"Obscurity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... animals. She had a panel in the oak wainscot of her dining-room, which she tapped upon and opened at meal times, when ten or twelve jolly rats came tripping forth, and joined her at table. At the word of command or a signal from her ladyship, they retired again to their native obscurity—a trait of good sense in the character and habits of the animals which, it is hardly necessary to remark, patrons do not always find ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... house as other than a nuisance almost impossible to rent—perhaps on account of the mustiness and sickly odor of unkempt old age. Indeed, it never was rented after a series of deaths culminating in 1861, which the excitement of the war tended to throw into obscurity. Carrington Harris, last of the male line, knew it only as a deserted and somewhat picturesque center of legend until I told him my experience. He had meant to tear it down and build an apartment ...
— The Shunned House • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... teaching. But the authority is in the Sermon itself. Its truths are so wonderfully distinct and self-evident, they carry conviction with them. Jesus sees so plainly all that he says—there is no hesitation, no obscurity, no perhapses in his language. He is like one describing what is before his eyes, what he knows to be true because he sees it while he is saying it. It is, in short, the authority which always attends knowledge. He who knows anything, and can speak with certainty, carries conviction ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... to "speak, and it was done." But, as an example to His people, His whole life on earth was one impressive act of subordination and dependence. At Nazareth He was "subject to His parents." There He remained in studied obscurity, occupying for thirty years a lowly hut, willing to continue in a state of seclusion, till the Father's summons called Him to His ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... flags, moving his lips and nodding, as if counting them, as was his way. The doctor was thinking all the time upon the one text:—Why should this livid memorial of two great crimes be now disturbed, after an obscurity of twenty-one years, as if to jog the memory of scandal, and set the great throat of the monster baying once more at ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of moonlit brightness this strip of trees afforded a margin of soft, almost sooty obscurity, save where here and there darts of light fell through the raggedness of ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... always thought of her soul as of something luminous, and there were instants when it seemed to touch her eyes and her mouth with an edge of light. Beyond this her complexities remained for him as on the day when he first saw her—if she was obscure it was the obscurity of a star seen through a fog—and the desire to understand lost itself presently in the bewilderment of his misapprehension. At last, however, he had put her, as it were, tentatively aside, had relinquished his attempt to reduce her to ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... of ascending to his position in the world, and he had loved her well enough to sink into obscurity with her. Was history about to repeat ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... obscurity the waves which rose ahead seemed like mountains topped with snow. Hollows and hills of water swept past on their right and left. But the crests of the waves were not breaking, and this fact meant respite from ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... his family, who, as it was computed, lost this night upwards of fifty thousand pounds. He was never afterwards able to recover his losses, or to shake off his constant fear of a fresh insurrection among his slaves. At length, he and his lady returned to England, where they were obliged to live in obscurity and indigence. They had no consolation in their misfortunes but that of railing at the treachery of the whole race of slaves. Our readers, we hope, will think that at least one exception may be made, in favour of THE GRATEFUL NEGRO. ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... in obscurity, the windows closed, for fear of draughts; two candles, burning before an image of the Virgin of ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... of men, O blind hearts! In what obscurity and in what dangers is passed this uncertain little ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... writings of Plato the Timaeus is the most obscure and repulsive to the modern reader, and has nevertheless had the greatest influence over the ancient and mediaeval world. The obscurity arises in the infancy of physical science, out of the confusion of theological, mathematical, and physiological notions, out of the desire to conceive the whole of nature without any adequate knowledge of the parts, and from ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... of which signifies that in a country where there are three powers you may bet a thousand to one that a government clerk who has no influence but his own merits to advance him will remain in obscurity." ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Language we dare set against any in the World. Lastly, Since the Author is so excellent, we undertook it because no other Persons wou'd. 'Tis strange that none of our great Wits wou'd undertake it before, but let us Persons of Obscurity, take their Works out of their Hands; when we can perceive by our little Performances that our Language will do it to a very high degree, undoubtedly better than ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... did not insist that it should contain a declaration or recognition of his preceding right; as, on the other hand, he avoided the appearance of a new law or ordinance. He chose a middle course which, as is generally unavoidable in such cases, was not entirely free from uncertainty and obscurity. It was voted, "That the inheritance of the crown should rest, remain, and abide in the king:" [**] but whether as rightful heir, or only as present possessor, was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... Malvern is a good example. In districts of this kind, all is change; one year's crop has no memory of its predecessor; all is activity, prosperity, and usefulness: nothing is left to the imagination; there is no obscurity, no poetry, no nonsense: the colors of the landscape are bright and varied; it is thickly populated, and glowing with animal life. Here, then, the character of the cottage must be cheerfulness; its colors may be vivid: white is always beautiful; even red tiles are allowable, and ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... publishers, Richard Bonian and Henry Walley, {226b} and these publishers, more fortunate than Roberts soon printed a quarto with Shakespeare's full name as author. The text seems fairly authentic, but exceptional obscurity attaches to the circumstances of the publication. Some copies of the book bear an ordinary type of title-page stating that the piece was printed 'as it was acted by the King's majesties servants at ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... dreaming dreams in the third heaven, that is, the third story! O ye voluminous historians, who live in the guilt and glory of the past, and are proud in making the biggest and thickest books for the dust, cobwebs, and moths of the future! O ye commentators, who delight to render obscurity more obscure, and who assume that in a multitude of words, as in a multitude of counsellors, there is wisdom! O ye critics, who vote yourselves the Areopagites of Intellect, whose decrees confer immortality in the Universe of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... excited his ambition, and he became expert in all the common rules, and mastered the rule of three and fractions, by the help of an old school book, in the course of one year. He afterwards taught himself geometry, and raised himself, by the force of his abilities and perseverance, from obscurity to fame. ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... he had been doing in his hours of relaxation from the business which had occupied his mind to the banishment of nearly every other consideration; that had driven into comparative obscurity the old gnawing grief which had incorporated itself with his being! The intimacy with a beautiful, sprightly girl had been a holiday diversion to him after arduous brain-labor, recreation sought conscientiously and systematically, that his mental powers might be clearer and fresher ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... hair, dark grey eyes, and had over the right shoulder a scar from a sword thrust. It seemeth little possible that, if living, he should still remain in that Isle of Jersey. He may rather have returned to obscurity in France or have gone to England to be lost to name and remembrance —or even indeed beyond ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... perhaps the most chastened of the poet's thoughts, crowd on the imagination as he gazes into the depths of the illimitable void. The expanse of the ocean is seldom seen by the novice with indifference; and the mind, even in the obscurity of night, finds a parallel to that grandeur, which seems inseparable from images that the senses cannot compass. With feelings akin to this admiration and awe—the offspring of sublimity—were the different characters ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... exclusively to the flora of the rocks. Sea-weeds are no mere playthings for children; and to buy at a shop some thirty pretty kinds, pasted on paper, with long names (probably mis-spelt) written under each, is not by any means to possess a collection of them. Putting aside the number and the obscurity of their species, the questions which arise in studying their growth, reproduction, and organic chemistry are of the very deepest and most important in the whole range of science; and it will need but a little study ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... you, sir, if I can help it. At the outset of my career in this country, the vile slander to which I have referred struck me down at once and for ever. I resigned my aspirations in my profession—obscurity was the only hope left for me. I parted with the woman I loved—how could I condemn her to share my disgrace? A medical assistant's place offered itself, in a remote corner of England. I got the place. It promised me peace; it promised me obscurity, as I thought. I was wrong. Evil ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... with our hero's father; his grandfather is a probable hypothesis: the remoter ancestors with whom, since his rise to fame, he has been endowed by enthusiastic admirers in Western Europe, are purely romantic. In Greece, where nearly everyone's origin is involved in obscurity, matters of this sort possess little interest, and M. Venizelos's Greek biographers ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... why should Dante go about to make me believe in devils? Me! the ruler of all the devils in the teatrino! As though I did not know more about devils than anyone. Dante is the Emperor of Words, but the buffo is the Emperor of Deeds. And then his obscurity! As a theme for discussion Dante is as obscure as religion. One says: 'It is so.' While another says: 'It is not so.' As men discuss a melon and one says: 'Inside it is red.' While another says: 'Inside it is white.' Who can bear testimony to the truth of Dante's words? We cannot cut ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... distinguished and beautiful Roman lady, and when Napoleon afterward offered him the throne of Tuscany on condition that he should get a divorce from his wife, Lucien refused, and preferred to live in obscurity outside of France, and to dispense with the ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... is an awful feeling; why do you want him to have that?" Patricia replied, sinking into obscurity at the ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... tradition from the time of the flood. From all these arguments, which, however plausible at first sight, are found to be futile, may be argued the necessity of a revelation. Without it, the destiny of the noblest of the works of God would have been left in obscurity. Never till the blessed light of the Gospel dawned on the borders of the pit, and the heralds of the Cross proclaimed "Peace on earth and good will to men," was it that bewildered and misled man was enabled to trace his celestial origin ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... passage is evidently very corrupt and the meaning is by no means plain, but, in the absence of a parallel version, it is impossible to clear up the obscurity ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... fog disappeared, and Germain could see the stars shining through the trees. The moon also shook itself clear of the vapors that shrouded it and began to sow diamonds on the damp moss. The trunks of the oak-trees remained in majestic obscurity; but, a little farther away, the white stems of the birches seemed like a row of phantoms in their shrouds. The fire was reflected in the pool; and the frogs, beginning to become accustomed to it, hazarded a few shrill, timid notes; the knotty branches of the old trees, bristling ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... carpeting the ground. He started; life for an instant returned to him. Did that portend the approach of the soldiers, or was it some friendly Indian roaming the forest for game, and now on his return home? He gazed into the obscurity of the approaching night, lying back too weak to move, though it were his enemies come to take him again. But his fear was vain. It was an Indian boy, not more than fifteen years old, on the way to his tribe. At sight of him Pomponio was rejoiced, for the nearing Indian ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... yourself in Jesus, and may you be a pattern of his doctrines.' "There are few subjects," says the reviewer, "more worthy the ambition of a writer, or that are more inspiring, than the history of the martyred Vaudois, in the inaccessible solitudes of the Alps, for some time protected by their obscurity, but at last devoted for ages to the most cruel persecutions." The mystery of the origin of this people, the drama of their destiny, the melancholy interest which attaches itself to the different phases of their existence, command in their favor the attention of the world, and suffuse the pages ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... a board, but let into the wall of the upper story, in solid statuary, a huge human mouth opened to its utmost capacity, and a bull, round and plump, standing stoutly on its four legs between the two distended jaws. Now, the leading idea of this device is involved in a tempting obscurity, which leads one, at first sight, into different lines of conjecture. What did the designer of this group of statuary really intend to represent? Was it to let the outside world know that, in that inn, the "Roast Beef of Old England" was always ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... to Queen Christina of Sweden. This great woman was wise enough not to regard the crown of Sweden as a rare and precious gem; she chose a simple life of obscurity and poverty in beautiful Italy, rather than a throne in cold and unfruitful Sweden. This act alone establishes her superiority. Yes, sister, you are right. Christina was the greater woman, even because she scorned ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... they cannot conceive or comprehend what the soul can be, distinct from the body. As if, forsooth, they could comprehend what it is, when it is in the body,—its conformation, its magnitude, or its position there.... To me, when I consider the nature of the soul, there is far more difficulty and obscurity in forming a conception of what the soul is while in the body,—in a dwelling where it seems so little at home,—than of what it will be when it has escaped into the free atmosphere of heaven, which seems its natural abode".[1] ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... of character, and a devotion to rectitude and virtue in your moral estimate, quite as remarkable as the felicity of diction by which the varieties of each portrait are denoted. You have also escaped the snare to which brevity (according to Horace's well-known line), is exposed—obscurity."—From a letter of the late Bishop ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.19 • Various
... much more antique, we returned to Paris, in order that I might become a man of the world, if possible, by rubbing off the provincial specks that had unavoidably adhered to the American diamond while in its obscurity. ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... brightly are becoming smoky and dim. To many men this is no more than a waning of the lanterns, and they call for new ones, or a trimming of the old. They blame the day for putting out these flares. And some go apart, out of the glare of life, into corners of obscurity, where the radiation of the lantern may still be faintly traced. But, indeed, with the new light there has come the time for new methods; the time of lanterns, the time of deductions from arbitrary ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... made enemies—chiefly, I believe, by a certain impetuous candour; and they hindered his advancement, so that he lived in obscurity. And he would never stoop to conciliate: he could ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... possible,' says Mr. Stephen, 'with the best intentions, to take such a discussion seriously. Boswell tells us how a lady interrogated Dr. Johnson as to the nature of the spiritual body. She seemed desirous, he adds, of "knowing more; but he left the subject in obscurity." We smile at Boswell's evident impression that Johnson could, if he had chosen, have dispelled the darkness. When we find a number of educated gentlemen seriously enquiring as to the conditions of existence in the next world, we feel that they are sharing Boswell's naivete ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... fictions represented in public. The great and good PILPAY the fabulist, is said to have used that kind of exhibition as a medium for conveying political instruction to a despotic prince, his master, to whom he dared not to utter the dictates of truth, in any other garb. In the obscurity of those remote ages, the evidences of particular facts are too faintly discernible to be relied upon: All that can be assumed as certain, therefore, is that the elementary parts of the dramatic art had then been conceived and rudely practised. But the first ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... fog advanced across San Pablo Bay to meet us, and in a few minutes the Reindeer was running blindly through the damp obscurity. Charley, who was steering, seemed to have an instinct for that kind of work. How he did it, he himself confessed that he did not know; but he had a way of calculating winds, currents, distance, time, drift, and sailing speed that ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... not here, madam," said Mrs. Aylward. "Allow me—" and she led the way across a great empty hall, that seemed the vaster for its obscurity, then along a matted passage, and down some steps into a room surrounded with presses and cupboards, evidently belonging to the to the housekeeper. She set a chair for the trembling girl, saying, "You will excuse the having supper here to-night, madam; the south ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the bottom, quite in the shade, where the details are absorbed in the obscurity, the mastiff, with his eyes glistening like carbuncles, and shaking his chain, on which the double light from the lamp of Rosa and the lantern of ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... faithful son than himself, nor any more willing to comply with the holy father's wishes. The Bishop, now on friendly terms with all parties, and all but worshipped by them, soon made his authority felt; and had not Theodore risen from obscurity, Abouna Salama would, no doubt, have ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... tell?' cried the doctor helplessly. 'I have heard that such things may happen. I have read of them, but I have no proof. In these matters all is obscurity. The adepts in magic make strange claims. Arthur is a man of science, and he knows what ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... words, notwithstanding their great obscurity at present, were very clear and intelligible to Mrs. Johnson: they referred to conversations, which passed between her and Dr. Tisdall seven or eight years before; when the Doctor, who was not only a learned and faithful divine, but a zealous Church-Tory, frequently entertained ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... family. In Mrs. Lightener he found a woman whose wealth had compelled the so-called social leaders of the city to accept her, but whose personality, once she was accepted, had won her a firm, enduring position. He found her a woman whose sudden, almost magical, change from obscurity and the lower fringe of salary- drawers to a wealth that made even America gasp, had not made her dizzy. Indeed, it seemed not to have affected her character at all. Her dominant note was motherliness. She was still ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... surveys this marvellous vista from the vantage-ground of the present, attention is fixed first upon a long succession of well- authenticated facts which are shaded off in the dim distance, and finally lost in the obscurity of unlettered antiquity. The flesh and blood heroes of the more modern times regularly and slowly pass from view, and in their places the unsubstantial worthies of dreamy tradition start up. The transition is so gradual, however, that it is at times impossible to ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... title-page. We know, too, that he wrote some of the best of Lord Chatham's earlier speeches, just because he said so, and pointed out the very garret in Fleet Street in which they had been written. But it is from other data we conclude that, during his period of obscurity and distress, he wrote prefaces for the Gentleman's Magazine, for some six or seven years together,—data derived exclusively from a discriminating criticism; and his claim to the authorship of Taylor's Sermons rests solely on the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... condition. Many a poor tiller of the fields enjoys a degree of peace and happiness that those favoured by birth or fortune would envy. Disease visits poor and rich alike; moral suffering is more especially the appanage of the so-called higher classes, and if obscurity and poverty render certain troubles specially severe, wealth and rank play the same role in afflictions of another kind; there is a dark side to every picture. More than this, inequality of condition is one of the fundamental factors of social equilibrium; ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... prey, and, with the joy Of meaner natures, far and wide From deep obscurity they glide, The ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... then beginning to emerge from obscurity, was entrusted with the task of repression. With such a leader action was swift and energetic. Vigorously pounded with ball near the church at St. Roch, the insurgents fled, leaving some hundreds ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... freedom of form. Considering that a free rein to their fancy was incompatible with strict adherence to traditional rules, the Romantic spirits refused to be bound by forms felt to be inadequate. Although this attitude sometimes resulted in diffuseness and obscurity, on the whole (as Goethe says of romantic literature) "a wider and more varied subject matter and a freer form has been attained." The chief aim of romantic art being to arouse the imagination, we find a predilection for the use of solo wood-wind instruments, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... of time, enrolled as one of the Mamelukes. As such he rose rapidly. His ambition was intense; and, being both able and unscrupulous, he had no reason to despair of his ambition being one day gratified. No position, indeed, could be more favourable to a man eager to emerge from obscurity to eminence, than that which he occupied; and he not only succeeded in winning the confidence of the sultan, but contrived to insinuate himself into the good graces of the soldiers. In truth, this with him was no difficult matter. ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... scandals which revolted the public conscience!' And whom had the elective principle put into his place, under the pressure of irreconcilable personal rivalries, and of a threatened popular outbreak? A man whose recommendations were his own relative personal obscurity and the traditional reputation ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... movement of the great Gallo-Roman country. They are the popular singers of an abased race, of a conquered people. Toward the end of the twelfth century we see their legends emerge from their previous obscurity and conquer a sudden and astonishing popularity, which endured throughout all the remainder of the Middle Ages. But in the seventh century they had no profound influence in Gaul, and their voice had no echo except beyond the boundary straits ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... her. The attitudes and questionings in these passages, the religious feeling displayed, are distinctly masculine. Most easily could the following, for instance, pass as having been written by a man: "I desire for a considerable time only to lead a life of obscurity and toil, for the purpose of allowing whatever I may have received of God to ripen, and turning it some day to the glory of His Name. Nowadays people are too much in a hurry both to produce and consume ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... his Leipsic reputation, and if he had, in all probability, it would have been useless. Seven years is a long time for even a genius to remain in obscurity. ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... single line that is typically and exclusively masculine. One could easily imagine Edith Wharton, or Mrs. Watts, or even Agnes Repplier, writing all of them. When a first-rate novelist emerges from obscurity it is almost always by some fortuitous plucking of the dexter string. "Sister Carrie," for example, has made a belated commercial success, not because its dignity as a human document is understood, but because it is ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... devoted to this species of slavery:—"I regarded myself as one of those evil things that nature designed should be thrown into her lumber room, there to perish in obscurity. It happened that Mr. Crispe's office seemed invitingly open to give me a welcome reception. In this office Mr. Crispe kindly offers to sell his Majesty's subjects a generous promise of L30 a year; for which ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... Ancienne Lorette, which place they also abandoned many years afterwards to go and settle at Jeune or Indian Lorette, where the remnants of this once warlike race [196] (the nobles amongst Indian tribes) exist, now crossed with their Caucasian brethren, and vegetate in obscurity—exotic trees transplanted far from ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Annas Tenebrosus, which book I did not so entitle, because of the great obscurity of the solar eclipse, by so many prattled of to no purpose, but because of those underhand and clandestine counsels held in England by the soldiery, of which I would never, but in generals, give any ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... unfit, he had been recommended by the elder Mather, who, like his son Cotton, expected to make use of him. He carried his old habits into his new office, cudgelled Brinton, the collector of the port, and belabored Captain Short of the royal navy with his cane. Far from trying to hide the obscurity of his origin, he leaned to the opposite foible, and was apt to boast of it, delighting to exhibit himself as a self-made man. New England writers describe him as honest in private dealings; but, in accordance with his coarse nature, he seems to have ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... of the shadow like that man there," she added brightly, pointing to a figure just emerging from the obscurity of an overhanging warehouse. "Why, it's ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... you 'The Sceptic Soul' was too fine for ordinary intellects, Mab?" he said. "You lost yourself in an ocean of obscurity. You knew what you meant, but there's no man alive who could follow you. You ought to have remembered Voltaire's definition of a metaphysical discussion, a conversation in which the man who is talked to doesn't understand the man who talks, and the man who talks doesn't understand himself. ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... doll, and showing signs of recent wandering in the white dust which dropped on the carpet from her frock and her shoes, as she advanced towards the place in which I was sitting. Arrived in front of me, she peered quaintly up at my face, through the obscurity of the room; lifted her doll by the legs; hit me a smart rap with the head of it on my ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... both of thought and diction. This latter fault, however, had insinuated itself into my Religious Musings with such intricacy of union, that sometimes I have omitted to disentangle the weed from the fear of snapping the flower. A third and heavier accusation has been brought against me, that of obscurity; but not, I think, with equal justice. An author is obscure, when his conceptions are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect, or inappropriate, or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, like the 'Bard' of Gray, or ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... indivisible, irreducible, superior to all analysis, if it is to retain those aspects of infinitude, of the supernatural and the miraculous, which constitute its beauty. Most people hold cheaply whatever they understand, and bow down only before the inexplicable. Woman's triumph is to demonstrate the obscurity of that male intelligence which thinks itself so enlightened; and when women inspire love, they are not without the proud joy of this triumph. Their vanity is not altogether baseless; but a profound love is a light and a calm, a religion and a revelation, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... general nature of the instrument called the Constitution of the United States there is no obscurity; it has no fabled descent, like the palladium of ancient Troy, from the heavens. Its origin is not confused by the mists of time, or hidden by the darkness of passed, unexplored ages; it is the fabric of our day. Some now living, had a share in its construction; ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... become vague and indistinct. I have only been able to find a few which I seem to have jotted down almost unconsciously. But their very brevity and their obscurity reveal the intensity of the excitement which dominated me, and describe the actual position even better than ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... this time several new "stars" were reported, flashing into brilliancy and then fading again into obscurity. All were observed in the vicinity of Mercury; none appeared elsewhere. I believe these so-called "stars" to be some form of interplanetary vehicle—probably navigated in space by beings from Mercury. And from them were launched the two meteors that struck ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... that he may end at the end; one who could 'toil terribly,' 'who always laboured at the matter in hand as if he were born only for that.' Accordingly, he sets to work faithfully and stoutly, to learn his trade of soldiering, and learns it in silence and obscurity. He shares (it seems) in the retreat at Moncontour, and is by at the death of Conde, and toils on for five years, marching and skirmishing, smoking the enemy out of mountain-caves in Languedoc, and all the wild work of war. During the San Bartholomew massacre we hear nothing ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... The obscurity of these words and embarrassment of the two women produced a lively effect upon the countess; but she controlled herself and let the subject drop. Her agitation, however, did not escape the notice of the marchioness, who the next day had horses put to her coach and retired ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... ripples of mirth which this judicial sally aroused, the little doctor was permitted to leave the box, and depart for his native obscurity of Twelvetrees. He had served his purpose, so far as Mr. Middleheath was concerned, and Sir Herbert Templewood was too good a sportsman to waste skilful flies on such a small fish, which would do no honour to ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... sofa with her face to the window. She had given her jacket and gloves to her maid, but had kept on her hat; and she leaned forward a little as she sat, clasping her hands together in her lap and keeping her eyes on him. The lamp, in a corner, was so thickly veiled that the room was in tempered obscurity, lighted almost equally from the street and the brilliant shop-fronts opposite. "Therefore why be sapient and solemn about it, like an editorial in a newspaper?" ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... she murmured, resigned and defiant, at the mute and smooth obscurity that hung before her eyes in a black curtain without a fold; and as if in answer to that whisper a lantern was run up to the foreyard-arm of the brig. She saw it ascend swinging for a. short space, and suddenly remain motionless in the air, piercing the dense ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... a man whose life was one of meritorious achievement, every one knows. That he was a diligent and successful working geologist, scarcely needs saying. That with indomitable perseverance he struggled up from obscurity to a place in the world of literature and science, shows him to have been highly endowed in character and intelligence. And that he had a remarkable power of presenting his facts and arguments in an attractive form, a glance at any of his books will ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... what could a jury do, more than, according to Blount, the jury had done? Yet there is dense obscurity as to the finding of the jury. We have seen that Appleyard, Amy's half-brother, was at Cumnor during the inquest. Yet, in 1567, he did not know, or pretended not to know, what the verdict had been. 'Leicester's Commonwealth' says 'she was found murdered (as ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... but at a certain spot some red and yellow lamps, lamps the beams of which seemed to be saying, "Come up hither!" were shining through the obscurity. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... been thrown down the Tarpeian Rock than have retired, as you did, to the obscurity of a village, after acting the first part on the ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... confinement.[382] It appears that a number of moths, especially the Sphingidae, when hatched in the autumn out of their proper season, {158} are completely barren; but this latter case is still involved in some obscurity.[383] ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... is universal—with those who believe in him. And even here universality of belief is only secured by their refraining from discussing precisely what it is they mean by "God," and what it is they believe in. There is agreement in obscurity, each one dreading to see clearly the features of his assumed friend for fear he should recognise ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... to see what is to be done. That is to say, what duty is, is plain of itself to everyone; but what is to bring true durable advantage, such as will extend to the whole of one's existence, is always veiled in impenetrable obscurity; and much prudence is required to adapt the practical rule founded on it to the ends of life, even tolerably, by making proper exceptions. But the moral law commands the most punctual obedience from everyone; it must, therefore, not be so difficult to judge what it ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... be said to have been posthumous: it did not attain to any vigorous life till she had ceased to exist. Her talents did not introduce her to the notice of other writers, or connect her with the literary world, or in any degree pierce through the obscurity of her domestic retirement. I have therefore scarcely any materials for a detailed life of my aunt; but I have a distinct recollection of her person and character; and perhaps many may take an interest ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... "I am justified," he wrote, "in painting the manners of the times; the vices of Theodora form an essential feature in the reign and character of Justinian.... My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language."[131] This explanation satisfies neither Cotter Morison nor Bury, nor would it hold for a moment as a justification of a historian of our own day. Gibbon is really so scientific, so much like a late nineteenth-century man, that we do right to ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... plain two or three miles off suddenly vanished. It looked as if a curtain had been drawn across the grass. The horses set off at a fast trot, and the rig jolted furiously among the ruts. It would not be dark for an hour, but the gray obscurity that had hidden the bluff was getting near. At its edge and about a mile off a pond shone with ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... he was passing a certain mean-looking house in one of the less important thoroughfares, his attention was attracted to a scene which caused him to stop before the house; and, resting in the obscurity of a great recessed doorway on the opposite side of the way, to observe with much interest what took place in ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... of Flicoteaux's with Claude Vignon (who happened to be dining there that day) and the great man in obscurity, who kept his wardrobe at Samanon's, the four among them could not produce enough specie to pay for a cup of coffee at the Cafe Voltaire. They lounged about the Luxembourg in the hope of meeting with a publisher; and, as it fell out, they met with one of the most famous printers of the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... quietly forward from the dusk of the room beyond, where I saw she had been listening, reminding me, in spite of the incongruity of the idea, of that time when she emerged from the obscurity of her garden, and stood at the foot of the windmill tower, leaning on her father's arm, her hands filled with petunias, the night we first visited the Trescott farm. And then my mind ran back to that other night when she had thrown herself ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... without the assent of the child transferred to the adoptive parentage. In short, we are brought very close to the verge of the ideas which have at length prevailed in the modern world. But between these widely distant epochs there is an interval of obscurity, and we can only guess at the causes which permitted the Patria Potestas to last as long as it did by rendering it more tolerable than it appears. The active discharge of the most important among the duties which ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... the Hanyards looked so fair. The firelight danced on the black oak wainscot which age and polishing had made like unto ebony, and the row of pewter plates on the top shelf of the dresser glimmered in their obscurity like a row of moons. Our special pride, a spice-cupboard of solid mahogany, ages old, glowed red across the room, and from the neighbouring wall the great sword and back-and-breast with which Smite-and-spare-not Wheatman, Captain of ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... inward energy which carries the man who possesses it over all obstacles, enables him to master adverse conditions, to secure education without means and culture without social opportunity; but it was not unexampled in a country which has seen many men of ultimate distinction emerge from entire obscurity. Its material success has been paralleled many times; but its intellectual success has rarely been paralleled. It disclosed inward distinction; a passion for the best in life and thought; an eager desire to see things in their largest relations. And so out of conditions which ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... is his really famous "obscurity." This obscurity is variously ascribed to a diction unduly learned, or almost unintelligibly colloquial, or grotesquely inventive; to figures of speech drawn from sources too unfamiliar or elaborated to the point of confusion; to sentences complicated by startling inversions, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... interval before he found himself floating in his boat under the impenetrable shadow of the rocky promontory. The profound and infinite gloom of night overhung him with a portentous darkness, melting only into a liquid obscurity as it touched and dissolved into the stretch of waters across the bay. But above, on the high and rugged shoulder of the Point, the Collector, with dulled and swimming vision, beheld a row of dim and lurid lights, whereupon, collecting his faculties, he opined that ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... alluded in his work to the events of his own times. It has been suggested that he fell under the displeasure of Tiberius and his minister Sejanus, in consequence of the covert allusions made to them in Fables II and VI in the First Book. This question is, however, involved in impenetrable obscurity.] ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... I am not formed for the bustle of the busy, nor the flutter of the gay. I shall never again be capable of entering into such scenes. Indeed, I am altogether unconcerned at the thoughts of this life. I foresee that poverty and obscurity probably await me, and I am in some measure prepared, and daily preparing, to meet them. I have but just time and paper to return you my grateful thanks for the lessons of virtue and piety you have given me, which were too much neglected at the time of giving them, but which I ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... obscurity, into the broad light of honour and riches, was the house of Lenoble to be lifted by this young law-student. On the broad shoulders of this modern Atlas the Lenoble world was to be sustained. To him they looked, ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... day for enacting a part in the last extremities here seen; when by sickness, destitution, each busy ill of exile, he was destined to experience a fate, uncommon even to luckless humanity—a fate whose crowning qualities were its remoteness from relief and its depth of obscurity—London, adversity, and the sea, three Armageddons, which, at one and the same time, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... stately arcade of solid masonry supports it on the brink of the rock, and an iron parapet incloses it; there are a few seats to lounge upon, and some idle old guns for the children to clamber over and play with. A soft twilight had followed the day, and there was just enough obscurity to hide from a willing eye the Northern and New World facts of the scene, and to leave in more romantic relief the citadel dark against the mellow evening, and the people gossiping from window to window across the narrow streets of the Lower Town. The ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Gipsies, often alleged as a parallel, is a ludicrous evasion of the argument. These few and scattered vagabonds, whose very safety has been obscurity and contempt, have never attracted towards them a thousandth part of the attention, or the hundred thousandth part of the cruelties, which have been directed against the Jews. Had it been otherwise, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... small but rarely meet On terms of amity complete; Plebeians must surrender, And yield so much to noble folk, It is combining fire with smoke, Obscurity with splendour. ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... glad, also, for the obscurity which attends their annual coming and going. Whether they hibernate or migrate, the secret is their own; and for my part, I wish them the wit to keep it. In this age, when the world is in such danger of becoming omniscient before the time, it is good to have here and there a ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... entrance-effect in the matter of composition, its dramatically graded light-and-shade was masterly. From the outer obscurity, shot forward as from a catapult by the pushing crowd, we were projected through a narrow portal into a dimly lighted passage more or less obstructed by fallen blocks of stone; and thence onward, suddenly, ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... form it had been moved and guided by the same single spirit,—"Le roi est mort; vive le roi!"—A Vipont dies; live the Vipont! Despite its high-sounding Norman name, the House of Vipont was no House at all for some generations after the Conquest. The first Vipont who emerged from the obscurity of time was a rude soldier of Gascon origin, in the reign of Henry II.,—one of the thousand fighting-men who sailed from Milford Haven with the stout Earl of Pembroke, on that strange expedition which ended in the conquest of Ireland. This gallant ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of greatest value to him, for he is in sore straits for want of evidence to make good certain claims. It is not forth-coming, and he alleges that it was destroyed by the Spaniards when they captured Fort Caroline. Be that as it may, he who should be loaded with honors and riches now suffers obscurity and poverty, and perchance thou art the very one who ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... work; so he, seeing that I understand him, does not torment me in the same way as much as he used to do. That it is his work is clear from the restlessness and discomfort with which it begins, and the trouble it causes in the soul while it lasts; from the obscurity and distress, the aridity and indisposition for prayer and for every good work, which it produces. It seems to stifle the soul and trammel the body, so as to ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... we guide ourselves through life without the beacon-light of reason? It pierces the darkness of social ignorance, it helps us to distinguish vaguely objects heretofore plunged in obscurity, and which will always remain invisible to those who are unprovided with this indispensable accessory—the gift ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... reticence, which hinted that she was an unfaithful wife and that in this lay the cause of her long absence. Her husband did not believe this anonymous denunciation, but the fate of the two beings dearest to him seemed shrouded in so much obscurity that he could delay no longer, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Presidency grew in activity. There were several possible presidents in the field, and during the "era of good feeling" many an aspiring politician had his brief period of mild expectancy followed in most cases only too surely by a hopeless relegation to obscurity. There were, however, four whose anticipations rested upon a substantial basis. William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, had been the rival of Monroe for nomination by the Congressional caucus, and had then developed sufficient strength (p. 149) ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... is generally accorded its deserved honor; the man who wrote it has been allowed to remain in unmerited obscurity. The Pacific coast alone, in one of the most beautiful of personal monuments,* has acknowledged his service to his country—a service which will terminate only with that country's life; for he who gives a nation ...
— The Star-Spangled Banner • John A. Carpenter
... admitted that the constitutional question was then not quite free from obscurity. Our ancient Kings had undoubtedly claimed and exercised the right of suspending the operation of penal laws. The tribunals had recognised that right. Parliaments had suffered it to pass unchallenged. That some such right was inherent in the crown, few even of the Country Party ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay |
