"Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... solar disk between serpents, and the old Berber religion, with its sun and animal worship, has many points of resemblance with Egyptian beliefs. All this implies trade contacts far below the horizon of history, and obscure comings and goings of restless throngs across incredible distances long before the Phenicians planted their first trading posts on the north African coast ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... family table and sideboard, the social entertainment, the haying field, and the factory had not been attained without some corresponding loss. Close upon the heels of the reform in the domestic and social habits of the people there was spawned a monstrous brood of obscure tippling-shops—a nuisance, at least in New England, till then unknown. From the beginning wise and effective license laws had interdicted all dram-shops; even the taverner might sell spirits only to his ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... many another magnate in his day; whose powdered head, however, was scarcely in the tomb, before his mountain pile of wealth began to dwindle. The founders of the greater part of the families which now compose the aristocracy of Salem might here be traced, from the petty and obscure beginnings of their traffic, at periods generally much posterior to the Revolution, upward to what their children look upon as ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said Butler, in a rather obscure manner, thinking of Cowperwood's mistake in appealing to these noble protectors of the public, "that it's best to let sleepin' dogs run ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... sensation of fatigue. After prolonged mental work, there may be fatigue sensations from the eyes and perhaps from the neck, which is often fixed rigidly during strenuous mental activity; and there are perhaps other obscure fatigue sensations originating in other organs and contributing to the total sensation which we know as mental fatigue, or as ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... feudal endowments was the establishment of a cordon round the throne of powerful subjects under conditions and titles which to ourselves may appear incongruous and obscure, but which were in tolerable keeping with the financial and commercial organisation of the period, with a restricted currency, a revenue chiefly payable in kind, scanty facilities for transit, and an absence of trading centres. These ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... gorgeous Pallace, for a Hermitage, My gay Apparrell, for an Almes-mans Gowne, My figur'd Goblets, for a Dish of Wood, My Scepter, for a Palmers walking Staffe, My Subiects, for a payre of carued Saints, And my large Kingdome, for a little Graue, A little little Graue, an obscure Graue. Or Ile be buryed in the Kings high-way, Some way of common Trade, where Subiects feet May howrely trample on their Soueraignes Head: For on my heart they tread now, whilest I liue; And buryed once, why not ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... laughing, 'how I wished Mr. Potts had been there to have enjoyed listening to Philip and Mr. Lascelles discussing some new Lexicon, digging down for roots of words, and quoting passages of obscure Greek poets at such a rate, that if my eyes had been shut I could have thought them two withered old students in spectacles and ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... known That harp has rung or pipe has blown, In Lowland vale or Highland glen, From Tweed to Spey—what marvel, then, At times unbidden notes should rise, Confusedly bound in memory's ties, Entangling, as they rush along, The war-march with the funeral song?— Small ground is now for boding fear; Obscure, but safe, we rest us here. My sire, in native virtue great, Resigning lordship, lands, and state, Not then to fortune more resigned Than yonder oak might give the wind; The graceful foliage storms may reeve, 'Fine noble stem they cannot grieve. For me'—she stooped, and, looking round, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... them—have shown me what the Bible means. Your father and brother knew what I had done, they met me separately, quite independent of each other, and both of them held out their hands to me; why, except that I had offended them, I cannot tell. A stranger, belonging to an obscure class, I had no claim upon them except that I had done what ought to have closed their house against me. And you know how they have interpreted that. They have shown ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... early and marked debility and depression; though usually of short duration, attacks must not be disregarded; fatal results often ensue on carelessness. Convalescence is slow, and complications may ensue. The cause of the malady is obscure; sporadic cases always occur, but from time to time great epidemics of this disease have travelled westward over the world. Their movement seems to depend on atmospheric conditions, but is independent of the season of the year and often contrary to the direction of the wind. Visitations ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... to do with the relationships of slaves with one another, nor is there any old statute by which such relationships were recognised. However, in the constitution which we have issued with regard to the rights of patrons—a subject which up to our times had been most obscure, and full of difficulties and confusion—we have been prompted by humanity to grant that if a slave shall beget children by either a free woman or another slave, or conversely if a slave woman shall bear children of either sex by either a freeman or a slave, and both the parents ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... actress took on from moment to moment the heart-trials of the woman of the play. In a subconscious way even as he read, Douglass analyzed and understood her power. Hers was a soul of swift and subtle sympathy. A word, a mere inflection, was sufficient to set in motion the most complicate and obscure conceptions in her brain, permitting her to comprehend with equal clarity the Egyptian queen of pleasure and the austere devotee to whom joy is a snare. From time to time she uttered little exclamations of pleasure, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Universal History as they lay before him from ancient times, and so make them more intelligible. He touches on the events of his age only in allusions, which excited attention at the time, but remain obscure to posterity. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... riding that way in obedience to some obscure impulse, lifted his hand to give his customary tap-tap before he walked in; saw Val lying there, and almost fell headlong into the room in his haste and perturbation. It looked very much as if he had at last stumbled upon the horrible tragedy which was ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... of Captains, and of Kings, Of cities founded, Commonwealths begun, For my mean pen are too superior things: Or how they all, or each their dates have run Let Poets and Historians set these forth, My obscure Lines shall ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... 'A History of Montanism, by a Lay Gentleman,' a work directed against fanaticism in general. He writes it in the tone of one who has lately recovered from a sort of mental fever which may break out in anyone, and sometimes becomes epidemic, inflaming and throwing into disorder certain obscure impulses which are common to all human nature.[52] He became intimate with Nelson, and subscribes one of his letters to him, 'To the best of friends, from the most affectionate of friends.'[53] He helped him in his devotional ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the commencement of my investigations," writes Mr. Darwin, "it seemed to me probable that a careful study of domesticated animals and of cultivated plants would offer the best chance of making out this obscure problem. Nor have I been disappointed; in this and in all other perplexing cases, I have invariably found that our knowledge, imperfect though it be, of variation under domestication, afforded the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... for an hour. Sanda was to be married by the Catholic priest from Touggourt, as early in the morning as he could be fetched. The great caravan and the little caravan halted for the night. Stanton harangued his escort in their own various dialects, for there was no obscure lingo of Africa which he did not know, and this knowledge gave him much of his power over the black or brown men. The news he told, explaining the delay, was received with wild shouts of amused approval. Stanton was allowing some of his head men to travel with their wives, it being their ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... transitory—a step, a blow. . . . Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, And has the nature of infinity. Yet through that darkness (infinite though it seem And irremoveable) gracious openings lie. . . . Even to the fountain-head of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... dining-car the train was stopping at a small station, and for a few moments the young men strolled up and down the platform. A dense, bluish-gray haze hung low over the country, rendering the outlines of even the nearest objects obscure and dim; the western sky was like burnished copper, and the sun, poised a little above the horizon, looked like ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... made no very great way with the public, which found the matter unequal and the title obscure. But both the title and the greater part of the single poems are linked inseparably with the most intimate personal relationship of his life. Hardly one of the Romances, as we saw, but had been read in MS. by Elizabeth Barrett, and pronounced ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... save the Raphaels. And yet this was so far from the opinion of a patient artist whom I saw the other day copying the finest of Ghirlandaios—a beautiful Adoration of the Kings at the Hospital of the Innocenti. Here was another sample of the buried art-wealth of Florence. It hangs in an obscure chapel, far aloft, behind an altar, and though now and then a stray tourist wanders in and puzzles a while over the vaguely-glowing forms, the picture is never really seen and enjoyed. I found an aged Frenchman of modest mien perched on ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... was almost suffocated with passion; but she knew her niece too well to doubt her putting her threat into execution, and there was distraction in the idea of the vulgar obscure Grizzy Douglas being presented to a fashionable party as her aunt. After a violent altercation, in which Mary took no part, an ungracious permission was at length extorted, which Mary eagerly availed herself of; and, charged with kind messages from Lady Emily, set off in quest ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... the more he is bound to pay,—he oweth, and he oweth eternally. His bond is never cancelled as long as he continues a creature subsisting in God, and abides a redeemed one in Christ. For these continuing, his obligation is eternally recent and fresh as the first day. And this doth not at all obscure the infinite grace of God, or diminish the happiness of saints, that they are not freed from this debt of love and obedience, but rather illustrates the one and increases the other, for it cannot ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... and obscure case. There has been at least one representative of the Devonshire Chinns in or near Central India since the days of Lieutenant-Fireworker Humphrey Chinn, of the Bombay European Regiment, who assisted at the capture of Seringapatam in 1799. Alfred Ellis Chinn, Humphrey's ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... hope, no pleasure, nor its dream, Now cheers my heart. The current of my life Seems settled to a dull, unruffled lake, Deep sunk 'midst gloomy rocks and barren hills; Which tempests only stir and clouds obscure; Unbrightened by the cheerful beam of day, Unbreathed on by the gentle western breeze, Which sweeps o'er pleasant meads and through the woods, Stirring the leaves which seem to dance with joy. No ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... Nimbus, which is quite unlike the others. It puts on a dark gray color, has irregular transparent edges, and increases rapidly so as to obscure the sky. It appears to absorb the other clouds, to be a union of their differently electrified particles, which are attracted to each other, form drops of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... man in brilliancy of intellect and indefatigable activity." His career was a most varied one. He was at all times a boisterous reveller, but whether flaunting gayly among the guests of an emir or biding in some obscure apothecary cellar, his work of philosophical writing was carried on steadily. When a friendly emir was in power, he taught and wrote and caroused at court; but between times, when some unfriendly ruler was supreme, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... usually busy itself with little men and small facts, and is therefore often obscure, unprecise, vague, tiresome. I believe that if some day I deserve praise, it will be because I have tried to show that everything has value and importance; that all phenomena interweave, act, and react upon each other—economic changes and political revolutions, costumes, ideas, the family and ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... is very obscure. Uluka is explained by Nilakantha as a brand (used for want of lambs). The line, however, is elliptical. The Burdwan Pundits introduce ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... carries out this feeling to a noble, not to say sublime extent, and becomes the philanthropist par excellence. Philanthropy is virtue, and virtue, we all know, is its own reward—that is, we all say; for in reality the idea is somewhat obscure. Perhaps we mean that it is the feeling of being virtuous which rewards the act of virtue, and if so, how happy must the managing partner be! Troubled by no vulgar ambition, by no hankering after notoriety, by no yearning to join ostensibly in the game of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 462 - Volume 18, New Series, November 6, 1852 • Various
... friends murdered, and there registered his vow to avenge their blood in the disenthralment of the slave. The compeers of this "grand old man" or people of the nation could have scarcely supposed that this man, hitherto obscure, was to be the instrument of retributive justice, to inaugurate a rebellion which was to culminate in the freedom of 4,000,000 slaves. John Brown, at the head of a few devoted men, at Harper's Ferry, struck the blow that echoed and re-echoed ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... directions given subsequently to the student should be found obscure by him, or if at any stage of the recommended practice he finds himself in difficulties which I have not provided enough against, he may apply by letter to Mr. Ward, who is my under drawing-master at the Working ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... established it becomes in the highest degree probable that every infectious disease may be, and actually is, at times propagated by the agency of flies. Attention turned to this much neglected quarter will very probably go far to explain obscure phenomena connected with the distribution of epidemics and their sudden outbreaks in unexpected quarters. I have seen it stated that in former outbreaks of pestilence flies were remarkably numerous, and although ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... spent more time," Miss Jeffries was confiding brightly, for those imperative reasons of her own so obscure to the bewildered young man, "introducing Jack to nice girls—but it never takes! Not seriously. He's a perfectly dear friend, but he doesn't care anything really about girls—and he does need somebody to get him out of his antiquities and his dusty old ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... her lip a little further, and turned her shoulder to him. But the others thought him very witty—probably because he was obscure. Columbine encouraged him with a friendly smile that displayed her large white teeth, and M. Binet swore yet once again that he would be a great success, since he threw himself with such spirit into ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... the Suiones is another sea, sluggish and almost stagnant, [250] by which the whole globe is imagined to be girt and enclosed, from this circumstance, that the last light of the setting sun continues so vivid till its rising, as to obscure the stars. [251] Popular belief adds, that the sound of his emerging [252] from the ocean is also heard; and the forms of deities, [253] with the rays beaming from his head, are beheld. Only thus far, report says truly, does nature ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... out with some insistence. He guesses with no one contradicting him that rice is useful, that flour is still more useful, and that every pound we can find in the native shops should be taken. The obvious is often somewhat obscure in times like these, and the men who act are very laudable. There is no denying it that on this 20th the Americans showed more energy than anybody else, and pushed everybody to sending out their carts and ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... merit. On the contrary, it was brought forward with a degree of diffidence, which, if it did not deserve the epithet of modesty, could incur nothing harsher than that of bashfulness. It was printed at the obscure market-town press of Newark, was altogether a very homely, rustic work, and no attempt was made to bespeak for it a good name from the critics. It was truly an innocent affair and an unpretending performance. But notwithstanding these, at least seeming, qualities of young doubtfulness and timidity, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... the Valleys his history ought not to be forgotten. With what interest would not the pen of Muston have clothed the recital! what attraction! what novelty! How the reformation, which originated in the cell of an obscure cloister, had already germinated in the mind of Waldo; how the rich merchant of Lyons, in search of the treasures of the age, was suddenly changed into a bumble disciple, voluntarily poor; and what were the principal ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... a fen of immense size which begins from the river Granta, not far from the city, which is named Grantchester ... a man named Tatwine said that he knew an island especially obscure, which ofttimes many men had attempted to inhabit, but no man could do it on account of manifold horrors and fears, and the loneliness of the wild wilderness.... No man ever could inhabit it before the holy man Guthlac came thither on account of the dwelling of the accursed ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... remembered, too, what Milton said about the duty of poetry to be simple, sensuous, and passionate. Akenside's is nothing of these; it is, on the contrary obscure, metaphysical, and, as a consequence, frigid. Following Addison, he names greatness and novelty, i.e., the sublime and the wonderful, as, equally with beauty, the chief sources of imaginative pleasure, and the whole poem is a plea for what ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... uncertain and obscure existence did the moths lead for many years in Liberty Forest. There were no insect folk in the whole country that were so scarce, and they would have remained quite harmless and powerless had they not, most ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... when she needs an income; otherwise, she produces obscure poems with malice aforethought, and laughs in her sleeve, they say, when the ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... devoutly to be wished," but it is ambitious to be a potent factor in all the tendencies that make for such a condition of life in the heart of the South. So important is this aim and idea of Tuskegee, that it allows no criticism to affect, interfere, or obscure its vision. Tuskegee says to the world that it is determined not only to be a school, but an agent of civilization, a missionary for a better life, that shall stand for a kindlier relationship ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... erstwhile prophet of liberty. Great changes these in the estate of one who had been a simple peasant; but then the times were times of great changes. Was not Santerre, the brewer, become a great general, and was not Robespierre, the obscure lawyer of Arras, by way of becoming a dictator? Was it, therefore, wonderful that Charlot should have passed from peasant to preacher, from preacher to ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... room for its recognition. In other words, supposing that a man has the natural ability to receive x visual impressions, the tenderfoot fills out his full capacity with the striking features of his surroundings. To be able to see anything more obscure in form or color, he must naturally put aside from his attention some one or another of these obvious features. He can, for example, look for a particular kind of flower on a side hill only by refusing to ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... spots, as big as an ordinary pin's head, occur. At the large end, besides these specklings, there is a cloudy, dull, irregular cap, or else isolated patches, of very pale inky purple, which more or less obscure the ground-colour. In the peculiar speckly character of the markings these eggs recall doubtless some specimens of the eggs of the different Bulbuls, but their natural affinities seem to be with those of ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... or countess dowager descends to mingle with a person of obscure birth, does she not then degrade herself? and is she not effectually degraded? And will any duchess or ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... wonderfully eloquent was he, that whatever he might choose to say, his auditors had no choice but to believe him; wrong looked like right, and right like wrong; for when it pleased him, he could make a kind of illuminated fog with his mere breath, and obscure the natural daylight with it. His tongue, indeed, was a magic instrument: sometimes it rumbled like the thunder; sometimes it warbled like the sweetest music. It was the blast of war, the song of peace; and it seemed to have a heart in it, when there was no such matter. In good truth, he was ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wonderful people, these Romans, as even this obscure corner of Europe can witness," said Lady Mabel, her eyes dwelling on the beautiful colonade, and tracing out the exquisite symmetry of the shafts, and the rich foliage of ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... thrilling illustration of the sacred record; the past becomes the present; the veil of three thousand years is raised, and the living picture is a witness to the exactness of the historical description. At the same time there is a light thrown upon many obscure passages in the Old Testament by a knowledge of the present customs and figures of speech of the Arabs, which are precisely those that were practised at the periods described. I do not attempt to enter upon a theological treatise, therefore it is unnecessary to allude specially to these particular ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... Corsican outlaws, Manila-men from the marshes, deserters from many navies, Lascars, marooners, refugees of a hundred nationalities,—fishers and shrimpers by name, smugglers by opportunity,—wild channel-finders from obscure bayous and unfamiliar chenieres, all skilled in the mysteries of these mysterious waters beyond the comprehension of ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... although she pored over the originals, she had to depend, in the main, upon French translation, which was usually available, too, for the Gascon and Breton. Italian, which she knew well, guided her through obscure dialects of Italy and Sicily, but Castilian, Portuguese, and Catalan she puzzled out for herself with such natural insight that the experts to whom these translations have been submitted found hardly a word to change. 'After all,' as she herself ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... pitch dark, and ranging themselves in a line near a large tree, they each lit a small fire, and had a supply of dry leaves to give effect to the acting. On their commencing their chanting, the men came forward, emerging from the darkness into the obscure light shed by the yet uncherished fires, like spectres. After some performance, at a given signal, a handful of dry leaves was thrown on each fire, which instantly blazing up lighted the whole scene, and ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... to Jim; he had brought no happiness to Susy or Mrs. Peyton, whose disagreement his visit seemed to have accented. Thinking over the mysterious attack upon himself, it now seemed to him possible that, in some obscure way, his presence at the rancho had precipitated the more serious attack on Peyton. If, as it had been said, there was some curse upon his inheritance from his father, he seemed to have made others share it with him. He was riding onward abstractedly, with his head sunk on his breast and his eyes ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... dialect, and embody it in a written language? He knew much of the patois, from hearing it spoken at home. But now, desiring to know it more thoroughly, he set to work and studied it. He was almost as assiduous as Sir Walter Scott in learning obscure Lowland words, while writing the Waverley Novels. Jasmin went into the market-places, where the peasants from the country sold their produce; and there he picked up many new words and expressions. He made excursions into the country round Agen, where many of the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... in a corner of the room, where perhaps she hoped to be unremarked; but her fair beauty and her white dress made it difficult for her to remain obscure. Wyvis Brand stood beside her, leaning against the wall, with arms folded across his breast. He was more in shadow than was she, for he was touched by the folds of a heavy velvet curtain; but his attitude was significant. He was not looking ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Tongue itself—though exhaustive disquisition obviously lies outside the scope of necessarily brief forewords—it may be pointed out that its origin in England is confessedly obscure. Prior to the second half of the 16th century, there was little trace of that flood of unorthodox speech which, in this year of grace eighteen hundred and ninety-six, requires six quarto double-columned volumes duly to chronicle—verily a vast ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... was skulking along an obscure highway, at the very bottom of the well of his despair, a firm hand was laid on his shoulder and a cheery voice called out: "Whither so fast? Come home with me, poor ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... stopped to telephone his friend of his detention, took a Westchester Avenue car at the nearest point, and in twenty minutes was at the library. He found an obscure corner ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... for Mr. Twist, of whose identity he was unaware, had grown too great even for him to bandy pleasantries with him, he did land his party at an obscure hotel in a street off the less desirable end of Fifth Avenue, ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... various and changing people. America has a natural love of metaphor and imagery; its pride delights in the mysteries of a technical vocabulary; it is happiest when it can fence itself about by the privilege of an exclusive and obscure tongue. And what is Slang but metaphor? There is no class, no cult, no trade, no sport which will not provide some strange words or images to the general stock of language, and America's variety ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... of the dye. Then the line would mean, using the antecedent word brokers in the bad sense, 'Not themselves of the same colour as their garments (investments); his vows are clothed in innocence, but are not innocent; they are mere panders.' The passage is rendered yet more obscure to the modern sense by the accidental propinquity of bonds, brokers, and investments—which have nothing ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... utterance, of a soul diseased, a soul permanently ill at ease. We find in their constant tension something of insomnia, of that sleeplessness which can never be a quite healthful condition of mind in a human body. Sometimes they are cries, cries of obscure pain rather than thoughts—those great fine sayings which seem to betray by their depth of sound the vast unseen hollow places of nature, of humanity, just beneath one's feet or at one's side. Reading them, so modern still are those thoughts, so rich and various in suggestion, that one seems ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... and mounting on a camel, offered to guide us on our way during the night. It is no easy matter at any time, even for the Arabs, to find the way in a direct line across the boundless Desert; and when clouds obscure the stars, it is almost impossible without a compass. The old recluse, on seeing white strangers, cast a look of disgust and disdain at us, expressing his surprise that any true believers should allow infidel Nazarenes to remain in their company. But our leader only ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... that the motives which had induced me to choose this secluded residence were of a peculiarly selfish order. Whilst I liked sometimes to be among my fellowmen and whilst I rarely missed an important first night in London, my inherent weakness for obscure studies and another motive to which I may refer later had caused me to abandon my chambers in the Temple and to retire with my library to this odd little backwater where my only link with Fleet Street, with the land of theaters and clubs and noise and glitter, was the telephone. I scarcely ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... applied to a hundred of houses, or of families, or of warriors, we do not know.[8] M. Geffroy, in his interesting essay on the Germania of Tacitus, suggests that the term canton may have a similar origin.[9] The outlines of these primitive groups are, however, more obscure than those of the more primitive mark, because in most cases they have been either crossed and effaced or at any rate diminished in importance by the more highly compounded groups which came next in order of formation. Next above the hundred, in order of composition, ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... dispute in a manly manner without some trumpery local newspaper letting loose a volley of abuse against 'the disgraceful exhibition,' in which abuse it is sure to be sanctioned by its dainty readers; whereas some murderous horror, the discovery, for example, of the mangled remains of a woman in some obscure den, is greedily seized hold on by the moral journal and dressed up for its readers, who luxuriate and gloat upon the ghastly dish. Now, the writer of 'Lavengro' has no sympathy with those who would shrink from striking a blow, but would not shrink from the use ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the sharp summit of the pointed rock, Which overhangs the deep, a dungeon drear: Cell within cell, a labyrinth of horror, Deep cavern'd in the cliff, where many a wretch, Unseen by mortal eye, has groan'd in anguish, And died obscure, unpitied, ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... policy of the administration and the Department seems to have been to make details and bookkeeping a secondary consideration. The names of all, their organizations and officers were faithfully kept, but distinctions between whites and blacks were very obscure. Until the complete historical records of the Government are compiled, it will be impossible to separate ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... done all this alone. It had to call to its aid the infernal fruit can that now desolates the most obscure trail in the heart of the mountains. You walk over chaos where the "hydraulic" has plowed up the valley like a convulsion, or you tread the yielding path across the deserted dump, and on all sides the rusty, neglected and humiliated empty tin can ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... of life and death. A young mathematician may be excused for langour in studying curves to be described only with a pencil; but not in tracing those which are to be described with a rocket. Your knowledge of a wholesome herb may involve the feeding of an army; and acquaintance with an obscure point of geography, the success of a campaign. Never waste an instant's time, therefore; the sin of idleness is a thousandfold greater in you than in other youths; for the fates of those who will one day be under your command hang upon your knowledge; lost ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... was very rabid indeed when I first knew him) belonged just then not only to the honorable brotherhood of Les Chicards, but also to a small debating club that met twice a week in a private room at the back of an obscure Estaminet in the Rue de la Harpe. The members of this club were mostly art-students, and some, like himself, Chicards—generous, turbulent, high-spirited boys, with more enthusiasm than brains, and a flow of words ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... work before us—a work abounding in elaborate research and erudition, but somewhat deficient in logical precision or lucid arrangement; a mass of details is given, but the links whereby the generalizations from these are sought to be established, are here and there wanting, and here and there obscure. It is probably the fault of the subject, which is in its character inexact; but we certainly expected that more had been done; and from some passages in the early portions of the work, we were induced to believe that the author had succeeded in proving races of mankind to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... had somewhat cleared away, and time elapsed sufficient to garner these circumstances into authentic news, it transpired that the woman who had done this was Mrs. Carry A. Nation—utterly obscure and unknown ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... doing good few, and limited in range, to all appearances, reader? Have you often said, like the bedridden man, "What can I do?" Are you poor, weak, ignorant, obscure, or even sick as he was, and shut out from contact with the busy outside world? No matter. If you have a willing heart, good work will come to your hands. Is there no poor, unhappy neglected one to whom you can speak words of encouragement, ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... Obscure as were the directions which Hopperdown's niece had taken from his dying lips, one point at least was clear—the treasure-cave opened on the sea. This seemed an immense simplification of the problem, until you ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... in the house of Fledermausse; only, in some distant room, an obscure light was burning. Some one was on the watch. "That is well," said I, closing the curtain. "I have all ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... of her grimy, branch-line carriage, and began to get down her bags. The porter was nowhere, of course, but there was Harry, obscure, on the outer edge of the little crowd, missing her, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... her face to see if a sarcasm might not lurk somewhere in that obscure speech, but the gentle simplicity of the beautiful eyes that met his, banished that suspicion. He went away and conferred with the proprietor. Both appeared to be non-plussed. They thought and talked, and talked ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to him. This man sent his friend Leroy to me with a letter of recommendation. He was a well-educated Parisian music-master, who won my esteem by his attractive personality. My confidence in him was aroused, because he at once dissuaded me from associating myself with an obscure journalist on a theatrical newspaper (in which character M. de Charnal finally disclosed himself), and advised me to go to Roger, a highly gifted and experienced operatic singer, who had been a favourite with the Parisian public ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... such a deception as this is inconsistent with the manner in which Aristotle speaks of the number (Pol.), and would have been ridiculous to any reader of the Republic who was acquainted with Greek mathematics. As little reason is there for supposing that Plato intentionally used obscure expressions; the obscurity arises from our want of familiarity with the subject. On the other hand, Plato himself indicates that he is not altogether serious, and in describing his number as a solemn jest of the Muses, he appears to imply some degree of satire on the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... in the youth of day That mists obscure the sun's imperfect ray, Who, as he's mounting to the dome's extreme, Smites and dispels them with a steeper beam, So you the vapors that begirt your birth Consumed, and manifested all your worth. But still one early vice ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... disclosed a figure, a woman's figure, which occupied, majestically, a settee. The settee, set far back in the bay of the window, was in a direct line with Anne's sofa. That part of the room was still unlighted, and the figure, sitting a little sideways, remained obscure. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... alone, Would brave the entangling mazes of these wilds. The night comes on, and soon these gloomy woods Will echo to the yell of savage beasts, And savage men more merciless. Alas! And am I, after all my golden dreams Of laurel'd glory, doom'd in wilds to fall, Ignobly and obscure, the prey of brutes? [Music. Fie on these coward thoughts! this trusty sword, That made the Turk and Tartar crouch beneath me, Will stead me well, e'en in this wilderness. [Music. O glory! thou who led'st me fearless on, Where death stalk'd grimly over slaughter'd heaps, Or drank the drowning ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... voluminous records of the bearded historians, and you will not find his name. No great figure of history was this friend of mine; just an obscure officer on an obscure ship of the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... the rather extreme case, where such a person is sufficiently courageous and robust to engage in anything approaching a serious examination of these families of books. The authors were true enthusiasts, labouring to their lives' last thread in some obscure cell or dim closet, where pride of authorship, as we may feel and enjoy it, there was none, when beyond the walls of a convent or those of a native town their names were unknown, their personality unrecognised. Except to the theologian or ritualist how repellent ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... belief that a law so fundamental in Sparta, and so general in all the primitive States of Greece, as that which forbade intermarriage with a foreigner, could be cancelled for the Regent of Sparta, and in favour of an obscure maiden of Byzantium. Every visit Pausanias paid to Cleonice but served, in his eyes, as a prelude to her ultimate dishonour. He lent himself, therefore, with all the zeal of his vivacious and ardent character, to the design ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... some Anecdotes which are consigned to, or concealed in, certain obscure Books. 'I have been much amused, said I to the King, (with the big cargo of Books, true or false, written by French Refugees, which perhaps are unknown in France itself.' [Discourses ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... misrepresentation; it certainly was grossly unfair and inaccurate. Poe's friends retorted, and a long war of words followed, in which hatred or prejudice on the one side and wholesale, undiscriminating laudation on the other, alike tended to obscure the truth. It is now almost impossible to see the real Poe, just as he appeared to an ordinary, unprejudiced observer of his own time. Only by the most careful, thoughtful, and sympathetic study can we hope to approximate ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... Liberal party, and so to strike ahead of du Croisier. His behavior in the d'Esgrignon affair was the first step in this direction. To begin with, he was an admirable representative of that section of the middle classes which allows its petty passions to obscure the wider interests of the country; a class of crotchety politicians, upholding the government one day and opposing it the next, compromising every cause and helping none; helpless after they have done the mischief till they set ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... then, that many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure. It is true that, in his latter plays, he had worn off somewhat of the rust; but the tragedy which I have undertaken to correct was in all probability one of his first endeavours on the stage.... So ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... own. These landmarks also they have removed, in appointing, by an inviolable law, that very thing which the former punished with excommunication, and the latter gave a powerful reason for disapproving. There was a father[31] who asserted the temerity of deciding on either side of an obscure subject, without clear and evident testimonies of Scripture. This landmark they forgot when they made so many constitutions, canons, and judicial determinations, without any authority from the word of God. There was a father[32] who ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... high places, the hidden hand—Mr. Jones read about them all and shuddered with unholy joy. Perhaps he, an obscure cashier—who could tell? Stranger ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... outlined by the public prosecutor in London, is "to preserve the standard of outward decency." And you will find that the one essential to prosecution is always that the victim shall be obscure and helpless; never by any chance is he a duke in a drawing-room. I will record an utterance of one of the obscure victims of the British "standard of outward decency", a teacher of mathematics named Holyoake, who presumed to ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... tender hue is bright and pure, As heav'n through summer clouds doth show, A pledge though clouds thy way obscure, It shall not be for ever so. "Speed thee well! Speed well!" She softly whisper'd, "Speed well! This flower blue Be token true Of my true heart's true ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... variance, even when Greek and Hebrew are not concerned? Have chemists been always of one opinion?' &c. which must be answered in the negative. Nevertheless I may take liberty to observe that inasmuch as they have disagreed, it shews that the subjects about what they have disagreed, are as yet obscure, and therefore perhaps none of them are entitled to full and complete 'confidence:' for whatever is plain and obvious, men seldom disagree about. That the sun and moon are globes, and not triangles, all are agreed; and it would be impossible to raise a dispute on the subject: ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... over with recommendations to purchase Mr. Such-an-one's blacking, to the walking placard insinuating the excellences of Mr. What-d'ye-call-him's Cream Gin*—from the bright resplendent brass-knob, garnished with the significant words "Office Bell," beside the door of an obscure surveyor, to the spruce carriage of a newly arrived physician driving empty up and down the street, everything whether movable or ...
— Mr. Joseph Hanson, The Haberdasher • Mary Russell Mitford
... suppress stage-plays." Yet, all this notwithstanding, some little show of life stirred now and then in the seeming corpse of the drama. A few players met furtively, assembled a select audience, and gave a clandestine performance, more or less complete, in some obscure quarter. Secret Royalists and but half-hearted Puritans abounded, and these did not scruple to abet a breach of the law, and to be entertained now and then in the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... yard just as I drove out," said Mrs. Anderson. "He is a very fine-looking man. It is a pity." Then she added again, with an obscure accent of congratulation, "Well, if he goes away nobody need say anything more ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... window was new it must have been surmounted in the middle of the arch by an ornamental design. But later, when the chapel belonged to the Hautecoeurs, they replaced the original work by their family coat of arms. And that was why, in the obscure nights, armorial bearings of a more recent date shown out above the painted legend. They were the old family arms of Hautecoeur, quartered with the well-known shield of Jerusalem; the latter being argent, a cross potencee, or, between four crosselettes ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... sufficient light for us to follow the imprints any distance. The snow around us was dazzling, but beyond seemed all vague and obscure. ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... way up together from obscure beginnings to their present affluence, as the owners of the "T.T." ranch and the "O——" ranch respectively. They had been partners in all but name. Now they contemplated a definite deed of that nature. It was a consummation which the older man had looked forward to ever since he first lent ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... Pennington, he confessed that he proposed the taking of the Mexico fleet if the mine failed. To which I can only answer, that all depends on how the thing was said, and that this is the last fact which we should find in Sir Julius's notes, which are, it is confessed, so confused, obscure, and full of gaps, as to be often hardly intelligible. The same remark applies to Wilson's story, which I agree with Mr. Tytler in thinking worthless. Wilson, it must be understood, is employed after Raleigh's return as a spy upon him, which office he executes, all confess (and Wilson himself ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... Salisbury quotes a story about St. Paul which seems to come from the ancient apocryphal Acts of that Apostle. First on the list (twelfth century) of the library of Lincoln Minster (but lined through as if subsequently lost) is a title Proverbia Grecorum. What this book was is obscure; probably it was a translation from Greek by an Irish scholar. It is quoted extensively by Sedulius, the Irishman, and also in a collection of treatises by an unknown York writer (the Germans call him the Yorker anonymus) of the eleventh to twelfth centuries. The work of ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... better families; and allowing genius to be equal in them and the vulgar, the odds are clearly on their side. Nay, we may observe in some, who by the appearance of merit, or favour of fortune, have risen to great stations, from an obscure birth, that they have still retained some sordid vices of their parentage or education, either insatiable avarice, or ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... to devout consciences, we ask His Imperial Majesty to hear us with forbearance in regard to matters of such importance. For since the adversaries understand neither what the remission of sins, nor what faith, nor what grace, nor what righteousness is, they sadly corrupt this topic, and obscure the glory and benefits of Christ and rob devout consciences of the consolations offered in Christ. But that we may strengthen the position of our Confession, and also remove the charges which the adversaries advance against us, certain things are ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... an occasional word where the meaning was obscure, I have added nothing to the diaries. I have, of course, omitted such passages as appeared to be private or of family interest only; but otherwise I have contented myself with a slight rearrangement of some of the paragraphs, and I have inserted a few letters and extracts from letters, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... can be obscure intimations of that bygone time when WE were rocked in the bosom of the Divine consciousness? Perhaps.... And now if the reader will pardon a piece of moralizing, we would say that these expressions teach us in the most emphatic way that—'This is not our rest.' So that when ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... every precaution adopted that medical judgment and maternal love can dictate, for the well-being of the parents' hope; and find, in despite of all this care and vigilance, disease and death invading the guarded treasure. We turn to the foetor and darkness that, in some obscure court, attend the robust brood who, coated in dirt, and with mud and refuse for playthings, live and thrive, and grow into manhood, and, in contrast to the pale face and flabby flesh of the aristocratic ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... perfectly just observation of Mr Godwin, that, 'There is a principle in human society, by which population is perpetually kept down to the level of the means of subsistence.' The sole question is, what is this principle? is it some obscure and occult cause? Is it some mysterious interference of heaven which, at a certain period, strikes the men with impotence, and the women with barrenness? Or is it a cause, open to our researches, within our view, a cause, which has constantly been observed to operate, though ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... by trying an obscure adventurer for attempting to trap a Senator into bribing him? Or would not the truer way be to find out whether the Senator was capable of being entrapped into so shameless an act, and then try him? Why, of course. Now ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... was two stories in height, the lower story having been formerly used by the Free Grace Believers as a place wherein to celebrate certain obscure mysteries appertaining to their belief. The upper story, devoted to the more ordinary worship of their Sunday meetings, was reached by a tall, steep flight of steps that led from the ground to a covered porch which ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... wholly obscure the American people generally have been kept in such ignorance of the facts of this commerce that few even dream that it exists. And I am fully conscious of the need for proof in support of what to many must appear to be unwarranted assertions. Indeed, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... system of the Middle Ages. Obscure as its origin is, and indefinite as the date of its first appearances, there can be no doubt whatever that the break-up of the Roman system, and the modification of the existing form of slavery, constituted ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... island! When Miss Trevor had spoken of it Leslie pictured to himself some tiny, obscure, bare atoll of perhaps a mile in length, and not more than a dozen feet high at its highest point—knowing from his reckoning that, at the time of the fatal outbreak, the brig had not been near enough any known land to render wreck upon it possible. But the land upon which he gazed with wondering ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... to her obscure birth has indeed been a labour—but withal, a labour of love! For who could help experiencing exquisite joy at unearthing trinkets and miniatures and broken memories of such ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... discuss the condition and the contents of the entire Book of Proverbs, seeing that each one of its component parts has an independent, if somewhat obscure, history of its own. The final compiler and editor, to whom we are indebted for the collection in its present form, undoubtedly found the sweeping scepticism of the poet Agur and the pious protestations of his anonymous adversary, the thesis and the antithesis, inextricably ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... the character and condition of the native races of the continent at the period of the Spanish Conquest. This subject is treated with peculiar skill and learning, and with unusual power of sympathetic analysis and appreciation of remote and obscure developments of society. Another portion of the history, which his plan has led Mr. Helps to treat at length and with exhaustive thoroughness, is the early relations between the conquerors and the conquered, embracing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... pass it as such by a royal proclamation: and should it ever be disputed, I have quirks and quibbles enough at your service, with Mr. Brazen and Mr. Attorney-General's assistance, to render it so doubtful, obscure and ambiguous, as to puzzle Lord Justice, perplex Dunning, ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... case, my dear Dick, come back to me after you have become acquainted with all the facts, and we will discuss the matter together. That you may call me your friend goes without saying, as you ought to know by this time; and although I am only an obscure East-End practitioner I am not wholly without friends able and willing to do me, or any friend of mine, a good turn, if necessary. So come back here when you have threshed out the matter, and we will see what—if anything—can ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... letter which I received this day was from O'Shea about Parnell's opinions on the Coercion Bill, but it is so obscure that I can make nothing of it. It was on a suggestion of Lefevre's with regard to bringing the Coercion Bill into force only by "proclamation." It shows, however, if O'Shea is to be believed, that Parnell was willing to accept a coercion measure of some kind, or, at all events, to haggle ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... so, in the majority of cases their minds were so rusty and stultified by long years of disuse, that, although the pamphlets were generally written in such simple language that a child might have understood, the argument was generally too obscure to be grasped by men whose minds were addled by the stories told them by their Liberal and Tory masters. Some, when Owen offered to lend them some books or pamphlets refused to accept them, and others who did him the great favour of accepting them, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Haym the violoncello. Dieupart, after the small success of the design set forth in this letter, taught the harpsichord in families of distinction, but wanted self-respect enough to save him from declining into a player at obscure ale-houses, where he executed for the pleasure of dull ears solos of Corelli with the nicety of taste that never left him. He died old and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... had been too long silent on my achievements, Pompey himself, to such a frame of mind as not once only in the senate, but many times and in many words, to ascribe to me the preservation of this empire and of the world. And this was not so important to me—for those transactions are neither so obscure as to need testimony, nor so dubious as to need commendation—as to the Republic; for there were certain persons base enough to think that some misunderstanding would arise between me and Pompey from a difference of ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in drinks. There was an excited clamour of voices, a clinking of mug-lids, a great crying of 'Prosit—Prosit!' Loerke was everywhere at once, like a gnome, suggesting drinks for the women, making an obscure, slightly risky joke with the men, confusing and mystifying ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... subject of the causes of the proportion. When I reflected on queen bees producing only males when not impregnated, whilst some other parthenogenetic insects produced, as far as known, only females, the subject seemed to me hopelessly obscure. It is, however, pretty clear that you have taken the one path for its solution. I wished only to ascertain how far with various animals the males exceeded the females, and I have given all the facts which I could collect. As far as I know, no other data have been published. The equality of the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... with alacrity, bringing all her prettiness and pleasure and gliding over the grass in that rustle of delicate mourning which made the endless variety of her garments, as a painter could take heed, strike one always as the same obscure elegance. She seated herself on the floor of my mother's chair, a little too much on her right instep as I afterwards gathered, caressing her stiff hand, smiling up into her cold face, commending and approving her without a reserve and without a doubt. She told ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... in two points offensive to me; I have two strong grounds of objection to it. First, as being the means of bringing persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of; and secondly, as it cuts up a man's youth and vigour most horribly; a sailor grows old sooner than any other man. I have observed ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... hill above it by what in my childhood was a brambled and furtive lane, he will find on either side of him villas and villa gardens, till at length he is brought to a ridge overlooking a secluded valley. For some distance villas will still obscure his view, but presently these end. Below him he will see steep fields descending into a quiet hollow, the opposite slopes being covered or crowned with woods, and against them he will see smoke wreaths straying upward from undiscerned ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... bright idea broke on my brain at once. The Index! The Index! Presumably, as no fold seemed to obscure the first words, the name began with what looked like a B. That was ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... clasped his hands and looked upward pleadingly, the tears running down his wasted cheeks. Ah, many such strivings and prayers in those days went up from silent hearts in obscure solitudes, that wrestled and groaned under that mighty burden which Luther at last received strength to heave from the heart ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... such finished art—The Village that Voted the Earth was Flat, which one might call a fantasia upon Publicity, and (to my mind the best thing in the volume) My Son's Wife, an exquisitely humorous and cunning study in the Influence of Landed Estate upon a Modern. If this definition strikes you as obscure, read the story and you will understand. For the rest, as I said above, all tastes are catered for; so that the rival schools who admire Mr. KIPLING most as the creator of Plain Tales, or Stalky ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... the entire fabric insecure. Just at the beginning of the present century they reached a predicted minimum, but are expected again to augment their range after the year 1902. The interesting suggestion has been made by Mr. J. Halm that such fluctuations are, in some obscure way, affected by changes in solar activity, and conform like them ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... is white, often yellowish with age, pithy and often hollow, becoming rough and shaggy, finally scaly, the scales below appearing to merge into the form of an obscure cup, the stem ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... added regarding some of its most striking phenomena. The great majority of the stars whose motions have been determined belong to one or the other of two great star streams, but the part played by these streams in the sidereal system as a whole is still obscure. The stars have been grouped in classes, presumably in the order of their evolutional development, as they pass from the early state of gaseous masses, of low density, through the successive stages resulting from loss of heat by ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... came to Orchard Glen. England was in the war and she would in all probability call for a Canadian contingent. Indeed Algonquin had not waited to know, but was going to offer one herself whether the rest of Canada was loyal or not. And on the very day that Britain entered the Great War, this little obscure town, set far away north in a ring of forest and lake, was calling her sons to go over seas and help the Mother Land. And it was the sound of her drums that had penetrated to the hills of Orchard Glen and had set Gavin Grant's heart throbbing ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... was her great caution in doing so which occasioned her to miss that gentleman, who entered at the front door of the Dragon just as she emerged from the back one. Moreover, Mr Anthony Chuzzlewit and his son Jonas were economically quartered at the Half Moon and Seven Stars, which was an obscure ale-house; and by the very next coach there came posting to the scene of action, so many other affectionate members of the family (who quarrelled with each other, inside and out, all the way down, to the utter distraction of the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... that civilisation was but the shibboleth of traffic; that because trade follows the flag, therefore to carry the flag afar, thousands of young soldiers of every nationality are slaughtered annually in poisonous climes and obscure warfare, because such is the suprema lex and will of the trader. If the waters of Edera would serve to grind any grit for the mills of modern trade they would be taken into bondage with many other gifts of nature as fair and as free as they were. All creation ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... thing, though I sat on the old benches and mounted the rostrum whereon I was wont to "speak my piece" with much trepidation of spirit and an inexplicable weakness of the knees. I wrote my name on the wall in an obscure corner, simply because I didn't want it to be stricken off from the roll entirely, and then turned back into the street with less regret ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... commands, as if there were a dozen attendants all actively engaged in their execution, he turned his velvet cap inside out, put it on with great dignity so as to obscure his right eye and three-fourths of his nose, and sticking his arms a-kimbo, looked very fiercely at a sparrow hard by, till the bird flew away, when he put his cap in his pocket with an air of great satisfaction, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... them into the thickest and most obscure part of the forest, when, stealing away into a by-path, they there left them. Little Thumb was not very uneasy at it, for he thought he could easily find the way again by means of his bread, which he had scattered all along as he came; but he was very much surprised when he could not find ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... obscure speech, Little Dorrit returned that she was quite at Flora's disposition. Flora accordingly led the way across the road to the pie-shop in question: Mr F.'s Aunt stalking across in the rear, and putting herself in the way of being run over, with a perseverance ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... is man in future things! for did the Athenians foresee what mischief this would do their city, they would even eat it with their own teeth to be rid of it." A similar anticipation is ascribed to Thales; they say he commanded his friends to bury him in an obscure and contemned quarter of the territory of Miletus, saying that it should some day be the marketplace of the Milesians. Epimenides, being much honored, and receiving from the city rich offers of large gifts and privileges, requested ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... avoid being like Burns there are several possible ways. Thus you might copy us, as we shine forth in our published memoirs, practically without a flaw. No one so obscure nowadays but that he can have a book about him. Happy the land that can produce such subjects ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... hesitation there are several pictures in the exhibition which impressed me. Power is power, no matter the strange airs it may at times assume. Browning's Sordello, despite its numerous obscure passages, is withal a work of high purpose, it always stirs the imagination. I found myself staring at Carra's Funeral of the Anarchist Galli and wondering after all whether a conflict shouldn't be represented in a conflicting manner. Zola reproached ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... incidents, is none the less highly interesting, and the characters are most of them excellently, all well, drawn and sustained. The fact that certain episodes had to be cut in representation in order to bring the comedy within a reasonable time limit, though it may have tended to obscure the connection of the intrigue, could not have insured in spite of its many real merits so absolute a doom for the much maltreated play, a sentence which seems to ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... were called for. The state of aimlessness in hot perplexity demands a show of action. Whither to go first was as obscure as what to do. Diana said of the Englishman's hat and coat, that she supposed they were to make him a walking presentment of the house he had shut up behind him. A shot of the eye at the glass confirmed the likeness, but with a ruefully wry-faced repudiation ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... this subject, but which left it in the end in the complete ignorance in which the most exhaustive researches had left it. Doubtless the question of heredity fascinated him as it did only because it remained obscure, vast, and unfathomable, like all the infant sciences where imagination holds sway. Finally, a long study which he had made on the heredity of phthisis revived in him the wavering faith of the healer, arousing in him the noble and wild hope of ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... to expose a logical fallacy, but I am not fond of the attempt to obscure by logic-chopping what is a writer's real meaning. I will therefore say that, as far as I can make out, what this particular writer really believes is that the German people, through some innate and incurable ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... Gouache was painting, was very far from comprehending his definition of artistic comparison; but Del Ferice understood it very well. Donna Tullia had much foreign blood in her veins, like most of her class; but Del Ferice's obscure descent was in all probability purely Italian, and he had inherited the common instinct in matters of art which is a part of the Italian birthright. He had recognised Gouache's wonderful talent, and had first brought Donna Tullia to his studio—a matter of ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... borne in Hel, yet harborest heauens ioyes, Whose fauor slaughter is, and dandling death, Bloud-thirsty pleasures and mis boding blisse: Brought forth of Fury, nurse of cankered Hate, 1540 To drowne in woe the pleasures of the world. Thou shalt no more in duskish Erebus: And dark-some hell obscure thy Deity, Insteede of Ioue thou shalt my Godesse bee, To thee faire Temples Cassius will erect: And on thine alter built of Parian stone Whole Hecatombs will I offer vp. Laugh gentle Godesse on my bould attempt, Yet ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... of utter abstraction, he struck the bell upon the table thrice, burnt a little incense, and read a passage from the sacred book, which he reverently lifted to his head. The congregation joined in chorus, devout but unintelligent; for the Word, written in ancient Chinese, is as obscure to the ordinary Japanese worshipper as are the Latin liturgies to a high-capped Norman peasant-woman. While his flock wrapped up copper cash in paper, and threw them before the table as offerings, the priest next recited a passage alone, and ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford |
