"Indefinable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an extraordinary affection, though he would not have expressed it so, to himself, for all the world, and a very real admiration of a quite indefinable kind. It was impossible to say why he admired him. Frank did nothing very well, but everything rather well; he played Rugby football just not well enough to represent his college; he had been in the Lower Boats at Eton, and the Lent Boat of his ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... Hawthorne, again, another great master, feeling instinctively the poverty and want of sharp contrast in the externals of our New England life, always shades off the edges of the actual, till, at some indefinable line, they meet and mingle with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... the theoretic contents of their opinion cannot be distinguished. Thus they say that there is a certain divine person in the man Jesus Christ; but that, when they use the term 'person,' they mean, not a person, but a certain indefinite and indefinable distinction. The later Unitarians, meantime, are found asserting that God is present in Christ in a mysterious and peculiar communication of his being; so that he is the living embodiment and express image of God. If, now, the question be raised, 'Wherein does the indefinable ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... old path by the road-side at home, just as she used to go every evening for the milk. The dusk was deepening and she began to hurry, when she noticed a tall, dark figure ahead. As she drew nearer she recognized Arthur's broad shoulders and well-set head. Then a strange, indefinable fear seized her. She did not want to overtake him, to meet him face to face. She tried to slacken her steps, but a mysterious, resistless wind seemed to bear her forward against her will. Not a leaf stirred. All was still around her, and yet that uncanny, ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... in their endeavours to reconcile antiquarian statements in Scriptures and theologies with the authenticated facts of mental and physical science, are not such as to encourage us to attempt a definition of the Indefinable, or the comprehension of the Infinite within the exiguous limits of human thought and speech. We are too young by some centuries to so much as think about the formulation ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... as they greeted him. His clothes, a neat business suit and light colored shirt, were soiled, his face was streaked with dust but in his eyes there was that indefinable gleam that marks the soul of an adventurer. ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... Ayrshire was not Eden. And though Mary had not been able to witness the happiness she had planned, she felt it. It seemed to pervade the house like some quicker atmosphere. She had even a better appetite, and the servants also seemed conscious of a new joy, and indefinable promise of festivity—something far more subtle than a bird in the air had carried the matter to ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... Mr. Jackson looked in vain for the heavy, foreign faces, the greasy canvas jackets and blanket trousers he was accustomed to see. Not that these men seemed to be landsmen—each carried in his face and bearing the indefinable something by which sailors of all races may distinguish each other at a glance from fishermen, tugmen, and deck-hands. They were all young men, and their intelligent faces—blemished more or less with marks of overnight dissipation—were as sunburnt as were those of the ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... awakened in a delicious excitement on the morning of a fox-hunt, and have dressed as eagerly as if she were going to a ball; but to-day, while she lit the oil-stove in the hall room and put on the kettle of water, she was supported not by the hope of pleasure, but by a dull, an almost indefinable sensation of dread. The instinct of woman to adjust her personality to the changing ideals of the man she loves—this instinct older than civilization, rooted in tragedy, and existing by right of an unconquerable necessity—rose superior at the moment to that more stable maternal ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... whenever he did speak to her she felt miserably constrained and unable to appear like herself. Why was it?—she asked herself in a very vexed state of mind. No doubt partly from the remembrance of that overheard conversation which she could not help applying, but much more from an indefinable sense that at these times there were always eyes upon her. She tried to charge the feeling upon her consciousness of their having heard that same talk, but it would not the more go off. And it had no chance to wear off, for somehow the occasions never lasted long; something ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... wrap and seated herself at the dressing-table, studying her face critically. She saw that she was somewhat pale and that she had an indefinable air of dishevelment. Also she detected shadows beneath her eyes, the pupils of which were curiously contracted. Automatically, as a result of habit, she unlocked her jewel-case and took out a tiny phial ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... back of it. No boy in the house, so Mr. Dupre said, grudged the sixpence which had been stopped from his pocket money to pay for the bat. Then, passing to graver matters, Mr. Dupre spoke warmly of the tone of the house, that indefinable quality which in the eyes of a faithful schoolmaster is more precious than rubies. It was Mannix, prefect and member of the lower sixth, who more than any one else deserved credit for the fact that Edmonstone stood second to no house in the school in the matter ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... not even pretty, but for all that distinctly good-looking. Her hair and eyebrows were black, her eyes a deep pansy-blue. A clear complexion, usually pale but decidedly flushed now, and, for the rest, somewhat irregular features which might have been almost plain, but for that indefinable expression of combined gentleness and strength which only the careful selection of long descent ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... evidence of your own senses. Let me only say this, it was not so much what we saw or heard (in which you might fairly suppose that we were the dupes of our own excited fancy, or the victims of imposture in others) that drove us away, as it was an indefinable terror which seized both of us whenever we passed by the door of a certain unfurnished room, in which we neither saw nor heard anything. And the strangest marvel of all was, that for once in my life I agreed ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... disjointed descriptions, had dimly fancied clamour and confusion bursting upon eyes and ears on the instant of entering the gambling-rooms. But the silence of the place was as haunting and mystery-suggesting as the indefinable odour, and more thrilling to the imagination than the ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is no moral quality in a good temper—that change of principle could not much affect it. And then she was never more winning; perhaps her beauty had taken on a more refined quality from her illness abroad; perhaps it was that indefinable knowledge of the world, which is recognized as well in dress as in manner, which increased her attractiveness. This was quite apart from the fact that she was not so sympathetically companionable to us as she once was, and it was this very attractiveness ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... by a gentle hand presently, and Marian came into the room. Percival Nowell rose from his seat hastily and stood facing her, surprised by her beauty and an indefinable likeness which she bore to her mother—a likeness which brought his dead wife's face back to his mind with a sudden pang. He had loved her after his own fashion once upon a time, and had grown weary of her and neglected her after the ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... the towering big Lofty establishment, which occupied half the block, and at the dingy little ladies' tailoring shop, down around the other corner, with speculative curiosity. About both, as widely different as they were, there was the same indefinable appearance of prosperity, as if the solid worth from ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... was as difficult to read as Colonel Carter's voice had been. It might have meant pleasure at the thought of rest, or anger, or contempt, or almost anything. It was undefined and indefinable. ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... me out of the library, and sat down in a convenient position so that I could scratch it gently behind the ear if I wanted to. I was smoking a pipe that had just reached the right stage of maturity, and, in some indefinable way, made life seem richer and better. Everything was well arranged for the ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... the half-fainting woman as though she alone held the key of the mystery that resulted in Joan's disappearance. His impassioned eyes sought to peer into her very soul, and his nostrils quivered with the frenzied eagerness of one who awaited an answer to the implied question. In some indefinable way he had already begun to suspect the truth; for when the poor woman made no reply, though more than once her terror laden eyes met his in mute appeal, he whirled ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... wood, the laughter and talking before it growing louder. Each grey marksman twitched his cartridge box in place, glanced at his musket, glanced toward his immediate officer. Across the intervals ran an indefinable spark, a bracing, a tension. Some of the men moistened their lips, one or two uttered a little sigh, the hearts of all beat faster. The step had quickened. The trees grew more thinly, came down to a mere bordering fringe of sumach. Cleave motioned to the bugler; ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... it were all herself, or if there really were a peculiar, indefinable constraint in everybody with everybody else. Certainly she felt it, and she thought she saw evidences that the others felt it, too. As for the cause of it all—unhesitatingly she attributed it to that last day at camp with its ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... Pagan. His mind was of decidedly antique structure. He had the virtues of paganism: its sanity, its calmness, and its probity; but of the tenderness of Christianity, and its quenchless aspirations after an indefinable ideal, of that feeling which has incarnated itself in Gothic cathedrals, masses and oratorios, he exhibited but scanty traces. His intellect was above all things self-consistent and incorruptible. He had that imperial good-sense which might have formed the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... It is this indefinable brilliancy, which, in war, in love, in gaming, and in the various stages of a long life, has rendered the Count de Grammont the admiration of his age, and the delight of every country wherein he has displayed his engaging wit, dispensed his generosity and magnificence, or practised his inconstancy: ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... or two amongst those present in the Council room at Westminster that evening, who noted and never forgot a certain indefinable dignity which seemed to come to Stenson's aid and enabled him to face what must have been an unwelcome and anxious ordeal without discomposure or disquiet. He entered the room accompanied by Julian and Phineas Cross, and he had very ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of an indefinable interrogation in Owen's mind made her, as she spoke, fix her eyes steadily ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... a very powerful influence over his destiny, nevertheless. There was a strange fascination in the society of the Austrian widow—a nameless, indefinable charm, which few were able to resist. A bitter experience of vice and folly had robbed Reginald Eversleigh's heart and mind of all youth's freshness and confidence, and for him this woman seemed only what she was, an adventuress, dangerous to ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... great, old hall; there were spacious chambers, and broad stairways; there were panelled corridors; sudden flights of steps that led up, or down again, for no apparent reason; there were broad, and generous hearths, and deep window-seats; and everywhere, within, and without, there lurked an indefinable, old-world charm that was the ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... Bovary been so beautiful as at this period; she had that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances. Her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure, and her ever-young illusions, that had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers grow, gradually developed ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the religion of reason. It is this, but it is also the religion of the soul. It recognises the value of that mystic insight, those indefinable intuitions which, taking up the task at the point where the mind impotently abandons it, carries us straight into the presence of the King. Thus it has found room both for the keen speculator on theological problems ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... his air and attitude; while the abbe gathered himself together, as it were, to be nearer his plate, with his right hand curved inward like the paw of a cat drawing chestnuts from the fire, whilst in every feature was shown enjoyment and an indefinable look of close attention. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... meeting for a moment in honest grief. In some indefinable way, this parting marked the end of ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Hugh Carew began. He was a man uninteresting to look upon, save that his face wore a certain indefinable expression of a man who has been a stranger in many places; a man habituated to loneliness and to silence. But he was evidently a man also accustomed to speak, for he addressed his ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... the immortal whiff, indefinable, of a fine ship just off the high seas, trod the beatified club. A ship, the last abiding place in a mannerless world of good old-fashioned caste, and respect paid upward with due etiquette and discipline through the ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... containing her belongings on the counter and registered. He saw in Kate only a woman peculiarly dressed, with a tanned and not too clean face, dishevelled hair, weary-eyed, and alone at a late hour. He missed altogether the indefinable atmosphere of character and substantiality which a more discerning and experienced person would have ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... An indefinable excitement possessed Linda, accompanied by a sudden acute fear of what Arnaud might say. She wanted more than anything else in life to go quickly, inattentively, past Bailey Sandby and up to her room. Nothing ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... of the third afternoon May had completed the best sketch she had ever done. Just as she was putting the finishing stroke to it, a gondola went gliding by, an old and shabby one, and in the tall figure at the stern she recognised Nanni. An indefinable shadow crept over the bright elation of a moment ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... too; so was the bulldog, and, through a certain unconfessed and indefinable vigilance they both felt called upon to exercise in behalf of their beloved ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... manner she was the successful woman of business, but she was the woman of business with something added. Though she spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, her voice had a vibrating quality; though she wore only the plainest clothes, her grace, her good-breeding, her indefinable ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... a subtle, indefinable malaise began to take possession of him. I once saw a very young foal trying to eat some most objectionable refuse, and unable to make up its mind whether it was good or no. Clearly it wanted to be told. If its mother had seen what it was doing she ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... could not see each other in the gloom, she knew his lips sought hers. By an indefinable instinct she turned from him twice before their lips met in a long kiss of passion and content. They kissed each other again before he drew her down beside him on the garden ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... future. She saw in a dream, a grave, venerable-looking man, dressed like an ecclesiastic, standing silently before her. The form and features of the man, who was not then known to her, remained distinctly imprinted on her imagination, and she had an indefinable inspiration that he was to be in some way connected with the work for which God intended her. She related the dream to some of her friends, and three days afterwards M. de Maisonneuve arrived at Troyes. He called at the Convent, when as usual the subject ...
— The Life of Venerable Sister Margaret Bourgeois • Anon.
... Presently she saw them, the lower ones: the waters of the little stream beside her broke the black bonds of ice and raced over the rapids; the engine was puffing and groaning on the grade. Then the sun crept out, slowly, from the indefinable margin of vapor that hung massed over the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to be exact we mention, as this particular author seems to have done, that she had an "elusive expression," or a penetrating fragrance. Or we say that she moved, the centre of an indefinable nuance. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... silence for some little while, my heart full of joy at being so near to her, and the friendliness which she evinced for me, and my mind casting o'er my joyous heart a cloud of some indefinable evil presage. ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... with a sense of satisfaction that he viewed the affair with such abhorrence. For, much as she liked George, her hesitation to become his wife and renounce the bachelor-girl career to which, since her last birthday—her twenty-fifth—she had felt herself committed, was a sort of indefinable suspicion as to the real integrity of his standards. He was an excellent talker, of course; his ideals of public life and private ethics, as expressed in drawing-rooms, or during pleasant dialogues when they were alone together, were exemplary. ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... have given the world to know what lay behind the teeming word at which Jasper hesitated; but the indefinable and controlling sense of womanly diffidence made her suppress her curiosity. She waited in silence for him to explain his ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... surface, that I should hesitate to tell it, were it not for its Inwardness, what one might call the symbolism of the thing. Frankly, I do not clearly see what that symbolism is, but I feel it hovering in some indefinable way whenever I recall his case. It is one of those things that make a man extend his arm and twiddle his fingers, and say, blinking, "Like that, you know." So do not imagine for one moment that this is a shallow story, simply because it is painted, so to speak, not ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... hangers-on telling of a flight upward on a fiery chariot, as well as a predicted disappearance and reappearance after three days. Such were the stories being gulped down by the thousands who still clung with an indefinable fascination to the memory of the charlatan. Meantime the soldier Wilkes had died of his injuries, and the coroner's inquiry was to ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... pleasure or pain, for while his posteriors were of a burning heat, the warmth flew to the opposite part, which was so deliciously clasped in the doctor's caressing hand. He ground his teeth with pleasure and pain, he ceased to cry out, but sobbed and moaned with the excess of indefinable feelings. The doctor never ceased lecturing him, dwelling continually on the beauties of his lovely young cousin and the scene in the arbour. He thought but of her, of her lovely pink little slit so sweetly shaded with soft downy short curls; how she had so charmingly ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... all this, there was a mysterious and indefinable sentiment with which Dionysia had inspired him; for he had succumbed to her charms, like everybody else. It was not love, for he who says love says hope; and he knew perfectly well that altogether and forever Dionysia belonged to Jacques. It was a sweet and all-powerful sentiment, which made him ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... little something of the commencement of the larger life of the awakened soul might be conveyed before they themselves experience it. The lovers of nature, of music, of the beautiful and romantic, and of poetry: in the highest moments reached by such they are aware of an indefinable Something—an expansion, a going out towards, a longing—yearning, subtly composed of both joy and pain, which goes beyond the earth, beyond the music, beyond the poetry, beyond the beautiful into a Nameless Bourne. ...
— The Romance of the Soul • Lilian Staveley
... caught but a glimpse of her face. There was in it, and particularly in her eyes,—which, perhaps, on account of her dramatic cultivation, had the faculty of concentrating in a wonderful manner the most powerful as well as the most indefinable expressions,—a peculiar light, which then I did not understand, but afterwards, oh, too well. Fool, fool, that I was, after all my anxious scrutiny of her moods through two years of intensest agony, not to understand this one. The alchemist, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... become acutely aware on making his acquaintance, is that he is a Londoner. "Nearly a pure-blooded London Saxon" is his characterization of himself. And so it is. He could have sprung from no other stock. In person and speech, in the indefinable quality of the man, in the humour which continually tempers his tremendous seriousness, he belongs to London. Among the men of our time who have done creative writing I can think of no other about whom this can ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... world was talking about, and who had answered the King's mandate with a bland refusal to obey. Joan charmed them every one with her sweetness and simplicity and unconscious eloquence, and all the best and capablest among them recognized that there was an indefinable something about her that testified that she was not made of common clay, that she was built on a grander plan than the mass of mankind, and moved on a loftier plane. These spread her fame. She always made friends and advocates that way; neither the high nor the low ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of the novels, Scott has given a very full account of the genesis of Waverley. These introductions, written before the final inroad had been made on his powers by the united strength of physical and moral misfortune, animated at once by the last glow of those powers, and by the indefinable charm of a fond retrospection, displaying every faculty in autumn luxuriance, are so delightful that they sometimes seem to be the very cream and essence of his literary work in prose. Indeed, I have always wondered why they have ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... sunny rooms, tastefully furnished, with the usual French lavishness in mirrors and clocks,—all for two hundred francs a month, which was hardly more than they had paid for the dreary Grosvenor Street lodgings in London. Mrs. Browning was very responsive to that indefinable exhilaration of atmosphere that pervades the French capital, and the little Penini was charmed with the gayety and brightness. Mrs. Browning enjoyed the restaurant dining, a la carte, "and mixing up one's dinner with heaps of newspapers, and the 'solution' ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... is not so important?" said Louise, raising her head, and looking towards the hall with some uneasy but indefinable feminine instinct. ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... up at the beautiful face in a conflict of emotions, among which the tears that name awakened, struggled for a moment with surprise, interest, admiration, and an indefinable sort of fear. Then she cried out, 'Oh, Papa, may you be happy! may you be very, very happy all your life!' and then fell weeping ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... this, along with the portentous change, rather felt than visible, in mademoiselle's conduct toward her, invested the beautiful Frenchwoman, in the eyes of her former friend and patroness, with an indefinable character that was not only repulsive ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... an event of the most tremendous import—one that must shake the earth to its centre. The reason of the onlooker may rebel against this portentous version, yet he is dominated all the same, is overwhelmed with something of the indefinable awe that has seized upon the bystanders who are witnesses of ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... forty miles at least from the base of Ararat, the magnitude of the mountain, of about the centre of which our elevated position now placed us abreast, caused it to appear contiguous to our route, and produced that indefinable thrill and sense of humility which the immediate presence of any vast and overpowering object is so eminently calculated to generate. I continued to gaze until the decline of day warned us to seek ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... he is making war, and we are on terms of war, and more or less bound by them. At least, that is one's general notion. But who can tell? The ethical boundaries, and the borders of honour, are indefinable and intangible." ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... They were convictions, maintained and defended by the supreme logic of passion. That penetrating fire ran in and roused those primary instincts that make their lair in the dens and caverns of the mind. What is called the great popular heart was awakened, that indefinable something which may be, according to circumstances, the highest reason or the most brutish unreason. But enthusiasm, once cold, can never be warmed over into anything better than cant,—and phrases, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... that much for granted. Herbert Spencer no doubt talked of the unknown and unknowable, but not in this sense as an element of inexactness running through all things. He thought, it seems to me, of the unknown as the indefinable Beyond of an immediate world that might be quite ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... and listening to the brief colloquies he had with other men at Jonah Winch's store, when she went there to buy things for the parsonage; and it seemed to her that Jock had not been altogether wrong, and that there was in the man an indefinable but very compelling force. And when a woman begins to admit that a man has force, her curiosity usually increases. On one or two of these occasions Cynthia had been startled to find his eyes fixed upon her, and though the feeling she had was closely akin to fear, she found something distinctly ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... first time I felt that, with Evelyn Howard, something indefinable had gone from the atmosphere. Her presence had spelt security. Now that security was removed—and the air seemed rife with suspicion. The sinister face of Dr. Bauerstein recurred to me unpleasantly. A vague suspicion of every one and everything filled my mind. Just for a moment I had a premonition ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... afterward an added firmness in the repose of the lips. Immada moved a step forward. She looked at Lingard with terror in her black and dilated eyes. She exclaimed in a voice whose vibration startled the hearts of all the hearers with an indefinable sense of alarm, "He will perish, ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... of a certain poverty-stricken nobleman had driven a car. This young Mitchell was exceptionally good-looking in a nice, boyish, fresh-faced way, and she saw in his manner a youthful reflection of the courtliness which distinguished Mr. Chadwick Champneys. He had a great deal of that indefinable something we call charm, and before she knew it Mrs. MacGregor was won over to him, and looked upon his presence as a distinct addition to ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... and fallen almost immediately into a peaceful sleep, from which I awoke with that indefinable sense of peril which is, I think, a common experience in that other, earlier life. Of its unmeaning character, too, I was entirely persuaded, yet that did not banish it. My husband, Joel Hetman, was away from home; the servants slept in another part of the house. But these were familiar conditions; ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... While this may be disputed, nobody can fail to see some truth in Adams's assertion. Hay had not only the manners of a gentleman, but also the special carriage of a diplomat. He was polite, affable, and usually accessible, without ever losing his innate dignity. An indefinable reserve warded off those who would either presume or indulge in undue familiarity His quick wits kept him always on his guard. His main defect was his unwillingness to regard the Senate as having a right to pass judgment on his treaties. And instead of being compliant and ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... to speak. The note of sympathy in her voice allured him, and sympathy was to him as drink to one who perishes of thirst. A passionate, indefinable longing impelled him to pour out the story that in Worcester he had related unto Kenneth, and thus to set himself better in her eyes; to have her realize indeed that if he was come so low it was more the fault of others than his own. The ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... of dirty trucks stopped with an abrupt jerk and noisy jarring of impact. Then it came! Grumbles ceased as if by common consent. There was something indefinable but pregnant, and in tense silence ears were strained intently. Was it only the rumble of a distant cart on hard cobbles or...? Faintly over the damp air came a long, insistent murmur. ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... slow steps was returning to his solitude, the very picture of melancholy, and each time I saw him—as the plain was wide and clear of obstructions—I felt my eyes stream, and my heart swell with a vague, indefinable feeling of ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... splendidly. It was jubilant, did not contain a single minor note of apology and the country will visualize you at the head of the column. You know this country, and every country, wants a man to lead it of whom it is proud, not because of his talent but because of his personality,—that which is as indefinable as charm in a woman, and I want to see your personality known to the American people, just as well as we know it who sit around the Cabinet table. Your speech glows with it, and that is why it gives me such joy that I can't ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... evening dress toward us. It was like a lantern-picture thrown upon a screen. There were only the pair of them, but the table was brilliant with silver and gay with flowers, and the maid waited with the indefinable air of a good servant. It certainly seemed a ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... but he did not particularly affect the society of Henry Dunbar. The millionaire was very courteous, very conciliating: but there was something in his stiff politeness, his studied smile, his deliberate speech, something entirely vague and indefinable, which had the same chilly effect upon Sir Philip's friendliness, as a cold cellar has on delicate-flavoured port. The subtle aroma vanished under ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... was of that peculiar quality that foretells the twilight. Something of its mysterious and significant solemnity had imparted itself to the man's mood. In the spiritual, as in the material world, are signs and presages of night. Rarely meeting her look, and whenever he did so conscious of the indefinable dread with which, despite their feline beauty, her eyes always affected him, Jenner Brading listened in silence to the story told by Irene Marlowe. In deference to the reader's possible prejudice against the artless method of an unpractised historian the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... women were shut up in harems and wore veils if they stirred out of doors? Such customs could scarcely make a whole country mysterious. But now, though he had not yet landed, he knew that he would be compelled to acknowledge the indefinable mystery at which he had sneered. Already he fancied an elusive influence, like the touch of a ghost. It was in the pulsing azure of the sky; in the wild forms of the Atlas and far Kabyle mountains stretching into vague, pale distances; in the ivory white of the low-domed roofs that gleamed ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... description is more often introduced than either argument or exposition, it follows that the writer of fiction must always reckon with the factor of style. It is true that stories may be written without style; it is even true that many of the greatest stories have been devoid of this indefinable quality: but it is not therefore logical to argue that the factor of style may be neglected. How much it may be made to contribute to the attainment of the aim of fiction will be recognized instinctively upon examination of ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... curved sori of youth to become straightened and even confluent with age, although such changes are rather unreliable. Possibly the suggestion of the poetic Davenport may be helpful to some that there is "An indefinable charm about the various forms of the lady fern, which soon enables one to know it from its peculiarly graceful motion by merely gently swaying a frond in the hand." Spores ripen ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... his own long, thin legs. Possibly no boy ever had hair of such a homely red. Certainly few could have been found with bigger freckles. But it was his eyes which accented the plainness of his features. You know the color of a ripe gooseberry, that indefinable faint purplish ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... his pen to describe a campaign, or any great historic scene, we feel that we shall have something worthy of the occasion, that we shall be carried swiftly and grandly through it all, without the suspicion of a breakdown of any kind being possible. An indefinable stamp of weightiness is impressed on Gibbon's writing; he has a baritone manliness which banishes everything small, trivial, or weak. When he is eloquent (and it should be remembered to his credit that he never affects eloquence, though he occasionally ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... what a name ought to be. As the characteristic quality depends upon a hundred indefinable, subconscious associations, it is clearly impossible to suggest any principle of choice. The only general rule that can be laid down is that the key of the nomenclature, so to speak, may rightly vary with the key of the play—that farcical names are, within ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... sanction, being applicable to numberless cases which that sanction does not, and, in fact, cannot reach; secondly, the legal sanction, even in those cases which it reaches, is greatly reinforced by the social sanction, which adds the pains arising from an evil reputation, and all the indefinable social inconveniences which an evil reputation brings with it, to the actual penalties inflicted by ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... closed the door. A faint perfume stole to my nostrils—a vague, elusive breath of the East, reminiscent of strange days that, now, seemed to belong to a remote past. Karamaneh! that faint, indefinable perfume was part of her dainty personality; it may appear absurd—impossible—but many and many a time ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... sleep. Her fortitude nearly deserted her. The tears had their way. She lay curled in her seat, a wretched, disconsolate little heap, when a brown-bearded man, muffled in furs, entered, flashing the light of his lantern here and there, eagerly scrutinizing the faces. He paused at Ruey's seat, an indefinable something attracting him, though the face was covered by two hands. Suddenly she looked up, and there were Philip's dear eyes gazing into hers. No questions were asked or answered just then. She was gathered in his arms for an instant; then he wrapped her in blankets, brought ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... brick, which still subsist. It was not until after the conquest of Sicily that the Romans for the first time made use of marble for their monuments; but it is sufficient to behold places where great actions have occurred, to experience an indefinable emotion. It is to this disposition of the soul that we must attribute the religious power of pilgrimages. Celebrated countries of every kind, even when stripped of their great men and of their monuments, preserve their effect ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... friends, his sister among them, is journeying to the north. A hope of meeting them—scarce acknowledged as an intention—spurs you on. The eye rests dreamily and vaguely on the beauties that appear at every turn: they are beauties that charm you, and charm you the more by an indefinable association with that fairy object that floats before you, half unknown, and wholly unclaimed. The quiet towns with their noonday stillness, the out-lying mansions with their stately splendor, the bustling cities with their mocking din, and the long ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... her cause, he was a little surprised to notice an indefinable but evident change in the rustic beauty's manner. Perhaps she disliked to hear a stranger accuse her father—however truly—of horribly bad taste, but this did not occur to Ferdinand, who had intended to show her that a gentleman was certain to sympathize ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... Jim Blake sold his farm, and took his family to New Mexico. He had not been prospering in the valley, and things had gone from bad to worse. Pan did not get home in time to say good-by to Lucy—something that hurt in an indefinable way. He had not forgotten Lucy for in his mind she had become a steadfast factor in his home life. She left a little note of farewell, simple and loyal, hopeful, yet somehow stultified. Not so childish as former notes! Time flew by and Lucy might be ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... the moisture from his eyes. The glare from the unprotected boulevards was terrific. Under these somewhat unfavourable conditions he was occupied in studying the monument of Egypt's past magnificence when he felt a slight dragging sensation. It was indefinable and had no visual concomitant. But it was as though the brakes were being gently applied to a Pullman train. He was the only human being in the neighbourhood; not even a policeman was visible; and the experience gave him a creepy feeling. Then to his amazement ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... awoke, he was for some time in a sort of stupor. Through the bright sunlight that filled his room he seemed to scent the fumes of tobacco and of liquor. The place was filled, he imagined, with that indefinable aroma that proceeds from a convivial company made up of both sexes. He half believed that Jennie Pelham and Mrs. Delavan were sitting by his bed, more brazen than the bell which, from a neighboring steeple, ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... individual through the need which he feels of uniting himself with another individual of the same species, but who is a polar opposite to him, in order to preserve the two in a new individual. The blood rushes more vigorously; the muscular strength becomes more easily roused into activity; an indefinable impulse, a sweet melancholy takes possession of the being. This period demands a special ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... desk of the Special Reports Officer. The SR Officer was a lieutenant also, a combination of psychologist and writer, whose business it was to make sure that Special Reports on morale matters were presented in the properly dramatic fashion so that that indefinable aura of reality, customarily omitted from official historical documents, could be included. The Evaluation Division, back on Earth, was ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... some brilliant shrubbery which seemed to light up the whole picture with the effect of a sweet and melancholy smile. I felt as if spirits were there,—or as if these shrubs had a spiritual life. In short, the impression was indefinable; and, after gazing and musing a good while, I retraced my steps through the Irish hamlet, and ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... grammatical phrase which covers in turn a whole series of contributors. But any writer in a paper, however free a course may be conceded to him, finds as a fact that the 'we' means something very real and potent. As soon as he puts on the mantle, he finds that an indefinable change has come over his whole method of thinking and expressing himself. He is no longer an individual but the mouthpiece of an oracle. He catches some infection of style, and feels that although he may believe what he says, it is not the independent outcome of his own ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... other great preachers of our denomination,—Dr. Channing, for example, Dr. Nichols, and Dr. Walker,—he spoke as one standing within the all-encompassing and divine presence. He awakened in us a sense of that august and indefinable influence from which all that is holiest and best must come. He brought us into communication with that Light of life. He showed us how our lives, our thoughts, and even our every-day acts, may be sanctified and inspired by it, as every plant and tree is not only illuminated by ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... I would have cried my eyes out with disappointment if Ida had come home with bad news," returned the pretty girl in a plaintive tone which impressed Grace with a curiously uncomfortable feeling that this attractive young woman would have done nothing of the sort. There was that indefinable something about her that contradicted, flatly, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... describes his ideal in poetry, although it is not his own verse of which he is speaking. He described—in 1845, when his ripe genius had just brought forth "The Raven"—the poetic faculty as producing "a sense of dreamy, wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight." This shadowy but absorbing and mastering pleasure impregnated his own best writings to such a degree that it gives us the measure of his unlikeness to his contemporaries, and states the claim of his individuality. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... police patrol the tropical forests. But consider the legends on a chart even of the North Sea, of the world beneath the fathoms—the Silver Pits, the Dowsing Ground, the Leman Bank, the Great Fisher Ground, the Horn Reef, the Witch Ground, and the Great Dogger Bank! Strange, that indefinable implication of a word! I remember that, when a child, I was awake one night listening to a grandfather's clock talking quietly to itself in its long box, and a brother sat up in bed and whispered: "Look, the Star in the East." I turned, and one bright eye of the night ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... with Luisina. I was in no haste to let her go. Her presence pleased me in some subtle, quite indefinable manner; and my sense of beauty, which, always strong, had hitherto lain dormant within me, was awake at last and was finding nourishment ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... change in her? The vicar perceived something indefinable; and before they had walked half the distance to the road he had forgotten his own grievance. She looked ill. Janet Leighton, meeting him in the village a few days before, had talked of her partner as "done up." Was it the excitement of falling in love?—combined ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... her big, wondering eyes, her shy, hesitating French and childish curiosity, in some indefinable way gave back to Diana the self-control that had slipped from her. Her pride reasserted itself, rigidly suppressing any sign of feeling or emotion that could be noticed by the gentle, inquisitive eyes ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... Nancy was the prey to indefinable anxieties and vague forebodings. Everybody had noticed her sadness. Mr. Campbell had spoken of it with concern and had promised to take them all on another ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... even more notice than the limb of the law; a gigantic, well-groomed man, with keen, close-set eyes, and that indefinable easy movement and polished bearing that come from confidence, health, and travel. Unlike the others, he did not dally on the beach nor display much interest in his surroundings; but, with purposeful frown strode through the press, up ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... if he would give her their names, she would save him the trouble. For, despite his affability, there was something about him she distrusted and disliked,—an indefinable air of insincerity, and a look out of his eyes ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... entering the Finnish harbour of Helsingfors were very pleasing; there was a certain indefinable charm about the scene as we passed in and out among the thickly-wooded islands, or dived between those strong but almost hidden fortifications of which the Russians are so proud. Once having passed these impregnable mysteries, we found ourselves in more open water, and before ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... other was no less indicative of coldness. Fair, even to paleness, were her cheek and forehead, which wore an appearance of almost marble immobility, save when, in moments of oft recurring abstraction, a slight but marked contraction of the brow betrayed the existence of a feeling, indefinable indeed by the observer, but certainly unallied to softness. Still was she beautiful—coldly, classically, beautiful—eminently calculated to inspire passion, but seemingly ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... constituents for the final struggle between Freedom and Despotism. He obtained a furlough to go home and mount the stump for the Union. He was about to set out, his private secretary was ready, and the carriage waiting at the gateway, when an indefinable feeling took possession of him, holding him back, and warning him of coming danger. It would not be shaken off, and reluctantly he postponed the journey till the morrow. Before the morrow facts were developed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Even at the moment he had swallowed the poison the motive prompting him to it had been so intensely material that it had started but the most momentary questions. It was the thought of Mrs. Wentworth, the sight of the baby, the indefinable boundaries of his own love—it was love that pressed the question in upon him. Now the other extreme embodied in the sight of the man before him, capped by the acute query of what the sin of murder might mean, sharpened it to a real concern. If such love as ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the most welcome of all refreshments. She wore a smartly cut tweed coat and skirt, and a soft felt hat with a pheasant's wing, and her brown shoes looked quite preposterously small and bright. In some indefinable way she looked older and more responsible than the Pixie of two years before, and Stephen noticed the change and ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... became more fully aroused, an indefinable terror struck to his heart. At all costs he must take some action. He rose suddenly to his feet but before he reached his full height his head struck the roof. The blow was so violent that he fell back again in ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... of incipient but ill-understood classicism that belongs the only work of Domenico Neroni—at least the only work still extant nowadays—which possesses, over and above its artistic or scientific merit, that indefinable quality which we must simply call charm; to this time, with the one exception of the famous woodcuts done for Filarete. Domenico began about this time, and probably under the stress of necessity, to make frontispieces for the books with which Florentine ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... did not endeavor to relieve himself by separating himself from that infinite; but, knowing he was a part of the whole, not divisible from the remainder, he was content to aim at perfecting his knowledge of existence rather than at dogmatising upon an indefinable word, which, if it represented anything, professed to represent an incomprehensible existence far ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... gorgeous of person and attire. He was dressed in a suit of black cloth. A long coat was buttoned close around his tall and robust form. He was dead black, from his shiny top hat to his not less shiny boots, and about him there was the indefinable air of distinction. He stood looking about the platform for a moment, and then stepped briskly and decisively toward the group that was staring at him with wide eyes. There was no hesitation in that step. He walked as a man walks who is not in the ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... old bachelor, confounded the village gossips by bringing home a young bride. The birth of a son and heir was the nephew's undoing. While the uncle regarded Stephen with undiminished affection, he was now much more emphatically in loco parentis. An indefinable something had come between them. The subtle change in relationship was brought home to both when Stephen proposed that he should go to the academy in Brandon, to prepare for college. That he was to go to college, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... vision into the actuality of the hour and who also exalts this actuality of the hour to the universality of the vision. In the creation of portrait busts and of the statues and monumental memorials of great men he infuses into them the indefinable quality of extended relation which relegates his work to the realm of the universal and, therefore, to the immortality of art, rather than restricting it to the temporal locality. Louis Gorse observes that it is not the absence of faults ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... "An indefinable something tells me," she announced coldly, "that henceforth you needn't be so DRASTICALLY fearful of being dragged to the chateau for dinner, nor ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... directions, they came into Union Street, and without further mishap gained the Hill. From the brow they looked down into the Pit, whence arose that steady, indefinable hum which comes ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... astonishment I gave him provoked the first and only sneer I have ever seen on his face. What was I to say—what could I say, in response to such a declaration, following so immediately upon his warm assertion of her innocence? Nothing. With that indefinable chill between us, which had come I know not how, I ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... kills us, without deepening the shadows that surround us. But where is the man who has lived who will deny woman's power over us, if he has ever taken leave of a beautiful dancer with trembling hands. If he has ever felt that indefinable enervating magnetism which, in the midst of the dance, under the influence of the sound of music, and the warmth that makes all else seem cold, that comes from a young woman, that electrifies her and leaps from her to him as the perfume of aloes from the swinging censer? I was struck with ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... is one of a great personality, strong in purpose, deep in feeling, open always to the highest inspirations, a certain indefinable something gets into his pages that makes them breathe forth a vital, living power, a power so great that each reader gets the same inspirations as those that spoke through the author. That that's written between the lines is many ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... i.e., does not originate or proceed from Him, but has its source in the world itself. We might reverse this proposition and say: "All that does not emanate from the Father, which you cannot trace back to His purpose in creation, is that mysterious indefinable influence or spirit which makes the world." The world, in this sense, is not primarily a thing, or a collection of people, but a spiritual influence poured out into the very atmosphere of ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... geological time rises before the student of this, as of all other, fragments of the history of our earth—springing irrepressibly out of the facts, like the Djin from the jar which the fisherman so incautiously opened; and like the Djin again, being vaporous, shifting, and indefinable, but unmistakably gigantic. However modest the bases of one's calculation may be, the minimum of time assignable to the ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... atmosphere was that of a great conservatory. A dozen tropical growths mingled their odors into an indefinable whole; and the effect was akin to that of a subtle exotic drug, lulling the senses, filling the whole being with a languor, a relaxation, a pleasant enervation which it seemed well not to throw off. Outside on the prairie the sun burned harshly; within, the scented shadows shielded ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... watching it, taking it all in, as though he had never seen it before. A policeman on point duty eyed him curiously, yet with no hint of suspicion. Most men, and practically every woman, remembered Jimmy's face when they met him a second time. He was not handsome, far from it; but, in some indefinable way, his grey eyes suggested sympathy, whilst the poise of his head spoke of ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... the extremest boundary of the buildings in the suburbs. Before him lay an uninterrupted prospect of smooth, shining fields, and soft, hazy, indefinable woods. At one side of him were some vineyards and cottage gardens; at the other was a solitary house, the outermost of all the abodes in his immediate vicinity. Dark and cheerless as it was, he regarded it for some time with the mechanical attention of a man more occupied in thought ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... spoke in the West of England dialect; but whenever he became interested, this instantly slipped from him, as did his still more ineffective attempt to move and act the rustic. Indeed, the ease of his movements and the straightness of his carriage, with a certain indefinable precision of manner, led to a common agreement among his fellow-labourers that he had earlier in life accepted the king's shilling. Granting him to be but one and twenty years of age, as his covenant stated, and as ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... families, but the mother was tender-hearted, and had a poor memory for sins that were past, and Friedrich saw her fill one shoe after another with cakes and sweetmeats. At last she came to his, and then she stopped. He lifted up his head, and an indefinable fury surged in his heart. He had been very tiresome since the ballad was begun; was she going to put rods into his shoes only? His! He could have borne anything but this. Meanwhile, she was fumbling in the basket; and, at last, pulled out—not ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... been almost painful. In one sense these people were to her simply a means to an end. She cared so little for them that she was not afraid, and had merely to acquire the ease which results from usage. Diffidence soon passed into a shy grace that was indefinable and yet became a recognized trait. The least approach to loudness and aggressiveness in manner was not only impossible to her, but she also possessed the refinement and tact of which only extremely sensitive natures are capable. A vain, selfish woman is so preoccupied with herself that she does ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... power of research. In him what mines of instruction, what sources of undiscovered delight, what philosophy yet to be grappled with, to be laid to the heart! Charles Lamb has with a quaint melancholy depicted the pain of parting from his books, and from the indefinable delights laid up in each dear folio. Yet after all, what is the literature of one age but the reproduction, the remoulding, the condensation of the literature of another; the loss and destruction of its waste ore, but the re-setting of its gems, and the renewed investiture of all ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... wits of these ladies. At first he was inclined thoroughly to sluice himself inwardly. The water was deliciously cool to the outer person on this hot day. But on approaching the bucket to his mouth there was an indefinable nauseating something about it that made him hesitate. Again he tried to drink. Decidedly it was bad, this water; offensive for drinking. With a sigh he diverted the stream from his gullet to his ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... roasted like sweet potatoes when these trees catch," returned the sheriff grimly. "No." Even as he spoke, a dropping rain of fire spattered through the leaves from a splintered redwood, before overlooked, that was now blazing fiercely in the upper wind. A vague and indefinable terror was in the air. The conflagration no longer seemed to obey any rule of direction. The incendiary torch had passed invisibly everywhere. They scrambled out of the hollow, and ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... dismissal with an indefinable air of irony, and Joe went unhappily out of his office. He telephoned his father at length. His father did not share Joe's disappointment at being removed to a place of safety. He undertook to begin the castings for an entire new set of ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... please," Bertram put in, half-pleadingly, it is true, but still with that same ineffable and indefinable air of a great gentleman that never for a moment deserted him. "The duke would never have heard of my ancestors, I'm sure, and I particularly don't want to be mixed up with the ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... odds on the main point at issue, that he had as yet no intention of sharing his solitude with her for any length of time. As the days went by she perceived something else. She was not long in discovering that he was extremely poor, and she became aware in some indefinable wise that he held existence very cheap. Had her penetration been guided by a form of experience which she happily lacked, she might have suspected still another factor in the situation which had an unacknowledged influence ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... everything, for some purpose or some effect on his sinful associate. Do you know that he is so like in every lineament, look, and gesture, that, against the clearest light of reason, I cannot in my mind separate the one from the other, and have a certain indefinable expression on my mind that they are one and the same being, or that the one was a ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... from my hands as I read the last words, and a tumultuous rush of feelings made my heart throb with indefinable emotion. In my most sanguine moments I had not perhaps anticipated so favourable an answer, nor hoped that Henry would have exerted himself so earnestly in my behalf; and yet I felt more afraid ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... shafts went true. Moreover, although harboring no suspicion of Susan's dissimulation, she instinctively held aloof from her and remained coldly unresponsive. Perhaps in the depths of Susan's past lurked something indefinable which threw its shadow between them, an inscrutable impediment; and her inability to penetrate the young actress' reserve, however she might wound her, awakened Susan's resentment. But she was too world-wise to display her irritation. She even smiled sweetly now, as confidante ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... with the crocheted coverlets. It is a curious thing about rooms. There was no change in the bedroom apparent to the eye, save that for Marie's tiny slippers at the foot of the wardrobe there were Mrs. Boyer's substantial house shoes. But in some indefinable way the room had changed. About it hung an atmosphere of solid respectability, of impeccable purity that soothed Mrs. Boyer's ruffled virtue into peace. Is it any wonder that there is a theory to the effect that things take on the essential qualities of people who ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... disguising the grim determination of lips and jaw, and the face somehow conveyed an impression of transparency, almost of light, so delicately were the features refined away. On the fine forehead was that indefinable touch of peace that comes from identifying the mind with what is permanent in the soul, and letting the impermanent slip by without power to wound or distress; while, from his manner,—so gentle, quiet, sympathetic,—few could have guessed the strength of purpose ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... indefinable, unmistakably Gallic flavor or piquancy savors the life of the people; it disappears only when they cease to be their own natural selves. A woman novelist, American by birth, but a resident of several years in Paris, told me a story ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... composure belonging to unconscious youth—no fidgeting or fussing—modest, unassertive—his big brown eyes under their heavy lashes studying everything about him, his face brightening when you addressed him. I discovered, too, a certain indefinable charm which won me to him at once. Perhaps it was his youth; perhaps it was a certain honest directness, together with a total lack of all affectation that appealed to me, but certain it is that not many minutes ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... king, my old master, must be relieved.' That when all is done will be found to contain some hints as to the manner in which 'charities' of this kind have need to be managed, under a government armed with powers so indefinable. ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the Nibelungs and Volsungs, of Sigurd and of Siegfried,—whether we follow the older versions or the mote recent renderings,—there is, as it were, an ever-present but indefinable shadow of coming fate, "a low, inarticulate voice of Doom," foretelling the inevitable. This is but in consonance with the general ideas of our Northern ancestors regarding the fatality which shapes and controls every man's life. These ideas are embodied ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... indefinable expression in her eyes.] If that is so, we shall see, one of these days, whether I am one of ...
— The Master Builder • Henrik Ibsen
... hauteur of manner that distinguished her at the outset of our acquaintance; but if the weather was fine, the wind fair, the men upon their best behaviour—as sometimes happened—in short, if things were going well with me in other respects, she invariably kept me at arm's-length by a certain indefinable, but none the less unmistakable, coolness, indifference, and distance of manner just sufficiently pronounced to suggest a desire to be left to herself. But in proportion as difficulties, anxieties, and vexations ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood |
