"Baffled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Rousillon. While on a visit to the king of France, Helena, a physician's daughter, cured the king of a. disorder which had baffled the court physicians. For this service the king promised her for husband any one she chose to select, and her choice fell on Bertram. The haughty count married her, it is true, but deserted her at once, and left for Florence, where he joined the duke's ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the same. Everything is meaningless and transitory, except to be prepared. And I finally became prepared for anything and everything. My life was and is a preparation—for what? For social crucifixion, I suppose, for I belong to those baffled beings who are compelled to unfold within because there is no place for them without. I am a remaining product of the slums, consciously desiring to be there. I know its few heights and many depths. There have I seen unsurpassed devotion and unbelievable atrocities, which I would not dare, ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... have been forcibly swallowed up in the mission of natural philosopher; but, on the other hand, to pause resolutely at any one stage of this public examination, and to refuse all further advance, would be, in the popular opinion, to retreat as a baffled disputant from insane paradoxes which he had not been able to support. One step taken in that direction was fatal, whether the great envoy retreated from his own words to leave behind the impression that he was defeated as a rash speculator, or stood to these words, and thus ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... Momentarily baffled here, the huge elephant wheeled and bore down upon the hapless priests who had now scattered, terror-stricken, in every direction. The nearest he gored and threw high among the branches of a tree. One he seized in the coils of his trunk and broke upon a huge bole, ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... feels humiliated when one is stumped about a quite common thing.... All you could see a little way iff was that they were very dwarg and very thick, and the peculiar coloul baffled us...." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... seemed so ridiculous. I was baffled, perplexed, full of contempt and misery at once. "Perhaps she is engaged, after all," I comforted myself, feeling that there was anything ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... early and many enquiries about, and there was one that had stirred and baffled his curiosity much before he discovered what it really was. All that was visible from the street was a great high wall, apparently quite alone, no thicker than a party wall, with grated windows, to which iron screens gave farther protection. At first he supposed there had been a fire; but by degrees ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... question propounded by the other. Naturally it was Hiram who was always the loser. The Tyrians maintain that finally Solomon found more than his match in one of Hiram's subjects, one Abdamon, who put many a riddle to Solomon that baffled his wit. (36) ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... at her, baffled, inarticulate. "Oh, of course," he agreed helplessly, "we want to do the best by ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... and walked on without speaking. Dr. O'Grady was not the kind of man who is easily baffled. He turned round ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... not cry; Graham at college, coming in with the winning crew, and stumbling, half collapsed, into the arms of a waiting, cheering crowd. And the Graham who had followed his mother up the stairs that night, to come down baffled, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... mathematical considerations, that "when we try to visualize the motions of the air having one thousand separate tones, to present to the eye of the mind the battling of the pulses, direct and reverberated, the imagination retires baffled at the attempt;" and he might have added, the shallowness and fallacy of the wave theory of sound was made apparent. He, however, does express himself as follows: "Assuredly, no question of science ever stood so much in need of revision ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... brought her to London has been successfully accomplished," he thought. "Has she baffled me by some piece of womanly jugglery? Am I never to get any nearer to the truth, but am I to be tormented all my life by vague doubts, and wretched suspicions, which may grow upon me till I become a monomaniac? Why did ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Ghosts Present at a Hanging A Cold Greeting A Wireless Message An Arrest Soldier-Folk A Man with Two Lives Three and One are One A Baffled Ambuscade Two Military Executions Some Haunted Houses The Isle of Pines A Fruitless Assignment A Vine on a House At Old Man Eckert's The Spook House The Other Lodgers The Thing at Nolan The Difficulty of Crossing a Field An Unfinished Race Charles Ashmore's ...
— Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories • Ambrose Bierce
... crossed eyes darting here and there along the line of force, and after a long minute, after a time that seemed filled with a distant chuckling, like thunder too far off to be heard clearly—the lift and fall of the dust on the baffled wind stopped, the strict line of the wind's stoppage began to disappear, the ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... for a well could not have been selected in all his extensive grounds; but he was not a man to be patiently baffled even by Nature herself, and he stood looking with grim satisfaction at the hole which rapidly widened and deepened under the vigorous efforts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... some islets, but the Indians, hovering round them in their balsas, prevented them from advancing further. At length the Spaniards embarked in twenty balsas, and came in sight of the native squadron. The Indians, however, going in and out among the lanes and rushes, baffled their oppressors, cutting off several Spanish balsas. A party of cavalry also, advancing into the swampy ground, was suddenly surrounded and cut to pieces, with a loss to the ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... said Lodbrok. "The man's pride is hurt that he should be thus baffled for all his skill, which, from his talk, must be great," and we both laughed, for Beorn loved ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... striped with those fine red roses. And now Adrienne's anger, the grief that she had trampled under for some hours, increased from moment to moment, heightened and stung by the sight of this creature, by all kinds of bitter thoughts and by visions of treason and baffled love. She felt that she was becoming literally mad at the thought that, upon those red and painted lips, Sulpice had rested his, that his hands had stroked those shoulders, unwound that hair, that this woman's body had been folded in ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... was growing rapidly and would soon make a complete disguise. Village constables are generally simple people, easily imposed upon, very different from London detectives; and hitherto he felt sure that he had baffled pursuit by the mere simplicity of his proceedings. The intelligent officials of Scotland Yard were used to forgers and swindlers who travelled by express trains and crossed to America by fashionable steamers. ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... promised with a martial air, But ill thy soul supplies a form so fair. In former days, in all thy gallant pride, When thy tall ships triumphant stemm'd the tide, When Greece beheld thy painted canvas flow, And crowds stood wondering at the passing show, Say, was it thus, with such a baffled mien, You met the approaches of the Spartan queen, Thus from her realm convey'd the beauteous prize, And both her warlike lords outshined in Helen's eyes? This deed, thy foes' delight, thy own disgrace, Thy father's grief, and ruin of thy race; ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... was the cause of no small amount of discomfort to the persons already on board that vessel. It took us but little time to rush over the gangway and seek safety from our pursuers within the precincts of the steamboat: but they were not to be baffled easily; they came in after us in millions; like Bishop Haddo's rats, they came "in at the windows and in at the doors," until in a very short space of time the interior of the boat became perfectly black with insects. Attracted by the light they flocked into the saloon, covering ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... thou comest, it is always A Sabbath in the house. I cannot work; I must sit at thy feet; must see thee, hear thee! I have a feeble, wayward, doubting heart, Incapable of endurance or great thoughts, Striving for something that it cannot reach, Baffled and disappointed, wounded, hungry; And only when I hear thee am I happy, And only when I see thee am at peace! Stronger than I, and wiser, and far better In every manner, is my sister Martha. Thou seest how well she orders everything ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... king, baffled, now offers to pardon and reward the thief if he will discover himself. The thief gives himself up, and ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... playing with the rest of the girls, so thinking that Ling Kuan was like the others, he felt impelled to draw near her and to entreat her, with a forced smile, to get up and sing part of the "Niao Ch'ing Ssu." But his hopes were baffled; for as soon as Ling Kuan perceived him sit down, she impetuously raised herself and withdrew from his side. "I'm hoarse," she rejoined with a stern expression on her face. "The Empress the other day called us into the palace; but I couldn't sing ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... indiscriminate rage, and many of those who escaped were deprived of their speech, without being secure from a return of the disorder. The physicians of Constantinople were zealous and skilful, but their art was baffled by the various symptoms and pertinacious vehemence of the disease; the same remedies were productive of contrary effects and the event capriciously disappointed their prognostics of death or recovery. The ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... And his breath failed him, his throat was parched, his face burned as with the simoom wind, his legs were trembling under him. His presence of mind, usually so perfect, failed him utterly. He was baffled, netted; there was a spell upon him. Was it a dream? Was it all one of those hideous nightmares of endless pillars beyond pillars, stairs above stairs, rooms within rooms, changing, shifting, lengthening out for ever and for ever before the dreamer, narrowing, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... contradiction in terms is the bedrock on which all our thoughts and deeds are founded, and to acquiesce cheerfully in the fact that whenever we try to go below the surface of any enquiry we find ourselves utterly baffled—or to redefine freedom and necessity, admitting each as a potent factor of the other. And this I do not see my way to doing. I am therefore necessitated to choose freely the admission that our understanding can burrow but a very ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... a solitary scholar. I comprehended, too, how gradually and slowly, as my father entered that stage of middle life when all men are most prone to ambition, the long-silenced whispers were heard again, and the mind, at last escaping from the listless weight which a baffled and disappointed heart had laid upon it, saw once more, fair as in youth, the only ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... (and not without cause, perhaps) for having, by his scruples, occasioned the loss of the bishopric. Commanded to avoid a battle, Tilly contented himself with checking the farther advance of the enemy; but he could save only a few of the towns from the impetuosity of the Swedes. Baffled in an attempt to reinforce the weak garrison of Hanau, which it was highly important to the Swedes to gain, he crossed the Maine, near Seligenstadt, and took the direction of the Bergstrasse, to protect ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Hugo's grasp; the guide was amidst the reeds, and in one moment he had made his escape; the reeds parted, waved again, higher than the head of the fugitive, and the baron saw him no more; only a mocking laugh arose to augment the rage of the baffled tyrant. ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... feeling herself baffled, sat for some time wondering how to find fault politely with the young man before her. Her mind was full of subject-matter, but the politeness easily eluded her. She threw out after a time the suggestion that his presence at the bedside of sick people was not ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... thought it would turn out. Baffled in their game of robbing old men who have all left the city, they have begun to work the chance for blackmail. I will advise Van Cleft to pay them, and then we will follow the money. Here is the mansion and I will be out ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... thought. Other peoples had declared war on each other: America by her silence had declared war on Ignorance. He felt a sudden shame for his previous doubts. He saw clearly that his great continent-country was a rock to which the other baffled, despairing nations might ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... presently to race it through the country, this strange malady laid low its victim with what might have been pneumonia, except for certain complications that baffled and alarmed an already thoroughly aroused ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Pecos, and the more distant one as belonging to Jesse Presnall. Blair had stayed all night with the latter, and while its foreman was able to locate at least a dozen trail herds in close proximity, our two from Uvalde had neither been seen nor heard of. Baffled again, necessity compelled us to turn within touch of some outfitting point. The staples of life were running low in our commissary, no opportunity having presented itself to obtain a new supply since we left the ranch in Medina over a month before. Consequently, after crossing the ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... at Austin, but not a muscle of his grey face responded. Her natural expectations were baffled. There was no start of amazement, no fierce movement of anger, no indignant look of reproach. She was thrown back on ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... on the wall A thousand Blues and swung their caps in air, Thundering their wild Hurra! above the roar And crash of cannon;—victory was ours. Back to his crest of hills the baffled foe Reluctant turned and fled the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... to this no one was better qualified to aspire. Cross purposes, moot-points, pleas, demurrers, flaws in the indictment, double meanings, cases, inconsequentialities, these were the play-things, the darlings of Mr. Tooke's mind; and with these he baffled the Judge, dumb-founded the Counsel, and outwitted the Jury. The report of his trial before Lord Kenyon is a master-piece of acuteness, dexterity, modest assurance, and legal effect. It is much like his examination ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... argument of the priest and the convenience of the neighbours; and all because a bad man had been brought into it. "What the revered osho[u] (prebend) has said reaches to the heart of this Iwa. Submission is to be an inspiration from the revered hotoke. Iwa will seek their counsel." Baffled, the priest left the house; veiled censure was on his lips; open disobedience and contempt on the part ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... mystery surrounding everything completely baffled the Russian police, and though they half suspected Barnwell, they were not able to bring anything home to him, and he all the while maintained the appearance of a rich cosmopolitan, and if they followed him in his many journeyings they were unable to see that he was doing more ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... mist had aided him to lose those pursuing vultures. The last of them fell off, baffled,—or afraid to go deeper into France. Now he emerged again into the clear air and the starlight. The land beneath him was a scudding blur, with a dark-green mass in its center, the forest ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... with pain; he was no Don Juan, learned in the byways of a woman's heart. Then, almost roughly, he caught her to him, and she, looking up, saw a strange glowing look come over his face—a look which was, even to her, an all-sufficing answer, for it told of the baffled longing, of the abnegation, and, even now, of the restraint and selflessness, of ...
— The Uttermost Farthing • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his own, yet, by reason of her more delicate organization, she was unable so to conceal her emotion that it should be entirely unobserved. The faintest possible color suffused her face as she proceeded, and when she raised her eyes at the conclusion, they had in them a look which, though it baffled the sagacity of her keen observer, betrayed a something which he did not like. It was not triumph, nor despondency, nor joy, nor grief, but, according to the fancy of Sir Christopher, a strange mingling of them all. The two had been in the habit, on their arrival in the country, and ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... on the hearth, and learns, Half-dazed, that other is his actual self In name and claim, as the whole parish swears, So strangely, suddenly, stood dispossessed Of that same self I had sold all to keep, A baffled ghost that none would see or hear! "Vesalius? Who's Vesalius? This Fallopius It is who dragged the Galen-idol down, Who rent the veil of flesh and forced a way Into the secret fortalice of life"— Yet it was I that bore the brunt ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently awaits an explicit answer, and Jo, more baffled by his patience than by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... along the road leading to Ostend. Rod had figured some time back that they would soon be across the border, and traversing French soil. The last glimpse they had of the baffled plotter he was standing in the road and still staring hard after ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... bursting Baron turned and flew up the stairs. Being familiar with every turn, he gained on the Russian and caught sight of the dreadful black coat-tails as his enemy burst through to the twentieth floor. The locked door of the apartment baffled him only a moment. Stepping back, Solinski hurled his giant frame against the panels. They splintered and crashed inward. But the delay allowed ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... rarely granted to strangers who have not some scientific claim to the favour. Lord Derby has agents collecting for him in every part of the world, and has been very successful in rearing many birds from tropical and semi-tropical countries in confinement, which have baffled the efforts of zoological societies. The aviaries are arranged on a large scale, with shrubs growing in and water flowing through them. In fine weather some beautiful parrots, macaws, and other birds of a tame kind, are permitted to fly about the grounds. There is something very ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... themselves—as they less and less want, or at any rate less and less venture to appear to want, to be left. As they had for so long arranged things," the Princess went on, "you see they sometimes have to be." And then, as if baffled by the lucidity of this, Mrs. Assingham for a little said nothing: "Now do you ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... darksome glen, Soon lost to hound and Hunter's ken, In the deep Trosachs' wildest nook His solitary refuge took. There, while close couched the thicket shed Cold dews and wild flowers on his head, He heard the baffled dogs in vain Rave through the hollow pass amain, Chiding the ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... materials. But there was neither chimney nor plastering, for Heaton had neither bricks nor lime. Bricks he insisted he could and would make, and did, though in no great number; but lime, for some time, baffled his ingenuity. At last, Socrates suggested the burning of oyster-shells, and by dint of fishing a good deal, among the channels of the reef, a noble oyster-bed was found, and the boats brought in enough of the shells to furnish as much lime as would put up a chimney for the kitchen; ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... behaviour; whenever he wanted new advancement, he used to go off He has openly met with great discouragement now; though he and we know Mr. Pelham so -well, that it Will not be surprising if, though baffled, he still carries his point of secretary of state. However, the old corps resented this violently, and rushed up their old anger: Mr. Pelham was inclined to give way, but Lord Hartington, at the head of the young Whigs, divided the House, and Pitt had the mortification ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... all its changing harmonies. It is the self-consciousness of a soul compelled by quick and eager senses and vivid intelligence to recognise a host of outer realities not itself, which it constantly strives to bring into relation with itself, as constantly baffled and thrown back by the obstinate objectivity of that outer world. A pure dreamer would have "contentedly lived in a nut-shell and imagined himself king of infinite space"; a purely scientific intelligence would have applied himself to the patient ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... trees. Again and again his mind reviewed the strange events of the evening, unable to arrive at any definite conclusion. The harder he sought to delve into the mystery, the more obscure it became. The young woman herself thoroughly baffled him. If this was merely a test, it was certainly a most unusual one, and he hoped he had met the requirements to her entire satisfaction. He already frankly acknowledged to himself, at least, that she had become of personal interest to him. He fell a peculiar desire to be of ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... September 4th they sprung a mine under the "Bourg" bastion; one-half of the city was shaken thereby, and a breach was rent in the bastion wide enough for an assault to be delivered, but the enemy was repulsed. Next day the Turks attacked it with renewed courage, but the valor of the besieged baffled the assailants. On September 10th another mine was sprung under the same bastion, and the breach was so wide that a battalion might have entered it abreast. The danger was extreme, for the garrison was exhausted by fighting, sickness, and incessant labor. The Count de Starhemberg ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... Colonel Wensleydale, formerly of the Grenadier Guards. Lord Blackwater professed himself vastly annoyed and displeased. The young people, furiously in love, had managed the affair, however, with a skill that baffled all vigilance. Married they were, and without any settlements, Colonel Wensleydale having nothing to settle, and Lady Alice, like a little fool, being only anxious to pour all that she possessed into the lap ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... freighted with the balsamic odor of the crowning foliage. But the foliage of "Gladswood"! We have no powers capable of description. The majestic maples, stately willows and graceful elms were grouped with an effect that baffled the mind of man. And the interfacings of soft feathery furze, moss and ferns. Surely this spot must have been in the mystic ages one grand amphitheatre for the sylvan deities. And the stately manor-house, for such it much resembles ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... pursue his researches. But the time of his visit was most unfortunate. The whole province was in a state of open rebellion; so that, while he was received courteously, and permitted to make some local surveys, nothing of importance could be accomplished. Baffled and wearied by delay, he sailed back to Singapore, and from thence to Celebes, where he remained several months, engaged in extensive explorations, and in collecting specimens to illustrate the natural history of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... situation of the Dundee column, they misunderstood operations designed to keep them from it. The demonstration against Intintanyoni seemed to them nothing less than a serious attempt to drive them from their hold, and the retreat of the British to be that of a baffled army. Thus, ignorant of their strategical defeat, they rejoiced at what seemed a tactical victory. Moreover, their losses[109] had been small. The cavalry alone, now called upon to protect the rear—as all day they had covered the right—had ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... and "the-remnant-that-shall-be-saved" idea give place to a faith that claims for God the entire world with its present life as well as individual immortality in future felicity. Miracle and cataclysm and postmortem glory—the ever-ready recourse of baffled hope and persecuted Christianity—are giving place more and more to a Christian conquest that is orderly and inclusive of the whole sweep of human life. The church is but dimly conscious, as yet, that through the aid of science she has attained this magnificent ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... along. Its gray, dirty waves are beaten up by a light, chilly wind, and chase the black barges with a puny, fretful, sinister fury, falling back from their dark, wet sides with a hiss of baffled hatred. ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... can not get into his presence," replied Otanes. "There are guards stationed at every gate and door, who will not allow us to pass. If we attempt to kill them, a tumult will be immediately raised, and the alarm given, and all our designs will thus be baffled." ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... more to be said or done. The steward, baffled and bursting with rage, fell back; and the stranger, directing me by a gesture to attend him close, descended the stairs and crossing the courtyard, entered St. Honore. I was in a maze what I was to expect from him; and overjoyed as I was at my present deliverance, had a sneaking fear ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... decrease in our numbers as Methodists should lead us to repent, and do our first works. We should as a Church humble ourselves before God, and that without delay. He waits to be gracious. We must not lose heart. Let the thousands of faithful workers among us remember that when the disciples were baffled, Jesus was in the company of Moses and Elijah; but He dismissed them that He might come to the help of His people. Whatever he may be doing, we can catch His ear, and bring Him to the rescue. He needs only that we should cry to Him for help. We indulge the ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... soon. As I peered over the bridge rail an outstretched hand was reaching for a hold. Instantly it was withdrawn. The moonlight poured like a spotlight on the uplifted face of the sailor Neidlinger. Never have I seen a look more expressive of stupid, baffled surprise. His mouth was open, his eyes popping. But when I made a motion to aim my revolver he slid down the stanchion with a rush, knocking over the fellow supporting ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... she had betrayed him—of course she had had a lover! What other explanation was there of her turning against him?—of her flight from his house? But she had been clever enough to hide all the traces of it. He recalled his own lame and baffled attempts to get hold of some evidence against her, with gnashing ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... limestone on every side, yet they could have no brick and no mortar; grand boulders of granite and rock were everywhere, yet there was not a single facility for cutting, drawing, or using stone. These homeless men, so sorely in need of immediate shelter, were baffled by pioneer conditions, and had to turn to many poor expedients, and be satisfied with rude covering. In Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and, possibly, other states, some reverted to an ancient form of shelter: they became cave-dwellers; ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... she stood there, baffled, "a woman scorned" in the presence and hearing of another, who nevertheless stepped quickly forward to express her opinion of such heartless, soulless conduct despite the interposing shade, there came a sharp, ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... with a ferocious growl it swerved aside, and bounded to the other side of the ravine. Again the hunter leaped across, and stood in its way. He bent forward to resist the animal's weight and impetus, but the baffled wolf was cowed by his resolute front. It turned tail, and fled, followed by Glumm ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... for the man who had swooned away in taking farewell of her; she was filled with anger against the foolish prejudices and the petty finesse of the people of the world; filled with joy at having baffled a monstrous conspiracy against her happiness; filled with pride because she had seen clearly, because she had not mistaken in her choice, and because the man whom she loved was worthy of being loved. During several days she had ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... crowding in passing the gate, yet only a small portion of the water was spilled. The brave water carriers were received with open arms and loud cheers by the garrison, who hailed them as their preservers, and the Indians shortly after retired, baffled and cursing themselves for being outwitted by the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... served always in the place of knowledge. She spoke so agreeably of the things she did not know that no one wished her to understand them better; and when her ignorance was too visible, she got out of it by pleasantries which baffled the pedants who tried to humiliate her. She was so contented with her lot that she looked upon knowledge as a very useless thing for a woman. She said: 'I have done without it so well that I have never felt the need of it. If my granddaughter is stupid, learning ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... third edition, the tale gained picturesqueness and circumstantial weight. To the New York episode the widow contributed the imaginative touch of a baffled detective, while Mrs. Bowers's shots in the stilly night passed into the province of undisputed fact. The circumstance that the widow had only that morning seen the destroyer of homes walking abroad ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France? Alas, great nations have great shames, I say. No pity, O world, no tender utterance Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way For poor Italia, baffled by mischance? O gracious nations, give some ear to me! You all go to your Fair, and I am one Who at the roadside of humanity Beseech your alms,—God's justice ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... him, threaten him, beat him, rack him, would he—granted he knew—reveal its whereabouts? Writ large in his face was every manner of roguery, but not one iota of cowardice. He might very well hold us baffled, hour on hour, while the papers went to Mayenne. Even should he tell, we had the business to begin again from the very beginning, with some other knave ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... his soul was baffled—or did it mean that his soul would not suffer him to baffle it, try as he might? Was that girl of the old days to greet him with her wondering eyes at the end of every high path? These and many other questions he ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... would expect every detail of his life to be known and recorded, his every private thought to be revealed with the pellucid clarity of his immortal strains. It is not so; to assemble the bare facts of Handel's life is a problem which has baffled the most laborious of his biographers, and his inward personality is more mysterious than that of any other great musician of the last ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... left their little camp in the charge of three of the men, and made an attempt to descend the precipice by following some of the streams of water, or by getting down at some of the projecting points where the rocks had fallen in; but they were baffled in every instance. In some places the perpendicular height of the rocks above the earth below could not be less ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... formula, until at last the moment comes, as it surely will come in some access of hallucination, furor or ecstasy, the unfailing accompaniments of excessive mental strain, when the mist seems to roll away from the mortal vision, the inimical powers which darkened the mind are baffled, and the word of the Creator makes itself articulate to ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... for the last two days, taken up a hopeless case, and conducted it against a man who, in their hearts, they had supposed was more than a match for Joshua R. Giddings or Chief Justice Hitchcock, beaten and baffled him, and finally thrashed him out of all semblance of ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... paralyse our hopes, or make us fancy that future success is impossible where past failures frown. Ebenezer was a field of defeat before it rang with the hymns of victory. And there is no place in your past life where you have been shamefully baffled and beaten, but there, and in that, you may yet be victorious. Never let the past limit your hopes of the possibilities and your confidence in the certainties and victories of the future. And if ever you are tempted to say to yourselves, 'I have tried it so often, and so often failed, that it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to discover the elements of which the planets and satellites of our system are composed, we, however, find ourselves baffled, for the simple reason that these bodies emit no real light of their own. The light which reaches us from them, being merely reflected sunlight, gives only the ordinary solar spectrum when examined with the spectroscope. But in certain cases we find that the solar spectrum ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... North-Wind, Wrestled naked on the moorlands With the fierce Kabibonokka, Till his panting breath grew fainter, Till his frozen grasp grew feebler, Till he reeled and staggered backward, And retreated, baffled, beaten, To the kingdom of Wabasso, To the land of the White Rabbit, Hearing still the gusty laughter, Hearing Shingebis, the diver, Singing, "O Kabibonokka, You ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... Elaine, it was an unknown land. Davila, however, was looking for something she could recognize—some building that she knew, some stream, some topographical formation. But in the faint and uncertain moonlight, coupled with the speed at which they travelled, she was baffled. The chief observed, however. ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... Baffled in this direction, the new commander-in-chief, General Gage, resolved to accomplish the desired end by an expedition from Fort Pitt. Pontiac, however, was known to be still plotting vengeance at that time, and it seemed advisable to break ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... led down the hill; but here, at the spring, without any sign of their having retraced themselves, they suddenly vanished. For once the hunter's clear-seeing eye and his dog's keen-scenting nose were utterly baffled. Those Manitou moccasins being, as you must remember, charmed, could be worn and leave no trace of their wearer behind them that sight of man or scent of dog could discern, be it footprint on the ground or odor in the air. What manner ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... ordinary state. To be able to break through the meshes of that thraldom, and to disentangle and to disengage its ten thousand holds upon the heart, is to bring it, I might almost say, half way to Heaven. Here, even divine grace, to speak of things according to their appearances, is ordinarily baffled, and retires, without expedient or resource, before this giant fascination. Religion seems too high and unearthly to be able to exert a continued influence upon us: its effort to rouse the soul, and the soul's effort to co-operate, are too violent to last. ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... manner had led to the belief that he was not a committed and acknowledged lover. She made no discoveries, however, for he was not one to display a real preference in public, and indeed, in accordance with his scheme, she received his most marked attentions. Amy also both baffled and interested her. She could not immediately accept of this genuine child of nature, whose very simplicity was puzzling. It might be the perfection of well-bred reserve, such complete art as to appear artless. Miss Hargrove had been in society ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... related in the Book of Kings that Naaman, the Syrian, was afflicted with a grievous leprosy, which baffled the skill of the physicians of his country. He had in his household a Jewish maid-servant. She spoke to her master of the great prophet Eliseus, who lived in her native country, to whom the Lord had given the power of performing miracles. She besought her master to consult ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... slumbering element; but the fire had been smouldering for some time before it was discovered. The water thrown upon it from the buckets was useless—the flames bursting forth with such violence that they baffled the most strenuous efforts to overcome them. Such was the posture of affairs when the captain, officers, and men, alarmed by the cry of fire, rushed from all parts of the ship to the scene of conflagration. It would be no easy task to describe the feelings of a number of human ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing Napoleon and his marshals—and that aim was not merely frustrated but all attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled—then this last period of the campaign is quite rightly considered by the French to be a series of victories, and quite wrongly considered victorious by ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... enraged, baffled, helpless Captain Jack could hear the two dogs moving about ere they settled down on the shelf of ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... Without a word the baffled man turned away. But the look of savage hatred that gleamed in his fierce eyes told Challoner that he had made a dangerous enemy. And only a few days passed before he heard from the natives that Larmer said he would have his revenge—and the brass gun as well—before ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke
... would. Youd pay me something handsome to keep it out of court afterwards. [B. B., baffled, flings away from him with a snort]. Have you any more civilities to address to me in my own house? I should like to get them over before my wife comes back. [He resumes ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... on man, the three forms of tropical forest are very different. In the genuine rain forest agriculture is almost impossible. Not only does the poor native find himself baffled in the face of Nature, but the white man is equally at a loss. Many things combine to produce this result. Chief among them are malaria and other tropical diseases. When a few miles of railroad were being built through a strip ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... on the dial Marks the hour of deadlier strife; Days of terror, years of trial, Scourge a nation into life. Lo, the youth, become her leader All her baffled tyrants yield; Through his arm the Lord hath freed her; Crown him on the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... been cast off, and an ever widening strip of water appeared between the vessel and the shore. It was now that the man on the dock sighted the girl. She gesticulated at him. He gesticulated at her. She appeared helpless and baffled, but he showed himself a person of resource of the stuff of which great generals are made. Foch is just like that, a bird at changing pre-conceived plans to suit ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... those days the storm had for me a perfect impersonation, as durable and unvarying as any heathen deity. I always heard it, as a horseman riding past with his cloak about his head, and somehow always carried away, and riding past again, and being baffled yet once more, ad infinitum, all night long. I think I wanted him to get past, but I am not sure; I know only that I had some interest either for or against in the matter; and I used to lie and hold my breath, not quite frightened, but in a state ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fancy the wonder and eagerness of the people, and the dark frowns of the baffled and exhausted Baal priests, as they gradually came out of their frenzy, and knew that they had lost their opportunity. The tranquil though earnest prayer of the prophet is in sharpest contrast with the meaningless bellowings to Baal. Note in it the solemn invocation. The ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... it is," said Andrew J. Burris, Director of the FBI. He threw his hands in the air and looked baffled and confused. ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... in a chair without a word. Evidently he was completely baffled, and knew not which way ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... suffering." The quotation was often in his mind, and he had never felt its force so profoundly as this afternoon. The worst of it was, he did not believe himself a victim of inherent weakness; rather of circumstances which persistently baffled him. But it came to the same thing. Was he never to know the joy of vigorous action?—of asserting himself to some ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... for a while may yield to wrong, And virtue be baffled by crime, But the help of our need and the might of our creed Are faith, ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... had retired, we observed to our right the red hussars of the Garde Imperiale charging a square of Brunswick riflemen, who were about fifty yards from us. This charge was brilliantly executed, but the well-sustained fire from the square baffled the enemy, who were obliged to retire after suffering a severe loss in killed and wounded. The ground was completely covered with those brave men, who lay in various positions, mutilated in every conceivable way. Among the fallen we ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... than if these insignia had marked her work; and Milly's observation to Lord Mark had just been, doubtless, the result of such a light exchange of looks with her as even the great length of the table had not baffled. There were twenty persons between them, but this sustained passage was the sharpest sequel yet to that other comparison of views during the pause on the Swiss pass. It almost appeared to Milly that their fortune had been unduly precipitated—as if, properly, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... we call it "good luck." We also observe that sometimes failure after failure comes when the man is not only doing his very best but when all of his plans will stand the test of sound business procedure. Baffled again we throw logic to the winds ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... coaxed and argued and blamed—it all came to the same thing. Even those of them who could be "set" enough themselves on occasion could not understand Theodosia, who had always been so tractable. They finally gave up, as Wesley had done, baffled. Time would bring her to her senses, they said; you just had to leave ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in the Preface to a little book called A Bible Reading for Schools, and in its fuller and alternative title, The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration, Arranged and Edited for Young Learners. Arnold, himself a constant and attentive student of Holy Writ, "liked reading his Bible without being baffled by unmeaningnesses." He complained that "the fatal thing about our version is that it so often spoils a chapter in the Old Testament by making sheer nonsense out of one or two verses, and so throwing the reader out." He habitually ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... figure who is more wholly transfused and penetrated by the aroma of charm. Everything that he did and said had some distinction and unusualness: perceptive observation, ripe wisdom, and, with it all, the petulant attractiveness of the spoiled and engaging child. And yet even so, one is baffled, because it is not the profundity or the gravity of what he said that impresses; it is rather the delicate and fantastic turn he gave to a thought or a phrase that makes his simplest deductions from life, his most sensible bits of counsel, appear to have something fresh ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... wits which had been sharpened at so many different grindstones proved keen enough for the occasion. Valentine Hawkehurst had had little to do with genealogies or baptismal registers during his past career; but his experiences were of such a manifold nature that he was not easily to be baffled or mystified by any new experience. He showed himself almost as quick at tracing up the intricacies of a family tree as Mr. Sheldon, the astute attorney ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... move directly opposite Knoxville, taking the city by a surprise if possible. But Sanders opposed a stubborn resistance, falling back deliberately, and held the hills south of Knoxville near the river. Wheeler was thus baffled, and returned to Longstreet on the 17th of November. The absence of his cavalry had been a mistake, as it turned out; for the Confederate infantry, after crossing at Loudon to the right bank, had not been able to ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... not many days after my solution of the Missing Diamond of the Nizam of Jigamaree Mystery that I was called upon to take up a case which has baffled at least one person for some ten or eleven centuries. The reader will remember the mystery of the missing diamond—the largest known in all history, which the Nizam of Jigamaree brought from India to present to the Queen of England, on the occasion of her ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs |
