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More "Unintelligible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could understand Arabic, the order of the Emir would have been unintelligible to them had it not been for the conduct of Mansoor. The unfortunate dragoman, after all his treachery and all his subservience and apostasy, found his worst fears realised when the Dervish leader gave his curt ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... person whom they think perceptive and sympathetic; in some cases it proceeds, I think, from a hysterical desire to be thought interesting, with a faint hope, I fear, of being possibly put into a book. Some of the letters have been simply unintelligible and inconceivable on any hypothesis, except for the human instinct to confess, to bare the heart, to display the secret sorrow. Many of these letters are intensely pathetic, affecting, heart-rending; an invalid lady writes to say that she would like to know me, and will I come to ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... contumely have now taken the place of that. The plain fact is that no man sees the greatness of the present, unless he regards it as being the vestibule of the future, and that this present life is unintelligible and insignificant unless beyond it, and led up to by it, and shaped through it, there lies the eternal life beyond. The low flat plain is dreary and desolate, featureless and melancholy, when the sky above it is filled with clouds. But sweep away the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... cried the Steel King. "Here, Jack,"—this to the aged garcon, "smoke up! and ask the ladies what they'll have"—all of which was unintelligible to the two little Parisiennes and the garcon, but quite clear in meaning to ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... Carlyle's labours which will not meet so unanimous an approbation. As editor, Mr Carlyle has given us a valuable work; as commentator, the view which he would teach us to take of English Puritanism is, to our thinking, simply the most paradoxical, absurd, unintelligible, mad business we ever encountered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... system of the mental fabric is exceedingly obscure, and without more attention than will be willingly bestowed, is unintelligible. The Ideas of Beauty will be more easily understood, and are often charming. I was delighted with the different beauty of ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste, and of the Origin of - our Ideas of Beauty, etc. • Frances Reynolds
... different materials or variations to work on, in order to arrive at the same functional result; and the structures thus acquired would almost necessarily have differed. On the hypothesis of separate acts of creation the whole case remains unintelligible. This line of argument seems to have had great weight in leading Fritz Muller to accept the views maintained by me in ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... handwriting. Part was in Ashton's handwriting but this the counsel for the prosecution had not the means of proving. They therefore rested the case against Ashton on the indisputable facts that the treasonable packet had been found in his bosom, and that he had used language which was quite unintelligible except on the supposition that he had a guilty knowledge of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Lewis sat for a long time listening to chatter that was quite unintelligible. But he scarcely listened, for his eyes had robbed his brain of action. They roamed and feasted upon one bit of sculpture after another. Casts, discarded in corners, gleamed through layers of dust that could not hide their wondrous contour. Others hung upon the wall. Some were fragments. ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... thought on awakening was for his chum. Charley was tossing restlessly on his blanket, his face and hands flushed and hot with fever. All of Walter's attempts to rouse him met only with unintelligible words and phrases. The exertion of the previous day in his weak state, the opening of his wound afresh, and the unhealthy river water he had drank, had all combined to bring him ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... part of her career that, since it had proved a failure, seemed least like herself and most difficult to justify. She had gone away with him, and had lived with him for two months: she, Undine Marvell, to whom respectability was the breath of life, to whom such follies had always been unintelligible and therefore inexcusable.—She had done this incredible thing, and she had done it from a motive that seemed, at the time, as clear, as logical, as free from the distorting mists of sentimentality, as any of her father's financial enterprises. It had been a bold move, but it ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... instead. That much is saved. Now we need not read them. If we feel ourselves weakening towards such idleness, let us spin tops. If we had to choose between Garvice and say Hegel or Locke for a niche in the Temple of Letters, we should make an unintelligible blunder if we did not elect Mr. Garvice without discussion. He is human, he is ingenuous and funny, and the philosophers are only loosening with the insinuations of moth and rust. The philosophers are like the great statesmen and the great soldiers—we should be happier without them. If we ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... threatened the short upper lip with obliteration. Straight from ear to ear, deep under his chin, was a zigzag scar made by a razor in his boyhood days, and under emotion the injured throat became convulsed at times, causing his words to be unintelligible. The red flannel shirt, patched with colors of lighter shades, lay open to the shoulders, ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... Fenwick rose. The day had grown cool. A fresh breeze was blowing from the north down the fell-side. He put his arm round Carrie as she stood beside him, kissed her, and in a gruff, unintelligible voice, murmured something that brought the tears again to her eyes. Then he announced that he was going for a short walk. Neither Phoebe nor Miss Anna were to be seen. Carrie protested on ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... as from a trap-door opening in the roof, and a voice was heard to utter these words in Anglo-Saxon, "Leap, sirrah; come, no delay; leap, my good Sylvan, show your honour's activity." A strange chuckling hoarse voice, in a language totally unintelligible to Count Robert, was heard to respond, as if disputing the orders which ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... Presently, from the direction of the lines of light in the shutters, came the sound of voices, Lem's deep and insistent, and another, pitched in a high nasal key, deprecatory and protesting. There was still another, a harsh one that growled something unintelligible, and Wetherell guessed, from the fragments which he heard, that the judge before sitting down to his duty was trying to dissuade the stage driver from a step that was foolhardy. He guessed likewise that Lem was not to be dissuaded. At length a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the polished floor, she took her place by her hostess's side. She had already been presented to the fashionable guests who sat around the ample table, and a good deal of the awe which she had felt in anticipation, had begun to ooze away. Although much was said that was unintelligible to her, she could see that this was not the result of intellectual deficiency on her part, but merely of an ignorance of the ground on which the conversation was founded. As Cornelia stole glances at the faces, pretty or pretentious, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... to be mutually unintelligible languages, but which have an undoubted relationship to each other, and to the numerous Mandingo dialects as well. It is this which induces me to place them in the same section with the more civilized Africans of ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... should efface the remembrance of his defeat, and still prove to the world his military superiority. Nevertheless, he continued inactive in Bohemia, while the Emperor's losses in Bavaria, Lower Saxony, and the Rhine, pressingly called for his presence—a conduct equally unintelligible to friend and foe—the terror, and, at the same time, the last hope of the Emperor. After the defeat of Lutzen he had hastened into Bohemia, where he instituted the strictest inquiry into the conduct of his officers in that battle. Those ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... comer, after a few shuffles on the threshold, and an unintelligible murmur of words, walked in with painful awkwardness, and took a seat upon a corner of the chair which Pet offered him, as if the whole chair were more of a favor than he could conscientiously accept; ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... explain the tactical device it indicated robbed his country of a victory at an hour of the direst need. There had been no previous theoretical training to supply the omission, and Rodney's fine conception was unintelligible to ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... structure of the part should be retained, which is manifestly possible if not probable, then we should have the organs, on which morphology is founded and which instead of being metaphorical becomes plain and <and instead of being> utterly unintelligible becomes simple matter ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... made a low-voiced, unintelligible reply, and then they ran on for some distance in silence. Suddenly Ashton-Kirk signaled the driver and the car came to a stand; the investigator pointed to some buildings at no great distance; a locomotive with a few cars trailing behind it was panting laboriously away from these, its headlight ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... terrified people who did not know him. At a dinner table he would, in a fit of absence, stoop down and twitch off a lady's shoe. He would amaze a drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating a clause of the Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would set his heart on touching every post in the streets through which he walked. If by any chance he missed a post, he would go back a hundred yards and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at this point is unintelligible, if you suppose that the country enjoyed a regular government, and that the men had deliberately adopted a plan. In order to account for the circumstances, you must suppose that the central government was paralyzed, and that these men were as stupid as they ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... objects only to which they have been familiarized, find in learning this branch of science. There is scarcely any way of conveying the meaning of it to them. All the usual terms and definitions, and the means which are commonly employed in schools, are utterly unintelligible here. But the curious and novel devices which must be employed, have this advantage,—that they exercise their understanding, and help to form their judgment. Dictation was one of the methods to which I had recourse: without it they would have made ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... a start, and a low growling voice asked what was apparently a question as to what was the matter. The response came from the man who had struck the blow; but what he said was unintelligible to the listeners, who had immediately shrunk flat upon the deck, conscious as they were that two of the crew had been sleeping within touch, while for aught they knew ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... lately, I fear I have missed a letter or two of yours: I hope this will have better fortune; for, almost unintelligible, as it is, you will want even so awkward ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... lay a few miles further southward, and where not only fresh water was abundant, but also fish and wild ducks. These men were natives of Botany Bay, whence it was that we understood a little of their language, whilst that of some others was altogether unintelligible. Their river proved to be nothing more than a small stream, which descended from a lagoon under Hat Hill, and forced a passage for itself through the beach; so that we entered it with difficulty even in Tom Thumb. Our two conductors then quitted the boat to walk ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... procession, and heard, with unspeakable terror, that it was the solemnization of the funeral rites of a Venetian nobleman, who had been beheaded for high treason. "His name?" cried the breathless girl, in almost unintelligible accents: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various
... sleeping waiter. But to his great astonishment, two gigantic fellows were posted outside the door; who, upon his affirming that he must be allowed to enter his own room, seemed in some foreign and unintelligible language to support the negative of that proposition. Without further scruple or regard to their menacing gestures, he pressed forwards to the chamber door; but immediately after felt himself laid hold of by the two fellows—one at his legs, the other at ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the monster and the legends are compounded have been preserved in Egypt, and in perhaps a more primitive and less altered form than elsewhere. Hence, if Egypt does not provide dragons for us to dissect, it does supply us with the evidence without which the dragon's evolution would be quite unintelligible. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... islands of Goram, Matabello, Ke, and Aru, of several distinct species of Euploea and Diadema, having broad bands or patches of white, which do not exist in any of the allied species from the larger islands. These facts seem to indicate some local influence in modifying colour, as unintelligible and almost as remarkable as that which has resulted in the modifications ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... place a dead adult. I hope to make a picture of the whole quaint incident, for it was a corner crammed full of Imperial history in the light of what we already knew, and it would otherwise have been about as unintelligible as any group of animate or inanimate nature could possibly have been. As it is, it throws more light on the life history of this ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... talk well. Annie listened with polite attention for a short time—indeed Gregory was exerting himself more for her sake than for Mr. Walton's—and she was satisfied from her father's face that his guest was interesting him; but as the subject was mainly unintelligible to her she soon turned with real zest to Miss Eulie's fancy-work, and there was an earnest whispered discussion in regard to the right number of stitches. Walter noted this and sneeringly thought, with a masculine ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... to journey; and if dumb there would be an end to my calling." After simpering in a small way, like one whose modesty prohibited a more open expression of his admiration of a witticism that was perfectly unintelligible to his hearers, he continued, "It is not prudent for any one of my profession to be too familiar with those he has to instruct; for which reason I follow not the line of the army; besides which, I conclude that a gentleman of your character has the best judgment in matters of wayfaring; ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... prospects around me, still struck with new sense of pleasure; when I found by the voice of my friend, who walked by me, that we had insensibly strolled into the grove sacred to the widow. "This woman," says he, "is of all others the most unintelligible; she either designs to marry, or she does not. What is the most perplexing of all, is, that she doth not either say to her lovers she has any resolution against that condition of life in general, or that she banishes them; but, conscious of her own merit, she permits their addresses, without ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... far they found carvings and inscriptions, the latter of which were unintelligible to them, but they were very curious, judging from the few sketches which were made. But like many men of their class they began to quarrel over the treasure, and fought each other to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Grandcourt had returned to Diplow; knowing no more than she did that Leubronn had been the goal of her admirer's journeying, and feeling that it would be unkind uselessly to revive the memory of a brilliant prospect under the present reverses. In his secret soul he thought of his niece's unintelligible caprice with regret, but he vindicated her to himself by considering that Grandcourt had been the first to behave oddly, in suddenly walking away when there had the best opportunity for crowning his marked attentions. The rector's ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... you mean about your father: he is no martinet in society, even with his son. He assumes to himself no mysterious unintelligible dignity. He has none of the military Grimgruffenuff about him. He takes things easily, and allows other people ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... audaciously attired young girl; and near the lamp sat an old crone spinning and singing in a quavering voice. As the young man did not laugh constantly, fragments of the old woman's ditty reached the priest; it was something unintelligible yet frightful,— ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... it out in this form, and took it section by section. 'Pepys,' that was unintelligible. 'Buttered toast,' no sense in that. 'Suede gloves,' yes, she had told Frank that when she came to town, she would buy some suede gloves at a certain shop in the City, where she could get for three and threepence a pair which would cost her three and ninepence in Woking. Maude was so conscientiously ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... admit," said Lenorme when he had ended, "that you are no longer unintelligible, not to say incredible. You have had a splendid education, in which I hope you give the herring and Kelpie their ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... de force. You took it as you took a leap. It was spiritually acrobatic. You didn't understand but you believed. The less you understood the more credit your belief became to you. The more hidden and difficult and mysterious and unintelligible God made Himself the greater your merit in having faith in spite of everything. I am far from saying that this is the common understanding of Christians, or from holding others responsible for my misconceptions. I speak of these misconceptions only because ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... losing my consciousness, either of the uproar out of doors, or of the place in which I was. Both became overshadowed by a new and indefinable horror; and when I awoke—or rather when I shook off the lethargy that bound me in my chair—my whole frame thrilled with objectless and unintelligible fear. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... in which Herbert Spencer reasoned these things out, and his high literary style, which made him unintelligible to all those whose minds were not of scientific bent, and his emphatic statement that what is, is right, and all the steps in man's development mean a mounting to better things, saved him from the severe treatment that greeted, say, Charles ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... all right. Don't you want Mrs. Snow to fix your piller? P'raps you'd lay a little easier, then. Now, Mrs. Snow, if you'll jest turn it while I lift him. So; that's better now, ain't it, shipmate, hey?" But the sick man muttered an unintelligible something, and relapsed once more into the half-doze, half-stupor that ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... to me to be on the eve of a collapse. His lips moved, and he mumbled something, but the words were wholly unintelligible. ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... who never will travel ought to know. Mingle this approval with scoffing at the travelers who hail the appearance of a bird or a flying-fish as a great event, who dilate upon fishing, and make transcripts from the log. Where, you ask, is that perfectly unintelligible scientific information, fascinating, like all that is profound, mysterious, and incomprehensible. The reader laughs, that is all that he wants. As for novels, Florine is the greatest novel reader alive; she gives me a synopsis, and I take her opinion and put a review together. ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... him stay and talk to me. I sat on the stairs and he folded himself up on the mat—I can't describe it any other way—and told me all about Japan, and California and Algeria and all the other queer places he has been to with Mr. Craven. He has such a quaint dramatic way of speaking and lapses into unintelligible Japanese just at the exciting moments—so tantalising! They seem to have been in some very—what do you say?—tight corners. We got quite sociable. I was so interested in listening to his description of the wonderful gardens they make in Japan that I never heard Mr. Craven come ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... at last deputed the whole matter to the de Courcy faction. And for this there was another reason, not hitherto mentioned. Mr Mortimer Gazebee was finding the money with which all the furniture was being bought. He, with an honest but almost unintelligible zeal for the de Courcy family, had tied up every shilling on which he could lay his hand as belonging to Crosbie, in the interest of Lady Alexandrina. He had gone to work for her, scraping here and arranging there, strapping the new husband down upon the grindstone of his matrimonial ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... first masters, when other rulers and another tongue were thrust upon him,—and this may have occurred three or four times! The result is a totally incoherent agglomeration of speech-forms—a baragouin fantastic and unintelligible beyond the power of anyone to imagine ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... eyebrows, looking at his young friend, who capered and danced round the fire in a manner that threw the cook's performances in that line quite into the shade, while he continued all the time to shout fragments of sentences that were quite unintelligible to anyone. It was evident that Harry was in a state of immense delight at something unknown save to himself, but which, in the course of a few minutes, was ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... rough-and-tumble! Dunder and blixum! swore the Dutchmen; splitter and splutter! cried the Swedes. Storm the works! shouted Hardkoppig Peter. Fire the mine! roared stout Rising—Tantarar-ra-ra! twanged the trumpet of Antony Van Corlear;—until all voice and sound became unintelligible,—grunts of pain, yells of fury, and shouts of triumph mingling in one hideous clamor. The earth shook as if struck with a paralytic stroke; trees shrunk aghast, and withered at the sight; rocks burrowed in the ground like rabbits; and even ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... the usual patter about spiritual and physical freedom, about faith and perfection, "the Deific principle as a rule of health," a jumble of things medical and things physical, things profane and things holy mingled in a strange and unintelligible jargon. By the time that the eager-eyed speaker had talked for an hour Ashe felt his mind to be in confusion, and he could not but feel that not a few of the hearers must be in a state of utter mental bewilderment if the address ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... is sometimes called the Mimamsa ( philosophical reflections). The aphorisms of which the Vedanta Sutras consist are in themselves almost as unintelligible as the Confucian "Book of Changes," the compiler having been only too successful in aiding the memory of the Hindu student by a system of multum ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... evidently taken leave of his senses. Would he bite her next? No: he only looked confused, and said (how very extraordinary!) that he would never do it again. Susan gave her message gravely. Here was an unintelligible man; she felt the necessity of being careful in her ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... a relief to come up into the sunshine where people of our own kind had walked, the Kings of Tara and their harpers, and St. Patrick and St. Malachy and Oliver Cromwell and William III. After the unintelligible symbols on the rocks, how familiar and homelike seemed the sculptures on the Celtic crosses. They were mostly about people, and people whom we had known from earliest childhood. There were Adam and Eve, and Cain slaying Abel, and the Magi. They were ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... had given him a taste of her tongue, nor would he have looked so upset about it. But you know the fellow's way; whenever it's important for him to make himself clear he loses what little power of speech he has, becomes worse than dumb-unintelligible. He sputtered inconsequent ejaculations ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... further informed that the Sibyl generally wrote her oracles on separate oak leaves, which were set in due order in her cave, but which the wind, as soon as the doors opened, scattered or jumbled together, so that most of her predictions proved unintelligible to those who visited her shrine. After a solemn invocation, Aeneas besought her not to baffle him by writing on oak leaves, and was favored by her apparition and the announcement that, after escaping sundry perils by land and sea and reddening the Tiber with ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... and amused myself in the best way I could. I helped Mademoiselle Madeleine in her poultry-yard and dairy, looked in on the old lady employed in her culinary affairs, walked over the farm with the old man, and chatted in my somewhat unintelligible French, with every one I met. Happening to go into my own room in the evening, I found the window open, and looking out, I saw that the height from the sill to the ground was not more than from twelve to ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... magical work and muttered some unintelligible words in a sepulchral voice, looked at the remaining millet-seeds, and watched the way in which the toad retired. Then after seven or eight minutes, she turned her white eyes on the cards and ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... are going to stay,' said the Judge, after we had waited some fifteen minutes. The conversation behind the arras, at first low and murmuring, was becoming animated. I distinctly heard the Parsee say, 'Who are the blaggards ye've brought here wid ye?' followed by an unintelligible reply. ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... ago, when it was being given in the Dresden theatre, I saw it performed four or five times and I remember noticing the wonderful attraction that it had for minds of a certain class (and no very limited class), while for others it was just such an unintelligible farrago of wearisome 'Zeug' as Dante's Paradiso and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... distinctness to the opposite roof. At this moment some words fell on my ear. The door of the dining hall had just been opened to let in the fresh air, and I heard the following conversation: "Do you recall having taken part in the murder of Ulmet Elias on the twentieth of this month?" Some unintelligible words followed. "Close the door, Madoc!" said the bailiff; "the woman is ill." I heard no more. As I stood with my head resting against the balusters, a sudden resolution seized me. "I can save my comrades!" I exclaimed; "God has pointed out ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... was to quit the field she had so rashly ventured upon. Her answer to Mr. Stoutenburgh, if made, was too unintelligible to be understood or remembered; and meanwhile she was as the Squire had hinted, looking very well, and a picture of dainty confusion. It might not help the confusion, though it did put her face more out of sight, to ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... thought into "blind furies slinging flame." Unless immortality be true, man appears a dark riddle, not made for that of which he is made capable and desirous: every thing is begun, nothing ended; the facts of the present scene are unintelligible; the plainest analogies are violated; the delicately rising scale of existence is broken off abrupt; our best reasonings concerning the character and designs of God, also concerning the implications of our own being and experience, are futile; and the soul's proud faculties tell glorious ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... men are generally so easily impressed by external objects, but I must confess that when I trudged along the streets with my knapsack on my back, looking around in every direction for a gasthaus; when I spoke to people in my peculiar style of French and German, and received unintelligible answers in Russian; when I got lost among palaces and grand military establishments, instead of finding the gasthaus, and finally attracted the attention of the surly-looking guards, who were stationed about every where, by the anxious pertinacity with ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... few—five or six, perhaps, of the twenty—would be able to fit their minds, zestfully climbing the poet's climax. To some they would be dazzling, semi-offensive extravagance, prosaic minds not liking, because seeing but dimly by, the poetically imaginative light. And to some they would be grossly unintelligible, the enjoyment of the few full appreciators seeming to ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... was rather proud of this instance of juvenile indiscretion. When therefore he entered the room, and perceived, instead of the lady. Mr Sullivan raised up to his utmost height, and looking any thing but good humoured, he naturally started back, and stammered out something which was unintelligible. His behaviour did not allay the suspicions of Mr Sullivan, who requested, in a haughty tone, to be informed of the reason why he had been honoured with a visit. The colonel became more confused, and totally losing his ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Probably owing to careless abridgement by Purchas, this passage is quite unintelligible. The meaning seems to be, That the ship in which was the English messenger, having a cargo worth 100,000l. sterling, and 700 persons aboard, bound on the pilgrimage to Mecca, was taken and carried ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... related all that she knew regarding the fugitives, stammering very much from sheer anxiety to get it all out as fast as she could, and delaying her communication very much in consequence,—besides rendering her meaning rather obscure—sometimes unintelligible. Indeed, the worthy seaman could scarcely understand a word she said. He sat staring at the whites of her eyes, which, with her teeth, were the only visible parts of her countenance at that moment, and swayed his body to and fro, ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... attention and interest excited by the attractive powers of others is so much homage subtracted from her own. That beautiful aphorism, "The human heart is like heaven—the more angels the more room for them," is to such persons as unintelligible in its loving spirit as in its wonderful philosophic truth. Their craving is insatiable, once it has become habitual, and their appetite is increased and stimulated, instead of being appeased, by the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... Preserved, but his Obsolete Language and Manner of Verse totally laid aside. Delivered in Heroic Numbers by a Person of Quality." The preface praises Spenser, but declares that "his style seems no less unintelligible at this day than the obsoletest of our English or Saxon dialect." One instance of this deliverance into heroic numbers ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... He gave a sudden cry. Yes, there it was—a hasty memorandum; part of the writing was unintelligible to him, but the main word stood ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... colloquial speech was incapable. Even the "Fifth Reader," with its imposing passages from the English classics carefully selected with a view of paralyzing small, hesitating, or hurried voices, in Cressy's hands became no longer an unintelligible incantation. She had quietly mastered the difficulties of pronunciation by some instinctive sense of euphony if not of comprehension. The master with his eyes closed hardly recognized his pupil. Whether or not she ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... old, the baby swam like a frog in the clear water of the river, gurgling at intervals scraps of what must have been Marquesan baby-talk, unintelligible to me, but showing plainly her enjoyment. Something of European caution, however, still remained with me and, perhaps unnecessarily, I picked up the dripping little body and carried her up the ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... soul of man is an independent substance, and entirely unintelligible as a mere higher stage of development ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... of the tunnel the plate-layer, the foreman and the navvies all followed with their eyes the unintelligible conversation passing between the gendarme and the tramp a hundred yards away. Suddenly they saw the man try to get off and the sergeant seize him almost simultaneously. A few minutes later the individual, with his hands linked together in front of him, was obediently descending the steep ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... blue-tinted envelopes, held together by two rubber bands, and written on, here and there, in a language which the intruder assumed to be Russian. Next came a japanned-tin box, which proved to hold nothing but a file of quite unintelligible, Seidlitz-powder-colored papers, and then what seemed, to Durkin's exploring fingers, to be a few small morocco cases. The question flashed through his mind: What if, after all, the money he was looking for was not to be found! He ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... taken from vegetables, and others from minerals. Three kinds of talismans were usually distinguished 1st. the astronomical known by the signs or constellations of the heavens engraven upon them, with other figures, and some unintelligible characters; 2nd. the magical, bearing very extraordinary figures, with superstitious words and names of angels unheard of; 3rd. the mixt talismans, which consist of signs and barbarous words; but without any superstitious ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... when someone grasped her from behind. She felt the hands as the coils of a snake. Then she was ready to faint, but she must not faint. She struggled away, stood free. It was the man Bill who had caught her. He said something that was unintelligible. She reached for the snag of a dead cedar and, leaning there, fought her weakness, that cold black horror which seemed a physical thing in her mind, her ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... and marriage, she was too apt to bring in her husband. I received him cordially enough two or three times, particularly when he came with 'the good news from Ghent.' But on other occasions his conversation was so far from agreeable, so unintelligible, or, 'not to put too fine a point upon it,' unedifying, that at last my porter was obliged to hand him out for immediate chastisement.[5] He never came again. I do not quite see why not; for, if others are willing to take pains for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... came answering shouts, but with an interrogatory note in them. The assistants were willing, but puzzled. They did not like to leave their posts without specific instructions, and Buck, shouting as he clattered over the bare boards, was unintelligible. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... Marion murmurs some unintelligible excuse and follows her sister—leaving the unfortunate Tommy a prey to his grandmother's tender mercies. So brilliant an opportunity is not, of course, to be thrown away. Tommy's fingers, having incontinently strayed in the direction of the sugar-basin, are summarily ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... components and the properties of the resultant, but neither was there in the case of the water. It is also true that what I have spoken of as the influence of pre-existing living matter is something quite unintelligible; but does anybody quite comprehend the modus operandi [106] of an electric spark, which traverses a mixture of ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... of these." All things seem to acquire fresh sweetness, and to be clothed with fresh beauty in their sight. They tasted as it were for themselves and us, of all that there ever was pure in human bliss. "In them the burthen of the mystery, the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened." They stood awhile perfect, but they afterwards fell, and were driven out of Paradise, tasting the first fruits of bitterness as they had done of bliss. But their pangs were such as a pure spirit might feel at the sight—their ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... laws of nature. At the utmost they do but exemplify the aphorism, "Knowledge is power."[343] Such as are within the range of human knowledge are no miracles. Those of them, on the contrary, which are beyond it, will be found on inspection to be unintelligible, and to convey no evidence. The prediction of an earthquake (for instance) is not necessarily superhuman. An interpretation of the discourse of birds can never be verified. In understanding languages, knowing future events, discovering the purposes of others, recognising ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... catacombs of Rome, are very curious and interesting for their antiquity and their associations, and as illustrations of faith; but they present no intrinsic beauty or worth. They are not only clumsy and childish designs ill executed, but they are rendered unintelligible to all save the initiated in such hieroglyphics, by offering an elaborate ground-work of type, antitype, and symbol, on which the artist probably spent a large part of his strength. Lambs and lilies, serpents, vines, fishes, dolphins, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... unnaturally angry, and an angry man in his passion is apt to lose both his head and his memory. Forgetting the manner in which he had shortly before acknowledged the services and talent of the artist, he now attacked him and his abilities with a malice which would be unintelligible if we had not seen something of his nature and disposition. In his favourite "Notices to Correspondents" in the number of 13th September, 1834, he professes to account for the employment of Isaac Robert Cruikshank after the following disingenuous fashion: "Mr. Seymour, our ex-artist, is much ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... by all but Mrs. Hunter. And Aurelia could not like her, for her gossip had been far broader and coarser than that of the Mistresses Treforth, who, though more bitter were more of gentlewomen. Happily much of what passed was perfectly unintelligible to Betty's carefully shielded pupil, who sat all the time with the cat on her lap, listening to its purring music, but feeling much more inclined to believe nothing against my Lady, after her father's example, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... answered the man in an almost unintelligible jargon, a horrible medley of French, Spanish, and English. "I heard you tell the little ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... to the organism which presents it. On the contrary, it is a general rule that "the less any part of the organization is concerned with special habits, the more important it becomes for classification." Now, from the point of view of special creation it is unintelligible why unity of ideal should be most manifested by least important structures, whereas from the point of view of evolution it is to be expected that these life-serving structures should have been most liable to divergent modification in divergent lines of descent, ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... engaged his fancy that he entered and began a sentence in excellent English. The shopman replied by shaking his head and uttering a few unintelligible words. ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... refused to believe that, and said that with a stupid woman Charles would just rot away in a studio and grow more and more unintelligible. ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... upon Milburgh's willingness to confess his guilt. If the manager agreed to stand sponsor to this lie, he admitted his own peculations, and Tarling, to whom the turn of the conversation had at first been unintelligible, began dimly to see ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... my belief never will. I wish you had been more critical, and had pointed out the faults and defects of the book, of which there are no doubt some, if not many, to be found. I flatter myself that I have made more clear some passages utterly unintelligible in our A.V., such as, "He shall deliver the island of the innocent, yea," etc., chap. xxii. 30, and chap, xxxvi. 33, and the whole of chap. xxiv. and chap. xx. What a fierce, cruel, hot-headed Arab Zophar is! How the wretch gloats over Job's miseries. Yet one admires his word-painting ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... often highly important to understand the fundamental beliefs of a writer. His works may be in a measure unintelligible till his standpoint is fully understood. Sometimes his various writings are only an expansion and application of one or two great fundamental principles. The works of Herbert Spencer, for example, are in the main an elaboration of the theory of evolution. Byron represented ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... slang had ever before passed the lips of the judge: for slang might indeed be unintelligible to a judge who knew not what a race-course was, and would ask in court, "What is the 'Stock ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Many Passages in the Scriptures Would Be Unintelligible Except on the Ground of a Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ from ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... faculties to comprehend this, the greatest of them all. Had not science gradually discovered the chemical processes by which gases could be concentrated and disengaged, the formation of one of those glittering orbs above his head would have been quite as unintelligible a mystery to him, as the incarnation of the Saviour. The fact was, that phenomena that were just as mysterious to the human mind as any that the dogmas of Christianity required to be believed, exist hourly before our eyes without awakening skepticism, or exciting discussion; ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... absorbed in the information he had received—and so confident that the English, in which it had been told, would be unintelligible to anyone who might overhear it—that he paid no attention to the boys who—one of them limping badly—went slowly down the street; stopping, occasionally, to look in at the shop windows. It was not until they were fairly outside the town, and ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... reasoning or other, she had cajoled herself into the notion, that whoever steered the brigantine, for that period was captain. Wherefore, she gave herself mighty airs at the tiller; with extravagant gestures issuing unintelligible orders about trimming the sails, or pitching overboard something to see how fast we were going. All this much diverted my Viking, who several times was delivered of a laugh; a loud and healthy one to boot: a phenomenon worthy ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... and slipped it into her pocket. There were just a few words in the telegram that would have been unintelligible to the ordinary understanding. The girl did not even comprehend, but Littimer's eyes were upon her, and the cipher had to keep for a time. Littimer walked away at an intimation that his steward desired to ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... many ways. It may glorify and make spiritual some action of man, or it may give to thoughts such life as thoughts can have, an intenser and stranger life than man knows, with forms that are not human and a speech unintelligible to normal human moods. This poem gives to a flock of thoughts about the passing of truth and beauty the mystery and vitality of birds, who come from a far country, to fill ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... bad mind-reader you are!" fairly shouted the outraged wife. Sadie added something unintelligible, it was so rapidly uttered and so venomously hissed. Even Mrs. Schmidt displayed every ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... sane men take care to exchange a certain consideration and courtesy. But even as late as the time of Dickens's first visit to the United States, we English still felt America as a colony; an insolent, offensive, and even unintelligible colony sometimes, but still a colony; a part of our civilisation, a limb of our life. And America itself, as I have said, under all its bounce and independence, really regarded us as a mother country. This being the case it was possible for us to quarrel, like kinsmen. Now ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... herself that she was anxious, but for us; for when she observed that she had attracted our attention she smiled and turned to go back the way she had come, beckoning us with hand and eye to follow her, and still singing her sweet but unintelligible words. Perhaps I flattered myself, but I thought she was looking at me more than at my companion, and I began with great eagerness to unfasten the door of ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... deserves more attention than it appears to have received. Not only will the faithful reader find in it the necessary corrections of the version of 1611, but clear guidance as to the meaning of the sometimes utterly unintelligible renderings of the version of the Great Bible which still holds its place in our Prayer Books. To take two examples: let the reader look at the Authorised Version and Prayer Book Version of Psalm lxviii. 16, and of lxxxiv. 5, 6, and contrast ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... Menko, is it not?" demanded Andras; while the terrified General gasped out something unintelligible, his intoxication increasing every yard the carriage advanced ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... her picture. The guide, of course, followed her, and I could see by the vehemence of his shrugs and gesticulations that his temper had given way. I guessed that his English must have been almost unintelligible. The scene interested me and I stood still to see how it would end. The girl in the blue dress changed her intention and tried to photograph the excited interpreter while he gesticulated. I sympathized with ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... Dwight, the musical critic, C. P. Cranch, the poet, and younger men, like G. W. Curtis, and T. W. Higginson. A reader of to-day, looking into an odd volume of the Harbinger, will find in it some stimulating writing, together with a great deal of unintelligible talk about "Harmonic Unity," "Love Germination," and other matters now fallen silent. The most important literary result of this experiment at "plain living and high thinking," with its queer mixture of culture and agriculture, was Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance, which has for its background ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... usual, unintelligible to the humble unit, but the force is advancing slowly, the Yorkshire Light Infantry and Munster Fusiliers on either hand of us. Our section is in action now. We have just taken our waggon to the firing line and brought back the team. The corporal's horse stepped in a hole just ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... into the Loggie, which consist of a long gallery, or arcade or colonnade, the whole extent of which was once beautifully adorned by Raphael. These pictures are almost worn away, and so defaced as to be untraceable and unintelligible, along the side wall of the gallery; although traceries of Arabesque, and compartments where there seem to have been rich paintings, but now only an indistinguishable waste of dull color, are still to be seen. In the coved ceiling, however, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... often since given me of our early intercourse, one of his great diversions was to make me fold my little fat arms—not an easy performance for small muscles—and with a portentous frown, which puckered up my mouth even more than my eyebrows, receive from him certain awfully unintelligible passages from "Macbeth;" replying to them, with a lisp that must have greatly heightened the tragic effect of this terrible dialogue, "My handth are of oo tolor" (My hands are of your color). Years—how many!—after this first lesson in declamation, dear Charles Young was acting Macbeth ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... in quoting our Lord's saying respecting "anger," he quoted it very shortly, because to have quoted at length the gradations of punishment for being "angry without a cause," for "calling a brother Raca" and "fool," would have been almost unintelligible to those unacquainted ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... which, as much as Mr. Darwin, he recognises the base and foundation."—"Pall Mall Gazette," April 12th, 1871.) How the mistake which I have made in speaking of greatest happiness as the foundation of morals arose, is utterly unintelligible to me: any time during the last several years I should have laughed such an idea to scorn. Mr. Lecky never made a greater blunder, and your kindness has made you let me off too easily. (242/2. In the first edition of the "Descent of Man," I., ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... Reserve is in northwestern Rhodesia, bordering the Congo Free State. The description of its local boundaries is quite unintelligible outside of Rhodesia. ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... tuyo that he had met a woman from the Rito de los Frijoles and had taken her to his home, or rather to that of his wife; that the woman was gesticulating in an unintelligible manner; and that all he could surmise was that there might be Queres approaching the Puye with hostile intentions. He said nothing about Cayamo and his relations toward Shotaye, for Cayamo had enjoined ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... even thought whether she was a Christian or not. She had not even once put her finger on her spiritual pulse, to gauge the evidences of her faith. A system of theology would have been unintelligible to her. She could not have defined one doctrine so as to have satisfied a sound divine. She had not even read the greater part of the Bible, but, in her bitter extremity, the Spirit of God, employing the inspired guide, had brought ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... ignorance of the mischief she was doing, and the other half from the mere desire of selfish gratification. The times and ways in which Lot and Abraham were walked into the conversation were incalculable,—and unintelligible except to the person who understood it only too well. On one occasion Mrs. Evelyn went on with a long rigmarole to Mr. Thorn about sea-breezes, with a face of most exquisite delight at his mystification and her own hidden fun; till Fleda was absolutely trembling. Fleda ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... collect himself to speak, some one shouted from outside, and one of his captors replied, but the Gaelic words were quite unintelligible to the prisoner, as was also the conversation which ensued between the two men before him, though it was apparent that one was urging the other to do something ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... logical notion, nor a collective unity, which is nothing but a company who are naturally many: but a true subsisting numerical unity of nature; and if the difficulty of explaining this, and his zeal to defend it, forced him upon some unintelligible niceties, to prove that the same numerical human nature too is but one in all men, it is hard to charge him with teaching, that there are three independent and co-ordinate Gods, because we think he has not proved that Peter, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... attempt to deduce a settled scheme of philosophy from these discourses among the mountains. I would urge only that as a guide to conduct Wordsworth's precepts are not in themselves either unintelligible or visionary. For whereas some moralists would have us amend nature, and others bid us follow her, there is apt to be something impracticable in the first maxim, and something vague in the second. Asceticism, ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... avoid the Texas treasury—and triumphant Populism take it for granted that 'twas on these curious disks that our "infant industry" cut its teeth. The "In God We Trust" inscription may be regarded as a barbaric hoodoo to prevent infantile bellyache or the evil eye, but the dollar mark will be entirely unintelligible to a people so many thousand years removed from the savage superstition of metallic money. Of course woman will have ruled the world so long that "tyrant man" will be regarded as a sun myth, and the Goddess of Liberty on our coins be mistaken for portraits of our female monarchs. Thus will ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... again after dinner, and with his finger between the leaves, at the last-read, unintelligible page, he went out to the bow, and crouched down there to renew the conflict of the morning. It was not long before Dunham followed. He stooped over to lay a hand ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... itself becomes defective, though the gap thus left open can hardly extend beyond a very few words. Without this supplement, incomplete as it is, it would have been impossible to give the full drift of one of the Romancer's best stories, which is equally unintelligible in both the French and Welsh texts in their ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... translate them. He says: "In the preceding chapters I have sketched the daily life of the Kai people. But I have not attempted to set forth the reasons for their conduct, which is often very peculiar and unintelligible. The explanation of that conduct lies in the animistic view which the Papuan takes of the world. It must be most emphatically affirmed that nobody can judge the native aright who has not gained an insight into what we may call his religious opinions. The native must be ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... muttering something unintelligible to Sara, and looked altogether quite queer and cross enough to be a denizen of this ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... know," he said doggedly. "She won't come back,—anyhow not till—" his utterance trailed off into an unintelligible murmur in his throat and he ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... great as is my horror of this parody of a government to which we have had to submit for nearly two months, I could not forbear a feeling of repulsion on reading the letter of Citizen Rossel. It is a capitally written letter, firm, concise, conclusive, differing entirely from the bombastic, unintelligible documents to which the Commune has accustomed us; and besides, it brings to light several details at which I rejoice, because it permits me to hope that the reign of our tyrants is nearly at an end. I am glad to hear that the Commune, if it possesses artillery, is short of artillerymen. It delights ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... comforted her who was weeping not with remorse for what had been, but that it had gone. No word consciousness stirred her grief. An unintelligible sorrow, it swelled in her heart and filled her with helplessness. Life had gone from her. She was mourning for it. Mourning for a murderess and a sinner who had gone, abandoned her and left her a naked, uninteresting Pauline Pollard again—a nobody surrounded by nobodies. And once it had been ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... oddly companioned, and my exit thence was equally so, though greatly in contrast. For a day or two I was storm-bound, and felt the depression natural in a remote solitude, wrapped in by rain and fog, with no society but an unintelligible mountaineer or two. At last it cleared and the revulsion was inspiring. I found myself in a little green vale hemmed in by magnificent heights whose rocky summits were covered with freshly-fallen snow. Close at hand ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... was quite unintelligible to the two men, who could scarcely have been more bewildered and alarmed if they had found themselves confronted by one of those "white things" that Bud had described to his wife; and when they heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps on the road, without being able to see who or ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... thought something, I understood, but the thoughts themselves were hopelessly unintelligible to me. You know the explanation?" asked Zezdon ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... assumes a written form, and it is the most marked of professional distortions, the most unintelligible to the illiterate, who think waveringly and who do not, happily for them, suffer the continual servitude to precision of word and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Spirits. They are intended to be taken by the reader for what they may be worth as contrivances of the fancy merely. Their doctrines are but tentative, and are advanced with little eye to a systematized philosophy warranted to lift "the burthen of the mystery" of this unintelligible world. The chief thing hoped for them is that they and their utterances may have dramatic plausibility enough to procure for them, in the words of Coleridge, "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith." The wide prevalence of the Monistic theory of the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... count, in so pathetic a tone that his companions both laughed. "As often as I look at my gray hair I would think of her." And the young count gazed into the distance, like one entranced, and his smiling lips whispered low, unintelligible words. ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... place. At Delphi there was a temple to Apollo built over a chasm in the mountain side from which came sulphurous fumes. A priestess took her seat on a tripod over this chasm, and the answers she gave to inquiries were supposed to be dictated by the god. These answers were almost always unintelligible, and even when interpreted by the priests were ambiguous and of little use. Nevertheless, the Greeks believed in oracles firmly, and never undertook any important work without first consulting one or more of them.] of Apollo whether he or his family had ignorantly offended any of the gods. Eagerly ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... thou'll never need to know about it, only to spend money,' said the millionaire, purposely, as his son believed, talking in such broad Yorkshire as is not often heard nowadays, and so broad as to be unintelligible to the reader of this tale, for which reason it must be taken for granted, as perhaps his wife's cockney ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... our hero grew in the good graces of his school-fellows, he fell out of those of his masters, for lessons were brought only half-learned, and exercises only half-written, or blotted and scrawled so as to be nearly unintelligible; and after he had been a fortnight at school, he seemed much more likely to descend to a lower class than to mount a step in his own. Day after day saw Louis kept in the school-room during play-hours, to learn lessons which ought ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... the least matter how they had made up their minds, yet she felt obliged to behave in the way that was expected of her. She did not want to talk to this unpleasant-looking man, and what he told her about the crops and their marvellousness was half unintelligible to her and wholly a bore. Yet she did talk to him, and looked friendly, and affected to understand and be deeply interested in ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... same Magazine, there may be papers of practical and directly useful character, and of ready application to the arts and interests of life and society. A person wishing to possess these popular papers must therefore purchase with them a quantity of matter which to him would be unintelligible, and the value of which could only be appreciated by direct study, a task of no small import in these days of cheap literature. That the plan has succeeded, and that its intention has been fully recognised, is borne out by the testimony ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... muttered something unintelligible, and backed away. The others likewise seemed discouraged by the mischance to their leader, for they turned and followed his retreating ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... what the judge had said to her about Clark's Field and felt rather queer, uncomfortably so, as if the probate judge had distilled a subtle medicine in her cup of joy, or had clouded the clear horizon of her young life with a mysterious veil of unintelligible considerations. Yet he seemed to be, as she had always thought him, a good old man, and wise. And he was making no trouble about giving her and Archie the money they so much wanted to have. Even now he was writing his signature with the old-fashioned ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... I had frequently, both in earnest and in jest, expressed these hopes to him; and, in one of my letters, after touching upon some matters relative to my own little domestic circle, I added, "This will all be unintelligible to you; though I sometimes cannot help thinking it within the range of possibility, that even you, volcano as you are, may, one day, cool down into something of the same habitable state. Indeed, when one thinks ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... could even distinguish the dim outlines of his lower limbs as he passed and repassed before the single gleaming point of light on board. I was also assured as to a group of seamen forward, hard against a steeper rise of the deck; once I heard the officer aft call out some unintelligible order, when one of the group detached himself from among those others and passed along the opposite side of the mast from where I lay, yet so close I could have touched him with extended hand. I felt convinced a sentinel stood beside the ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... some unintelligible thing. He was, to tell the truth, tremendously excited, disturbed, overwhelmed by Bauer's return at this ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... accordance with the-severe character of "war in procinct" [Footnote: "War in procinct"—a phrase of Milton's in Paradise Regained, which strikingly illustrates his love of Latin phraseology; for unless to a scholar, previously acquainted with the Latin phrase of in procinctu, it is so absolutely unintelligible as to interrupt the current of the feeling.] Hardly would he allow himself an ivory hilt to his sabre. The same severe proscription he extended to every sort of furniture, or decorations of art, which sheltered even in the bosom ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... It had a minutely large quality. Here and there, in a kind of sonal darkness, solid sincere unintelligible absurd wisps of profanity heavily flickered. Optically the phenomenon was equally remarkable: seated waggingly swaying corpselike figures, swaggering, pounding with their little spoons, roaring, hoarse, unkempt. Evidently Monsieur le Surveillant had been forgotten. All at once the roar bulged ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... note how many of the Sophismes Anarchiques which Dumont published for Bentham, and which embody Bentham's exposure of errors distinctively French, are derived from the Roman hypothesis in its French transformation, and are unintelligible unless referred to it. On this point too it is a curious exercise to consult the Moniteur during the principal eras of the Revolution. The appeals to the Law and State of Nature become thicker as the times grow darker. They are comparatively rare in ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... answer, except to shake her fist and utter unintelligible threats. She commanded her son to drive the intruders away, but Jeff, the gypsy ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... thought that, on learning what important folk I was in the habit of mixing with, the Graps would no longer think it worth while to pretend to me). However, just as they were leaving, I invited Ilinka to come and see me another day; but he only murmured something unintelligible, and it was plain that he meant never to set foot in ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... wonders in the natural order, illustrates what takes place in heaven the moment a pure soul enters there. In the supposition just made, you receive an accession or addition of intellectual power, which enables you to see clearly and to understand what was invisible and unintelligible to you before the flash enlightened you. The Light of glory produces a similar effect upon the soul at her entrance into heaven. Our mind, which is now unable to see God except "as through a glass, ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... of the preservation of these remains is half-pathetic, half-grotesque. We have one complete poem and a considerable portion of another; the rest are the merest fragments—now two or three lines, now two or three words, often unintelligible without their context. We have imitations and translations by Catullus and by Horace; but even Catullus has conspicuously failed to reproduce her. As Mr. Swinburne has candidly and very truly said: "No man can come close ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... to promise never again to put it forward (1616). The work of Copernicus and those of some other writers who advocated the Copernican system were condemned /donec corrigantur/. The decision of the congregation was wrong, but in the circumstances not unintelligible. Nor can it be contended for a moment that from this mistake any solid argument can be drawn against the infallibility of the Pope. Paul V. was undoubtedly present at the session in which the condemnation was agreed upon and approved of the verdict, ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... unintelligible jargon. He looked from La to Tarzan. Would the latter understand this strange tongue? To the Belgian's surprise, the Englishman answered in a language evidently ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cordially into this matter of beds and chairs, and, therefore, at last deputed the whole matter to the de Courcy faction. And for this there was another reason, not hitherto mentioned. Mr Mortimer Gazebee was finding the money with which all the furniture was being bought. He, with an honest but almost unintelligible zeal for the de Courcy family, had tied up every shilling on which he could lay his hand as belonging to Crosbie, in the interest of Lady Alexandrina. He had gone to work for her, scraping here and arranging there, strapping the new husband down upon the grindstone of his matrimonial settlement, ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... the temper of England. The strange medley of contradictory qualities which blended in the English character, its love of liberty and its love of order, its prejudice and open-mindedness, its religious enthusiasm and its cool good sense, remained alike unintelligible to them. And as they failed to understand England, so in many ways England failed to understand them. It underrated their ability, nor did it do justice to their aims. Its insular temper found no hold on a policy which was far more European than insular. Its practical sense recoiled from the unpractical ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... the prospects around me, still struck with new sense of pleasure; when I found by the voice of my friend, who walked by me, that we had insensibly strolled into the grove sacred to the widow. "This woman," says he, "is of all others the most unintelligible; she either designs to marry, or she does not. What is the most perplexing of all, is, that she doth not either say to her lovers she has any resolution against that condition of life in general, or that she banishes them; but, conscious of her own merit, she permits their addresses, ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... high up in giddy air, floating, a tiny human pin-wheel, in a shining cone of light. One can hear the crowd catch its breath. She walks back, all smiles, while her maid trots ahead saying something unintelligible. Her tall husband is waiting for her at the doorway. He catches her up like a child and carries her off, limp and exhausted. One of the clowns (irreverent creature) makes a piteous squawk and begs us to carry him to ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... message, whereupon the wise men of the north laughed heartily. Then the three of us raised our hats with aristocratic gravity; and the vehicle moved away toward the land of Disillusionment. As I lay down again, I heard the poor fellows burst into unintelligible song; and, after the spring-cart had jogged a quarter of a mile, one of the adventurers looked past the edge of the tilt toward me, and waved his handkerchief. Not having any similar article on me at the time, I half-rose and returned the farewell ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... saw it wasn't there and I searched everywhere. I saw it with my own eyes," said Tootsie incoherently, and between rage and tears she repeated her account in a manner to be completely unintelligible. Mr. Bedelle was a theorist afflicted with indigestion. He carefully selected his diet with due regard for starch values and never ate a raw tomato without first carefully removing the seeds. He was likewise particularly ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... Dionysus, Gilbert Murray, speaking of Orphism—a great wave of religious reform which swept over Greece and South Italy in the sixth century B.C.—says: (1) "A curious relic of primitive superstition and cruelty remained firmly imbedded in Orphism, a doctrine irrational and unintelligible, and for that very reason wrapped in the deepest and most sacred mystery: a belief in the SACRIFICE OF DIONYSUS HIMSELF, AND THE PURIFICATION OF MAN BY HIS BLOOD. It seems possible that the savage Thracians, ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... rude song were unintelligible to his stupid, drink-bemused audience; but the keen brain of the schemer lurking near the door picked up their sense at once. Dr Pendle was the priest who was to drop the money on Southberry Heath, and Jentham the knave who was to pick ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... very cogent to say, but the dentist felt an impalpable obstruction of will, unintelligible and persistent. His enthusiasm grew as he perfected the details of his plan. It was a new kind of scheme, in which he took the artistic delight of the incorrigible promoter. His imagination once enlisted for the plan, he held to it, arguing, counselling, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the savages crowded round us and gazed at us in surprise, while they continued to pour upon us a flood of questions, which, being wholly unintelligible, of course we could not answer. However, by way of putting an end to it, Jack took the chief (who had recovered from the effects of his wound) by the hand and shook it warmly. No sooner did the blacks see that this was meant to express good-will than ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... made me restless with excitement and anxiety to peruse those letters and notes which I still had in my possession. I may here remark, the letters were, for the most part, unintelligible to a common reader, because of the secret language in which they were written. I had examined them again and again, without much satisfaction. I knew they were penned for the purpose of clandestinely carrying on a wholesale ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... with the local circumstances to which they applied at the time they were used, have been erected into prophecies, and made to bend to explanations at the will and whimsical conceits of sectaries, expounders, and commentators. Every thing unintelligible was prophetical, and every thing insignificant was typical. A blunder would have served for a prophecy; and ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... tube, and then a great noise and a sparkling and crackling as of fires, that the consciousness came upon me, "This is John Harmon drowning! John Harmon, struggle for your life. John Harmon, call on Heaven and save yourself!" I think I cried it out aloud in a great agony, and then a heavy horrid unintelligible something vanished, and it was I who was struggling there ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... city, on warm summer evenings. He ran his own car, and was never so happy as when Mary was on the driver's seat beside him, where he could amuse her with the little news of the day, or repeat to her long and, to Mary, unintelligible business conversations in which he had ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... the boy—not behind his back, but on his left hand in the next rank. No spy most curious could have detected the least love-making between them, and their talk, in the still, dark air, sounded loud all the way as they went. Strange talk it would have been counted by many, and indeed unintelligible, for it ranged over a vast surface, and was the talk of two wise children, wise not above their own years only, but immeasurably above those of the prudent. Riches indubitably favour stupidity; poverty, where the heart is ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... believers have doubted altogether of any evil spirits, as existences, warranted by Scripture, that is, as beings whose principle was evil ["evil, be thou my good:" P. L.]; others, again, believing in the possibility that spiritual beings had been (in ways unintelligible to us) seduced from their state of perfection by temptations analogous to those which had seduced man, acquiesced in the notion of spirits tainted with evil, but not therefore (any more than man himself) essentially or causelessly malignant. Now, it is well known, and, amongst others, Eichhorn ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... I have encountered of this unintelligible arrangement of things was contributed to the 'Traveller's Record' by Mr. Forrest Morgan, of Hartford, three years ago. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bedroom again, Prudence was muttering unintelligible words under her breath. He kneeled down beside the bed, and put his arms around her. She clung to him with ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... without prejudice and respect of persons. Indeed, we know that the ancient philosophers were a ridiculous composition of arrogance, disputation, and contradictions; that some of them acted against all ideas of decency; that others affected to doubt of their own senses; that some, for venting unintelligible nonsense, pretended to think themselves superior to kings; that they gave themselves airs of accounting for all that we do and do not see-and yet, that no two of them agreed in a single hypothesis; that one thought ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... an acquaintance with them which is pleasing to see, and when an assumed infringement takes place, it is generally heralded from some part of the field by a partisan of the contending elevens. The only apparently unintelligible point to them is the "off-side" rule, and I have seen a goal kicked in this way hailed with deafening cheers and waving of hats and handkerchiefs. These manifestations, however, were turned into ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... translate for him a story which Sir Walter Scott once related to me, and was so far apropos, as conveying my own sense of the merits of our national music, such as we have it, by its association with scenes, and persons, and places we are all familiar with, however unintelligible to the ear ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... in each hand and repeated a few words of command over and over again, while from the brown, gleaming heads about us came, in sometimes angry, sometimes mournful, sometimes mocking tones, loud, but to me unintelligible, replies. I saw the fierce, self-interested, indifferent faces, with the wild eyes, and I realized how narrow was the boundary separating ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... perspiring candidate and, standing on his hands and feet,—an attitude which seemingly caused him no inconvenience,—reached in the ballot-box and pulling therefrom a handful of votes he cast them ceiling-ward with a shrill laugh, followed by an unintelligible spluttering as he sat down suddenly and began to pick up the scattered ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... spoken by a million or more persons; numerous other languages and dialects, for the most part mutually unintelligible ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Turner, and touches of profound and glowing imagination; and the whole poem, in spite of its obscurity, affects the mind like a strain of high and mournful music. The Sonnets are all more or less harsh and unintelligible,—a criticism which applies to many of the other poems. Miss Whitney evidently despises foot-notes as utterly as Tennyson, and leaves much unexplained in her titles and in the poems themselves, which might help us to understand them, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... marvelled who this man might be. Heron spoke to him in ambiguous phrases that would have been unintelligible to any one who did not know the circumstances of the Dauphin's escape and the part that the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel had played in it. But to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, who—cleverly disguised as a farrier, grimy after his day's work—was straining his ears to listen whilst ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... legs and lower halves of dead Emperor chicks hanging through, and even in one place a dead adult. I hope to make a picture of the whole quaint incident, for it was a corner crammed full of Imperial history in the light of what we already knew, and it would otherwise have been about as unintelligible as any group of animate or inanimate nature could possibly have been. As it is, it throws more light on the life history ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... knew how long afterward it was that he heard a voice speaking to him. The words, jumbled and unintelligible, seemed to come from a great distance. He attempted to rise, gave it up, and fell back dizzily. His vision was slow in clearing. What he finally saw, through blurred, uncertain eyes, was the face of Kenneth Gwynne, far above him,—and ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... to them. This would all have been unintelligible to us, if you had not related to us ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... that all those upon this side are of the same family." "Then pitch them all into the yard," responded the priest; "for, rather than miss the satisfaction of roasting Queen Pintiquiniestra and the pastorals of Darinel the Shepherd and his damned unintelligible speculations, I would burn my own father along with them, if I found him playing at knight-errantry." So into the yard went "Olivante de Laura, the nonsensical old blockhead," "rough and dull Florismart of Hyrcania," "noble Don Platir," with nothing in him "deserving ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... not like your great and gracious ways! Do you, that have naught other to lament, Never, my Love, repent Of how, that July afternoon, You went, With sudden, unintelligible phrase, And frighten'd eye, Upon your journey of so many days Without a single kiss, or a good-bye? I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon; And so we sate, within the low sun's rays, You whispering to me, for your voice was weak, Your harrowing praise. Well, it was well To hear you ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... endeavoured to charge his memory, or perhaps more properly, to discharge it. Dave had said first thing when he opened his eyes:—"The worty will be all over the hedge. Let me go to stop the worty." Of course, this had been quite unintelligible to his hearers. However, Mr. Alibone and Uncle Mo were au fait enough of the engineering scheme that had led to the accident, to supply the explanation. Dave's responsibility as head engineer had ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... funny little shuffle of exceeding temerity, considering the facilities at his command for that agile amusement, but he was made reckless by praise—and they all lied valiantly in chorus. He repeated all the words he knew, which were few, and for the most part unintelligible, crowed like a cock, barked like a dog, mewed like a cat, and finally went away, his red cheeks yet more ruddily aglow, grave and excited and with quickly beating pulses, like one who has achieved some great public success and led ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... instance. A public instructor jumped up in the person of Mr. Flummery Flam, the least insinuating and the least plausible personage that ever performed the easy task of gulling a nation. His manners were vulgar, his voice was sharp, and his language almost unintelligible. Flummery Flam was a provisional optimist. He maintained that everything would be for the best, if the nation would only follow his advice. He told the Vraibleusians that the present universal and overwhelming distress was all and entirely ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... the admiral looked very keenly at his subordinate, and asked him to explain his ship's unreadiness, while the rest of the captains looked the astonishment they were too polite to put into words. The ensuing explanation was somewhat unintelligible to Frobisher, notwithstanding the valiant efforts of his interpreter. But he gathered that the admiral considered Prince Hsi's reasons as quite inadequate, and concluded by informing the Prince, without any circumlocution, that he, as admiral, was quite as ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... different from the easy, rhythmic, oratorical verses on which I had been brought up. In Palamas, I missed those pleasant trivialities which attract a boy's mind in poetry. One thing, however, was clear to me even then. Dark and unintelligible though his poems appeared, they were certainly full of a deep, passionate feeling, a feeling that haunted my thoughts long after I had closed his book in despair. From that day, I condescended to think of him as of a sincere follower of a wrong cause, as ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... himself resolutely. For a time Ahmed Ben Hassan lay motionless, and then, as the day crept on and the early rays of the warm sun filled the tent, he moved uneasily, and began to mutter feverishly in confused Arabic and French. At first the words that came were almost unintelligible, pouring out with rapid indistinctness, then by degrees his voice slowed, and hesitating, interrupted sentences came clearly from his lips. And beside him, with his face buried in his hands, Raoul de Saint Hubert thanked God fervently ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... the advertising columns. What splendid feasts they afford him to banquet upon! Some of them, in a few pithy lines, contain the plot of a three-volume novel or the materials for a grand sensation melodrama. What tragedies and what comedies he may weave out of one or two mysterious and almost unintelligible sentences! What reveries he may indulge in, what castles in the air—the most harmless and inexpensive of building operations—he may construct, provided he start with the hypothesis, 'If I were to buy this,' or 'If I were to invest ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... Abu Thaleb and he are said to have lodged with; or how much any monk could have taught one still so young. Probably enough it is greatly exaggerated, this of the Nestorian Monk. Mohammed was only fourteen; had no language but his own: much in Syria must have been a strange unintelligible whirlpool to him. But the eyes of the lad were open; glimpses of many things would doubtless be taken-in, and lie very enigmatic as yet, which were to ripen in a strange way into views, into beliefs and insights one day. These journeys to Syria were ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... archway they called some name unknown to Fandor and so unintelligible that he could not remember it; then it was a painful ascension: up a staircase they went with prodigious effort, stopping on ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... commiserating himself, "Poor Crab (Cricket, Rat)!" (D1) Through a purgative he by chance helps to find a stolen horse, or (D2) he discovers the horse that has previously been concealed by him. (E) He gets a living among the peasants, upon whom he has made an impression with a short or unintelligible sermon or through the crashing-down of the pulpit, which has previously been ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... Egbert, the first Saxon King of England, on to Edward the Confessor, the last, being everywhere completely interwoven with that of their mysterious, continually invasive "Danes," as they call them, and inextricably unintelligible till these also get to be a little understood, and cease to be utterly dark, hideous, and mythical to us as they ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... ambitious of exhibiting, in the most imposing if less intelligible way, their superior knowledge, were probably the mixed causes which led such distinguished scholars as Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Cardan, and Campanella to oppress themselves and their readers with a mass of unintelligible rubbish and cabalistic mysticism.[112] Slow and gradual as are the successive advances in the knowledge and improvement of mankind, it would not be reasonable to be surprised that preceding generations could not at once ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... to, he threw off his cloak, so as to spring on deck more easily. Three men, in the dark, woollen smock and tarpaulined hat of coast fishermen, approached him and, in answer to his inquiry for the master, told him, in an unintelligible mixture of Dutch and German, that he had ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... has spread their Philosophy, but their great Brags and undertakings; notwithstanding all which, (sayes Themistius smiling) I scarce know any thing they have performed worth wondering at, save that they have been able to draw Philoponus to their Party, and to engage him to the Defence of an unintelligible Hypothesis, who knowes so well as he does, that Principles ought to be like Diamonds, as well very ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... of form—for my Spanish is by no means unintelligible—I am examined through the medium of an interpreter, who makes a terrible hash of my replies. He talks of the 'foots of my friend's negro,' and the 'commandant's, officers', sergeant's relations,' by which I infer ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... mantel-shelf, in order to the more deliberate and satisfactory cogitation on such an unusual event, when he was startled by a loud shout, or scream rather, from above. The quivering and excited voice was that of Mr. Lisle, and the outcry was immediately followed by an explosion of unintelligible exclamations from several persons. Caleb was up stairs in an instant, and found himself in the midst of a strangely-perplexing and distracted scene. Mr. Lisle, pale as his shirt, shaking in every limb, and his eyes on fire with passion, was ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... into a large number of dialects, each of which is confined to a relatively small area, and it often happens that a little [clan] or even a single family uses a form of speech which is differentiated from other dialects to be practically unintelligible to all except the members of the ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... of human improvement, it is probable, that that calamity will be in a manner unintelligible, which in the present instance contributed to tarnish and wither the excellence of one of the most elevated and amiable of human minds. If Mr. Falkland had reflected with perfect accuracy upon the case, he would probably ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... his philanthropy and his jealousy, his desire to show the one and his incapability of concealing the other, that he became unintelligible; and Helen laughed, and told him that she could not now understand what his opinion really was. She was quite ready to agree with him, she said, if he would but agree with himself: this made him disagree still more with himself and unluckily with his better self, his benevolence quite gave way before ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... any one, not compelled to do it for a living, should paint the face or dye the hair is to me unintelligible. It is like attempting to pass off a counterfeit coin. It is either a confession that one is so ashamed of one's face that one dare not let it be seen in public, or it is an attempt to deceive the world into accepting you as something other ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... been made of the typical drawbacks of political oratory—of the dull men, of the heavy, of the shallow, of the unintelligible, and what not. We have been told how 'a lord of senatorial fame' was known at once by his portrait, because the painter had so 'play'd his game' that it 'made one even yawn at sight.' It has been said of an M.P., that his speeches 'possessed ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... the rush of temptation and the illusions of this fleeting life have lost their grip upon him: 'This is not the place that can bring out all that is in me, or that can yield me all that I desire.' Our capacities transcend the present, and the experiences of the present are all unintelligible, unless the true end of every human life is not here at all, but in another region, for which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... masks turned towards the Cross, reading the name, and they made a sign with the hands in unison, a rapid crisscross motion over the breast, the forehead, the eyes, ending in the low murmur of a word, unintelligible, like a pledge. Then the first mask to the left rose and ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... permanently jammed into a narrow fissure. I fully expected, from the analogy of B. capreolata and B. littoralis, that the tips would have been developed into adhesive discs; but I could never detect even a trace of this process. There is therefore at present something unintelligible about the habits ...
— The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants • Charles Darwin
... express it in speech, for in this way they cannot communicate with one another; but certain looks and gestures exchanged, unintelligible to others, have been easily interpreted by the Indian as the signs of a secret and mutual understanding ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... course would have been hopeless. But an Australian squatter, if he have any well-grounded claim to the character of a bushman, has eyes which are not ordinary, and he has, probably, nurtured within himself, unconsciously, topographical instincts which are unintelligible to the inhabitants of cities. Harry, too, was near his own home, and went forward through the thick gloom without a doubt, Jacko following him faithfully. In about half an hour they came to another fence, but now it was too absolutely dark for jumping. ...
— Harry Heathcote of Gangoil • Anthony Trollope
... tongues I don't know something about—I shouted loudly to attract their attention. On this, two men, dressed in skins, came out of the hut, and answered me in so extraordinary a dialect, that even I did not comprehend what they said. I then hailed them in Russian, but their answers were perfectly unintelligible. I next tried French, but they shook their heads, as was, I thought, but natural for Esquimaux who were not likely to have been sent to Paris for their education. I then spoke a little Spanish to them, but I was equally at a loss ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... noon, Filled all the woods; the cry of unknown birds; The mountains more by blackness visible And their own size, than any outward light; 715 The breathless wilderness of clouds; the clock That told, with unintelligible voice, The widely parted hours; the noise of streams, And sometimes rustling motions nigh at hand, That did not leave us free from personal fear; 720 And, lastly, the withdrawing moon, that set Before us, while she still was high in heaven;— These were our food; and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... conclude that. It is agreeable to a vast number of people: as a Frith or an O'Neil is agreeable to a vast number of people to whom an Ary Scheffer or a Delaroche would be unintelligible. It is better, perhaps, that this vast number should look at Friths and O'Neils than that they should never look on any painting at all. Now the stage paints rudely, often tawdrily; still it does paint. It is better than nothing. I take it that the excellence, as ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... others; whereas, the second was invented with the view that we should not be able to understand a word about it. In former times, when all law, except club law, was in its infancy, and practitioners not so erudite, or so thriving as at present, it was thought advisable to render it unintelligible by inventing a sort of lingo, compounded of bad French, grafted upon worse Latin, forming a mongrel and incomprehensible race of words, with French heads and Latin tails, which answered the purpose intended—that of mystification.—Flotsam and jetsam ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the thread of events becomes tangled beyond the hope of unravelment. What were the causes which led Garibaldi into the desperate venture that ended at Aspromonte? Recollecting his hesitation before assuming the leadership of the Sicilian expedition, it seemed the more unintelligible that he should now undertake an enterprise which, unless he could rely on the complicity of Government, had not a single possibility of success. His own old comrades were opposed to it, and it was notorious that Mazzini, to whom the ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... were unintelligible, and threw into the chafing-dish the other half of the paper with the characters she had written down. "Say now, Pedro, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... was little less than slow martyrdom. The country was wild, the inhabitants were half barbarous, speaking a language unintelligible to him; the monks were violent, unruly, and dissolute, openly living with concubines; the lands of the monastery were subjected to intolerable burdens by the neighboring lord, leaving the monks in poverty and discontent. Instead of finding a home ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a scientific genius in the sense understood by modern savants; nor was he an original observer,—his materials being drawn up second-hand, like a modern encyclopaedia. Nor did he evince great judgment in his selection: he had a great love of the marvellous, and his work was often unintelligible; but it remains a wonderful monument of human industry. His Natural History treats of everything in the natural world,—of the heavenly bodies, of the elements, of thunder and lightning, of the winds and seasons, of the changes and phenomena of the earth, of countries and nations, of seas and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... runner of the party had far outstripped his companions, but it was evident to Ethan and Fanny that he was moving towards the other band of savages, rather than towards them. He was shouting in his own tongue words which were unintelligible to the white boy and girl. But if the words were not understood, their effect was, for the hostile band presently halted, and awaited the arrival ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... to which he was converted was the Christianity of Stephen, not of James the Lord's brother. His later epistles are steeped in the phraseology of the Greek mysteries. The Epistle to the Hebrews and the Fourth Gospel are unintelligible without some knowledge of Philo, whose theology is more Greek than Jewish. In the conflict about the nature of the future life, it was the Greek eschatology which prevailed over the Jewish. St. Paul's famous declaration, 'We look not at the things which are seen, ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... are vociferating round about him. As fast, however, as he learned to translate the language of his companions into his own, he discovered that there was not so much meaning in their expressions as he had been inclined to imagine whilst they had remained unintelligible: but he was good-humoured and good-natured, so that, upon the whole, he was much liked; and even his inferiority, in many little trials of skill, was, perhaps, in his favour. He laughed with those that laughed at him, let them triumph in his awkwardness, but still persisted in new ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... a little monkey, perched upon his shoulder. George was eager to join the group and see the antics of Jacko, who sat grinning and holding a little cap for money, into which a boy flung a halfpenny, and then asked the Italian where he came from. But the answer was unintelligible to him, for it was given in a strange tongue, and George was soon tired of listening to the music and watching ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell
... breaking some of the last ties which still connect me with so beloved an object. The being in the midst of books he has been accustomed to read, and which contain his marks and notes, will still give him a sort of existence with me. Unintelligible as such fond chimeras may appear to many people, I am persuaded they ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... had fled in terror at finding him alone in the church, so strange and dazzling was his look. More than once, in the choir, at the hour of the offices, his neighbor in the stalls had heard him mingle with the plain song, ad omnem tonum, unintelligible parentheses. More than once the laundress of the Terrain charged "with washing the chapter" had observed, not without affright, the marks of nails and clenched fingers on the surplice of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... we quote from are of recent date; but they are unintelligible without going back to the very origin of the colonies. I have no doubt that in our days the penal part of these laws is very rarely applied. Laws preserve their inflexibility, long after the manners of a ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... unanimous an approbation. As editor, Mr Carlyle has given us a valuable work; as commentator, the view which he would teach us to take of English Puritanism is, to our thinking, simply the most paradoxical, absurd, unintelligible, mad business we ever ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... song, l. 4619 and onwards. The crucial passage is a sharp rebuke of "finders [vindaere, trouveres] of wild tales," or one particular such who plays tricks on his readers and utters unintelligible things. It may be Wolfram: it also ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... deduce a settled scheme of philosophy from these discourses among the mountains. I would urge only that as a guide to conduct Wordsworth's precepts are not in themselves either unintelligible or visionary. For whereas some moralists would have us amend nature, and others bid us follow her, there is apt to be something impracticable in the first maxim, and something vague in the second. Asceticism, quietism, enthusiasm, ecstasy—all ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... doorway of our building a strange surprise awaited me. A warrior approached bearing the arms, ornaments, and full accouterments of his kind. These he presented to me with a few unintelligible words, and a bearing at ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... preserved and hallowed. But whatever the future may bring forth, the marvellous accounts of the powers of ancient music will meet with little indulgence from modern scepticism. At present such effects are unknown among us, and therefore unintelligible. Among the early Greeks, for many centuries, the several characters of poet, musician, lawgiver, and philosopher, were combined in the same individual; and it is probable that the music of that period consisted principally of recitative ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... but the mother of this suffering infant says, with a quiet air of truth and triumph, that Chinese women suffer less in the process of being crippled than foreign women do from wearing corsets! To these Eastern women the notion of deforming the figure for the sake of appearance only is unintelligible and repulsive. The crippling of the feet has ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... besides, we have some facts in the treatise which are not hypothetical. Why ignore them? Do you not see that your miserable suggestion of "The Potential Mood" is as worthless as it is sensational and fails as not comprehensive, inadequate, unintelligible, and not true? ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... hopelessly at the unintelligible line, and then at the two photographs. One, taken evidently from a point well up the side of a hill, showed a narrow valley, flanked upon the opposite side by a high rock wall. Toward the upper end of ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... dread of having money of the murdered, a thought she never breathed to any but her husband; and to poor uninitiated Grace (who had not heard a word of Ben's adventure), her answer about Mrs. Quarles and Mr. Jennings in the dawn of the crock's first blessing, had been entirely unintelligible: Mary, then, said never a word, but looked on ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and peace. Yellow Bird did not disbelieve. Her faith was illimitable. The spirits would not lie. But the unrest of the night was eating at her heart. She tried to lift herself to the whisperings above the tepee top. But they were unintelligible, like many voices mingling, and with them came a dull fear ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... in his sleep when Gwyn reached his side, but for a time his words were unintelligible. Then ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... which he had just been speaking; it had fastened upon him and was sucking his life-blood. In his past there had been the strange marriage in the style of Dostoevsky; long letters and copies written in a bad, unintelligible hand-writing, but with great feeling, endless misunderstandings, explanations, disappointments, then debts, a second mortgage, the allowance to his wife, the monthly borrowing of money—and all this for no ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... philosophy of language," the author seems to exempt, and in some sort to commend; and at the same time his proposition of exclusion is applied not merely to the school-grammars, but a fortiori to this science, under the notion that it is unintelligible to school-boys. But why should any principle of grammar be the less intelligible on account of the extent of its application? Will a boy pretend that he cannot understand a rule of English grammar, because he is told that it holds good in all languages? Ancient ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... manner, with, at first sight, startling humility, He contrasts 'these things,' the partial and to a large extent unintelligible utterances which He had given with His human lips, with the complete, universal teaching of that divine Spirit, who was to instruct in 'all things' pertaining to man's salvation. We have then, here, sketched in broad outline, the great truths concerning the ever-present, inward ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Christianity a Trial? Why Jesus more than Another? Was Jesus a Coward? Was Jesus a Martyr? The Gospels without Prejudice The Gospels now unintelligible to Novices Worldliness of the Majority Religion of the Minority. Salvationism The Difference between Atonement and Punishment Salvation at first a Class Privilege; and the Remedy Retrospective Atonement; and the ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... 1829.) The tales and anecdotes in this edition follow the order of The Nights. No. 163 is incomplete, Zinserling giving only the commencement; and two other tales (Nos. 132b and 168) are related in such a confused manner as to be unintelligible, the former from transposition (perhaps in the sheets of the original MS.) and the latter from errors and omissions. On the other hand, some of the tales (No. 137 for instance) are comparatively ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... doctor, videlicit an M.D., is a sedate-looking personage; he listens calmly to the story of your ailments; if your eye and skin be yellow, he shrewdly remarks that you have the jaundice; he feels your pulse, writes two or three unintelligible lines of Latin, for which you pay him a guinea; he keeps a chariot, and one man-servant. The standard board behind, intended for a footman, is fearfully beset with spikes, to prevent little boys from ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... occasions he was the object of popular insult and on one of popular violence. Both were at Jedburgh; but the blame is put upon intrusive weavers from Hawick. The first, a meeting of Roxburghshire freeholders, saw nothing worse than unmannerly interruption of a speech made partially unintelligible by the speaker's failing articulation. He felt it bitterly, and when hissing was repeated as he bowed farewell, is said to have replied, low, but now quite distinctly, 'Moriturus vos saluto!' On the second, the election ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... caught a severe cold, and died of fever in London, in the year 1688. Every one has read, or will read, the Pilgrim's Progress; and it may be said, without exaggeration, that to him who has not read the book, a large part of English life and history is dumb and unintelligible. Bunyan has been called the "Spenser of the people," and "the greatest master of allegory that ever lived." His power of imagination is something wonderful; and his simple, homely, and vigorous style makes everything ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... work and muttered some unintelligible words in a sepulchral voice, looked at the remaining millet-seeds, and watched the way in which the toad retired. Then after seven or eight minutes, she turned her white eyes on the cards and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... prophet among the Buriats, the daughter of a gypsy woman and a Buriat. She drew a small bag very slowly from her girdle, took from it some small bird bones and a handful of dry grass. She began whispering at intervals unintelligible words, as she threw occasional handfuls of the grass into the fire, which gradually filled the tent with a soft fragrance. I felt a distinct palpitation of my heart and a swimming in my head. After the fortune ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... element in them. The mystery of pain and suffering is still a mystery; and while general principles, taught us even more clearly in the New Testament than in this book, do lighten the 'weight of all this unintelligible world,' we have still to take Job's language as the last word on the matter, and say, 'How unsearchable are His judgments, and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... months have been full of unpleasant work,—the people were unsettled, discontented, and grumbling. I hope their growling is nearly over, and look for quieter times soon. The disputes among the tax-commissioners have been very unintelligible and prejudicial to them. On some places I understand that the negroes refuse to have anything to do with the new proprietors. On others they have agreed to work, and the year as a whole will probably witness much more industry than either ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... entered, in an idle mood, the shop of one of those curiosity venders who are called marchands de bric-a-brac in that Parisian argot which is so perfectly unintelligible elsewhere ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... phrases, unintelligible to ears unused to the sound of the sea, seemed to put fresh energy into the oars; they kept time together, the rhythm of the movement was still even and steady, but quite unlike the previous manner of rowing; it was as if a cantering ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... it as one between two nations, the mismanagement of the war by the Americans on all points save one—the retention of Washington in the chief command—is seen to have been so pitiable, from first to last, as to be in fact almost unintelligible." ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... earth. But the divine law was little more than an analogical inference from human law, taken in the vulgar sense of arbitrary will or partial covenant. It was surmised rather than discovered, and remained unmoral because unintelligible. It mattered little, under the circumstances, whether the Universe were said to be governed by chance or by reason, since the latter, if misunderstood, was virtually one with the former. "Better far," said Epicurus, "acquiesce in the fables of tradition, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... became fixed and classical, all others became useless, remained perhaps here and there in proverbial sayings or in sacred songs, but were given up at last completely, as strange, obsolete, and unintelligible. ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... laws by which the houses of a certain class of offenders might be destroyed; but the French translator construes it, "Que nulle maison de Rome ne saroit donnee en propre, pour quelque raison que ce put etre; mais que les revenus en appartiendroient au public!" (The English translator makes this law unintelligible:—"That no family of Rome shall appropriate to their own use what they think fit, but that the revenues shall appertain to the public"!!!—the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... only to think of this crowning calamity, and could only utter broken, unintelligible sounds to express my gratitude for ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... him lying in a pool of blood. But he was entirely whole; there was no blood visible and we could find no broken bones. Apparently there was nothing the matter beyond fear, and of that he was nearly dead. He crawled to the Colonel and clung to his feet chattering an unintelligible gibberish. His eyes rolling wildly in the dim light, showed an uncanny yellow gleam. I could see ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... sank down limply where Jarrold left her and watched him as he slouched over to the fire. She sought to hear their words, to read the looks on their faces. But she caught only a monotonous mutter, unintelligible but evil, and saw only the bottle passing from one to the other. Brodie finished it and hurled it from him so that it broke noisily. A few times she heard them laugh; she could distinguish Brodie's throaty, bull tone and ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... glass Style is the dress of thoughts Success turns much more upon manner than matter Tacitus Take characters, as they do most things, upon trust They thought I informed, because I pleased them Unaffected silence upon that subject is the only true medium Unintelligible to his readers, and sometimes to himself Use palliatives when you contradict We love to be pleased better than to be informed Woman like her, who has always pleased, and often been pleased Women are the only refiners of the merit of men Yielded ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... Martin hailed them in an unsteady voice. They pulled up suddenly and drew pistols from their holsters; but on seeing only a fair youth armed with a bow, they replaced their weapons, and with a look of surprise rode up and assailed him with a volley of unintelligible Portuguese. ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... remember, my dear Miss Mayberry," said the gentleman, "that we do not know what our language will be in eight hundred or a thousand years from now. The English of to-day may be utterly unintelligible to the readers of that era, but that portion of our literature which I put into imperishable and unchangeable Greek will be the same then as now. The scholar may read it for his own pleasure and profit, or he may translate it for the pleasure ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... wing. The sister swift of Philomel, Intent on business, prosper'd well; In spite of the complaining pest, The insects carried to her nest— Nest pitiless to suffering flies— Mouths gaping aye, to gormandize, Of young ones clamouring, And stammering, With unintelligible cries. The spider, with but head and feet. And powerless to compete With wings so fleet, Soon saw herself a prey. The swallow, passing swiftly by, Bore web and all away, The spinster dangling in ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... with a message from the besiegers, but a message which was utterly unintelligible to the besieged. Even after all that we have seen of the perverse imbecility of the directors of the Company, it must be thought strange that they should have sent a colony to a remote part of the world, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... closer. He gave a sudden cry. Yes, there it was—a hasty memorandum; part of the writing was unintelligible to him, but the main word stood clear ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... and onwards the prophet speaks. He catches up the mockers' words, and retorts them. They have scoffed at his message as if it were stammering speech. They shall hear another kind of stammerers when the fierce invaders' harsh and unintelligible language commands them. The reason why these foreign voices would have authority, was the national disregard of God's voice. 'Ye would not hear' Him when, by His prophet, He spoke gracious invitations to rest, and to give the nation rest, in obedience and trust. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... his smile. Consequently his body became quite mahogany-coloured. When he was wounded he was put under an anaesthetic so that I could search for the bullet. As the anaesthetic began to take effect, Claude talked the usual unintelligible gibberish. Now, we happened to have a Turkish prisoner at the time, and in the midst of Claude's struggles and shouts in rushed an interpreter. He looked round, and promptly came over to Claude, uttering words which I suppose were calculated to soothe ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... Omnium, and Lord de Courcy, and Mr Moffat were all Whigs; Whigs, however, differing altogether in politics from Sir Roger, who belonged to the Manchester school, and whose pretensions, through some of those inscrutable twists in modern politics which are quite unintelligible to the minds of ordinary men outside the circle, were on this occasion secretly favoured ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Percy Noakes would not act fairly, impartially, or honourably; but he begged it to be distinctly understood, that he said this, without the slightest personal disrespect. Mr. Hardy defended his honourable friend, in a voice rendered partially unintelligible by emotion and brandy-and-water. The proposition was put to the vote, and there appearing to be only one dissentient voice, Mr. Percy Noakes was declared duly elected, and ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... searching in this direction and in that, looked more dead than his face. He saw neither his daughter nor his crown: it was the voice of the one and the touch of the other that comforted him. He kept murmuring what seemed words, but was unintelligible to Curdie, although, to judge from the look of Irene's face, she learned and ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... threw a packet into his dog-cart. In the packet was the half of a broken glass-bangle, one flower of the blood-red dhak, a pinch of bhusa or cattle-food, and eleven cardamoms. That packet was a letter—not a clumsy compromising letter, but an innocent unintelligible lover's epistle. ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... stood outside the tent, awaiting and receiving gruff orders from their superior. Between gulps he gave out almost unintelligible sounds, and one by one these officers, interpreting them ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... inconsistency in the works of Stainer, and to strike the balance between his exceptional abilities on the one side and his model on the other, is not easy. His form was not a borrowed one; it is as original as that of Stradivari—a fact which makes it more than ever unintelligible that he should have been content with it. To arrive at anything approaching to a satisfactory solution, we must endeavour to trace the history of this model. Jacob Stainer was born in the Tyrol, and passed there his early years, and probably ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... is in itself a kind of melody. Had he been much abroad? Yes, and he gloried in the Continent; the dear old inconvenient inns, and the extortionate landlords, and the insatiable commissionaires—he revelled in the commissionaires; and the dear drowsy slow trains, with an absurd guard, who talks an unintelligible patois, and the other man, who always loses one's luggage! Delicious! And the dear little peasant-girls with white caps, who are so divinely pretty when you see them in the distance under a sunny meridian sky, and are so charming in coloured chalk upon ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the shoulders, and tore it away. The pale, distorted face with a bloody channel down the middle was turned inquiringly this way and that. The man put his hand to his forehead as if to collect his thoughts. Then he tried to utter a cry; the jaw moved, but only unintelligible sounds were heard. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... This story is very unintelligible, as no circumstance is mentioned as to where the fish were got, nor who was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... towards morning had been perceived by a market-woman not far from the spot where the body of the murdered child had been afterwards found. The woman asked her what she did there, but she looked very strangely and only returned a confused and unintelligible answer. She returned to the house about eight o'clock, and when one inquired where she had passed the night, she replied that she had been looking for the child and demanded earnestly if anything ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... be," said Florence, kissing her. To this Fanny made some unintelligible demur. It was undoubtedly possible that, under the altered circumstances of the case, so strange a being as Mr. Saul ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... water not far from the ship. At the same time we perceived that all was bustle on the walls; the cannons were pointed, the matches lighted, and plenty of Spanish balls were ready for our reception. Our government being at peace with Spain, this hostile conduct was quite unintelligible to us; but as I had no desire for a battle, I contented myself with drawing off the ship, and lying to beyond the reach of cannon shot, in the hope that a boat would be sent to us with some explanation of it. After, however, waiting a considerable ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... gabbled. The audience yawned, it stirred uneasily, it muttered, grumbled, and broke forth at last in articulate cries of "Speak up!" and "Nobody can hear!" I took to skipping, and, being extremely ill-acquainted with the country, almost invariably cut in again in the unintelligible midst of some new topic. What struck me as extremely ominous, these misfortunes were allowed to pass without a laugh. Indeed, I was beginning to fear the worst, and even personal indignity, when all at once the humour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... should be girdled, at a point halfway up their height, with coronae made of woodwork or of stucco. Without these, the voice of men engaged in discussion there will be carried up to the height above, and so be unintelligible to their listeners. But when the walls are girdled with coronae, the voice from below, being detained before rising and becoming lost in the air, will ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... Colonel had also noticed a singular look in the dog's eye which he did not entirely fancy. He would not say anything against the lady, sir, but he had noticed—And here haply the Colonel became so mysterious and darkly confidential as to be unintelligible and inaudible to ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Hood—the wildest, deepest infinity of marvelously jestful men; manly and rational Sydney, inevitable, infallible, inoffensively wise of wit;[3]—they are gone their way, and ours is far diverse; and they and all the less-known, yet pleasantly and brightly endowed spirits of that time, are suddenly as unintelligible to us as the Etruscans—not a feeling they had that we can share in; and these pictures of them will be to us valuable only as the sculpture under the niches far in the shade there of the old parish church, dimly vital images ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... wisely, is not so hard to grant when the facts of the soul are weighed with the facts of Nature. Power, Love, Wisdom—there you have a real trinity which makes up the Jewish God. And in this God we trust, incomprehensible as are His ways, unintelligible as is His essence. 'Thy ways are not My ways nor Thy thoughts My thoughts.' That comes into collision with no modern philosophies; we appeal to experience and make no demands upon the faculty for believing things 'because they are impossible.' And ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... well-feigned indignation, muttering half-unintelligible words in French, denying stoutly both in voice and gesture all acquaintance with the person who thus ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... but ten to do it, himself and Mr. Skead making twelve, Smart and Benjie fourteen. And yet every voice pronounced, "we must go and explore." The good captain was sorely puzzled, and in his perplexity talked Scotch to an unintelligible degree. Every day was of consequence until he had discovered what injury the ship had received. We, on our parts, declared it was impossible to sleep or rest in peace while we were subjected to any unknown enemy rushing out ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... Then the dreamer rolled out a string of what may be called gibberish, seeing that it consisted of fragments of words and was unintelligible, followed by,— ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... In reality it was at first a close aristocracy of influential families, to whom the authority of the superseded Counts was transferred in commission, and who held it by hereditary right.[3] Unless we firmly grasp this fact, the subsequent vicissitudes of the Italian commonwealths are unintelligible, and the elaborate definitions of the Florentine doctrinaires lose half their meaning. The internal revolutions of the free cities were almost invariably caused by the necessity of enlarging the Popolo, and extending its franchise to the non-privileged inhabitants. Each effort after ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... ceremonial of changing the regimental colors before Buckingham Palace. I will not be asked why this is imperative; it has always been done and probably always will be done, and to most civilian onlookers will remain as unintelligible in detail as it was to me. When the regiment was drawn up under the palace windows, a part detached itself from the main body and went off to a gate of the palace, and continued mysteriously stationary there. In the mean time the ranks left ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... customs of the country, ancient privileges of the inhabitants, and public charities, as were necessarily allowed, and appeared proper to be continued, but which, under the Nabob's government, were not only rated much higher, but had been blended under one confused and almost unintelligible title of expenses of the districts: so joined, perhaps, to afford pleas and means of secreting and appropriating great part of the revenues to other purposes than fairly appeared; and certainly betraying the utmost neglect ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and the evening light died away. They were too excited to strike a light. Shadows crept out of the corners and surrounded them. At last a faint voice grew in their ears. But again the words were unintelligible. ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... or by others. Ecstasy means possession by the deity; the interpretation of the diviner's words, which, in the ecstatic condition, are the words of a spirit or a god, is sometimes left to the bystanders, or, if unintelligible to them, must be recovered by the seer himself when he returns to his ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... Weiss produced a dressing-gown and together we invested the patient in it. Then we dragged him, very limp, but not entirely unresisting, out of bed and stood him on his feet. He opened his eyes and blinked owlishly first at one and then at the other of us, and mumbled a few unintelligible words of protest; regardless of which, we thrust his feet into slippers and endeavoured to make him walk. At first he seemed unable to stand, and we had to support him by his arms as we urged him forward; but presently his trailing legs ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
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