"Undistinguishable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... broad trench in front of his whole position, leaving only a space of some twenty or thirty yards, midway in the work, untouched. Having excavated the trench, he caused it to be filled with water, and covered carefully with boughs of trees, reeds, and earth, so as to be undistinguishable from the general surface of the plain on which he was encamped. On the arrival of the Persians in his front, he first of all held a parley with Perozes, in which, after reproaching him with his ingratitude and breach of faith, he concluded by offering ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... extremely variable almost every part of this species is. I find, in the British Museum, ten distinct specific names given by Dr. Leach to different varieties, or rather to different specimens, for some of them are undistinguishable. A specimen from the Sandwich Islands, sent by Mr. Conrad to Mr. Cuming, is marked ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin
... early morning of her own, A blending of the mist and sea and sun Into an undistinguishable one, And Saint ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... cologne bottle, its kid cover cracked and yellow under its faded ribbons, and three small photographs: Blair, a baby in a white dress; a little boy with long trousers and a visored cap; a big boy of twelve with a wooden gun. They were brown with time, and the figures were almost undistinguishable, but Blair recognized them,—and again his armor ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... it! Zola could describe it—this spectacle of sleeping thousands in the moonlight and in the shadow of the Moon. The roof-tops are crammed with men, women, and children; and the air is full of undistinguishable noises. They are restless in the City of Dreadful Night; and small wonder. The marvel is that they can even breathe. If you gaze intently at the multitude, you can see that they are almost as uneasy as a daylight crowd; but the tumult is subdued. Everywhere, in ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... Gallery. I came away with a reeling undistinguishable mass of form and colour before my eyes. I felt sick. Only one single picture stood out clear. Paragot talked Italian art to my uncomprehending ears all the ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... the housetops since the firing ceased had changed suddenly into hand-clappings, and the cries, though still undistinguishable, were of a different sound. Clay saw that the Americans on the balconies of the club and of the theatre had thrown themselves far over the railings and were all looking in the same direction and waving their hats and cheering loudly, ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the landscape, dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing dust on all the roads. The burial-place had got to the pass that its little heaps of poor grass were undistinguishable from one another; the figure on the Cross might have come down, for anything that could be seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed were fast asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, as the starved usually do, and of ease ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... God's working through His servants, which results at last in the establishment of His eternal kingdom. Just as a drop of water that falls upon the moor finds its way into the brook, and goes down the glen and on into the river, and then into the sea, and is there, though undistinguishable, so in the great summing up of everything at the end, the tiniest deed that was done for God, though it was done far away up amongst the mountain solitudes where no eye saw, shall live and be represented, in its effects on others and in its ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... begin a march of blessings; that blood was staunched and scowling enmities were sinking like storms beneath the horizon; that the dear fatherland, nothing lost, much gained, was to rise up in unexampled honor among the nations of the earth—these thoughts, and that undistinguishable throng of fancies, and hopes, and desires, and yearnings, that filled the soul with tremblings like the heated air of midsummer days—all these kindled up such a surge of joy ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... Then in a few moments, it being apparently impossible to restrain the impatient soldiery, the battle became general. The cry of the onset and the clash of arms fell distinctly upon our ears. Long, long, were the opposing armies mingled together in one undistinguishable mass, waging an equal fight. Now it would sway toward the one side, and now toward the other, heaving and bending as a field of ripe grain to the fitful breeze. Fausta sat with clenched hands and straining eye, ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... level spot; and they had all indisputably been embedded with the shells. I compared the plaited rush, the COTTON string, and Indian corn, at the house of an antiquary, with similar objects, taken from the Huacas or burial-grounds of the ancient Peruvians, and they were undistinguishable; it should be observed that the Peruvians used string only of cotton. The small quantity of sand or gravel with the shells, the absence of large stones, the width and thickness of the bed, and the time requisite ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... sad-coloured, and monotonous, fissured in every direction by channels of dark-tinted water, in which the very fish take the same sad colour. This tract is almost without trace of habitation, save where, at distant intervals, utter destitution has raised a mud-hovel, undistinguishable from the hillocks of turf ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... outline of the part obscured Thread-like curved visible from horn to horn,— And Jupiter, supreme among the orbs, And Mars, with rutilating beam, came forth, And the great concave opened like a flower, Unfolding firmaments and galaxies, Sparkling with separate stars, or snowy white With undistinguishable suns beyond,— They paused and rested on their oars again, And looked around,—in adoration looked. For, gazing on the inconceivable, They felt God is, though inconceivable;— And, while they mutely worshipped, suddenly A change came over Linda's ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... fifty years ago from those that instruct and fascinate us to-day. Except the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and a few pillars covered thick with the filth of the modern city, the traveller found the ancient Rome an undistinguishable heap of bricks. Still, when we reflect on the profound and undying impression that Rome even then had made on such men as Goethe, or Winckelmann, or Byron, the shortcoming must have been partly in the traveller. In truth, Mr. Greg was ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 7: A Sketch • John Morley
... managed with great skill; for no sooner had I extinguished the fire of my camp, and laid me down to rest in full security, as I thought, than I felt seized by an undistinguishable number of hands, and was immediately pinioned as if about to be led to the scaffold for execution. To have attempted to be refractory would have proved useless and dangerous to my life, and I suffered myself to be removed from my camp to theirs, a few miles distant, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... appropriate for a widow. When the guard announced the next stop as Bleecker Street, however, it occurred to Morris that the manufacturers of quadruple plate were producing some very artistic effects in knives, forks and spoons, which in appearance were undistinguishable from sterling silver; and the train was leaving Spring Street when Morris bethought himself of a certain bonbonniere that had cost Mrs. Perlmutter precisely four dollars at a dry-goods store. He distinctly recalled examining the trade-mark, ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... continued our course, the river increasing to the breadth of half a mile with many rapids between the rocky islands. The banks were luxuriantly clothed with pines, poplars, and birch trees, of the largest size, but the different shades of green were undistinguishable at a distance and the glow of autumnal colours was wanting to render ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... Speaker's place of abode in Sydney, and averred her children ran about so untended as to be undistinguishable from aboriginals, and that her housekeeping was sending her husband to perdition; and such is the texture of human nature unearthed at political crises, that some even went so far as to suggest that she was a weakness ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... menacing? And where was desert of stone and sand to compare with this awful expanse of water? What a small dot was this great ship on the visible surface! But the ocean itself extended away beyond there, reaching out to the infinite. The dot became a mere speck, undistinguishable beneath a celestial microscope such as the ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... which now seemed dismal beyond degree. There was a great Argand lamp in one corner. How she had labored that day to prepare it for evening illumination! A little beyond it, on the wall, hung a crucifix. She knelt under it, with her eyes fixed upon it, and thus silently remained until its outline was undistinguishable in the deepening shadows ...
— Madame Delphine • George W. Cable
... Haldimar was on the rack. The chief had gradually dropped his voice as he explained his plan, until at length it became so low, that undistinguishable sounds alone reached the ear of the excited officer. For a moment he despaired of making himself fully master of the important secret; but in the course of the deliberation that ensued, the blanks left unsupplied in the discourse of the leader were abundantly filled ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... up the oozing sides, the dingy parapet above which it was death to put one's head, the grey free sky, the only thing free along that awful row of parallel ditches that stretched from the Belgian coast to Switzerland, the clay-covered, shapeless figures of men, their fellows, almost undistinguishable ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... planking. He worked away with the fury of despair, fully believing that ere long the ship would be sent to the bottom. The noise he made prevented our hearing what was going forward on deck; indeed, all sounds were undistinguishable by ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... paper would be impossible; the reader, however, may form some idea of the indispensable necessity of knowing the distinction by the few words here selected, which to one unaccustomed to hear the Arabic language spoken, would appear similar and undistinguishable. ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... resemblances, in what formerly seemed, and really is, perfectly inseparable. After a little more practice of this kind, we begin to distinguish the figure from the colour by a distinction of reason; that is, we consider the figure and colour together, since they are in effect the same and undistinguishable; but still view them in different aspects, according to the resemblances, of which they are susceptible. When we would consider only the figure of the globe of white marble, we form in reality an idea both of the figure and colour, but tacitly carry our eye to its resemblance with the ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... greatest vigour, is, that they represent their object in so lively a manner, that we could almost say we feel or see it: But, except the mind be disordered by disease or madness, they never can arrive at such a pitch of vivacity, as to render these perceptions altogether undistinguishable. All the colours of poetry, however splendid, can never paint natural objects in such a manner as to make the description be taken for a real landskip. The most lively thought is still inferior to the ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... water. The white disk presented a bluish-green tint at the depth of from nine to twelve meters; at about fifteen meters it assumed a greenish-blue hue, and the blue element increased in distinctness with augmenting depth, until the disk became invisible or undistinguishable in the surrounding mass of blue waters. The water intervening between the white disk and the observer did not present the brilliant and vivid green tint which characterized that which is seen in the shallow ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... miles or more across the moor to his habitation, and the black expanse lay before him, disappearing dismally in the darkness. So that, looking straight before him, sky and land blended together in an undistinguishable and awful blank. ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... to know what we were talking about," said Mrs. Travers, altering slowly her position so as to confront d'Alcacer whose face was almost undistinguishable. "Oh, well, then, we talked about opera, the realities and illusions of the stage, of dresses, of people's names, and things ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... objections that my correspondents made, at any rate to the best of my ability. Whoever is convinced that each individual, be it fish or bird, springs from its own cell, knows ipso facto that a human cell, however undistinguishable it may be to the human eye from the cell of a catarrhine ape, could never have been the cell of an ape. And what is true ontogenetically, is of course true phylogenetically. For myself this inquiry into the simian origin of man never had any great interest; I even doubt ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... women, whose forms will in a few short weeks be unrecognisable, whose whitened bones will be crushed and kicked aside by the future explorer, who may perchance penetrate the labyrinths, and whose dust will finally be mixed up and undistinguishable from that of the bones and skulls taken from ancient cemeteries and graveyards with which this terrible Golgotha ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... growths, and itself covered with low jungle. There is the appearance of a ditch, in the form of a cross, at the intersecting angles of which are tall mounds of ruin, of which the original form is now undistinguishable beyond the fact that the basements, constructed of large stones, indicate that the structures were square. The natives can not be induced to go near this place, although it abounds in wild pigeons, which they ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... self-estimation, and all the sentiments which they will at other times indulge in homage of their own importance,—do they, when this assignment is attempted to be made to them, instantly and willingly surrender to a feeling of crumbling down from this proud individuality into an undistinguishable existence in the mass; and, profaning the language of religion, say to the State, "In thee we live, move, and have a being?" Or, will they, (in assimilation to eastern pagans, who hold that a divinity so pervades them as to be their wills and do their actions, leaving the mere human ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... Harz, and still later one has been cited from Bicken near Herborn by V. Koenen; but, as Beyrich points out, there may be some doubt as to whether the latter is not a Pterichthys. A Ctenacanthus, seemingly undistinguishable from the C. Bohemicus of Barrande's Etage G, has also been obtained from the Lower Devonian "Nereitenschichten" of Thuringia. The characteristic Holoptychius nobilissimus has been detected in the Psammite de Condroz, which in Belgium forms a characteristic sandy portion of the Upper ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... sight. Inasmuch as in this parable no other punishment is inflicted on the indolent servant than the deprivation of his capital, it may possibly be intended to intimate that culpable unfaithfulness in a true believer may sometimes descend so far as to be undistinguishable by human eyes from the entire neglect of the unbelieving. There is, however, in all cases, a dividing line, although we may not be able to trace it—"the Lord knoweth them that are his." Nor does this conception really weaken the motive to diligence; ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... eye, trained perceptions, and frontier knowledge now stood him in good stead. His intuitive sense of distance, instincts of woodcraft, and his unerring detection of those signs, landmarks, and guideposts of nature, undistinguishable to aught but birds and beasts and some children, were now of the greatest service to his less favored companion. In this part of their strange pilgrimage it was the boy who took the lead. Flynn, who during the past two days seemed to have fallen into ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... of the window of the railway-carriage and saw his friend standing on the narrow platform, gazing after the departing train. That thin face, with its sad eyes, became by degrees undistinguishable, and at last he could hardly recognise the slender, slightly ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... cane sofas, a few chairs, a small table, and three or four indifferent prints, which we have ample time to study. For company, we see a stray New York or Philadelphia family, a superannuated Mexican who smiles and bows to everybody, and some dozen of those undistinguishable individuals whom we class together as Yankees, and who, taking the map from Maine to Georgia, might as well come from one place as another, the Southerner being as like the Northerner as a dried pea is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... is art, truth, or sense to fuse a cow, a horse, and a critic into one undistinguishable quadruped, with six legs, then it will be art to melt an ash, an elm, and a lime, things that differ more than quadrupeds, into what you call abstract trees, that any man who has seen a tree, as well as ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... improbable as he knew this to be, his vanity had forbidden him to argue against it. When no little Miss Rivers appeared, the notion of her affliction gained ground, and Leonard, whose gray back was undistinguishable from other gray backs, heard Mrs. Pugh citing his brother as an authority for the misfortune which Mr. and Mrs. Rivers so carefully concealed as to employ no surgeon ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with us. But the breeze only sang about our way, and shook the water out of sunny calm. Katahdin to the North, a fair blue pyramid, lifted higher and stooped forward more imminent, yet still so many leagues away that his features were undefined, and the gray of his scalp undistinguishable from the green of his beard of forest. Every mile, however, as we slid drowsily over the hot lake, proved more and more that we were not befooled,—Iglesias by memory, and I by anticipation. Katahdin lost nothing by approach, as some of the grandees ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... designed with reference to a painted window placed behind it: it is hardly necessary to say that it is greatly benefitted by the general reduction of the glare of light, which rendered the outlines of much of the statuary and more delicate ornaments undistinguishable at a distance, but still more by the transmission through it of glimpses of the most beautiful colours, which change with every movement, however slight, in the position of the eye, and whose very indistinctness and transitory character contributes not a little to the effect which they tend ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... and high moorlands, at whose feet hath stood for ages the royal and ducal capital of the county palatine of Lancaster, once rose a strong border defence called Raven Castle. Its site only remains. This noble and castellated fortress now lies an almost undistinguishable heap on the barren moor; the sheep browse above it, and the herdsman makes his pillow where warriors and dames once met in chivalric pomp, and the chieftain held ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... first metaphysical inquiries by a feeling contemplation of outward phenomena. Now, in the material world, when individual forms perish, each sensible component relapses into its original element and becomes an undistinguishable portion of it. Our exhaled breath goes into the general air and is united with it: the dust of our decaying frames becomes part of the ground and vegetation. So, it is strongly suggested, the lives of things, the souls ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... other high and particular secrets in the culinary art, which they drew from remote family-archives. One might have learned in that instructive assembly how best to keep moths out of blankets,—how to make fritters of Indian corn undistinguishable from oysters,—how to bring up babies by hand,—how to mend a cracked teapot,—how to take out grease from a brocade,—how to reconcile absolute decrees with free will,—how to make five yards of cloth answer the purpose of six,—and how to put down the Democratic party. All were busy, earnest, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... what is this? All your great heroes flung down upon the earth, shapeless, undistinguishable; mere meaningless dust; 'strengthless heads,' and no mistake.—Who is this ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the well-known oscillatory or swarming motion. Notwithstanding the agreement of these minute bodies with the characters of the genus of Bacterium of the Vibrionia, I regarded them as spermatia, having frequently seen others undistinguishable from them under circumstances inconsistent with the presence of Confervae, as in the interior of the immature peridia and sporangia ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... front door extended, as has already been said, a straight passage-way, into which the stairs descended, and on which opened the doors of three rooms. It was covered with a deeply-worn strip of oil-cloth, the pattern being quite undistinguishable in the middle, and at the entrances of the doors and foot of the stairs, but appearing with tolerable clearness for a distance of several inches out along the walls. A high wainscoting ran along the sides; at the front door stood an old-fashioned ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... this view of woman's character and culture is as absurdly narrow and unintelligent, on the one hand, as the opposite view, now so much in vogue, is extravagant and unnatural on the other—that woman ought to be educated so as to be as much as possible the equal of man; undistinguishable from him, except in sex; equal to him in rights and votes; and his competitor in all that makes life a fierce and selfish struggle for ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... which, though crowned and armed, are destined to crumble at the breath of heaven or at the touch of human hands. And still more did it resemble some splendid palace, whose gilded cupolas and towering minarets are built of materials collected from every quarter of the world, only to collapse in undistinguishable ruin when the Ficus religiosa has lodged its destructive roots in the foundation on which they rest. Thus does this great ruler furnish another instance of the familiar but everneeded lesson, that countries may be over-governed. ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... for the occasion; and the festival was concluded by a dramatic representation of events in the life of Buddha, illustrated by scenery and costumes, with figures of elephants and stags, so delicately coloured as to be undistinguishable ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... man ought not to be. Why should not he, so like the worst of men, have some bond or kindred with the evil beings who were not men? Why should not the graceful and deadly cobra, the horrid cerastes, the huge throttling python, and even more, the loathly puff-adder, undistinguishable from the gravel among which he lay coiled, till he leaped furiously and unswerving, as if shot from a bow, upon his prey—why should not they too be kindred to that evil power who had been, in the holiest and ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... evidently intended to be subdued, was now, in the silence of night, distinctly audible; while our whispers, on the contrary, mingled as they were with the crisping sound of the waves rippling on the sands were, at that distance, undistinguishable. It was evident that I had erred in my original conjecture. Had it been Desborough himself, living alone as he did, he would not have knocked for admission where there was no one to afford it, but would ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... locations are said to be:—of prana the breast, of apana the fundamentum, of samana the umbilicus, of udana the throat, and vyana is spread all over the body. Functions of these are:—prana goes out, apana descends, udana ascends, samana reduces the food eaten into an undistinguishable state, and vyana circulates all over the body. Of these five vital airs there are five sub-airs—namely, naga, kurma, krikara, devadatta and dhananjaya. Functions of these are:—eructations produced ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... not meet with a long series of structures running into one another, but only two forms united by no intermediate terms (Figures 8 and 9). The males would be unhesitatingly regarded as belonging to two well-marked species if they did not live on the same spot, with undistinguishable females. That the two forms of the chelae of the males occur in this species is so far worthy of notice, because the formation of the chelae, which differs widely from the ordinary structure in the other species, indicates that it has quite recently undergone considerable changes, and therefore ...
— Facts and Arguments for Darwin • Fritz Muller
... his native town of South Windsor, Connecticut, where he was born on the twenty-first of January, 1743. His body was buried in the graveyard of Bardstown, then a frontier village. No one contributed a stone to mark the grave. Nor has that duty ever been performed. The spot became undistinguishable as time went by, and we believe that there is not a man in the world who can point out the place where the body of John Fitch was buried. The grave of the inventor of the steamboat, hidden away, more obscurely than that of Jean Valjean in the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, will ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... opened and another river of travellers, presumably from the great plains of the Middle West, poured forth, quite undistinguishable in general appearance from those which had preceded them; and, dropping his speculation, Morton peered among these faces, not quite sure that he would know Lambert if he saw him. As a matter of fact, he would ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Give us the veritable notchings of Robinson Crusoe on his stick, the indubitable records of a life long since swallowed up in the blackness of darkness, traced by a hand the very dust of which has become undistinguishable. The foolishest egotist who ever chronicled his daily experiences, his hopes and fears, poor plans and vain reachings after happiness, speaking to us out of the Past, and thereby giving us to understand that it was quite as real as our Present, is in no mean sort our benefactor, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... substance of one of the valves (the ventral), whilst the other or free valve is more or less limpet-shaped. All the above-mentioned genera are in existence at the present day; and one species—namely, Terebratulina striata—appears to be undistinguishable from one now ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... were well adapted to what they had undertaken; and Beaumont and Fletcher present what is probably the only parallel instance of literary co-operation so complete, that the portions written by the respective parties are undistinguishable.' Southey's Cowper, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... there were brown cakes and yellow cakes, frosted cakes, glazed cakes, hearts and rounds, and jumbles, which playful youth slip over the forefinger before spoiling their annular outline. There were moulds of blo'monje, of the arrowroot variety,—that being undistinguishable from such as is made with Russia isinglass. There were jellies, that had been shaking, all the time the young folks were dancing in the next room, as if they were balancing to partners. There were built-up fabrics, called Charlottes, caky externally, pulpy within; there were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... more horrible than the rest, presented itself to the affrighted eyes of Edwin. He saw a figure, larger than the human, that walked among the clouds, and piloted the storm. Its appearance was dreadful, and its shape, loose and undistinguishable, seemed to be blended with the encircling darkness. From its coutenance gleamed a barbarous smile, ten times more terrific than the frown of any other being. Triumph, inhuman triumph, glistened ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... them this fact would not have been noticed, while they were alone or in company with one another, though if a fair white person had gone among them it would perhaps have been more apparent. From the few who were undistinguishable from pure white, the colors ran down the scale by minute gradations to the two or three brown faces at ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Sonora trail was becoming more indistinct before me at every step. The difficulty had increased over the grassy slope, where the overflow from some smaller watercourse above had worn a number of diverging gullies so like the trail as to be undistinguishable from it. Unable to determine which was the right one, I threw the reins over the mule's neck and resolved to trust to that superior animal's sagacity, of which I had heard so much. But I had not taken into account the equally well-known weaknesses of sex and species, and Chu Chu had already ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... disappears, and you note, as it were by flashes, the characteristics of face and figure that mark the Louisianaises in the perfection of the new-blown flower. You see that blondes are not impossible; there, indeed, are two sisters who might be undistinguishable twins but that one has blue eyes and golden hair. You note the exquisite pencilling of their eyebrows, here and there some heavier and more velvety, where a less vivacious expression betrays a share of Spanish blood. As Grandissimes, you mark their tendency to exceed ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... morbid irritability of his boyish pride; but the high spirit, the generous love of independence, the scorn of mercenary calculation, were strong as ever; these were in the grain of his nature. In common with all who in youth aspire to be one day noted from the "undistinguishable many," Lionel had formed to himself a certain ideal standard, above the ordinary level of what the world is contented to call honest, or esteem clever. He admitted into his estimate of life the heroic element, not undesirable even in the most practical point of view, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... suspend my steps. I determined to seek my habitation once more, and, having written and deposited this letter, to return to the execution of my fatal purpose. I had scarcely reached my own door, when some one approached along the pavement. The form, at first, was undistinguishable, but, by coming, at length, within the illumination of a lamp, it ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown |
