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Ineffable   /ɪnˈɛfəbəl/   Listen
Ineffable

adjective
1.
Defying expression or description.  Synonyms: indefinable, indescribable, unspeakable, untellable, unutterable.  "Indescribable beauty" , "Ineffable ecstasy" , "Inexpressible anguish" , "Unspeakable happiness" , "Unutterable contempt" , "A thing of untellable splendor"
2.
Too sacred to be uttered.  Synonyms: unnameable, unspeakable, unutterable.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ineffable" Quotes from Famous Books



... seem. It was with extraordinary effect that the idea finally flashed upon him that she was probably alive, and now in the prime of her beauty. After a period of feverish and impassioned excitement, he wrote a letter full of wild regret and beseeching, and an ineffable tenderness. Then he waited. After a long time it came back from the German dead-letter office. There was no person of the name at the address. She had left Bonn, then. Hastily setting his affairs in order, he sailed for Germany ...
— Lost - 1898 • Edward Bellamy

... half raising her hand, and gazing out through the open window, over the banks of the yellow-flowing Arno, with a look of ineffable trust and tenderness in her face, "Alan, did you try to kill the woman who has cursed and degraded you? Did you strike her once in return for her thousand malicious blows? Did you so much as wish her ill to gratify your anger and revenge? No!—there ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... the picture loses not its attractions. It is no exaggeration to say that, to a European of any sensibility, who, for the first time, wanders back into these valleys—away from the haunts of the natives—the ineffable repose and beauty of the landscape is such, that every object strikes him like something seen in a dream; and for a time he almost refuses to believe that scenes like these should have a commonplace existence. No wonder that the French ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville

... that of the British commander as the representative of his sovereign." The captain again moved his hat, and turned to conduct the Emperor to the cabin. As he passed through the officers assembled on the quarter-deck, he repeatedly bowed slightly to us, and smiled. What an ineffable beauty there was in that smile, his teeth were finely set, and as white as ivory, and his mouth had a charm about it that I have never seen in any other human countenance. I marked his fine robust figure as he followed Captain Maitland into the cabin, and, boy ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland

... before they were impressed on Creation. The infinite glories of sky, and air, and sea, the beauties of the tree, the flower, the bird, and all forms of life, the fleeting and recurring grandeurs that paint the seasons and the years, are all but revelations of the boundless resources and the ineffable beauties and qualities of the mind of Christ, our Master and Teacher. Our craving of genius, and its never-dying ambition, is to come ever nearer to the perfection of the Infinite Artist and Architect. The inspiration which filled the soul of Bezalel or Hiram may ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.

... their expectations, and Friedel avowed that he did not know what he thought of it. It was not such as he had dreamt, and, like a German as he was, he added that he could not think, he could only feel, that there was something ineffable in it; yet he was almost disappointed to find his visions unfulfilled, and the hues of the painted glass less pure and translucent than those of the ice crystals on the mountains. However after his eye had become trained, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... interrupted. The taller lady on the outside wheeled around so suddenly as almost to throw the tip-toe follower off his feet, confronted him boldly, flung up the short light veil that depended from her gypsy and partially hid her features, ineffable scorn and delicious impudence dancing at the same moment out of her dark eyes and ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... had turned, and was facing me even as she had faced me the night before. The night before! The greatest part of my life seemed to have passed since then. I remember wondering that she did not look tired. Her face was sad, her voice was sad, and it had an ineffable, sweet quality at such times that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... fervour. The Chronicle was not a poor little weekly sheet, struggling into existence anyhow, at haphazard, dependent on other newspapers for all except purely local items of news. It was an organ! It was the courageous rival of the ineffable Signal, its natural enemy! One day it would trample on the Signal! And though her role was humble, though she understood scarcely anything of the enterprise beyond her own duties, yet she was very proud of her role too. And she was glad that the men were seemingly ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... of her former life has now passed beyond all outward manifestation, lost in absorbing self-devotedness and absorbing sorrow; and every thought, feeling, and word is characterised by an ineffable ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown

... said: "What became of that genie after he was safely thrown back into the sea is not properly spoken of by any save those that pursue the study of demons and not with certainty by any man, but that the stopper that bore the ineffable seal and bears it to this day became separate from the bottle is among those things that man may know." And when there was doubt among the great ones Ali drew forth his bundle and one by one removed those many silks till the seal stood revealed; and some of them knew it ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany

... tell me; there is but one man upon earth who could so act, and that man is Sir Willmott Burrell.—The villain made a shrewd guess, and fooled ye into a confession. I see through it all!—And are you so mean a coward?" he continued, turning upon Sir Robert a look of ineffable contempt—"are you cowardly enough to sacrifice your daughter to save yourself? I see it now; the secret that Burrell has wormed from you is the spear that pushes her to the altar; and you—you suffer this, and sell her and her lands to stay his tongue! Man, man, is there no feeling at ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... with an ineffable tone of contempt, just like the original Nuttie, who seemed to be recalled by ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to be, and when it is over—for the experience is but momentary—it is impossible to describe the vision in precise terms, but the effect of it is such as to inspire and guide the whole subsequent life of the seer. Wordsworth several times depicts this "bliss ineffable" when "all his thought were steeped in feeling." The well-known passage in Tintern Abbey already quoted (p. 7) is one of the finest analysis of it left us by any of the seers, and it closely resembles the accounts given by Plotinus and ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... extend the vision farther still,—to Mr. Hartopp's villa, behold his wife, his little ones, his men-servants, and his maid-servants, more and more impressively general would become the tokens of disturbance occasioned by that infamous concussion. Everywhere a sullen look,—everywhere that ineffable aspect of crestfallenness! What can have happened? is the good man bankrupt? No, rich as ever! What can it be? Reader! that fatal event which they who love Josiah Hartopp are ever at watch to prevent, despite ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... case take heed, lest the radiance, which is from the heaven whence we have descended, and is of a flaming quality, penetrate too interiorly; by its influence the superior ideas of your understanding, which are in themselves heavenly, may indeed be illustrated; but these ideas are ineffable in the world in which you dwell: therefore what you are about to hear, receive rationally, that you may explain it so that it may be understood." I replied, "I will observe your caution; come nearer:" ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... vain desire to make himself beloved by the prettiest and richest girl in the town, the necessity of distraction from depression—anything, in short, but real love. That was shown in great sadness, ineffable joy, sleepless nights, anxiety, and agitation, both sweet and bitter, by which the breast is ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... upon him, giving him an ineffable sense that she had, in telling him, somehow dropped her burden. Now she said, with as calm a resolution as that of the martyr marching to the fire he is sure his Lord ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... praying circle of the women of the church, all were startled by the clear silver tones of one who sat among them and spoke with the unconscious simplicity of an angel child, calling God her Father, and speaking of an ineffable union in Christ, binding all things together in one, and making all complete in Him. She spoke of a love passing knowledge,—passing all love of lovers or of mothers,—a love forever spending, yet never spent,—a love ever pierced and bleeding, yet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... he said fiercely, "cast me loose, and meet me hand to hand in a fair fight? Surely," he added, changing his tone to one of ineffable scorn, "the pale-face is not weak, he is not a small man, that he should fear ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne

... and still at the College, informed me in a charming letter that he was present at this concert at which Chopin played, and also at the preceding one (on Good Friday) at which Liszt played Weber's "Concertstuck," and that he remembered very well "the fiery playing of Liszt and the ineffable poetry of Chopin's style." In another letter M. Chouquet gave a striking resume of the vivid reminiscences of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... market was again glutted. "What doth quite overwhelm both us and Maryland," complained the colonists, "is the extreme low price of our only commodity ... and consequently our vast poverty and infinite necessity."[911] The Burgesses, in 1682, spoke of the worthlessness of tobacco as an "ineffable Calamity". "Wee are," they said, "noe wayes able to force a miserable subsistance from the same.... If force of penne, witt, or words Could truely represent (our condition) as it is, the sad resentments would force blood from any Christian Loyall Subjects heart."[912] ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... a thousand times, by night and by day, of the ineffable bliss of rescuing Pet from a mad dog, from a runaway horse, from the assault of ruffians, from drowning, from a burning building. He had his plans all laid for doing every one of these things. He ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... child! but she had been too ignorant even to imagine such a place as this house. Its furnishing and decorations represented not only the accumulated wealth, but also the accumulated taste and opportunity, of many successive generations. She felt an ineffable emotion of deep, sensuous enjoyment in her present surroundings which made her heart leap at the idea that all these things might some day be hers. Lord Hurdly looked exceedingly well preserved, and that day might be very far distant. All the more reason, therefore, she told herself, ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder

... had quite a good time, only as life is always mingled in sweet and bitter, bitter and sweet, we had the melancholy experience of finding, when we got ready to come home, that Jules had taken a drop too much, and was in a state of ineffable silliness, which made ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... apathetic wonder as to what new freak he was expected to countenance and aid. At the entrance of the street in which the old house stood, he involuntarily pulled up his horse. Then, with an air of ineffable disdain, he drove slowly on, and proceeded to the number at which he had been directed ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... restless gentlewoman showed as the abandoned house of youth and wit and beauty, with here and there a trace of the old occupancy; always her furtive eyes shone with a cold and shifting glitter, as though a frightened imp peeped through a mask of Hecuba; and in every movement there was an ineffable touch of something loosely hinged and fantastic. In a word, the Marchioness was not unconscionably sane, and was known far and wide as a gallant woman resolutely oblivious to the batterings of time, and so avid of ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... with a gesture of ineffable contempt, Good swept his hand across his mouth. Then he grinned again, and lo, there were ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard

... did we see within? Ah! who can tell? What glory and glow of light Ineffable; What peace in the very air, What hush and calm, Soothing each tired ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge

... analysis. Nor could she have told how much later, since the passage of time had gone unnoticed. Curiosities, doubts, passions, longings, antagonisms—all these seemed—as the most natural thing in the world—to have been fused into one common but ineffable emotion. Such, at least, was the impression to which Alison startlingly awoke. All the while she had been conscious of Hodder, from the moment she had heard his voice in the chancel; but somehow this consciousness of him ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... possessed the depth of the tenderest, sweetest summer night, subjugating all those who came in contact with her. Annabel Lee won Maggie's warmest affections at once; she determined to join her friend at St. Benet's. She spoke with ineffable scorn of her London season and resolved, with that enthusiasm which was the strongest part of her nature, to become a student in reality. Under Annabel's guidance she took up the course of study which was necessary to enable her to pass her entrance examination. ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade

... Poland: he tried by intimidation and persuasion to induce the prisoner to reveal his projects and the names of his associates. Piotrowski held firm, but the prince on withdrawing ordered his chains to be struck off. The relief was ineffable: he could do nothing but stretch his arms to enjoy the sense of their free possession, and he felt his natural energy and independence of thought return. He had not been able to take off his boots since leaving ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... themselves were affected by the names they bore. A knowledge of the secret and ineffable name of a deity was the key to a knowledge of his inner essence and attributes, and conferred a power over him upon the fortunate possessor of it. The patron god of the dynasty to which Khammurabi belonged was spoken of as "the Name," Sumu or Samu, the Shem of ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... His was the age when we most sensitively enjoy the mere sense of existence,—when the face of Nature and a passive conviction of the benevolence of our Great Father suffice to create a serene and ineffable happiness, which rarely visits us till we have done with the passions; till memories, if more alive than heretofore, are yet mellowed in the hues of time, and Faith softens into harmony all their asperities and harshness; till nothing within us remains ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book V • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... kind care of a man who was binding the wound on my shoulder. That man who had saved me from the panther's clutches was Captain Joliette. Days of ineffable bliss followed. The captain took me into his French camp and surrounded me with every care and attention. I called him my 'little papa.' Oh, how I love him! I could place my hands under his feet. He became ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

... the heart. Our household gods are the memories of our childhood, the recollections of the hearth round which we gathered; of the fostering hands which caressed us, of the scene of all the joys, anxieties, and hopes, the ineffable yearnings of love, which made us first acquainted with the mystery and the sanctity of home.' Such a home, dear uncle, let us fashion, somewhere in sight of the blue Pacific; and into its sacred rest ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... red, hot, fiery, unguarded locust, in the inanity of his mind's incomprehensibleness, has not only incurred my displeasure by his satirical dogged Lampoons, etc., but the abhorrence, animosity, and holy indignation of many who move in the high circle, as well as the ineffable contempt of the majority of those good and useful members of society, who are engaged in the glorious and delightful task of 'teaching the young idea how to shoot,' and forming the mind to rectitude of conduct; and whose labors are tremendous—I speak ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... a violence in receiving me. Next day I found her armed with affected high spirits, and it took two months of habit before I saw her in her true character. But then it was like a delicious May, a springtime of love that gave me ineffable bliss; she was no longer afraid; she was studying me. Alas! when I proposed that she should go to England to return ostensibly to me, to our home, that she should resume her rank and live in our new residence, she was ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac

... is well, In through the agate windows I can see The place prepared—glory ineffable, To which in royal love ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke

... and beat him with it on the eyes and brow. But when the blessed man asked him who he was, and how he had earned that doom, he said, "I am that most wretched Judas, who made the worst of all bargains. But I hold not this place for any merit of my own, but for the ineffable mercy of Christ. I expect no place of repentance: but for the indulgence and mercy of the Redeemer of the world, and for the honour of His holy resurrection, I have this refreshment; for it is the Lord's-day now, and as I sit here I seem to myself ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... ragged, unshaven and unshorn, with one arm hanging helplessly at his side, Santa Claus came to Simpson's Bar, and fell fainting on the first threshold. The Christmas dawn came slowly after, touching the remoter peaks with the rosy warmth of ineffable love. And it looked so tenderly on Simpson's Bar that the whole mountain, as if caught in a generous action, ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... were theirs! To be young; to be drawn together by an affinity which produced a mysterious and ineffable happiness; to wander aimlessly over the earth; to yield to every passing fancy; to dream; to hope; to love. It was the ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... irresistible propensity, and regretting, that by having tasted of those harmless joys, they had become the authors of double misery to their wives. Like their masters, they are not permitted to partake of those ineffable sensations with which nature inspires the hearts of fathers and mothers; they must repel them all, and become callous and passive. This unnatural state often occasions the most acute, the most pungent of their ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... the mirage that you read about yesterday; it fades and flits out of your grasp, as you travel toward it. When we go home I will read you something which Emerson has said concerning this same lovely ignis fatuus; for I can remember only a few words: 'What splendid distance, what recesses of ineffable pomp and loveliness in the sunset! But who can go where they are, or lay his hand, or plant his foot thereon? Off they fall from the round world forever.' Felix, I suppose it is because we see all the imperfections ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans

... may know as I know, Visibly revealed In the flowers of the field, Yea, declared by the stars in their courses, the tides in their flow, And the clash of the world's wide battle as it sways to and fro, Flashing forth as a flame The unnameable Name, The ineffable Word, I am ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... shall never pronounce in Thy presence, with a horror of his crimes; let him be the first to apply for admission to the redeemed society; let the promptness of his repentance be the ground of his forgiveness! Then, great and small, wise and foolish, rich and poor, will unite in an ineffable fraternity; and, singing in unison a new hymn, will rebuild Thy altar, O God ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... bed, but with sound judgment, full memory and understanding, believing in the ineffable mysteries of the Holy Trinity, three distinct persons in one God, in essence, and in the other mysteries acknowledged by our ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... sealing of the senses. The yoga of the Brahmins, which is the same as the "union" of the Cabalists, is made to depend upon the same conditions,—passivity, perseverance, solitude. The novice must arrest his breathing, and may meditate on mystic symbols alone, by way of reaching the formless, ineffable Buddha. But it is useless to heap up evidence; the ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... Day. A blast of Gabriel's horn has torn away The last haze from our eyes, and we can see Past the three hundred skies and gaze upon The Ineffable Name engraved deep in the sun. Now one by one, the pious and the just Are seated by us, radiantly risen From their dull prison in the dust. And then the festival begins! A sudden music spins great webs of sound Spanning the ground, ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... when we are in health. She has no quarrel with the world—she loves and she is loved again. No vain longing fills her heart, no feverish unrest disturbs her dreams, for her no crouching fear haunts the passing hours—that ineffable smile which plays around her mouth says plainly that life is good. And yet the circles about the eyes and the drooping lids hint of world-weariness, and speak the message of Koheleth and say, "Vanity of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... that road will come the bearer of news to make an end of it," rejoined Fosbrook sententiously. Mr. Jerkley looked at him with a sudden upspringing of hope, and Sir Charles nodded with ineffable mystery, never guessing how these lightly spoken words were to return to his mind with the strength of a ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... She beckoned acquiescence, and slackened her pace into a slow movement. The Laird turned the corner quickly, but when he had rounded it the maiden was still there, though on the summit of the brow. She turned round, and, with an ineffable smile and curtsy, saluted him, and again moved slowly on. She vanished gradually beyond the summit, and while the green feathers were still nodding in view, and so nigh that the Laird could have touched them with a fishing-rod, he reached the top of the brow ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... wakened to a sense Of sin and its guilty consequence. It was as if an angel's voice Called the listeners up for their final choice; As if a strong hand rent apart The veils of sense from soul and heart, Showing in light ineffable The joys of heaven and woes of hell All about in the misty air The hills seemed kneeling in silent prayer; The rustle of leaves, the moaning sedge, The water's lap on its gravelled edge, The wailing pines, and, far and faint, The wood-dove's note of sad complaint,— To the solemn ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Lochaber, in so artless, but sweet and pathetic a manner, that little Harry listened almost with tears in his eyes, though several of the young ladies, by their significant looks and gestures, treated it with ineffable contempt. ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... a white man, I know not who," said Tiger, with an expression of ineffable contempt, "but he must be the chief of the fools among the white men, who seem to me to be ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... night the good Albanian bishop, betrayed by who knew what of episcopal charity and response to appeals for succour from his fellow-countrymen, the helpless sheep of his flock, threatened by the wolfish atrocities of the ineffable Serb-Croat-Slovenes. ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay

... I see a confusion got into the dates. You didn't know anything about the date or the day of the week. Existence was just a dateless alternation of light and darkness, of saddle-up and off-saddle, of cossack-post, of thinking about water—and of yearning with every fibre of one's being for the ineffable boon ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie

... but the good doctor made no greater interruption to the florid professor than I did myself; he only grinned applause, with placid, but ineffable satisfaction. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay

... it's over," she repeated. Her eyes lifted to Billy's in a look of ineffable softness and ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... and, more than the words, their tone of ineffable disdain, aroused the passion that ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini

... make itself known by the waiving a point or renouncing a principle for others' advantage, in him has no place; he either knows it not, or else considers it a poor, mean-spirited, creeping baseness, altogether unworthy of his imitation, and best befitted with ineffable contempt. He neither dreads the contact of the baker—the Scylla of the metropolitan peripatetic, nor yet shuns the dire collision of the chimney-sweep—his Charybdis. Try to pass him as he walks leisurely on, making the solid earth ring with his bold tread, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various

... vivacity, asked us in less than a quarter of an hour one dozen questions, to answer which would have required an exhaustive exposition on the nature of man, the nature of the universe, the science of physics and of metaphysics, the Macrocosm and the Microcosm—not to speak of the Ineffable and the Unknowable. Then she drew out of her pocket her little Saint- George, who had suffered most cruelly during our flight. His legs and arms were gone; but he still had his gold helmet with the green dragon on it. Jeanne solemnly ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... about the chandelier above the supper-table took fire from the gas, just as we came out from the reading, and Longfellow ran forward and caught the burning garlands down and bore them out. No one could speak for thinking what he must be thinking of when the ineffable calamity of his home befell it. Curtis once told me that a little while before Mrs. Longfellow's death he was driving by Craigie House with Holmes, who said be trembled to look at it, for those who ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... baby says," responded Cricket, with decision. "Think I'm going to waste this glorious day, knitting washrags?" with ineffable scorn. "You two old grandmothers can knit and read all you want to. I've too ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow

... Infinite slope In faith, and we walk on in hope; But think ye from here to the "Holy Of Holies" beyond yon still sky, O'er the stars that forever move on, I' the heavens beyond the bright Third, In glory's ineffable light; Where the Father, and Spirit, and Word Reign circled by angels all bright — Ah! think you 'tween Here and that Yonder There is naught but the silence of death? There's naught of love's wish or life's wonder, ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)

... add columns of figures. Those things take your attention. You cannot be thinking of your friend while you write letters beginning "Yours of the 17th inst. rec'd and contents duly noted." But to work with your hands all day, thinking and singing, and then, after nightfall, to hear the ineffable kindness of your friend's greeting—always there—for you! Who would wake from such a ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington

... no evidence whatever of its previous urgent importance. Founded in the time of the Commonwealth as a symbol for the Company's men who, when in rare moments they looked up from the engrossing business of their dominant hours, desired a reminder of the ineffable things beyond ships and cargoes, the Chapel has survived all the changes which destroyed their ships and scattered the engrossing business of their working hours into dry matter for antiquaries. So little do men really change. They always leave their temples, whether ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson

... Minsk, where I duly alighted, to discover that General Brusiloff's headquarters were out at a village called Gorodok, about five miles distant, in the direction of Vilna. The evening was bitterly cold, and as I drove along I became filled with ineffable disgust of Rasputin and the disgraceful camarilla who were slowly but surely hurling the nation ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux

... day of the Holy Trinity in the year 1789, for the first time to church, he was so deeply moved by the sounds of the organ that he fainted. On recovering he felt his whole being filled with such ineffable comfort and happiness that he thought he saw in this occurrence the hand of destiny. He, therefore, set out for Vienna, in order that he might draw as it were at the fountain-head the great principles of his art. Be this as it may, in 1791 we hear ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... day to Sabbath day sheds on a ceaseless light, Eternal pleasure of the saints who keep that Sabbath bright; Nor shall the chant ineffable decline, nor ever cease, Which we with all the angels sing in that sweet realm ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... every battle-field where the negro fought, where danger was greatest and death surest—and tell me, if you can, that 'this is the white man's Government.' And then go to Salisbury and Columbia and Andersonville, and as you shudder at the ineffable miseries of those dens, and think of those who ran the dead-line, and were not shot, but escaped to the woods and were concealed and fed and piloted by the black men, and never once betrayed, but often enabled to escape and return to ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... of ineffable pride and consciousness of his own position, he gave his hand to the messenger of victory. The latter, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of Christianity. We have nothing to dread but the deadness and indifference of the public mind. It is not credible that polytheism should stand a day upon any fair comparison of it with the religion of Christ. You yourself are not a believer (pardon my boldness) in the ineffable stupidities of the common religion. To suppose you were—I see by the expression of your countenance—would be the unpardonable offence. I sincerely believe, that nothing more is wanting to change you, and every intelligent Roman, from professed supporters of the common religion, (but real infidels,) ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... multifarious amours—but surely he had not made himself indispensable to both sisters simultaneously. Surely even he had not so far forgotten that Ham Lake was in the middle of a country called England, and not the ornamental water in the Bois de Boulogne! And yet.... The delicious possibility of ineffable indiscretions on the part of Simon Fuge monopolized my mind till the train stopped at Knype, and I descended. Nevertheless, I think I am a serious and fairly insular Englishman. It is truly astonishing how a serious person can ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... lilies, and blazing blossoms of hibiscus, and other strange gorgeous tropic flowers. The dream was becoming almost impossibly beautiful to us who for so long had seen naught but the restless, salty sea. Charmian reached out her hand and clung to me—for support against the ineffable beauty of it, thought I. But no. As I supported her I braced my legs, while the flowers and lawns reeled and swung around me. It was like an earthquake, only it quickly passed without doing any harm. It was fairly difficult ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... name! It thrilled him inexpressibly, bringing a tenderness into his eyes and a glow into his bosom. He felt that when he should smoke a Little Sweetheart it would be a tribute to the ineffable visitor for whom this party was being given—it would bring her closer to him. His young brow grew almost stern with determination, for he made up his mind, on the spot, that he would smoke oftener in the future—he would become a confirmed smoker, and all his life he would smoke My Little ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington

... not see, how these bodies of ours could be made capable of such union, were it not that, in the man Christ Jesus, we see our corporeal nature capable of such transformation as to make it compatible for his human mind, and indwelling Deity, to receive it into their ineffable union. ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... of piazza, by arches constructed in front of the nave and closed in above by a vaulted roof. This idea so unique and at the same time so splendid, he was enabled to realize: and posterity, at the distance of six centuries, beholds with ineffable delight and admiration, a composition, the outlines and details of which, for their beauty and variety, render it one of the noblest facades in existence. Towards the north and south are two lofty turrets, flanked at the angles by clustered shafts, rising from a projecting base and crowned ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips

... visitations granted to the loving soul in this life, distinguishing the feelings and sensations that are mere delusions, from those that truly proceed from the fire of love in the affection and the light of knowing in the reason, and are a very anticipation of that ineffable "onehead" in heaven. ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various

... didn't know a word of it. He knew, however, or thought he knew, that she couldn't walk into a room like other people, and so made the most of that. He put on a look of ineffable distress, and said that he was aware ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... autobiographical "Praefatio Generalissima," "to set me free from the dark Chains, and this so sordid Captivity of my own Will." More offered to faith all which his reason could know, and so it happened that he "was got into a most Joyous and Lucid State of Mind," something quite ineffable; to preserve these "Sensations and Experiences of my own Soul," he wrote "a pretty full Poem call'd Psychozoia" (or A Christiano-Platonicall display of Life), an exercise begun about 1640 and designed for no audience but himself. There ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More

... sleepiness took possession of me, a weariness ineffable. Nerve and brain and muscle suddenly relaxed, went slack and numb. Without a struggle I surrendered to an overpowering stupor and cradled deep in its ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt

... "To a Mountain Daisy," by Robert Burns (1759-96), are the ineffable touches of tenderness that illumine the sturdy plowman. The contrast between the strong man and the delicate flower or creature at his mercy makes tenderness in man a ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... her, and grew homesick for heaven. His loving flock had crowned him with their grateful benedictions; he waited only for the good-night kiss of the Master he served, and he awoke from a transient slumber to behold the ineffable glory. On the previous day his illustrious Andover instructor, Professor Edwards A. Park, had departed; it was fitting that Andover's most illustrious graduate should follow him; now they are both in the presence of the infinite light, and they both behold ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... chatting with Valdarno, a tall and fair young man, with a weak mouth and a good-natured disposition; she had secured Giovanni, and though he sat sullenly smoking behind her, his presence gave her satisfaction. Del Ferice's smooth face wore an expression of ineffable calm, and his watery blue eyes gazed languidly on the broad stretch of brown grass ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... thankful enough that I have health to go. At the prayer-leaders' Lovefeast, said I could give up all for God, but have since asked myself, Is this true? Lord, Thou knowest it is the desire of my heart to give myself to Thee without reserve: accept the offering. I feel Thee now pouring in Thy ineffable peace. My soul has but one object, inward and outward holiness. O make me quite clear.—The intercourse is open between my soul and God, but yet I have had to struggle for it. O save me fully. This is what I want. Last ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... impossible to be gloomy with Juliet, in whom each day developed some sunny charm un-guessed before. Her freshness and coquettish candor were constant surprises. She had had many lovers, and she confessed them to Hamlet in the prettiest way. "Perhaps, my dear," she said to him one evening, with an ineffable smile, "I might have liked young Romeo very well, but the family were so opposed to it from the very first. And then he was ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... travelled a ten days journey, and, coming to Omaria, related all that had befallen him; and when the people were amazed, he attributed all that had befallen him to his knowledge of the ineffable name of Jehovah[13]. The king sent messengers to inform the caliph of Bagdat of what had happened, requesting that he would get David restrained from his seditious practices, by order from the head of the captivity, and the chief rulers of the assembly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... behind him saw nothing but shops and pavement, and coats and faces; neither did he hear the aggregated turmoil of a city of nations, nor the noisy exponents of various desires, appetites and pursuits: each pulsing tremour of the atmosphere was not struck into it by a subtile ineffable something willed forcibly out of a cranium: neither did he see the driver of horses holding a rod of light in his eye and feeling his way, in a world he was rushing through, by the motion of the end of that rod:—he only saw the wheels in motion, and heard the rattle on the stones; ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... Gazelle,—eyes that will admit of no epithet or comparison,—and the old question of preexistence and transmigration rises afresh in my mind, and something like a dim recognition of kinship passes. I turn this Thrush in my hand,—I remember its strange ways, the curious look it gave me, its ineffable music, its freedom, and its ecstasy,—and I tremble lest I have slain a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... notice of no less a reader than Sir WALTER SCOTT, who thus writes of it: 'I have read WORDSWORTH'S lucubrations[3] in the 'Courier,' and much agree with him. Alas! we want everything but courage and virtue in this desperate contest. Skill, knowledge of mankind, ineffable unhesitating villany, combination of movement and combination of means, are with our adversary. We can only fight like mastiffs—boldly, blindly, and faithfully. I am almost driven to the pass of the Covenanters, when ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... the congregation, his doctrine proved decidedly Nicene. It was a test for his hearers as well as for himself. He carefully avoided technical terms, repudiated Marcellus, and repeatedly deprecated controversy on the ineffable mystery of the divine generation. In a word, he followed closely the lines of the Sirmian creed; and his treatment by the Homoeans is a decisive proof of their insincerity. The people applauded, but the ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

... those grotesque pieces of masonry—gargoyles, we believe, they are called- -were fixed to any place of worship. Around our Parish Church and half-way up the steeple, there are, at almost every angle and prominence, rudely carved monstrosities, conspicuous for nothing but their ineffable and heathenish ugliness. Huge eyes, great mouths, immense tooth, savage faces and distorted bodies are their prime characteristics. The man who invented this species of ecclesiastical decoration must have been either mad or in "the horrors." An evenly ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... noble comrade," said Achilles, after he had hurried over his own exculpation, and without noticing the Varangian's light estimation of the crime, "his Imperial Majesty, in his ineffable graciousness, imputes these ill-advised draughts as a crime to no one who partook of them. He rebuked the Protospathaire for fishing up this accusation, and said, when he had recalled the bustle ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... rather dissipated clerks and semi-loafers of the village were inclined to make the acquaintance of such stylish handsome girls, but the Allens received the least advance from them with ineffable scorn. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... in that invisible life. By the ineffable name of Jehovah, at the sound of which the earth trembles, the sea draws back, fire quenches, and the elements of nature ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... not of the seed of man, nor of the will of man, nor by carnal union, being conceived in the Virgin's undefiled womb, of the Holy Ghost; as also, before his conception, one of the Archangels was sent to announce to the Virgin that miraculous conception and ineffable birth. For without seed was the Son of God conceived of the Holy Ghost, and in the Virgin's womb he formed for himself a fleshy body, animate with a reasonable and intelligent soul, and thence came forth in ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... to them; and so beautifully that they were all but melted to tears—especially the monsieur, who was evidently very sentimental and very much in love. Besides, there was that ineffable charm of the pure French intonation, so caressing to the Belgian ear, so dear to the Belgian soul, so unattainable by Flemish lips. It was one of Barty's most successful ditties—and if I were a middle-aged burgher of Mechelen, I shouldn't much like to have a young French Barty singing ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... According to Claude Haton, the edict was received with ineffable delight, especially in those cities of the kingdom where there were Huguenot judges. The Catholics were despised. The Huguenots became bold: "En toutes compagnies, assemblees et lieux publicz, ilz huguenotz ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... friend, the bare recollection of those hours still consoles me. Even this effort to recall those ineffable sensations, and give them utterance, exalts my soul above itself, and makes me doubly feel the intensity ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe

... what we have been in the habit of meaning. I have already said-I fear, too often-that no conception of God can have any value or meaning for us which does not involve his existence as an independent Living Person of ineffable wisdom and power, vastness, and duration both in the past and for the future. If such a Being as this can be found existing and made evident, directly or indirectly, to human senses, there is a God. If otherwise, there is no God, or ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler

... have now indicated what I mean by religion, "pure and undefiled," though I know too well what truth lies hid in those words of the "Over-soul," "Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul". The spoken word does but suggest, and that faintly, what the inner word of the soul expresses on matters so sublime. Still, so far as the limitations of thought and speech ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... there were during that month of June. Glancing casually over his left shoulder as he marched one afternoon with head bent and back turned toward the east, Chip saw that which a few minutes before had been but the misty edge of the sky transformed into a range of ineffable white peaks. The unexpectedness with which the glistering spectacle appeared made his heart leap. It was like a celestial vision—like a view of the ramparts of the Heavenly City. He clutched the stone top of the balustrade beside which he ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King

... pillow (for in this dream he seemed to himself waking and watching) he saw a hovering spirit, the incarnate shape of Light, gazing at the sleeping child with ineffable tenderness; but its keen eyes caught the aspect of Roger's Shadow; the pure lineaments glowed with something more divinely awful than anger, and with levelled lance it assailed that evil Presence and bore it to the ground; but the Shadow slipped aside from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... Redeemer I love, His praises aloud I'll proclaim: And join with the armies above, To shout his adorable name. To gaze on his glories divine Shall be my eternal employ; To see them incessantly shine, My boundless, ineffable joy. ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz

... retreat. There is no escape for us, except into the lives of others. In nature it is still our own face we see; and before the ideal creations of art we are still aware, for all our contemplation, of the ineffable yearning of the thwarted soul, of the tender melancholy, the sadness in all beauty, which is the measure of our separation therefrom, and is fundamental in the poetic temperament. This is that pain, which ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... that we had got our canvas trimmed the breeze had become quite perceptible, and the ship had gathered steerage-way; we therefore wore her round, and presently had the ineffable satisfaction of hearing a slight but distinct tinkling and gurgle ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... it is very strange, that Austrian scene of things in which poor Robinson is puffing and laboring. The ineffable pride, the obstinacy, impotency, ponderous pedantry and helplessness of that dull old Court and its Hofraths, is nearly inconceivable to modern readers. Stupid dilapidation is in all departments, and has long ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... had some one on whom to repose her care than slumber claimed its due, and she went away to her thankful rest, treasuring the thought of Robert's presence, and resting in the ineffable blessing of being able to overlook the thorns in gratitude ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of national righteousness and of Christian equality, the substantial truth and excellence of the frame of government of the United States, the substantial nobility and courage, justice and perseverance, of the real democracy of the country, and the certain and ineffable splendor of our future, if only we are true to ourselves, to humanity, and to God.' Few men have had such ardent and devoted friends as Henry Ward Beecher; few such bitter and determined enemies. It were useless to tell his friends of the loyalty, patriotism, and ability ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... fury of longing woke in her to have one week, one day, one hour of life, one hour of life now that her eyes were open, one moment only—even one moment. She felt that she had had nothing, that every other human being must have known the dolcezza, the ineffable, the mysterious ecstasy, the one and only thing worth the having, that she alone had been excluded, when she was beautiful, from the participation in joy that was her right, and that now, in her ugliness, she was irrevocably cast ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... she spoke thus, and cast back her head, seeking an assent to her words in his eyes—they were sparkling with ineffable delight. "Why, my little Lady Protectress," said he, playfully, "what is this you say? And what pretty scheme have you woven of exile and obscurity, while a brighter web, a gold-enwoven tissue, is that which, in truth, you ought ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley

... are a good son, though terribly extravagant. You bought sealskin furs that I can't wear, and a grand piano on which I can't play. But——" and she went over and put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes with ineffable fondness—"Jims, what you gave didn't matter because I knew that your heart, all of it, was there in the gift! And often, when you are away, I thank God for giving me a son so unselfish, so loyal, ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton

... the New Testament modification of the divine accusation. 'In Christ' is the Name of God fully and finally revealed to men. For us who live in the blaze of the ineffable brightness of the revelation, our attitude towards Him who brings it is the test of our 'hallowing of the Name' which He brings. He Himself has varied Malachi's indictment when He said, 'He that despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent Me.' Our sin ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... are no ladies present! We can stare as much as we like without being rude, because everyone else in the carriage has their eyes fixed with a straight unwinking stare upon us. It is difficult to realise that we are more entertaining to them than the gentleman who is disrobing himself with ineffable dignity in ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... merely mortal object of his eulogy: 'Nec illi, quod est rarissimum aut facilitas auctoritatem, aut severitas amorem, deminuit.' Still more beautiful is the Apostles description of superiority to all Human failings, with ineffable pity for human sorrows: 'He can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, though without sin.' Was there ever in truth a man who could read the appeals of Paul to his converts, and doubt either that the letters ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... of lightning he plunged far down the purgatory fire; his brightness was so great that Alvira could follow him even through the flames. There the angel found a young, beautiful soul, deep in agony, clothed with crimson fire. A smile of ineffable joy lit up the countenance of the sufferer—the message from heaven was understood. The angel lifted this soul from the fire, and, pausing for a moment on the peak of a lambent flame, the angelic deliverer and the liberated soul, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... divided you from me seem approaching each other: I stretch out my hand across the narrowing fissure, to grasp yours on the other side. And I wish, with all my heart, that you and I could spend this ineffable May afternoon under that old oak at Whittaker's ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... Protestants were to join: it was this. "We believe that in the use of the supper we truly, really, and substantially, that is to say, in its proper substance, receive the true body and the true blood of Jesus Christ in a spiritual and ineffable manner." Grotius informs us that this formulary was approved of by the Roman Catholic Doctors and by Protestants: which is not surprising of the Catholics, since the expressions he employs, when taken in their natural sense, comprehend the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church: it is more ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... them, but as different endowments—the one of nature, the other of grace. “Behold the new and surprising union which God alone could teach and alone accomplish, and which is only an image and an effect of the ineffable union of two natures in the one ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... side. Dora, looking up, saw the calm face beaming down upon her, ineffable tenderness in the clear eyes. She felt the clasp of Valentine's arms, and ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... of herself and was prepared for it; but persecution had rendered her courageous, and she did not give Madame the pleasure of seeing on her face the impression of the shock her heart had received. On the contrary, smiling with that ineffable gentleness which gave an angelic expression to her features—"In that case, madame, I shall be at liberty this evening, I suppose?" ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... student of these modern times. His history puts before us many and serious defects; but there is much more to approve and admire: and while a feeling or sorrow lingers over the one, the other is so marked and prominent that it secures your sympathy, and you are drawn towards the man with an ineffable affection. There is a candour, and honesty, and generosity, and heroism, which gives to his character a most healthy tone. The qualities of his mind and heart, when sanctified by grace, become really noble; and if it were right, you would like to forget his failings in presence ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... to him, stirring tremendously that faculty of his of seeing more clearly, visioning life more poignantly, with his mind than with his eye. She spoke to him of preparation for winter, and beyond winter with ineffable assurance for spring, bring winter what it might. He saw her dismantling all her house solely to build her house again. She packed down. She did not pack up, which is confusion, flight, abandonment. She packed down, which is resolve, resistance, husbandry of power to build and ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... field. Everlasting life is its subject. The Ancient of Days is its awful familiar. It has to do with the righteous conduct of individual men and women here on earth and of their eternal felicity in the world to come. The Ineffable One whose crucifixion has made the cross a symbol of all good and the emblem of our highest hope is its divine and ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... beauty oft inspires In generous lovers, she imagines not, Nor could she comprehend. Those narrow brows, Cannot such great conceptions hold. The man, Deceived, builds false hopes on those lustrous eyes, And feelings deep, ineffable, nay, more Than manly, vainly seeks in her, who is By nature so inferior to man. For as her limbs more soft and slender are, So is her mind less ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi

... wore a brown holland suit, with grey stockings and square-toed shoes; and at first I mistook him for a Quaker. His snow-white hair was gathered back from his temples, giving salience to a face of ineffable simplicity and goodness—the face of a man at peace with God and all the world, yet touched with ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... listening to the far-off tap of hoofs over the hill as the messenger came up from Cana, faith was as simple as an exact science. Here Gabriel had descended on wide feathered wings from the Throne of God set beyond the stars, the Holy Ghost had breathed in a beam of ineffable light, the Word had become Flesh as Mary folded her arms and bowed her head to the decree of the Eternal. And here once more, he thought, though it was no more than a guess—yet he thought that already the ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... been sent to fetch it, and there were a few crumbs on the chauffeur's coat, which made me fancy he'd been called away in the midst of his luncheon, poor man. He must have been surprised, but he had that ineffable marble-statue look which I've noticed on the faces of grand coachmen driving high-nosed old ladies in glittering carriages through the streets of Carlisle. Heppie says that the true test of a well-trained servant is to show no ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... from an unusually fine sunset. In a word, Miss Hugonin was a very quaint and colourful and delectable figure as she came a little further into the room. Her eyes shone like blue stars, and her hair shone—there must be pounds of it, Billy thought—and her very shoulders, plump, flawless, ineffable, shone with the glow of an errant cloud-tatter that is just past the track of dawn, and is therefore neither pink nor white, but manages somehow to combine the ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell

... compact of the rose of morning, of the flame of noon, of the purple of even; yet no star appears on the glowing horizon. No sun rises and no sun goes down on the country where nothing ends, where nothing begins. But an ineffable clearness, showering from all sides like a tender dew, maintains the unbroken[36] daylight ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... are obliged to draw our comparisons from human acts, and to inflict on the Lord the shame of our words. We have to employ such terms as 'union,' 'marriage,' 'wedding feast'; but it is impossible to speak of the inexpressible, and with the baseness of our language declare the ineffable immersion of the soul ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... in the front row of the heavenly choir-loft," observed Nan. "What he has taken from those women has given him a clear title to joys ineffable." ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... did great execution in the pocketing line was, as you may well believe, little Martha. Finding, to her ineffable joy, that there was no limit assigned to consumption, and that pocketing was not esteemed a sin, she proceeded, after stuffing herself, to stuff to overflowing the pocket with which she had previously wrestled, ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne

... been fixed upon her son, with an expression of ineffable soul-drawn delight; but, just before the poem drew to a close, they stole around the circle to note the effect produced by his masterly reading upon others. Every face mirrored such emotions as the poem might have awakened in minds capable of appreciating the noble and ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... could not bring herself to give up the battle without making some further effort. "It is about the vicarage at Hurst Staple," said she; "the vicarage at Hurst Staple," she repeated, impressing the words on the man's memory. "Don't forget, now." The man gave a look of ineffable scorn, and then walked away, leaving Mrs. Wilkinson still in ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope

... a countenance in which they are blended, in which beauty is the expression of goodness, is a silent reproach of the first irregular wish: and the purpose immediately appears to be disingenious and cruel, by which the tender hope of ineffable affection would be disappointed, the placid confidence of unsuspected simplicity abased, and the peace even of virtue endangered by the most sordid infidelity, and the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... his voice, his manner, his physique and his bearing were all exceptional, and told highly in his favour,—but unfortunately his scholarly acumen and knowledge of literature went against him with his manager. This personage, who was densely ignorant, and who yet had all the ineffable conceit of ignorance, took him severely to task for knowing Shakespeare's meanings better than he did,—and high words resulted in mutual severance. Aubrey was hardly sorry when his theatrical career ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli

... scanty bread by heavy toil; and when I compare the Caesar of Rome or the great king, whether of Egypt, Babylon, or Persia, with the hermit of the Thebaid, starving in his frock of camel's hair, with his soul fixed on the ineffable glories of the unseen, and striving, however wildly and fantastically, to become an angel and not an ape, I will say the hermit, and not the Caesar, is the ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... measures of Mr. Pitt, on the ground of policy. This used to enrage their audience, which consisted of the farmers of the parish and neighbourhood, among whom was frequently some upstart puppy, some ineffable coxcomb, one of their sons, perhaps, apprenticed at the neighbouring town, who came home on a Sunday, at Easter, Whitsuntide, Michaelmas, or Christmas, on a visit, and who had imbibed a double portion of the mania, in consequence of his having licked up the froth and ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt

... this mute, passionately sweet association the very thing to bind Marcolina to him more firmly with each kiss that they enjoyed? Would not the ineffable bliss of this night transmute into truth what had been conceived in falsehood? His duped mistress, woman of women, had she not already an inkling that it was not Lorenzi, the stripling, but Casanova, the man, with whom she was mingling in these ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler

... fatness and ease. The touch of him, like Nature, tells in action. Whom he takes he takes with firm sure grasp into live regions previously unattain'd—thenceforward is no rest—they see the space and ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos —the elder encourages the younger and shows him how—they two shall launch off fearlessly together till ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... comes up. So now I can't write what I felt. But I felt pantheistic then—your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's. A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling—no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content—that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... future when the bride shall pass into the presence of the King. The whole collective body of sinful souls redeemed by His blood, and who know the sweetness of His partially received love, shall be drawn within the curtains of that upper house, and enter into a union with Christ Jesus ineffable, incomprehensible till experienced; and of which the closest union of loving souls on earth is but a dim shadow. 'He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit'; and the reality of our union with Him rises above ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... creature nothingness humbles me; my many transgressions humble me; my innate sinfulness humbles me; but this humbles me most of all, Thine infinite condescension, and the ineffable indwelling Thou dost vouchsafe. It is Thy Holiness, in Christ bearing our sin, Thy Holy Love bearing with our sin, and consenting to dwell in us; O God! it is this love that passeth knowledge that humbles me. I do beseech ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray

... colors and forms with the beauty of all landscape. Corot painted at Ville d'Avray; what he painted was God's twilight or dawn enwrapping tree and pool. In gratitude and worship he revealed to men the tender, ineffable poetry of gray dawns in all places and for all time. Millet's peasants were called John and Peter and Charles, and they tilled the soil of France; but on their bowed shoulders rests the universal burden; these dumb figures are eloquent of the ...
— The Enjoyment of Art • Carleton Noyes

... her hand and devoured it with kisses. "Foolish thing!" murmured she, looking down on him with ineffable tenderness. "Should I not be always with you if I consulted my ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

... champion —is of all stiff-intruding blades the primest. Come hither, my ballocket, and hearken. Didst thou ever see the monk of Castre's cowl? When in any house it was laid down, whether openly in the view of all or covertly out of the sight of any, such was the ineffable virtue thereof for excitating and stirring up the people of both sexes unto lechery, that the whole inhabitants and indwellers, not only of that, but likewise of all the circumjacent places thereto, within three ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... lavender overtint, like the tender colors of the beautiful day he made his own. She had not worn it since, and he was far distant when he caught the first flickering glimpse of her through the lower branches of the maples, but he remembered.... And again, as on that day, he heard a far-away, ineffable music, the Elf-land horns, sounding the mysterious reveille which had wakened his ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington



Words linked to "Ineffable" :   inexpressible, unexpressible, sacred



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