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Unspeakable   /ənspˈikəbəl/   Listen
Unspeakable

adjective
1.
Defying expression or description.  Synonyms: indefinable, indescribable, ineffable, untellable, unutterable.  "Indescribable beauty" , "Ineffable ecstasy" , "Inexpressible anguish" , "Unspeakable happiness" , "Unutterable contempt" , "A thing of untellable splendor"
2.
Exceptionally bad or displeasing.  Synonyms: abominable, atrocious, awful, dreadful, painful, terrible.  "Abominable workmanship" , "An awful voice" , "Dreadful manners" , "A painful performance" , "Terrible handwriting" , "An unspeakable odor came sweeping into the room"
3.
Too sacred to be uttered.  Synonyms: ineffable, unnameable, unutterable.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Unspeakable" Quotes from Famous Books



... can blame it for choosing as its nesting-place the little soft furred Siberian marmots, which the Chinese hunt for their skin. If only the hunters could be given a dip in a sulphur vat before they lay them down to sleep in the unspeakable inns with their spoils wrapped around them, the chance for infection would not be so great. Of course the bare suggestion of a bath might prove more fatal than the plague, for oftener than not the hunters are used ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... swarthy hunchback, ridiculously gay in green and gold, came leaping down the platforms toward him, bawling again and again in good English, "This is Ostrog's doing, Ostrog the Knave! The Master is betrayed." His voice was hoarse and a thin foam dropped from his ugly shouting mouth. He yelled an unspeakable horror that the Black Police had done in Paris, and so ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells

... though Llewellyn Stanhope felt them hostile and longing for verbal brick-bats; and the Reverend Mr. Arnold shrank into the farthest corner of Surgeon-Major Livingstone's box, and knew all the misery of outrage. Pilate and the slave-maidens, Pilate's fat wife, and an unspeakable comic centurion, offered as yet hardly more than a prelude, but the monstrosity of the whole performance was already projected upon Arnold's suffering imagination. This, then, was what Patullo had done with it. But what other, he asked himself in ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... proceeded in its operation. I cannot dream that there should be at the last day any such judicial pro- ceeding, or calling to the bar, as indeed the Scripture seems to imply, and the literal commentators do con- ceive: for unspeakable mysteries in the Scriptures are often delivered in a vulgar and illustrative way, and, being written unto man, are delivered, not as they truly are, but as they may be understood; wherein, notwith- standing, the different interpretations according to dif- ferent capacities may ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... this battle were no less formidable than the men themselves, for they fought with the swift venom of the she-wolf, the cunning fury of the mad heifer, intuitive and implacable. Their instincts of motherhood, the safeguard of the future, made them loathe with a blind, unspeakable hate these filthy and bestial males who threatened to ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... journey. There were wonderful things to be seen, and every day brought novel experiences. But exposure and illness, dread of Indian attacks, mishaps of every sort, and the awful sense of isolation and of uncertainty of the future, caused many a man's stout heart to quail, and brought anguish unspeakable to brave women. Of such joys and sorrows, however, is a frontier existence compounded; and of the growing thousands who turned their faces toward the setting sun, comparatively few yielded to discouragement and went back East. ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... To travel a dreary path alone, a path leading seemingly nowhere, and then suddenly to have a companion by one's side, the very sight of whom enchanted the eye, the very touch of whom delighted the senses—what joy unspeakable! Who could sleep soundly when wakefulness brought a ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin

... only a preparation of greater sorrow for the future. Suicides, he declared, cannot shirk their responsibilities so easily. They must return to take up life exactly where they laid it so violently down, but with the added pain and punishment of their weakness. Many of them wander the earth in unspeakable misery till they can reclothe themselves in the body of some one else—generally a lunatic or weak-minded person, who cannot resist the hideous obsession. This is their only means of escape. Surely a weird and ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... took place. The introduction of military conscription of a most aggravating kind and the unspeakable cruelties attending its practical execution were followed, in the case of the Jews, by an unprecedented recrudescence of legislative discrimination and a monstrous increase of their disabilities. The Jews were lashed with a double knout, a military and a civil. ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... direction and the same line. It behaved precisely as though it were rubbing against something solid. Undoubtedly, there was something standing there on that strip of carpet, something invisible to the doctor, something that alarmed the dog, yet caused the cat unspeakable pleasure. ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... his feet, violently waving his hands at the Speaker. "Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker!" His dress was disordered and muddy; his eyes shone with a fierce, absurd, liquorish light; and with each syllable that he uttered his beard wagged to an unspeakable effect of comedy. He offered the most grotesque spectacle ever seen in that hall—a ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... coward—unjustly, because, nurtured as she had been on the proprieties, surrounded all her days by men and women of a class most sensitive to public opinion, who feared the breath of scandal worse than a plague, confession for her must mean a shame unspeakable. What! Admit that she, Dorothea Westcote, had loved a French prisoner almost young enough to be her son! that she had given him audience at night! that he had been shot and captured ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... I would get one cheaply by taking up that unhappy boy! Heaven preserve me from the heroics, especially the economical heroics! The one heroic course possible, I decline. What, then, have I to complain of? Must I tear my hair because a man of taste has resisted my unspeakable charms? To be charming, you must be charmed yourself, or at least you must be able to be charmed; and that apparently I'm not. I didn't love him, or he would have known it. Love gets love, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... gradually began to recover and breathe more freely. This was now the third day of our confinement. The storm had almost subsided, as we could feel from the vessel lying more steady in the water; and, to our unspeakable joy, the hatch was opened, and a supply of water and biscuit given to us. Next to the water, the pure air of heaven was most welcome to us. I wet the parched lips of the pale sufferer, then held the beverage to them. She swallowed a few mouthfuls, blessed me for my kindness, then sank into ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... leaning; strange women weep Aloud, suddenly on my mind Startling a fear unspeakable, as the shuddering wind Breaks and ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... unspeakable within me never slumbers, Saying, Honour not the gauds of wealth if men have ceased to grow, Nor deem that men, apart from wealth, can find their strength in numbers— We shudder for our light and king, though we have ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... Then, to Jimmy's unspeakable relief, gun and torch dropped simultaneously to the floor. In an instant Jimmy ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... here and there a patriarchal voice was heard telling of that solemn day and deed. The grand-children had lost much of the fervor, power, purpose, holy enthusiasm, dread of God's majesty, fellowship with Jesus Christ, and raptures in the Holy Spirit—had lost many of the countless and unspeakable blessings descending from the sure Covenant made with God and kept by their fathers. Fifty-seven years had elapsed and many changes had occurred. Henderson, by appointment, added to the Covenant what was necessary to make it applicable to ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... was full of weariness and contempt; it qualified the man as unspeakable and dismissed him as intolerable. Was Marchmont infallible, as Fanny had said? At least he represented, in its finest and most authoritative form, the opinion of her own circle, the unhesitating judgment against which she must set ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... it, I never dreamed it," she repeated, with passionately clasped hands. "I... I thought the surf at the Cliff House was wonderful, but it gave no idea of this.—Oh! Look! LOOK! Did you ever see such an unspeakable color? And the sunlight flashing right through it! Oh! ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord: Grant us grace so to follow thy blessed Saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those unspeakable joys, which thou hast prepared for them that unfeignedly love thee; through Jesus Christ our ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England

... for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest upon each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed

... 'the Gerard Dow of architectural painters,' was born in 1637 and died in 1712. He combined an unspeakable minuteness of detail with the closest observation of nature. His subjects, which he selected with great taste, were chiefly well-known buildings, palaces, churches, and canal banks in Holland and Belgium. He painted in a warm transparent tone, with close application of the laws of perspective. ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... thought that He was lost to them for ever; they saw Him die, and gave up all hope of His rising again. And we know that Christ is not lost to us for ever. We know Christ is not on the cross, but at the right hand of God in bliss and glory unspeakable. We may be told to watch with the three Maries at the tomb of Christ: but we cannot do as they did, for they thought that all was over, and brought sweet spices to embalm His body, which they thought was ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... society, I had excused myself on the plea (not altogether a false one) of a bad headache, and having witnessed their departure from the library window, I drew an easy-chair to the fire, and prepared to enjoy the luxury (in my then state of feeling an unspeakable one) of solitude. But I was not fated to avail myself of even this small consolation, for scarcely ten minutes had elapsed when the library door was opened, and Mr. ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... rigid figures sat as upright as posts. In front of these severe countenances, the butter-plates remained as fixtures; the passing of them to a neighbor would be a frightful breach of good form—besides being dangerous. Such practices, in public places, had been known to lead to things—to unspeakable things—to knowing the wrong people, to walks afterward with cads one couldn't shake off, even to marriages with the impossible! Therefore it was that the butter remained a fixture. Even between those who formed the same tourist-party, there was rarely such an act of self-forgetfulness ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... Blind fool—unspeakable idiot that he had been! To take her for Mrs. Palmer's niece—that peerless creature with the calm acceptance of any situation, which marked the woman of the world, with the fine appreciation and quickness of repartee that spoke of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... storm. And here, at the beginning of her flight, she found herself in utter confusion of body and spirit, powerless to protect herself against such conduct as Harold's, such printed gossip as lay before her, or such unspeakable ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... had suffered no massacre of Drogheda or of Wexford; no Boyne, no Aghrim, no vast and repeated confiscations. Whereas Ireland, a partitioned and subject land, which had suffered during the last two centuries horrors unspeakable, still cowered like a whipped dog before its master, and was as ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman

... back, or we pull away!" One boat, however, dashed alongside. Ropes were hove to the people in her by the captain and others, and an officer climbed up on board, and instead of Alfonse Gerardin, whom she expected, Edda beheld, to her unspeakable joy, Ronald Morton. The bright glare revealed her to him. He did not look to see who else was there. He knew her in a moment. He asked not how she came there, but clasping her in his arms, he carried her to the ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... and grimaces, came stupidly alongside; and by five o'clock we were steaming out in the open sea. The vessel was beautifully clean; the meals were served under an awning on deck; the night was calm and clear; the quiet beauty of the sea and sky unspeakable. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... feeling for the personal share which I and the Queen have taken in the labor of securing the necessary means for the establishment of a Hospital in Honolulu. Whilst acknowledging your courtesy, I wish to take this first public occasion to express the almost unspeakable satisfaction with which I have found my efforts successful beyond my hopes. It is due to the subscribers as a body, that I should bear witness to the readiness, not less than the liberality, with which they have met my ...
— Speeches of His Majesty Kamehameha IV. To the Hawaiian Legislature • Kamehameha IV

... old at her mother's death, but she kept a crisp memory of the horror of it. The crimson, crumpled-looking baby brother, in his long clothes, whose coming somehow seemed responsible for the loss of her tender angel, for a long time was viewed with resentful hatred. It was a terrible, unspeakable grief. She remembered perfectly the helpless sense ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY,—As your advancement to the honorable and important station as governor of this commonwealth affords us unspeakable pleasure, we beg leave to present your excellency with our most ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... more unmitigated expressions of contempt and aversion. Mackintosh, says Mill, uses 'macaroni phrases,' 'tawdry talk,' 'gabble'; he gets 'beyond drivelling' into something more like 'raving'; he 'deluges' us with 'unspeakable nonsense.' 'Good God!' sums up the comment which can be made upon one sentence.[562] Sir James, he declares, 'has got into an intellectual state so thoroughly depraved that I doubt whether a parallel to it is possible to be found.'[563] There is scarcely ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... raised in its defence. It was regarded as a measure unwarranted in civilized warfare, and a sure and intentional incitement to the horrors which had attended the servile insurrections of Haiti and San Domingo; and, more recently, the unspeakable Sepoy incidents of the Indian mutiny. What actually occurred is now historic. The confident anticipations of our English brethren were, not for the first time, negatived; nor is there any page in our American record more creditable to those concerned than ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams

... 'mainly set on foot by his Majestie and so much coveted after by him that he may rid himselfe of the House of Commons, who have been very heavy on his loines, and the loins of his predecessors.... I confesse the king has reason to wrest this excessive power out of the Commons their hand, it being an unspeakable impairment of the soveraintie, but I ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... and good will to men. Surely if the knowledge of Him who came "to preach liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound," were diffused and received here, and were spread with no niggard hand, the prison of the Naam-Hoi magistrate, with its unspeakable horrors, would go the way of all our dungeons and bedlams. [*I cannot forbear adding a note on the extent of Mr. Henry's work in 1881. He preached 190 times in Chinese, and five times in English; held fifty-two Bible-class meetings, and thirteen communion ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... past exasperations and paroxysms was, for the poor creatures so long tossed about, an unspeakable comfort. It was as though the punishment of the rack had ceased. They caught a glimpse about them and above them of something which seemed like a consent, that they should be saved. They regained confidence. All that ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... lay on her sofa calmly happy, and thankful, the worn and wearied spirit full of rest and gladness unspeakable, in the fulness of gratitude for the answered prayer that she might know her brother free before her death. If she had ever doubted of her own state, she had read full confirmation in her physician's saddened eyes, and the absence of all hopeful auguries, except ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... depression" Of stories that gloomily bore Received as the subtle expression Of almost unspeakable lore? In the dreary, the sickly, the grimy Say, why do our women delight, And wherefore so constantly ply me ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang

... which is visible at a great distance in the day, should betray me. For this reason, I removed that part of my business which required fire, such as burning of pots and pipes, &c., into my new apartment in the woods; where, after I had been some time, I found, to my unspeakable consolation, a mere natural cave in the earth, which went in a vast way, and where, I daresay, no savage, had he been at the mouth of it, would be so hardy as to venture in; nor, indeed, would any man else, but one who, like me, wanted ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... for a while, but lay still, with his eyes fixed upon her, as she sat with her elbow leaning on the window. Oh! what an unspeakable joy it was to him to hear such heavenly words spoken by her, whom he had almost worshipped; and yet her presence and her words turned his thoughts back from heaven to the earth which he had all but left. Could she really have ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... just ahead. Entering that forest was like going into some vast fatal Iroquois Theatre saturated with death-dealing gas. It was even then being swept by a tornado of screaming, bursting shells, scattering far and wide fumes of mustard and chlorine, a single inhalation of which meant unspeakable agony and death. But our brave boys were there with souls to be prepared, and poor mangled bodies were there, reverently ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... Cornwall the division which had moved towards that place, where General Wilkinson confidently expected to hear of the arrival of General Hampton on the opposite shore, to whom he had written on the 6th, to that effect, not being then acquainted with his late defeat. Here, to his unspeakable mortification and surprise, he received a letter from General Hampton, informing him that the division under his command was falling back ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... scouring over the plains of Monte Video, yet I look back with regret to the Tropics, that magic lure to all naturalists. The delight of sitting on a decaying trunk amidst the quiet gloom of the forest is unspeakable and never to be forgotten. How often have I then wished for you. When I see a banana I well recollect admiring them with you in Cambridge—little did I then think how soon I should eat ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... his gun into the air, shouted for help, and tried to raise his friend. At the sound of the shot, the strange lady, who had stood motionless by the gate, fled away, crying out like a wounded wild creature, circling round and round in the meadow, with every sign of unspeakable terror. ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac

... Ghost, who is the third person in the Holy Trinity, is very God: not made, not created, not begotten, but proceeding from both the Father and the Son, by a certain mean unknown unto men, and unspeakable; and that it is His property to mollify and soften the hardness of man's heart when He is once received thereinto, either by the wholesome preaching of the Gospel, or by any other way: that he doth give men light, ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel

... his pace to a smart walk, soon stood before the door of one of those uncommonly small neat suburban villas which the irrigating influence of the Grand National Trunk Railway had caused to spring up like mushrooms around the noisy, smoky, bustling town of Clatterby—to the unspeakable advantage of that class of gentlefolk who possess extremely limited incomes, but who, nevertheless, prefer ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne

... with a great and joyful surprise. Flinging ourselves helpless, and despairing of all other help,—rashly, as it will seem to us, flinging ourselves off from the position where we now are, and upon which we must inevitably perish, we shall find ourselves, to our surprise and unspeakable joy, caught in everlasting, paternal arms. He who loses his life,—he who dares to ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... plain to Flora from the moment she set foot over the threshold that the house was to be no mean ally of theirs, but Mrs. Herrick was making it help them doubly in their hard interval of waiting. Alone together with unspoken, unspeakable things between them—things that for mere decency or honor could not be uttered—with nothing but these to think of, nothing but each other to look at, they must yet, in sheer desperation and suspense, have inevitably ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... to reveal a world where woman reigned over all. What she had heard from her grandmother of the magic splendor which Wanda had missed and Iza enjoyed, flashed up before her, and her heart warmed delightedly in the voluptuous intoxication of unspeakable bliss. On the wings of this melody, which, in truth, merely sought to picture the celestial dwelling of the elect, she was carried into one of those bijou palaces of the best part of the Queen City of the Universe, where the bedizened ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... and the salad arriving!" I exclaimed hopefully. "And there never was a French cook yet, however unspeakable otherwise, who failed ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... Horace, with a look of unspeakable wisdom. "Much as you know, Prue. Rich people are the stingiest in the world. The fact is, the more you have, the more you ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May

... red lips pressed upon his. Closer drew the encircling arms, more breathlessly the red lips pressed his. He struggled for breath, and fought to tear away the dimpled arms. The music of Glory's voice rose into unspeakable tumult, the warm pressure of Precious' arms rendered him powerless. He fell insensible, and two days later ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston

... upon one image still, Till it becomes a portion of our being, Hath fix'd its features in the eye, until It hath become a part of sight—thus seeing, Even in tree, and rock, and rill, and flower, A form of borrow'd beauty, and a spell— A spirit of unspeakable heart—power— To move the waters in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... thought Elise, at the first view of the scene which presented itself. The soft glowing young forms in the clear warm water, the glimmering of the open fire, the splashing and jubileering of the children in their unspeakable comfort, their innocent sport one with another in the peaceful little lake of the bath, in which they had no fear of raising stormy waves; nay, even Brigitta's happy face, under her white cap, her lively activity, amid the continual phrases of "best-beloved," "little alabaster arm," "alabaster ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer

... mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitude, and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived; I and my friends; to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold

... out to relieve the monotony of that desert of grass. Any dwelling of man within reach of the searching eye must have been hidden in the troughs between the crests of summer grass. It was all so wide, so vast, so dreadful in its unspeakable solitude. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... again revived, and from the doorways of the houses I could see forms issuing, while far off the Hill of the Phosphori raised its glass domes in the air, where the homogeneous tide of spirit was undergoing differentiation, as we might say, into separate cognizable, discreet beings. An unspeakable delight filled me. I felt the power of mind and with it ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... rabbit trap and the trench grew unspeakably loathsome and hideous to me. What a mockery, this business of killing men! No matter that beyond the canal there lurked the menace of a foe that had himself shown unspeakable barbarity and resource in plotting death. No matter if the very odour that stank in my nostrils called loud for vengeance. I thought of German prisoners I had seen, German wounded responding so readily to kindness and a smile. I saw them driven across ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... and in half an hour had followed, leaving her crew afloat in boats and on life-rafts. Scotty found himself in the boat with the captain, and wisely anticipating rebuke, had brought his shovel. The captain glared unspeakable things ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various

... knell upon the capital. As far as we were concerned, there seemed to be just then only a choice of evils. Either the government would await in Mexico the impending issue, and we must be exposed to all the unspeakable horrors of which Puebla had just been the scene, or the President and his administration would abandon the city, and an interval must follow during which we must be left exposed to mob law, or, ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... times been conscious of some failure that cut keenly into the very tissue of the heart! And even when no such break may have come there is ever a heart-yearning for more than has yet been experienced. The men who seem to know most of God's power have had great, unspeakable longings at times for a fresh consciousness ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon

... miles further, being then within five miles of the grog spring we heared the report of several rifles very distinctly on the river to our right, we quickly repared to this joyfull sound and on arriving at the bank of the river had the unspeakable satisfaction to see our canoes coming down. we hurried down from the bluff on which we were and joined them striped our horses and gave them a final discharge imbrarking without loss of time with our baggage. I now learned that they had brought all ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... struck by superstition, "are not you that terrible and unhappy fantom? How many times this fear has taken possession of my dreams! How many times you have appeared to me as the type of the unspeakable agony to which the spirit of inquiry has driven man! With your beauty and your sadness, your weariness and your skepticism, do you not personify the excess of sorrow produced by the abuse of thought? Have you not given ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... party hatred, even if it had been possible at that moment to suppress the fire. "The great God of Heaven," they said, "had caused the undertaking of His holy instrument Mr. Doctor Martin Luther to prosper. Through His unspeakable mercy he has driven away the Papal darkness and caused the sun of righteousness once more to beam upon the world. The old idolatries, blasphemies, errors, and horrors of the benighted Popedom have been exterminated in many kingdoms and countries. Innumerable sheep of the Lord Christ have been ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... pride which makes the joy of the virtuous. These special and canonized vices are things too low and base to be possible to the pure animal, whose only inspirer is Nature herself, always fresh as the dawn. The god in man, degraded, is a thing unspeakable in its infamous ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... was exactly what she had been led to expect, and ought to have reassured her, yet, for no reason at all, the conviction remained as intense and disturbing as ever, that something unspeakable was happening in this respectable house. The minutes dragged by till quite half an hour must have passed, and then she heard the steps descending. They came down very slowly this time, and very heavily. The obvious explanation was that they were bringing down one of those boxes filled with dusty ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... have attracted the most powerful minds and the subtlest intellects to their elucidation; no other subjects have excited men's minds and aroused their passions as these have done; on account of their unspeakable importance, no other subjects have kindled such heat and strife, or proved themselves more fatal to many of the authors who wrote concerning them. In an evil hour persecutions were resorted to to force consciences, Roman Catholics burning and torturing Protestants, and the latter retaliating ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... the water. This sign corresponds with Mexzichuaut, which means Cloudy Serpent, or, of the clouds.[19-*] The people also consult them in order to work injury on their enemies, taking the lives of many through such devilish artifices, and committing unspeakable atrocities. ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton

... at the same time revealed a truth that is greater still, one that throws on these disillusions a light more brilliant, more ample, than the myriad flickering beams it has quenched all around you, For there lurks unspeakable pride, and pride of the poorest kind, in thus declaring ourselves satisfied because we can find satisfaction in nothing that is. Such satisfaction, in truth, is discontent only, too sluggish to lift its head; ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... President removed his own hat, and bowed in silence; but it was a bow which upset the forms, laws, customs, and ceremonies of centuries. It was a death-shock to chivalry, and a mortal wound to caste. Recognize a nigger! Faugh! A woman in an adjoining house beheld it, and turned from the scene in unspeakable disgust. There were men in the crowd who had daggers in their eyes; but the chosen assassin was not there, the hour for the damning work had not come, and that great-hearted man passed on to the executive mansion of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... teaching of the Bible, we shall not presume that the latter excludes the former, but understand that the unity is the foundation of perfect communion, and the communion the manifestation, so far as it can be manifested, of the unspeakable unity. The solemn words which shine like stars—starlike in that their height above us shrinks their magnitude and dims their brightness, and in that they are points of radiance partially disclosing, and separated by, abysses of unlighted infinitude—tell us that in the order of eternity, before ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren

... those glorious October days, when every breath quickens the blood and when simply to live is a joy unspeakable, that Darrell first walked abroad into the outdoor world. Several times during his convalescence he had sunned himself on the balcony opening from his room, or when able to go downstairs had paced feebly up and down ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... God's high throne, gloriously bright, The first art wont his great authentick will Interpreter through highest Heaven to bring, Where all his sons thy embassy attend; And here art likeliest by supreme decree Like honour to obtain, and as his eye To visit oft this new creation round; Unspeakable desire to see, and know All these his wonderous works, but chiefly Man, His chief delight and favour, him for whom All these his works so wonderous he ordained, Hath brought me from the quires of ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... magic way she always exercised of averting evil through sheer innocent challenge. "Here, Grace, hold her head while I fetch water," and while Grace attempted to support the head Madaline had been fondling, Mary raised it with a look of unspeakable joy. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... interviews: but all these things I rearrange and classify and put to the exact test of truth. My collaborator in this work is Arsene Lupin himself, whose kindness to me is inexhaustible. I am also under an occasional obligation to the unspeakable Wilson, the friend and confidant of ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc

... her husband had gone to Ostend to see the Emperor, and had declined to take her with him; for, as he was an alien, he could not understand her loyal enthusiasm, and that it was the one great desire of her life to see the ruler for whose kindness and goodness and greatness she had an unspeakable admiration; and her disappointment in not being able to go and ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... eternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies antique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we still refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are dwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all the dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify a whole city. All these things are not ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... he went on, "the assurance of the creature and my unspeakable carelessness in permitting the official letters brought to me on the day before by the postoffice messenger to be seen. In my relaxation I had forgotten the eye of the chair attendant. I took the cigar out of my teeth and ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various

... superiors. The second, veneration for that which is below us. The hands folded on the back as if tied together, the lowered, smiling glance, bespeak that we have to regard the earth well and cheerfully; it gives us an opportunity to maintain ourselves; it affords unspeakable joys; but it brings disproportionate sufferings. If one hurts oneself bodily, whether faultily or innocently; if others hurt one, intentionally or accidentally; if earthly chance does one any harm—let these be well thought of, for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... love of the few disciples, the enmity of the world, the things that infinite tenderness had done and borne for those who hated goodness and would not obey God. Molly listened, and Daisy talked; bow, she did not know nor Molly neither; but the good news was told in that poor little house; the unspeakable gift was made known. Seeing Molly's fixed eyes and rapt attention, Daisy went on at length and told all. The cripple's gaze never stirred all the while, nor stirred when the story came to an end. She still stared at Daisy. Well ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner

... public. For three months, you fastened yourself upon me, and I could not shake you off. What availed it me, that you were an honest and excellent man? Did I not, twenty times a day, wish you had been a villain, who had insulted me, and I a Kentucky giant, that I might have the unspeakable satisfaction of knocking you down? But you added to your crimes virtue. Villainy had no part or lot in you. You were a member of a church, in good and regular standing; you had graduated with all the honors worth mentioning; you had not a sin, a vice, or a fault that I knew of; and you ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... expressed each other. In his hands the flute no longer remained a mere material instrument, but was transformed into a voice that set heavenly harmonies into vibration. Its tones developed colors, warmth, and a low sweetness of unspeakable poetry; they were not only true and pure, but poetic, allegoric as it were, suggestive of the depths and heights of being and of the delights which the earthly ear never hears and the earthly eye never sees. No doubt his firm faith ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... of seventy, whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress of twenty, whose poverty and obscurity could not save her. Physical diseases, engendered in the vices and neglects of men, will seize on victims of all degrees; and the frightful moral disorder, born of unspeakable suffering, intolerable oppression, and heartless ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... Holland and Belgium, and spat in it. This man, who took no thought of other persons, never forgot the inveterate habit of using those boxes. To poor Josephine, unable to find a reason for this singularity, the constant care which her husband took of the furniture caused her at all times an unspeakable pang, but at this moment the pain was so violent that it put her beside herself and made her exclaim in a tone of impatience, which expressed her ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... weight I am likely to have with either of the parties who divide this kingdom,—even though I were endowed with strength of body, or were possessed of any active situation in the government, which might give success to my endeavors. But the fact is, since the day of my unspeakable calamity, except in the attentions of a very few old and compassionate friends, I am totally out of all social intercourse. My health has gone down very rapidly; and I have been brought hither with very faint hopes of life, and enfeebled ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... before him, when a scream of agonized terror arose on the farthest skirt of the crowd, and, swifter than flood or flame, the horror spread shrieking. In a moment the air was filled with hideous howling, cries of unspeakable dismay, and the multitudinous noise of running feet. The next moment, in at the door of the vault bounded Lina, her two green eyes flaming yellow as sunflowers, and seeming to light up the dungeon. With one spring ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald

... yet Paul's prayers are God's promises; and we are justified in taking these rapturous petitions as being distinct declarations of God's desire and purpose for each of us; as being the end which He had in view in the unspeakable gift of His Son; and as being the certain outcome of His gracious working ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... to conceive the thing again, as he sat by the fire, and again his mind shuddered and shrank back, appalled before the sight of such awful, unspeakable elements enthroned as it were, and triumphant in human flesh. Before him stretched the long dim vista of the green causeway in the forest, as his friend had described it; he saw the swaying leaves and the quivering shadows on the grass, he saw the ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen

... I shall list to the stars when the music is purple, Be drawn through a pipe, and exhaled into rings; Turn to sparks, and then straightway get stuck in the gateway That stands between speech and unspeakable things. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... of all this tender interest, he felt far happier than he had done for some time. He saw Amabel every day, and noted with unspeakable delight the gradual improvement which appeared to be taking place in her health. The greater part of his time, however, was not passed in her society, but in threading the intricacies of the wood, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... greatly assisted by Duke of TECK enthusiastically beating time with his dexter band. Such auxiliary conducting must be of unspeakable service to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 27, 1893 • Various

... sullen air, Richford lounged away; Colonel Berrington was crossing the drawing-room, and Beatrice's heart beat high with hope. She might have known that the gallant soldier would help her if possible. With unspeakable relief she saw Richford tactfully drawn away and disappear. Very quickly Beatrice changed her seat, so that she could command a view of the drawing-room without herself being seen. The side door opened, and Mark Ventmore came in again. He carried a tray still, ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White

... outstanding religious fact of the war?" asked he. "Let me recover my breath which your unspeakable friend here put out by calling me a 'High Churchman,' and then I'll begin. It ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... things was changing; there was a breath of the south already in the air; and there was an unspeakable tendency on the part of everybody to go to sleep after the ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield

... up. We had no other chance of recovering her, but by getting the person of the king into our possession; on our attempting to do that, the natives became alarmed for his safety, and naturally opposed those whom they deemed his enemies. In the sudden conflict that ensued, we had the unspeakable misfortune of losing our excellent commander, in the manner already related. It is in this light the affair has always appeared to me, as entirely accidental, and not in the least owing to any previous offence received, or jealousy of our second visit entertained by the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... holiness and happiness. Without these, life is not as it should be. It is our privilege in Christ to walk the path of life in perfect peace and joy and in perfect holiness. Such a life will flow out into an eternity of joys unspeakable. ...
— How to Live a Holy Life • C. E. Orr

... what followed. There was an outcry, first of all, from the half dozen servants in the great hall. They crowded forward curiously to look at him. And as for Ivan, he stared blankly for a moment, and then plumped down on one knee and, to Fred's unspeakable embarrassment, seized his hand and ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine

... Eros alone of divinities is altogether a spirit, and hides in passions not of his essence if he would commune with a mortal heart. So that if a man love nobly he knows love through infinite pity, unspeakable trust, unending sympathy; and if ignobly through vehement jealousy, sudden hatred, and unappeasable desire; but unveiled love he never knows. While I thought these things, a voice cried to me from the crimson figures: 'Into the dance! there is none that can be spared ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats

... my hands, by the most generous of men, shall be exerted to make every thing easy and agreeable to you: And as I shall soon have the honour of attending my beloved to Bedfordshire, it will be a very considerable addition to my delight, and to my unspeakable obligations to the best of men, to see my dear Mrs. Jervis, and to be received by her with that pleasure, which I promise myself from her affection. For I am, my dear good friend, and always ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... good to have known it. And though tragedy unspeakable dogged its footsteps, and broke its life in this world, it lives and will always live gloriously in the hearts and memories of uncounted men and women who believe more in humanity, and perhaps even believe more in ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various

... the battered and diminished remnant that would come back. And then the Black Burgundians, the horrible English ogres, whose names would make the children shudder! No God-den(2) had got so far as Domremy; there was no personal knowledge to soften the picture of the invader. He was unspeakable as the Turk to the imagination of the French peasant, diabolical ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... that, my dear fellow. No more introductions to-night, please. I've just suffered torture from an unspeakable youth from Aberdeen, who expected me to rejoice with him because Oxford is at last recognising the 'exeestence of a metapheesical principle in the ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... and Pollock's noble and successful constancy of purpose. Beyond this effulgence there spreads a sombre welter of misrepresentation and unscrupulousness, intrigue, moral deterioration, and dishonour unspeakable. ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... means of the leather strap. In the hands of a wise and even-tempered man, no harm could result from the use of this instrument of justice; but in the hands of a fierce-tempered and therefore changeable man, of small moral stature, and liable to prejudices and offence, it became the means of unspeakable injury to those under his care; not the least of which was the production, in delicate natures, of doubt and hesitancy, sometimes ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... the joyful days of childhood, then through the sorrowful days of womanhood when I was learning how to live, through the years of heartache and heart-break,—and through it all, though I actually suffer, there, is such an unspeakable lightness and buoyancy, such a lifting up, that even pain is a pleasure. I can't explain it all, unless it is the influence of this mysterious country, lulling and soothing, but powerful and subtle ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... fortunately was spared to it, but in the same year (1793) it became a "Temple of Reason," one of those fanatical exploits of a set of madmen who are periodically let loose upon the world. Mysticism, palaverings, and orgies unspeakable took place between its walls, and it only became sanctified again when Napoleon caused it to be reopened as a place of divine worship. Again, three-quarters of a century later, it fell into evil times—when ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... hideous calmness, bound me to a tree with an osier shoot. At the touch of his great horny hand I bent like a reed; and yet I was remarkably strong for my age. He fixed the owl to a branch above my head, and the bird's blood, as it fell on me drop by drop, caused me unspeakable horror; for though this was only the correction we administer to sporting dogs that worry game, my brain, bewildered by rage, despair, and my comrades' cries, began to imagine some frightful witchcraft. However, I really think I would rather have been metamorphosed into an owl at once ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... her a dazed glance, a glance out of a mind absorbed in an unspeakable grief, and returning into his absorption, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... approaching train afforded him unspeakable relief, and at the first opportunity he put himself and his belongings aboard with a celerity very remarkable in one ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... it was a simple matter to find the river and my old canoe waiting patiently under the alders in the gathering twilight. Soon I was afloat again, with a sense of unspeakable relief that only one can appreciate who has been lost and now hears the ripples sing under him, knowing that the cheerless woods lie behind, and that the camp-fire beckons beyond yonder point. The loons were hallooing far ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long

... unspeakable joy. The people also gathered together to pray God that blessing and happiness might descend upon the giant-slayer. At that very moment a servant came from the imperial citadel to say that a serpent had nearly been the death of the Emperor's daughter. Upon this the Emperor betook ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various

... days and even weeks, however, Huntingdon seemed a paradise. The heart of its new inhabitant was full of the unspeakable happiness that comes with calm after storm, with health after the most terrible of maladies, with repose after the burning fever of the brain. When first he went to church he was in a spiritual ecstasy; it ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... kind to him. He was not very expert, poor fellow, in the fabrication of excuses. His look seemed to implore her pardon for the shifts he had been driven to; it appealed to her to help him out, to stand by him in his unspeakable situation. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... the leg of the partridge left, and two or three other very delicate tit-bits, besides two large slices of cold roast-beef. Glumdalkin had hardly swallowed the last morsel of the wing, and was just thinking about the leg, when, to her unspeakable surprise, the house-door opened, and out came the princess, attended by one of the maids of honor, and followed by Grandmagnificolowsky. The ladies were muffled up in their fur cloaks, and the maid of honor seemed to be carrying a basket. Poor famished Glumdalkin! so great was ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin

... earth after me, ye Powers! To you the question may be nothing more than a gambling excitement as to the final outcome of your aerial squabble: but to the poor men who had to bear the wrongs, Inquisitions, rack-rents, Waterloos, unspeakable horrors, it was hard earnest, you know! Oh the wretchedness—the deep, deep pain—of that bungling ant-hill, happily wiped out, my God! My sweetheart Clodagh ... she was not an ideal being! There ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... one God, of perfect perfection and purity, under whose wings we find repose and a sure defence." How can we reconcile St. Augustine with his own devilish creed, or the religious belief of the Aztecs with their unspeakable cruelties? Perhaps we can only reconcile them by remembering out of what deeps of barbarism and what nightmares of haunting Fear, man has slowly emerged—and is even now only slowly emerging; by remembering also that the ancient ceremonies and rituals of Magic and Fear remained ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... remember Fenella, the resemblance to Mignon is merely superficial. A certain weirdness is all they have in common. The intensity of the inner life, the unspeakable longing, the cry of the unsatisfied heart, the devout aspiration, the presentiment of the heavenly life which characterize Mignon are peculiar to her; they constitute her individuality. Wilhelm has found her ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... fact connected with this hideous incident was that the devils who committed the unspeakable crime had vanished, so far as could be seen, as utterly as if the ground had opened beneath their feet and swallowed them. Two men had come back upon the scene within a few minutes after all this was done, and yet the doers were nowhere in sight. What ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... employ their thoughts (contrary to what some hold) about the final causes of things; and I confess I see no reason why pointing out the various ends to which natural things are adapted, and for which they were originally with unspeakable wisdom contrived, should not be thought one good way of accounting for them, and altogether worthy a philosopher. Thirdly, from what has been premised no reason can be drawn why the history of nature should not still be studied, ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley

... above all no young woman, should sell papers anywhere, more especially in Leicester Square. I'd like to give the Panks, and the Peths, and the Hicemen a bit of my mind on the subject. The mere thought of you ever indulging in such unseemly vagaries fills me with horror unspeakable. Talk of the Squire! Pouncing and pitchforks wouldn't be in it with me, I can tell you, and yet Miss Bax ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... of Mlle. d'Arency, but not for long; for suddenly Mlle. de Varion started up, as if awakened from a dream, and looked at me with an expression of unspeakable distress of mind. ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... when easily defending his title in the Pultanpur tournament. And when the Tournament and Assault-at-Arms were over he must find something else to occupy him by day and tire him before night. Meanwhile life was bearable, with the fight to come—except for sentry-go work. That was awful, unspeakable, and each time was worse than the last. Sitting up all night in the guard-room under the big lamp, and perhaps with some other wakeful wretch to talk to, was nothing. That was well enough—but to be on a lonely post on a dark night ... well—he ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... French flag to the Great Chief, to be kept forever as a pledge of that day's compact. The chief took the flag, and promised in behalf of his people to keep peace inviolate with the Indian children of the King. Then, with unspeakable delight, he and his tribesmen took and ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... when I saw a tombstone, the reader can imagine? 'Here we are at last,' exclaimed my father and echo repeated his words. Carefully did we view this monument; presently we detected the letter 'C,' nearly obliterated by the action of time; after remaining there a few moments, to my unspeakable delight we made our exit from the chamber of death, and stepping over the ruins, we again alighted on the green sward. Evidently where we stood had formerly been a garden; we could still make out the avenues, the walks and plots, over which plum, lilac and apple trees ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... the trusts I have exercised through life with powers of appointment, I can say with truth, and with unspeakable comfort, that I never did appoint a relation to office, and that merely because I never saw the case in which some one did not offer, or occur, better qualified; and I have the most unlimited confidence, that in the appointment of Professors to our nursling institution, every individual ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... saw anything, ... or more truly I saw, O my God, one thing alone. "Heavens, how can I speak of it? Oh no! human words cannot attain to expressing the inexpressible. Any description, however sublime it might be, could be but a profanation of the unspeakable truth. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... could scarcely expect to accomplish the voyage within three days. As however the boat was large, we were able to fit up a small shelter, in which Mary and Alea could sleep with tolerable comfort while the weather was fine. The conversation of Mr Bent I found of unspeakable advantage. He and I kept watch and watch, though I insisted on keeping five to his three, not to run the risk of fatiguing him overmuch. I remember, during a midnight watch, feeling some uneasy sensations come over me with occasional ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... your good fortune have secured the victory. Kezan is ours. The khan is in your power, the people are slain or taken captive. Unspeakable riches have fallen ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... woman; he had seen, in a thousand water-side dives, every variety of feminine degradation and feminine shame, and had sounded in his time all the squalid depths of sailor vice. With the memory of these unspeakable contrasts, Fetuao's freshness, purity, and beauty shone with a sort of angelic brightness. No, by God, she should never come to harm through him; and, clenching his huge hands together, he would repeat these words to ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... sighing winds among the reeds and rushes of the swampy moss, all added their notes to soothe and satisfy the little wounded spirit lying there on the soft moorland. Already he was away upon the wings of fancy in a world of his own—a world full of dreams and joys unspeakable; a world of calm comfort, where there was no pain, no hunger, no unpleasantness; a world of smiles and warm delights ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh

... of this book is to remind English-speaking people all over the Empire and our Allies in America of the wanton destruction and unspeakable terror which have overwhelmed the regions of France and Belgium occupied by the Boche, and also to quicken a true perception of the reparation and punishment due when peace is made with the enemy. In many minds time has dimmed the horrors of August and September 1914. When war weariness ...
— Their Crimes • Various

... champions; and before the principal actors were aware of his presence, he had snatched Paula from the old man's clutch, and called her by her name. She sank on his breast half-fainting with terror, surprise and unspeakable rapture, and he clasped her to him with his left arm, while the flashing sword in his right hand and his flaming looks warned all bystanders that it would be as wise to attack a lioness defending her young as to defy this desperate ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Lucy scarcely heard him. She was thinking of something else. The clasp of those young arms about her neck thrilled her with a joy unspeakable. With such an expression as it now wore, Towsley's face seemed, indeed, that of the lost, innocent Lionel restored to life. She was ready and anxious to give him all he desired, even to the half of her kingdom; and she comprehended ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond

... thought injustice or misfortune was but evidence of his wisdom and love; for we know that not a sparrow falleth without God, and that the hairs of our heads are numbered. Every act of kindness or unselfishness on my part, also, stands out like a golden letter or a white stone, and gives me unspeakable comfort. At the last judgment, and in eternity following, we shall have very different but just as real bodies as those that we possessed in the flesh. The dead at the last trump will rise clothed in them, and at that time the souls in ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... scene in but one way, and Time is probably correct. Still it is not here expressly said that the companions indulged to excess in food and drink, though they apparently had just had a sufficiency of feasting along the sea-shore, on venison and wine, "unspeakable meat and sweet drink." We must, however, consider the whole to be a phase of that same lack of inner subordination which led these people to untie the fatal bag of winds upon a ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... concerning one of the animals whose ways and habits they knew better than any other man in the highlands; that they were nothing, and worth nothing to anybody—even to themselves, would have been the judgment of most strangers concerning them; but God knew what a life of unspeakable pleasures it was that he had given them-a life the change from which to the life beyond, would scarce be distracting: neither would find himself much out of doors when he died. To Bob of the Angels tow could Abraham's bosom feel strange, accustomed to lie ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... increased.... To meet the exigency of the present moment, we earnestly hope that the liberal suggestion, in which the late Governor-General concurred, will be acted upon with effect by Your Excellency and the Legislature, and with as little delay as may be consistent with the unspeakable importance of the object to be obtained. In Lower Canada, which is supposed to contain a population of not less than 800,000 souls, there is at present (except in regard to the Medical Faculty) no seat of Learning, either Catholic or Protestant, in which a Degree can be conferred in any Art ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan

... conditions under which he is sometimes content to live whilst he is working in a town—in Bombay, for instance, for the most part in huge overcrowded blocks, known as chawls, ill lighted, ill ventilated, in a foul atmosphere and unspeakable dirt—may seem to him less intolerable as he can look forward to exchanging them again some day for the light and air which surround even the most squalid village hovels. If there were reason to believe that improved housing conditions such as are now ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... louis d'or, changed them for six thousand francs in assignats, with which he bought into the Funds at thirty, paying for the investment on the very day before the paper began its course of depreciation at the Bourse, and locking up his securities with unspeakable satisfaction. From that day forward he watched the movement of stocks and public affairs with secret anxieties of his own, which made him quiver at each rumor of the reverses or successes that marked this period of our history. Monsieur Ragon, formerly perfumer to her majesty Queen Marie-Antoinette, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... the unspeakable refreshment for an overworked brain, of laying aside all cares, and surrendering one's self to simple bodily activity? Laying them aside! I retract the expression; they slip off unnoticed. You cannot embark care in your wherry; there is no room for the odious freight. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... hand as she stood before him. 'No, Mr Trent; let me finish before you say anything. It is such an unspeakable relief to me to have broken the ice at last, and I want to end the story while I am still feeling the triumph of beginning it.' She sank down into the sofa from which she had first risen. 'I am telling you a thing that ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... me, I heard his breathing, and knew that he was about to strike me. He passed his arm over my shoulder. I saw his hand, it grasped a knife, and sought for the spot where my heart lay; then it drove the blade in, slowly, slowly, and I awoke in unspeakable agony. ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... has a good sound enough, but it's quite impossible. It's true, I verily believe, that such a kind of servant in our family would really prolong Marianne's life years,—that it would improve her health, and be an unspeakable blessing to her, to me, and the children,—and I would almost go down on my knees to a really well-educated, good American woman who would come into our family and take that place; but I know it's perfectly vain and useless to expect it. You know we have tried the experiment two or ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... horribly audacious, and kiss me straight off, you know how you used to. We are silent for a few moments, just holding each others' hands in unspeakable content, the sort of ecstacy ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham



Words linked to "Unspeakable" :   unexpressible, sacred, inexpressible, bad, awful



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