"Decipher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mechanical action of the body, and his mind had little part in it. His eyes were not looking at the sea of uncovered heads, but seemed fixed, under knitted brows, on the distance, as if they endeavored to decipher there some indistinct, shadowy form. Did the king perceive in this moment the responsibility of one human being to carry such a load? Did he wish in his innermost heart that he might share the weight of the decision ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... of which require an Atticus who knew him and the people among whom he had lived, and the times in which the events took place, for their special reading. Who is there can read them now so as accurately to decipher every intended detail? Then comes some critic who will not even attempt to read them—who rushes through them by the light of some foregone conclusion, and missing the point at which the writer subtly aims, tells us of some purpose of which he was altogether ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... or resume in Poetry, before him; we have given him the key to some of its wondrous hieroglyphics; let him study the remaining letters of this mystical alphabet for himself! These inscriptions are indeed trilingual, phonetic, and sacred, yet the simple and loving soul may decipher them without the genius of Champollion; their meaning is written within it. It will readily learn to connect the sign with the thing signified, and under the fleeting forms of rhythmed time and measured space, learn to detect the immutable principles ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the grey Lecomte, scarcely a motor had we seen since leaving Biarritz, except in Madrid; but now, when I tried to decipher the road hieroglyphics, the dust showed more than one track of pneus. Cars had come to Seville from Madrid for Semana Santa, and had evidently run out this way for a spin more than once. As I had not Ropes' detective talent I was unable to distinguish the Lecomte's ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... within the reach of very few. At the present day, "the merchants do not even possess the rudiments of an education. Many of them can neither read nor write and are forced to keep their accounts in their memory, or by means of ingenious hieroglyphics, intelligible only to their inventors. Others can decipher the calendar and the lives of the saints, and can sign their name with tolerable facility. They can make the simpler arithmetical calculations with the help of a little calculating ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... very pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (at which ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... but made no comment. He was doing his best to decipher Mr. Ginn's hieroglyphics. ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... you will see that the roots of this plant have burst through the vase. This recalls the famous definition of Hamlet's character in Wilhelm Meister. Here are the mystic rose, the flame, and the serpent, emblem of eternity. Some of the other symbols we have not yet been able to decipher." ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... the object of my scrutiny; whichever way I looked, it stood in my way, and I could not remove it. It was like a cloud, yet transparent, and with a certain undefined shape. I tried for some time, but in vain, to decipher it, but could not. At last it appeared to cohere into a form—it was the Dominie's great nose, magnified into that of the Scripture, "As the tower which looketh towards Damascus." My temples throbbed with agony—I burned all over. I had no exact notions of death in bed, except that of my poor mother, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... from Sir Arthur, he was glad to enter into conversation with Edie Ochiltree, who witnessed the finding of the treasure with a keen eye to future operations. Edie had surreptitiously obtained possession of the treasure box-lid, and on it he and the conjurer were able to decipher, "Search number one." The old beggar, who knew many of the traditions of the country, told Dousterswivel that the remains of Malcolm the Misticot were, along with a large amount of gold and silver, buried somewhere ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... Havill got out of bed and stood beside the sleeper. After a moment's pause he gently pulled back the unfastened collar of Dare's nightshirt and saw a word tattooed in distinct characters on his breast. Before there was time for Havill to decipher it Dare moved slightly, as if conscious of disturbance, and Havill hastened back to bed. Dare bestirred himself yet more, whereupon Havill breathed heavily, though keeping an intent glance on the lad ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... did France want, or rather, what did General Bonaparte want? None but himself knew. None could read his thoughts in his marble countenance. None could decipher his future actions from his laconic utterances. None could tell what Bonaparte intended to do and what aim ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... cleaning the south wall of Lanihale Church for a fresh coat of whitewash, discovered the frescoes and charcoal drawings, as well as the brass plaque of which I sent you a tracing; and I think not above a fortnight later that, on your suggestion, I set to work to decipher and copy out the old churchwardens' accounts. On the Monday after Easter, at about nine o'clock P.M., I was seated in the Vicarage parlour, busily transcribing, with a couple of candles before me, when my housekeeper Frances came in with a visiting-card, and the news ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... one of the brethren searching the cave wherein the holy woman dwelt, found there neither food, furniture, nor other matters; saving one bracelet of gold, of large size and strange workmanship, engraven with foreign characters, which no one could decipher. The which bracelet, being taken home to the Laura of Scetis, and there dedicated in the chapel to the memory of the holy Amma, proved beyond all doubt the sanctity of its former possessor, by the miracles which ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... you laughing at?" goody Liu inquired. "I can decipher the characters on this honorary gateway. Over at our place temples of this kind are exceedingly plentiful; and they've all got archways like this! These characters give the name ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... should value them; if, indeed, he has not in some sense left them—if the tragedies and comedies are not personal revelations altogether—the multiform nature of the man rushing towards the sun at once in Falstaff, Hamlet, and Romeo. But calling Montaigne an egotist does not go a great way to decipher him. No writer takes the reader so much into his confidence, and no one so entirely escapes the penalty of confidence. He tells us everything about himself, we think; and when all is told, it is astonishing how little we really know. The esplanades of Montaigne's palace are thoroughfares, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... estate; and since her commerce was, in fact, the mainspring of her wealth and prestige—a very vital part of her—she kept before their eyes on the exterior of this ancient church in the market-place where her merchant-princes daily met, her admonition to uphold them in righteous dealing. One might decipher it wrought into the wall of the apse under the stones of the frieze, in quaint lettering that tempted to the perusal and endowed the mastered motto with the impressiveness of a rite—for the legend assumed a quality of mystery, being ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... as to my correspondent. It was from Father Rush, my old tutor. I hurried eagerly from the spot, and regaining my quarters, locked the door, and with a beating heart broke the seal and began, as well as I was able, to decipher his letter. The hand was cramped and stiffened with age, and the bold, upright letters were gnarled and twisted like a rustic fence, and demanded great patience and much time in unravelling. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... he has only time to dwell upon essentials; he must put words in letters, and phrases in words, and let the scribes make it out afterwards." Napoleon indeed left a great deal for the copyists to do; he was their torment; his handwriting actually resembled hieroglyphics—he often could not decipher it himself. Las Cases' son was one day reading to him a chapter of The Campaign of Italy; on a sudden he stopped short, unable to make out the writing. "The little blockhead," said Napoleon, "cannot read his own handwriting."—"It is ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... on whom a Continent had written with its sun and its wind, and with its battlefields. The body of a man was graven by such a superscription. And no doubt even a child could read something of it. But the writing on Rosamund was much fainter, was far less easy to decipher; it was perhaps traced on the soul rather than on the body. The new legend of Dion was perhaps an assertion. But this story of Rosamund, what was it? She saw the man in Dion, lean, burnt, strong, ardent, desirous, full of suppressed emotion that was warmly ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... interest do we look upon any relic of early human history! The monument that tells of a civilization whose hieroglyphic records we cannot even decipher, the slightest trace of a nation that vanished and left no sign of its life except the rough tools and utensils buried in the old site of its towns or villages, arouses our imagination and excites our curiosity. Men gaze with awe at the inscription on an ancient Egyptian or Assyrian stone; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... honoured of the friends of my life, James Payn. I had been for some years an occasional contributor to Chambers's Journal, and had received more than one encouraging note written in a hand that it was difficult to decipher, and simply signed, "Editor, C.J." At last it occurred to me that a series of descriptive articles relating to the places and scenes with which I had become familiar as a Parliamentary reporter might be accepted by the editor. With much trepidation—for ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... In our own age she has sung for us, and this land gave her new birth. Indeed, Mrs. Browning is the wisest of the Sibyls, wiser even than that mighty figure whom Michael Angelo has painted on the roof of the Sistine Chapel at Rome, poring over the scroll of mystery, and trying to decipher the secrets of Fate; for she realised that, while knowledge is power, suffering ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... There are a great many brief notices in this diary relative to Jane Dee, most of which are expressed in astrological symbols; and as they are exceedingly difficult to decipher satisfactorily, and are certainly of very little, if any importance, I have thought it expedient to omit them. The entry of "Vnar unq gurz" is also of frequent occurrence, though what "gurz" can refer to I have ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... book some time ago, and it struck me as being especially good from the fact that it consisted entirely of figures, and that it was not necessary to use precisely the same figures every time to represent any particular letter; hence it seems impossible for anyone to decipher it without the key. Now, let me consider: how did it go? Something like this, I think. Can you let me have a pencil and a ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... not merely of the Professor's own labors, but of those of more ancient sages than he; and often a whole volume seemed to be compressed within the limits of a few lines of crabbed manuscript, judging from the time which it cost even the quick-minded student to decipher them. ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... she would be a great deal too much for the University of Oxford, as far as Oriental learning goes," he said. "She can read the Egyptian papyri, she tells me, and she can decipher anything on any of the monuments. I only wish I could persuade her to accompany me to ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... word, Diane took a long time to decipher it. For minutes she stared at it, as though the power of comprehension had forsaken her. Again and again she lifted her eyes to his, in sheer bewilderment, only to drop them then once more on the all but blank sheet in her hand. At last it seemed ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... say, had fallen at last into the great scheme of Law. Religious doctrines, many of them at least, have been up to this time all but as catastrophic as the old Geology. They are not on the lines of Nature as we have learned to decipher her. If any one feel, as Science complains that it feels, that the lie of things in the Spiritual World as arranged by Theology is not in harmony with the world around, is not, in short, scientific, he is entitled to raise the question ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... will now become easy to decipher; and the evening papers may take King Otho both off the throne and on. The designs of Russia have long been proverbial; but the exercise of the new art of printing may assign them new features. The representations of impartial periodicals will cut out, or out-cut De Custine; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... and devoted himself, heart and soul, to the cultivation and enjoyment of music. Every member of his little household was by degrees involved more or less in the same occupation, and even the housemaid could in time bear a part in a chorus, or decipher a melody of Schubert. One individual alone in the family seemed to resist this musical entrancement; this was a small spaniel, the sole specimen of the canine race in the mansion. Mr. S—— felt the impossibility of instilling the theory ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... the house, or it may have been devised by the historian to glorify the sage, but we may not, on account of it, discredit the finding of the ancient copies of the Books. We have K'ung An-kwo's own account of their being committed to him, and of the ways which he took to decipher them. The work upon the Analects, mentioned above, has not indeed come down to us, but his labors on the Shu- ching still remain. 5. It has been already stated, that the Lun Yu of Ch'i contained two Books more than that of Lu. In this respect, ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... thought of the law-cases that lay enshrined between those covers, he perused a couple of entries with a kind of professional enthusiasm. He was beginning a third, which, being by a different hand, was a little hard to decipher, when a black gown that hung on a hook over against him swung noiselessly outward from the wall, and a little old man emerged from the ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... bender," said he. "These are, doubtless, your family arms? Except the knowledge of blazons, that enables me to decipher them, I am very ignorant of heraldry—I, a count of a fresh creation, fabricated in Tuscany by the aid of a commandery of St. Stephen, and who would not have taken the trouble had I not been told that when you travel much it is necessary. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... showed it to be considerably pocket- worn. The obliterations referred to represented huge blots of black ink covering a lot of scratches and making it impossible to decipher the under writing. Defendant's Counsel immediately requested that the document be turned over to an expert, to see what could be done with it. The judge granted the motion and adjourned the case for several days to ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... this citizen.' "'Mebby he's got papers in his wamus,' says Boggs, 'which onfolds concernin' him. Go through him, Texas, anyhow: "All Texas can find on the dumb man is one letter; the postmark: when we comes to decipher the same, shows he only gets it that mornin'. Besides this yere single missif that a-way, thar ain't a scrap of nothin' else to ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Gladstone was deep in the book. He was reading it, pencil in hand, marking all the passages he disliked or quarreled with, with the Italian "Ma!"—and those he approved of with mysterious signs which she who followed him through the volumes could not always decipher. Mr. Knowles, she reported, the busy editor of the Nineteenth Century, was trying to persuade the great man to review it. But "Mr. G." had not made ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... table of contents of a volume whose thrilling text and stupendous illustration are engraved immortally in the rocks; a volume whose ultimate secrets the scholarship of all time perhaps will never fully decipher, but whose dramatic outlines and many of whose most thrilling incidents are open to all at the expense of a little study at home and a little thoughtful seeing in the places where the facts are pictured in lines so big and graphic that ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... been its unknown import, as a proof of remembrance at so solemn a moment) was afterward handed over by the physician in attendance, Sir Walter Farquhar, to Mr. Ward; and many a time did he declare, as he displayed it to me, that he would give anything he valued most in the world to be able to decipher its unformed characters." ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... blessing the Providence that had granted us a morning of sunshine after a night of so much horror, I sat down and drew from my breast the little folded paper which represented my poor Ada's will. Opening it with all the reverent love which I felt for her memory, I set myself to decipher the few trembling lines which she had written, in the hope they would steady my thoughts and suggest, if not reveal, the way I should take in the more than difficult path I saw ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... outer margin, (fol. III,) Knox had written some words which have been scored through, and are partly cut away by the binder. As well as I can decipher the words, the sentence may be thus read:—"Luik quhether it be best to tak in heir the Beggars Warning, or in the place befoir appoynted." See note 2, page ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... antiquity possess for him, as they did for the learned men of the Renaissance, or for Petrarch, who cherished a manuscript of Homer without being able to decipher it, a ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... letter in his hand and frowned. Not because he was displeased, but because the writing was cramped and difficult to read. However, the merchant was accustomed to receive such letters from seafaring men on many subjects of interest; he therefore broke the seal and set himself patiently to decipher it. Immediately his countenance became ghastly pale, then it flushed up and became pale again, while he coughed and gasped once or twice, and started up and sat down abruptly. In fact Mr Webster exhibited all the signs of having ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... but what needs either your 'mum' or her 'budget'? The white will decipher her well enough. It hath ...
— The Merry Wives of Windsor • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... scrutinising every point, of weighing evidence in the finest scales, of assaying its precise value. The contemporary writer has to deal with the huge accumulation of material to which I have already referred; he must ransack archives, hunt through records piled up, public and private, must decipher ancient manuscript, must follow the labours of the wandering collector of inscriptions and the excavator of old tombs. He has to make extracts from correspondence, diaries, and notes of travel which are coming for the first time to ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... ourselves be the wiser! Look!—I will now write you out some signs, and with them, at night, we will hold our intercourse. This very evening I will control the lamps at Penguin Light, and you shall read what I will therewith tell you. To-morrow you will answer me from here; and I, in turn, will decipher your sweet words. Will not that be a rare, as well ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... grief, conspired to invest the image of her lover in a tenderer and more impressive guise. She recalled his words, his actions, his letters, and employed herself whole hours, whole days and nights, in endeavouring to decipher their mystery. Who that has been loved will not acknowledge the singular and mighty force with which a girl, innocent herself, clings to the belief of innocence in her lover? In breasts young and unacquainted with the world, there is so pure a credulity in the existence ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... women under financial obligation to him, however, and he is careful not to annoy them with attentions. He has many times found a taxi for a woman traveling alone or with children when they have had the same destination; he has helped women decipher time tables; he has carried bundles and suitcases and baskets and boxes for old ladies who have not yet learned in all their long, long lives that the way to travel is with as little, instead of ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... blank warrant for a suspected party, whose name that fool Potin has registered so badly that I must get him to decipher it before I can ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye
... sale an investigation of title deeds, documents which a great English lawyer—Lord Westbury—once described as "difficult to decipher, disgusting to touch, and impossible to understand," is not necessary prior to sale; for an enjoyment for six years of the rents of an estate brings with it the right to sell, and proof of title is needed only after purchase has been completed in order that ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... in the Journal follow the lines last quoted in this place. Except a word or two, here and there, it is impossible any longer to decipher the writing. The mischief done to her eyes by her reckless use of them, by her fits of crying, by her disturbed nights, by the long-continued strain on her of agitation and suspense, has evidently justified the worst of those unacknowledged forebodings ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... sometimes difficult to decipher; the letters are often crowded and hesitating, a, e, o are sometimes hard to distinguish. Doubts are permissible in the following cases, hwen or hwon 118/24, ihaten or ihoten 37, hondon or honden 51; in sent 55, the last letter wavers between t and d; in [gh]emelese 56, [gh] appears ...
— Selections from early Middle English, 1130-1250 - Part I: Texts • Various
... must direct his eyes to the spheres of Sovereign Beauty; he must lend his ears to the harmonies of the Eternal World, that he may be able to decipher the symbolic signs which manifest the Being of beings, and recognize the voices which murmur His Name; for in humble reverence, yet joyful gratitude, it may be said that God Himself is the First, True, and Last ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... long excuse, Tommy plunged into a sea of ink and floundered through, pausing now and then to decipher one ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... finger and tried the surface of it: a little came off, a tinge of suspicious brown. There was writing on the paper! What was it? He held the faded lines close to the candle. They were not difficult to decipher. He sat down on the stool, and read thus—his reading broken by the stain: there was ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... you will be able to decipher this, written at steam speed with a breaking pen, the hotfast postman at my heels. No excuse, says you. None, sir, says I, and touches my 'at most civil (extraordinary evolution of pen, now quite doomed - to resume - ) I have not put pen to the Bloody Murder yet. But it is early ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Street. Waife examined the fronts of the various inns which they passed by with an eye accustomed to decipher the physiognomy of hostelries. The Saracen's Head pleased him, though its imposing size daunted Sophy. He arrested the steps of the porter, "Follow me close," and stepped across the open threshold into the bar. The landlady ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... throw light on a fact of much local interest connected with Colombo. There formerly stood there, in the Mahometan Cemetery, a stone with an ancient inscription in Cufic characters, which no one could decipher, but which was said to record the virtues of a man of singular virtue, who had arrived in the island in the tenth century. About the year 1787 A.D., one of the Dutch officials removed the stone to the spot where he was building, "and placed it where it ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Calvary. The dear Dean, instead of taking offense, accepted the frank letter in the same spirit in which it was written. A day or two after he sent me a characteristic note, whose peculiar hieroglyphics, after much labor, I was able to decipher; for it has been often said that the only reason why he was never made a bishop was that no clergyman in his diocese would ever have been able to read ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... Brewster, Massachusetts, she one day accompanied my friend and me through the graveyard. She examined one stone after another, and seemed pleased when she could decipher a name. She smelt of the flowers, but showed no desire to pluck them; and, when I gathered a few for her, she refused to have them pinned on her dress. When her attention was drawn to a marble slab inscribed with the name FLORENCE in relief, she dropped upon the ground as though looking ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... communicate by wireless to General Oku the fact of our arrival in the bay, by code of course; but such was the Russian keenness and activity that the moment their own wireless picked up our message,—as, of course, it was bound to do,—finding that it was in a code which they could not decipher, they immediately proceeded to "mix" it so effectually that the reading of it became impossible. The first word or two, however, reached Oku, and he at once, shrewdly surmising that the message was from us, ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... letter in her hand and began, as best she could, for the twentieth time to endeavour to decipher the address. It was very much blotted and besmeared, and presented a very remarkable specimen of caligraphy. The most legible word on it ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... grandeur of the pageant of Nature. Figures, and naught but figures, would not be entertaining, even to those most desirous of instruction. Let the reader take courage! We do not propose that he shall decipher the hieroglyphics of algebra and geometry. Perish the thought! For the rest, figures are but the scaffolding, the method, and do not ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... great a love of things literary as it might or should have done. But he realised that these strange black-letter and manuscript volumes were of unique value, and that their contents, so difficult to decipher, were responsible for the formation of Innocent's guileless and romantic spirit, colouring her outlook on life with a glamour of rainbow brilliancy which, though beautiful, was unreal. One quaint little book he opened had for its title— "Ye Whole Art of Love, Setting Forth ye Noble Manner ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... ceased to knock the clods about, descended the path, and leaning on his visgy began to contemplate the opposite slope of the coombe, as if the answer were written, in letters hard to decipher, ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... unfinished, was completed by Rameses II. A short ride from this temple brings one to the Ramessium, the large temple (which is badly preserved) erected by Rameses II and dedicated to the god Ammon. The pylon is ruined, but one can still decipher some of the inscriptions that tell of Rameses' campaign against the Hittites. The first court is a mass of ruined masonry, but it contains fragments of a colossal statue of Rameses, the largest ever found in Egypt. It probably measured fifty-seven ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... very deliberately to spell over, by a feeble lamplight, the addresses of a bundle of letters taken from a shelf. The process was excruciating, anxious as we were for news from home. She could make nothing of my friend's truly Saxon name;—what foreign official can ever decipher English names? Mine was more pronounceable, and as I kept repeating both, she caught that, and, incapable as I should have thought her of making a pun, she exclaimed at last, in despair, “Forestier, ecco! sono tutti forestière,” tossing me the whole bundle to choose for myself. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... gone. The company that had been chatting at the front door, and which in warmer weather would have tarried until bedtime, had wandered off; however, by stepping toward the light the young merchant could decipher the letters on the purse. Citizen Fusilier drew out a pair of spectacles, looked over his junior's shoulder, read aloud, "Aurore De G. Nanca—," ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... of coming to see me," the Doctor continued, "but I cannot decipher her hieroglyphics sufficiently to find out the time. Perhaps you can ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... nature had been so much diluted that reason, only half baffled, struggles to decipher the dim runes and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... man) used to shave once a week, as he was wont to explain, purely for the love of God. The holy man repaid the service by teaching me to read and write; and I made such progress under his care, that in two years I could decipher the Koran, and began to write a legible hand. When not in school I attended the shop, where I learnt the rudiments of my profession, and when there was a press of customers, was permitted to practise upon the heads of muleteers and ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... poor light—Doctor Pratt's miserable scrawl; but these were but cowardly subterfuges. John knew that he had been able to decipher Doctor Pratt's handwriting well enough, but that he had been thinking of something else while putting up the powders, and so had put too much opium ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... make out the cypher of my letter of September the 25th, because it contained things which I wished you to know at that time. They have lost now a part of their merit; but still, I wish you could decipher them, as there remains a part, which it might yet be agreeable to you to understand. I have examined the cypher from which it was written. It is precisely a copy of those given to Messrs. Barclay and Lambe. In order that you may examine whether yours corresponds, I will ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... than the book was occupying her attention. A piece of detached paper that gleamed whiter between the leaves, was evidently the object of her solicitude. It was the writing upon that she was trying to decipher. I watched with eager glance. I noted every movement of the fair reader. Marian had joined ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... version," says Lenormant, "which, interesting though it be, is, after all, second-hand, we are now able to place an original Chaldeo-Babylonian edition, which the lamented George Smith was the first to decipher on the cuneiform tablets exhumed at Nineveh, and now in the British Museum. Here the narrative of the Deluge appears as an episode in the eleventh tablet, or eleventh chant of the great epic of the town of Uruk. The hero of this poem, a kind of Hercules, whose name has not ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... long before rejected a "revealed code" as unnecessary; the next step was to decipher nature's symbols, and thus grasp God's hidden laws; but here the old trouble arose. How far was "individualism" allowable and safe? To reconcile the theories of rationalism, she felt, was indeed a herculean ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... the time, not knowing the resources of science. Afterwards, however, I took that huge bundle to a friend, a learned friend whose business in life it was and is, to deal with and to decipher old manuscripts. ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard
... occurred a perfect copy; and now the poor damaged worm-eaten leaves, once so reverently and so tenderly regarded, awake no further interest; the mystery and romance have vanished; and when we examine the book as a whole, we do not find its merits so striking as when we strained our eyes to decipher the old ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... articles of expense in dress by her actual possessions. There was a heap of little crumpled bills which, with Felicie's griffonage, Helen had thrown into her table-drawer. In vain did she attempt to decipher the figures, like apothecaries' marks, linked to quarters and three-quarters, and yards, of gauzes, silks, and muslins, altogether inextricably puzzling. They might have been at any other moment laughable, but now they were quite terrible to Helen; the only thing she could make clearly ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... but he must have perceived, as he went on, the extraordinary nature of the work he was producing. He was a great reader, and he knew what other books were like. It must, at least, have crossed his mind that some one might ultimately decipher the manuscript, and he himself, with all his pains and pleasures, be resuscitated in some later day; and the thought, although discouraged, must have warmed his heart. He was not such an ass, besides, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man. The trick of befouling what was clean (and because it was clean) clung to him most tenaciously all his days; and many a fair white surface—of humour, of fancy, or of sentiment—was to be disfigured by him in after-years with stains and splotches in which we can all too plainly decipher the literary signature of ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... sat, and the sword before him, as if they never had stirred since I left. And the old man gave me a bit of parchment covered with crabbed Latin script, and told me I should find therein the sense of my two inscriptions, though there were words even he could not decipher. So I put the parchment in my pouch, and reached my hand to the sword, when he withheld ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... complete, neatly written in the peculiar manuscript character of that age, so difficult for a modern reader to decipher. Its queer old-fashioned spelling suggested the idea that our ancestors considered both consonants and vowels too weak to stand alone, and that therefore they doubled them as often as they could; and there was such an actual identification of its antiquity in its exterior aspect as well as in its ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... operation at the present day: "During the progress of Geology, there have been great fluctuations of opinion respecting the nature of the causes to which all former changes in the earth's surface are referable. The first observers conceived that the monuments which the Geologist endeavors to decipher relate to a period when the physical constitution of the earth differed entirely from the present, and that, even after the creation of living beings, there have been causes in action distinct in kind or degree from these now forming part of the economy of nature. These ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... generation, who consider the moral temperature of a fish to be "good form," as "gush." How old Landor, who "gushed" from cradle to grave, would have massacred and rended in his wrath such talkers! Mary Mitford's "gush" was sincere at all events. But there is a "hall-mark," for those who can decipher it, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... a thrill of mystery upon reading the titles of many of the volumes. The majority were old books, many of them in languages that he was not able to decipher, picked up for a song at second-hand shops or on the book stands installed upon the parapets of the Seine. Only a man holding the key of tongues could get together such volumes. An atmosphere of mysticism, of superhuman insight, of secrets intact ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... glancing over this scrawl, I find it so illegibly written that I fear you will hardly be able to decipher it; but the cold is partly to blame for this—my fingers ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... light had a public school for the poorer people, in which he was taught to read and write. By the former of these elementary branches—supplemented by a smattering of Spanish, picked up in South American ports—he is enabled to decipher the writing upon the card—for it is in writing—and so gets the correct address, both the ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... Englishwomen seem to be almost deprived. 'I am Eve!' say the mocking, melting eyes of the Southern woman, and so said Camilla's eyes. No man could rest calm under that glance; no man could forbear the attempt to decipher the hidden secrecies of its message, and no man could succeed ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... friend. To forget and to learn, that is your device. You turn the leaves of dead books; you are too young for antiquities. Look about you, the pale throng of men surrounds you. The eyes of life's sphynx glitter in the midst of divine hieroglyphics; decipher the book of life! Courage, scholar, launch out on the Styx, the deathless flood, and let the waves of sorrow waft you to oblivion ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... have written often: I have only received yours of the eleventh, which is very short. By this post, five packets, I send you the tragedy of Sardanapalus, which is written in a rough hand: perhaps Mrs. Leigh can help you to decipher it. You will please to acknowledge it by return of post. You will remark that the unities are all strictly observed. The scene passes in the same hall always: the time, a summer's night, about nine hours, or less, though it begins before sunset and ends after sun-rise. In ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... a play of mixed authorship. Shakespeare's share in it is large and unmistakable; but much of it was written by an unknown poet of whom we can decipher this, that he was a man of genius, a skilled writer for the stage, and of a marked personality. It cannot now be known how the collaboration was arranged. Either the unknown collaborated with Shakespeare, or the unknown wrote the play ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... eagerly, hoping to discover something to throw light upon the poor fellow's sad end, but the writing was small, cramped, and difficult for her to decipher. ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... in time, finding a heap of gold under an oak tree some thousand years old, near Arundel, I've made them out: Eight, divided by three; that is to say, three couples of petals, with two odd little ones inserted for form's sake. No wonder I couldn't decipher ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... trace of him was found after his flight. Nothing was missed, he went without his wages, and no reason could be divined for his departure except the foreign letter. Bedford remembered it, but forgot what postmark it bore, for he had only been able to decipher "Italy." My lady made many inquiries and often spoke of him; but when month after month passed and no news came, she gave him up, and on Lillian's account feigned to forget him. Contrary to Hester's fear, she did not seem the worse for the nocturnal fright, but evidently connected the strange ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... in view and peering ahead for some sign of the unknown Terror. The red woman in her flight had left a sharp trail enough; but in the lapse of three days it had been so obliterated that all Grom's wood-craft was needed to decipher it, and his progress was slow. He began to be puzzled at the absence of any other trail, of any footsteps of a mysterious, unknown monster. Such tracks as crossed those of the fugitive, however terrible, were all familiar to ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Keeper of the Mineraloglcal Department. Of the alphabetical Mr. Hamilton we know something. He is one of the ablest palaeographists of his years in England, and the possessor of a pair of eyes of such microscopic powers that he can decipher manuscript which to ordinary sight seems obliterated by time, or even fire: a man of worth, too, as we hear, and one who has borne himself in this affair with mingled confidence and modesty. He says, that, of the corrections originally made on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... more idea of the art of conducting than of that of singing, who is generally a poor musician, selected from among the worst pianists to be found, or who cannot play the pianoforte at all—some old superannuated individual, who, seated before a battered out-of-tune instrument, tries to decipher a dislocated score which he does not know, strikes false chords major, when they are minor, or vice-versa, and under the pretext of conducting and of accompanying by himself, employs his right hand in setting the chorus-singers wrong in their time, and his left hand ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... cautious mildness on hearing me vent this raving notion, "you forget that these wonder-workers are the slaves of our race, need our tendance and regulation, obey the mandates of our consciousness, and are only deaf and dumb bringers of reports which we decipher and make use of. They are simply extensions of the human organism, so to speak, limbs immeasurably more powerful, ever more subtle finger-tips, ever more mastery over the invisibly great and the invisibly small. Each new machine needs a new ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... him for a moment, gave an incoherent grunt, the meaning of which the Doctor found it impossible to decipher, and presently, with a cunning ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... of Roman art, lies buried the monumental boldness of the Phoenicians, or of a race of giants whose extinction even Homer deplores, and whose name even the Phoenicians could not decipher. For might they not, too, have stood here wondering, guessing, even as we moderns guess and wonder? Might not the Phoenicians have asked the same questions that we ask to-day: Who were the builders? and with what tools? In one of the walls of the Acropolis are stones which a hundred ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... service that the voice performs. It tells us what we think better than we can ourselves. It unbinds the chains of the captive soul and permits it to take its flight. Happy the child, happy the young man who meets with a voice to decipher him to himself! This is what Christ did in those blest hours when He reunited the children of His people, as a bird reunites ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... solved when the manuscript of Bishop Landa's account of Yucatan was discovered, some twenty years ago, in Madrid. The Bishop gave what he called "an A, B, C," of the language, but which, when applied to the extant manuscripts and the mural inscriptions, proved entirely insufficient to decipher them. ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... she will not say the same of me," replied Ligarius. "I am just as able to decipher an obelisk as to ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pray forgive me!" she cried, looking more beautiful than ever with the flush which overspread her face. "I came in to ask about a word in your editorial which I could not decipher. I waited for you, as I felt sure you would be in shortly—and I was so TIRED I sat down for just a second to rest—and that is all I knew about it. You must forgive me, sir!—I did not ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... stick! I could as soon decipher Arabic! But, hark! my wizard's own poetic elf 5 Bids me take courage, and make one myself! An heiress, and with sighing swains in plenty From blooming nineteen to full-blown five-and-twenty, Life beating high, and youth upon the wing, 'A ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the rock was gray and ghastly, and tall,—and the rock was gray. Upon its front were characters engraven in the stones; and I walked through the morass of water-lilies, until I came close unto the shore, that I might read the characters upon the stone. But I could not decipher them. And I was going back into the morass when the moon shone with a fuller red, and I turned and looked again upon the rock and upon the characters;—and the characters ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... and so forth," I have but space to advise If you'd decipher it go forth, Look in the Dic and be wise. Make it a point, in your reading, Always to look up what's new. That is a simple proceeding: Why not adopt ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... of wood, surmounted by a gorgeous roof and hung with crimson curtains, awaits him. The roof is literally thatched with flowers ingeniously arranged so as to form symbols and mottoes, which the superior beast is supposed to decipher with ease. The floor of this splendid float is laid with gilt matting curiously woven, in the centre of which his four-footed lordship is installed in state, surrounded by an obsequious and enraptured crowd of mere bipeds, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... am to be the one to find them, to decipher them, and to give the great knowledge to ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... was enough for Dom Granger. He provided me straightway with Berber vocabularies by Venture, by Delaporte, by Brosselard; with the Grammatical Sketch of the Temahaq by Stanley Fleeman, and the Essai de Grammaire de la langue Temachek by Major Hanoteau. At the end of three months I was able to decipher any inscriptions in Tifinar. You know that Tifinar is the national writing of the Tuareg, the expression of this Temachek language which seems to us the most curious protest of the Targui race ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... believed it of them! But it looked so much like the "shinplasters" we are forced to use, that no wonder they made the mistake. To discover who had played so mean a trick on the poor old woman, the General asked me if I could decipher the name. I threw myself on my knees by the hearth, and by the flickering light read "S. Kimes. By order of C! H!! Luzenberg!!! Provost Marshal!!!! Onolona, Miss.," with a gasp of astonishment that raised a burst of laughter against ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... the exercise of meditation! A half-seen glance, or a few words caught as the speaker passes by, open a thousand vistas to your imagination. You wish to comprehend what these imperfect disclosures mean, and, as the antiquary endeavors to decipher the mutilated inscription on some old monument, you build up a history on a gesture or on a word! These are the stirring sports of the mind, which finds in fiction a relief from the wearisome ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... letters mean?" I asked, taking up one of the packages, and trying in vain to decipher the cabalistic sign ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... if the noble Mr. Evelyn had been able to decipher some of the hidden things in Mr. Pepys's "Diary," he would have written this tribute, under the ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... Psychology know how much is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snigger from the throat outwards; ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... all eagerness to begin, caught at the book, and tried to decipher the roughly-written words, but got on ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... Haughton something that astonishes and pleases her, for she gives him a hug; goes to a side-table puts yellow money, cannot tell the coin from here, in a sort of pattern. "Can you see what it means, Tilton, my eyes are tired," and the pink eyes are rubbed red. "No, I cannot decipher the words. Yes, the last is, 'cousin;' stay, I've got another, 'my,' that's all I can make out, the other words are ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... solicitude. Sometimes I think that you are even now exposed to dangers of whose very existence you know nothing; and sometimes I look forward with anxiety to the future, so undecipherable, if misfortune or death should overtake your aunt. Let me help you to decipher this riddle. Let me be your shield now, and your support in the days to come. Be my wife, and give me the right to be your protector. I am detained in London by business for some days more; but I shall await your answer ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... to decipher the mask he wore: it was proof against her imploring eyes. 'If you can ask me—if you can positively wish it—yes,' she said. 'But think of what you are doing. Oh! Alvan, not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
