively overfurnished, inexpressive, ill-fitting its uses, like a badly chosen ready-made coat. The day was not without its humors, or what would have been humors if her spirit could have rebounded to them. Chiefly, the violent antagonism she found aroused in two or three cases by ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... enterprises of life upon a man! And I have no experience of either. You must forgive me anything that may have appeared to you awkward in my behaviour, inexpressive in my ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... slight man, of middle height, with very respectable iron-grey hair that stood almost upright upon his head, but with a poor, inexpressive, thin face below it. He was given to bowing a good deal, rubbing his hands together, smiling courteously, and to the making of many civil little speeches; but his strength as a leading man in Warminster lay in his hair, and in the suit of orderly well-brushed black clothes which ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... at the best is a sorry substitute indeed for the light that is from heaven. Above all, it flings, as indeed we have intimated, an air of absurdity over the orthodox Church-of-Englandism—for once to quote a not inexpressive barbarism of Bentham—which every now and then breaks out either in passing compliment—amounting to but a bow—or in eloquent laudation, during which the poet appears to be prostrate on his knees. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... the hair, the politician's eye was usually small, and intensely black—not the dead, inexpressive jet, which gives the idea of a hole through white paper, or of a cavernous socket in a death's-head; but the keen, midnight darkness, in whose depths you can see a twinkle of starlight—where you feel ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... aside Cardinal Newman's, the style he wrote is certainly less open to criticism than that of any other modern Englishman. He was neither super-eloquent like Mr. Ruskin nor a Germanised Jeremy like Carlyle; he was not marmoreally emphatic as Landor was, nor was he slovenly and inexpressive as was the great Sir Walter; he neither dallied with antithesis like Macaulay nor rioted in verbal vulgarisms with Dickens; he abstained from technology and what may be called Lord-Burleighism as carefully as George Eliot indulged in them, and he avoided ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... manners certainly, the superficial polish of the Frenchman, but of no other attraction, and even in that there was something about him to Mary particularly repulsive. He had seen some threescore years; his countenance, in general inexpressive, at times betrayed that strong and evil passions were working at his heart. He was said to be very rich, though some reports had gone about that his fortune had all been amassed by gambling in no very honourable manner. With this man Mr. Greville was continually associated; they were ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... lids of Morning. In the dole That haunts the west wind, in the joyous roll Of Arethusan fountains, or among The wastes where Ozymandias the strong Lies in colossal ruin, thy control Speaks in the wedded rhyme. Thy spirit gave A fragrance to all Nature, and a tone To inexpressive Silence. Each apart— Earth, Air and Ocean—claims thee as its own, The twain that bred thee, and the panting wave That clasped thee like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... white lace over it, and with no other jewels upon her person than diamonds. Very beautifully she was dressed; doing infinite credit, no doubt, to those three artists who had, between them, succeeded in turning her out of hand. And her face, also, was beautiful, with a certain cold, inexpressive beauty. She walked up the room very slowly, smiling here and smiling there; but still with very faint smiles, and took the place which her hostess indicated to her. One word she said to the countess and two to the earl. Beyond that ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... lost the properties of hyssop known to Solomon, we regain our superiority over that learned Hebrew by christening it Gratiola officinalis. The sexes must not be taught in one room to discard such ugly and inexpressive terms as snow-drop, meadow-sweet, heart's-ease, fever-few, cowslip, etc., and learn to know the cowslip as Primula veris—by class, Pentandria monogynia; and the buttercup as Ranunculus acnis—Polyandria ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... When I came down to breakfast that morning I looked sharply into Pitting's face. He was as coldly placid and inexpressive as usual. It was evident to me that his mind was in no way distressed. After breakfast I sat down to work, all the time ceaselessly conscious of the fact of this intruder upon my privacy. Nevertheless, I laboured for several hours, waiting for any development that might occur ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... most critics of the character of Giorgione's art. In their eyes, he is something so perfect as to be incapable of producing anything short of the ideal. He could never have drawn so badly, he never could have composed so awkwardly, he never could have been so inexpressive!—such is the usual criticism. I have elsewhere insisted upon the unevenness which invariably characterises the productions of men who are gifted with a strong artistic temperament, and in Giorgione's case, as I believe, this is particularly true. The Glasgow picture ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... knowledge among the obsolescent accumulations of a public library, or it may for a moment be touched upon by some veteran teacher. But the time when social and economic science had to choose between debatable and inexpressive technicalities on the one hand or the stigma of empiricism on the other, ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... "predestined" to betrayal, as Balzac puts it. Councillor Karenin completes the trio and Anna hated his large ears; but before Karenin, Charles Bovary was despised by Emma because of his clumsy feet and inexpressive bearing, and his habit of breathing heavily during dinner. George Tesman with his purblind faculties, amiable ways, and semi-idiotic exclamations will go down in the history of fiction with Georges Dandin, Bovary, and ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... speak not only correctly but elegantly; and not only elegantly but eloquently. In order to do this, I will first take pains to get an habitual, but unaffected, purity, correctness and elegance of style in my common conversation; I will seek for the best words, and take care to reject improper, inexpressive, and vulgar ones. I will read the greatest masters of oratory, both ancient and modern, and I will read them singly in that view. I will study Demosthenes and Cicero, not to discover an old Athenian or Roman custom, nor to puzzle myself with the value of talents, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... everything to Wood, and he is really a thoroughly noble, good fellow, and a hero. He is a short, rather thick set, somewhat awkward, and "slouchy" man, extremely careless in his dress, blunt and abrupt in his manner, with a queer inexpressive face, little blue eyes which can look dull or flash fire or twinkle with the wickedest fun. He is so witty, sarcastic, and cutting, that he is a terrible foe, and will put the laugh even on his best friends. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... askaris stood leaning on their rifles. Over against her chair the porters were aligned in a great semicircle, tribe by tribe. The intervening flames of a camp fire shone richly on the massed bronze bodies and the brutish faces that had turned, for once, inexpressive. As Lilla sat down in her chair, a low murmur passed through their ranks and lost itself in the gilded fronds of palm trees that hung stiffly, like the scenery of a theater, ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... from Norman, was equally inexpressive of the almost incredulous gratitude and tenderness ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... casually given, she took in full measure. For twenty minutes, by the clock, she aired her views in a stream of vigorous colloquial English, lapsing into ready-made phrases of melodrama, common to the normally inexpressive, in ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... disciples of the schools. But he is painstaking, determined to get on, and eager to satisfy the continually increasing demand for work. His draperies are confused and unmeaning, his faces round, with small features, inexpressive button mouths, and weak chins, and his flesh tints have little of the glow which is later the prerogative of every second-rate painter. Yet Catena succeeds, like many another careful mediocre man, in securing patronage, and as the sixteenth ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... of night; Then a long, lonely, leaden mere Backed by a desolate fell As by a spectral battlement; and then, Low-brooding, interpenetrating all, A vast, grey, listless, inexpressive sky, So beggared, so incredibly bereft Of starlight and the song of racing worlds It might have bellied down upon the Void Where as in terror Light was ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... call to those around to release it, which was not done until it had been bitten so deeply that I shall carry the scar with me to my grave. Poor fellow, he meant me no harm, for, as the near approach of death softened his features, a smile spread over his rough inexpressive face, and ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... at him, but found it more comfortable to examine the inexpressive gravel path. "But now you have something to think of besides girls," she ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... the rogue," announced the captain, with a suggestion of challenge in the speech, as if he would like to have the epithet resented. But the man only regarded the officer with steady, inexpressive eyes. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... for one thing." Elsie withdrew her observant short-sighted eyes from Mrs. Pendleton's crowning glory, and a smile barely touched the corners of her expressively inexpressive mouth. Mrs. Pendleton glanced up, faintly ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... Amazonian mind, and, she declared, received her kindly refusals with manifest relief. And Arnold Shoesmith struck up a sort of friendship that oddly imitated mine. She took a liking to him because he was clumsy and shy and inexpressive; she embarked upon the dangerous interest of helping him to find his soul. I had some twinges of jealousy about that. I didn't see the necessity of him. He invaded her time, and I thought that might interfere with her work. If their ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... ignorance as to the beginnings of the scattered tribes of men, we cannot judge if these are the remains of an earlier art or the first germs of a new one. Of one thing there is no doubt: this primitive decoration consists entirely of pattern; that is to say, of the repetition of certain (to us) inexpressive forms, which by reiteration assume importance and in some degree express beauty—the beauty of what ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... inexpressive barrier of his superbly controlled features, but the coldness of his eyes showed ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... emotion was evidently agitating him, for the letter rustled in his hand, and his voice was uneven. Of this, no sign was given by his inexpressive features. The round brown eyes and the ruddy varnish on his cheeks were a mask upon grief, if not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... observer for whom one hint of human revelation outweighs in value a warehouseful of inexpressive furniture, a room of this type holds one superlative interest. It is an index of character no less infallible than its owner's face. Its salient features may tell the same tale as a dozen others in the same ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... illustrations of any Biblical scene that occurred in the lesson of the day. I have a book full of his childish fancies now, all elaborately colored on week-days—"Joseph and his Brethren" in gaudy turbans, and wonderfully inexpressive countenances, reminding me of Flurry's dolls; the queen of Sheba, coming before Solomon, in a marvelous green tiara and yellow garments; a headless Goliath, expressed with a painful degree of detail, more fit for the Wirtz Gallery than ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... innumerable tombstones. But when we ridicule the triteness of monumental verses, we forget that Sorrow reads far deeper in them than we can, and finds a profound and individual purport in what seems so vague and inexpressive unless interpreted by her. She makes the epitaph anew, though the selfsame words may have served ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... standing in front of her, against the fire, his grey eyes, which could be, as she well knew, so cold and inexpressive, bent upon her with ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... presents, and the great desirability that its progress and developments should be observed and its history written; also of C. N——, who, it appears, is passing through a new moral phasis. He is silent, inexpressive, talks little or none, and listens without response, except a sardonic laugh; and some of his friends think that he is passing into permanent eclipse. Various other matters were considered or glanced at, and finally, between five and six o'clock, Mr. Emerson took his leave. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... judging from stylistic grounds, between 1407 and 1412. This statue shows a doubt and hesitation which did not affect Donatello when making the little prophets for the Mandorla door. The head is commonplace and inexpressive; the pose is dull, and the drapery with its crimped edges ignores the right leg. There is, however, nothing blameworthy in the statue, but, on the other hand, there is nothing showing promise or deserving praise. Had it ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... doth follow talk that causes 2605 The baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears, When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses Of inexpressive speech:—the youthful years Which we together passed, their hopes and fears, The blood itself which ran within our frames, 2610 That likeness of the features which endears The thoughts expressed by them, our very names, And all the winged hours ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of the last wheat-rick at Flintcomb-Ash farm. The dawn of the March morning is singularly inexpressive, and there is nothing to show where the eastern horizon lies. Against the twilight rises the trapezoidal top of the stack, which has stood forlornly here through the washing and ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... nights, when she came up to the garret cold, hungry, tired, and with a tempest raging in her small breast, Emily's stare seemed so vacant, her sawdust legs and arms so limp and inexpressive, that Sara ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... or that she had purposely enveloped her movements in mystery. When she ceased to write he had simply concluded that, like himself, she felt the mockery of trying to keep up a sort of distant, semi-fraternal relation, marked by the occasional interchange of inexpressive letters. The inextricable mingling of thought and sensation which made the peculiar closeness of their union could never, to such direct and passionate natures, be replaced by the pretense of a temperate friendship. Feeling thus himself, and instinctively ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... man, as you see him in the British Museum for instance, with fittingly inexpressive expression, (look into, look at the curves of, the blossom-like cavity of the opened mouth) is beautiful, but not altogether virile. The eyes, the facial lines which they gather into one, seem ready to follow the coming motion of the discus as those ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... whom the fugitive sounds about him, or it may have been the intuition of disaster, had awakened from his uneasy slumber. He questioned them, insisted on knowing all. When he was finally brought, with much difficulty, to see how matters stood, stupor, immense and profound, filled his boyish, inexpressive eyes. More than ten times in ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... to have a round of jack-pots, say ten—or twenty, if the member from Silver City preferred—and then stop? It would do excellently, the member said, so softly that the Governor looked at him. But Wingo's large countenance remained inexpressive, his black eyes still impersonally fixed on space. He sat thus till his chips were counted to him, and then the eyes moved to watch the cards fall. The Governor hoped he might win now, under the jack-pot system. At noon he should have a disclosure to make; something that ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... blanching of the rose-tint on her cheek, Rose to more perfect worship. It might seem As if a sacred temple, purified By prayers and praises, were a place sublime, Of fitting sanctity, wherein to hear The inexpressive call that summoneth The ready spirit upward. But the change In her delightful home, what words can tell! The shock and contrast, when a mind so skill'd With order and efficiency to fill Each post of woman's duty and of love, Vanished from all its daily ministries, ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... doubtful company. He accepted ungraciously the cup handed to him by Mrs. Fyne, took an unwilling sip or two and put it down as if there were some moral contamination in the coffee of these "swells." Between whiles he directed mysteriously inexpressive glances at little Fyne, who, I gather, had no breakfast that morning at all. Neither had the girl. She never moved her hands from her lap till her appointed guardian got up, leaving his cup ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... unrepressed familiar accent that stirred a fresh flicker of Mitchy's grin, met the new arrival in the middle of the room before Mrs. Brookenham had had time to reach her. The Duchess, quickly reseated, watched an instant the inexpressive concussion of the tall brother and sister; then while Mitchy again subsided into his place, "You're not, as a race, clever, you're not delicate, you're not sane, but you're capable of extraordinary good looks," she resumed. "Vous avez parfois la ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... the sill, looking up and then down the street, as if waiting the arrival of a victim upon whom to pronounce one of his awful judgments. Felsh is a different species of person, being a short, stunted man, with a flat, inexpressive face. He has very much the appearance of a man who had been clumsily thrown together for any purpose future circumstances might require. Between these worthies and one Hanz Von Vickeinsteighner there has ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... and in him is thy sight," Said I, "blest Spirit! Therefore will of his Cannot to thee be dark. Why then delays Thy voice to satisfy my wish untold, That voice which joins the inexpressive song, Pastime of heav'n, the which those ardours sing, That cowl them with six shadowing wings outspread? I would not wait thy asking, wert thou known To me, as thoroughly ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... When lo! a wonder; on the opposite shore she rises, radiant and unhurt, in her native form. Modred contemplates the prodigy with astonishment; his lust and his brutality inflame him more than ever. Eagerly he gazes on her charms; in thought he devours her inexpressive beauties. And now he can no longer restrain himself; with sudden start he leaps into the river. The waves are wrought into a sudden tempest; they hurry him to and fro. He buffets them with lusty arms; he rides upon the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... to and fro on the armless rocker, her swift, appraising eyes taking in her visitor's distress. The smooth face wore its customary, inexpressive calm. Lucille, striving desperately to arrive at some opinion of what the woman thought, saw that she might as well try to find emotion ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... passionate crying. 'Oh, dunna, dunna!' she sobbed. So she did always at any mention of helpless suffering, flinging herself down in wild rebellion and abandonment so that epilepsy had been suspected. But it was not epilepsy. It was pity. She, in her inexpressive, childish way, shared with the love-martyr of Galilee the heartrending capacity for imaginative sympathy. In common with Him and others of her kind, she was not only acquainted with grief, but reviled and rejected. In her schooldays boys brought maimed frogs and ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... herself were at the antipodes, and they were separated no less by their similarities than by their differences. Their wistful and inexpressive love for each other was as much of a blight upon them as their inherent antagonism. The sun went down that bleak Christmas night on a house ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... cautious reticence and a rising enmity, blockading all investigation save the obligatory inquisition of a coroner's jury. An object of ever-recurrent scrutiny was a stranger in the vicinity, who had been subpoenaed also. The facial effect of culture and sophistication was illustrated in his inexpressive, controlled, masklike countenance. He was generally known as the "valley man with the lung complaint," who had built a cabin on the mountain during the summer, banished hither by the advice of his physician for the value to the lungs of the soft, healing air. He wore ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Claudia was able to indulge to the full the harrowing sense of her inadequacy. No wonder she had not been one of the few that he cared to talk to; every word she uttered must so obviously have diminished the inducement! She had been cheap, trivial, conventional; at once gushing and inexpressive, eager and constrained. She could feel him counting the minutes till the visit was over, and as the door finally closed on the scene of her discomfiture she almost shared the hope with which she confidently credited him—that they ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... only fault. It was stuck on the back of his head, and he was in a white waistcoat and shirt sleeves. He welcomed me with a forgetfulness of my bitter satire and my hostile abstinence that was almost divine. His glasses fell off at the sight of me. His round inexpressive eyes shone brightly. He held out his ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... agony in the strict form of a regular fugue; but here, as everywhere else in the Requiem, feeling triumphs over the artistic sense; and by a chromatic change, of which none but a Mozart or a Bach would have dreamed, the inexpressive formality of the counter-subject is altered into a passionate appeal for mercy. In no other work of Mozart known to me does he ever become hysterical, and in the Requiem only once, towards the end of this number, where the sopranos are ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... not only continue to be the favorite resort of tourists and artists, but will become, during the summer season, the abode of families whose abundant means enable them to enjoy the healthful climate, the gorgeous scenery, and the invigorating sports which lend an inexpressive charm to the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Murdy's and Moodna, from Murderer's Creek, its present inexpressive name having been given to it by N. P. Willis. One Murdock lived on its shore with his wife, two sons, and a daughter; and often in the evening Naoman, a warrior of a neighboring tribe, came to the cabin, caressed ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... to take possession of one of Ferragut's soft, inert, inexpressive hands. Its cold contact made him hesitate. He felt inclined to yield.... But immediately he blotted out this weakness with a firm, ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sullen- faced boy idly watched the game. When the three men came into the office the boy dropped his chair to the floor and stared at Ed who stared back at him. It was as though a contest of some sort went on between them. A tall neatly-dressed woman, with a brisk manner and pale, inexpressive, hard blue eyes, stood back of a little combined desk and cigar case at the end of the room, and as the three walked toward her she looked from Ed to the sullen-faced boy and then again at Ed. Sam concluded she was a woman bent on having her own ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... realism, let it then be clearly understood, regards not in the least degree the fundamental truth, but only the technical method, of a work of art. Be as ideal or as abstract as you please, you will be none the less veracious; but if you be weak, you run the risk of being tedious and inexpressive; and if you be very strong and honest, you may chance ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... negligently over the back of a chair. He faces the spectator, on his head a long, pointed black hat with a wide brim. His collar is white. A shadow covers the face above the eyes. These are rather melancholy, inexpressive; the flesh tints are anaemic, almost morbid. We are far away from the Vermeer of the Milkmaid and the Letter. There is something disquieting in this portrait, but it is a masterpiece ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... too, in the Far West. We went to San Francisco, among other places. We attended part of a performance at the Chinese theater. Oh, those rows of impenetrable faces gazing at the stage with their long, shining, inexpressive eyes! What a look of the everlasting the Chinese have! "We have been before you—we shall be after ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... last!" Letters in a strange handwriting filled her with anxiety. She would feel of the wax with her fingers, bury the letters in her pocket, hesitate about delivering them, and the moment when mademoiselle unfolded the terrible paper and scanned its contents with the inexpressive eye of elderly people was as full of suspense to her as if she were awaiting sentence of death. She felt that her secret and her falsehood were in everybody's hand. The house had seen her and might speak. The quarter knew her as she was. Of all about her, there was no one but her mistress whose esteem ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... half-world he had met! Not the new sort—college, suffrage! Like no one! And he knew so little of her! Not even whether she had ever really been in love. Her husband—where was he; what was he to her? "The rare, the mute, the inexpressive She!" When she smiled; when her eyes—but her eyes were so quick, would drop before he could see right into them! How beautiful she had looked, gazing at that picture—her favourite, so softly, her lips just smiling! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... inexpressive, but his face, turned full to the young doctor, told a powerful story of terribly serious doubt, the doubt of a big medical man ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... narrowly at the house. He recollected that a well-known lawyer lived there. What could the rough lieutenant want with him? He jumped at a conclusion, which was not far from the truth; still his countenance wore its usual calm and inexpressive look. ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... and hands were small and delicate; that her eyes were bright when looked at, but not brilliant so as to make their brilliancy palpably visible to all around her; her hair was dark brown, and worn very plainly brushed from her forehead; her lips were thin, and her mouth, perhaps, in general inexpressive, but when she was eager in conversation it would show itself to be animated with curves of wondrous energy; and, quiet as she was in manner, sober and demure as was her usual settled appearance, she ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... sacred truths they represent. The gods we have introduced from Egypt are regarded by the priests of that learned land as emblems of certain divine truths brought down from ancient times. They are like the Hermae at our doors, which outwardly appear to rest on inexpressive blocks of stone; but when opened, they are found to contain beautiful statues of the gods within them. It is not so with the new fables which the Greeks are continually mixing with their mythology. Pygmalion, as we ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... an outhouse. In the winter, driven home by the severity of the weather, he would sit for days together moping in the chimney-corner, without taking the least notice of what was passing around him. Brian never mentioned this boy—who had a strong, active figure; a handsome, but very inexpressive face—without a deep sigh; and I feel certain that half his own dejection was occasioned by the mental aberration of ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... nothing left to the Inspector but to dismiss him. He had answered all questions willingly, and with a countenance inexpressive of guile. He even indulged in a parting shot on his own account, as full of frank acceptance of the situation as it was fearless in its attack. As he halted in the doorway before turning his back upon the room, he smiled for the third time as ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... every class and temperament. Some have nothing salient either in feature or in form. Their eyes are inexpressive, their lips pale, and every feature denotes a want of energy, weakness, and something like suffering. One might almost say they seemed to be incomplete, and that the torch of their lives ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... dining-room windows. She has deposited the cushions, and now turns round, so that you may have a full view of her as she stands waiting the slower advance of the elder lady. You are at once arrested by her large dark eyes, which, in their inexpressive unconscious beauty, resemble the eyes of a fawn, and it is only by an effort of attention that you notice the absence of bloom on her young cheek, and the southern yellowish tint of her small neck and face, rising above the little ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... there is often no very salient peg to hang a romance on. A sort of dusky blankness invests the establishment, which has often a rather imbecile old age. But a hundred brooding secrets lurk in this inexpressive mask, and the Chigi Palace did duty for me in the suggestive twilight as the most haunted of houses. Its basement walls sloped outward like the beginning of a pyramid, and its lower windows were covered with massive iron cages. Within the doorway, across the ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... well-made little man, good-looking for those who like such good looks. He was light-haired and blue-eyed, with regular and yet not inexpressive features. But his eyes were small and never tranquil, and rarely capable of looking at the person who was speaking to him. He had small well-trimmed, glossy whiskers, with the best-kept moustache, and the best-kept tuft on his chin which were to be seen anywhere. His face still bore the ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... we'd better go down to lunch," Mrs. Adams said, absently. "She's at the gong again." "In a minute, mama. Now about the sleeves——" And she went on with her planning. Unfortunately the gong was inexpressive of the mood of the person who beat upon it. It consisted of three little metal bowls upon a string; they were unequal in size, and, upon being tapped with a padded stick, gave forth vibrations almost musically pleasant. It was Alice who had substituted this contrivance for the brass "dinner-bell" ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... made it no secret that those of England, as a general thing, are to their perception an inexpressive and speechless race, perpendicular and unsociable, unaddicted to enriching any bareness of contact with verbal or other embroidery. This view might have derived encouragement, a few years ago, in Paris, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... a walking apothegm—as consequential as a syllogism!" muttered Harry; "but come now, Frank, let us have the inexpressive she, without backing and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... of the reductio ad absurdum. Without insisting, for example, upon the impossibility of having a speech delivered by one who is actually blind, and deaf, and dumb, we need only imagine here its utterance, by some wall-eyed stammerer, who has a visage about as wooden and inexpressive as the figure-head of a merchantman. Occasionally, it is true, physical defects have been actually conquered, individual peculiarities have been in a great measure counteracted, by rhetorical artifice, or by ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... his press, which, manned (with certain exceptions) by those who are not typically English, is too highly colored altogether to illustrate the true English spirit; nor can he be judged by such of his literature as is best known on the Continent. The Englishman proper is inexpressive, unexpressed. Further, he must be judged by the evidences of his wealth. England may be the richest country in the world per head of population, but not 5 per cent. of that population have any wealth to speak of, certainly not enough to have affected their hardihood, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... curious question, that of Hawkins, "How did you come to get mixed up in this crowd?" And the inane response he had made to the counter as though it all were a mystery too vast for solution. Oh, well, Hawkins was a queer bird, inexpressive and glum and commonplace. Could not be expected to register much. His thoughts probably were too rusty and old by the time they formed in his head to issue forth in sparkling deeds or words. Joe ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... more undeserved than usual, for a look of gentle happiness softened and inspired her naturally plain features, and lent an unwonted tender grace to a somewhat inexpressive figure. ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... black felt hat of the middle class Spaniard. His face was brown and sun-dried, with deep lines drawn downwards from the nose to the lips in such a manner that cynicism and a mildly protesting tolerance were contending for mastery in an otherwise studiously inexpressive countenance. ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... the public required them to be clearly and vividly characteristic, since its previous training had fitted it to be a competent critic. Elsewhere, particularly at the Burgundian court, the most inexpressive figures, and even mere symbols, were allowed to pass, since to understand, or to seem to understand them, was a part of aristocratic breeding. On the occasion of the famous 'Oath of the Pheasant' in the year 1454, the beautiful young horsewoman, who appears as 'Queen of Pleasure,' is the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... quarter-deck, with none but his confidential quartermaster near him, he yielded to Israel's natural curiosity to learn something concerning the sailing of the expedition. Paul stood lightly, swaying his body over the sea, by holding on to the mizzen-shrouds, an attitude not inexpressive of his easy audacity; while near by, pacing a few steps to and fro, his long spy-glass now under his arm, and now presented at his eye, Israel, looking the very image of vigilant prudence, listened to the warrior's story. It appeared that on the night of the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... such a body have to think about the livelong day that is so absorbing that all one's bright thoughts, and one's most whimsical sallies, pass without notice? Should I see her once move a muscle of her very plain, doggedly inexpressive, provokingly composed phiz, I should jump up and cry, "Bo!" ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... being penetrating, he was of that indeterminate type which never seems to acquire a personality of its own. The small and bony and steel-blue face was as neutral as the spare and reticent figure that sat before a bald table in a bald room as inexpressive and reticent as its occupant. Copeland was not only unknown outside the Department; he was, in a way, unknown in his ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... equal thickness is a very dead and inexpressive thing compared with one varied and stressed at certain points. If you observe any of the boundaries in nature we use a line to express, you will notice some points are accentuated, attract the attention, ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... little man," she mused, glancing at his blank, inexpressive features, "happens to be a detective, and knows who I am, he may think I will lead him directly to Colonel Weatherby, whom he may then arrest. Gran'pa Jim is innocent, of course, but I know he doesn't wish to be arrested, ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... wall of prejudices and conventionalities separates us. The English old maids read their romantic novels; the German families talk among themselves; some Russian or other drinks champagne while he stares with vague and inexpressive eyes; and some swarthy man from a sultry country appears to be ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... perhaps younger, for she takes snuff, and females arrive at womanhood in warm countries much sooner than in cold ones. Her person is tall, stout, and well proportioned, though it has not dignity sufficient to be commanding; her countenance is round and open, but dull and almost inexpressive; mildness of manners, evenness of temper, and inactivity of body also, might notwithstanding, I think be clearly defined in it; on the whole she has a perfect virginity of face, which betrays not ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... The luxuriant landscape is in the main Giorgionesque, save that here and there a naked branch among the leafage—and on one of them the woodpecker—strongly recalls Giovanni Bellini. The same robust, round-limbed young Venetian, with the inexpressive face, does duty here as St. John the Baptist, who in the Three Ages, presently to be discussed, appears much more appropriately as the amorous shepherd. The Christ, here shown in the flower of youthful manhood, with ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... once," said the Duke, and he smiled as he spoke with a peculiarly sweet expression, which would at times come across his generally inexpressive face,—"I remember once that some First Minister of the Crown gave evidence as to the amount of his salary, saying that his place entailed upon him expenses higher than his stipend would defray. I begin to think that my experience will ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... the pomp that yesterday beheld, As with the mourner's heart the anthem swelled; The rich-plumed canopy, the gorgeous pall, The sacred march, and sable vested wall!— These were not rites of inexpressive show, But hallowed as the types of real woe! Illustrious deceased! a NATION'S sighs, A NATION'S HEART, went ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... again elaborately clean, and conveying by a virtuous and steadfast smirk a cheerful confidence in his innocence. Johnson solid and inexpressive, Redbrook unconcerned and debonair, Marzo uneasy. These four form a little group together on the captain's left. The rest wait unintelligently on Providence in a row against the wall on the same side, shepherded by the bluejackets. The first bluejacket, a petty officer, posts ...
— Captain Brassbound's Conversion • George Bernard Shaw
... its song Has been as little heeded as the noise Of rattling wheels incessant; but to-day One of its strains brought all Elysium back Into my heart. What was it? What the tie Linking it with some inexpressive joy? At length I solve the mystery! Those notes, Pensively slow and sadly exquisite, Were what the wood-thrush piped at early dawn After that evening passage in the boat, When stars came out, that never more shall set. Oh! sweet and clear the measured cadence fell Upon ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... all. Well, she would do nothing at all; she was already doing it; more than that, she had already done it, and her chance was gone. She gave herself up—she had the strangest sense, on the spot, of so deciding; for she had turned a corner before she went on again with Lord Mark. Inexpressive, but intensely significant, he met as no one else could have done the very question she had suddenly put to Mrs. Stringham on the Bruenig. Should she have it, whatever she did have, that question had been, for long? "Ah, so possibly not," her neighbour appeared to reply; "therefore, don't you see? ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... statements without substantive thought, esp. legal] boilerplate, clich. V. mean nothing; be unmeaning &c adj.; twaddle, quibble, scrabble. Adj. unmeaning; meaningless, senseless; nonsensical; void of sense &c 516. inexpressive, unexpressive; vacant; not significant &c 516; insignificant. trashy, washy, trumpery, trivial, fiddle-faddle, twaddling, quibbling. unmeant, not expressed; tacit &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... merely, and, even so considered, is as injudicious as illogical. In what does expression consist but in form and color? It is one of the ends which these accomplish, and may be itself an attribute of both. Color may be expressive or inexpressive, like music; form expressive or inexpressive, like words; but expression by itself cannot exist; so that to divide painting into color, form, and expression, is precisely as rational as to divide music into notes, words, and expression. Color ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... surely not harmless earth. And the man himself! He was primly and precisely dressed, but he had an indefinable resemblance to a goat; his hair curled like horns; and he had the thin, restless, sneering lips, the impudent, inexpressive eyes of the goat. I found myself curiously oppressed by him. I hated his slow, deliberate movements; the idea that the air he breathed should mingle with the air of the carriage, and be transferred to my own lungs and blood, was horrible to me. I pitied those who had to serve him, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that she must be real and that the others were trying to surround her with the reality she expected, as best they could. She had the sweet purity of tone—the candour, if I may so call it, often associated with delicate, small voices and singers of cool, rather inexpressive temperaments. But Bruenhilde was the part for her, and Bruenhilde was not cool and anything ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... do, propped out on each side of her face by thick round velvet pads, which, when the waltzing pace became exhilarating, occasionally showed themselves, looking greasy. She had a pair of eyes set straight in her head, faultless in form, and perfectly inexpressive. She had a nose equally straight, but perhaps a little too coarse in dimensions. She had a mouth not over large, with two thin lips and small whitish teeth; and she had a chin equal in contour to the rest of her face, but on which Venus had not deigned to set a dimple. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... an otherwise irreproachable shirt because of a minute wine stain on the cuff. It sniffed critically at its coat and trousers, and flung them to the other end of the room. It arrayed itself finally in a brand-new suit of grey flannel, altogether inexpressive of his role. He could not but feel that its behaviour compromised the dignity of the character he had determined to represent. It is not in his best coat and trousers that the book-dealer sets out on the dusty quest of the Aldine Plato and the Neapolitan ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... asylum—a surprising deaf-mute or one of the operative blind. Her noble pagan head gave her privileges that she neglected, and when people were admiring her brow she was wondering whether there were a good fire in her bedroom. She was simple, kind and good; inexpressive but not inhuman or stupid. Now and again she dropped something that had a sifted, selected air—the sound of an impression at first hand. She had no imagination, but she had added up her feelings, some of her reflections, about life. Lyon ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... as if to put aside an importunate ghost. And now they were both looking down at me. I wondered whether anything was expected from me. To my round, questioning eyes my uncle remarked: 'He's completely deaf.' And the unrelated, inexpressive voice said: 'Give me ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... high-top boots, to one of which was affixed a brass spur. Over his shoulder, holding the two ends in his hands, he carried a strong, flexible whip, silver mounted, and polished like patent leather. He was about six feet high, stoutly built, with a heavy, inexpressive face, and a clear, sharp gray eye. One glance satisfied me that he ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... as he came afterwards to understand—for his own conscience at the moment, the transaction seemed to have but the transitoriness, as also the guilt of a vagrant love. A connexion so light of motive, so inexpressive of what seemed the leading forces of his character, he might, but for the sorrow which stained its actual issue, have regarded finally as a mere mistake, or an unmeaning accident ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... the weepers off his cuffs and the crape off his bonnet; he had divested himself of the hateful things whenever he found himself alone, and he was listening with a rapt and inexpressive face to the pensive call of the curlew as it rose over the fields, and the tears were ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... at all at his ease, but being a business man, and being also blessed with a peculiarly inexpressive face, he was successfully dissembling ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... shooting those which he considered helplessly injured. His mouth was dry, his voice husky, and on his lips foam lay in yellow flecks. He ceased to imprecate only when, by repetition, his oaths became too inexpressive to be worth while. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland |
