"Cryptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Beyond the sunlight and the storm, Appears that lightning-laden form, That toothful smile, that cryptic face. ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... into the street where the Little Montmartre was preparing for a long evening of entertainment. We turned, and to cover ourselves got into a conversation with a hack driver who seemed suddenly to have sprung from nowhere with the cryptic whisper, "Drive you to the ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... fish with argent stripes (whose proper name, I think, is the launce) a silverling. The "coasting reader" is the courteous reader when walking along the coast, and what he sees are silver fish and gold fish, adoring the Lord by the beauty of their scales. The Song to David is cryptic to a very high degree, but I think there are no lines in it which patient reflection will not solve. On every page are stanzas the verbal splendour of which no lover of poetry will question, and lines which will always, to me at least, retain an echo of that gusto with which ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... he performed certain cryptic actions. He unraveled threads from his shirt and put them aside. There would be a vision-lens in the ceiling of his cell, and somebody would certainly notice what he did. He made a light. He put the threads in his mouth, set ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... neck. Yet did you ever see anything so graceful as those two girls and that magnificent dog when they went over? I tell you, girls, we've got something worth while in this school now, believe me. And just you wait!" and with this cryptic ending Juno jockeyed ahead ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... a little mystified by Merkle's cryptic message, for she could imagine no possible way in which she or the writer himself could be connected discreditably with Jarvis Hammon's affair. She gained some light, however, when that evening she read ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... my goo' flien'," chanted each of these apparitions; and each, after a long, slow discourse that ended more darkly than it began, retired with fatuous nods and smirks of satisfaction, leaving Rudolph dismayed by a sense of cryptic negotiation in which he had ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... officer's cap bearing down upon us. It was the Sirdar, quite rested and looking twenty years younger. He was going to the War Minister's, and promised to arrange at once for our visit to Scutari. He looked at our cryptic drawings of road scavengers, threw up his hands and ejaculating "Kako"—strode ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... his lips with a faint, far echo which he found vaguely but unidentifiably familiar. But into the group around the long table the utterance fell with cryptic, crucial solemnity. Only Mr. Green, stubbornly contentious to the last, and thinking anxiously of both horns of the dilemma at once, found voice or will ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... making people deaf," remarked Raymonde sanguinely. "How? Ah, my child, that's a surprise for the future! D'you suppose" (with a cryptic shake of the head) "I'm going to give away my professional secrets? I've told you already it's my mission to enliven this school, and if you don't have a jinky term I'll consider myself a failure. Haven't I started ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... after all and all ... From what alembic issues forth the Spring, What cryptic finger, moving by a wall, Leaves tulip writs in tulip colouring; I shall have knowledge of the tug and grip Of tender roots where they are thrust and curled, And what frail doors are opened to let slip The hidden spear into ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... color problems design their ornament with very little thought about the colors which they propose to employ, making it an after-consideration; but the two things should be considered synchronously for the best final effect. There is a cryptic saying that "color is at right angles to form," that is, color is capable of making surfaces advance toward or recede from the eye, just as modelling does; and for this reason, if color is used, a great deal of modelling may be dispensed with. If a receding color is used ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... "I am sorry to be so cryptic, Berkeley, but you understand that I can't make statements. Still, I am trying to lead you to make certain inferences from the facts that ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... seemed to suggest a train of thought to Renford, who made the following cryptic observation. "Have ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... What do these cryptic utterances mean? At first, both in his novel and in his letters, they are obscure; but before long, in each, they become very definite. In 1856, we find these ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... he employed a secret code, But who would guess at guile in that? Unless he used the cryptic mode He couldn't be a diplomat; He wished (we thought) to be discreet, Telling his friends how frail and fair is The exotic feminine you meet In bounteous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... reached the rock he'd placed as a marker. He did cryptic things, facing away from Jill. From time to time there was a golden glitter in the air ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... secrets of life are written in script so cryptic and obscure that none but the wise and greatly skilled may decipher it, and they only, when aided by the special equipment which science supplies. In this case the firm but facile miracle is recorded in words that ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... was a German agent kept in this country to disseminate Teutonic propaganda through Westchester County, and, after that, mysterious letters began to arrive from Philadelphia addressed to the bewildered Oriental as "Lt. Emile Tannenbaum," containing a few cryptic messages signed "General Staff," and adorned with an atmospheric double column of facetious Japanese. Anthony always handed them to Tana without a smile; hours afterward the recipient could be found puzzling over them in the kitchen and declaring earnestly ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... with skiffs and diminutive steamers bound for pleasure-gardens where gypsies sing and Tyrolese yodel and jugglers toss their knives and balls, and private rooms may be had for gambling and other cryptic diversions. Although with shortened days and cool evenings the tide suddenly took a reflux and the Nevskoi became a suggestion of Broadway, (which, of all individual streets, it most nearly resembles,) we found an indescribable charm in the solitude of the fading groves and the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... intently at her wide, flushed face, freckled nose, fierce little mouth, and her delicate, tender chin—the one soft touch in her hard little Scandinavian face, as if some fairy godmother had caressed her there and left a cryptic promise. Her brows were usually drawn together defiantly, but never when she was with Dr. Archie. Her affection for him was prettier than most of the things that went to make up the doctor's life ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... examined to see its exact place upon the clearly-defined line, afterwards noting it in his book in cryptic figures, and then carefully switching off again, ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... de Kercadiou was alone, purple in the face, puzzling out that last cryptic utterance, and not at all happy in his mind, either on the score of his godson or of M. de La Tour d'Azyr. He was disposed to be angry with them both. He found these headstrong, wilful men who relentlessly followed their own impulses very disturbing and irritating. Himself he loved ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... he cried. "That was not the exact reason. No, my dear Miss Maxwell, I begin to exercise a new-born discretion. I shall not elucidate that cryptic remark until after New Year's Day. But I don't mind telling you why I have hit on a definite date. If all goes well with us—and we have had so many escapes that Providence may well send us a few more—the Kansas should steam out of our little bay of Good ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... in New Orleans was awaited by friends and foes, with bated breath. The conspirators had as yet no intimation of his intentions: Governor Claiborne was torn by suspicion of this would-be savior, for at the very time he was reading Wilkinson's gasconade he received a cryptic letter from Andrew Jackson which ran, "keep a watchful eye on our General and beware of an attack as well from your own country as Spain!" If Claiborne could not trust "our General," whom ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... recovered from his surprise, followed his aged guide to a distant part of the forest. Then the hermit bade him farewell and left him to ponder on the cryptic saying: "Here thy ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Fairy returned, and the twins, their eyes bright with the unholy light of mischief, never looked at her. They sometimes looked heavenward with a sublime contentment that drove Connie nearly frantic. Occasionally they uttered cryptic words about the morrow,—and the older members of the family smiled pleasantly, but Connie shuddered. She remembered so ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... lie in ambush (ambush) 530; seclude oneself &c 893; lurk, sneak, skulk, slink, prowl; steal into, steal out of, steal by, steal along; play at bopeep^, play at hide and seek; hide in holes and corners; still hunt. Adj. concealed &c v.; hidden; secret, recondite, mystic, cabalistic, occult, dark; cryptic, cryptical^; private, privy, in petto, auricular, clandestine, close, inviolate; tortuous. behind a screen &c 530; undercover, under an eclipse; in ambush, in hiding, in disguise; in a cloud, in a fog, in a mist, in a haze, in a dark corner; in the shade, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... back to her seat. "I don't see any sense to it," she pondered, studying the cryptic message with puzzled eyes. "It must be right, or Grandpa wouldn't have said so. Sounds like 'pickle,' but it's spelled with a 't.' It must ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... out-of-the-way corner of the late Orleans collection—he saw Ginevra di Benci, and Lisa, the young third wife of Francesco del Giocondo. As we have seen him using incidents of sacred story, not for their own sake, or as mere subjects for pictorial realisation, but as a cryptic language for fancies all his own, so now he found a vent for his thought in taking one of these languid women, and raising her, as Leda or Pomona, as Modesty or Vanity, to the seventh ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... you always do. It took me some time to recover from this word-drunk debauch and to find my own natural intelligence again, the common sense that I was born with. Then I saw that the whole thing went wrong from the place where that Knox legal note came in. Congressmen in the backwoods quoted cryptic passages from it, thought they were saying something, and proceeded to make their audiences believe that somehow England had hit us with a club—or would have hit us but for Knox. That pure discourtesy kept us apart from English sympathy ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... between two methods of expression—the first a style of savage distortion, the second a style of the softest grace—each manner enlivened the common subject.[1] Yet in two respects elucidation was vitally necessary. Just as in Japan, the lover might express his longings by cryptic references to Nature, the Indian artist employed poetic symbols to charge his subjects with romantic ardour. Flowers were never merely flowers nor clouds clouds. The symbols of Indian poetry—the lotus swaying in a stream, the flowering creeper ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... entertainment, and slips of paper pasted beneath them testified in the great man's own handwriting that he was yours sincerely or affectionately or for ever. The father and daughter would have been quite content, apparently, to eat their dinner in silence, or with a few cryptic remarks expressed in a shorthand which could not be understood by the servants. But silence depressed Mrs. Hilbery, and far from minding the presence of maids, she would often address herself to them, and was never altogether unconscious ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... useful at times to all animals, is absolutely essential to some; and it is wonderful in what different ways it is attained. In cases of "cryptic resemblance to surroundings" the shape, colouration, or markings are such as to conceal an animal by rendering it difficult to distinguish from its immediate environment. In most cases the effect is PROTECTIVE; ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... loans to Allies and Dominions during the war period, because they are not included in the weekly financial statements. The amount that we borrow abroad is set out week by week—at least, that is believed to be the meaning of the cryptic item "Other Debt"—but the amount that we lend to Allies and Dominions is hidden away in the Supply Services or somewhere, and we only get occasional information about it from the Chancellor in the course of his speeches on the Budget or on Votes of Credit. In his ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... for two years, it follows that, at the same rate of loss, the German casualties would amount to 12,250,000, which is almost unthinkable. Its very destructiveness should tend to shorten the duration of this terrible war. As Mr. Asquith said at the opening of Parliament, in a curiously cryptic and significant passage: "The war may last long. I doubt myself if it will last as long as many people originally predicted." God grant that this may ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 15, Nov. 18, 1914 • Various
... as I had done— he would clap his hands over new lights and see them blown out by the wind of the turned page. He was like nothing, I told him, but the maniacs who embrace some bedlamitical theory of the cryptic character of Shakespeare. To this he replied that if we had had Shakespeare's own word for his being cryptic he would at once have accepted it. The case there was altogether different—we had nothing but the word of Mr. Snooks. I returned that I was stupefied to see him ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... out of his private jungle. "Oh, Tallerman," cried the Sunday editor, "here's this Arctic man come to arrange about his illustration. I wish you'd go and talk it over with him." By chance he picked up the scrap of paper with its cryptic word. " Oh," he said, scowling at the office boy. "Pity you can't remember that fellow. If you can't remember faces any better than that you should be a detective. Get out now and tell him to go to the devil." The wilted slave turned ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... to High Street to take his bus his mind was divided between two exultant convictions. He felt that he had not only found Treffinger's greatest picture, but that, in James, he had discovered a kind of cryptic index to the painter's personality—a clue which, if tactfully followed, might lead ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... by Rand's deliberately cryptic hints and a little frightened, had the grace to blush ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... of the inadequate capacity of the emperor of his day, there is discernible, though only in the form of cryptic hints, a fundamentally important progressive idea. It is that a nobleman (chuen-tzu) should not be a member of the ruling elite by right of birth alone, but should be a man of superior moral qualities. From Confucius ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... patient and humble student, the man who "trembleth at GOD'S Word."(313) Or, (if the Reader prefers the image,) the indications of a Divine Original to be met with in these verses shall be likened rather to those cryptic characters, invisible so long as they remain unsuspected, but which shine forth clear and strong when exposed to the Light or to the Heat; (Light and Heat, both emblems of Himself!) so that even he that gropeth in darkness must ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... could be either blunt or cryptic in speech at will. In one mood he was the straightforward, outspoken official; in another the potential lawyer. P.C. Robinson, though unable to describe his chief's erratic qualities, was unpleasantly aware of them. ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... have no knowledge of his words, he gestured with a dignity that conveyed all the meaning of Lying Bill's relation of the incident. In the expression and motion of the dramatic mute the aged uncle had the sublimity of Lear. For Vava, in a mask and an attitude, by some cryptic understanding encompassed the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... stove-heated room in winter as from the natural ambition of the mercury in summer. The habit so easily formed was as easily unlearned when I returned to civilisation. On the whole, it may be philosophic to conclude that a universal habit in any country has some solid if cryptic reason for its existence, and to surmise that the drinking of ice-water is not so deadly in the States as it might be elsewhere. It certainly is universal enough. When you ring a bell or look at a waiter, ice-water is immediately brought to you. Each meal is started with a full tumbler ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... eyebrows and looked questioningly at his employer, as if to ask what this cryptic sentence meant. Pine knew only too well, since Chaldea had impressed him thoroughly with the fact that she had overheard many of his secrets. Therefore he did not waste time in argument, but nodded quietly. "Sleep in peace, sister. ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... killing a cat than by choking it with cream," was his cryptic remark. "What would you say if I told you that in an hour's time we, will have every drop of water out of the yacht, and that following that we will have her afloat ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... elasticity to his theme, is to be found in the tradition that he adopts with regard to the later history of the fallen angels. A misunderstanding of four verses in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, and some cryptic allusions in the Book of Revelations are the chief Scriptural authorities for the Miltonic account of the Fall of the Angels, which is not borrowed from the Fathers, but corresponds rather with the later version popularised in England by the cycles of Miracle Plays. According to the ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... first stages of one of her expeditions into another's territory, Jimmie's first letter arrived. It was mailed at Honolulu, and consisted obediently of the cryptic statement: "There is no girl on the boat. She is a widow, but lots of fun." And it changed the character of the invasion from a harmless survey of the land to a determined attack upon its fortresses. ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... birthplace. Disdaining to use any but mathematical symbols for so great a mathematician, he writes that he was born on the 21st of December, 1571, in longitude 29 deg. 7', latitude 48 deg. 54'! It may be worth mentioning, that on this cryptic spot stood the little town of Weil in the Duchy of Wuertemberg. His birth was cast at a time when his parents were reduced to great poverty, and he received very little early schooling. He was, however, sent to Tuebingen, and here he pursued the scholastic studies of the age, designing for the Church. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... do not join the oldest order in the world—the Brotherhood of Man—is because its constitution and by-laws are neither secret nor cryptic. Everybody knows what they are, and everybody knows what they mean. "Love thy neighbour as thyself," "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," "Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... mind a maelstrom of conflict. She knew nothing about money; it had never occurred to her that her father had none, and the cryptic allusion to the "bar'l" was even more puzzling. She knew that her father was a man to be feared, but he had always been the same; she expected nothing else of him, or of fathers generally. She knew that he lived most ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... house she gave me that arrow she used to wear in her hair to hand over to you as a keepsake and also to prevent you, she said, from dreaming of her. This message sounds rather cryptic." ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... behind him he might have seen the sudden lighting of Rosamund's eyes, the sudden clutch at her bosom, which would have announced to him that his utterances were none so cryptic but that she ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... of this each time he sat at his own meals, surrounded by deft menials, lapped as he told himself in luxury,—oh, thought Tussie writhing, it was base. His much-tried mother had to listen to many a cross and cryptic remark flung across the table from the dear boy who had always been so gentle; and more than that, he put his foot down once and for all and refused with a flatness that silenced her to eat any more patent foods. "Absurd," cried Tussie. ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... contiguity, contiguous, contingent, contortion, contravene, contumacious, contumacy, contumelious, convergent, conversant, convivial, correlate, corrigible, corroborate, corrosive, cosmic, covenant, crass, credence, crescent, criterion, critique, crucial, crucible, cryptic, crystalline, culmination, culpable, cumulative, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... more than he found—nay, not a tithe of that he found. For, listening with a kindlier heart—even he, hurt by her neglect, had judged her for a while too harshly—he discerned that at her wildest and loudest, in the act of bandying cryptic jests with the buckeens, and uttering much that was thoughtless—Flavia did not suffer one light or unmaidenly word to ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... the balcony veranda on the first floor of the Hotel Grande del Universo when his astonished eyes skimmed rapidly through these letters. Scarce crediting his senses, he read them again, word by word, striving to extract from their cryptic sentences that hidden meaning which lay beneath. Outspoken as the solicitor was, he had evidently left unsaid the major portion of the strange story within his ken. The new correspondent, too, might or might not be the man whom Dick had seen ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... This cryptic remark was not encouraging, but Shorthouse did not pause to decipher it. He paid the man, and then pushed open the rickety old gate swinging on a single hinge, and proceeded to walk up the drive that lay dark between close-standing trees. The house soon came into full view. It ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... private wires and the absurd precautions he takes to keep them intensely private. "Why he went and had all his special numbers here changed once just because I found out one of them by mistake and called him up on it for a joke—the cryptic old person!" Peter had said with ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... might figger it out that way and mebbe not so far wrong," said the cryptic Mr. Searle. "But if you think you'd like to buy or rent her place I'm fully empowered to act. Got the keys right here and a car standing outside—take you right on out there in a jiffy if ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... (ambush) 530; seclude oneself &c. 893; lurk, sneak, skulk, slink, prowl; steal into, steal out of, steal by, steal along; play at bopeep[obs3], play at hide and seek; hide in holes and corners; still hunt. Adj. concealed &c. v.; hidden; secret, recondite, mystic, cabalistic, occult, dark; cryptic, cryptical[obs3]; private, privy, in petto, auricular, clandestine, close, inviolate; tortuous. behind a screen &c. 530; undercover, under an eclipse; in ambush, in hiding, in disguise; in a cloud, in a fog, in a mist, in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... be cryptic, and perhaps I ought to explain a little. I meant that you'll see that they're the best things I've written, and that I should not have written them if it had not been for you. I don't know whether you'll forgive me for writing ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... do it in half that time if you lived in Tinkletown," was Anderson's cryptic return. "You ought to see Ed Higgins. He's our champeen. His specialty is knot-holes. ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... thrills and excitements commonly attributed to his trade. I knew that many pages would not be turned before he would land us in the middle of some crimson intrigue; mysterious strangers, disguises, cryptic and invaluable manuscripts, urgent telegrams, codes, Italian hidden hands, Scotland Yard, pseudo-taxicabs, clues and things. But let others beware of Mr. JOHN FOSTER, a most ingenious manipulator of the old stock-in-trade and possessing a rare sense of humour. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... Guido looked cryptic. "That is for father Folco to settle," he said. "And father Folco is a man that loves his fellow-men, but would have his children obey him even to the death, like ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the English Club. Yes, I've got that. Well, if it will, I work—I think you said 'work'—round until I can reach the down-pipe. The drain—down-pipe will enable me to get my feet into the gutter. Sounds all right, doesn't it? 'The drain-pipe will enable.' A cryptic phrase. Quite the Brigade-Office touch. Where were we? Oh, yes. The drain-pipe having enabled me, etc., I just fall forward on to the tiles, when my hands will encounter and grasp the balustrade. Then I climb over and pat Nobby. Yes, except ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... took'st unawares Be as serpiants that twine and are spiteful, O thou best of good creeturs, who cares? For the curse hath recoiled, and the stigma Thou hast turned to her sorrer and shame, While thy cryptic and sombre Enigma ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... reaches of the town Henry Fenn's bibulous habits became accepted matters to a wider and wider circle and Tom Van Dorn still had his way with the girls while the town grinned at the two young men in gay reproval. But Amos Adams through his familiar spirits got solemn, cryptic messages for the young men—from Tom's mother and Henry's father. Amos, abashed, but never afraid, used to deliver these messages with incidental admonitions of his own—kind, gentle and gorgeously ineffective. Then he would return to his office with a serene sense of a duty ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... in mild surprise. Doubtless he would have asked the meaning of this cryptic utterance; but at this moment the two seamen from the Milo issued forth from the gateway up the road; and, descending a few paces, turned to call back farewell to Mrs. Treacher, who, having escorted them so far, halted under ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... doubt, who called himself a "Gnostic" was but a sorry rogue; many another was but a student of the letter, not of the life; many another was but a spiritual swashbuckler, pompous in his demeanour and cryptic in his utterance; some, led by an abhorrent fantasy, may have wandered along the path that goes to the Venus-berg and have striven to lisp a formula that would transform the earth into Gehenna rather than into ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... unfailing confidence. My credentials as a literary critic would not, I fear, bear five minutes' scrutiny; but I never cease to look for that defined and adequate equipment, such as even a carpenter calls his tool-chest, full of cryptic instruments, each designed for some particular task, and every implement named. It is sad to have to admit it, but I know I possess only a home-made gimlet to test for dry-rot, and another implement, a very ancient heirloom, ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... fell, pregnant and cryptic, and, while the voices of the children and the soft mandatory protests of the Asiatic maids drew nearer from the beach, Martha Scandwell felt herself vibrant and tremulous with sudden resolve of daring. She ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... Her cryptic description was sufficient to anyone who knows New York rooming houses. The room was typical. Charley had not been in it long enough to give it any of his own character. You squeezed past the bed to a tiny rectangular space at the foot where there was just room enough ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... Fu will have to round you up some more," was the cryptic answer, and Handyside forthwith plunged airily into some wholly ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... before him—his thoughts were on Val. "He's got to look after his mother," he said, "he's got no time for drilling and that, with that father of his." This cryptic saying produced silence, until he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... leave of Father Brown at the corner of the road, with some random apologies for any rudeness they might have shown. Both their faces were tragic, but also cryptic. ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... madness. "Let us bless heaven that the patriarch of the Gnosis has selected the former." It is possibly showing gratitude for small mercies, because our friend has saved his reason, but is blood-guilty in the matter of common sense. Meanwhile, the widowed Gnosis illuminates its Ichabod in the cryptic quartiers of Paris, ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... the mature thoughtfulness of much of the last act and with the tender charm of what has gone before: And—strangest incongruity of all in a play so essentially "actual"—there is in the original, between each act, a mysterious "mellemspil," or "interlude," in verse, consisting of somewhat cryptic dialogues between Genii and Unseen Choirs in the clouds, between an "Old Grey Man" and a "Chorus of Tyrants" in a desolate scene of snow and ice, between Choruses of Men, Women, and Children in a sylvan landscape, and so forth—their utterances being of the nature of the obscurest choruses in ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... my trepidation allayed by the cryptic remark of Mrs. Judson as I passed her at her tasks in ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... these cryptic utterances. They shadowed a modern Black Art, of which I had had no conception—a recrudescence in other language of the age-old dualism of good and evil. It was a sort of ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... cleric, considered Jubei of small account. He would prove to him what a fool he was by the interpretation of a mere thirty-one syllables of poetry. This should be the test of intelligence. The Knight's Way (Budo[u]) had its inner and cryptic meaning expressed in verse. So had the Way of the Buddha (Butsudo[u]). Of this latter Jubei knew nothing; and he doubted if he knew anything of the former. At least let him display some sample of his wit. Jubei leaped at the test to prove his greatness. Now he scorned to deal with a ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... pale-green booklet from the desk and opened it before her. She saw the cryptic characters for the first time. And she saw them with his glowing eyes. In their mysterious strokes and curves and dots she saw romance, and the key of the future; she saw the philosopher's stone. She saw a new religion that had already begun to work like leaven in the town. The revelation was ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... to the Baronet's mysterious private affairs; and when she had seated herself at the typewriter and re-read the reports—confidential reports they were, but framed in a manner which only the old man himself could understand—he dictated to her cryptic replies, the true nature of which were to ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... Sporting Page, he would come across a cryptic Reference to MacFearson of Drumtochtie being 3 up and 2 to play on Hargis of Sunset Ho, whereupon he would experience a sense of annoyance ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... With this cryptic utterance in her ears, Mrs. Sandworth fled downstairs, to find her sister-in-law turning away from the telephone with a frown. "Mrs. Hollister was very much provoked about it, and I don't blame her. It's hard to make her understand we couldn't have given her a little warning. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... actual handling of the troops to Hunter-Weston as I am bound to do. Old Oyama cooled his brain during the battle of the Shaho by shooting pigeons sitting on Chinese chimneys. King Richard before Bosworth saw ghosts. My own dark hours pass more easily as I make my cryptic jottings in pedlar's French. The detachment of the writer comes over me; calms down the tumult of the mind and paves a path towards the refuge of sleep. No order is to be issued until I get reports and requests. I can't think now of anything left undone that I ought to ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... Reread, the cryptic sentences began to take on meaning. An unknown named Bassett, whoever he might be, was going to Norada bent on "mischief," and another unknown who signed himself "G" was warning David of that fact. But the mischief was ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "What a cryptic remark!" said Kingsley laughing, yet a little chagrined. "What you probably wish to convey is that it says ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Miss Theodosia's cryptic little smile lingered on her lips and in the clear windows of her eyes, as she gazed past the voluble wife of Andrew, through her vines, at the little House of Children next door. She imagined she heard Stefana ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... these orbs were dotted lines and arrow-heads of the oldest form pointing in all directions, while all the intervening spaces were filled up with woven characters half-way in appearance between Runes and Cryptic-Sanskrit. Round the borders these characters ran into a wild maze, a perfect jungle of an alphabet through which none but a wizard could have forced a ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... Party cars are placarded with posters calling on the electors to vote for 'Unity and Party,' and there are the cryptic words, '1/8 Up. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... following morning Duperre and Rayne were closeted together, while afterwards I drove Duperre into York, where from the telegraph office in the railway station he sent several cryptic messages abroad, of course posing to the telegraph clerk as a passing railway passenger. Rayne never sent important telegrams from the village post-office at Overstow, or even from Thirsk. They were all dispatched from places where, even if inquiry ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... days those were for Jefferson Creede! Deep and devious as was his knowledge of men in the rough, the ways of a woman in love were as cryptic to him as the poems of Browning. The first day that Miss Kitty rode forth to be a cowboy it was the rodeo boss, indulgent, but aware of the tenderfoot's ability to make trouble, who soberly assigned his fair disciple ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... regarding an explosive magazine at Dinas Mawddwy have lately been addressed to the Ministry of Munitions. Hitherto they have received rather cryptic replies, no one in the Department apparently being prepared to pronounce the name. But this afternoon Mr. HOPE, after a few preliminary sentences to get his voice into condition, boldly blurted out, "Dinnus Mouthwy," and received the tribute which the House ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... Guard." When the credentials have been examined the visitor is sent under the guidance of a bluejacket to the "Officer of the Day," whose "cabin" is inside the maze of corrugated iron and weather-board. The doors flanking the passages traversed display cryptic lettering, such as I.O. (Intelligence Office), S.R. (Signal Room), S.N.O. (Senior Naval Officer), "Commander" (usually the second in command of the base), P.M.S.O. (Port Minesweeping Officer), C.B.O. ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... stop of course, Therefore stop I will perforce.— If I led them up, choragic, To reveal their nature magic, Twenty things, past contradiction, Yet would prove I spoke no fiction Of the room's belongings cryptic Read by light apocalyptic: There is that strange thing, glass-masked, With continual questions tasked, Ticking with untiring rock: It is called an eight-day clock, But to me the thing appears Busy winding up the years, Drawing on with ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... perhaps the busiest man on board, snatched the moment's respite to confer with the Carpenter, who had been hovering round waiting for his opportunity. The Master-at-Arms was standing by the bollards alternately sucking a stump of pencil and making cryptic notations in his request-book. The two ship's corporals had removed themselves with great delicacy of feeling to the screen door, where in an undertone they settled an argument as to whose turn it was to make out the leave tickets. The Captain's Clerk became interested in the progress ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... "only his fun"—a famous utterance which it is never more necessary to keep in mind than when speaking or writing of Mr Arnold, for his fun, such as it was, was pervading, and occasionally rather cryptic. But the bulk of the paper is perfectly serious. Social equality, and its compulsory establishment by a law against free bequest or by public opinion, these are his themes. He asserts that the Continent is in favour of ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... this cryptic utterance. "That sure beats me. I always said I got out of my depth with women, and you've got me out of my depth now. Why you want me to lose everything, seeing as you ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... once thought merely a sportive expression for a company of players, but Mr. Becket has undeceived us—"Cry (he tells us) is contracted from cryptic, and cryptic is precisely of the same import as mystery."—p. 53. How delightful it is when learning and judgment walk thus hand in hand! ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Cryptic words which, suddenly, for Beautrelet, shone bright with clearness! Was this not an exact statement of the reasons that determined Francis I. to create a town on this spot and was not the fate of the Havre-de-Grace linked with the ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... help, she had only accepted what had been offered her—what her mother had prompted him to offer. Poor little victim, passive in the hands of stronger natures, in the hands of circumstance, heredity, character—that Fate which the ancient gods surely meant by their cryptic saying: "The fate of all men we ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... the last hook Beverley went to the boudoir. There she sat down with Clo's cryptic message, praying that Roger might not come ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in silence—thinking. And that evening, by the light of her coal-oil lamp she puzzled over the roughly sketched map with its cryptic signs and notations. There were a half-dozen samples, too—chips of rough, heavy rock that didn't look a bit like gold. "High grade," her daddy had called them as he babbled incessantly upon his death-bed. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... She smiled—a highly cryptic smile. For a man as brilliant and as penetrant in every other respect ... but after all, if the big dope didn't realize that half the women aboard, including Sandy, had been making passes at him, she certainly wouldn't enlighten him. Besides, that one particular area of obtuseness was a ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... having the Gaelic, was somewhat taken aback by the cryptic utterance; but an anxious-looking younger son of an embarrassed peer, who for a considerable consideration was bear-leading the millionaire through the social labyrinth, hurriedly interpreted it to him as a standing invitation ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... baths and repeated currying with the dandy brush had made Chum's grand coat stand out in shimmering fluffiness. A course of carefully-conducted circular promenades on the end of a chain had taught the dog to walk gaily and unrestrainedly in leash. And any of several cryptic words, relating to hypothetical rats, and so forth, were quite enough to send ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... perforce. She kissed him again before going slowly to her own room, her perplexity evidently not dispersed; but the subject was not renewed between them the next day or subsequently. Nor did Fanny make any allusion to the cryptic approbation she had bestowed upon her nephew after the Major's "not very successful little dinner"; though she annoyed George by looking at him oftener and longer than he cared to be looked at by an aunt. He could not glance her way, it seemed, ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... big refractor, and it was a matter of only a few seconds and some cryptic instructions from Sykes until the eye-piece showed the image of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... to-morrow, sorr, and I'll be able to get yiz some claning matherials,' to which his weary master replied, 'I don't care a damn whether I'm clean or whether I'm dirty.' In answer his man made the following cryptic remark: ''Tis no use talking like that, sorr. Lord Roberts says the war is over, and we'll ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... to whom we have applied Our shopman's test of age and worth, Was elemental when he died, As he was ancient at his birth: The saddest among kings of earth, Bowed with a galling crown, this man Met rancor with a cryptic mirth, Laconic ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... others, there is that absurd eagerness to save the striking of a second match, which occasions so many burned fingers, and such picturesque language. And again, there is the desire to compress a telegraphic message into the minimum sixpennyworth, and so send an ambiguous and cryptic sentence, when sevenpence would have made it as clear as light. We all tend to be ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... what it was, Lanyard was well satisfied that he now held the true focus of this conspiracy, a secret of the first consequence, far too momentous to the designs of England to be entrusted, though couched in the most cryptic cipher ever mind of man devised, even to cables or mails ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Peter, frankly. "I'll see you in New York—if not sooner." With which cryptic observation he clattered down the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... colleague in amazement, and was about to ask for some elucidation of this cryptic reply, when he held up his finger ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... her gloves. They had been cleaned and the cryptic marks of the shopkeeper were visible along the inner side of the wrist hem. This was, to the woman, the first subterfuge of decaying smartness. When a woman began to send her gloves to the laundry she was on her way down. Other evidences were not ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... fantasy begins in the mood of the early Allegro; a wistful melody of the clarinet plays more slowly between cryptic reminders of the first theme of the symphony. In sudden Allegro risoluto over rumbling bass of strings, a mystic call of horns, harking far back, spreads its echoing ripples all about till it rises in united tones, with a clear, descending answer, much like the original first motive. The latter ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... distance, a very ordinary mortal of a man, working industriously among his cabbages. I thought: Here am I, capable of teaching him much concerning the field wherein he labours—the nitrogenic—why of the fertilizer, the alchemy of the sun, the microscopic cell-structure of the plant, the cryptic chemistry of root and runner—but thereat he straightened his work-wearied back and rested. His eyes wandered over what he had produced in the sweat of his brow, then on to mine. And as he stood there drearily, he became reproach incarnate. ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... resuscitated some and brought prosperity and life to the old guest-haunted chambers. We cannot dwell on the curious signs that greet us as we travel along the old highways, or strive to interpret their origin and meaning. We are rather fond in Berkshire of the "Five Alls," the interpretation of which is cryptic. The Five Alls ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... he said softly, "and I'm not such a ditherer as you think. Now, you watch old Bones." And, with that cryptic remark, he ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... all he is only a statue. To himself he is still a king—or at least a man who was once a king and, having done no wrong, ought not now to be insulted. If he had in his composition one marble grain of humour, he might... but no, a joke against oneself is always cryptic. Fat men are not always the best drivers of fat oxen; and cryptic statues cannot be depended on to ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... tradition from the overburdening names and dates: those scratches he was pointing out on the walls were supposed to be a cryptic message from some refugees in need of provisions. It was not ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... upper division of the first column of type. There were the usual requests for the return of absent friends, and several cryptic messages understood only by the advertiser and the person to ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... "Why cryptic after your really admirable frankness? But there's always a point beyond which women never will go when confessing their souls. . . . I suppose you think you're as hard as nails. Do you really imagine that you will ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... absent from the Hall altogether only about an hour and twenty minutes. There was still at least an hour before it would be possible for her to plead weariness and escape. And opposite, in the shadows of the distant box, the mock Prince Shan seemed always to be gazing at her with that cryptic ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... decidedly; but the words had been an affirmation and not a question. It seemed clear that for some cryptic reason I ought to have been an artist. Accordingly, I thought ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... and the squire for company, were like an idyl. The rainy days in the large, low drawing-room, singing with Sophia, or dreaming and speculating with her on all sorts of mysteries, were, in their way, equally charmful. He liked to walk slowly up and down, and to talk to her softly of things obscure, cryptic, cabalistic. The plashing rain, the moaning wind, made just the monotonous accompaniment that seemed fitting; and the lovely girl, listening, with needle half-drawn, and sensitive, sensuous face lifted to his own, ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... "This is, perhaps, the inevitable effect of twenty cigarettes a day," was her cryptic comment. "Nevertheless, it does affect me ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... in a cryptic way that our suspicions had been verified, and that the person of whom we were in search we had discovered. We were only now waiting for the appointment to be kept at the Hotel ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... of his tepid-minded, painlessly married tutor at Oxford, who read the vilest French novels as a duty, and took a walk with his wife on fine afternoons; and whose cryptic warnings on the empire of the passions would have made ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... to please him. His brows cleared, the wrath that had made his face almost unrecognizable subsided; he even smiled. And the girl trembled, knowing that he had solved her secret; for she had hoped against hope that the only words he could have heard her speak would have had too cryptic a significance for ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... idea that there were persons who could fathom the destinies of others, that the palm of one's hand was cryptic with one's future fortunes, and that the remotest planets had an influence on one's life. Furtively, then, as one might enter a place dedicated to some shameful mystery, this erudite, handsome, wretched gentleman slipped into the sanctums of the diviners, where, ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... typewritten onion-skin paper. There was no letterhead, no salutation or address-line. Just a mass of chemical formulae, and a concise report on tests. It seemed to be a report on an improved syrup for a carbonated soft-drink. There were a few cryptic cautionary references to heightened ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... with buttons on it. It might be a control-board, but it didn't look like it. There was a metal box with a transparent plastic front. One could see cryptic shapes of metal inside. Two bright-metal balls mounted on a side-wall. They had holes in them, about the right size for the hands of children like these to enter. There was a two-foot, carefully machined spiral ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... the little nuisance, as she now approached the door of our cabin; and he brushed past me and started not aft but toward the bows. "An' there you are!" he shouted over his shoulder in cryptic speech, whether to me or to his Auntie Helen I ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... talents. But you! The wizardry with which you mix metaphors is beautiful. You produce a dinner-table and transform it into an altar which instantly becomes a racecourse. That is what I call genius. But to an every-day sort of chap like me, would you mind being less cryptic?" ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... known world of common sense and explicable phenomena; and I was much put out to find, this morning, a cabbalistic inscription written in letters of large menace on my bath-room floor. TAM HTAB—what could be the meaning of these cryptic words, and how on earth had they got there? Like Belshazzar, my eyes were troubled by this writing, and my knees smote one against the other; till majestic Reason, deigning to look downward from her contemplation of eternal causes, ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... something hard And dreamless; what their fingers grasp and hold, They hold. While I am even now a-quiver With all this moment brings; no youthful monarch Were more intoxicated, when the breezes Should waft to him that cryptic word "possession." [He nears the window.] Ah, lovely stars, are ye out there as ever? From out of this unstable mortal body To look upon your courses in your whirling Eternal orbits—that has been the food ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various |
