"Oracular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the most difficult of contemporary questions this opinion is worth quoting, although the ritualistic leanings of the present day hardly operate to support it. But here, as in his published works, his religious utterances are somewhat ambiguous and oracular; and one welcomes the marking of a definite epoch in Church history when he writes emphatically that 'the Broad Church among the clergy may be said to ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... intend," said Mr. Milburgh in his best oracular manner, "describing all the events which preceded the death of the late Thornton Lyne. Nor will I go to any length to deal with his well-known and even notorious character. He was not a good employer; ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... concern for his fate, return from the world below: ought they not consequently to speak the language of a more simple olden time, and their voices, too, ought they not also to seem a feeble sound of wailing, when contrasted with the thundering oracular language of Jupiter? For this reason Shakspeare chose a syllabic measure which was very common before his time, but which was then going out of fashion, though it still continued to be frequently used, especially in translations of the classical poets. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Pentecost come; and third and worst, a Church gone dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here meant Chapterhouses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let him,' says the oracular Professor, 'read on, light of heart ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... forbade the Israelites ever to enquire of the demon, Ob, which is translated in our Bible: Charmer or wizard, divinator or sorcerer. The Witch of Endor is called Oub or Ob, translated Pythonissa; and Oubois was the name of the basilisk or royal serpent, emblem of the Sun and an ancient oracular deity of Africa." ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... animal magnetism in Paris, and Mainaduc is getting as much in London. There is a fortune-teller in Westminster who is making little less. Lavater's physiognomy books sell at fifteen guineas a set. The diving [divining?] rod is still considered as oracular in many places. Devils are cast out by seven ministers; and, to complete the disgraceful catalogue, slavery is vindicated in print and defended in the House of Peers! Poor human nature, when wilt thou come to years ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... radiant in white waistcoat and gold chains, two rings on each finger, and a cameo the size of a cheese-cake on his neckcloth. The other critic, in right of his account at the bank, was a tall silent gentleman, a wood-merchant from the Boro', who nodded his head in an oracular manner when any thing was said above his comprehension; and who was a patron of rising talent, on the same enlightened principles as his friend Mr Pitskiver. Mr Whalley also showed his patronage in the same economical manner as the other, and expected immortality at the expense of a few roasts of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... death-agony, this claim to legislative power was formally confirmed by the Emperor Valentinian III (445). But for some time after the Council of Sardica the new prerogative was used with the greatest caution. The Popes of that period use every precaution to make their oracular answers inoffensive. They assure their correspondents that Rome enjoins no novelties; that she does not presume to decide any point on which tradition is silent; that she is merely executing a mandate which general councils have laid upon her. Those who evince respect for her claims ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... the primitive cell, with which, it is supposed, all organisms begin, is in all the same, but, being placed in different situations, is developed here into a man, and there into a mushroom. "The offspring," he says, not without oracular twang, "is like its parent, not because it includes an immortal typical form, but because it is exposed in development to the same conditions as was its parent." Behold a cheap explanation of the mystery of life! If one inquire how the vast ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... was silence in the hut, save for the oracular breathing of Prince Levis and the sparks from the fire. But the Honourable did not sleep well; he lay and watched the fire ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was the oracular reply. "You bet he won't! From what I hear he got to be a sea cap'n himself and settled down there in Buenos Ayres. He's made all kinds of money, they say, out of hides and such. What he ever bought his dad's old place for, I can't see. He'll never come back ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... rights, and in search of evidence, without a legal adviser of some sort? Mr. Mervyn, of course, had his, and paid for the luxury according to custom. And every now and then off went a despatch from the Tiled House to the oracular London attorney; sometimes it was a budget of evidence, and sometimes only a string of queries. To-night, to the awful diapason of the storm—he was penning one of these—the fruit of a tedious study of many papers and letters, tied up in bundles by his ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... all the little Twitters, but also Mrs Loper, who had dropped in just to make inquiries, and Mrs Larrabel, who was anxious to hear what news they had to tell, and Mr Crackaby, who was very sympathetic, and Mr Stickler, who was oracular. Thus the ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... the vital force which absolute repose from the beginning would have spared him. He is a very sick man, but I believe with the doctor that he will pull through. Indeed," added Batoche in that quaint oracular way which was no longer new to those who heard him, "Cary Singleton cannot, must not die. Not only is his own young life precious, but there are dear lives depending upon his. What would Zulma Sarpy do without him, she that is fretting at the very thought of his illness? ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... poor, more cheerful than the rich Receives me; to his kindness thanks are due. More would it joy me if thy brother, blest Himself, could lead me to his prosperous house: Yet haply he may come; th' oracular voice Of Phoebus firmly will be ratified: Lightly of ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... when not discouraging, to witness travellers, who have rushed through India in a winter tour, publish volumes of their misconceptions and ill-digested theories about the people with an oracular emphasis which is equalled ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... how he joined in the talk about flying-machines and the possibilities of electricity, witnessing that flying-machines were "dead certain to come," and that electricity was "wonderful, wonderful"; how he went and watched the billiard playing and said, "Left 'em" several times with an oracular air; how he fell a-yawning; and how he got out his cycling map and studied it intently,—are things that find no mention here. Nor will I enlarge upon his going into the writing-room, and marking the road from London to Guildford with a fine, bright line of the reddest of red ink. In his ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... diamond-dust in its composition. The thoughts are not given in the bullion lump, but are well refined, and having passed through the engraver's hands, they shine with the true polish, ring with the true sound. In terse, pregnant, and somewhat oracular diction, we are here instructed how to avoid the evils contingent upon bold commercial enterprise—how to guard against excesses of the accumulative instinct—how to exercise a thoroughly conscientious mode of regulating expenditure, eschewing ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... Being (often an unbegotten Son) or his Messenger (Andaman, Noongaburrah, Kurnai, Kamilaroi, and other Australian tribes). He reports to the somewhat otiose primal Being about men's conduct, and he sometimes superintends the Mysteries. I am disposed to regard the prophetic and oracular Apollo (who, as the Hymn to Hermes tells us, alone knows the will of Father Zeus) as the Greek modification of this personage in savage theology. Where this Son is found in Australia, I by no means regard him as a savage refraction from Christian teaching about a mediator, ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... another, a poem of essential worldly wisdom, to be bracketed with Browning's equally oracular "The Statue and the Bust," fable and ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... learned that the man whom I had found in the street was himself again, and was as conscious as he was ever likely to be. Burning with curiosity to learn the nature of the connection which existed between Paul and him, and what was the meaning of his oracular apostrophes, I merely paused to remove my hat before hastening ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... pooh-poohed oracular warnings, and said that he preferred to do his best, and leave omens to do their worst. On one occasion, outside the south gate of the Cheng capital, two snakes (one from the city, one from outside) ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... origin, growth, and extinguishment in blood have now been traced, has been the cause of we know not how many oracular warnings from the lips of those who have not been distinguished by any hearty attachment to the rights of the black. "See now," they say, "what is the peril of emancipating these blacks." "Behold what comes of educating this people ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... flash of the brilliants Rachel in honest amazement raised her eyes to her cousin's face. The same pale smile was there; the look was oracular and painful. Had she overheard a part of that unworthy talk of Wylder's at the dinner-table, the day before, and mistaken Rachel's share ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... night, my grandmother said "You must go to Picault's ball, my dear;" and my grave, oracular father added: "Yes, you shall go among our people now. I am about to ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... be, and dat may not be," the German answered, in the same oracular voice. "I thought, in any case, my good friend Clutterbuck, dat I vould give you vat you call in English the straight tap. It is always vell to ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... encountered a sentence, like Prof. Owen's "axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things," which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such oracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet deprecating, the coming time of trouble, we still hoped that, with some repairs and makeshifts, the old views might ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... the possessive instinct or the instinct to possess property with an unwavering voice. As eternal aspects of the complex vision, both conscience and the aesthetic sense, when their power is exercised in harmony with all the other aspects of the soul, indicate with an oracular clearness that the possessive instinct is not ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... sounding statue, which, according to Herodotus, Strabo, and Pausanias, uttered a joyful sound when the sun rose, and a mournful one when it set. It is also related that it shed tears, and gave out oracular responses in seven verses, and that these sounds were heard till the fourth century after Christ. These phenomena, attested by many ancient and modern writers, are variously accounted for by the learned, as priestcraft, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... reduced in extent and in means. From no part of Europe have come more decided condemnations of the course of Austria than from the Russian capital. The language of the St. Petersburg journals touching the Treaties of Vienna has been absolutely contemptuous; and that language is all the more oracular and significant because we know that the editors of those journals must have been inspired by the government. It has been justly regarded as expressing the views of the Czar, and of the statesmen who compose his cabinet. Though not disposed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... dispenses, in this case, with our saying anything; since every word we could say would be hostile to our own purpose. However, we shall, even upon this field of the Greek literature, deliver one oracular sentence, tending neither to praise nor dispraise it, but simply to state its relations to the modern, or, at least, the English drama. In the ancient drama, to represent it justly, the unlearned reader must imagine grand situations, impressive groups; in ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... mildly amused but not a bit surprised that we did not discover their distinctive Open-Sesames. There was a sprinkling of manifest seers and prophetesses in shapeless garments, far too many, I thought, for really easy social intercourse, and any conversation at any moment was liable to become oracular. One was in a state of tension from first to last; the most innocent remark seemed capable of exploding resentment, and replies came out at the most unexpected angles. We Young Liberals went about puzzled but polite to the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... a lady who is not rich," said Allan, in an oracular manner; "and a duchess is a lady who is not poor. And that's all the difference I acknowledge between them. Miss Gwilt is older than I am—I don't deny that. What age do you guess her at, Midwinter? I say, seven or eight and twenty. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... will appear the mystery connected with the exhibition. This may be performed whenever circumstances demand such proof, but the tests are made before the candidate with a twofold purpose: first, to impress him with the supernatural powers of the Mid[-e] themselves; and second, in an oracular manner, to ascertain if Kitshi Manid[-o] is pleased with the contemplated ceremony and ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... misfortune. Let it warn you, Madame Regent Anna! You have called me a toad—very well, toads always have correctly prophesied misfortune, and if they can never avert it, it is because otherwise people will not listen to such oracular voices of all-wise Nature! Let me be your toad, your highness, and listen to me! I foresee misfortune for you. Believe my prophecy, and that misfortune may yet be averted. Mark the signs by which fate would warn you! Did you not yesterday see Elizabeth driving through the streets, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... It was the oracular sage, Deacon Bedott, who, in view of the imperfections of his kind, remarked several times in his life: "we are all poor creeturs"—a remark that comes as near to being pure truth as any we meet with outside of the Bible and the standard treatises on mathematics. We are, indeed, poor creatures. ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... and shine, she grows her fleece, Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies. So following her, your hewing may attain The right to speak unto the mute, and shun That sly temptation of the illumined brain, Deliveries oracular, self-spun. Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain To shed the words which are ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... knowing what it might be best to say in the momentary pause which ensued upon these remarks, made an elaborate demonstration of intending to deliver something very oracular indeed; trusting to the certainty of the old man interrupting him, before he should utter a word. Nor was he mistaken, for Martin Chuzzlewit having taken breath, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... wealth of the establishment. The attendant shows, in the stonework close to the well, the end of a tube coming from the upper part of the cathedral; and through this tube pious monks in the middle ages no doubt spoke oracular words calculated to enhance the authority of the saint presiding over the place. It was the same sort of thing which one sees in the Temple of Isis at Pompeii, and the zeal which created it was no doubt the same that to-day ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... was inevitable. In all the watering-places the talk was of nothing else. The Russian party in Vienna grew bolder; Pozzo di Borgo, Napoleon's life-long foe, who had been temporarily under a cloud in Russia, appeared in Vienna in his Russian uniform, courted and oracular. A French interpreter on his way to Persia was stopped by him, and bribed to enter the Russian service. In a terse personal note written by his own hand, Napoleon called Alexander's attention to the facts, but without awaiting the reply he went further. Kourakine, partly ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... states that the term "Nymphe" and its derivations was used to designate young women, brides, the marriage chamber, the lotus flower, oracular temples and the labiae ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the decided evidences of respect shown by the natives until it came out that the Islanders considered their white guests to be semi-idiots, and hence powerful sorcerers to be placated. Fijian religion had developed into the oracular stage, and the priest after receiving prayers and offerings would on occasions be entered into by the god. Tremors would overspread his body, the flesh of which would creep horribly. His veins would swell, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... about it than you do, Blake," was the impatient reply. "Ray has a fashion of being oracular where Truscott is concerned as though he were on intimate and confidential terms with him. Now I, for one, don't believe he had any authority whatever for saying what ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... them apart from all other essays ancient or modern. They are the most quotable, the fittest to "point a moral or adorn a tale" that have ever appeared in our literature; but they are also disjointed, oracular, hard to follow; and the explanation is found in the manner of their production. When Emerson projected a new lecture or essay he never thought his subject out or ordered it from beginning to end. That would have been another man's ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... the daily, weekly, monthly periodicals, in desperate exertion to attract public attention. They have at their head one sublime genius, whom they swear by, and they admire him the more, the more incomprehensible and oracular he appears ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... less than professors, occasionally say good things even in prose, and the following oracular utterance of Shelley is not pure nonsense:—'History is the cyclic poem written by Time upon the memories of men. The past, like an inspired rhapsodist, fills the theatre of everlasting generations with ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... this principle that the whole practice and doctrine of Sortilegy rest. Let us confine ourselves to that mode of sortilegy which is conducted by throwing open privileged books at random, leaving to chance the page and the particular line on which the oracular functions are thrown. The books used have varied with the caprice or the error of ages. Once the Hebrew Scriptures had the preference. Probably they were laid aside, not because the reverence for their authority ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... pictures again. When I looked his way again, a few minutes later, he held out his hand to me, and we entered into a conversation which lasted until Griffiths gave me a hint that Turner had business to transact which I must leave him to. He gave me a hearty handshake, and in his oracular way said, "Hmph—(nod) if you come to England again—hmph (nod)—hmph (nod)," and another hand-shake with more cordiality and a nod for good-by. I never saw a keener eye than his, and the way that he held himself up, so straight that ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... Hiddekel and Euphrates, how serpents moved before they were condemned to crawl, and where Eve found thread to stitch her figleaves. To his speculations on these subjects he gave the lofty name of the Oracles of Reason; and indeed whatever he said or wrote was considered as oracular by his disciples. Of those disciples the most noted was a bad writer named Gildon, who lived to pester another generation with doggrel and slander, and whose memory is still preserved, not by his own voluminous works, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... laurels, too)—Ver. 5. The "cortina" or oracular shrine was surrounded with laurels; which were said to quiver while the oracles were being pronounced. This is probably the most beautiful portion of these newly-discovered poems. Still, it cannot with propriety be called ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... of jealousy, my dear sir, against young members of ability," said Mr. Botcher, in his most oracular and impressive tones. "The competition amongst those—er—who have served the party is very keen for the positions you desired. I personally happen to know that the general had you on the Judiciary and Appropriations, and that some of your—er—well-wishers ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of ignorance and idolatry by the great Enemy, who used the priest or priestess as the means of accomplishing his eternal schemes of malice and mischief. At the instant, however (so it was confidently affirmed), of the divine incarnation the oracular temples were closed for ever; and the demons were no longer permitted to delude mankind by impersonating pagan deities. They must now find some other means of effecting their fixed purpose. It was not far to seek. There were human beings who, by a preeminently wicked disposition, ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... in for half-an-hour at the windows and doorway of a large warehouse for the sale of mourning. Giles Hickbody would not speak above his breath, and took his beer standing; but Dorothy was hopeful, and really believed that her aunt would recover. Perhaps Sir Peter had spoken to her in terms less oracular than those which he used towards ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... an instinctive sense that the parents of Helen would be displeased with her, were they aware of the influence she had exerted, and deprive her hereafter of the most admiring auditor that ever hung on her oracular lips. She had meant no harm, but she was really sorry she had told that "powerful story" at such a late hour, and pressed the child closer in her arms with a ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... opine with Sir Isaac Newton, Knight, and umwhile [*Late] master of his Majesty's mint, that the (pretended) science of astrology is altogether vain, frivolous, and unsatisfactory." And here he reposed his oracular jaws. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... the form of a young Hercules, or of the gymnastic Hermes. But when he comes before us with the title of Puthios, or with the attributes of Dionysus, distinct reference is probably intended in the one case to his oracular quality, in the other to the enthusiasm which led to his death. Allusions to Harpocrates, Lunus, Aristaeus, Philesius, Vertumnus, Castor, Herakles, Ganymedes, show how the divinising fancy played around the beauty of his youth, and sought to connect him with ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the millennium is coming and be done with it," said Creighton rather plaintively, wondering why so many people seemed to credit detectives with oracular powers. "If Norvallis has the right pig by the ear, Maxon may break down, turn State's evidence and hang his accomplice. That's one possibility. Another—we may as well face it—is that this case will go to swell the ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... uncommon feature of your complaint," said the specialist. An oracular shake of the head conveyed more ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... You are as oracular and as immovable as one of Egypt's monuments; only they are very hard, and you are very soft, my dear little Daisy!—and they are very brown, according to all I have heard, and you are as white as a wind-flower. One can almost see through ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... there was but one, an Irishman, named O'Ready, who seemed to question the utility of all their toil. He shook his head with an oracular gravity. He is an old- ish man, not less than sixty, with his hair and beard bleached with the storms of many travels. As I was making my way toward the poop, he came up to me ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... damp, and raw. The sky was overcast and there were signs of rain. "There's been rain to the nor'rard," said Captain Bulger, meditatively. Now Captain Bulger was the skipper of the "New Lucy," and when he said those oracular words, they were reported about the steamboat, to the great comfort of all on board. Still the five boats stuck on the shoals; their crews were still hard at work at all the devices that could be thought of ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... starting up, 'Speak swiftly, ere too late, where dwelleth he?' 'Ah, that I know not,' spake the little voice, 'Yet keep thy courage, seek thou out the stork, The ancient stork that saw from earliest days, Sitting in primal contemplation lost, Sphinx-like, seraphic, and oracular, Watching the strange procession ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... assembly, once or twice, listening to abolitionist orators, lay and clerical, and hearing their vile assaults on personal character, their vulgar and reckless ridicule of fifteen States of our Union, their affected, oracular way of saying the most trite things as though they were aphorisms, but reminding me of the piles of short stuff which you see round a saw-mill, and hearing the great throng applaud and shout, I asked myself whether we have really made any decided advances in civilization since the ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... soon, and if they find you without it—" He put on his helmet, still muttering to himself. It wouldn't make any difference if he were overheard. They didn't know Earth language and would take his words for oracular utterances. He could talk to himself all he wanted, and from the looks of things, there would be no one to understand him. He hoped he didn't grow crazy and eccentric, like those hermits who had been lost alone in space for ...
— Divinity • William Morrison
... ignorant folk who came to visit his temple of science, and to inspect its curiosities, felt themselves insulted—not always without reason. He kept a tame maniac in the house, named Lep, and he used to regard the sayings of this personage as oracular, presaging future events, and far better worth listening to than ordinary conversation. Consequently he used to have him at his banquets and feed him himself; and whenever Lep opened his mouth to speak, every one else was peremptorily ordered to hold ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... Whether it were the oracular cow or some other one, it did not seem reasonable that she should travel a great way farther. So, whenever they reached a particularly pleasant spot on a breezy hillside, or in a sheltered vale, or flowery meadow, on the shore ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... sifting evidence than the average child, with a credulity that was almost supernatural—the medium, a stout woman who rolled her eyes and had damp fat fingers; the hymn-singing, the wheezy harmonium, the amazing pseudo-mystical oracular messages that revealed nothing which a religiose fool could not invent—in fact the whole affair, from the sham stained-glass lamp-shade to the ghostly tambourines overhead, the puerility of the tricks played on the inquirers, and all the rest of it—this seemed as little connected with what he ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... with oracular spite; then, overcome with remorse at the thought of the way in which I was embittering the first moments of his return, I rebury ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... problem of authority. Criticism had been fatal to the apprehension which both had inherited concerning the authority of Scripture. From that point onward they took divergent courses. The arguments which touched the infallible and oracular authority of Scripture, for Newman established that of the Church; for Martineau they had destroyed that of the Church four hundred years ago. Martineau's sense, even of the authority of Jesus, reverent as it is, is yet no pietistic and mystical view. The authority of Jesus is ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... Gobbleall is hand and glove with all the tyrums. Ha'n't he got a machine?" said Dan, in an oracular manner. ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... made no reply for some time, gazing with gloomy eyes into the fire. Finally he said, speaking in an oracular manner, yet brokenly as he always did, for the English tongue was hard to him: "Jonas Harding not friend to Injin; Injin not friend to him. You friend to Crow Wing. You fight Crow Wing; fight 'um fair; when foot well we fight once ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... from the oracular platform and go down through my own chosen underbrush for haphazard adventure. I renounce the platform. Whatever it may be that I find, pawpaw or may-apple or spray of willow, if you do not want it, throw it over the edge of the hill, without ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,— "They enslave their children's children who make ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... as impatiently biding his time as Dermid had been his coming. Knowing the jealous sovereign under whom he served, he had gone over to France to obtain Henry's sanction to the Irish enterprise, but had been answered by the monarch, in oracular phrases, which might mean anything or nothing. Determined, however, to interpret these doubtful words in his own sense, he despatched his vanguard early in the spring of the year 1170, under the command of his uncle Herve and a company of 10 knights and 70 archers, under Raymond, son ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... was discontented and quarrelsome, as fearful of Eyes-in-the-hands as he was of his tribal god; many were impressed by the propaganda of Sakamata and Yabolo and the impunity with which Yabolo and Sakamata and company had quietly gone over to the enemy. Meanwhile Bakahenzie squatted in oracular silence, murmuring incantations that were prayers to the Unmentionable One interlarded with promises of the things he would accomplish for the said Deity, with solemnity and sincerity, for he felt that the result of Marufa's intrigue with ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... rising slowly with all the dignity he could muster, looked gravely over his glasses at Houston in exact imitation of Mr. Blaisdell, and in an oracular tone remarked: ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... said he, With a particularly oracular air, "Claudet is dead, and the dead, like the absent, are always in the wrong. But who is to say whether you are not mistaken concerning the nature of Reine's unhappiness? I will have that cleared up this very day. Good-night; keep ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... any more words, put this sudden climax to what he had faintly intended should be a long explanation of the whole life and character of his man, the oracular John Willet led the gentleman up his wide dismantled staircase into the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... ask why Helen was not intolerant, nor ask whether even intolerance may not sometimes be more tolerable than indifference. And in spite of his unpleasant irritation at finding this "average" woman not overawed by his oracular utterances, nor easily beaten in a controversy, Albert had a respect for her deeper than ever. There was something in her anger at Westcott that for a moment had seemed finer than anything he had seen in the self-possessed Miss Minorkey. But then she was ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... about Agriculture. But alas! right there is where I made my worst mistake—for that remark seems to have recommended my proposed Agriculture more than anything else. It lets a little light in on me, and I fancy I perceive that the farmers feel a little bored, sometimes, by the oracular profundity of agricultural editors who "know it all." In fact, one of my correspondents suggests this (for that unhappy squib has deluged me with letters about potatoes, and cabbages, and hominy, and vermicelli, and maccaroni, and all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... ugly clamoring Nor the dumb stillness of the other homes About and opposite. For in our home Rare birds sing forth uncommon melodies; And in our home-yard a young offshoot grows, Sprung from Dodona's tree oracular! And in the garden of our home, full thick, The ironworts and snakeroots blossom on; And in our home the magic mirror shines Reflecting always in its gleaming glass The visage of ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... his son, [31] and a short carmen de moribus or essay on conduct, completed the list of his paternal instructions. Why this was styled carmen is not known. Some think it was written in Saturnian verse, others that its concise and oracular formulas suggested the name, since carmen in old Latin is by no means confined to verse. It is from this that the account of the low estimation of poets in the early Republic is taken. Besides these regular treatises we ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... into which it might relieve itself. What is a lover without a confidante? I thought at once of my sister Sophy, my early playmate, the sister of my affections. She was so reasonable, too, and of such correct feelings, always listening to my words as oracular sayings, and admiring my scraps of poetry as the very inspirations of the muse. From such a devoted, such a rational being, what secrets could ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Miss Pole, so mysteriously wrapped up, and with so many seals on it to secure secrecy, that I had to tear the paper before I could unfold it. And when I came to the writing I could hardly understand the meaning, it was so involved and oracular. I made out, however, that I was to go to Miss Pole's at eleven o'clock; the number ELEVEN being written in full length as well as in numerals, and A.M. twice dashed under, as if I were very likely to come at eleven at night, when all Cranford was usually ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... said Mildred, "that in his oracular criticism pronounced this colonnade, beautiful as it is, to be disproportioned to the building, and out of place. Whoever it was, he must have excogitated the idea at a distance, and in some splenetic humour; it never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... almost wholly superficial; he possessed, upon an infinite variety of subjects, that little knowledge which is a dangerous thing. There was consequently no topic of conversation upon which he had not something oracular to say; he was wont to maintain his own opinion with a very considerable amount of heat, and so obstinate was he that it was quite impossible to convince him that he was ever in the wrong. He was essentially a vulgar man; but, as might naturally be supposed from what has already been ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... wholly unmixed with amusement, Odger junior regarded me majestically for a moment, and then, ejaculating the oracular phrase, "Oh, ah!" walked off, his four-foot-one drawn to its full height, his hands behind his back, and his mouth still drawn up for whistling, but apparently too overcome with dignity to emit the music which an observer would naturally be ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... to exercise, having dined heartily in the kitchen, could not, for the soul of him, contain within his own bosom the awful and supernatural adventure which had just occurred. He assumed, as before, a very solemn and oracular air; spoke little, however, but that little was deeply abstracted and mysterious. It was evident to the whole kitchen that he was brimful of something, and that that something was of more ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... old husband shuffling away his papers, and puzzling over cyphers and perpetually leaving the key of them lying about, and betraying again and again when he least intended it, by his mysterious becks and nods and glances and oracular sayings, that some scheme was afoot. She could have helped him considerably if he had allowed her; but he had an idea that the capacities of ladies in general went no further than their harps, their embroidery ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... accept—perhaps rather more entirely than it deserved to be accepted—the statement of that very astute Brahmin, Sir Dinkur Rao, himself the minister of an important native State, that "the natives prefer a bad native Government to our best patent institutions." These, and similar oracular statements, have now become the commonplaces of all who deal with questions affecting India. That there is much truth in them cannot be gainsaid, but they are still often too much ignored by one section of ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... of Pompeii. Of this town, amongst public buildings, the Forum, the Theatre, and the Temple of Isis, have been discovered; and the latter has revealed, in a curious manner, the iniquitous jugglery of the heathen priests. The statue of Isis, was, it seems, oracular, and stood on a very high pedestal, or kind of altar in the temple of the goddess. Within this pedestal a flight of steps has been discovered, ascending to a metal tube or pipe; which, fixed in the hollow body of the statue, and attached to its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 367 - 25 Apr 1829 • Various
... velvet meadows, 'mid the flowers a star. They sought me for my beauty near and far; My dawn, I thought, should be for ever new. But now an all unwished-for gift I rue, A fatal ray of knowledge shed to mar My radiant star-crown grown oracular, For I must speak and give an answer true. An end of silence and of quiet days, The Lover with two words my counsel prays; And when my secret from my heart is reft, When all my silver petals scattered lie, I am the only ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... was at Divisional Signals (always a well-informed and oracular body), who said they supposed he knew there would be very little opportunity ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... be anything else. It is wiser to admit that perhaps the author was not very clear himself, or possibly enjoyed that ambiguous attitude which might be interpreted according to the taste of his readers and the development of events. A man who deals in oracular utterances acquires instinctively a mode of speech which may shift its colour with every change of light. The texture of Disraeli's writings is so ingeniously shot with irony and serious sentiment that each tint may predominate ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... own offspring. The old lady sits in state, and daily praises her babes with the most doating loquacity. And she does this with so grave a face that it is impossible to forbear laughing, when you hear her. She is so serious, so solemn, so convinced that every thing she utters is oracular, and so irascible if she does but so much as smell a doubt concerning the beauty and perfection of her brats, that there is no scene in the world which tickles my imagination so irresistibly as to watch her maternal visage during her eulogiums, while the big-wigs are nodding approbation; or the ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... himself on being oracular when such questions were addressed to him. "I think I should define it to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... always a good listener. He preferred to hear what other men said, to weigh their words, rather than pour out his own ideas. Lawanne sometimes liked to talk at great length, to assume the oracular vein, to analyze actions and situations, to put his finger on a particular motive and trace its origin, its most remote causation. Mills seldom talked. It was strange to hear him speak as he ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... chuckled, and one oracular-looking old fellow spat, wiped his lips on the back of his hand, stared out ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... to the ex-queen—for he was becoming very wise in his own eyes, and somewhat oracular in the midst of all these excitements—"when a fellow can't help himself he's bound to make the best ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... deluge Christendom in the first half of the 13th century. In these stories also the beautiful Roxana, who becomes the bride of Alexander, is Darius's daughter, bequeathed to his arms by the dying monarch. Conspicuous among them again is the Legend of the Oracular Trees of the Sun and Moon, which with audible voice foretell the place and manner of Alexander's death. With this Alexandrian legend some of the later forms of the story had mixed up one of Christian origin about the Dry Tree, L'Arbre Sec. And they had also adopted ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of the present article. Carlyle, however, does not seem to have profited much by the spoken discourses of the master; and in his "Life of Sterling" he gives an exceedingly graphic, cynical, and amusing account of the oracular meetings at Highgate, where the philosopher sat in his great easy-chair, surrounded by his disciples and devotees, uttering, amid floods of unintelligible, mystic eloquence, those radiant thoughts and startling truths which warrant his claim to genius, if not to greatness. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Other elements in their imperfectly-known mythology deserve notice. Their priesthood contains both Demauns and Dewassis; the latter form being the Bodo Deoshi. As the names are alike, so are the functions. The Dewassi is an oracular seer. When he vouchsafes to give answers, his inspiration takes the form of frenzy—but he neither hurts nor speaks to any one. He makes signs for a cock, and for a hen's egg as well. The cock's head he wrenches off, and sucks the bleeding neck. The egg he eats. After this he seeks the solitude ...
— The Ethnology of the British Colonies and Dependencies • Robert Gordon Latham
... comprehended without some reference to the parts; but they shall be again referred to the whole. Without this latter attention, several of the passages would certainly remain covered with an impenetrable and truly oracular obscurity. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the lady impatiently. "You are strangely oracular this morning. If you know anything to the prejudice of this young woman, I pray ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... 'was a man of great spirit, but much subdued by inward exercise, and who attained the most rare experiences of downcasting and uplifting.' And in Rutherford's first letter to this Earlston, written from Anwoth in 1636, he says, in that lofty oracular way of his, 'Jesus Christ has said that Alexander Gordon must lead the ring in Galloway in witnessing a good conscience.' This, no doubt, refers to the prosecution that Gordon was at that moment undergoing at the hands of ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... writing guy decided we had monopolized the conversation long enough. So he seized the opportunity to exercise for our benefit the rare gift he was endowed with. He glanced patronizingly at the coal hulk, wrinkled his nose in disapprobation of her appearance, and delivered himself in an oracular voice. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... on his way toward Libya and Egypt. Over the latter land ruled Busiris, the son of Neptune and Lysianassa. To him during the period of a nine-year famine a prophet had borne the oracular message that the land would again bear fruit if a stranger were sacrificed once a year to Jupiter. In gratitude Busiris made a beginning with the priest himself. Later he found great pleasure in the custom and killed ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... bethought him of a subject that would enable him to introduce his trouvaille. As but one attitude could display the special formation to advantage, the idea of a Sibyl, sitting brooding beside her oracular tripod, was soon evolved, but not so soon was its form determined and fixed. Like Mr. Watts, Sir Frederic Leighton thinks out the whole picture before he puts brush to canvas, or chalk to paper; but, unlike Mr. Watts, once he is decided upon his scheme of colour, the arrangement of line, the disposition ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... a tone of mild interest. He was a man with heavy waxen eyelids and high-arched eyebrows, looking exactly the same under all circumstances. This immovability of face, and the habit of taking a pinch of snuff before he gave an answer, made him trebly oracular to ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... yeoman was not quite so natural as he may have been at an earlier period. The simplicity of his character has probably suffered by his detecting the impression he makes on those around him. There is a circle, I suppose, who look up to him as an oracle, and so he inevitably assumes the oracular manner, and speaks as if truth and wisdom were attiring themselves by his voice. Mr. Emerson has risked the doing him much mischief by putting him in print,—a trial few persons can sustain without losing their unconsciousness. But, after all, a man ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... dwellings, communicating with each other by subterranean passages, through which they led those who wished to consult the oracle hidden in the bowels of the earth." "Not far from the lake of Avernus," says Maximus of Tyre, "was an oracular cave, which took its name from the calling up of the dead. Those who came to consult the oracle, after repeating the sacred formula and offering libations and slaying victims, called upon the spirit of the friend or relation they wished to consult. Then it appeared, an unsubstantial ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... not a little also, when examined in detail, of that sublime-sounding sweep of despotic generality, (so inherent a vice of German literature,) which delights to confound the differences, rather than to discriminate the characters, of things; much that seems only too justly to warrant that oracular sentence of the stern Fichte with which we set out, "The younger brother wants clearness;" much that, when applied to practice, and consistently followed out in that grand style of consistency which belongs to a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... tenant of whom any proprietor might be proud—and proud of him I am, in that sense; but as a neighbour, what is he? Again and again I have entreated Mrs. Pryor to say what she thinks of him, but she still evades returning a direct answer. I hope you will be less oracular, Mr. Helstone, and pronounce at once. Do you ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... was slightly oracular. Out of a joke, he crossed her palm with a sixpence. She looked him all over, though she knew well what he had in his mind, examined the lines of his hand minutely, and then ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... pain and griping. And the wind in breaking forth deals with his face as it does with that of the sea, first blackening, then wrinkling, and at last bursting it into a foam. It is in this guise the sacred AEolist delivers his oracular belches to his panting disciples, of whom some are greedily gaping after the sanctified breath, others are all the while hymning out the praises of the winds, and gently wafted to and fro by their own humming, ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... classes, and their schools will suffer accordingly. His sort of teaching proclaims him either more or less than a human being in the estimation of normal people. Such a teacher drones forth weary platitudes as if his utterances were oracular. The only prerequisite for a position in some schools of education seems to be a degree of a certain altitude without any reference to ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... invisible arms would pluck the soul Back from the deed. "O miserable man! What would'st thou?" (Thus within the inmost heart Murmur'd the warning whisper.) "Wilt thou dare The All-hallow'd to profane? 'No mortal-born' (So spake the oracular word)—'may lift the veil Till I myself shall raise!' Yet said it not— The same oracular word—'who lifts the veil Shall see the truth?' Behind, be what there may, I dare the hazard—I will lift the veil—" Loud rang his shouting voice—"and I will see!" ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... and this time it was a pensive rather than a bitter smile. She had often heard her father talk like this before. She had often heard these oracular hints of some grand event looming mighty in the immediate future; but she had never seen the vague prophecy accomplished. Always a schemer, and always alternating between the boastful confidence of hope and the peevish bewailings of despair, the Captain had built his castle ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... shrine II 2 Of Earth, I'll seek, for light divine, Nor visit Abae's mystic fane Nor travel o'er the well-trod plain Where thousands throng to famed Olympia's town, Unless, with manifest accord, The event fulfil the oracular word. Zeus, Lord of all! if to eternity Thou would'st confirm thy kingdom's large renown, Let not their vauntings high Evade the sovereign look of the everlasting eye! They make as though the ancient warning slept By Laius ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... forgotten that what he said passed with his contemporaries almost for oracular dispensations. What he did or ordered to be done was like the achievements or behests of a superhuman being. Time, as it rolls by, leaves the wrecks of many a stranded reputation to bleach in the sunshine of after-ages. It is sometimes as profitable to learn what was ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he writes in "The Editor's Table" of Appleton's Journal for October, 1880, "when the theatre had a pit, where critics and wiseacres were wont to assemble and utter oracular things about the plays and the performers. The actors were in those days afraid of the Pit, especially at the Park, of the fourth bench from the orchestra, where the magnates of the pen sat watchful, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... not have ventured to introduce our subject with such very general and undeniable observations, had not experience taught us that the best way of introducing any subject is by a string of platitudes, delivered after an oracular fashion. They arouse attention, without exhausting it, and afford the pleasant sensation of thinking, without any of the trouble of thought. But, the subject once introduced, it becomes necessary ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... external conduct and worldly fortune than to the inner composition of character, or to the 'wide, gray, lampless' depths of human destiny. We find the same national characteristic, though on an infinitely lower level, in Franklin's oracular saws. Among the French sages a psychological element is predominant, as well as an occasional transcendent loftiness of feeling, not to be found in Bacon's wisest maxims, and from his point of view in their composition ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... sentence, delivered in a most oracular and encouraging tone, Clam departed; for Elizabeth ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Sunday after every 17th of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hilltops rising toward the sky, had begun, at a very ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... with this oracular saying when Croisette touched his sleeve. "Pray can you tell us if it be true," the lad said eagerly, "that the Admiral ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... perhaps, who has ever read Little Dorrit, whatever else in the novel may slip the memory, fails to recall the oracular utterance of Mr. F.'s aunt that "There's milestones on the Dover road". To the opening of A Tale of Two Cities the colour and atmosphere of the time in which it is set, and of the drama which is to be developed, are given at once by the ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin |
