"Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other said impressively, "a few years ago, it was found out that there were trout in these streams above falls which would be absolutely impassable to any fish. How could they get there? It was a riddle. The only possible answer was that the fish must be older than the falls, that the stream had worn away its bed, bit by bit, until an impassable barrier from below had been created, but that the trout had gone on in the upper creeks, developing in their own ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... life of her she could not tell what lay at the bottom of the business. The strange conflicts and discrepancies between Glen's very own letters made the riddle utterly obscure. She felt that Searle was fashioning falsehoods in every direction. That he had not visited Glen at all was her fixed conviction. A sudden distrust, almost a loathing for this heavy-browed man, was settling down upon her, inescapably. Someway, somehow she must know about ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... length in the Air, expir'd and fell; So after many a foil the Tempter proud, Renewing fresh assaults, amidst his pride 570 Fell whence he stood to see his Victor fall. And as that Theban Monster that propos'd Her riddle, and him, who solv'd it not, devour'd; That once found out and solv'd, for grief and spight Cast her self headlong from th' Ismenian steep, So strook with dread and anguish fell the Fiend, And to his crew, that sat consulting, brought Joyless triumphals of his hop't success, Ruin, and desperation, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the Macquarie was now, to a certain extent, cleared up, but there still remained another riddle to solve in the course and outlet of the Darling. Sturt, the discoverer of this river, was destined to find the answer to this problem ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... called Nidana Buddha, as having mastered the twelve nidanas (the twelve links in the everlasting chain of cause and effect in the whole range of existence, the understanding of which solves the riddle of life, revealing the inanity of all forms of existence, and preparing the mind for nirvana). He is also compared to a horse, which, crossing a river, almost buries its body under the water, without, ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... Venus' Oracle in turn I leaned the Secret of my Love to learn. The Answering Riddle came: "She loves you, yes, In just Proportion to the Sum ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... providence was watching over the dead body of His Servant. [Hebrew: vitN], in so far as it refers to the first clause, receives its limitation by the second. Before their fulfilment, the words had the character of a holy riddle; but the fulfilment has solved this riddle. The designation of Joseph of Arimathea as [Greek: anthropos plousios] in Matt. xxvi. 57, is equivalent to an express quotation. Although it was by a special divine providence that the Singular was chosen, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... a series of books for little folks as has ever appeared since "Alice in Wonderland." The idea of the Riddle books is a little group of children—three girls and three boys decide to form a riddle club. Each book is full of the adventures and doings of these six youngsters, but as an added attraction each book is filled with a lot of the best riddles you ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... pathos that she should have died before she had spent her money. That seemed to him a dark and pitiable mystery; and he looked from the coins in his hand to the dead woman, and back again to the coins, shaking his head over the riddle of man's life. Henry V. of England, dying at Vincennes just after he had conquered France, and this poor jade cut off by a cold draught in a great man's doorway, before she had time to spend her couple ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lady was in black, and so it's possible that your mother may have died, and that she took you to see your father, to whom, for some reason or other, she wanted to introduce you. That's how I read the riddle, but maybe I ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... relations to Arnault, whatever they were, placed him, a committed lover, in a rather anomalous position. Since she was absent, however, he would while away an hour with Madge, and try to solve the riddle she had become. ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... loue dearely, that your Dian Was both her selfe and loue, O then giue pittie To her whose state is such, that cannot choose But lend and giue where she is sure to loose; That seekes not to finde that, her search implies, But riddle like, liues sweetely where ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... brusque, hearty, restless, and fond of action—"a young fellow of infinite dash and originality," as John Hay remarked of him; combining the spirit of his old college, Harvard, with the breezy freedom of the plains; interested in everything—a new species of game, a new book, a diplomatic riddle, or a novel theory of history or biology. Though only forty-three years old he was well versed in the art of practical politics. Coming upon the political scene in the early eighties, he had associated himself with the reformers ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... down the canal, ever and anon we see some empty returning boat (called "light boat" in the technical canal phrase) rounding a curve before us, It comes nearer: the horses walk the same tow-path: how are the boats to pass without confusion? Ah, the riddle is solved. Our captain (who holds the helm while the boy, his assistant, is down in the cabin preparing supper) calls out suddenly, at the last moment, "Whoa!" The well-trained horses instantly stop; the momentum of the boat carries it on; the rope slackens, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... beautiful, passionless, in its simplicity and conventional representation queerly like an archaic Greek or early Egyptian figure. Queen of the night behind, and of the gods around, and of the city below—here, if at all, you think, may one find the answer to the riddle. Her ostensible message, burning in the firmament beside her, is that we should buy pepsin chewing-gum. But there is more, not to be given in words, ineffable. Suddenly, when she has surveyed mankind, she closes her left eye. Three times she winks, and then vanishes. No ordinary winks these, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... home at last, my darling one, Flushed and tired with thy play, From morning dawn until setting sun Hast thou been at sport away; And thy steps are weary—hot thy brow, Yet thine eyes with joy are bright,— Ah! I read the riddle, show me now The treasures ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... permitted him to concentrate upon whatever problem filled his thoughts. It was purely accidental that he saw Patti to-night or recalled her art. Coming upon the last photograph without having found a solution of the riddle of Two-Hawks he relaxed the mental pressure; and his sight reestablished its ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... Inglewood), meets a bold baron, who challenges him to fight, unless he can win his ransom by returning on New Year's Day with an answer to the question, What does a woman most desire? Arthur relates the story to Gawaine, asks him and others for an answer to the riddle, and collects their suggestions in a book ('letters,' 24.1). On his way to keep his tryst with the baron, he meets an unspeakably ugly woman, who offers her assistance; if she will help him, Arthur says, she shall wed with Gawaine. She gives him the true answer, A woman ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... riddle is that her ball is at Valre's; that I saw her go to him under cover of night, and that she is at ...
— The School for Husbands • Moliere
... attack upon Lossing at the bridge, in which we both saw the hand of Voisin. Mrs. Camp, too, added her quota to the solution of this riddle when she recognised in Voisin the swindler of the Turkish Bazaar, and identified the hand of Voisin as the hand which had held out the Spurious bank-notes to Camp; and, finally, there came his second attempt to destroy Lossing in the Cold ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... difficult riddle is the case of a middle-aged man, whose costume and avocation explain nothing, save that he is not an Osmanli. He is a passenger homeward bound to one of the coast villages, and he constantly circulates ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the air was hazy with multitudes of floating frost particles, and the tramp through the forest speedily brought the roses back to her cheeks. Bill carried the bundle of linen on his back, and trudged steadily through the woods. But the riddle of his destination was soon read to her, for a two-mile walk brought them out on the shore of a fair-sized lake, on the farther side of which loomed the conical lodges ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... mental attitude was the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church and the older scholasticism, pronouncing the illimitable power of human perception; the world's profoundest depths had been fathomed, its riddle finally solved; there was consequently no room for philosophy, the endless meditation on the meaning of the world and the destiny of man. Science had but one task: to bring logical proof of the revealed religious ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... will, Anne," said Marilla, helpless before the riddle of the universe—the WHY of undeserved pain. "And little Joy is ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... It was Nature rather, the inscrutable Sphinx, repeating her stale old riddle, the answer ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... letter as preserved bears a marginal note by Schwan to the effect that Laura in the poem 'Resignation' was no other than his eldest daughter. 'I gave her this letter to read', the note says, 'and told Schiller to apply directly to her. Why nothing came of the affair has remained a riddle to me. Happy my daughter would not have been with Schiller.' The annotation is not dated. The identification of Laura with Margarete is obviously wrong. Was Schwan's memory also at fault? Did he imagine, long after the fact, that he had actually taken what must have seemed to him, when Schiller ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... riddles, are capable, in any sort of writing, to find out what they desire. But above all, that which gives them the greatest room to play in, is the obscure, ambiguous, and fantastic gibberish of the prophetic canting, where their authors deliver nothing of clear sense, but shroud all in riddle, to the end that posterity may interpret and apply it ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... station and walked away from it with a quick, light step, as though hastening to keep some pleasurable appointment. After all the years of weak, bewildered subjection, of defeat and humiliation, her turn had come; she had found the answer to the Sphinx's riddle, the ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... He had begged of them, but to none had he exhibited his accomplishments except Bab and Betty; and they were therefore much set up, and called him "our dog" with an air. The cake transaction remained a riddle, for Sally Folsom solemnly declared that she was playing tag in Mamie Snow's barn at that identical time. No one had been near the old house but the two children, and no one could throw any ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused or disabused; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,— The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.[317-2] ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... land, no eloquence and sagacity of paper preambles and declarations, no swiftness of travel nor instantaneousness of communication, no invincibility of ironclads nor refinement of society, no logic in religion, no gospel of political economy,—none of these and a hundred other things will read us the Riddle of the Sphinx. Non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis! The elements of true life lie deeper and are simpler. Once more, it seems, we have reached the limits of a dispensation, and are halted by a blank wall. There is no visible way over it, nor around it. We cannot stand ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... a sky where the moonbeams all danced While a comet was telling a riddle, Where the stars and the planets and sun-dogs all pranced While the moon played his fiddle ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... wits to his. Between them they polished the riddle; but by the time it was done the Home Secretary had begun to find Meadows's little wife, whose existence he had not noticed hitherto, more agreeable than Lady Dunstable's table with its racked countenances, and its too ample supply of pencils and paper. A ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... and fidgeted. Twenty times he tried to solve, in his own mind, the riddle of why Dalzell should be away, and where he was. But it ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... Gi-may," said the driver, and Bob had solved the riddle. He then told Mr. Waterman how he had tried to think what "Gi-may" meant, thinking at first that it meant something like "Allons" but that he had found out it ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... thermograph case. Heavens! what an insult to the self-registering meteorological instruments! I was thunderstruck, thinking, of course, that the man was making a fool of me. I had carefully studied his face all the time to find the key to this riddle, and did not know whether to laugh or weep. Lindstrom's face was certainly serious enough; if it afforded a measure of the situation, I believe tears would have been appropriate. But when my eye fell upon ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... if it was human-faced like the Sphinx? There's no riddle to solve, whate'er the world thinks: The fiat that made it, from its heels to its hair, Wasn't simply 'Be man!' but ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... can solve the riddle now. Your years are different, of course, like everything else in this latitude. A month is called a year with you, and that would make you, let me see—how much is twelve times thirty-one? Oh, hang it, nearly five hundred, I should think. Why am I such a ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... regarded her. "Point is, where are you going? All dressed up and somewhere to go! I'll bet you have! I've seen you jazzing about the place when you haven't seen me, Dods. And heard about you! There was a chap with me watching you at the Riddle Club the other night told me ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... that the facts of life seem often to us, and are felt often by some of us, to shatter it to atoms; to riddle it through and through with shot. But, if we bring the Pattern-life to bear upon the illumination of all life, and if we learn the lessons of the Cradle and the Cross, and rise to the view of human life which emerges from the example ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... where Bunthorne is a popular and imitated character. But when we reach aesthetic boys, we pass out of the savage stage into hobbledehoyhood. The bigger boys at public schools are often terribly "advanced," and when they are not at work or play, they are vexing themselves with the riddle of the earth, evolution, agnosticism, and all that kind of thing. Latin verses may not be what conservatives fondly deem them, and even cricket may, it is said, become too absorbing a pursuit, but either or both are ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... American explorers is not extinct. Major Powell is with us to-day, hale and hearty still. Peary, in the prime of his powers, is as capital an example of courage and resource as ever threw themselves upon the riddle of the frozen north. Beyond the Arctic and Antarctic circles little remains unknown on earth. When at last every rood of ground and knot of sea is mapped and charted, whither shall the explorer direct his steps? He cannot repeat ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... it reveals itself to the senses in terms of consciousness. The explanation may be all wrong in the eyes of omniscience. All one can say is that it is a practical working basis, and is good enough for mundane purposes. But if I am asked if I can solve the riddle of the Universe I can only answer, No. Brunetiere then retorts that science is bankrupt. But this is equivocal. It only means that it cannot meet demands beyond its ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... years of serious education began. The terrible experiences he had been through had aroused new strength in him. He had endured, with princely pride, all the terrors of death and of the most terrible humiliation. He had reflected in the solitude of his prison on the greatest riddle of life—on death and what is beyond. He had realized that there was nothing left for him but submission, patience, and quiet waiting. But bitter, heart-rending misfortune is a school which develops not only the good—it fosters also many faults. He learned to keep his counsel hidden in the depth ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... part in the quarrel lest he should mix with the losing side. But this theory jibed so ill with Monsieur's character that not even his worst detractor could accept it. For he was known to all as a hotspur—a man who acted quickly and seldom counted the cost. Therefore his present conduct was a riddle, nor could any of the emissaries from King or League, who came from time to time to enlist his aid and went away without it, read the answer. The puzzle was too deep for them. Yet it was only this: to Monsieur, honour was more than ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... folk-lore,—not a scientific interest, but a fondness for the subject-matter itself. Many who do not care for folk-lore as a subject of research are pleased to have recalled to them the fancies, beliefs, and customs of childhood and early youth. A single proverb, superstition, riddle, or tradition may, by association of ideas, act like a magic mirror in bringing back hundreds of long-forgotten people, pastimes, and occupations. And whatever makes one young, if only for an hour, will ever fascinate. The greater number of those who kindly responded to the request for additional ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... will be anything left of the mission of Jesus: whether, in short, we may not throw the gospels into the waste-paper basket, or put them away on the fiction shelf of our libraries. I venture to reply that we shall be, on the contrary, in the position of the man in Bunyan's riddle who found that "the more he threw away, the more he had. "We get rid, to begin with, of the idolatrous or iconographic worship of Christ. By this I mean literally that worship which is given to pictures and statues of him, and to finished and unalterable stories about him. The test of the prevalence ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... she read the riddle correctly. The chemist was particularly anxious that no Steynholme resident should be made aware of his mother's death. ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... years ago Ah was laying by a pool just as Ah seen ye this morning, looking and trying hard to read the riddle of the spring Peeper. Ah lay there all day, aye, and mony anither day, yes, it was nigh onto three years before Ah found it oot. Ah'll be glad to save ye seeking as long as Ah did, if that's yer mind. Ah'll show ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... far as a rational explanation of the universe is covered, although it does not offer an explanation of the "ultimate," or "the riddle of the universe," does insist that any view held be one that shall be based on truth and conformity to reality. It further maintains that if a view be propagated it should be held in the same position ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... there, I own! See! curling smoke and flames right blue! To see the Evil One they travel; There many a riddle to unravel. ...
— Faust • Goethe
... is soaring to the vicious affectation of poetry: their poetry is sinking below the flatness and insipidity of prose. The tragic, epic, and lyric muses, were silent and inglorious: the bards of Constantinople seldom rose above a riddle or epigram, a panegyric or tale; they forgot even the rules of prosody; and with the melody of Homer yet sounding in their ears, they confound all measure of feet and syllables in the impotent strains which have received the name of political or city verses. [113] The minds of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... when the payment that landlords demand Was a source of continual woe, When the tenant preferred to adhere to his land, And the agent preferred him to go: When their claims to adjust and the balance to strike Was a riddle to baffle the Sphinx,— But they're reconciled now, by resolving alike That they never will pay for ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... thousand pangs not to be borne or supported; he was often ready to recall him, and was angry the boy did not urge him for an answer. He read the letter again, and wonders at nothing now after her last night's action, though all was riddle to him: he found it was writ to some happier man than himself, however he chanced to have it by mistake; and turning to the outside, viewed the superscription, where there happened to be none at all, for Sylvia writ in haste, and when she did it, it was the least of ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... that effect, on the part of the whole free population—the lack of fidelity to which conspiracy is the only treason known in those regions—the existence of a people like the inhabitants of the Southern States would be a riddle incapable of solution. Slavery itself, is a remnant of barbarism overlapping the period of civilization; but, unlike the slaveries of the barbaric ages, American slavery has been stimulated into all the enterprising ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Bede, the venerable father of English history and English learning, in the North of England. Venerable he truly was. We need not go back to the legend which supposed that he received the title from the Roman Senate for having solved a strange riddle which they could not answer; nor to the other legend, which tells us that, on his grave-stone at Durham, you can still read the inscription in which it is said that an angel in the night filled up the blank space with Venerabilis. He is venerable ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... all confused, Still by himself abused or disabused; Created part to rise and part to fall, Great lord of all things, yet a slave to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled - The glory, jest, and riddle of the world." ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... influence which this Frenchman appeared to exercise over Polina? He had but to give the word, and at once she did as he desired—at once she wrote me a note to beg of me to forbear! Of course, the relations between the pair had, from the first, been a riddle to me—they had been so ever since I had first made their acquaintance. But of late I had remarked in her a strong aversion for, even a contempt for—him, while, for his part, he had scarcely even looked at her, but had behaved towards ...
— The Gambler • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... become a meaningless riddle and uninteresting to most people because it is not rightly divided. It is assumed that all parts of the Bible are addressed to everybody. This is far from the truth. While we must recognize the unity and interdependence of the entire Bible and that each part teaches great spiritual truths for all, ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... beware of arousing Von Holzen's anger. Indeed, her use of Percy Roden was at an end, and yet she would not let him go. Cornish was puzzled, and so was Dorothy. Percy Roden was gratified, and read the riddle by the light of his own vanity. Mrs. Vansittart was not, perhaps, the first woman to puzzle her neighbours by refusing to relinquish that which she did not want. She was not the first, perhaps, to nurse ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... materialistic theories have been given in the past, trying to explain the mighty phenomena of dreams, but these theories have always been more or less unsatisfactory. Why? Because the-materialist tries to explain the riddle of human existence without an individual human spirit his explanation will ...
— The Secret of Dreams • Yacki Raizizun
... enigma, We shall guess it all too soon; Failure brings no kind of stigma - Dance we to another tune! String the lyre and fill the cup, Lest on sorrow we should sup; Hop and skip to Fancy's fiddle, Hands across and down the middle - Life's perhaps the only riddle That we shrink from ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... vague, gray shadow with edges touched softly with silver light, which whirled once over my canoe and looked down into it. Then he vanished; and from far over on the edge of the waiting woods, where the mystery was deepest, came a cry, a challenge, a riddle, the night's wild question which no man has ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... man's riddle, and if he succeeds in guessing its solution he cries out that it is a sham and was not worth guessing ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... Americans, and which were the ostensible object proposed in planting the colonies, were not sufficient: if we could obtain it, we must share in their profits likewise. But this was a question which time only could solve; a riddle, which events ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... excitement of the life she leads, to come and live in a dungeon in the Highlands? A single day like to-day would kill her, she is so fine and delicate—like a rose leaf, I have often thought. No, no, Ogilvie, I have thought of it every way. It is like a riddle that you twist and twist about to try and get the answer; and I can get no answer at all, unless wishing that I had never been born. And perhaps that ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... been to him the most delectable of riddles, and his expressed desire to marry and settle down was perhaps only another statement of the fact that he longed to solve one example of the riddle, one form in which it was presented to him. He felt now that he wished he had married years ago, that he had already become quiet and domesticated. There was a time for youth's fiery passions, its ecstatic uncontent, ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... Majesty; to be a just God, and YET a Saviour; to be just to his law, just to his threatening, just to himself, and yet save sinners, can no way be understood till thou understandest why Jesus Christ did hang on the tree; for here only is the riddle unfolded, 'Christ died for our sins,' and therefore can God in justice save us (Isa 45:21). And hence is Christ called the Wisdom of God, not only because he is so essentially, but because by him is the greatest revelation of his wisdom towards man. In redemption, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... second thoughts," said he, "it is the other street we must reconnoiter; and, if we don't see her there, we will enter the shop, and by dint of this purse we shall soon untie the knot of the Woffington riddle." ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... a later time, far outweighs the merits of the greatest critic. There is a profound modesty about philologists. The improving of texts is an entertaining piece of work for scholars, it is a kind of riddle-solving; but it should not be looked upon as a very important task. It would be an argument against antiquity if it should speak less clearly to us because a million words stood in ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... great differ there is, be all accounts, between that place and this. For here if a misfort'nit body does aught amiss, the first notion the rest of us have, God forgive us, is to be axin' what worser he was manin', like as if it was some manner of riddle, that there's bound to be an answer to, if one ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... time to solve this riddle, I concluded that I must be the victim of my own imagination; and I turned my attention to making the best possible use of my sudden fortune. On the same day, I took a little room in the Faubourg St. Denis; and I bought myself a sewing-machine. ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... "I know another riddle," went on Laddie. "It's about how do the tickets feel when the conductor punches them. But I never could ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... unexpected pleasure; reflected with bitterness that never, since they had cast their lives together, had he urged her to indulge in any sweet little extravagance, though he had denied himself nothing that he really wished. It was no riddle to her, as it had been to her niece earlier in the evening, why the same hard work had dealt so benignly with Martin and so uncharitably with herself. She comprehended only too well that it was not that alone which had crushed her. It was his ceaseless ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... the fiercer devil within me would rise in vain. I have read that the tiger can be awed by the human eye, and you compel me into submission by a spell equally unaccountable. You are a singular man, and it seems to me a riddle, how we could ever have been thus connected; or how—but we will not rip up the past, it is an ugly sight, and the fire is just out. Those stories do not do for the dark. But to return;—were it only for the sake of my child, you might depend upon me now; better ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... harsh, cynical tone, and Lionel had turned cold at his words. He stood a long while in silence there, turning them over in his mind and considering the riddle which they presented him. He thought of asking his brother bluntly for the key to it, for the precise meaning of his disconcerting statement, but courage failed him. He feared lest Sir Oliver should confirm his ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... in, curious to solve the riddle. A door which she had often noticed, but never seen opened, now stood wide open, and the old quadrangular garden, which was James Steadman's particular care, smiled at her in the golden evening light. Seen thus, this little old Dutch garden seemed ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... criticisms of life. Like Dreiser, Conrad is forever fascinated by the "immense indifference of things," the tragic vanity of the blind groping that we call aspiration, the profound meaninglessness of life—fascinated, and left wondering. One looks in vain for an attempt at a solution of the riddle in the whole canon of his work. Dreiser, more than once, seems ready to take refuge behind an indeterminate sort of mysticism, even a facile supernaturalism, but Conrad, from first to last, faces squarely the massive and intolerable fact. His stories are not chronicles ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... of the causes and results of Pessimism. It can touch the practical side of the riddle of life by asking certain questions, the answers to which lie within the province of human experience. ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... in which that prolific tree, the cocoanut palm, is propagated was a curious and interesting study for a leisure hour, the germination having been with us heretofore an unsolved riddle. Within the hard shell of the nut, among the mass of rich creamy substance, near the large end, is a small white lump like the stalk of a young mushroom, called the ovule. This little finger-like germ ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... disasters which had been brought upon the world. The question has, however, never been answered why this distinction was abandoned by Mr. Wilson at Versailles. Without wishing in any way either to accuse or defend him I consider the answer to this riddle to be that the President allowed himself to be convinced of the complicity of the German people by the statesmen of the Entente. He was at the time in a mood with regard to us which predisposed him to such influences. Mr. Wilson was by origin, up-bringing and training ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... are; small sparks, elucidative, confirmatory of your dull History Books, and adding traits, here and there, to the Image you have formed from them. Yielding you a poor momentary comfort; like reading some riddle of no use; like light got incidentally, by rubbing dark upon dark (say Voltaire flint upon Dryasdust gritstone), in those labyrinthic catacombs, if you are doomed to travel there. A mere weariness, otherwise, to the outside reader, hurrying forward,—to the light French Editor, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... not!" Rutherford's voice was like the snap of a whip. "Try it. Try it. I'll hunt you down like a wolf and riddle yore carcass." ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... was. There is something to be set against each of these assertions. For it was not the goddess of Fortune which pursued Bismarck in the ungainly shape of his former friend, that spiteful Prince Gortschakoff. The Frankfort assembly had left the Austrian riddle unsolved, and apparently insoluble. There was no hand in the country firm or skilful enough, no brain sufficiently hard or enlightened as to the needs of the day—not the king's, not Count Arnim's, nor certainly that of any other ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... alike are your teachers. Your enemy becomes a mystery that must be solved, even though it take ages: for man must be understood. Your friend becomes a part of yourself, an extension of yourself, a riddle hard to read. Only one thing is more difficult to know—your own heart. Not until the bonds of personality are loosed, can that profound mystery of self begin to be seen. Not till you stand aside from it will it in any way reveal itself to your understanding. ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... RIDDLE. A question-mark gone mad. A foolish member of the Interrogation family whose most fiendish offspring is "How old is Ann?" ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... The lady with the hatchet does not tremble. It is as though she had taken measurements; and the edge of her weapon does not swerve by a hair's breadth. Need I give you any further proofs or examine all the other details with you? Surely not. You now possess the key to the riddle; and you know as I do that only a lunatic can behave in this way, stupidly, savagely, mechanically, like a striking clock or the blade of ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... and wax-moths and ants, and even mice. These things eat the honey and riddle and ruin the comb. Then birds eat the bees, and spiders catch them. Honey-bees do nothing but good that I can see, yet Nature 's pleased to fill the world with their enemies. Queen and drone and the poor unsexed workers—all have ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... away with Pablo at her heels, Bill Conway unburdened himself of a slightly ribald little chanson entitled: "What Makes the Wild Cat Wild?" In the constant repetition of this query it appeared that the old Californian sought the answer to a riddle not even remotely connected with the mystifying savagery of ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... art commands homage, where, in short, the game is everything—that most aristocratic and enthralling of all games—the game of chess, with men and women as kings, queens, pawns. . . . There you have the whole explanation of my apparent riddle. You have never met any ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... is like a pilgrimage: What's his life then that lives in mariage? Tis Sisyphus his toyle that with a stone Doth doe what surely for ease must be done. His labours journey's endles; 'tis no riddle, Since he's but halfe on's ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... pulsations of sublime unity. At present we are only a people in the making, and very few there are calling themselves Americans who have any idea of what America is and means in relation to history. By and by we shall all apprehend the riddle more wisely, and be more worthy of the great ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... French and Italians know nothing of the two first—at least, their best poets have not practised them. As for the pauses, Malherbe first brought them into France within this last century, and we see how they adorn their Alexandrines. But as Virgil propounds a riddle which he leaves ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... an instant the key of the riddle was in my hands, and I saw that every third word, beginning with the first, would give a message which might well drive old ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... of several hours' search, Mr. Martin found only one worm, and this one escaped only by accident, for several of the birds had been within a quarter of an inch of it. "So eager are woodpeckers in search, of codling moths that they have often been known to riddle the shingle traps and paper bands which are placed to attract the larvae about ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... cock they had heard—the finger close to the trigger they saw—they were made to mount—in momentary apprehension that the backwoodsman, whose determined character was sufficiently seen in his face, might yet change his resolve, and with wanton hand, riddle their bodies with his bullets. It was only when they were mounted, that they drew a breath of ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... never-to-be-satisfied women? Our mothers pined because our fathers drank and were rakes. Our wives pine because we are virtuous but inadequate. Who is this sphinx, this woman? Where is the Oedipus that will solve her riddle of happiness, and then strangle her?—only to marry his ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... a constant annoyance to him, notwithstanding the mask of mutual civility. "I never," he tells his mother, "ask for a place in the colony troops for anybody. You need not be an Oedipus to guess this riddle. Here are ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... more than an ordinary man was qualified to cope with, to make his observations, write his letters, and look after their transmission, without having to attend to his nag, and do an odd turn of cooking at a pinch. The riddle was how to get the horse—a sound hardy animal that would not call for elaborate grooming, or refuse a feed of barley. Horse-flesh was at a premium, but he thought I might be able to have what I wanted at Bayonne, on payment of an extravagant ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... traces the angle with his finger. The gesture ends with an accusing finger pointing at Red Joe. He whistles softly. For a moment his eye rests upon the gun, which leans against the clock. He has guessed the riddle. He advances casually, but with dirk in hand. He comes in front of Joe. Suddenly he presses the blade of ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... treason in the largest sense: And they who once rebel, must certainly Their God, and king, and former oaths defy; If ye allow no mal-administration Could cancel the allegiance of the nation, Let all our learned sons of Levi try, This ecclesiastic riddle to untie; How they could make a step to call the prince, And yet pretend the ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... had haunted my brain for two days and as many nights, while I wandered forlorn through house and playground, or lay awake on my little bed. I had said farewell to one pupil after another till all were gone, and the riddle which I had been putting to myself continually for the last forty-eight hours had now been solved for me by Mrs. Whitehead, and I had been told that I ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... Temperley with a sudden laugh. "You evidently, Dodge, are one of those who strive to read the riddle of this painful earth. Tell me what you think it ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... flames! That with thy music-footed horse doth strike The clear light out of crystal, on dark earth, And hurl'st instinctive fire about the world, Wake, wake, the drowsy and enchanted night, That sleeps with dead eyes in this heavy riddle: O thou great prince of shades, where never sun Sticks his far-darted beams, whose eyes are made To shine in darkness, and see ever best Where men are blindest! open now the heart Of thy abashed oracle, that for fear Of some ill it includes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... neither," objected Jimmy. "You all time got to ask the first riddle. I'm going to ask the ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... understand nothing, but the great peace of perfect security. She let him hold her still, with her head against his shoulder and his dear face near, so near she seemed to lose sense of her own identity. All the answer to her life's riddle lay there, behind the love that emptied her soul of need. Out of the blissful unspeakable light some ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... emerging from the door, calm, handsome, serious, and Margaret by his side. The dark-haired beauty seemed strangely serene. What could it mean? His heart was in his throat. Was he too late? Wreathed in smiles when the preacher had gone, the girl's face was a riddle he could not solve. ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... in the mean time, have not relinquished the inquiry, and try, as they become more closely acquainted with your mode of life and thought, to guess many a riddle, to solve many a problem; indeed, with the assistance of an old liking, and a connection of many years' standing, they find a charm even in the difficulties which present themselves. Yet a little assistance here and there would not be unacceptable, and you cannot well refuse ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... of the Chesapeake reached under his pillow and produced a pistol. "Out of my cabin or I'll riddle ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... spoils all the former, for these farthingales take up all the room now-a-days; 'tis not a woman, questionless. Shall I be put down with a riddle? Sirrah Heuresis, search the corners of your conceit, and ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... puzzling again over the mystery of their suspicion of him. He tried to recall some careless act, some imprudent question, an ill-considered remark. He was giving up the riddle again when that trained memory of his flashed before him a picture that, trivial as it was in itself, yet was as enlightening as the white paper of the cigarette ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... The riddle of existence is seen not from the Old World point of view, but from that of the new. It is of the nature of a surprise. The Sphinx of Emerson is not carved in stone. It is not silent and motionless, waiting for ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... from 1 Manik brings us to 1 Been instead of 1 Men; 26 more to 1 Cauac, a day not found in either column as given in the original. Taking the second column and counting 26 days from 1 Ymix, we reach 1 Manik, instead of 1 Been. This gives us the key to the series and solves the riddle. We must commence with 1 Ymix, then take 1 Manik, then 1 Been, and so on, going alternately from column ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... which," he added, in a sudden awed whisper, "is to know the ultimate secrets of life and death, and to read the riddle of the world and the ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... at length to puzzle himself about Mary. Of course she was just like the rest! but he did not at once succeed in fitting what he saw to what he entirely believed of her. She remained, like Sepia, a riddle to be solved. He was not so ignorant as his wife concerning the relations of the different classes, and he felt certain there must be some reason, of course a discreditable one, for her leaving her former, and taking her present, position. The attack he had ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... clear Saxon steadiness of Malcolm Durwent, his own face was constantly touched by lights and shadows of his mind, lit by the incessant prompting of his thoughts that demanded their answer to the riddle of life. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... she does, possibly. She is a living riddle. She must needs follow out every idea that comes into her head. Fortunately, most of them don't last long; but this one may last long enough to give the prince a chill. If that were to happen, I don't know what I should do! I ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... most significant historical fact of this Fourth Book is the connection which it makes between Egypt and Greece. In another Greek legend, that of OEdipus, the same connection is made through the Sphinx, whose riddle the Greek hero solves, whereat the ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... It were a shame for modest lips to speak it, And silly doves are better mates than we? And yet our love is Jesus' due,—and all things Which share with Him divided empery Are snares and idols—'To love, to cherish, and to obey!' . . . . . O deadly riddle! Rent and twofold life! O cruel troth! To keep thee or to break thee Alike seems sin! O thou ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... Sphinx, oh, answer me, That riddle strange unloosing! For many, many thousand years Have I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... joined Him. Happiness here, and happiness there with Him. The quest for Eternal Happiness, which was always His Own Divine Thought. Why, then, did He create ugliness and evil? Why write those upon the scroll? Ah, this perhaps is the Eternal Riddle! But, in 2930, they told me that there could be no beauty without ugliness with which to compare it; no truth without a lie; no consciousness of happiness without ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... surgeon, Cruickshank, assisted by Mr. White and other pupils. All interest in the case had subsided in Knutsford, that could now have cleared up the case satisfactorily; and thus it happened that to this day the riddle, which was read pretty decisively in a northern county, still remains a riddle in the south. When I saw the College Green house in 1809-10, it was apparently empty, and, as I was told, had always been empty since the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Grant, Jr., and had no acquaintance at Belfast, a town in Maine, two hundred miles distant from Salem. After poring over it in vain, he handed it to his son, Nathaniel Phippen Knapp, a young lawyer; to him also the letter was an inexplicable riddle. The receiving of such a threatening letter, at a time when so many felt insecure, and were apprehensive of danger, demanded their attention. Captain Knapp and his son Phippen, therefore, concluded to ride to Wenham, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... deferred to Helen and the Riches, appealed in comradely fashion to Katherine and Rachel. Betty alone she utterly, though quite unostentatiously, ignored; and Betty, too much hurt to make any effort, stood aside and tried to solve the riddle of Eleanor's latest caprice. On the way up-stairs Eleanor spoke to her for the first time. She went up just ahead of her and at the top of the ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... acquaintance, no one had the means of observing closely how Dominie Sampson bore a disappointment which supplied the whole town with a week's sport. It would be endless even to mention the numerous jokes to which it gave birth, from a ballad, called "Sampson's Riddle," written upon the subject by a smart young student of humanity, to the sly hope of the Principal, that the fugitive had not, in imitation of his mighty namesake, taken the college gates along with him ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... month. Life is indeed dramatic,—at least it has seemed so to me. Some men say that life has no meaning; that men are the playthings of blind forces that crush them, and there is no answer to the riddle. This is nonsense. I admit that we are in the grip of blind forces. But we are not blind. We can not change those forces. If we fight against them they will crush us. But by going with them, guiding our careers along their courses, they will bear us ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... incredible! You must have manufactured this riddle out of sheer wantonness, for in the indictment you charge me with reverencing gods! Can anyone believe that there are human affairs, or equine affairs, or instrumental affairs without believing that there are men, or horses, or instruments? You say expressly that I believe in daemonic affairs, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... excursions into Kentucky. They were present at the celebrated attack on Bryant's station; they fought with their characteristic bravery in the battle of the Blue Licks, and participated in colonel Byrd's hostile excursion up Licking river, and the destruction of Martin's and Riddle's stations. In turn, they were compelled to stand on the defensive, and to encounter the gallant Kentuckians on the north side of the Ohio. Bowman's expedition in 1779, to the waters of Mad river; Clark's in 1780 and 1782, and Logan's in 1786, to ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... believe that I have clearly shown in my Science of Thought that thought without word and word without thought are impossible and inconceivable, and why it is so. Here is the first key to a historical solution of the riddle at the beginning of the Fourth Gospel. We know that Greek philosophy after making every possible effort to explain the world mechanically, had already in the school of Anaxagoras reached the view that the hylozoic as well as the atomic ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... jewelled and engraved, appeared among the folds of his raiment, and he strode about the room in silence, as if he thought it necessary to give Joseph a few moments in which to consider his war gear (intended as an elaborate piece of symbolism). In response to the riddle presented, Joseph began to wonder if Nicodemus regarded himself rather as a riddle than as a reality—a riddle that might be propounded again and again, or if he could not do else than devise gaud and trappings to conceal his inner emptiness, a dust-heap of which he himself was grown weary. A ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... God be with him! as surely He will be, if the simple, faithful prayers of fair, sad Hepsy Ann are heard. Thus will he, thus only can any, solve that sphinx-riddle of life which is propounded to each passer to-day, as of old in fable-lands,—failing to read which, he dies the death of rusting discontent,—solving whose mysteries, he has revealed to him the deep secret of his life, and sees and knows ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... uneasy. — Naisi and Fergus are coming on the path. OWEN. I'll go so, for if I had you seven years I'd be jealous of the midges and the dust is in the air. (Muffles himself in his cloak; with a sort of warning in his voice.) I'll give you a riddle, Deirdre: Why isn't my father as ugly and old as Conchubor? You've no answer? . . . . ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge |
