Indefinable Something Quotes & Sayings

How good it would be to know where to look for help in this life and what to expect after it, there, beyond the grave! How happy and calm I'd be, if I could say now: Lord, have mercy on me! ... But to whom shall I say it? Either it is an indefinable, unfathomable power, which I not only cannot address, but which I cannot express in words - the great all or nothing ... or it is that God of whom Princess Marya has sewn in here, in this amulet? Nothing, nothing is certain, except the insignificance of everything I can comprehend and the grandeur of something incomprehensible but most important! — Leo Tolstoy

Glamour: the indefinable something about a girl with a big bosom. — Abe Burrows

At last she halted at a rotted, mossy stump. "I cannot marry you," she told the clump of toadstools flourishing at its base. "I'm so terribly sorry. I should have told you years ago, but - "
"For God's sake, Cecily." His soft laugh startled her, and she lifted her gaze. "You can't do this, not yet. How can a lady refuse a man, when he hasn't even proposed? I won't stand for it."
"It's not right, Denny. I've known for some time now that we wouldn't ... that I couldn't ... "
He shushed her gently, placing his hands on her shoulders. "The truth is, we know nothing of what could be or would be. We've been delaying this conversation for years now, haven't we? I've been waiting for ... Well, I hardly know what I've been waiting for. Something indefinable, I suppose. And you've been waiting for Luke. — Tessa Dare

These tiny groups that make us feel loved and save and part of something even on our loneliest nights when we stumble home to our computers - partnerless, tired, awake. We won't have those next year. We won't live on the same block as all our friends. We won't have a bunch of group texts.
This scares me. More than finding the right job or city or spouse, I'm scared of losing this web we're in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now. — Marina Keegan

It had been some time since Magnus was last in love, and he was beginning to feel the effects. He remembered the glow of love as brighter and the pain of loss as gentler than they had actually been. He found himself looking into many faces for potential love, and seeing many people as shining vessels of possibility. Perhaps this time there would be that indefinable something that sent hungry hearts roving, longing and searching for something, they knew not what, and yet could not give up the quest. Every time a face or a look or a gesture caught Magnus's eye these days, it woke to life a refrain in Magnus's breast, a song in persistent rhythm with his heartbeat. Perhaps this time, perhaps this one. — Cassandra Clare

When the logician has resolved each demonstration into a host of elementary operations, all of them correct, he will not yet be in possession of the whole reality, that indefinable something that constitutes the unity ... Now pure logic cannot give us this view of the whole; it is to intuition that we must look for it. — Henri Poincare

Take the stupidest thing you've ever done. At least it's done. It's over. It's gone. We can all learn from our mistakes and heal and move on. But it's harder to learn or heal or move on from something that hasn't happened; something we don't know and is therefore indefinable; something which could very easily have been the best thing in our lives, if only we'd taken the plunge, if only we'd held our breath and stood up and done it, if only we'd said yes. — Danny Wallace

There was an indefinable something that spoke of the sea in the not-too-great distance. — Stephen King

In the OED editors' defense, they have set out to accomplish something that is inherently impossible - to record the entirety of a language. It is only natural they should occasionally come across words that are virtually indefinable, or that have meanings that have been lost to the ages. Whatever failings or inconsistencies the editors may exhibit are certainly not for lack of effort. James Murray in particular was renowned for attempting to ferret out knowledge, writing letters to every authority he could think of and posting queries in newspapers begging for information on a word. When I read the definition of lege de moy ("App. the name of some dance") I cannot help but imagine that they must have spent a tremendous amount of time looking for the meaning and roots of this word before one of the editors finally threw his hands up in disgust and exclaimed, "What the hell - just say it's some kind of dance or something, and let's get to the pub." As — Ammon Shea

you asked me if I believed in eternal love. Love is something way too abstract and indefinable. It depends on what we perceive and what we experience. If we don't exist, it doesn't exist. And we change so much; love must change as well. — Julie Maroh

Conviction brings a silent, indefinable beauty into faces made of the commonest human clay; the devout worshiper at any shrine reflects something of its golden glow, even as the glory of a noble love shines like a sort of light from a woman's face. — Honore De Balzac

She walked in somber seclusion, unable to connect with women despite her heart's desire to do so while being shadowed by men who hungered for the indefinable; and while she yearned for friendship, they yearned for something more and what she had been in search of remained removed from her, and the more she erected barriers, the more they crossed them and each time they did, she turned from them and hid. — Donna Lynn Hope

Well, when you do something like Rocky which is indefinable somehow, it always becomes difficult to lose that. — Richard O'Brien

Discipline brings us effort, sacrifice and suffering. Later it brings us something of an inestimable value: something of which those who live only for pleasure, profit or amusement will always be deprived. This peculiar indefinable joy which one must have felt oneself to understand is the sign with which life marks its moment of triumph. — Alexis Carrel

Christy Mathewson brought something to baseball no one else had ever given the game. He handed the game a certain touch of class, an indefinable lift in culture, brains, and personality. — Grantland Rice

What is courage? Let me tell you what I think it is. An indefinable quality that makes a man put out that extra something, when it seems there is nothing else to give. I dare you to be better than you are. I dare you to be a thoroughbred. — Herb Brooks

He found himself looking into many faces for potentional love, and seeing many people as shining vessels of possibility. Perhaps this time there would be that indefinable something that sent hungry hearts roving, longing and searching for something, they knew not what, and yet could not give up the quest. — Cassandra Clare

It's kind of like religion. It gives us comfort to believe we have defined something that is, by its very nature, indefinable. As to whether or not we've gotten it right, well, it's all a matter of faith. — Neal Shusterman

I'm a believer in belief. Faith is something that works - it causes people to do things, it has results. It's an intangible, indefinable, very real thing. And it moves people, sometimes to atrocity. And sometimes to survival. — Tommy Lee Jones

Much of our modern difficulty, in religion and other things, arises merely from this: that we confuse the word "indefinable" with the word "vague." If some one speaks of a spiritual fact as "indefinable" we promptly picture something misty, a cloud with indeterminate edges. But this is an error even in commonplace logic. The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing; the primary fact. It is our arms and legs, our pots and pans, that are indefinable. The indefinable is the indisputable. The man next door is indefinable, because he is too actual to be defined. And there are some to whom spiritual things have the same fierce and practical proximity; some to whom God is too actual to be defined. — G.K. Chesterton

Reading aloud is different from just following sentences with your eyes. Something quite unexpected wells up in your mind, a kind of indefinable resonance that I find impossible to resist. — Haruki Murakami

She told herself that she longed greatly to go back to those dear merry days when life was seen through a rosy mist of hope and illusion, and possessed an indefinable something that had passed away forever. Where was it now
the glory and the dream? — L.M. Montgomery

The aesthetic event is something as evident, as immediate, as indefinable as love, the taste of fruit, as water. We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it further with words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings? — Jorge Luis Borges

Just at that moment she glanced towards him and saw him smiling at her, his eyes lingering on her with warmth and an indefinable something else. Her heart caught in her chest — Emily Arden

The thing that you learn in directing is that when you're on the floor, no matter how complex the shooting is ... you have to remain absolutely sensitive to every nuance of the behavior of the people around you. Because, ultimately, if you don't keep in mind the overall humanity, then the machine takes over and suddenly all you have are technically fine shots, technically good performances. The story's being told, but something's lacking, something mysterious, indefinable. — Irvin Kershner

The Portuguese call it saudade: a longing for something so indefinite as to be indefinable. Love affairs, miseries of life, the way things were, people already dead, those who left and the ocean that tossed them on the shores of a different land - all things born of the soul that can only be felt. — Anthony De Sa

Love, I would later conclude, was all things to all people. Love was the breaking and healing of hearts. Love was misunderstood, love was faith, love was the promise of now that became hope for the future. Love was a rhythm, a resonance, a reverberation. Love was awkward and foolish, it was aggressive and simple and possessed of so many indefinable qualities it could never be conveyed in language. Love was being. The same gravity that relentlessly pulled at me was defied as I rose into something that became everything. — R.J. Ellory

God is that indefinable something which we all feel but which we do not know. — Mahatma Gandhi

What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. — Jean-Paul Sartre

You do not become a star, you are born a star. A star is born with that indefinable extra something. — Sophia Loren

With the "civilized" person contentment is a myth. From the cradle to the grave they are forever longing and striving after something better, an indefinable something, some new object yet unattained. — William Matthews

In the wine world, crusaders would have wine consumers believe that the only wines of merit are something completely indefinable but which they call 'authentic' or 'natural.' — Robert M. Parker Jr.

And through a dark night of the soul, I came to realize that salvation happens through a mysterious, indefinable, relational interaction with Jesus in which we become one with Him. I realized Christian conversion worked more like falling in love than understanding a series of concepts of ideas. This is not to say there are no true ideas, it is only to say there is something else, something beyond. — Donald Miller

It would be good," thought Prince Andrei, glancing at the little image that his sister had hung around his neck with such reverence and emotion, "It would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya . How good it would be to know where to seek help in this life, and what to expect after it, beyond the grave! How happy and at peace I should be if I could now say:" Lord have mercy on me! ... But to whom should I say this? To some power
indefinable and incomprehensible, to which I not only cannot appeal, but which I cannot express in words
The Great All or Nothing," he said to himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Marya? There is nothing certain, nothing except the nothingness of everything that is comprehensible to me, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all important! — Leo Tolstoy

There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention- that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary- the sunshine, the memories, the future,- which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. — Joseph Conrad

In some indefinable way he felt drawn to her, as if he already knew her, as if they had been close friends, soulmates even, somewhere in a previous existence. Her mere presence seemed to calm his thoughts, saving him from the vicissitudes of his mind. She appeared before him as familiar, a kindred spirit. Perhaps it was something in her face, her eyes. She seemed to know ... what, exactly, he was not sure. She seemed to understand. Or rather, he had detected in her the capacity to understand. — Tabitha Suzuma

If it is awakened, it communicates a new life to the intelligence in which it lives, so that it becomes a living awareness of itself: and this awareness is not so much something that we ourselves have, as something that we are. It is a new and indefinable quality of our living being. — Thomas Merton

He wondered what the years had done to his face as he traced the effects on hers. Eyes the same blue-lit green, but where mischievous joy once danced, now he saw sadness, deep as the ocean. Her cheeks were thinner. There was something else too: the arrogant pride of a princess seemed to be extinct. Yet the indefinable, untamed quality of her spirit remained. Yes, it was Torina. — Victoria Hanley

There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call 'the breaks. — Countee Cullen

There is something in the Olympics, indefinable, springing from the soul, that must be preserved. — Chris Brasher

An indefinable something is to be done, in a way nobody knows how, at a time nobody knows when, that will accomplish nobody knows what. — Bill Vaughan

His [Ben Okri's] work poses very serious questions for the twenty-first century. Among them: To what extent will we allow the indefinable dynamics of something called "destiny" to maintain grief and horror in the world? How hard are human beings willing to fight to achieve and sustain justice, equanimity, or joy? And should progress be called such when it devours what is best within the human spirit? — Aberjhani

Art is expression; what is expressed is often the vision of a subtle and powerful soul, and also his experience with his vision; and however vivid and skilful he may be in the means of expression, yet it is frequently found that the master-spell in his work is something felt to be indefinable and inexpressible. — George Edward Woodberry