"Enigma" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not applying dogmas to facts but facts to their own preconceived opinions, and forcing things to agree that do not by nature, have filled philosophy with many difficulties, the greatest of which is that all men but the perfect man are equally vicious, which has produced the enigma called progress, one little short of extreme folly, since it makes those who have not at once under its guidance given up all passions and disorders equally unfortunate as those who have not got rid of a single vile propensity. However ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... asked the question, and I wish you would answer it. I've been driving myself wild over it for the past few days, but I don't seem to get to the solution. Can't your Familiar," pointing downward, "help you guess the enigma, Miriam?" ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... the paper containing the curse was a forgery by Cowie and his associate in crime, and that the money paid to Mrs. Hislop was furnished by the lady; all which suppositions, and others not less incredible, were greedily accepted, for the very reason that it required something prodigious to explain an enigma which exhausted the ordinary sources of man's ingenuity; just as we find in many religions, where miracles—the more absurd, the more acceptable—are resorted to to explain the mystery of man's relation to God, a secret which no natural ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... Fontenelle was in the habit of dining frequently with me; one day, finding me in tears, he was so surprised, he who never wept himself, from philosophy, doubtless, that he tormented me for more than an hour for a solution of the enigma. He was almost like a woman; he drew from me, by his cat-like worrying, the history of my love. Would you believe it? I hoped to touch his heart, but it was like speaking to the deaf. After having listened to the end without saying a word, he muttered with his little weak voice, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... sake of brevity, to compress—we have the suggestion of Pascal’s philosophy both of human nature and of Divine revelation. He recurs over and over again to the same idea, that man is great and yet weak, full of capacity and yet miserable, and that the Gospel alone holds the key to this enigma of human nature. This, more than any other, is the pervading thought round which all the ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... a quasi-introduction, awkwardly done. Sanchia gravely bowed, and all might have been well had not her gentle smile persisted. The baffling quality of this, the archaic enigma of it, made Mrs. Wilmot stare at her helpless with brimming blue eyes. It made Mrs. Devereux shiver. It was she, however, who accepted the inclination of the head. "Good evening to you," she said. The housekeeper! This—person! ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... allegory Time appears to be commanding Death to extinguish the lamp of Life. The sun may mean the brighter life beyond. The building to the right is an enigma. ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... to discovering the secret of this enigma. Madame de Fischtaminel makes fun of Adolphe who goes home in a rage, has a scene with ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... Evang., 1. ii., c. 5: "For those things which are spoken concerning it [the Divine Nature] are not spoken as they are in very truth, but as the tongue of man can interpret, and as man can hear; for he who sees in an enigma also speaks in ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... any haste to break the silence. A puzzling factor had come into her life, and she was impatient of the enigma. The solution was not a question of curiosity but of safety, and a safety not her own. On one side was Commines, Louis' devoted adherent, devoted not alone in service, but in blindness, the blindness which ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... to believe ourself to be the victim of some occult power, or at least of some optical illusion, the true cause of which remained a mystery to us. Finally, after many fruitless attempts to find a key to the enigma that engaged our attention, the light finally dawned upon us, and then shone straight ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... unwarrantable thus to draw the lines between what, for want of better terms, we call Material and Spiritual. Still, reason is but the faculty of a very finite being; and, as in the enigma of the will, utterly incapable of solving any problems beyond those whose data are furnished by the senses. Reason is essentially realistic. Science is its domain. But science demonstratively proves that things are not what they ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... offer; he knew, or thought he knew, her inmost opinion of that ridiculous person. She must be aware that her own dignity was considerably compromised by the situation; perhaps she hoped by rehabilitating the Colonel's behavior to justify her own. But why that insistence on the enigma of Frida Tancred's? Why this superfluous and elaborate cover for her own ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... best of women. Let her be thrown into turbulent times and she might become a demon of mischief. At present she is altogether undeveloped. She is two and twenty in years, but a child, or rather a piquant, amusing young girl, in manner, and perhaps in disposition. She is an enigma of which I should be sorry to have to undertake the solution. As she seems, I like her immensely, but when I try to fathom what she really ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... night, she wakened often and glanced over to the fire. Roaring Bill kept his accustomed position, flat in the glow. She had no fear of him now. But he was something of an enigma. She had few illusions about men in general. She had encountered a good many of them in one way and another since reaching the age when she coiled her hair on top of her head. And she could not recall one—not even Jack Barrow—with whom she would have felt at ease in a similar situation. She knew ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Duenna, however, kept plying the Prince with wine, mere and pure, until she had made him drunken and his carousal had so mastered him that he required her person of her; however she refused herself and questioned him of the enigma wherewith he had overcome her mistress; whilst he, for stress of drunkenness, was incapacitated by stammering to explain her aught thereof. Hereupon the Princess, having doffed her upper dress, propped herself sideways upon a divan cushion and stretched herself at full ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... a daughter of the house of Fuller. It was not outside the reasonable that Ruth should have had possession of this old document, in which a Ruth of that far-distant day had accepted a member of his own household. She might have chosen to answer him by this clear enigma, but a sense of solemnity in the phrasing of the letter made him hope his guess untrue. Desperate mysteries ask naturally for desperate guesses, and Reuben guessed right and left, but the mystery remained as desperate as ever. His thoughts so harried him that at last, though it was late for Heydon ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... used to be to me," said Eleanor, "to comprehend such a life; how impossible to understand, that anybody should leave home and friends and comfort, and take his place voluntarily in distance and danger and heathendom. It was an utter enigma to me." ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... chosen. But authors masculine they are, the pair of them. Mr. W. S. LILLY is to be congratulated on his very taking title, The Great Enigma, and all classes of readers will be glad to be informed that it has nothing whatever to do with the Irish Question. If any reader expects to find the Great Enigma solved by the LILLY who toils and spins, then he must not be surprised if the author says to him in effect, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 17, 1892 • Various
... intellect. Coningsby in his solitary rooms arranging his books, sighed when he recalled the Lady Everinghams and the Lady Theresas; the gracious Duchess; the frank, good- natured Madame Colonna; that deeply interesting enigma the Princess Lucretia; and the gentle Flora. He thought with disgust of the impending dissipation of an University, which could only be an exaggeration of their coarse frolics at school. It seemed rather ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet," is an axiom with most Englishmen to whom the oriental character seems an insoluble enigma. This form of agnosticism is unworthy of a nation which is responsible for the happiness of 300,000,000 Asiatics. It is not justified by history, which teaches us that civilisation is the result of the mutual ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... key to the enigma explaining Steve's strange action, as well as his queer antics while floundering about out there in the little stream, both boys could easily see that May evidently spoke the truth. So those envious Spanish courtiers found it easy to balance an egg on end, after Columbus ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... in Novaia Zemlia. I have stayed with a mayor who did not know that England was an island; I have been the guest of a citizen who had never heard of Scotland, and to whom, therefore, my nationality was an enigma: but I never met any one—I mean of this same class—who had not heard of Palmerston. He was a mysterious personage, execrated by the "blacks" and adored by the "reds." And I shone with a reflected lustre as the citizen of a country of which he was the Prime Minister. As a consequence, ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... know what he is talking about or he is concealing something," remarked Craig, as we paced up and down the platform. "I am inclined to read the enigma ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... yet an enigma, stands for our astonishment. Herodotus tells us, when speaking of the Labyrinth of Egypt, that it had 3,000 chambers, half of them above and half below ground. He says, "The upper chambers I myself passed ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... talk, moreover, was an enigma to them. He was no favorite, and only his goodly property tempered his ill repute. People could not help identifying him, in a measure, with his noble old house, with the stately pillared portico, with his silver-plate and damask and mahogany, which ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... priding himself upon Gemuethlichkeit, loving reunions, restaurants, his Stammtisch, formal and punctilious in his politeness, unused to the ways of the world, but yet convinced that he is now a great man politically and commercially, the Englishman is not only an enigma but an insult. I am criticising neither. I have received unbounded hospitality and friendliness from both. I have ridden, fought, drunk, travelled, and lived with both, but for that very reason I understand how horribly ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... moderated, and the wind had become fair. Then, indeed, he departed, after taking leave of the Pathfinder, in the manner of one who believed he was in company of a distinguished character for the last time. The two separated like those who respect one another, while each felt that the other was all enigma ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... simply desired to traverse, at once seemed altogether delightful to him. And all this was due to his meeting a divine creature in the midst of this crowd. He was eager to find Marianne, to see her again. She aroused his curiosity as some enigma might. ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... extracted out of a destiny more than he has. The preposterous and the commonplace are equally familiar to him. He has shone, he has suffered, he has dragged along a humdrum existence: nothing has escaped him.... He is an enigma, a riddle that can ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... distinguished by the elegance of his accomplishments, nor did he much pride himself in the attainments of literature. After many conjectures, he at length determined with infinite sagacity, to suspend his judgement, till Mr. Moreland mould solve the enigma. ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... Whispering Pines Miss Hurd. An Enigma Leavenworth Case That Affair Next Door Strange Disappearance Lost Man's Lane Sword of Damocles Agatha Webb Hand and Ring One of My Sons The Mill Mystery Defence of the Bride, Behind Closed Doors and Other Poems Cynthia Wakeham's Money Risifi's ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... produced none but evasive answers. Each of the girls had her own idea as to the solution of the enigma. Margaret, very naturally, pronounced Belasez in love. Eva, one of whose sisters had been recently ill, thought she was anxious about her brother. Marie suggested that too much damson tart might be a satisfactory explanation,—that having been the state of things ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... undertaking as he was able. But now Zenas Henry's launch had suddenly become a glorified object, sacred to the relatives of the divinity of the workshop, and how and where the flotsam of the tides ensnared it was of colossal importance. Into solving the nautical enigma Robert Morton now threw every ounce of his energy and while at work artfully drew from his companion every detail he could obtain ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... Aunt Margaret had said, "to bury a woman like Jessica Cameron on a farm. What possessed her to let Robert take her there in the first place is beyond my comprehension. Granting that first mistake, why she has let him stay all these years is another enigma. Robert is all very well, but Jessica! I would defy any one to produce the situation anywhere that Jessica wouldn't be ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... nothing but the military costume in which she stood, not any woman's linen, not even one chemise. For a change she took the captain's shirt. Such a state of things was so new to me that the situation seemed to me a complete enigma. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... very wise," he went on, thoughtfully, staring into the obscurity of the room, pervaded by the gruesome enigma of the tortured and murdered Hirsch. "But I am not such a fool as when I started. I have learned one thing since, and that is that you are ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... possessor, has placed his Portia; and so endowed her, that all the wild, strange, and moving circumstances of the story, become natural, probable, and necessary in connexion with her. That such a woman should be chosen by the solving of an enigma, is not surprising: herself and all around her, the scene, the country, the age in which she is placed, breathe of poetry, romance, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... at her, and the old curiosity took possession of him to understand this feminine enigma. Many a man before him has been the victim of a like desire, and lived to regret that he did not leave it ungratified. It is not well to try to lift the curtain of the unseen, it is not well to call to heaven to show its glory, or to hell to give us touch and knowledge ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... scholars, and the usual statement that it owed its name to Byzantine settlers coming hither from the ancient town of Melfi in the Basilicata does not sound very convincing, though for want of a better theory it must suffice. Why, when, and by whom the city was in reality founded remains an enigma, yet we learn from a passage in one of the letters of St Gregory the Great that the place was of sufficient size to be governed by a bishop in the sixth century. By the tenth we find the Republic of Amalfi already risen to a position ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... evil-smelling dark bottle in the Italian's inside coat-pocket, which was an enigma. It was not ginger pop or beer, or any kind of soda water; Black Bruin knew all of these drinks himself, and this drink ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... itself to another, he veiled his earnest friendship under a guise of mere clerkly companionship, rarely giving way to those bursts of tender feeling, which rendered him, in Guly's young eyes, an absolute enigma. ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... married, but the priest was ordained by my master, and the license was of his own granting, and so they are not married, and now the enigma's explained. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... acquainted with the military energy of the Tartar government, and the abject weakness of their own; and certainly knew, from their brethren in Kathay, the significant name of the Tartar general; on which foundation, they constructed the enigma of their prophecy, which, like many others, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... The enigma pressed upon her days, she lived in the heaviness of it, waiting. His silence added itself up, brought her a kind of shame for the exertions she had made. She turned with obstinacy from the further schemes her ingenuity presented. Out of the sum of her unsuccessful efforts grew ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... Having untangled the enigma to his own satisfaction, Mr. Benton proceeded to sit back and enjoy its solution all ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... one, as we may infer, of the highest order of those intelligences that "circle the throne rejoicing;" and the same glorious spirit who so many ages before had been sent to Daniel, to specify, in a prophetic enigma, the time of "MESSIAH THE PRINCE," which he now came to announce ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... into detail than Cortez, he now and then drops an expression that furnishes a clew to many an enigma otherwise unexplainable. In speaking of the avarice of the officers, he lets fall the following confession of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... wretched lady vainly sought some solution of the enigma—why she had been brought thither. She could not solve it; but she determined, if her capture had been made by any lawful authorities, to confess her guilt ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sentiment or to appease its craving for satisfaction. There being no God, they find it necessary, as Voltaire predicted it would be, to invent one, not for the purposes of police (they are far above such sordid Jesuitism), but as the solution of the otherwise hopeless enigma of our spiritual nature. Science takes cognizance of all phenomena, and this apparently ineradicable tendency of the human mind is a phenomenon like the rest. The thoroughgoing Materialist, of course, escapes all these philosophical exigencies, but he does it by denying ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... the enigma of this interview as she had accepted the wonder of the girl's sudden appearance and the other, incidents of this extraordinary night. She did not undertake to imagine what the drawing on the menu meant, the words about the ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... blanched faces were turned to him as though he must be solver of the enigma. He could not be unconscious of this mute eye-questioning, and it disturbed his resolute air of composure. He hesitated, glanced towards his mother, the house-mistress, then back at the frightened folk, and gravely, before them all, made the sign of the ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... and forth with solemn earnestness, but respectfully requesting every one to comply with the cardinal's wishes and not approach the mysterious drapery, but await his own time for the solution of the enigma! A few steps led up to this closed and covered niche; these steps were strewed with roses, that was plainly seen; but, to what did these steps lead, and what ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... who have sat as that poor mother did, over a loved one hovering between life and death. And as Mrs. Wharton sat so silently opposite her, her thoughts were sometimes raised in prayer for her poor misguided sister; and sometimes she sat looking at her as a perfect enigma; with a heart so capable of loving devotedly, and yet so steeled against her own child, and so lovely and winning a little creature as Agnes. It was a puzzle which she had often tried to ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... the room with a shudder as her eyes travelled over the luxurious appointments and different objects that had become so curiously familiar in the last two months. The unexpected equipments and the man's own baffling personality would remain in her recollection always as an enigma that she would never be able to solve. So much had been so inexplicable in himself and in his mode of life. She drew a long breath and went ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... bewildered her. Her countenance was stamped with a wondering expression as though she were gazing at the upsetting of the most elemental physical laws. In reflective silence she was puzzling over the Marne enigma, unable to understand how it was that the Germans had not conquered the ground on which she was treading; and in order to explain this failure, she resorted ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... man whom he had seen driving the Russian horses, and squatting on the floor of the hashish cafe, might well be at home here. And he himself—could not he be at home here, with these marvellous prayer-rugs and embroideries, into which was surely woven something of the deep and eternal enigma of the East? ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... absent ones were named and the faces of the dead recalled. In all our songs the rustling of withered leaves could be heard. All felt the pitiless march of time and I respected them for their perception of life's essential enigma. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... and death must be added the mystery of growth. When Demosthenes exclaimed: "Yesterday I was not here; I shall not be here to-morrow; to-day I am here," he suggested a hard problem. Having solved the enigma, what went before life, and answered that mystery, what follows after death, there still remains this question: "How can a babe in twenty years take on the proportions of the great orator and reformer?" Rocks do not grow, nor diamonds, nor dirt, but a shrunken bulb does ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... arriving at truth as ever scholar sat at the feet of his instructer. The result was anything but satisfying, I ended a universal sceptic, so far as human systems of philosophy were concerned, so far as they pretended to solve the enigma of God and man, of life and death; but with a heart, nevertheless, yearning after truth; and even full of faith, if that may be called faith which would instinctively lay hold upon a God and a hope of immortality; and, though beaten ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... her brow I saw the stigma Still of death; and life's enigma Filled her eyes: around her shimmered Folds of silence; and afar, Faint above her forehead, glimmered Lone the light of one ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... answered, with a sigh. "Why, of all his volumes, this only should have vanished, was an inexplicable enigma." ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... a shaft only. This is, I think, rare. Sometimes in the village street, the slender column grey against the green trees, sometimes in the churchyard, these crosses come on the mind like a sudden enigma. It requires an effort to grasp their meaning, so long have the ideas passed away which led to their erection. They almost startle modern thought. How many years since the peasant women knelt at their steps! On the base of one which ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... only clue which will enable justice to seize the murderer. Conscious of her innocence, she braves peril that would chill the blood of men, and extort almost any secret; and shall I tell you the reason? Shall I give you the key to an enigma which she knows ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... view of facts that displeased him, understanding chiefly his personal interests, true to those whom he considered his friends, but implacable toward the people whom he himself had wronged. He was a living enigma to which no one had ever found a solution; because he presented constantly new and unexpected sides that appeared suddenly and shattered the conclusion to which ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... to hover about the enigma of the scarlet letter seemed an innate quality of her being. From the earliest epoch of her conscious life, she had entered upon this as her appointed mission. Hester had often fancied that Providence ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in Roderick Deal's eyes began to feed upon some enigma in Skag's own; he endured it a moment and ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... the greatness and the waning of the heroic world In the Nibelungen-lied the final event is a great calamity that is akin to a half historical event of the North. Odin descends to the nether world to consult Hela; but she, like the sphinx of Thebes, will not reply save in an enigma, which enigma is to entail terrible tragedies, and lead to destruction the young hero who is the prey of ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... he will go far. The Japanese is prepared and fit to undertake this management. Not only has he proved himself an apt imitator of Western material progress, a sturdy worker, and a capable organizer, but he is far more fit to manage the Chinese than are we. The baffling enigma of the Chinese character is no baffling enigma to him. He understands as we could never school ourselves nor hope to understand. Their mental processes are largely the same. He thinks with the same thought-symbols as does the Chinese, and he thinks in the same peculiar ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... give you a word of advice. Never try to get a detective to do anything for you unless you are willing to tell him all you know and all you suspect. It is generally hard enough to solve an enigma without having other ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... There was an enigma in the rejoinder; she did not stay to read the riddle, but went on to possess the situation, according to her wont. "Ye hev tuk a powerful pore place ter hide," she admonished him. "This tree is a plumb cur'osity. Gran'dad ...
— Wolf's Head - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... subject of inquiry, field of inquiry, subject of controversy; point in dispute, matter in dispute; moot point; issue, question at issue; bone of contention &c. (discord) 713; plain question, fair question, open question; enigma &c. (secret) 533; knotty point &c. (difficulty) 704; quodlibet; threshold of an inquiry. [person who questions] inquirer, investigator, inquisitor, inspector, querist[obs3], examiner, catechist; scrutator scrutineer scrutinizer[obs3]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Son of Man was to come with the clouds of heaven, seated on God's throne, to execute judgment on all sinners and apostates; the Nazarene fulfilled none of these conditions. The name, as used by Jesus, was probably always an enigma to the people, at least until he openly declared its Messianic significance in his reply to the high-priest's question at his trial (Mark xiv. 62), and gave the council the ground it desired for a charge of blasphemy ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... answered Grace doubtfully. "She is an enigma. She speaks the most precise English, with absolutely no trace of slang. But she looks as though the whole world were her natural enemy. Elfreda named her the Anarchist. I am rather ashamed to say we call her ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... of death was already visible, had more of its original beauty than Mr. Strafford had ever seen on it before; and as he came near to the bedside, he for the first time began to comprehend, what had always till now been an enigma to him, why Mary Wynter had loved and married ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... start with affright. In a theocracy, what is to fear? Let us compose ourselves to death as fagged horsemen sleep in the saddle. Let us welcome even ghosts when they rise. Away with our stares and grimaces. The New Zealander's tattooing is not a prodigy; nor the Chinaman's ways an enigma. No custom is strange; no creed is absurd; no foe, but who will in the end prove a friend. In heaven, at last, our good, old, white-haired father Adam will greet all alike, and sociality forever prevail. Christian shall join hands between Gentile and Jew; ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... still further indicated, the next day, by crowds of savages who flocked into the wigwam where he was confined, some to stare at him, some to inquire the mysteries of their fate, and some, as it seemed, with credulity less unconditional, to solve the enigma of his appearance before yielding their full belief. Among these last were the renegade and one or two savages of a more sagacious or sceptical turn than their fellows, who beset the supposed conjuror with questions calculated to pluck out the heart ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... how natural, all this seemed! Why had not my mother dreamed of the possibility of such a thing! Knowing the existence of this brother, why had she not at once found in him the solution of the dark problem, which was the enigma as well as ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... what he says of bismuth, in his report to the Academy, must be taken cum grano salis. The simple truth is, that up to this period all analysis has failed; and until Von Kempelen chooses to let us have the key to his own published enigma, it is more than probable that the matter will remain, for years, in statu quo. All that as yet can fairly be said to be known is, that 'Pure gold can be made at will, and very readily from lead in connection with certain other substances, in kind ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... is the great enigma of Art History,—you must not follow Art without pleasure, nor must you follow it for the sake of pleasure. And the solution of that enigma is simply this fact; that wherever Art has been followed only for the sake of luxury ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... led me to understand the marvelous framework of ideas on which the great Italian poet built his poem, the only work which the moderns can place by that of Homer. Till I heard you, the Divine Comedy was to me a vast enigma to which none had found the clue—the commentators least of all. Thus, to understand Dante is to be as great as he; but every form of greatness ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the Second Part, when much of the impulse had gone and all the deliberation in the world was not active enough to replace it. Helen has her share, among other abstractions, but the breath has not returned into her body, she is glacial, a talking enigma, to whom Marlowe's Faustus would never have said with ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... that our luckless crowned philosopher has been the common mark at which so many quivers have been emptied, should be quite obvious when so many causes were operating against him. The shifting positions into which he was cast, and the ambiguity of his character, will unriddle the enigma of his life. Contrarieties cease to be contradictions when ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... is a purely imaginative being; that is, the imagination marks the summit of his intellectual development. He does not go beyond this stage, but it is no longer an enigma as in animals, nor a transitory phase as in the civilized child who rapidly advances to the age of reason; it is a fixed state, permanent and lasting throughout life.[48] It is there revealed to us in its entire spontaneity: it has free rein; it can create without imitation or tradition; ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... revolution like that of Greece, when the very organization of society is shaken, compress the progress of a century within a few years! There remained nothing for me but to visit the monastery, and seek a solution of the singular enigma from my friend's own mouth; so, joining a party of travellers who were about to visit the marble quarries of Pentelicus, and continue their excursion to the plain of Marathon, I set out on such a morning as can only be witnessed under the pure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... commander-in-chief of the Continental armies was undoubtedly a political act meant to bind the southern colonies to the war and to blunt charges that this was a New England revolution. Seldom has a political decision borne greater positive benefits. Washington is an enigma and he always will remain so to his countrymen. His greatness as a man and as a commander are difficult to fathom. The contradictions are best summarized by ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... in the government of a people, because it is very dangerous that the people should be an enigma. It is necessary to know what it thinks, what it feels, what it suffers, what it desires, what it fears, and what it hopes, and as this can only be learnt from the people itself, it is necessary that it should have a voice which ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... asked, not realizing it to be the most futile of questions when applied to human actions. To every such "Why?" there are a myriad answers. When a mysterious murder is committed, everyone seeks the motive. Unless circumstance unquestionably provides the key of the enigma, who can tell? It may be revenge for the foulest of wrongs. It may be that the assassin objected to the wart on the other man's nose—and there are men to whom a wart is a Pelion of rank offense, and who believe themselves heaven-appointed ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... a seed or a root? Do you plant it or sow it, or how do you prepare it? are some of the questions asked me now and again. To the general public there seems to be some great mystery surrounding this spawn question; in fact, it appears to be the chief enigma connected with mushroom-growing. Now, the truth is, there is no mystery at all about the matter. What practical mushroom growers call spawn, ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... difficulties about the place. Or say finally at Soissons; where Fleury wished it to be, that he might get the reins of it better in hand; and where it finally was,—and where the ghost or name of it yet is, an empty enigma in the memories of some men. Congress of Soissons did meet, 14th June, 1728; opened itself, as a Corporeal Entity in this world; sat for above a year;—and did nothing; Fleury quite declining the Pragmatic Sanction, though the anxious Kaiser was ready to make astonishing sacrifices, give ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... it squarely—"I love Emily Brunell. Whatever her father is, or has done, she is guiltless of any complicity, and I can't stand by and see her suffer, much less be the one to precipitate her grief by bringing her father to justice. I told you the truth when I said that the cipher letter was an enigma to me. I could not solve the cryptogram, nor will I be the means of bringing it to the hands of those who might solve it. I don't want any further connection with the case; in fact, sir, I want to get out of the sleuth game altogether. ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... Gladys, she felt restless and unhappy, she did not know why; only she knew that never had her thoughts reverted with such lingering persistence to the past, never had its memories seemed more fraught with sweetness and with pain. She was an enigma, she ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... the twentieth perusal of his works? He is a Voice coming to us from the Land of Melody: his old brick dwelling- place, in the mere earthly burgh of Stratford-on-Avon, offers us the most inexplicable enigma. And what is Homer in the /Ilias/? He is THE WITNESS; he has seen, and he reveals it; we hear and believe, but do not behold him. Now compare, with these two Poets, any other two; not of equal genius, for there are none ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Ah, that was it! But where had he gone? Why should he rise up in the middle of the night, take the flock and dogs, and steal off in this noiseless fashion? The boy could not solve the enigma. ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... palaces—and so intermixed and confused, that the clearest head gets puzzled with the entanglements of the story; and confusion gets worse confounded as the farrago proceeds. How M. Sue will manage ever to come to a close is an enigma to us; and we shall wait with some impatience to see how he will distribute his poetic justice, when he can't get his puppets to move another step. Horror seems the great ingredient in the present literary fare of France, and in the Mysteres de Paris the most confirmed glutton of such delicacies ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... inquire into it, my good sir,' said the learned Baronet. 'Yet even now I venture to conjecture that I shall adopt the solution or explanation of this riddle, enigma, or mystery which you have in some degree thus started. Yes! revenge it must be; and, good Heaven! entertained by and against whom? entertained, fostered, cherished against young Hazlewood of Hazlewood, and in part carried into effect, executed, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... whirlwind excitement as all this, so much radiant joy over the disposal of a baby, had never entered into any previous negotiation, and Mr. Bingle was quite carried away by the novelty of the situation. Never before had the ceremony resolved itself into an enigma, a puzzle, so to speak, in which it was his ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... by a glance so keen and so covert that it always took, but never gave, and then complimented him home in so masterly a manner that he was lured into the fond belief that he had found a disciple. A mind so capacious and so reticent is always an enigma to near observers. Hence it is that the transcendently great may be more truly known to after-ages than to any contemporary. By the patient research and profound insight of Mr. Carlyle, Frederick ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... men have hitherto always bowed reverently before the saint, as the enigma of self-subjugation and utter voluntary privation—why did they thus bow? They divined in him—and as it were behind the questionableness of his frail and wretched appearance—the superior force which wished to test itself by such a subjugation; the strength of will, in which they recognized ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... has always been regarded as a sort of enigma. Professor Dowden asks: "With what intention and in what spirit did Shakespeare write this strange comedy? All the Greek heroes who fought against Troy are pitilessly exposed to ridicule?" And from this fact and the bitterness of "Timon" some German critics have drawn the inference ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... form it receives no reply. It is an enigma to which no one present holds the key. For none know aught of a rivalry having existed between the two men—much less a love-jealousy, than which no motive more inciting to murder ever beat ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... what John thought rather too much of an enigma, the young clergyman took to the dusty highway which led to Westways. John watched the tall figure awkwardly climbing a snake fence, and keeping in mind for explanation the clergyman's last remark he ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... making-believe all the time. One great, good thing can be said for Roy: he is never really cross; he never snaps; he never snarls; he never bites his human friends, no matter how great the provocation may be. Roy is a canine enigma, the most eccentric of characters. His family cannot determine whether he is a gump or a genius. But they know he is nice; and ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... made envious mothers cite her as a model of ladylike repression. Love, she told herself, would one day release her from this spell of unreality. She was persuaded that the sublime passion was the key to the enigma; but it was difficult to relate her conception of love to the forms it wore in her experience. Two or three of the girls she had envied for their superior acquaintance with the arts of life had contracted, ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... writing, he again gave way to fears that though he himself could unfold their meaning, others, who came to peruse these lines, would not be able to fathom them, and he also went on consequently to indite another stanza, in imitation of the "Parasitic Plant," which he inscribed at the close of the enigma; and when he had read it over a second time, he felt his heart so free of all concern that forthwith he got into his bed, and went ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... he replied, "to travel to the uttermost ends of the earth at all times, if by doing so we can obtain even a meager clue to the enigma which baffles us." ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... and working as many wonders as a veritable witch. She leaves us poor, friendless, dependent; she returns to us rich, powerful, and with influential friends ready to serve those who once protected her. But I think I have found the key to the enigma. Did we not hear strict orders given that none but the Countess Orlowski should be admitted? Well, Madeleine was at once allowed to enter: it follows, beyond doubt, that ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... unanimous in regard to Sappho, and the reliable information about her, outside the evidence of the fragments of her poems which have reached us, is scanty. Her fame has always been great; in classic times her name was coupled with Homer's. But even to antiquity she was somewhat of an enigma, and many legends grew up around her name, such as the familiar story that she threw herself into the sea for the love of Phaon. What remains clear is that she was regarded with great respect and admiration ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... regarded with satisfaction by the little circle at Billingsfield, while he himself was at once received into intimacy and treated with cordial friendliness, he nevertheless represented in the minds of all an unsolved enigma. And to the squire the existence of one of the circle was at least as problematical as his own life could seem to any of them. The more he saw of Mrs. Goddard, the more he wondered at her and speculated ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... yet everything went on in the valley with a harmony and smoothness unparalleled, I will venture to assert, in the most select, refined, and pious associations of mortals in Christendom. How are we to explain this enigma? These islanders were heathens! savages! ay, cannibals! and how came they without the aid of established law, to exhibit, in so eminent a degree, that social order which is the greatest blessing and highest pride of ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Wilfer's shoulders and gloves, as who should say, 'An Enigma!' and then she marched at the head of the procession to the family ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... of an enigma to Hector Strong. He was making more than a million pounds a year, and yet she did not want to marry him. Sometimes he wondered if the woman were quite sane. Yet, mad ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... could beguile him into passing; the actual outcome of which at last was that there was scarce one that could arrest him in his rush. His rush—as Strether vividly and amusedly figured it—continued to be all with Sarah, and contained perhaps moreover the word of the whole enigma, whipping up in its fine full-flavoured froth the very principle, for good or for ill, of his own, of Strether's destiny. It might after all, to the end, only be that they had united to save him, and indeed, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... monk, and not a troubadour? These questions are far too large to be answered fully here, but in any life of Francis they ought at least to have been asked; we have a suspicion that if they were answered we should suddenly find that much of the enigma of this sullen time of ours was answered also. So it was with the monks. The two great parties in human affairs are only the party which sees life black against white, and the party which sees it white against black, the ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... black porpoises in one line, extending fully a quarter of a mile, fast asleep! The appearance certainly was a little singular, not unlike a raft of puncheons, or a ridge of rocks; but the moment it was seen, some one exclaimed, (I believe the captain)—"here is a solution of Jonathan's enigma"—and the resemblance to his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... may have been written? It may have been written at Henry Dunbar's dictation, and under coercion. Be it as it may, the mystery of the Winchester murder shall be set at rest, if patience or intelligence can solve the enigma. No mystery shall separate me from the woman ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... much as a kitten first introduced to its own image in a mirror: she runs to the back of it, she leaps over it, she turns and twists, and jumps and frisks, in all directions, in the vain attempt to reach the fair illusion; and, at length, turns away in weariness from that incomprehensible enigma—the ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... overflowings of a zeal too intemperate to be ingenuous. It would probably occur to him, that he would be likely to find the precautions he was in search of in the primitive compact between the States. Here, at length, he would expect to meet with a solution of the enigma. No doubt, he would observe to himself, the existing Confederation must contain the most explicit provisions against military establishments in time of peace; and a departure from this model, in a favorite point, has occasioned the discontent which appears to ...
— The Federalist Papers
... an aid in understanding the stages of European development, affirming that colonial settlement is for economic science what the mountain is for geology, bringing to light primitive stratifications. "America," he says, "has the key to the historical enigma which Europe has sought for centuries in vain, and the land which has no history reveals luminously the course of universal history." There is much truth in this. The United States lies like a huge page ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... still his; a king of men. The practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer; but to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky sublime character, and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gillman's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain whether ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... always be so well dressed that his dress shall never be remarked at all. Does this sound like an enigma? It is not meant for one. It only implies that perfect simplicity is perfect elegance, and that the true test of dress in the toilet of a gentleman is its entire harmony, unobtrusiveness, and becomingness. Displays should be avoided. Let a sensible man leave the ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... Mr. Jeorling, for although this 'romance'—as you call it—appeared only last year, it is none the less a reality. Although eleven years have elapsed since the facts occurred, they are none the less true, and we still await the ' word J of an enigma which ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... he met Fay that such women existed. Women he was aware were an enigma. Men could not fathom them. They were fickle, mysterious creatures, on whom no sane man could rely, whom the wisest owned they could not understand, capable alternately of devotion and treachery, acting from instincts that men did not share, moved by sudden, amazing impulses that ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... man, at once the world's admiration and enigma, we are taught by a fine instinct to venerate, and by a wrong opinion to misjudge. The might of his character has taken strong hold upon the feelings of great masses of men; but, in translating this universal sentiment into an intelligent ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... by Goethe, alleging that Hamlet was 'a fat man.' At first I was inclined to regard this as a joke of the majestic German. Later reflection induced me to examine this surmise in detail, and to conclude finally that the theory is true, and that the enigma of Hamlet's character can be ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... He interpreted my look, and said—"To solve the enigma at once, It is our wish to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... as Zeus, the earth as Demeter, the sea as Poseidon; from generation to generation under his shaping hands, the figures multiply and define themselves; character and story crystallise about what at first were little more than names; till at last, from the womb of the dark enigma that haunted him in the beginning, there emerges into the charmed light of a world of ideal grace a pantheon of fair and concrete personalities. Nature has become a company of spirits; every cave and fountain is haunted by a nymph; in the ocean dwell the Nereids, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... immense body of free laborers could be found, particularly when it is recalled to what desperate straits the colonial leaders were put in securing immigrants,—slavery, indentured servitude, and kidnapping being the fruits of their necessities. The answer to the enigma is to be found partly in European conditions and partly in the cheapness of transportation after the opening of the era of steam navigation. Shrewd observers of the course of events had long foreseen that a flood of cheap labor was bound to come ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... you. Would you like us to go down to Monsieur de Saint-Aignan's rooms? Perhaps we shall be able to find the solution of the enigma there." ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... poetical phrase. Not till after the meaning was forgotten could the myth arise. But the myth existed already in the Veda! And the unseemliness is precisely what we have to account for; that is our enigma. ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... off with deliberate coolness. The very manner in which this had been accomplished merely served to stimulate his eagerness to penetrate the mystery of her reserve, and caused him to consider her henceforth as altogether differing from other girls. She had become a problem, an enigma, which he would try to solve; and her peculiar nature, baffling, changeable, full of puzzling moods, served to fascinate his imagination, to invite his dreaming. A strange thrill swept him when he caught a fleeting glimpse of white skirt and well-turned ankle as she ran ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... motive for such a performance. One is not at all surprised to find that Mrs. Mitchell was among the last of his earthly thoughts; but were there not ample proof of the falsity of these careless assertions, then indeed would Hamilton be an enigma. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... realized in water, as the superficial—(whence Orpheus employed the term 'sprinkled,' or rather affused or superfused)—and you will hear the voice of infant nature;—that is, you will understand the rudimental products and elementary powers and constructions of the phenomenal world. An enigma this not unworthy of Orpheus, 'quicunque fuit', and therefore ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... is! what puppets we are! How terrible an enigma is Fate! I never set my foot without my door, but what the fearful darkness that broods over the next moment rushes upon me. How awful an event may hang over our hearts! The sword is always above us, ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exclusively considered the action of the "legislator." But what in its turn did these "conditions of property" depend on? Guizot is unable to answer this question, and after long, vain efforts to find a solution of the enigma in historical circumstances, he returns, falls back nolens volens, upon the theory of human nature. Augustin Thierry, another eminent historian of the Restoration, found himself in almost the same case, or rather he would have done so if only he had tried to investigate this ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... personality. Every woman worth the having, down in her heart, loves to be mastered: it gives her a sense of security, and she likes to lean; for, strong as she may be at times, she is often singularly weak. She knew that her mother deprecated "that Belward enigma," but this only sent her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... silences that belong to the night in field and forest were far and near. Across the moon a mottled cloud floated with the slowness of a sleeping fish, a second, third, and fourth as slowly followed, the shadow of a dead tree crawled over a white stone and left it in the light; but the enigma remained an enigma still. It might be that the object of conjecture had fled in the belief that the conjecturer was none other than Widewood's master. But, in that same belief, who could say he might not be lying in ambush within close gunshot ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... cunning, and the artful advantage he would sometimes take of words which he attributed to the dead, will easily solve the enigma. The battle of Eylau was terrible. Night came on—Bernadotte's corps was instantly, but in vain, expected; and after a great loss the French army had the melancholy honour of passing the night on the field of battle. Bernadotte at length arrived, but too late. He met the enemy, who were retreating ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... carried away, characteristics which Serge and Aunt Vera have so often tried to repress. On the table is the parcel of books found at my home at the time of my arrest. Where they come from remains an enigma which I fear to touch, because its solution may compromise some of my relatives and friends. Therefore, after I have replied to sundry questions concerning my social status, I refuse to answer any other. My refusal provokes much dissatisfaction, especially on the part of Colonel P——, who ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... life must be lived while we wait for the word that shall solve the enigma, and the happier, the nobler our life, the more vigorous shall it become, and we shall have the more courage, clear-sightedness, boldness to seek and desire the truth.... We should live as though we were always ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... action of her nerves that any change in her physical condition affected her whole nature, making her an enigma to herself as well as to others. Even as she sat there rebellious and defiant, her eyes fell upon the small morocco box on her pillow, and she picked it up ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... Filmer, motionless and flushed. Jock contemplated him from his greater height as if he were a new and startling enigma. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... wanted to know more; ever so much more. He mentioned other ships and masters, to induce me. I got the idea that he would let his mind, at least, escape into that time, if only I would help him to let it go. But there was that potent and silent enigma about us. . ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... own for a short space, and the two have now branched off, nor in all likelihood will ever meet again. My life has been a quiet one, and has not lain much in the way of extraordinary men, but I doubt if many such as Simon Colliver exist. He is a perfect enigma to me. That such a man, with such attainments (for besides his wonderful conversation and power of singing, he has an amazing knowledge of foreign tongues), that such a man, I say, should be a mere attorney's clerk is little short of marvellous. But as regards his past he told me ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... though the minister had no further lot or part in her fate. The poetasters called her Charmante, Anwet, Chloe,—what not! Young Mr. Lee in many a slight and pleasing set of verses addressed her as Sylvia, but to the community at large she was Darden's Audrey, and an enigma greater than the Sphinx. Why would she not marry Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View? Was the girl looking for a prince to come overseas for her? Or did she prefer to a dazzling marriage the excitement of the theatre, the adulation, furious applause? That could ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... wake up and get a fresh currency, until some new circumstance gave rise to a new hypothesis. Unconscious of all these inquiries and fictions, Maurice Kirkwood lived on in his inoffensive and unexplained solitude, and seemed likely to remain an unsolved enigma. The "Sachem" of the boating girls became the "Sphinx" of the village ramblers, and it was agreed on all hands that Egypt did not hold any hieroglyphics harder to make out than the meaning of this young ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... began it—this morning. (Candida, instantly connecting this with his mysterious allusion in the afternoon to something told him by Eugene in the morning, looks quickly at him, wrestling with the enigma. Morell proceeds with the emphasis of offended superiority.) But your other point is true. I am certainly the bigger of the two, and, I hope, the stronger, Candida. So you had better leave the matter in ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... found in the room but from their appearance it seemed as if they had struck nothing, evidently the bullets would have been changed in shape if they had impinged upon any hard substance. But then this was another enigma. How did the bullets come back? No man could have put the bullets there from before, (for they were still hot when discovered) or could have guessed the bore of the revolver that was going ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... in the bracken. All these years he had, like an old blind horse, stolidly plodded round and round in a dull self-set routine. And now, just when the spirit had come for rebellion, the mood for a harmless truancy, there had fallen with them too this hideous enigma. He sat there with the dusky silhouette of the face that was now drenched with sunlight in his mind's eye. He set off again up ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... in legal literature as not to have heard that the language of the Roman jurisconsults on the subject of Possession long occasioned the greatest possible perplexity, and that the genius of Savigny is supposed to have chiefly proved itself by the solution which he discovered for the enigma. Possession, in fact, when employed by the Roman lawyers, appears to have contracted a shade of meaning not easily accounted for. The word, as appears from its etymology, must have originally denoted physical contact or physical contact ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... acknowledgment. And this was the girl who, an afternoon before, had sat beside him on the worn old bench at the side of Ba'tiste's cabin and picked thorns from the palm of his hand,—thorns from the stems of wild roses which she had brought him! The enigma was too great for Houston. He could only gasp with the suddenness of it and sink back into a dullness of outlook and viewpoint which he had lost momentarily. It was thus that old friends had passed him by in Boston; it was thus that men who had been glad to borrow money from ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... understand and focus them upon himself. He wished he could see her in the society of other men and could learn more of her antecedents so that he might better account for her, but he went away feeling that she was more of an enigma than ever. ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... she certainly had become, but they saw her old cheery, indomitable spirit once more looked out of her blue eyes and vibrated in the tones of her voice. With the changes indicated, she was the same bright little "enigma in brown" that had so fascinated Van Berg the first day of her arrival, and led him to make the half-jesting prediction to Stanton that had been so thoroughly fulfilled. In spite of themselves her irresistible grace, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe |
