"Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "antecessors" into "grandfather." Halliwell-Phillipps only mentions one at that date, but Mr. Stephen Tucker,[54] Somerset Herald, gives facsimiles of both. Halliwell-Phillipps calls these ridiculous assertions, and asserts that both parties were descended from obscure country yeomen. The heralds state they were "solicited," and "on credible report" informed of the facts. We must not forget that all the friends intimately associated either with the Ardens or the Shakespeares (with the exception ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... greater than either Walter Pater or Mr. Chesterton who first pointed out that the language which appealed to the understanding of the common man was also that which expressed the highest culture. Mr. Chesterton's habit of paradox will always obscure his meanings for the common man. He has a vast amount to tell him, but much of it he ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... inscrutable eyes were riveted upon Shefford. At that moment he seemed magnificent. How infinitely more he seemed than just a common Indian who had chanced to befriend a white man! The difference was obscure to Shefford. But he felt that it was there in the Navajo's mind. Nas Ta Bega's strange look was not to be interpreted. Presently he turned and passed from ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... should do unto you," etc. Every individual desires to be loved and not hated; and he also feels and sees his obligation to exercise the same disposition toward others. The carrying out of this obligation is loving another as himself. But evil lust and sinful love obscure the light of natural law, and blind man, until he fails to perceive the guide-book in his heart and to follow the clear command of reason. Hence he must be restrained and repelled by external laws and material books, with the sword and by force. He must be reminded of his ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... Chapter Coffee-house, St. Paul's Churchyard, about noon he reached the corner of St. Botolph Lane. Before Jorrocks & Co.'s warehouse, great bustle and symptoms of brisk trade were visible. With true city pride, the name on the door-post was in small dirty-white letters, sufficiently obscure to render it apparent that Mr. Jorrocks considered his house required no sign; while, as a sort of contradiction, the covered errand-cart before it, bore "JORROCKS & Co.'s WHOLESALE TEA WAREHOUSE," in great gilt letters on each side of the cover, ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... pull down London Bridge. This peculiar kind of "distraction" (as the French call it) seems to have had the desired effect, as is evident in the romantic incident of his second marriage, when the Irish Princess Gyda chooses him—apparently an obscure stranger—to be her husband, out of a hundred wealthy and well-born aspirants to her hand. But neither Gyda's love, nor the rude splendours of her father's court, can make Olaf forgetful of his claims upon the throne of Norway—the inheritance of his father; and when ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... effort untried on our behalf. A second time, we set out by the same route. When we found ourselves on a hill-top, far from human haunts, we sat down as was our wont, to consider our future course. We determined to visit some obscure watering-place in the vicinity of Cape Clear. With that view we skirted the picturesque mountains that surround Dunmanway. These mountains present features to which the eye of one living in the inland country is little accustomed. The mountains of the midland and eastern counties are generally ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... and other fugitive publications, I can speak from certain knowledge, only furnished him with sport. At last there came out a scurrilous volume, larger than Johnson's own, filled with malignant abuse, under a name, real or fictitious, of some low man in an obscure corner of Scotland, though supposed to be the work of another Scotchman, who has found means to make himself well known both in Scotland and England. The effect which it had upon Johnson was, to produce this pleasant observation to Mr. Seward, to whom he lent the book: 'This fellow ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... made very little appeal to Mr. Polly. But afterwards it developed. It fell into his mind like some small obscure seed, and germinated. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... get you out of a rut. To keep you from becoming commonplace and obscure and—and everything you promised not to be when you married me," she retorted from the doorway, her eyes still alight with that disturbing and tantalizing fire. "It is my last desperate effort as a wife to save you from baldness, obesity, and nonentity." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... announcements. In those early days there was one Richmond Nolley, a preacher in the new Southern country. He was a man of great zeal, energy, and courage, and omitted no opportunity of doing good to persons of any color or condition in whatever obscure corner he could find them. On one occasion, while travelling, he came upon a fresh wagon-track, and following it, he discovered an emigrant family, who had just reached the spot where they intended to make their home. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... are evident; his style is harsh, obscure and crabbed; it is sometimes said that he seems wiser than he really is mainly because his language is difficult; that if his thoughts were translated into easier prose our impressions of his greatness would be much modified. Yet it is to be remembered ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... served as mediators between men and God. Such mediation is not wanted, and was directly forbidden by Christ, who has revealed his teaching directly and immediately to each man. But the churches set up dead forms in the place of God, and far from revealing God, they obscure him from men's sight. The churches, which originated from misunderstanding of Christ's teaching and have maintained this misunderstanding by their immovability, cannot but persecute and refuse to recognize all true understanding of Christ's words. They ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... books that will pay, and they generally pounce on a good manuscript in fiction, whether the writer be known or unknown. It is much more easy to predict whether a novel will pay or not than to prophecy about a drama. Thus the most obscure author (in spite of the difficulties faced by "Jane Eyre" and "Vanity Fair") may rely on it, that if his MS. is not accepted, it is not worth accepting. He should not, if he has decently sound reasons for self-confidence, ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... this great advance, the greatest thing in Modern History as we know it, that which is the distinction and glory of the last three hundred years, is at all due to the inspiration and the action of Henry of Portugal, an obscure Prince of the fifteenth century, that obscure Prince may possibly belong to the rank of the great civilisers, the men who have most altered society and advanced it, men like Alexander and Caesar and the founders of the great ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... many and weighty inconveniences do follow upon the ceremonies,(1316) as namely, that they make way and are the ushers for greater evils; that they hinder edification, and in their fleshly show and outward splendour, obscure and prejudice the life and power of godliness; that they are the unhappy occasions of much injury and cruelty against the faithful servants of Christ, that they were bellows to blow up, and are still fuel to increase ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... as she said this, looking full in Euphra's eyes. It was a smile of meaning unfathomable, and it quite overcame Euphra. She had never liked Margaret before; for, from not very obscure psychological causes, she had never felt comfortable in her presence, especially after she had encountered the nun in the Ghost's Walk, though she had had no suspicion that the nun was Margaret. A great many of our dislikes, ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... in his verse. Tennyson was too sincere by nature, and too strongly averse to experimenting in new fields of poetry, to attempt the affected or unique. He purposely avoided all subjects which he feared he could not treat with simplicity and clearness. So, in his shorter poems, there are few obscure or ambiguous passages, little that is not easy of comprehension. His subjects themselves tend to prevent ambiguity or obscurity. For he wrote of men and women as he saw them about him, of their joys and sorrows, their trials, their ideals,—and in this was nothing ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... words of his, spoken in such confidence on the previous night, recurred to me. There was mystery somewhere—a far more obscure mystery even than what was apparent ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... ages that celebrated name was almost uniformly applied to Sumatra. The single circumstance indeed of the latter being intersected by the equator (as Taprobane was said to be) is sufficient to justify the doubts of those who were disinclined to apply it to the former; and whether in fact the obscure and contradictory descriptions given by Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Pliny, and Ptolemy, belonged to any actual place, however imperfectly known; or whether, observing that a number of rare and valuable commodities were brought from an island or islands in the supposed extremity ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... he had the air of a man who praises his neighbor without stint, with a calm consciousness that he himself is out of reach of comparison in the possessions or qualities which he is admiring in the other. Clement was right in his obscure perception of Mr. Bradshaw's feeling while he was making his phrases. That gentleman was, in another moment, to have the tingling delight of showing the grand creature he had just begun to tame. He was going to extinguish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Saturday we soon found out why we had come here, to use the rather obscure phrasing of the man of the party, for it speedily transpired that Miss Cassandra had brought us here with deliberate intent to lead us from the straight and narrow path of sightseeing into the devious ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... this unquestionably because of a lack of authentic data regarding the conquering of the wilderness. Considering how many years the pioneers struggled on the border of this country, the history of their efforts is meager and obscure. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... What shall we say of the obscure and tedious Compositions of those whom you celebrate as the Top of the Universe, tho' your Opinion goes for nothing? Don't you perceive that those old-fashioned Crabbednesses are disgustful? We should be great Fools to grow pale, and become paralytick in ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... frolic-loving spirit of the girl, and the gentleness of Roxana Beecher. "Mother was an enthusiastic horticulturist in all the small ways that limited means allowed. Her brother John, in New York, had just sent her a small parcel of fine tulip-bulbs. I remember rummaging these out of an obscure corner of the nursery one day when she was gone out, and being strongly seized with the idea that they were good to eat, and using all the little English I then possessed to persuade my brothers that these were onions, such as grown people ate, and would be very ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... She had the look, Dr. Blake told himself, which old-fashioned country nurses of the herb-doctor school refer to as "called." He knew that, in about one case out of three, that look does in fact amount to a real "call"—the outward expression of an obscure disease. ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... caused to be removed; and it is to be hoped that when, at last, his monument achieves its ultimate purpose, those who care for the cemetery will see to it that leafy tendrils be not permitted to mount to the marble collar of the figure, to form a necktie, or to obscure the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... the stove, in those last delicious moments before going to bed, when all the house is mellowed to such a warmth that it seems hard to leave it to the cold and dark. In this poor lady, who had so long denied herself spiritual comfort, there was a certain obscure luxury: she liked little dainties of the table; she liked soft warmth, an easy cushion. It was doubtless in the disintegration of the finer qualities of her nature, that, as they grew older together, she threw more and more the burden of acute feeling upon her husband, to whose ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... roan to a walk, and riding in long sweeping semicircles, methodically searched for Purdy's trail. With set face and narrowed eyes the man studied every foot of the ground, at times throwing himself from the saddle for closer scrutiny of some obscure mark or misplaced stone. So great was his anxiety to overtake the pair that his slow pace became a veritable torture. And at times his struggle to keep from putting spurs to his horse and dashing wildly on, amounted almost ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... according to Bayle, "the most monstrous that could be devised, and directly opposed to all the most evident ideas of our intelligence." He goes on to say that Bruno, in his war against Aristotle, invented doctrines a thousand times more obscure than the most incomprehensible things written by the disciples ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... to walk sedately along the path. The long grass that grew beside the path wet his shoes, and his hands were wet and muddy. Farmers turned on their wagon seats to stare at him. For some obscure reason he could not himself understand, he was terribly afraid to face Hugh McVey. In the bank he had been in the presence of men who were trying to get the best of him, to make a fool of him, to have fun at his expense. ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... costing from $0.75 to $1.50 a yard, is the only fabric sold now for this purpose for drawing-room use. The inner curtains may be simply side curtains, or made with a valance as well, and hang from a separate pole to obscure the top of the casement and just escape the floor, covering the outside edges of the lace curtains without concealing their borders. The over curtain should reproduce the coloring of the side wall and ceiling in a shade between the ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... the Needle of Cleopatra, the work got entangled again, and jolted at a miserable rate over the mud and swampy ground of all that country; yet my poor bulls trotted on with astonishing labour across the Isthmus of Suez into the Red Sea, and left a track, an obscure channel, which has since been taken by De Tott for the remains of a canal cut by some of the Ptolemies from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean; but, as you perceive, was in reality no more than the track of my chariot, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... Poyntz thus issued the word of command, Dr. Lloyd was demolished. His practice was gone, as well as his repute. Mortification or anger brought on a stroke of paralysis which, disabling my opponent, put an end to our controversy. An obscure Dr. Jones, who had been the special pupil and protege of Dr. Lloyd, offered himself as a candidate for the Hill's tongues and pulses. The Hill gave him little encouragement. It once more suspended its electoral privileges, and, without insisting on calling ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... concubines, others are sent to the brothels. Reports of conditions at Hong Kong which we have already quoted, speak of the special celebration of the entrance of a virgin into prostitution, and the high prices paid by patrons for this initiation, but leave it obscure as to the nationality of the men who initiate girls into the life of a brothel slave. But Chinese in San Francisco do not hesitate to make the charge that Chinamen recoil, through moral sense or superstition, from deflowering a virgin, and that ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... language in Cornwall. In James I's reign, 'John Norden ... constructing his Speculum, his topographical description of this kingdom,' writes: 'Of late the Cornishmen have muche conformed themselves to the use of the English tongue;' and adds that all but 'some obscure people' are able to 'convers with a straunger' in English. The bitterness aroused by the religious question was intensified by a report which was 'blazed abroad,' as Hooker says, 'a Gnat making an Elephant, that the gentlemen were altogether ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... a boat which carried passengers from one shore to the other. Middelburg, the chief town in the island, destined to become so famous in the annals of Protestantism, at that time only numbered some two or three hundred hearths; and the prosperous town of Ostend was an obscure haven, a straggling village where pirates dwelt in security among the fishermen and the few poor merchants who ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac
... great administrator, who had been wearily turning over the pages of an illustrated weekly chiefly filled with flamboyant photographs of obscure actresses, took his gold glasses from his nose and the black cigar from his lips, and ...
— A Christmas Mystery - The Story of Three Wise Men • William J. Locke
... and Evil" (1903), some of them stating his philosophy, never too definitely formulated. These two collections are very interesting in themselves, but both, like his "Discoveries" (1907), are more interesting as commentary on his powers. Mr. Yeats has used many notes to explain obscure allusions in his poems, though the most obscure he, perhaps with premeditation, fails to explain. Yet the reader unacquainted with his use of symbols will find much interpretation in these essays, especially those in "Ideas of Good ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... of a summer in the open, Borrow, who was now twenty-two, relapsed into the indifferent versification of Danish ballads and Welsh bards, was severely fleeced in obscure journeyings in Southern Europe, and so gained some experience for future use, vainly sought a post, on the strength of his linguistic attainments, as an assistant in the British Museum Library, and was reduced to writing reactionary political leaders for a Norwich ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... having achieved an awareness—obscure and indescribable indeed, yet actual—of the enfolding presence of Reality, under those two forms which the theologians call the "immanence" and the "transcendence" of the Divine, a change is to take place in the relation between your ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... opening words, "there were two testimonies," that they were given at the trial, and to run the luck of having it removed by the latter part of the paragraph. The whole thing is so stated as to mystify and obscure. There were "two" testimonies; "one" is said not to have been presented; and then, that neither was presented. The reader, not knowing what to make of it, is liable to carry off nothing distinctly, except that, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... canst not deny the fact stated."—Id. "They specify some object, like many other adjectives, and also connect sentences."—Kirkham cor. "A violation of this rule tends so much to perplex the reader and obscure the sense, that it is safer to err by using too many short sentences."—L. Murray cor. "A few exercises are subjoined to each important definition, for him [the pupil] to practise upon as he proceeds in committing the grammar to memory."—Nutting cor. "A verb ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... about it, to discuss the meaning of parts which we could not at first understand, to pray that our minds might be enlightened to comprehend it. We read it, as the book itself tells us to do, with earnest prayer; we read it with faith, and we read it not in vain. Soon passages which seemed at first obscure were made clear to our comprehension. Every day we understood it better and better. We had no one to whom to go for information. We had no one to instruct us, so we went to God; we asked Him to show us the truth, as He in ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... autocratic regime of the kind spoken for. At least for the present any such hope of a peaceable settlement seems illusive. What may be practicable in this way in the course of time is of course still more obscure; but argument on the premises which the present affords does not point to a substantially different outcome in ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... have taken this voyage in hand by the encouragement of this only author, he should have been thought but simple, considering that this navigation was written so many years past, in so barbarous a tongue by one only obscure author, and yet we in these our days find by our own experiences his ...
— Voyages in Search of the North-West Passage • Richard Hakluyt
... As to that he was by no means certain; he knew only that he must get out of the beaten track, out of the ruts. For an hour or two he must cease to be Littimer, the prosperous moneyed man, and must tread once more the obscure paths through which he had made his way to fortune. He could hardly have explained the prompting which he obeyed. Could it have had anything to do with the treacherous holes in the bottoms of ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... attack of Margaret Nicholson on the life of George III., the following bill was stuck up in the window of an obscure alehouse: "Here is to be seen the fork belonging to the knife with which Margaret Nicholson attempted to stab ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... superior importance was, what he would put in the place of the old form of chattel slavery. There was the rub, and this had come to be well understood at the North in the light of the reports from the South, which the advocates of President Johnson's policy could not deny nor obscure. The moral effect of the National Union ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... and the woman in their parlance replaced the letter 'r' by vowel sounds almost too obscure to be represented, except where it came last in a word before a word beginning with a vowel; there it was annexed to the vowel by a strong liaison, according to the custom universal in rural ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... at some public-house on the outskirts of the city where its members duly qualified themselves as bona fide travellers. But his fellow-travellers had never consented to overlook his origin. He had begun life as an obscure financier by lending small sums of money to workmen at usurious interest. Later on he had become the partner of a very fat, short gentleman, Mr. Goldberg, in the Liffey Loan Bank. Though he had never embraced more than the ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... Year, and eggs at Easter; he believed in the duties of a godfather, and never deserted the customs which colored the life of the olden time. Maitre Mathias was a noble and venerable relic of the notaries, obscure great men, who gave no receipt for the millions entrusted to them, but returned those millions in the sacks they were delivered in, tied with the same twine; men who fulfilled their trusts to the letter, drew honest inventories, took fatherly ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... had no intention of telling. Perhaps he could not have told, for his mental states became obscure as soon as he had passed through them. He misliked the very word "interesting," connoting it with wasted energy and even with morbidity. Hard facts ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... odd it is true, and I certainly did not pay much attention to it; but that sort of obscure intention, which seemed to lurk in his nonchalance like a wary old carp in a pond, had never before come so near the surface. He had distinctly aroused my expectations. I would have been unable to say what it was I expected, but at all ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... law prohibiting the coming of Chinese to the United States has been effective as to such as seek to land from vessels entering our ports. The result has been to divert the travel to vessels entering the ports of British Columbia, whence passage into the United States at obscure points along the Dominion boundary is easy. A very considerable number of Chinese laborers have during the past year entered the United ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... But all the same, there was the chance of others having an object in watching us, so every spadeful was thrown out in silence, every word spoken in a whisper. The night came on impenetrably black and obscure, but we worked on, feeling our way lower and lower, taking turn and turn, till once more we stood in the pit we had dug, and commenced groping about with our hands, for the spades told us that we had come ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... what was my most awkward predicament, for the choice lies between a prayer-meeting and Folkestone. This may seem obscure, but it isn't, as you will presently see. My Folkestone experience was as follows:—The baby—I decline to specify whose baby, for the law of England does not compel any man to confess that he is a grandfather—had ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... history of the foundation is very obscure. King Aethelstan is said to have founded the first monastery. More certain is it that, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, the church at Twynham was held by Secular Canons, who remained there until 1150, when ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... the Jewish standpoint. I hold that Philo is essentially and splendidly a Jew, and that his thought is through and through Jewish. The surname given him in the second century, "Judaeus," not only distinguishes him from an obscure Christian bishop, but it expresses the predominant characteristic of his teaching. It may be objected that I have pointed the moral and adorned the tale in accordance with preconceived opinions, which—as Mr. Claude ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... sovereign, across the waters, paramount over all, he held that in still greater distrust; for what was the authority which could not command the obedience even of its own vassals? *23 The Inca Manco was not slow in taking advantage of this state of feeling. He left his obscure fastnesses in the depths of the Andes, and established himself with a strong body of followers in the mountain country lying between Cuzco and the coast. From this retreat, he made descents on the neighbouring plantations, destroying the houses, sweeping off ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... insisting that the King of Portugal had moved first in this matter, and therefore should be the plaintiff. As to the rest he said that the suit was obscure, vague, and general, insufficient to form a case on possession, and to pass a sure sentence upon it, let them specify wherein they thought the treaty was not observed, and let them attempt the fitting remedy and interdict, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... extremely sane presentation of the problems discussed; while, for the general public, the effect of the book cannot be other than beneficial,— giving a sound and scientific view-point of many of these obscure and ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... with his task, and has written of his favourite master enthusiastically, yet with consummate judgment. Among living authorities, Dr. Gronau, Herr Wickhoff, Signor Venturi, and Mr. Bernhard Berenson have contributed effectively to the elucidation of obscure or disputed points, and the latter writer has probably come nearer than anyone to recognise the scope of Giorgione's art, and grasp the man behind his work. The monograph by Signor Conti and the chapter in Pater's Renaissance may be read for their ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... The room was so obscure that nothing further of the appearance of the figure could be ascertained, and the face was altogether overshadowed by the heavy flap of the beaver which overhung it, so that not a feature could be discerned. A quantity of dark hair escaped from beneath this sombre hat, a circumstance which, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of archaic and otherwise difficult words are given at the foot of the page: but the text has not been disfigured with reference-marks. And rather than make the book unwieldy I have eschewed notes—reluctantly when some obscure passage or allusion seemed to ask for a timely word; with more equanimity when the temptation was to criticize or 'appreciate.' For the function of the anthologist includes ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... life-giving soul, and, as always happens, seeking the quiet, and not too anxious to make itself felt by others. With some unfixed, though real, place in the general scheme of Greek religion, this phase of the worship of Dionysus had its special development in the Orphic literature and mysteries. Obscure as are those followers of the mystical Orpheus, we yet certainly see them, moving, and playing their part, in the later ages of Greek religion. Old friends with new faces, though they had, as Plato witnesses, their less worthy aspect, in certain appeals to vulgar, superstitious fears, they seem to ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... empty bottles clinked together in corners to the rolling of the ship. One of the doctor's medical books lay open on the table, half of the leaves gutted out, I suppose, for pipelights. In the midst of all this the lamp still cast a smoky glow, obscure and brown ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... platform, and walked rapidly into the town, fearing lest any one should recognize him, or lest any official should wish to detain him. With his bag in hand, he wandered through the streets, uncertain what to do or where to go. Presently he came to a small house, in an obscure street, with a placard in the window stating that apartments were to let. He knocked, and was answered by the landlady, a respectable looking woman, who told him that she had a bedroom and sitting-room to let, and would accommodate ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... must not obscure the fact that the short-story is a form of narration and subject to all that pertains thereto. Now what is narration ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... times are gone when only few were fit To view with open vision the sublime, When for the rest an altar-rail sufficed To obscure the democratic Christ.... Perceiving now his gift, demanding it, The benison of common benefit, Men, women, all, Interpreters of time, Have found that lordly Christ apocryphal While Christ the comrade comes again—no wraith Of virtue ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... occupied during the hot hours of the day collecting insects in a neighbouring clearing. Our kind hosts gave us a cup of coffee about five o'clock, and we then started for home. The last mile of our walk was performed in the dark. The forest in this part is obscure even in broad daylight, but I was scarcely prepared for the intense opacity of darkness which reigned here on this night, and which prevented us from seeing each other while walking side by side. Nothing occurred of a nature to alarm us, except that now and then a sudden ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... not here—having gone away again shortly after the apparent dismissal of Mr. Clavering. F——, then, was the only town I could think of which combined the two advantages of distance and accessibility. Although upon the railroad, it was an insignificant place, and had, what was better yet, a very obscure man for its clergyman, living, which was best of all, not ten rods from the depot. If they could meet there? Making inquiries, I found that it could be done, and, all alive to the romance of the occasion, proceeded to plan ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... sitting in his study attempting, with many groans, to make sense out of a very obscure passage in Cicero, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... need has a being for the discernment of good and ill who neither has nor can have any ill? Of what use is reason to him? of what use is understanding? We men, indeed, find them useful to aid us in finding out things which are obscure by those which are clear to us; but nothing can be obscure to a Deity. As to justice, which gives to every one his own, it is not the concern of the Gods; since that virtue, according to your doctrine, received its birth from men and from civil ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the earliest poems, forms an appropriate opening. Metrical considerations forbid an earlier date than the first quarter of the eleventh century, and the last few lines are still later. The material is, however, older: the poem is an outline, in allusions often obscure to us, of traditions and beliefs familiar to its first hearers. The very bareness of the outline is sufficient proof that the material is not new. The framework is apparently imitated from that of the poem known as Baldr's Dreams, some lines ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... silence again, except that before long a murmur began on the veranda beneath him where the half-dozen obscure figures had been sitting when he entered. Why should they be mumbling to themselves? He thought he could distinguish the voice of the widow Rickson among the rest, but he shrugged that idle thought away and turned back into his room. He sat down on the side of the bed and pulled off his boots, but ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... successive archivolts, one within the other, forming the great central entrance of St. Mark's. The first is a magnificent external arch, formed of obscure figures mingled among masses of leafage, as in ordinary Byzantine work; within this there is a hemispherical dome, covered with modern mosaic; and at the back of this recess the other three archivolts follow consecutively, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... there were some extremely witty things in it. The jokes were about bishops in gaiters, about garden-parties, about curates or lovely young ladies or rectors' wives and rustics, about Royal Academicians or esthetic poets. Their humor appealed to him as little and seemed as obscure as his had ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... guests is the subject of anxious deliberation. The modest, the sober, and the learned are seldom preferred; and the nomenclators, who are commonly swayed by interested motives, have the address to insert in the list of invitations the obscure names of the most worthless of mankind. But the frequent and familiar companions of the great are those parasites who practice the most useful of all arts, the art of flattery; who eagerly applaud each word and every action ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... pronounced, nor changed a whit his wonted gaiety; but dying, as he had lived, in abandoned luxury, sent under seal to the emperor, in lieu of flatteries, the unblushing record of their common vices. The obscure playwright is no less impressive than the world-renowned historian. While Antonius and Enanthe are picturing to themselves the consternation into which Petronius will be thrown by the emperor's edict, the object of their ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... of thought, religious liberty, toleration, had not been forced upon society and were never seriously considered. When Christianity confronted the Roman government, no one saw that in the treatment of a small, obscure, and, to pagan thinkers, uninteresting or repugnant sect, a principle of the deepest social importance was involved. A long experience of the theory and practice of persecution was required to base securely the theory ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... which were then entertained of him. He has made several really valuable contributions to historic literature—indeed, I think he is even now engaged upon some researches calculated to throw much light upon the obscure origin of several of our political institutions. He has entered upon politics with uncommon—perhaps with an excessive—ardor. I think he is likely to make an eminent figure in Parliament; for he ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... by Ahaziah, his son, B.C. 913, who renewed the worship of Baal, and died after a short and inglorious reign, B.C. 896, without leaving any son, and Jehoram, his brother, succeeded him. In reference to this king the Scripture accounts are obscure, and he is sometimes confounded with Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, who married a daughter of Ahab. This accounts for the alliance between Jehoshaphat and Ahab, and also between the two Jehorams, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... must be told, he was far more perplexed than Fitzgerald. He knew the girl, but he did not know and could not imagine what purpose she had in aiding Fitzgerald to win his wager or luring him out to an obscure village in this ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... winds that flailed and flayed The sea to him, the night obscure? In dreams he strayed some ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... And that obscure Event on which he had staked his hopes? Was He, as John had written, the First Born of the Universe, the Word Incarnate of a system that defied time and space, the Logos of an outworn philosophy? Was that Universe conscious, as Berkeley had declared, or the blind ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... being an artist? Imagine Mr. Lloyd George nominating Mr. Roger Fry Government selector of State-paid artists. Imagine—and here I am making no heavy demand on your powers—imagine Mr. Fry appointing some obscure and shocking student of unconventional talent. Imagine Mr. Lloyd George going down to Limehouse to defend the appointment before thousands of voters, most of whom have a son, a brother, a cousin, a friend, or a ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... quite firm in this decision,—however absurd or obscure their conclusions,—and Jackson, after his first flash of indignation, felt a certain relief in their departure. But strangely enough, while he had hesitated about keeping the property when they were violently in favor of it, he now felt he was right ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... seasonal August winds blow from the west, carrying sand and dust across the country, which can obscure visibility ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... would; and hath particularly blemished his master by name among us. I told Sir W. Coventry of my letter to Sir R. Brookes, and his answer to me. He advises me, in what I write to him, to be as short as I can, and obscure, saving in things fully plain; for that all that he do is to make mischief; and that the greatest wisdom in dealing with the Parliament in the world is to say little, and let them get out what they can by force: which I shall observe. He declared to me much ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... that has attentively read this dreadful soliloquy is disappointed at the conclusion, which, if not wholly unintelligible, is, at least, obscure, nor can be explained into any sense worthy of the authour. I shall therefore propose a ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... too recent to have its end yet—for stories like this have no end. But as it is similar to many of the same kind of stories, reader! of whatever race, or country, or religion, if you meet this obscure apostle on your way, give him cordially and quickly your brotherly hand in friendship ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... humour of The Sentimental Bloke speaks for itself; but there's a danger that its brilliance may obscure the rest, especially for minds, of all stations, that, apart from sport and racing, are totally devoted ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... residents in China are adverse to missionaries and express their opinions with such vehemence as to generally obscure criticisms of a more temperate nature. According to this majority the missionaries do nothing but harm. Frequently of poor education, and lacking altogether in tact and discretion, they thrust themselves in where they are not wanted, they interfere in local matters, ignore ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... 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, ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... about Davos; I have discoursed about it already, rather sillily I think, in the Pall Mall, and I mean to say no more, but the ways of the Muse are dubious and obscure, and who knows? I may be wiled again. As a place of residence, beyond a splendid climate, it has to my eyes but one advantage—the neighbourhood of J. A. Symonds—I dare say you know his work, but ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a position he had long been wanting to achieve. In the past when he had been with her and had kissed her lips he had come away filled with anger at himself. He had felt like one being used for some obscure purpose and had not enjoyed the feeling. Now he thought he had suddenly become too ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Mediterranean lands. The process was extended by state aid. Republics or monarchs founded colonies to extend their power or to house their veterans, and the results were equally towns springing up full-grown in southern Europe and, western Asia and even northern Africa. So too in remoter regions. Obscure evidence from China suggests that there also in early times towns were planted and military colonies were sent to outlying regions on somewhat the same methods as were used by ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... storms; Sicilian and 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
... of those vague spectres and shadows and indefinitenesses, and stand or fall, win or lose, by the verdict rendered by the jury upon that single question. If the verdict was Yes, I should feel quite convinced that the Stratford Shakespeare, the actor, manager, and trader who died so obscure, so forgotten, so destitute of even village consequence that sixty years afterward no fellow-citizen and friend of his later days remembered to tell anything about him, did not write ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... off, promising its return "when he was dead or she was married." This implied that he never meant to lose sight of her. Nor, indeed, had he wished it, would it have been very difficult to find her, these ten years having been spent entirely in one place, an obscure village in the south of England, where she had lived as governess—first in the squire's ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... man, hot climates tend to produce diseases of the liver, just as in cold climates lung diseases prevail. Not only are diseases of the liver rare in horses in temperate climates, but they are also very obscure, and in many cases pass totally unobserved until after death. There are some symptoms, however, which, when present, should make us examine the liver as carefully as possible. These are jaundice (yellowness of the mucous membranes of the mouth, nose, and eyes) and the condition of the dung, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... him he felt little care or uneasiness. After a five-mile gallop he drew in to the plainsman's jogging trot, and rode northeastward toward the Nueces River bottoms. He knew the country well—its most tortuous and obscure trails through the great wilderness of brush and pear, and its camps and lonesome ranches where one might find safe entertainment. Always he bore to the east; for the Kid had never seen the ocean, and he had a fancy to ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... ‘Pensées.’ But it should be remembered that their task was one not only of theological perplexity, but of great literary difficulty. Pascal’s manuscripts were a mere mass of confused papers, sometimes written on both sides, and in a hand for the most part so obscure and imperfectly formed as to be illegible to all who had not made it a special study. The papers were pasted or bundled together without any natural connection, parts containing the same piece being sometimes ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... finally to the extent of starting plans. Food was the first consideration. Monet was still in the dining room at Ward 6. About the first of November he began hoarding sugar and rice. A hollow tree in an obscure corner of the grounds back of the barns was the hiding place. Everyday a little more was added to the store. The process communicated a feeling of extraordinary interest to them both. Around this almost trivial ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... down from the hill In the west cloud's murked obscure, And looking back we could see the handpost still In ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... (Pentarchies); and that the judges, although presumably by law chosen from year to year, practically remained in office for a longer period or indeed for life, for which reason they are usually called "senators" by the Greeks and Romans. Obscure as are the details, we recognize clearly the nature of the body as an oligarchical board constituted by aristocratic cooptation; an isolated but characteristic indication of which is found in the fact that ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... gather evidence against the Company. This board consisted of John Harvey, John Pory, Abraham Piersey and Samuel Matthews, men destined to play prominent roles in Virginia history, but then described as "certayne obscure persons".[221] When the commissioners reached the colony they made known to the Assembly the King's desire to revoke the charter and to take upon himself the direction of the government. They then asked the members ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... not know at the time about certain circumstances which have since made a great deal clear to me that was obscure before. ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... been a poor lay brother," cried out the dying Philip II. of Spain, "washing the plates in some obscure monastery, rather than have ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... plain little table and chair, and here he is often to be found deeply immersed in a study of the many experiments that are being conducted. Not infrequently he is actively engaged in the manipulation of some compound of special intricacy, whose results might be illuminative of obscure facts not patent to others than himself. Here, too, is a select little library ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... more reality than Putois have inspired nations with hatred and love, terror and hope, have advised crimes, received offerings, made laws and customs. Monsieur Goubin, think of the eternal mythology. Putois is a mythical personage, the most obscure, I grant you, and of the lowest order. The coarse satyr, who in olden times sat at the table with our peasants in the North, was considered worthy of appearing in a picture by Jordaens and a fable by La Fontaine. The hairy son of Sycorax ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... had upset her. The last idea had sound salesappeal, but it was a low income market.... Oh well—her queer notions and obscure reactions undoubtedly went with her scientific gift. You have to lead individuals of this type for their own good, otherwise they spend their lives wandering around in ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... reverence and worship. Both of these sets of ideas degenerated into folly and vice, and became modes of selfishness and luxury. Elaborate hypocrisy and insincerity became common. Technical definitions of terms were used to obscure their ethical significance. Minne came to have a bad meaning and was used for erotic passion. Courtoisie became a term for base solicitation.[1221] Gower, in the Vox Clamantis (1382), tried to distinguish and specify sensual love. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... themselves to design—the artist is strongly influenced by color. This is especially true in the case of Holland, where the uncertain light and the vague shadows which continually veil the air soften and obscure the outlines of objects until the eye neglects the form it cannot comprehend, and fixes itself on color as the chief quality that nature possesses. But there are yet other reasons for this: a country ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... our Expeditionary Force, on the surrender of Belgium. She had willed the War; the tragedy of Sarajevo gave her the excuse. There is no longer any need to fix the responsibility. The roots of the world conflict which seemed obscure to a neutral statesman have long been laid bare by the avowals of the chief criminal. The story is told in the Memoir of Prince Lichnowsky, in the revelations of Dr. Muehlon of Krupp's, in the official correspondence that has come to light since ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... Science? Man's knowledge of this grand verity gives him power to dem- [5] onstrate his divine Principle, which in turn is requisite in order to understand his sonship, or unity with God, good. A personal requirement of blind obedience to the law of being, would tend to obscure the order of Science, unless that requirement should express the claims [10] of the divine Principle. Infinite Principle and infinite Spirit must be one. What avail, then, to quarrel over what is the person of Spirit,—if we recognize infinitude as personality,—for who can tell ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... lobular-formed small cysts throughout the substance of one or more lobes, the contents of which may either be expectorated or remain encysted, giving rise to most harassing cough, laborious breathing, and palpitations, dull resonance of chest, and obscure respiratory murmur. The third and last stage, is that in which the several cysts in one or more lobes have approximated each other, forming extensive excavations, the prominent symptoms of the disease becoming considerably aggravated, and the powers of the system sinking ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... of the Med Ship. It bore on through space. There were tiny noises from the communicator. There were whisperings and rustlings and the occasional strange and sometimes beautiful musical notes whose origin is yet obscure, but which, since they are carried by electromagnetic radiation of wildly varying wave lengths, are not likely to be the fabled music of ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... door stood Mahaffy with Yancy and Cavendish; they understood that what was obscure and meaningless to them held a tragic significance to these two men. The judge's heavy face, ordinarily battered and debauched, but infinitely good-natured, bore now the markings of deep passion, and the voice ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... the experiment, I had supposed that every man, whose wealth or power gave him influence in society, would start up, the moment it was known that an obscure individual, the usher of a school, had written a tragedy; not only to protect and produce it to the world, but to applaud and honour the author! Would secure him from the possibility of want, load him with every token of respect, and affectionately clasp him to their bosom! ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... now followed the dramatic pastoral from its obscure origin in the eclogue to the eve of its assuming a recognized and abiding position in the literature of Europe[167]. But if it is in a measure easy thus to trace back the Arcadian drama to its historical sources, and to show ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... imitation of human life, which is in the very definition of a poem. Words indeed, like glaring colours, are the first beauties that arise, and strike the sight; but if the draught be false or lame, the figures ill-disposed, the manners obscure or inconsistent, or the thoughts unnatural, then the finest colours are but daubing, and the piece is a beautiful monster at the best. Neither Virgil nor Homer were deficient in any of the former ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... artistic temperament was all very well, but there were limits. It was absurd that obscure authors should behave in this way. Prosser! Who on earth was Prosser? Had anyone ever heard of him? No! Yet here he was going about the country clipping small boys over the ear-hole, and flinging loaves of bread at bank-clerks as if he were Henry James or Marie ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... been above ten from home, filled us with apprehension, and the cries of the poor, who followed us for some miles, contributed to encrease it. The first day's journey brought us in safety within thirty miles of our future retreat, and we put up for the night at an obscure inn in a village by the way. When we were shewn a room, I desired the landlord, in my usual way, to let us have his company, with which he complied, as what he drank would encrease the bill next morning. He knew, however, ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... error; And, e'er thy race was run, wert forced at last to yield The well-earned laurel-wreath of many a bloody field, Fame, power, and deep-thought plans; and with thy sword beside thee Within a regiment's ranks, alone, obscure, to hide thee, And there, a veteran chief, like some young sentinel, When first upon his ear rings the ball's whistling knell, Thou rushedst 'mid the fire, a warrior's death ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... for an "Ode", which some people think superior to the "Bard" of Gray, and which others think a rant of turgid obscurity; and the latter are the more numerous class. It is not obscure. My "Religious Musings" I know ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... nobleman being under no injunctions or obligation to keep the affair secret, discovered the young gentleman's misfortune, by way of news, to the first company in which he happened to be; and Peregrine's name was not so obscure in the fashionable world, but that his disorder became the general topic of conversation for a day; so that his friend soon partook of the intelligence, and found means to learn the particulars of the minister's information, as above related. Nay, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... never tired of marveling over the all-predominant militarism. Soldiers everywhere, all with good lungs and loud voices. We spent the evening seeing the town; at midnight we parted to meet and breakfast together at the cafe at 8. I then went to an obscure hotel and soon was in the land of dreams. In the morning I awoke with an anxious feeling, and found myself wishing it were night. At 8, the appointed time, I met Mac. He may possibly have felt some anxiety; ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... if either of them is wanting. The Jesus whom Christians confess is not merely the man who was born in Bethlehem and known among men as 'Jesus the carpenter.' In these modern days, His manhood has been so emphasised as to obscure His Messiahship and to obliterate His dominion, and alas! there are many who exalt Him by the name that Mary gave Him, who turn away from the name of Jesus as 'Hebrew old clothes,' and from the name of Lord as antiquated superstition. But in all the lowliness and gentleness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... misfortune can not tarnish it; where malice can not blast it. Favoured of heaven, he departed without exhibiting the weakness of humanity; magnanimous in death, the darkness of the grave could not obscure his brightness. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... often been accused of claiming for himself the credit of discoveries made by others, of writing as if he had been the first to traverse routes in which he had really been preceded by the Portuguese. Even were it true that now and then an obscure Portuguese trader or traveler reached spots that lay in Dr. Livingstone's subsequent route, the fact would detract nothing from his merit, because he derived not a tittle of benefit from their experience, ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... malignity and eloquent irreligion of his later productions. Collins' callow namby-pamby died and gave no sign of the vigorous and original genius which he afterward displayed. We have never thought that the world lost more in the "marvellous boy," Chatterton, than a very ingenious imitator of obscure and antiquated dulness. Where he becomes original (as it is called), the interest of ingenuity ceases and he becomes stupid. Kirke White's promises were indorsed by the respectable name of Mr. Southey, but surely with no authority from Apollo. They ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... starting a little now and then at the aspect of a newly-barked trunk lying white across the track. They were silent, having, in sooth, very little to say to each other just at this time. Vixen was nursing her wrathful feelings; Rorie felt that his future was confused and obscure. He ought to do something with his life, perhaps, as his mother had so warmly urged. But his soul was ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... Otridge, of the Strand, discourse most eloquently upon the brilliant manner in which Mr. Miller conducted his complicated concerns; and which, latterly, were devoted entirely to the Bibliomania. Although Bungay was too small and obscure for a spirit like Miller's to disclose its full powers, yet he continued in it till his death; and added a love of portrait and coin, to that of book, collecting. For fifty years his stock, in these twin departments, was copious and respectable; ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... above her divine Son. We need have no sympathy whatever with the dogma that ascribes worship to the Virgin Mary, and teaches that the Son on his throne must be approached by mortals through his more merciful, more gentle-hearted mother. But we need not let these errors concerning Mary obscure the real blessedness of her character. We remember the angel's greeting, "Blessed art thou among women." Hers surely was the highest honor ever ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... men. Holati Tate discovered them—then disappeared. Trigger Argee was his closest associate—she means to find him. She's brilliant, beautiful, and skilled in every known martial art. She's worth plenty—dead or alive—to more than one faction in this obscure battle. And she's beginning to have a chilling notion that the long-vanished Masters of the Old Galaxy were wise when they exiled the plasmoids to the most distant and ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... brief conversation between Mrs. Gaston and Michael left the store of Mr. Berlaps, she walked slowly in the direction of her temporary home, which was, as has before been mentioned, in an obscure street at the north end. It consisted of a small room, in an old brick house, which had been made by running a rough partition through the centre of the front room in the second story, and then intersecting this partition on one side by another partition, so as to make three ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... his left the field stretched, grey and sodden; ahead, on his right, hung the dark woods of the ducal chase. Presently a bend of the road brought him within sight of the keep of Pontesordo. His way led past it, toward Valsecca; but some obscure instinct laid a detaining hand on him, and at the cross-roads he bent to the right and rode across the marshland to the ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... Creation, and the Wonders, of his Might. Then staid the fervid Wheels, and in his Hand He took the Golden Compasses, prepar'd In Gods eternal Store, to circumscribe This Universe, and all created Things: One Foot he center'd, and the other turn'd Round, through the vast Profundity obscure; And said, Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds, This be thy ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Indian afterglow, in which one can see better than in brilliant sunlight, a light that breathes soft and delicate effulgences. The cobra at the point of stillness was like dark dulled jewels against it—dulled so that the raying of the jewels would not obscure the contour. ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... age; then the more developed Egos—those incarnated in these races during their maturity—come down into the advanced nations, living on the continents animated by the "life-wave," whilst the less evolved go to form the so-called degenerate races vegetating in obscure parts of the world. Look now at the adolescence of Russia, the youth of America, the old age of France, and the decrepitude of Turkey. Look backwards at the glorious Egypt of bygone ages; nothing remains but deserts of sand on which imperishable structures still testify to the greatness of ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... a second reason, more obscure. I wanted to keep for a while the little mystery of the lady who had come to the farmhouse room in the dark of the night. She was pure romance, a rare incident in a prosaic age. My table had been bare of such delicately spiced morsels, and I relished the savor of this one upon my palate. I was ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... border is crossed and Asia Minor begins, the coast turns due west and runs in that direction for a considerable distance. The Phoenicians were accustomed to trade along this region, and we may attribute, perhaps, to them the foundation of those obscure cities—Kibyra, Masura, Euskopus, Sylion, Mygdale, and Sidyma*—all of which preserved their apparently Semitic names down to the time of the Roman epoch. The whole of the important island of Rhodes fell into their power, and its three ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... most populous empire, under cloud of night and distance and utter poverty, Mark that—of utter poverty. Wealth is power; but it is a jest in comparison of poverty. Splendour is power; but it is a joke to obscurity. To be poor, to be obscure, to be a baker's apprentice or a tailor's journeyman, throws a power about a man, clothes him with attributes of ubiquity, really with those privileges of concealment which in the ring of Gyges were but fabulous. Is it a king, is it a sultan, that such a man rivals? Oh, friend, he rivals ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... of alias is not really the same as the long initial vowel of area, but the two will be treated as identical. It will thus be possible to write of only three kinds of vowels, long, short, and obscure. ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... I had never before attained—and yet I must admit that most of my prosperity was expected rather than secured, a promise, rather than a fulfillment, and the fact that I permitted Zulime to settle upon a three-room suite in an obscure Hotel on Fifteenth Street, is proof of my secret doubts. Eighteen dollars per week seemed a good deal of money to pay for ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... long lane of beams in the surface waters of lake or sea; it loses the strength of its rays and fails in vigor; while the evening mists, the dampness of approaching dewfall, and the gathering clouds obscure its power and foretell the extinction which will soon engulf the bright luminary. As Quetzalcoatl cast his shining gold and precious stones into the water where he took his nightly bath, or buried them in underground hiding places, so the sun conceals his glories ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... loyal subject to his royal master, would not accept of the high dignity offered him, but sent to let Pericles know their intentions, that he might return home and resume his lawful right. It was matter of great surprise and joy to Simonides, to kind that his son-in-law (the obscure knight) was the renowned prince of Tyre; yet again he regretted that he was not the private gentleman he supposed him to be, seeing that he must now part both with his admired son-in-law and his beloved daughter, whom he feared to trust ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... with no other aid than the grammar and lexicon he could, in the course of an hour or so, get out a fair translation of the passage to be mastered. But Sallust gave him no end of trouble. There was something in the involved obscure style of this old historian that puzzled him greatly, and he was constantly being humiliated by finding that when, after much labour, he had succeeded in making some sort of sense out of a sentence, Dr. Johnston would pronounce his translation altogether wrong, and proceed ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... directions his peculiar abilities entitle him to go, subordinate to the welfare of the state. It keeps the avenues of promotion to the highest offices, the highest honors, open to the humblest and most obscure lad who has the natural gifts, at the same time that it aids in the ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... published, the dialogue, having no letters of direction, was perplexed and obscure. Pope seems to have written with no very distinct idea; for he calls that an Epistle to Bathurst, in which ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... that she had not suffered from any such confusion. She did not add, as with no less truthfulness she might have done, that what had induced a slight access of confusion in her had been the sudden and unexpected possession of eleven golden sovereigns. But she had a feeling, somewhat obscure, that such a happening should not confuse a red Deeping; therefore she did not ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... was rocking in the wind, and pitching over the waves, they would make him climb the mast, and laugh to see how terrified he was, as the mast reeled to and fro, and the wind almost blew him into the raging ocean. Often did this poor boy get into some obscure part of the ship, and weep as he thought of the home he had forsaken. He thought of his father and mother, how kind they had been to him, and how unkind and ungrateful he had been to them, and how unhappy he had made them by his misconduct. But these feelings soon wore away. Familiarity with ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... were quietly reclining under the obscure shadow of the tree, the birds did not notice them, but stalked along the shore about ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... call a river?" And so on, in a perpetual attitude of protest against everything not so large as their steamboats, their lakes, their rivers. When this genus of Americans abroad comes together with the other genus—with the people who think the most wretched daub that hangs in the most obscure corner of a European gallery, labelled with prudent indefiniteness "of the school of ——," better far than the most conscientious work by the most gifted of American artists—and a discussion arises, as it is sure to do, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various |
