"Puzzlement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been lying in a rack on the wall. He picked it up and flexed it a bit, as a man might flex a rapier to test its material. Then he held it far out in front of him and proceeded to tie a knot in the inch-thick metal bar! Then, still frowning in puzzlement, he untied it, straightened it as best he could, and put it ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... be apparent. While these things were going on in the parlour, and while Mr. Huxter was watching Mr. Marvel smoking his pipe against the gate, not a dozen yards away were Mr. Hall and Teddy Henfrey discussing in a state of cloudy puzzlement ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... on the narrow, closed-in, wooden stair, not a little wondering, and full of thought. His wonder, however, had no puzzlement in it. The child's behaviour involved no difficulty. The two existences came together, and each understood the other in virtue of its essential nature. In after years Clare could put the thing into such words; he sought none at the time. The child was lonely. She had done her best with her ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... of his face his puzzlement at each new reference to the mysterious bowmen—the vanishing soldiery ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... don't!" pleaded Shearson, with such a shaken flabbiness of vehemence that both Hal and Ellis laughed, though the former felt an uneasy puzzlement. ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... with plain premeditation directly opposite the caisse, staring openly. But Sofia did not heed him at all. An odd smile shadowed his lips, an expression half eager, half apprehensive; there was a hint of puzzlement in his scrutiny. It was rather as if he had unexpectedly found some new reason for thinking the girl an exceptionally interesting personality. But she continued ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... unusually sound, even after making every allowance for the excessive fatigue of the past day; in fact he had not slept so soundly and so long since the night of his abduction from the survey camp. When at length he awoke he found himself labouring under the same feeling of puzzlement that had oppressed him on that eventful morning; for when consciousness again returned to him and, opening his eyes, he looked about him, he at once became aware that his surroundings were very different from what he had expected. It is true that he still occupied the litter in which he had ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... rows of still standing shacks, then, and faces were beginning to turn toward them, and there was a little stir of apathetic puzzlement at sight of the white man ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... visualized what had happened inside that house of death, piecing a number of things together and forming a whole. On the surface it seemed plain enough, and yet there were one or two points.... His face showed a trace of puzzlement. He shook his head slightly; then he stooped and picked up the radio operator's body with an ease that might have seemed surprising from such a slender man, and walked out of ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... sudden, the principal mystery of all this affair bit into Tom Swift's mind. The burglar had made his escape. He could relieve his father's anxiety later. It was his own puzzlement of mind that ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... puzzlement as it became apparent that it was useless to go back further. "The normal thing would be for them to brag all over the place about their great conquests. Even races who become comparatively civilized citizens ordinarily let themselves go when it comes to history. If they've had a long record of conquest ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones
... finished luncheon and returned to her room, he was still there. Not until the mid-heat of the afternoon, however, did she observe, first with puzzlement, then with a start of recognition, the patiently rounded brown back of the forward- leaning figure in the corner. Greatly wroth was Miss Polly Brewster. For some hours—two, at least—the man to keep tryst and wager with ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Rene took it into his head that Mary and the Mere were distinct persons, that Mary was not, could not be, the Virgin, she must be one of the other Marys; so with a little putting together of heads and puzzlement, he and his advisers decided that the two Marys were Mary, the mother of James, and Mary Salome. The next thing to be done was to find their bodies there, but that naturally presented no difficulty. There were bones there—from ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... face of the minor group first shows the figure of Greed, with his worldly goods now turned literally to a ball of clay in his hands, gazing back at earth in puzzlement. The next two figures show Faith offering the hope of immortality (as symbolized in the scarab) as consolation to a sorrowing woman. Finally there are two figures sinking back into Oblivion, drawn by the hand of Destiny. Thus the cycle from Oblivion through ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... door of the hunting hut, and all the varying glories of the dying year stirred the latent poetry in his soul. In his hand he held a slip of paper which he read and reread. There was a mixture of joy and puzzlement in his eyes. Diane. It had a pleasant sound; what had she to say that necessitated this odd trysting place? He glanced at the writing again. Evidently she had written it in a hurry. What, indeed, had she to say? They had scarce ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... studied the new formation of their enemy, and scowled in puzzlement. He looked ahead, where he knew the land lay practically level before them, all sand and rabbit weed, with a little grass here and there; to the left, where the square butte stood up bold-faced and grim; to the right where a ragged sandstone ledge ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... LEBRON expressed puzzlement at the variety of ways electronic publishing has been viewed. Much of what has been discussed throughout these two days has concerned CD-ROM publishing, whereas in the on-line environment that she confronts, the constraints and challenges are very different. Sooner ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... his hand. But she betrayed nothing to his curiosity, since she knew nothing of her husband's affairs, and had no fear, therefore, of what the letter might portend. She received the missive with a vacant unconcern. It was addressed to "John Gourlay, Esquire." She turned it over in a silly puzzlement, and, "Janet!" she cried, "what am I ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... according to the very best traditions. He conscientiously pointed every bird he could get his nose on. Furthermore he was absolutely staunch, and held his point even when the four non-bird dogs rushed in ahead of him. The expression of puzzlement, grief, shock, and sadness in his eyes deepened as bird after bird soared away without a shot. Girlie was more liberal-minded. She pointed her birds, and backed Wayward at need, but when the other dogs rushed her point, she rushed too. And when we swept on by her, leaving ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... door. Breitmann; she rather expected to find him. Nearly all educated Germans played. The music stopped for a moment, then resumed. Another melody followed, a melody she had heard from one end of France to the other. She frowned, not with displeasure, but with puzzlement. For what purpose did a soldier of the German empire play the battle hymn of the French republic? The Marseillaise? She entered the music-room, and the low but vibrant chords ceased instantly. Breitmann had been playing these melodies standing. He ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... The puzzlement and self-contradiction of most critics of the Army springs undoubtedly from the fact that they are bound to account for its success without admitting that any superhuman power attends its ministry, yet day after day, and night after night, the wonderful facts go on multiplying. ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... all the virile love that such as he feel for theirs, watched her vanish amid the throngs. Then, sauntering to the rail, leaned against it.... There came into his eyes a look of abstraction, of aberration, of puzzlement. Blake stood watching him— stood for a long time, silent, unmoving.... At length ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... objects at which one is not looking come within the range of vision. The woman paused, her foot upon the step of the modest limousine. She whispered something hurriedly into her companion's ear, something evidently to the puzzlement of the latter, who looked around irresolutely. She obeyed, however, and retreated to the stage entrance. A man, quite as tall as Courtlandt, his face shaded carefully, intentionally perhaps, by one of those soft Bavarian hats that are worn successfully only by Germans, stepped out of the gathering ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... he's drugged in the woman you've took a shine to," sympathized Singleton. He scratched his head in puzzlement. "Hell's fire!" he added; "I didn't think that of Lawler. I ain't never admired the cuss none—a damned sight less since he walloped me—but I didn't think he'd drag another man's woman into ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... affecting a connoisseurship unconsciously copied from the architect, bent over the table, examining it; with vague puzzlement he passed his hand over its cut and hacked surface—surface on which hundreds of monks of the time of Clement III had ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... on this planet, both inside the perimeter and out. I never pretended differently. As to losing—why you haven't lost anything. In fact you've won. Won your war against this planet, if you will only hear me out." He turned to Rhes, who was frowning in angry puzzlement. "Of course your people have won also, Rhes. No more war with the city, you'll get medicine, off-planet ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... how we should sleep; and put the cloak about the Maid; but surely she did refuse, very piteous, and seeming to have also somewhat of doubt and puzzlement. But in this thing I did be very stern and intending; for she did not be over-warm clad, as you do know, and moreover, she was but a little One, while ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... him wonderingly. If he felt at all disconcerted, nothing of the kind appeared in his face, which wore, indeed, a look of genuine puzzlement. ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... Warrington. The puzzlement vanished from the older man's face, and his eyes became alert, renewing from another angle their investigation of the stranger. Warrington. So this was the man? He could understand now. Who could ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... that the colonel casually turned his attention to the groom, He observed him. First, his gray eyebrows arched abruptly in surprise, then sank in puzzlement. ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... Jean's whip, more sure, and more compelling. But while Jean saw all this, and more, with genuine admiration for Jan, and for his own astuteness in foretelling this exceptional capacity and acquiring ownership of the hound, he also saw, with angry puzzlement, that his team was falling off in condition and in efficiency as ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... of a wedding very often," said Fanny, with a pretty look of puzzlement and doubt, "but I don't know exactly what it means. Will you tell ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the way badly handled," said Bertric, watching her in some puzzlement. "I only hope that they may know enough to pick up ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... heavy-eyed and abstracted during the course of the dinner, a point which Larssen had noted with some puzzlement. His mind had worked over the reasons for it without arriving at any definite conclusion. But now, at this unexpected announcement, her ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... smartness. Den Jedge B'ar, he drap he head one side, he did, en he ax how come Brer Rabbit got all de luck on he own side. De mo' dey ax, de mo' dey git pestered, en de mo' dey git pestered, de wuss dey worry. Day in en day out dey wuk wid dis puzzlement; let 'lone dat, dey sot up nights; en bimeby dey 'gree 'mungs deyse'f dat dey better make up wid Brer Rabbit, en see ef dey can't fine out how come he ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... sign beyond that one movement. Now he slowly rose to his feet and looked down upon the set face of the arbiter of his fate a little uncertainly. He turned from him to the Agent, who was looking on in no little puzzlement. Then his eyes came back to the relentless face of Seth, and he seemed to be struggling to penetrate the ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... surge of emotion, he wished he were with the others. Kendricks, now. Jay knew, precisely, why Forth had sent the big, reliable spaceman at his back. And that handsome, arrogant Darkovan—where was he? Jay looked at the girl in puzzlement; he didn't want to reveal that he wasn't quite sure of what he was saying or doing, or that he had little memory of what Jason ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... way Chris took to be his smile. At last he spoke again, and his voice was strangely gentle and kind. So kind that the forlornness Chris had momentarily forgotten at the mystery of his position, the puzzlement and lost feeling that reclaimed him instantly should he allow himself to wonder at how he could get back again into his own life and time, was reawakened by the something he heard in Mr. Wicker's voice. The tears gathered in his throat and he had to swallow ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... table. "'T was only the rounds," she remarked with a note of half surprise, half puzzlement, in her voice, which was not lost to ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... ready to defend himself. The attitude was familiar to him. He had read stories of the bears in the Rockies, and they came home to him now as he saw his adversary rear itself to its full height. His puzzlement was over; he understood now. He was dealing with a large specimen of ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... vicinity of the kill. A little later he flushed a four-footed creature from between two rocks and killed it with one blow from his spear haft. He skinned his kill, feeling the substance of the skill. Was it exceedingly rough hide, or rudimentary scales? And knew a return of that puzzlement. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... attacked the three blacks separately, telling them he was sure they knew where Leather was in hiding, and insisting upon being told; but the only result he obtained in each case was a stare of surprise and puzzlement. The man's face puckered up, and at ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... angrier and angrier as her puzzlement has grown greater—in a stern tone.] I understand less and less of this. Where has Curtis gone? Why did he act so sick? What is the matter with all ...
— The First Man • Eugene O'Neill |
