Indefinable Quotes

• There is an indefinable mysterious Power that pervades everything.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Power, Mysterious

  Address at Kingsley Hall, delivered 17 October 1931, London

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• 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

  Art, Powerful, Mean

  George Edward Woodberry (1914). “Two Phases of Criticism, Historical and Aesthetic: Lectures Delivered on the Larwill Foundation of Kenyon College, May Seventh and Eighth, 1913”

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• She is very clever, too clever for a woman. She lacks the indefinable charm of weakness.

  Oscar Wilde

  Clever, Weakness, Charm

  Oscar Wilde (1997). “Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis”, p.125, Wordsworth Editions

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• Color which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power.

  Paul Gauguin

  Color, Matter, Vibrations

  Paul Gauguin (1978). “The writings of a savage”, Viking Adult

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

  Countee Cullen

  Hard Work, Secret, Break

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• The world is full of musicians who can play great, and you wouldn't cross the road to see them. It's people who have this indefinable attitude that are the good ones.

  Nick Lowe

  Attitude, Play, People

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

  Chris Brasher

  Athlete, Soul, Olympics

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• 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

  Light, Shining, Clay

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• Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Art, Inspiration, Past

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

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• Man exists, turns up, appears on the scene and only afterwards, defines himself

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Men, Scene, Turns

  Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre (2016). “The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism”, p.164, Open Road Media

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• Being a Christian is more like falling in love than understanding a series of ideas.

  Donald Miller

  Christian, Falling In Love, Ideas

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• 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

  Real, Moving, People

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• Great art is indefinable but that's all right; it exists anyway.

  Edward Abbey

  Art, Great Art, Art Is

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.36, RosettaBooks

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• Old among the young, poor among the rich, I adopt an air of indefinable superiority.

  Mason Cooley

  Air, Rich, Behavior

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• Always the edge of the sea remains an elusive and indefinable boundary. The shore has a dual nature, changing with the swing of the tides, belonging now to the land, now to the sea.

  Rachel Carson

  Ocean, Swings, Sea

  Rachel Carson, Sue Hubbell (1998). “The Edge of the Sea”, p.1, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• God is that indefinable something which we all feel but which we do not know.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  God, Feels, Knows

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Ronald Duncan (2005). “Gandhi: Selected Writings”, p.238, Courier Corporation

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• Anyone who ever loves anyone truly loves them because of their indefinable essence, not because they conform to some checklist.

  Kim Wilkins

  Essence, Checklists, Conform

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• How can one express the indefinable sensations that one experiences while writing an instrumental composition that has no definite subject? It is a purely lyrical process. It is a musical confession of the soul, which unburdens itself through sounds just as a lyric poet expresses himself through poetry...As the poet Heine said, 'Where words leave off, music begins.'

  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

  Music, Writing, Soul

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• Depression is like a headache or true love or any of those indefinable concepts. If you've never been there, you don't know what it's like until you're too far in to stop the process.

  Tim Sandlin

  Headache, Process, Knows

  Tim Sandlin (2010). “Skipped Parts: A Novel”, p.42, Sourcebooks, Inc.

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• 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

  Forever, Contentment, Longing

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• There are women who have an indefinable charm in their faces which makes them beautiful to their intimates, but a cold stranger who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty would fail.

  Mark Twain

  Beautiful, Matter, Faces

  Mark Twain (2015). “A Tramp Abroad: Mark Twain's Collections”, p.214, 谷月社

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• There is more or less of pathos in all true beauty. The delight it awakens has an indefinable, and, as it were, luxurious sadness, which is perhaps one element of its might.

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman

  Beauty, Sadness, Elements

  Henry Theodore Tuckerman (1846). “Thoughts on the Poets”, p.275

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• Of course there must be the urge, the indefinable longing to get something through into terms of plastic presentation, but results are nearly always unpredictable.

  Lawren Harris

  Desire, Longing, Plastic

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• love is so very subtle an essence, such an indefinable metaphysical marvel, that its due force, though very cruelly felt by the sufferer himself, is never clearly understood by those who look on at its torments and wonder why he takes the common fever so badly.

  Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Love Is, Essence, Fever

  Mary Elizabeth Braddon (2015). “Lady Audley's Secret”, p.344, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• 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

  People, Humanity, Mind

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