"Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the oracle contained plain and wholesome advice; but very many of them, particularly those that implied a knowledge of the future, were obscure and ingeniously ambiguous, so that they might correspond with the event however affairs should turn. Thus, Croesus is told that, if he undertake an expedition against Persia, he will destroy a great empire. He did, indeed;—but ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... The obscure defendant charged with murder has little reason to complain of the law's delays. The morning following the arrest of Victor Ancona, the newspapers published long sensational articles, denounced him as a fiend, and convicted him. The grand jury, as it happened, was in session. The ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... was lying on sand. The colour of the sand was scarlet. The obscure shadows he had seen were bushes, with black stems and purple leaves. So far, nothing else ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... not a book in that pack. John Mackenzie, schoolmaster, had been a bondslave of books in that country for four obscure, well-nigh profitless years, and he was done with them for a while. The less a sheepman knew about books, the more he was bound to know about sheep, for sheep would be the object and aim of his existence. ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... left the 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 a ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... rolled up to obscure somewhat the light of the moon. This was what Kid Wolf had been waiting for. It was their ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... hesitation, natural enough, for they could scarcely feel like pitting themselves against a brother officer in a quarrel the merits of which were so obscure. I was about to speak, volunteering to stand alone, when some one hastily pushed a way to the front, and Lieutenant Caton, pale but determined, ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... the party waited only to hear from Brodie. He came a day or two later, but he could give them no hope. He had been repelled from all sources of information, insulted in the War Office, and denied access to the President. He was convinced that there were secret influences at work to obscure the true facts in the case of the escaped prisoners, but what the agencies were he could not guess. When Olympia told this to Kate, she was surprised ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Given a planet, moving at a given speed in a given direction, and controlled by given attractive forces, we can determine its place at a future moment. Or given a vegetable organism in a given environment, we can predict within certain limits the way in which it will grow, although the laws are too obscure and too vague to enable us to speak of it with any approach to the precision of astronomy. And we should have reached a similar stage in sociology if from a given social or political constitution adopted by a given population, we could prophesy ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... capital, and some points in support of my condemnation of the political absorption of the Irish mind, out of the total failure of the Nationalist party to solve certain all-important constitutional and financial problems which months of Parliamentary debate in 1893 tended rather to obscure than to elucidate. I am, however, willing for argument's sake to postpone all such questions, vital as they are, to the time when they can be practically dealt with. I am ready to assume that the wit of man can devise a settlement of many points which seemed insoluble in Mr. Gladstone's day. ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... promised me as readily as a pinch of snuff. I gloated over the revenge I was winning for my race, a race rooted in those darling Hanyards a century before the Ridgeleys were heard of, for the first earl, the grandfather of the old rogue, started as an obscure pimp to Charles the Second, and was enriched and ennobled ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... 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 the experience 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 ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... dim dull dawn. Tired of these bouts of wakefulness I got off the bed—for I was lying full-dressed even to my boots—and crept softly to the window. I would keep watch and ward for Margaret, as a true knight oweth to do. Then, if my obscure misgivings were unfounded, I should at any rate ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... reproduces itself frequently in the careers of all men of any public distinction. In his days of comparative obscurity, or in some position of "greater freedom and less responsibility," even when he ceases to be obscure, a man deals faithfully, but perhaps a little flippantly, with this or that person, thing, nation, subject, doctrine. Afterwards he is brought into a relation with the person or nation, into a position as regards the thing, subject, or doctrine, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... door, for those who have the least to steal are often the most afraid of robbers; but, recognizing the lofty personage at the door, she invited him to enter, much wondering what had driven him from his comfortable abode in Pemberton Square to seek out her obscure residence at that hour in the evening. Mr. Checkynshaw was conducted to an apartment which served as kitchen, parlor, and bed-room for the poor woman, her son having a chamber up stairs. A seat was handed to the great man, and he sat down by the cooking-stove, after bestowing ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke and reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... primarily refers to that which shines, and impresses the mind through the eye with a sense of luster or splendor. A substance is said to be clear that offers no impediment to vision—is not dim, dark, or obscure. Transparent refers to the medium through which a substance is seen, clear to the substance itself, without reference to anything to be seen through it; we speak of a stream as clear when we think of the water itself; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... now been accomplished. Three English parties, and only three, have at various periods started upon this obscure mission: each has gained ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... the country if the lessons of the industrial acerbities of Europe and the United States should not be grasped. Meantime it is a duty which the foreign observer owes to Japan to speak quite plainly of attempts as silly as they are useless[155] to obscure the lamentable condition of a large proportion of Japanese workers, to hide the immense profits which have been made by their employers and to pretend that factory laws have only to be placed on the statute ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... these fine Roman remains and for its name, Orange is a perfectly featureless little town, without the Rhone— which, as I have mentioned, is several miles distant—to help it to a physiognomy. It seems one of the oddest things that this obscure French borough—obscure, I mean, in our modern era, for the Gallo-Roman Arausio must have been, judging it by its arches and theater, a place of some importance—should have given its name to the heirs apparent of the throne ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... is not surprising. The average person, no matter how humble or obscure, is pretty certain to be talked about on the day of his funeral, and Marcellus was to be buried that afternoon. Moreover, Marcellus had been neither humble nor obscure; also, he had been talked about a good deal during the fifty-nine years of his sojourn on this planet. So it is not ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... who wrote in Wolcott's own lifetime, "that during his residence in Cornwall, he discovered, and encouraged, the fine talents of the late Opie, the artist; a man of such modesty, simplicity of manners, and ignorance of the world, that it is probable his genius would have lain obscure and useless, had he not met, in Dr. Wolcott, with a judicious friend, who knew how to appreciate his worth, and to recommend it tothe admiration of the world. The Doctor's taste in painting has already been noticed; and it may now be added, that perhaps few men have attained more correct ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... feared for years had happened. Quintana had found him, — Quintana, after all these years, had discovered the identity and dwelling place of the obscure American soldier who had robbed him in the wash-room of a Paris cafe. And Quintana was now in America, here in this very wilderness, tracking the man who ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... had in view in writing this book has been to give a history of the origin of Unitarianism in the United States, how it has organized itself, and what it has accomplished. It seemed desirable to deal more fully than has been done hitherto with the obscure beginnings of the Unitarian movement in New England; but limits of space have made it impossible to treat this phase of the subject in other than a cursory manner. It deserves an exhaustive treatment, which will amply repay the necessary labor to this end. ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... the wet pavement glistened in the gaslight, while the oppressive warmth of the almost impalpable rain lay heavily over the streets and seemed to obscure the light ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... somewhat obscure, and not expressed in good German, for in our mother-tongue we would say: Heavenly Father, help that by all means Thy name may be holy. But what is it to pray that His name may be holy? Is it not holy already? Answer: Yes, ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... and Bessieres followed him. This mean habitation of an obscure artisan contained within it an Emperor, two Kings, and three Generals. Here they were about to decide the fate of Europe, and of the army which had conquered it. Smolensk was the goal. Should they march thither by Kalouga, Medyn or Mojaisk? Napoleon was seated at a table, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... plan. But whatever may be its advantages or inconveniences, the method adopted in this work is such, that a young pupil, who should occasionally recur to it, with a view to procure information on particular subjects, might often find it obscure or unintelligible; for its various parts are so connected with each other as to form an uninterrupted chain of facts and reasonings, which will appear sufficiently clear and consistent to those only who may have patience to go through the whole work, or have previously ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... something better than a half-confidence, we might be cured the sooner. How often, when the unhappy disciple of Esculapius is perplexing himself about the state of our bodies, we might throw light upon his obscure labours by simply detailing to him the ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... that the better sort of people succeeded in having them abolished and Huniades established as sole governor. For all that, however, Huniades had a good deal of trouble with the chief aristocrats, Garay, Czillei, Ujlaki, who, envying the parvenu his sudden promotion and despising his obscure origin, took up arms to resist his authority. Thus Huniades, instead of blunting the edge of his sword upon foreign foes, had to bridle the insubordination of his own countrymen. Luckily it did not take long to force the discontented to own the weight of his arm ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... charge of a class or of a school, for the purpose of showing to himself or to others how certain things may be done, the children are quick to find it out, and to resent it. No child, however humble or obscure, but feels indignant at being considered as a mere pawn upon a chess-board, or a mere wheel or pulley in some complicated piece of machinery. Every individual child is to itself the centre of all human interests, and if you are to ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... intelligible cause, and necessary in relation to the phenomena from which it is a necessary consequence—a distinction which, stated in this perfectly general and abstract manner, must appear in the highest degree subtle and obscure. The sequel will explain. It is sufficient, at present, to remark that, as the complete and unbroken connection of phenomena is an unalterable law of nature, freedom is impossible—on the supposition that phenomena are absolutely real. Hence those philosophers who adhere ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... civilization everywhere, and to see the nations of the world bound so closely together by social and commercial relations. But we must remember that when they were uttered the true God was known and adored only in an obscure, almost isolated, corner of the earth, while triumphant idolatry was the otherwise universal religion ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... who were born for the benefit of their fellow-creatures have rendered themselves conspicuous among their cotemporaries, and founded a reputation upon which their memory remains, and will continue to the latest posterity—at that period, I still find myself as obscure, as unknown to the world, as the most indolent, or the most stupid of human beings. In the walks of active life I have done nothing. Fortune, indeed, who claims to herself a large proportion of the merit which exhibits to public view the talents of professional men, at an early ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... learning at the bar. And what the consequence may be, to have the interpretation and enforcement of the laws (which include the entire disposal of our properties, liberties, and lives) fall wholly into the hands of obscure or illiterate men, is ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... is accused only by the prisoner, his two brothers, and Madame Svyetlov. But there are others who accuse him: there are vague rumors of a question, of a suspicion, an obscure report, a feeling of expectation. Finally, we have the evidence of a combination of facts very suggestive, though, I admit, inconclusive. In the first place we have precisely on the day of the catastrophe that fit, for the genuineness of which the prosecutor, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Douglass entered upon that epoch of his life which brought the hitherto obscure refugee prominently before the public, and in which his services as anti-slavery orator and reformer constitute his chief claim to enduring recollection. Millions of negroes whose lives had been far less bright than Douglass's had lived and died in slavery. ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... looked bewildered, for the failing of nature rendered that obscure which was once so evident to his mind. After gazing long at his son, his eye wandered between him and the wall, and he ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... with a multitude of cloudlets drifting slowly across the sky so as to reveal, veil, partially obscure, or sometimes totally blot out the orb of night, may be a somewhat romantic, but is not a desirable, state of things in an enemy's country, especially when that enemy is prowling among ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... Woolfolk instantly responded. He bent and, lifting the body of Lichfield Stope, carried it into the hall, where, relieved at the opportunity to dispose of his burden, he left it in an obscure corner. ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... grown quite dusk. They were now come to a very wild and desert place, overgrown with shaggy bushes and so silent and solitary that nobody seemed ever to have dwelt or journeyed there. All was waste and desolate in the gray twilight, which grew every moment more obscure. Perseus looked about him rather disconsolately and asked Quicksilver whether they had a ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... one man for the whole work would mean stagnation, the worker never getting beyond his first crude attempts. Animal industry is a little like our own: it does not attain its perfection save with the aid of obscure toilers, who, without knowing it, prepare the final masterpiece. I see no other reason for this need of a gratuitous lodging for the Megachile's leafy basket or the Anthidia's cotton purses. In the case of other artists who ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... he pursued with any especial hatred was Probus; whom from the first moment that he saw him he never ceased to threaten, and to whom he never softened; and the causes of this animosity against him were not obscure nor trivial. When Probus first obtained the rank of prefect of the praetorium, the power of which he was continually labouring to extend by all kinds of means (I wish I could say by all lawful means), he forgot the lessons which he might have ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... exposition of doctrines which are the life of Christianity and which make up the soul of the Christian religion.... A profound work, but so far from being dark, obscure, and of metaphysical difficulty, the meaning of each paragraph shines with ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... thou comest back once more, Though dark clouds hang and loud winds roar, And mists obscure the nearest hills, And dark and turbid roll the rills, Such pleasures then my breast shall know, That summer's sun shall round me glow; Then through the gloom shall gleam the May— 'Tis ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... unknown past, we find a large modern collection of these attributed to a lady named "Miss A—-". They were waking dreams representing obscure incidents of the past, and were later corroborated by records in books, newspapers and manuscripts. But as these books and papers existed, and were known to exist, before the occurrence of the visions, it is obvious that the matter of the visions may have been derived from ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... no such institution as a home, no such thing as a fireside, no such object as a beautiful woman. His dear Miss Marguerite would excuse him, if he accounted for her attractions on the theory that English blood must have mixed at some former time with their obscure and unknown ancestry. Survey this English nation, and behold a tall, clean, plump, and solid people! Look at their cities! What magnificence in their public buildings! What admirable order and propriety in their streets! Admire their laws, combining the eternal ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... class, many of them being little better than beggars. They were people in whom the desire of life played a minor part. They were those people who are commonly regarded as being failures, people who live and die unknown to the world. They were those people who devote themselves to an obscure existence, shun the rewards of successful careers, and are ridiculed by all prosperous individuals. It seems that Thornduck was instrumental in calling a meeting of these people at St. Paul's. There were about two thousand of them ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... may be sure, I was determined never to lose sight of your Cleo for a moment. But my task was not a difficult one. That delightful room seems to have been as fatal to her imagination as she was to yours. She made some desperate attempts to leave it; twice she crossed to America and made obscure appearances on the boards, and once she sojourned in Paris for several months. But all in vain—she had to go back and sit on her gilded couch. Do you know, I rather like her; after all, she has never tried to turn to account her connection with you, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... of a controversy, which was wonderfully obscure and difficult, that, by reason of his just decree therein, he was reputed to have a ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... government influenced by a most short-sighted economy and prudence, else the highly interesting and instructive account of his experiments would have been familiar to some one in this country, and would not have waited these many years to be found by accident last spring in an obscure corner of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... humbled at the thought of loving one so handsome. No; it is impossible that those Parisian women are so stupid as not to have seen their dreams fulfilled in you. You neglected! you unloved! I do not believe a word of all that you have written me about your lonely and obscure life, your hunger for an idol,—sought in vain until now. You have been too well loved, monsieur; your brow, white and smooth as a magnolia leaf, reveals it; and it is I who must be neglected,—for who am I? Ah! why have you called me to life? ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... more vitality and truth than are to be found in a highly-wrought and painstaking drawing, during the process of which the essential and vital things have been lost sight of in the labour of the work; and the non-essential, which is usually more obvious, is allowed to creep in and obscure the original impression. Of course, had the finished drawing been done with the mind centred upon the particular form significance aimed at, and every touch and detail added in tune to this idea, the comparison might have been ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... poor his brothers, and their dispositions and wants familiar to him. His own early errors made him tolerant to the faults of others,—few men are charitable who remember not that they have sinned. In our faults lie the germs of virtues. Thus gradually and serenely had worn away his life—obscure but useful, calm but active,—a man whom "the great prizes" of the Church might have rendered an ambitious schemer, to whom a modest confidence gave the true pastoral power,—to conquer the world within himself, and to sympathize with the wants of others. ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book I • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... condition is judicially rescinded, the obligation of the promise or confession is taken away, and both parties are statu quo, Josh. ii. 14, &c. That, in many cases it is lawful to conceal and obscure a necessary duty, and divert enemies from a pursuit of it for a time. 1 Sam. xvi. 1, 2. xx. 5, 6. Jer. xxxviii. 24, &c. That when an open enemy perverts and overturns the very nature and matter of a discourse or confession, by leaving out the most ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... felt able to help in the house-work herself, owing to something obscure about the legs, would persist in talking all breakfast time about the dust and Caroline's other shortcomings. "Never know when you have her. This week she is eating at all sorts of hours because she has to go to ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... all the better. He had worthily represented America in Europe. In that young community a man who brings home with him abundant European testimonials is still treated with respect (I have found American writers, of wide-world reputation, strangely solicitous about the opinions of quite obscure British critics, and elated or depressed by their judgments); and Irving went home medalled by the King, diplomatized by the University, crowned and honored and admired. He had not in any way intrigued for his honors, he had fairly won them; and, in Irving's instance, as in others, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the poem had no general popularity, gained the notice of Carlyle, Wordsworth, and other men of letters, and gave him a reputation as a poet of distinguished promise. Two years later his drama of Stratford was performed by his friend Macready and Helen Faucit, and in 1840 the most difficult and obscure of his works, Sordello, appeared; but, except with a select few, did little to increase his reputation. It was followed by Bells and Pomegranates (containing Pippa Passes) (1841), A Blot in the 'Scutcheon (drama) (1843), Luria and A Soul's Tragedy (1846). ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... room with their talk and their affairs. Among them came a stranger named Pudd'nhead Wilson, and woman named Roxana; and presently the doings of these two pushed up into prominence a young fellow named Tom Driscoll, whose proper place was away in the obscure background. Before the book was half finished those three were taking things almost entirely into their own hands and working the whole tale as a private venture of their own—a tale which they had nothing at all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... relationship to them, he could hardly even in the days of his fame have ventured thus publicly to challenge it, unless there had been some acknowledged ground for it. There are obscure indications, which antiquarian diligence may perhaps make clear, which point to East Lancashire as the home of the particular family of Spensers to which Edmund Spenser's father belonged. Probably he was, however, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... scarcely necessary to observe that the deciphering of Mr. Fortescue's notes and the writing of his memoirs were not done in a day. There were gaps to be filled up, obscure passages to be elucidated, and parts of several chapters and the whole of the last were written to his dictation, so that the summer came and went, and another hunting-season was "in view," before my work, in its present shape, was completed. ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... from the public eye longer than he thought was suitable to the success of his career. He particularly disliked obscurity for he had found that in his case obscurity had meant comparative poverty. An obscure man, as he observed early in life, had nothing to sell. Now, Undy had once had something to sell, and a very good market he had made of it. He was of course anxious that those halcyon days should return. Fond of him as the electors of ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... secluded corner of the camp long lines of wooden crosses tell the tale of sadness. The first cross marked a Russian from far-away Vilna, the next a Tommy from London. East had met West in the bleak and silent graveyard on the heather. Close to them slept a soldier from some obscure village in Normandy, and beside him lay a Belgian, whose life had been the penalty of his country's determination to defend her neutrality. Here in the heart of Germany the Allies were united ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... "Notice," and for its friendly wit. You shall not do this thing again, if I should send you any more books. A Preface from you is a sort of banner or oriflamme, a little too splendid for my occasion, and misleads. I fancy my readers to be a very quiet, plain, even obscure class,—men and women of some religious culture and aspirations, young, or else mystical, and by no means including the great literary and fashionable army, which no man can count, who now read your books. If you introduce me, your readers and the literary ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a certain want of nature in them. The fault of Propertius was too pedantic an imitation of the Greeks. His whole ambition was to become the Roman Callimachus, whom he made his model. He abounds with obscure Greek myths, as well as Greek forms of expression, and the same pedantry ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... blood-red, reflecting from the sky and staining the rocks below, so that distant wall and sky merged, with little to show where the one ended and the other began. That beautiful haze, which tints, but does not obscure, enshrouded the temples and spires, changing from heliotrope to lavender, from lavender to deepest purple; there was a departing flare of flame like the collapse of a burning building; a few clouds in the zenith, torn by the winds so that they resembled the craters of the ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... or, according to the regular custom of the country, Johnny Darbyshire, was a farmer living in one of the most obscure parts of the country, on the borders of the Peak of Derbyshire. His fathers before him had occupied the same farm for generations; and as they had been Quakers from the days of George Fox, who preached there and converted them, Johnny also was a Quaker. That ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... Sieben are, in reality, much wider. It does such work in connection with the newspapers as is even too dirty for the German Foreign Office to touch, comprising everything from the launching of personal attacks in obscure blackmailing sheets against inconvenient politicians to the escorting of unpleasantly truthful foreign correspondents to the frontier. It is the obedient handmaiden of the Intelligence Department of both War Office and Admiralty in ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... to learn little about her father's death as yet. A Paris paper reported, and Boston papers copied, the statement that an American of his name, stopping at an obscure French town, was missing for two days, and found on the third, murdered, robbed, horribly disfigured. Mr. George Breynton had been traveling alone in the interior of the country, and had written home that he should be in this town—St. Pierre—at precisely the ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Fourth Folio ends the early history of how Shakespeare got into print. From that time to this a long line of famous and obscure men, at first mostly men of letters, but afterwards, and especially in our own times, trained specialists in their profession, have devoted much of their lives to the editing of Shakespeare. Their ideal has been, usually, to give readers the text of his poems and plays ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... him discussing S. Mark's "characteristics," at p. 151:—"In the consecution of his narrations, Mark puts them together very loosely." "Mark is also characterised by a conciseness and apparent incompleteness of delineation which are allied to the obscure." "The abrupt introduction" of many of his details is again and again appealed to by Dr. Davidson, and illustrated by references to the Gospel. What, in the name of common sense, is the value of such criticism as this? What is to be ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... found in any of the ancient Descriptions of Germany. That I may no longer detain the Reader in Suspence, it must needs be, that either the Nation of the Franks, by which such mighty things were done, was at first very obscure and mean, (as we see in Switz, an ordinary Village) yet because the first beginning of the Liberty of those Countries proceeded from thence, gave the name of Switzers to all the rest of the Cantons: ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... story. The origin of Gaudin de Sainte-Croix was not known: according to one tale, he was the natural son of a great lord; another account declared that he was the offspring of poor people, but that, disgusted with his obscure birth, he preferred a splendid disgrace, and therefore chose to pass for what he was not. The only certainty is that he was born at Montauban, and in actual rank and position he was captain of the Tracy regiment. At the time when this ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... "eleves." Again, the title of the Pedant's play is thoroughly Spanish. It was intended to ridicule the habit which prevailed in Spain, after the expulsion of the Moriscoes in 1610, of adapting for the stage Moorish habits and amusements, by making a stupid pedant in an obscure village, select them as the subject of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... reached the obscure boarding-house at which Mrs. Cameron stopped, the mother had gone to the market to buy a bunch of roses to ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... street boy was, for the first time in his life, bereft of speech! When that faculty returned, he remarked in language which was obscure ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... resolved never to do unless directly commanded: for that to go thither while the Chief Secretary of State was his professed enemy, was to undo himself; and therefore it were better for him to venture being unhappy here, than to go further off to be undone by some obscure instructions, or whatever other way of mischief his enemy should cut out for him. He mighty kind to ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... out the most obscure rooming house that gave any promise of decency and comfort, and stayed off Central Avenue and away from its loitering groups of range dwellers who might know him. That is why he hired a horse and rode early and alone to the fair grounds on the opening day, and avoided, by a roundabout ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... other was an organism, an animal, a man. When I had sufficiently admired their exterior, I asked my attendant genius to allow me to examine the inside of them; and I did so. In the vase I found nothing but the force of gravity and a certain obscure desire, which took the form of chemical affinity. But when I entered into the other—how shall I express my astonishment at what I saw? It is more incredible than all the fairy tales and fables that were ever conceived. Nevertheless, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... his own uncanny company, either by mesmerism or through the action of the drug he threw upon the fire, he had succeeded in calling up the illusion of her presence to my charmed sight. All this was clear enough, what remained obscure ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... of catastrophes was curiously mixed. Perhaps the comedy in it tended to obscure the utter degradation of the ruin she described. But the freakish incongruity of the speech did not strike Hyacinth. He found in it only two notes—pity that such a fate awaited him, and contempt for the man who submitted ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... marking him in order to know him at a future time. As is always the case, it was the smaller officials who were the most offensive—the little Jacks-in-office from the postal administration, the common officers, the hundred obscure civil servants who wear a sword and uniform unworthily in any one of the three European empires. On the other hand, the men in real authority, and notably the officers of the better regiments, sought to conciliate by politeness and a careful retention of themselves in the background. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... of the great guns increased, the tremendous rattle of small arms became continuous, with now and again exceptionally strong bursts, when whole battalions fired in volleys. The smoke soon became so dense as partly to obscure the vision. ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... in 1790. In particular Bruce's description of the Abyssinian custom of feeding upon "live bulls and kava" provoked a chorus of incredulity. The traveller was ridiculed upon the stage as Macfable, and in a cloud of ephemeral productions; nor is the following allusion in Peter Pindar obscure:— ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... solitary ride upward and homeward the ranger searched his heart and found it bitter and disloyal. Love had interfered with duty, and pride had checked and defeated love. His path, no longer clear and definite, looped away aimlessly, lost in vague, obscure meanderings. His world ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... of his imagination and all the strength of his judgment to believe it? Let us who are seeing the fulfilment of this vision, utter the fervent prayer that no sullen clouds of coldness or estrangement may ever obscure these fair relations, and that the madness of man may never mar the benevolent purposes ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Lord Bolinbroke more than he does now. The book by no means answered my expectation: the style, which is his fort, is very fine: the deduction and impossibility of drawing a consequence from what he is saying, as bad and obscure as in his famous Dissertation on Parties: Von must know the man, to guess his meaning. Not to mention the absurdity and impracticability of this kind of system, there is a long speculative dissertation on the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... hide myself in some obscure corner where I could vent my feelings without fear or favour. I composed my face as well as I could before leaving the 'phone booth; then I sidled across the lobby and slipped out of the side door. I found my way into the stable, where good old Peg was munching in her stall. The fine, ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... and indeed of effeminate temperament. Such opinions had been long current; it could not be expected of the rabble of quality that it should trouble itself about the real state of things and abandon once established platitudes because of obscure feats of heroism on the Tagus. Caesar evidently played in the league the mere part of the adjutant who executed for his chief the work which Flavius, Afranius, and other less capable instruments had attempted and not performed. Even his governorship seemed not ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... however, I was not afraid very much. What influenced my decision most were the obscure promptings of that pagan residuum of awe and wonder which lurks still at the bottom of our old humanity. "Victory" was the last word I had written in peace-time. It was the last literary thought which had occurred to me before the doors of the ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the wood-pile, in the shed, where they had been before, and then the boys sallied forth into the street. They crept along stealthily in the shadows of the houses and the most dark and obscure places, until they came to the tavern, where they were to turn down the lane to the corn-barn. As soon as they got safely to this lane, they felt relieved, and they walked on in a more unconcerned manner; and when at length they got ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... me because I am poor and unknown. But," exclaimed Mario, with a haughty glance, "the time may come and will come, when he will not he ashamed to acknowledge me. Art can ennoble the poor and obscure." ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... large commodious camel-boxes for carrying specimens of natural history, one sextant and artificial horizon, three boiling-point and common atmospheric thermometers, and one primitive kind of camera obscure, which I had made at Aden under the ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... fought their 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 a hand ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... say, I have no colour for it, which I confesse, for these pictures are not drawne in colours, but in characters, representing to the eye of the minde divers severall professions, which, if they appeare more obscure than I coulde wish, yet I would have you know that it is not the nature of a character, to be as smooth as a bull-rush, but to have some fast and loose knots, which the ingenious reader may easily untie. The first picture is the description of a maide, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... of the locality could present no difficulty; the central point of the kingdom had of necessity also to become the central point of the worship. Even Jerusalem and the house of Jehovah there might need some cleansing, but it was clearly entitled to a preference over the obscure local altars. It was the seat of all higher culture, Iying under the prophets' eyes, much more readily accessible to light and air, reform and control. It is also possible, moreover, that the Canaanite ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... dealt with is that magical one when South Africa unnoted and obscure was startled from the simplicity of her bucolic life by the discovery of gold and diamonds. This was, of course, some years before the fountains of her boundless potential wealth had become fully unsealed. I was one of that band of light-hearted, haphazard pioneers who, rejoicing ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... visited me in dreams was the same wronged Alice? Had she arisen from her grave beneath the granite of the church-yard to warn me? Or are the dead jealous of their rights? Do they cling to their earthly love? I queried. But when he spoke I shook off these thoughts that were rising like mist to obscure my judgment, and answered, "I am. I am ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... itself is curiously divided into parallelograms, like hollow bricks,* [I have seen similar bricks in the sandstones of the coal-districts of Yorkshire; they are very puzzling, and are probably due to some very obscure crystalline action analogous to jointing and cleavage.] enclosing irregularly shaped nodules, while in other places it looks as if it had been run or fused: spherical concretions of sand, coloured concentrically by infiltration, are common in it, which have ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... made to apply these obscure lines to the poor prophet of Salon. In the first line he is said to figure as one of the twelve minor prophets, Micah, which name is closely allied to Michel. In the second line Diane was said to be the mother of the farrier, who was certainly called by that name. But if the line means anything ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... a quantity of such stimuli, as strongly affect them, become for some time afterwards disobedient to the natural quantity of their adapted stimuli.—Thus the eye is incapable of seeing objects in an obscure room, though the iris is quite dilated, after having been exposed to ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... that meant more to Andrew than he would have been able to explain. He only knew that it led him somehow through those dim, obscure pathways of spiritual life, on which the light of common day does not shine. And as he stood there, his mother and sister felt vaguely that they knew what "moral beauty" meant, and were the better for ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... any other. Marriage, the precedent condition of most parenthood, is thus regarded as the concern of the individuals and the present. Individuals and the present therefore decide what marriages shall occur; but by some obscure fatality which no one had thought of, the future appears upon the scene: and when it is actually present, or rather not only present but visible, the responsibility for it is recognized. We have not yet gone so far as ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... large amount of baggage, came alongside and were taken aboard; and as a double precaution, the distinguished pasha and his attendants went down the forepeak until the vessel got outside. Their goods were put into the upper side-bunkers, and a wooden bulkhead put up to obscure them from view in case the vessel was boarded before getting clear. At midnight the anchor was weighed, and the steamer slipped out into the Black Sea. Every ounce of steam was used to make speed, and she was soon into safety so far as ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... Crystal, visionary, passionate, and fantastic in purpose, are, in method, trenchantly formal and clear; and the schools of Clay, absolutely realistic, temperate, and simple in purpose, are, in method, mysterious and soft; sometimes licentious, sometimes terrific, and always obscure. ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... I had meant to assert that belief is nothing but an irresistible association, I think it necessary to observe that I express no theory respecting the ultimate analysis either of reasoning or of belief, two of the most obscure points in analytical psychology. I am speaking not of the powers themselves, but of the previous conditions necessary to enable those powers to exert themselves: of which conditions I am contending that language ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... existence, with but few comforts and no luxuries,—would make people discontented. Yet it does not seem to be so in fact, as illustrated by the apparent contentment of people doomed to hard labor in the most retired and dreary retreats. We wonder at their placitude, as we travel in remote and obscure sections of the country. A poor farmer, whose house is scarcely better than a hovel, surrounded with chickens and pigs, and with only a small garden,—unadorned and lonely and repulsive,—has no cravings which make the life of the favored rich sometimes unendurable. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... way—unless she were willing to admit defeat, to give up everything, her own good name, her father's name, to run from it all and live henceforth in hiding in some obscure place far away, branded in the life she would have left behind her as a despicable criminal and thief. And she could not, would not, do this while her intuition, at least, inspired her with the faith to ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... 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 ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... British Magazine. Burke had spoken of the pleasure given him by Goldsmith's review of the Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. But, to crown all, the great Cham himself sought out this obscure author, who had on several occasions spoken with reverence and admiration of his works; and so began what is perhaps the most interesting literary friendship on record. At what precise date Johnson first made Goldsmith's acquaintance, is not known; Mr. Forster is ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... the particular fortunes of a not very interesting set of people; but may quote one or two more specimens of the sort of scenes which fill the greater part of the first of these volumes. Our authoress and her sister are at one time separated from their parents, and placed in an obscure pension in the Faubourg (no longer St.) Antoine. Their brother, a very young man, has also remained in Paris, and frequently visits them ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... navy, but remained on shore without employment for some forty years before his accession, taking an occasional part in debates of the house of lords, and generally acting with the whig party. During this long period he was little regarded by his future subjects, and led a somewhat obscure life, at first in the company of Mrs. Jordan, by whom he had a numerous family. After his marriage with the Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen in 1818, he became a more important personage, and, as we have seen, was ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Mandingo merchant, who fled hither with his family during a former war. The adjacent fields yield him plenty of corn, his cattle roam at large in the valley, and the rocky hills secure him from the depredations of war. In this obscure retreat he is seldom visited by strangers, but whenever this happens, he makes the weary traveller welcome. I soon found myself surrounded by a circle of the harmless villagers. They asked me a thousand questions about my country; and, in return for my information, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... with the ghosts of ploughmen of old who gave themselves for England, even as the faithful farmers now leave scenes inexpressibly dear. For the aim of our poet is to magnify the lives of the humble and the obscure, whether on land or sea. In the beautiful Consecration that he prefixed to Salt-Water Ballads, he expressly turns his back on Commanders, on Rulers, on Princes and Prelates, in order to sing of the stokers ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... case? I think not. He had lived a virtuous and industrious life, not studying for rank or honor, but because he enjoyed doing what was right and fit for a young man to do; and now the reward had come to him, like the sun breaking through the clouds which seemed to obscure his future prospects. Still, there was a hard road before him. It is very pleasant to travel rapidly through foreign countries, seeing the best that is in them and to return home with a multitude of fresh impressions; but living and working a long time in another ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... happily obtain, are that the objection to the introduction of such evidence finds its source usually in the side seeking to obscure and hide the truth or facts, while the honest litigant or innocent individual hastens to ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... contrary, it has been demonstrated that, after a universal silence of the orthodox fathers of the Church, of the ancient versions of the Scriptures, and of all really important manuscripts, the verse first appeared in a Confession of Faith drawn up by an obscure zealot toward the end of the fifth century. In a very mild exercise, then, of critical judgment, Erasmus omitted this text from the first two editions of his Greek Testament as evidently spurious. A storm arose at once. In England, Lee, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... who think themselves wise, and of some who are thought wise by others, the exertions are directed to the revival of mouldering and obscure dramas; to endeavours to exalt that which is now rare only because it was always worthless, and whose deterioration, while it condemned it to living obscurity, by a strange obliquity of moral perception constitutes its title to posthumous renown. To embody the flying colours of folly, ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... table drawer three unpublished articles, a few poems, and the First Act of the second and unfinished tragedy, saved by its obscure position at the back of the drawer. The woman owned to having lit the fire with the rest. Maddox cursed and groaned as he thought of that destruction. He knew that many poems which followed Saturnalia had remained unpublished. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... enough,' said Eugene, coolly. Far be it from me to say otherwise. The sister who is something too much upon your lips, perhaps—is so very different from all the associations to which she had been used, and from all the low obscure people about her, that it is a very ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... have this young Galilean prophet, coming from an hitherto unknown Jewish family in the obscure little village of Nazareth, giving obedience in common with his four brothers and his sisters to his father and his mother; but by virtue of a supreme aptitude for and an irresistible call to the things of the spirit—made irresistible through ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... out of the ways of men unnoticed and unmourned; as a rebel, under the obscure name of another and bearing another's sins upon my shoulders, I was to pass almost unheeded to the gallows. Bardelys the Magnificent—the Marquis Marcel Saint-Pol de Bardelys, whose splendour had been a byword in France—was to go out like ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... blushing slightly in the obscure corner of the carriage as she spoke, explained to Lady Ball that clause in her agreement with her brother respecting ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... after numerous adventures they slay their fathers or some other unfortunate relative. But the most characteristic part of what seems an almost universal legend is that these children are born in the most obscure circumstances, afterward rising to a height of splendour which makes up for all they previously suffered. It is not necessary to explain nowadays that this is characteristic of nearly all sun-myths. The sun is born in obscurity, and rises to a height ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... from which they are conspicuous enough; and if to be talked of and pointed at be the sole object of their ambition, they can, of course, be congratulated on their success. Virtue may sit in humble and obscure usefulness at a thousand quiet firesides, while the work of the incendiary may be seen to spread widely, and the tumult of his mischief be heard from afar. And so any public man or politician, whose ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... question whether he was a born novelist at all, though he had not a few of the qualifications necessary to the kind, and exercised, coming as and when he did, an immense influence upon it. The subject is too obscure. Its only original vates, Charlevoix, though always a respectable name to persons of some acquaintance with literature and history, has never been much more, either in France or in England. The French, unluckily for themselves, never took much ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the instant, he felt an icy shudder pass through his frame. The same voice rose higher and called him again. He recognized it as the voice of Madame de Tecle. Looking around him in the obscure light with a rapid glance, he saw a light shining through the foliage in the direction of the cottage of the sabot-maker. Guided by this, he put spurs to his horse, crossed the cleared ground up ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... and sent out a warrant for the speedy apprehending him; but coming to his house, though early, they found him gone, and being informed which way he took, the messenger pursued him, and found his coach at the door of a cabaret, too obscure for his quality, which made them apprehend this was some place of rendezvous where he possibly met with his traitorous associators: they send in, and cunningly inquire who he waited for, or who was with him, and they understood he stayed for ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... were read above the ashes of Betty Higden, in a corner of a churchyard near the river; in a churchyard so obscure that there was nothing in it but grass-mounds, not so much as one single tombstone. It might not be to do an unreasonably great deal for the diggers and hewers, in a registering age, if we ticketed their graves at the common charge; so that ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... it might be called, and continued talking for a long time. Pinzon listened to him with profound attention and without interrupting him, except to ask an occasional question for the purpose of obtaining further details or additional light upon some obscure point. When Pepe Rey ended, Pinzon looked grave. He stretched himself, yawning with the satisfaction of one who has not slept for three nights, and ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... however small, written on such a subject, by such an author. Yet I know not whether these letters will be very satisfactory; for they are answers to inquiries not published; and, therefore, though they contain many positions of great importance, are, in some parts, imperfect and obscure, by their reference to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... and their defeats, thou wert in darkness still. Yes, their failures, their errors even, have a right to your respect; for man is weak..... Weep then, for us obscure travellers—unknown victims, who, by our mortal sufferings and unheard-of labors, have prepared the way before you. Pity me, who have passionately loved justice, and perseveringly sought for truth, only opened my eyes ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are obscure; and possibly (though it is treason in a writer to hint such a thing, as tending to produce hatred or disaffection towards his liege lord who is and must be his reader), yet, perhaps, even the reader—that great character—may be 'dense.' 'Dense' is the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... of doubt. Dreading the resentment of the people whom he had so often and so wantonly oppressed, and having on his back that uniform which was never so dishonoured before, he skulked under a servant's bed in an obscure chamber of his house, but was at length discovered in this disgraceful hole, and conducted pale, trembling, and covered with flue,*** before the officer who had commanded his arrest; nor could this gentleman's repeated assurances ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... after the disappearance of Martin Paz, there was a numerous assembly in the hall of the inn; one could scarcely through the darkness, rendered still more obscure by the tobacco-smoke, distinguish the frequenters of this tavern. Fifty Indians were ranged around a long table; some were chewing the coca, a kind of tea-leaf, mingled with a little piece of fragrant earth ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... the extent of the disaster in the winter battle of Mazurian Land is either concealed or an attempt is made to obscure it. It is unnecessary to go further into these denials. As evidence of the extent of the defeat, the following list of the positions held by the captured ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... miles and preached twice. My views of Scripture of late have been obscure; I can recall the truths to my mind, but they don't make that impression they have hitherto done. Is this change of feeling inherent, or the effect of neglect of duty, and want of watchfulness? I will examine ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... had more enthusiasm and courage in our teaching and our methods! This was the quality that enabled the infant church to emerge from its obscure dwelling in a Syrian town and spread all the world over. It is this warmth of conviction which lent fortitude to the martyrs of old time, and at this moment breathes valour into our brave enemies. But where is such vital enthusiasm ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... spirit go with you: the fetters of my thraldom are fil'd off, and I at liberty to right my self; and though my hope in Angellina's little, my honour (unto which compar'd she's nothing) shall, like the Sun, disperse those lowring Clouds that yet obscure and dim it; not the name of Brother shall divert me, but from him, that in the world's opinion ruin'd me, I will seek reparation, and call him unto a strict accompt. Ha! 'tis near day, and if the Muses friend, Rose-cheek'd Aurora, invite him to this solitary Grove, as I much hope she ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the art of living tribes, especially of those least influenced by the whites, capable of throwing light upon the obscure passages of precolumbian art. By supplementing the study of the prehistoric by that of historic art, which is still in many cases in its incipient stages, we may hope to penetrate deeply into the secrets of ...
— Origin and Development of Form and Ornament in Ceramic Art. • William Henry Holmes
... there a more ill-judged step than the removal of the Choir hither, towards the latter portion of the last century. To give it such stinted proportions, and for this purpose to displace some of the fine old monuments, and to hide others, to obscure the pillars, and, above all, to erect the miserable organ gallery which we now behold, may surely be pronounced most tasteless performances"[24] When he wrote, the proposal was to replace Walsingham's stalls in the octagon, and to make Bishop ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... command in chief, this Year,—Schweidnitz still sticking in some people's throats: "Dangerous; a man with such rash practices, rapidities and Pandour tendencies!" Daun is to command in Silesia; Loudon, under him, obscure to us henceforth, and inoffensive to Official people. Reichs Army shall take charge of Saxony; nominally a Reichs Army, though there are 35,000 Austrians in it, as the soul of it, under some Serbelloni, some Stollberg ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... insufficient excuse. A blind ale-house, lane, or alley; an obscure, or little known or frequented ale-house, lane, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... task in a way to deserve the warmest praise. The difficulties he has overcome are very great, consisting not merely of intricate rhyme and assonance, which he has faithfully reproduced, but a text often corrupt and meaning often obscure. He says himself in his preface that "The life-blood of rhythmical translation is this commandment—that a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one;" and this commandment, as far as we can see, he has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... making her fall in love violently (amore flagrantissimo) with the lowest, poorest, and most abject man on earth. Just at that time Psyche has been exposed by the king on a mountain top in obedience to an obscure oracle. Cupid sees her there, and, disobeying his mother's orders, has her brought while asleep, by his servant Zephir, to a beautiful palace, where all the luxuries of life are provided for her by unseen hands; and at night, after she has retired, an unknown lover visits her, disappearing ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Shakspere, which appeared between the years 1598 and 1601, there are characters markedly stamped with Jonsonian peculiarities. We may be convinced that 'gentle Shakspere' had received many a provocation [19] before he took notice of the obscure dramatist who was younger by ten years than himself, and publicly gave him a strong lesson. 'All's Well that Ends Well' contains a figure, Parolles, whose peculiarities are too closely akin to those of Ben Jonson to be regarded as a mere fortuitous ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... they would have selected for their victim an individual so certain to be missed as the Father Tommaso? From his long residence at Damascus, and the nature of his calling, his absence was sure to be noticed. Why not have selected for their victim some more obscure individual, on whom their barbarous fanaticism might have exercised their impious rites with impunity? Bah! why waste time by pursuing the ridiculous absurdities of ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... see, Temple, I have my troubles as well as you have. My promise under the venerable yew has kept me sober.' Letters of Boswell, p. 198. On June 19, he is 'vexed to think myself a coarse labourer in an obscure corner.... Mr. Hume says there will in all probability be a change of the Ministry soon, which he regrets. Oh, Temple, while they change so often, how does one feel an ambition to have a share in the great department! ... My father is most ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... considered proper and respectable. And we know how gentlemen in Baker Street have editions of the classics handsomely bound in the library, and how they use them. Of course they don't retire to read the newspaper; it is to look over a favourite ode of Pindar, or to discuss an obscure passage in Athenaeus! Of course country magistrates and Members of Parliament are always studying Demosthenes and Cicero; we know it from their continual habit of quoting the Latin grammar in Parliament. But it is agreed that the classics are respectable; therefore we ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the neighborhood in which she had been reared, made Tillie feel that in yielding her lips to this man for whom she did not care, and whom, if she could hold out against him, she did not intend to marry, she was desecrating her womanhood. Vague and obscure as her feeling was, it was strong ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... compelled to return, barely escaping with our lives. At length we succeeded in swimming our horses and reached the opposite shore; though I but just escaped with my little boy from being drowned. From Sandusky the path that we travelled was crooked and obscure; but was tolerably well understood by my oldest brother, who had travelled it a number of times, when going to and returning from the Cherokee wars. The fall by this time was considerably advanced, ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... the letter marked "immediate," and noted that there had been a delay in its delivery, for the address had been obscure, and an official alteration had been made. It was written in a feminine hand and said: "On second thoughts I cannot accompany you. Do not try to see me again. Forget me. I shall ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various |
