"Intricacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... each at a guess, 150 feet high, with a wing between them, bristle with bamboo scaffolding so warped and twisted out of the perpendicular that the uprights are like old fishing rods. The extraordinary intricacy is quite fascinating, but at present it partially prevents one seeing the general proportions and effect of the building. As we see it, in the afternoon, the great mass of building is grey against the western light; thousands of men, women, boys, and children are scattered over its face on these ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... as the extreme intricacy of the subject permits, the circumstances favourable and unfavourable for the production of new species through natural selection. I conclude that for terrestrial productions a large continental area, which has undergone many oscillations ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... its depths, finding their greatest enjoyment in so doing. Starting with the simpler forms of the art left by their predecessors, they deepened, they broadened and varied those forms; while, with every intricacy created, they experienced the sweetest of pleasure. And one of the most fitting tributes that can be paid to these and others of the noble masters of harmony is beautifully embodied in ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... have made this English Translation something more plain and correct than the Spanish. Some few notorious faults either of the Printer or the Interpreter, I am sure I have redressed. But the Spanish Translator complaining much of the intricacy of Stile in the Original (as flowing from a person who, as hath been said, was no Scholar) as he was pardonable, being in great haste, for not rendring his own Version so distinct and elaborate as he could desire; so must I be excused from the one, that is to say, Elegancy, if ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... is always a hope of Peace through England; as well as contrariwise, especially till Bavaria settle itself (in April next), a hope of great assistance from the French. Here are potentialities and counter-potentialities, which make the Bavarian Intricacy very agitating to the young King, while it lasts. And indeed his world is one huge imbroglio of Potentialities and Diplomatic Intricacies, agitating to behold. Concerning which we have again to remark how these huge Spectres of Diplomacy, now filling Friedrich's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Fraeulein perceived it. She recommended 'My Religion' as an antidote to the romances. I did not want his religion. I wanted his men and women, his reading of the human soul, the largeness of incident, the sense of time and space, the intricacy of family life, the problems of race, the march of nations across ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... so ingenious and perfect that the old clergyman held his wrath for the moment, and peered into this miniature intricacy of peaks and steeps, and gullies and valleys. He had scarcely gathered himself together to wonder who had had the ingenious impudence for the mischief, when amazement once more seized him. For he saw now, stooping down, that ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... barred to-morrow in the morning!" In this preoccupation I believe he took leave of me without observing it; our things were handed out; we heard the window shut behind us; and became instantly lost in a horrid intricacy of blackness and the shadow ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... also impresses us by a Gothic richness of detail,* the picturesque counterpart of its intricacy of thought, and, perhaps for this very reason, never so fully displayed in any subsequent work. Mr. Browning's genuinely modest attitude towards it could not preclude the consciousness of the many ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... between St. Martin and Chamouny, is little more than six leagues, but from the extreme inequality of the ground and the intricacy of the paths, occupied a very long space of time in passing. We still continued to follow the course of the Arve, which, according to the opinions of some writers, is believed to have, at one period, formed a lake between the mountains which encompass this valley; a conjecture which the marshy ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... who made it famous, but by the ruined temples and columns whose rent seams were shaped anew into graceful perfection by the magical light, by the wilderness of the ruined Caesar's palace, until we looked wonderingly into the intricacy of arch and corridor and column of which was built the arch-temple of Paganism, the Coliseum. The moonlight silvered the broad spaces of scornful silence as if Fate mused mournfully upon the work it must needs do. Grass ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... applied to the consideration of social perplexities and contradictions. The dialogue is indecisive in its outcome. It does not lend itself to dogmatic conclusions and systematic presentation, but exposes the intricacy of all important questions and the inevitable conflict of views, which may seem altogether irreconcilable. We much need to encourage and elaborate opportunities for profitable discussion to-day. We should revert to the dialectic of the Athenian agora and make it a ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... yet been allowed to touch. Yet had she been shut up alone with the machine, as she was now shut up to revise her own conduct within herself, she would, by sheer force of determined intelligence, have mastered its intricacy to a large degree without asking aid. And so with this strong idea that she must learn how to act differently to this young man; dim, indeed, as was her idea of what was lacking, or what was to be gained, she strove with it in no ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... was a gift of Heaven. At any other epoch he would have been as great, perhaps greater. What he received from his surroundings and from the "civilization" with which he was blessed, he has handed down to us in the uncouth form, the intricacy of plot and adventures, which would have rendered barbarous a poet less naturally gifted. And, although the question has never been definitely settled, it is probable that he was born and lived a Catholic; and it is strange how Elizabeth, who, tradition tells us, was present at some of his plays, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... of this latter consideration is so enormous, that no one who has not studied human anatomy can be in a position to appreciate it. For without special study it is impossible to form any adequate idea of the intricacy of structure which is presented by the human form. Yet it is found that this enormously intricate organization is repeated in all its details in the bodies of the higher apes. There is no bone, muscle, nerve, or vessel of any importance in the one which is not answered ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... to which he then belonged fell. The one which followed refrained from dealing at all with the subject, except by recourse to an expedient not uncommon with party leaders, dealing with a new question of admitted intricacy. They passed a bill leaving the whole matter to the Crown for executive action. Accordingly, in July, 1783, a proclamation was issued permitting intercourse between the islands and the American continent, in a long list of specified articles, but only by British ships, owned ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... is shocked by 'slabby-bellies,' 'mucus,' 'Priapulids'; the reader who is awed by the paraded learning of 'Splendour by Numbers,' by the deliberate intricacy of 'Beauty,' or the delicate fatigue of 'The Death of Lully' in Limbo—these are no audience for an artist. It tickles the author's fancy, stretches his wits, flatters his deviltry to provoke and witness such ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... deaths so unlike, the tragic end of Darnell and her brother's sudden removal, sank deep into her, sounding to her in the midst of her own childish preoccupation with her own life, the intricacy, the mystery of all existence. Life was larger than a private garden hedged with personal ambitions. She was the instrument of forces outside her being. And in her weakness she ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... man's relation to man constitutes one of the primary problems of life. Where this adjustment is complicated by diverse physical peculiarities and by different inherited or acquired characteristics, the problem becomes one of the greatest intricacy that has ever taxed human wisdom and patience ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 52, No. 3, September, 1898 • Various
... interesting to make Mr. Cleveland's speech the text of some examination into the ex-President's peculiarities of style. It was Clevelandesque to the core. All his protuberant characteristics are there: the leviathanic egotism, the profound and tenebrous ponderosity, the labored intricacy of the commonplace, the pedagogic moralizing, the oracular inconsequence. How absurdly obvious it all is now, and how inexplicable that the glamour of high place should ever have clothed such matter as his with the seeming of philosophy and statesmanship! ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... five rapids of the St. Lawrence, which are impassable by steam, and occur between Montreal and Kingston, a distance, by the St. Lawrence River, of 171 miles, and by the Rideau Canal, 267 miles. The rapids vary in rapidity, intricacy, depth and width of channel, and in extent, from half a mile to nine miles. The Cedar Rapid, twenty-four miles from La Chine, is nine miles long, very intricate, running from nine to twelve miles an hour, and in some places only from nine to ten feet water in ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... all began to move. Each mirror moved on its own axis and she watched with fatal curiosity. For now a bright light was cast from behind her on the revolving mirrors and they formed a scintillating kaleidoscope that was bewildering in its intricacy. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... they have various grotesque dances, which are originals in their kind, being extremely difficult to execute, not only for the variety of the steps, but for the intricacy and uncommonness, or rather ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... the reader in the intricacy of the inquiries necessary for anything like a satisfactory solution of these questions. But, were he to engage in such inquiries, their result would be his strong conviction of the earth's having ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... mountains, on the meadows, on the roofs of the living, on the graves of the dead! All white save the river, that marked its course by a winding black line across the landscape; and the leafless trees, that against the leaden sky now revealed more fully the wonderful beauty and intricacy ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... a forest, just where its intricacy had broken away into picturesque openings, leaving visible some strange old trees with knotted trunks and mysteriously twisted branches, sat a young girl sketching. She was intently engaged, but as her eyes were ever and anon raised from her paper to the opening ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... the blessed in the Vision of Mirza—a resemblance more striking from the long tract of mist which rested on the top of the steeps of Morven. The view was endless, and though not so wide, had something of the intricacy of the islands and water of Loch Lomond as we saw them from Inch-ta-vanach; and yet how different! At Loch Lomond we could never forget that it was an inland lake of fresh water, nor here that it was the sea itself, though ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... dark suspicion weighed heavily against her, because she had become possessor of his property: her patrons stand[29] and boldly plead the cause of the guiltless woman. The judges then besought the Emperor Augustus that he would aid them in the discharge of their oath, as the intricacy of the case had embarrassed them. After he had dispelled the clouds raised by calumny, and had discovered a sure source of truth[30]: "Let the Freedman," said he, "the cause of the mischief, suffer punishment; but as for her, at the same instant bereft ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... sometimes put five francs on zero en plein to protect half a stake on a simple chance," Mary explained, now thoroughly conversant with every intricacy of the game that had been so kind to her. "But zero's been up three times in half an hour, so I don't think I shall bother with it again for a while. And, anyhow, I'm not playing for a few minutes. Sometimes I feel as if I must ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... clearness, to carry without confusion all the wheels within wheels, and fables within fables, which spring out of the original story as it proceeds. In other respects the popular tale loses in simplicity what it gains in intricacy by this artificial arrangement; and it is evident that in the twelfth century the Hindoo tales had been long since collected out of the mouths of the people, and reduced to writing; in a word, that the popular element had disappeared, and that they had passed into the written literature of the ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... manifestly to account for the existence of this machine, for such a completed piece of mechanism as a man or a tree cannot be explained as a result of simple accident, as the existence of a rough piece of rock might be explained. Its intricacy of parts and their purposeful interrelation demands explanation, and therefore the fundamental problem is to explain how this machine came into existence. The second problem is simpler, for it is simply to explain the running of the machine after it is made. If the organism is ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... &c. (see uncertainty); intricacy; entanglement; cross fire; awkwardness, delicacy, ticklish card to play, knot, Gordian knot, dignus vindice nodus, net, meshes, maze; coil, &c. (see convolution); ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... the other side of the dell is much lower than the field through which we came, so that it is mainly to the labyrinthine intricacy of these high banks that it owes its singular character of wildness and variety. Now we seem hemmed in by those green cliffs, shut out from all the world, with nothing visible but those verdant mounds ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... move forward for want of water, and that their provision was exhausted, and finally the wet season had set in. To facilitate their endeavours in finding the Settlement (a work of more than ordinary difficulty, arising from the intricacy of the rivers and scrubby nature of the country, at the apex of the Cape York peninsula,) Mr. Jardine had cut a marked tree line for 30 miles in a south-westerly direction, meeting a similarly marked line running east and west ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... prevent crews from getting to sea in favourable weather, is sometimes fortified by the assertion that the people of Shetland are singularly defective in arithmetic. Even if we assume this statement to be correct, there is so little intricacy in a calculation of the price of 18 cwt. of fish at 6s. 6d. per cwt., and dividing the sum among five or six men, that a very low arithmetical faculty would not be severely taxed in checking it. There is little doubt that in stating this objection, which scarcely deserves refutation, the simple ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... each case the several factors operate with different degrees of intensity. It is often extremely difficult to disentangle them; and the more complex the society is in which a crime takes place, the greater is the combination and intricacy of the causes ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... experienced in many details of practical government, soldiers and local administrators, penetrated with the thought of a protesting and humanitarian age. Some, like La Fayette, had played conspicuous roles, and proved revolution in the making; others, like La Rochefoucauld, had mastered every intricacy of political and philanthropic thought; and some, like Condorcet, had proved themselves among the masters of science of their time. Counts, marquises, dukes, they were prepared to lay all aside in the overwhelming demand ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... of his dark lantern he conducted Tressilian, as soon as he had made himself ready for his journey, through a long intricacy of passages, which opened to an outer court, and from thence to a remote stable, where he had already placed his guest's horse. He then aided him to fasten on the saddle the small portmantle which contained his necessaries, opened a postern door, and with a hearty shake of the hand, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... conduct of the world around him, unworthy his attention; yet, among the sons of learning, many seem to have thought of every thing rather than of themselves, and to have observed every thing but what passes before their eyes: many who toil through the intricacy of complicated systems, are insuperably embarrassed with the least perplexity in common affairs; many who compare the actions, and ascertain the characters of ancient heroes, let their own days glide away without examination, and suffer ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... afforded by putting his enemy to death, and he frequently exacts it by any means that he finds ready to his hand. Being simple, he reflects little, and often acts with violence. The Northern mind, capable of vast intricacy of thought, seeks to combine revenge of injury with personal profit, and in a spirit of cold, far-sighted calculation, reckons up the advantages to be got by sacrificing an innate desire for blood to a civilised ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... before you could guess what had happened, and was drumming away on his heels; but she soon pulled up, realizing that a polecat may be slow in the books, but not so slow in real life, with her to assist speed. Anyway, she seemed slower; and, in any case, she could not hope to follow him in the intricacy of holes and cover he was sure to take to, like a fish to water. Moreover, she was spitting up blood, result of friend polecat's neat and natty strangle-hold on her throat, and felt more in need of the egg—which she had won, at ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... would be natural to expect something remarkable and marvellously elaborate of its kind. Such was the Scholastic Philosophy. As a mere exhibition of dialectical acumen, minute distinctions, and logical precision in the use of words, it was wonderful. The intricacy and detail and ramifications of this system were an intellectual feat which astonishes us, yet which does not instruct us, certainly outside of a metaphysical divinity which had more charm to the men of the Middle Ages than it can have to us, even in a theological school where dogmatic divinity is ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... not the subtleties of the laws, nor the intricacy of pleadings. First, let me assert that I have never robbed; but I have restored unto the plundered: I have never murdered; but I have stood between the assassin's knife and his victim. For this have I been hated and reviled ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... be a national loss for me to fail to record in this place a just estimate of the value to the Nation of these training camps for officers. They disclosed an unsuspected source of military strength. Nobody will suppose that, with the growing intricacy of military science and the industrial arts related to it, a country can dispense with trained professional soldiers. The fundamentals of military discipline remain substantially unchanged and, in order that we may assemble rapidly and effectively adequate military forces, there must ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... all, the English party and the people themselves, the two lines of mounted men helped to keep back the rush of the crowd who pressed forward to see the great man of whose deeds they had just heard, and the length, the intricacy, and narrowness of the streets played their part in lessening the gathering; but it was a weary journey—one which grew slower and slower, till the city was completely traversed, and the mounted men rode off to one side, leaving the Hakim's followers to pass ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... put forth this medicine in pill- boxes or bottles, and then, as it were, by some captivating title, inveigle the public into his spider's web, and suck out its gold substance, and himself wax fat as he sat in the central intricacy. ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... insufferable glare, thrust in huge logs of oak, or stirred the immense brands with a long pole. Within the furnace were seen the curling and riotous flames, and the burning marble, almost molten with the intensity of heat; while without, the reflection of the fire quivered on the dark intricacy of the surrounding forest, and showed in the foreground a bright and ruddy little picture of the hut, the spring beside its door, the athletic and coal-begrimed figure of the lime-burner, and the half-frightened child, shrinking ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... be understood, gives no adequate idea of the local intricacy of the system, while at the same time it is precisely this intricacy, both vertical and horizontal, that increases the cost and difficulty of making roads, and that has served in the past to keep the ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... with a strict charge to bring them back to his house, for he had heard they were impostors; and, if he found them such, he would treat them accordingly. The servants obeyed his commands without the least suspicion of the intricacy of this affair, and soon came up with Mr. Carew, whom they forcibly brought up to my lord. His lordship accosted him in a very rough stern manner, asking where the other fellow was, and told him he should be made to find him. Mr. Carew in the mean time stood thunder-struck, expecting nothing less ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... the jungle. He didn't take a book with him—on purpose; indeed he wouldn't have needed to—he knows every page, as I do, by heart. They all worked in him together, and some day somewhere, when he wasn't thinking, they fell, in all their superb intricacy, into the one right combination. The figure in the carpet came out. That's the way he knew it would come and the real reason—you didn't in the least understand, but I suppose I may tell you now—why he went and why I consented to his going. We knew the change would do it, the difference of ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... would have seemed marvelous and beautiful in its combination of simplicity and intricacy, to have noted the delicate tactics with which Bertie conducted himself between his two claimants—bending to his Countess with a reverent devotion that assuaged whatever of incensed perception of her unacknowledged rival might be silently lurking in ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... which supplies were conveyed by an elaborate system of camel transport. Every week the line grew, Railhead moved forward, and the strain upon the pack animals diminished. But the problem of feeding the field army without interfering with the railway construction was one of extraordinary intricacy and difficulty. The carrying capacity of the line was strictly limited. The worn-out engines frequently broke down. On many occasions only three were in working order, and the other five undergoing 'heavy repairs' which might secure them another short span of usefulness. Three ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... faultlessly cast in logical moulds. Too faultlessly methought, for looking at the mere heaps of architectural rubbish, let alone the earth, the various vegetations which have accumulated upon it, I had a sense of the infinite intricacy of all reality, and of the partiality and insufficiency of the paths which our reason (or our fancy in the garb of reason) cuts into it. Rituals and laws whose meaning had become mere shibboleths two thousand ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... hopeless than the external half-arch propping the side of a pier, or the chimney-like weight of stones pressing it down from above; but a courageous acceptance of these necessities, and a submissive study of their form, revealed a new and strange effect: the bewildering and stimulating intricacy of masses suspended in mid-air; the profusion of line, variety of surface, and picturesqueness of light and shade. It needed but a little applied ornament judiciously distributed; a moulding in the arches; a florid canopy and statue amid the buttresses; a few grinning monsters leaning ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... so snarled. The intricacy of those incidents which defy the narrator's extrication, is not illy figured in that bewildering intertanglement of all the yards and anchors of the two ships, which confounded them for the time in one chaos ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... unspeakable advantage of being reared in close contact with Nature, in an aspect beautiful and wild. My father's house was remarkable for its pretty garden, laid out with the old-fashioned intricacy of pattern, and blazing, even into autumn, with varied colour. In the midst of it, a large and absolutely symmetrical cedar "spread its dark green layers of shade," and supplied us in summer with a kind of al fresco ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... exercises that should tend to draw the incipient conceits of youth away from the alluring empty fifth (a form in which his other self delighted), and the equally insidious octave parallel. At times he advanced to laws of even greater moment, and corresponding intricacy. For he took a genuine interest in his pupils; and, in that first year of his teaching, carried his class to surprising lengths, nor let them betray any evidences of unthoroughness when they went trembling up ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... its name implies. The lap is actually raked by a fine-tooth comb with needle-like teeth of steel ranging from 16 to 90 per inch. This involves breaking the lap again and the intricacy of the comber rests in the mechanism which it employs ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... was summoned, and Clarice followed to listen to her. And when the Lopez had soared with strong practised flight through the brilliant intricacy of the Shadow Song, Clarice became aware what real applause sounded like from the stage. It shook the stage as the old favourite of two generations, wearing her set smile, waddled back to the debutante. Scores of voices hoarsely shouted 'Encore!' and 'Last Rose of Summer,' and with a proud ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... People of the State of New York: THE erection of a new government, whatever care or wisdom may distinguish the work, cannot fail to originate questions of intricacy and nicety; and these may, in a particular manner, be expected to flow from the establishment of a constitution founded upon the total or partial incorporation of a number of distinct sovereignties. 'T is time only that can mature ...
— The Federalist Papers
... of different ages and characters induced me to consult the two great Benedictine works, the Diplomatica of Mabillon, and the Palaeographia of Montfaucon. I studied the theory without attaining the practice of the art: nor should I complain of the intricacy of Greek abbreviations and Gothic alphabets, since every day, in a familiar language, I am at a loss to decipher the hieroglyphics of a female note. In a tranquil scene, which revived the memory of my first ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... merchants come here from foreign countries with silver, and carry away gold, bringing likewise large quantities of merchandize to sell to these people; for no strangers can go into the high mountains where the people dwell who gather gold, oh account of the intricacy and impassable nature of the roads. After passing this plain, and going to the south for fifteen days journey, through uninhabited and woody places, in which there are innumerable multitudes of elephants, rhinoceroses[10], and other wild beasts, we come to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... the interminable complexity of the rights of property, and the relations of commercial and personal dependence involved in your system. What, indeed, could possibly give a more powerful impression of the intricacy and artificiality of that system than the fact that it was necessary to set apart from other pursuits the cream of the intellect of every generation, in order to provide a body of pundits able to make it even vaguely ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... length they comprehended its apparition, they looked at one another in complete bewilderment. Miss Emma began to cry; but Flor took it as only a fresh complication of this world, that was becoming for her feet a maze of intricacy. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... emotional though extremely reticent. Only an artist would have recognized beauty in those scenes, for in all Ireland it would be difficult to find a landscape with less amenity; the hill shapes are featureless, without boldness or intricacy of line. Redmond, a born artist in words, possessing strongly the sense of form, was sensitive to beauty in all kinds—yet rather to the beauty that is symmetrical, graceful and well-planned. A sailor does not love the sea for its beauty, and Redmond ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... diversified, its parts narrower, and its processes more concealed, new and more extended training has been called for to prepare young people for the work of life; to reveal to them something of the intricacy and interdependence of modern political and industrial and social groups; and to point out to them the importance of each one's part in the national political and industrial organization. With the ever-increasing subdivision and specialization ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... but also from the practice of Satan's emissaries here; for what his angels do, that doth he. Now there is here nothing more apparent than that the instruments of Satan do plead against the church, from the pretended intricacy, ambiguity, and difficulty of the promise; whence I gather, so doth Satan before the tribunal of God; but there we have one to match him; "we have an Advocate with the Father," that knows law and judgment better than Satan, and statute and commandment better ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... itself, it has made possible an ample roadway through the heart of a great city, the peer of which does not exist elsewhere. It is to be feared, though, that it is hardly appreciated. The London cabby appears to be fascinated with the glare and intricacy of the Strand, and mostly the drivers of brewers' drays and parcel delivery vans the same. The result is that, but for a few earnest folk who are really desirous of getting to their destination quickly, it is hardly made use ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... the word, which has nothing to do with fire at all, but only with mixing or staining; and then, to make the whole group of thoughts inextricably complex, yet rich and subtle in proportion to their intricacy, the various rose and crimson colors of the murex dye,—the crimson and purple of the poppy, and fruit of the palm,— and the association of all these with the hue of blood,—partly direct, partly through a ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... example may suffice to illustrate the intricacy of the legislation passed in pursuance of this policy. It describes a change of detailed policy in support and ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... away its support, he brought down the hanging his mother had knitted, which covered the inner as well as the outer walls of the hall. This he flung upon the snorers, and then applying the crooked stakes, he knotted and bound them up in such insoluble intricacy, that not one of the men beneath, however hard he might struggle, could contrive to rise. After this he set fire to the palace. The flames spread, scattering the conflagration far and wide. It enveloped the whole dwelling, destroyed ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... over that of the English senate. It is this—the public business of Athens was as yet simple and unencumbered by details; the dignity of the occasion was scenically sustained. But, in England, the vast intricacy and complex interweaving of property, of commerce, of commercial interests, of details infinite in number, and infinite in littleness, break down and fritter away into fractions and petty minutiae, the whole huge labyrinth of our public affairs. It is scarcely necessary to explain ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... indeed, evolved several ways by which the contents of the safes might be reached, some simple and desperate, hanging on the razor-edge of chance to fall this way or that; others more elaborate, safer on the whole, but more liable to break down at some point of their ingenious intricacy. And setting aside complicity on the part of the manager—a condition that Carrados had satisfied himself did not exist—they all depended on a relaxation of the forms by which security was assured. Carrados ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... should be simple and clean. We should never believe that simplicity of life might make us unsuited to the requirements of the society of our time. It is the simplicity of the tuning-fork, which is needed all the more because of the intricacy of strings in the instrument. In the morning of our career our nature needs the pure and the perfect note of a spiritual ideal in order to fit us for the complications of our ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... gongs, drums, and other warlike instruments arose on the other side, and crowds of boatmen were seen running down to the vessels. These were soon manned, and oars got out, and they began to row up the river. As, owing to the intricacy of the channel, the steamboat and flotilla had not yet arrived, a few shots were fired at the boats by the field guns. This had the desired effect, many of the boatmen jumping overboard, leaving their craft to drift down the river; while the great bulk hastily ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... up in her imagination with the fairies in an intricacy that would have defied the best reasonings of ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... has occasioned a delay of some weeks; if their success in this attempt has been in any degree proportioned to their attention to the subject, it will furnish their excuse; indeed, when the legislature shall have seen the number, the variety, and intricacy of the matters which have been submitted to the consideration of the commissioners, it is hoped that a further apology ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... grandest repose,—a repose that pervades the room and the soul,—a repose not to be mistaken for serenity, but which is power in equilibrium. No brilliancy of color, no elaboration of accessories, no intricacy of composition attracts the attention of the observer. There is no need of these. But he who is worthy of the privilege stands suddenly conscious of a presence such as the world has rarely known. He feels that the embodiment before him is the record of a great ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... be born of a woman to sanctify the virtue of endurance; loving submission is an attribute of woman; men are logical, but women lacking this quality, have an intricacy of thought. There are those who think women can be taught logic; this is a mistake. They can never by any power of education arrive at the same mental status as that enjoyed by men, but they have a quickness of apprehension, which is usually called leaping at conclusions, that is astonishing. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... I remember, and am not likely ever to forget, a winter wren who favored me with what I thought the most bewitching bit of vocalism to which I had ever listened. He was in the bushes close at my side, in the Franconia Notch, and delivered his whole song, with all its customary length, intricacy, and speed, in a tone—a whisper, I may almost say—that ran along the very edge of silence. The unexpected proximity of a stranger may have had something to do with his conduct, as it often appears to have with the thrasher's; but, however that may be, the cases are ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... things, from the block as it were of nature: And it is, I think, an easier thing to give a just draught of man from these Theatric forms, which I cannot help considering as originals, than by drawing from real life, amidst so much intricacy, obliquity, and disguise. If therefore, for further proofs of Falstaff's Courage, or for the sake of curious speculation, or for both, I change my position, and look to causes instead of effects, the reader must ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... another, according to the circumstances of the times, and accomplish it. One gives it flexibility, that is, shows how it can be used without difficulty to express adequately a variety of thoughts and feelings in their nicety or intricacy; another makes it perspicuous or forcible; a third adds to its vocabulary; and a fourth gives it grace and harmony. The style of each of such eminent masters becomes henceforth in some sort a property of the language itself; ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... of the experiences of each vessel, that the failure of the greater part of the fleet to pass was principally due to other circumstances than the Confederate fire. The darkness of the night, the stillness of the air, which permitted the smoke to settle undisturbed, the intricacy of the navigation, the rapidity of the current, then running at the rate of five knots, the poor speed of the ships, not over eight knots, were known beforehand, and were greater elements of danger than the simple fire of the enemy. To these is to be added the difficulty ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... could be to perform, the particulars might be of great use to keep us from confusion in the general. Neither could the limiting of every several ship to such a rank or file [and] to such certain place in the same, bring upon the fleet intricacy and difficulty of proceeding, so [long] as (if the proper ships were absent or not ready) those in the next place were left at liberty, or rather commanded, to supply their rooms and maintain the instructions, ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... every juncture Marco must be consulted, and acquainted with every step of progress; and no doubt the Biondina has some lively Moretta for her friend, to whom she confides her part of the love-affair in all its intricacy. ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... framed, the intricacy so artful, and the disentanglement so easy, the suspense so affecting, and the passionate parts so properly interposed, that I have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... carried out by a woman, I'll swear to that. There is a woman concerned in it, for at every point we come upon evidence of her voice issuing the mysterious instructions; but she is not alone in the matter. Already the intricacy of the thing points to a criminal of genius. When we know the whole truth, if we ever do, that the crime was planned by a man of amazing, if perverted, intellect, will be put beyond ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... might be permitted to make his report in person in order to answer such inquiries as the members might be disposed to make, for it was a justifiable surmise that gentlemen would not be able clearly to comprehend so intricate a subject without oral illustration." The allusion to the intricacy of the subject had the effect of turning against the plan of oral communication some who had favored giving the Secretary the same direct access to Congress that the Superintendent of Finance had ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... fixing his eye for hours together upon a little print of Amsterdam, which hung in a black frame against the opposite wall of the council-chamber. Nay, it has even been said, that when any deliberation of extraordinary length and intricacy was on the carpet, the renowned Wouter would shut his eyes for full two hours at a time, that he might not be disturbed by external objects; and at such times the internal commotion of his mind was evinced by certain regular guttural sounds, which ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... excellence with which you have been examine', I p'onounce the exhibition finish'—dispensing with 'Twink', twink' lil stah.' And now, in the book of the best writing scholar in the school—you, sir, deciding that intricacy—shall now be written the name of the eminent frien' of learning ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... betray confidence at whatever rate I purchased it. Usually, indeed, my feats and Singleton's were only obtaining the best information and communicating the most speedy instructions to Mr. Wentworth's vessels, which were made to move from port to port with a rapidity and intricacy of movement which none besides us two understood in the least. It was in that expedition that I travelled almost alone across the continent. I was, I think, the first white man who ever passed through the mountain path of Xamaulipas, ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... intricacy of the enemy's defences, consisting not only of the breastwork connecting their batteries, but of successive lines of entrenchments for a hundred yards in the rear, covering the batteries and enfilading each ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... phenomena of colour in the organic world we have been led to realise the wonderful complexity of the adaptations which bring each species into harmonious relation with all those which surround it, and which thus link together the whole of nature in a network of relations of marvellous intricacy. Yet all this is but, as it were, the outward show and garment of nature, behind which lies the inner structure—the framework, the vessels, the cells, the circulating fluids, and the digestive and reproductive processes,—and behind ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... an imaginary partner, she began to spin round on her toes. Ada's only talent lay in her feet, and, conscious of her skill, she danced before the hunchback with the lightness of a feather, revolving smoothly on one spot, reversing, advancing and retreating in a straight line, displaying every intricacy of the waltz. The sight was too much for Jonah, and, dropping the mouth-organ, he seized her ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... said no, it was far from right artistically, though beautiful in spite of faults. My description would briefly be: whole chapel like great carved jewel-casket for a queen; ornamentation simply dazzling in intricacy and delicate detail; extraordinary pale rose-flush in shadow on stone pillars, which have the rich cream tints of carved ivory. No two alike: Spanish spirit visible here. Reminded me of detail in Burgos Cathedral. Nice story about the Prentice's ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... been in many wars, but this is a case that tries his soldier qualities as none other has ever done. A case of endless intricacy,—if he be quite equal to it; which perhaps he was not altogether. Nobody ever doubted Schmettau's high qualities as a man and captain; but here are requisite the very highest, and these Schmettau has not. The result ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of Greece and Rome, in the Intricacy and Disposition of the Fable; but, what a Christian Writer would be ashamed to own, falls infinitely short of it in the Moral Part ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... other simple purposes apart from the use of the dynamo, a ready application of this form of wind-engine with a minimum of intricacy or expense may be worked out by setting the lower bearing in a round tank of water kept in circular motion by a set of small paddles working horizontally. Into the water a vertically-working paddle-wheel dips, carrying on its shaft a crank which directly drives the pump. This simple wind-motor ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... belonged to the same date, and had been laid on, if not by the same hand, by one no less careful. Something more than a craftsman's pride had surely inspired the exquisite workmanship, the deft and joyous pattern that chased itself in and out as though smiling at its own intricacy. A gift for the artist's mistress, perhaps? Or a toy for some dead and gone princess?... Yet it had been played upon, and recently. One or two of its relaxed strings showed evidences of fraying; and the sender had tied a small packet of new ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... half-spoken, makes an effect of overwhelming pathos. Of a different order is Siegmund's refusal to go to Valhalla: it verges on the melodramatic, and the emotion expressed justifies the means. It may be remarked that though the instrumental writing is symphonic, there is none of the contrapuntal intricacy of Tristan: the pictorial requirement warranted a freer use of chords in the accompanying parts, both—if a paradoxical phrase may be pardoned—for the abstract colour of the chords and for the instrumental tone colour which ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... among a very simple and grateful race, he became the St. Oswald of that ancient shrine (as already has been hinted), and might do as he liked, even on the Sabbath-day. And as one of the first things he always liked to do was to enter into everybody's business, he got into an intricacy of little knowledge too manifold even for his many-fibred brain. But some of this ran into and strengthened his main clew, leading into the story he was laboring to explore, and laying before him, as bright as a diamond, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... with tremendous loss not only to the defenders, but also to a relieving force sent from Liyang. Five thousand prisoners were also taken. Liyang itself was the next place to be attacked; but the intricacy of the country, which was intersected by creeks and canals, added to the fact that the whole region had been desolated by famine, and that the rebels had broken all the bridges, rendered this undertaking one of great ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... practically uttered as one word: the first, in this case, an iamb; the second, an amphibrachys; the third, a trochee; and the fourth, an amphimacer; and yet our schoolboy, with no other liberty but that of inflicting pain, had triumphantly scanned it as five iambs. Perceive, now, this fresh richness of intricacy in the web; this fourth orange, hitherto unremarked, but still kept flying with the others. What had seemed to be one thing it now appears is two; and, like some puzzle in arithmetic, the verse is made at the same time to read in fives and to ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be an unfortunate turn, for the policeman saw him take it, and, knowing every intricacy of the town, he was enabled to take a cross cut by a lane, accompanied by several of his brother constables, who had joined him by this time, and by such of the crowd ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Compendium" for a terse and true statement of the result of many conflicting decisions, and a luminous exposition of the principles which ought to govern the administration of commercial law. The calm, practised skill with which this young unknown jurist moved about in these regions of subtle intricacy—inter apices juris—excited the cordial admiration and respect of all competent judges. He was manifestly a master of his subject; and having quietly detected important but unoccupied ground, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... about anything he wanted done by others; he simply commanded, and that was the end of it. But the mass of knowledge about the Terranovans and their world before he came appalled him not only by its sheer bulk but by its intricacy, the unexplained gaps, the contradictions. For a long time after the founding of New Washington—later New Jerusalem—he was still bothered a little by doubt. He wanted to learn all that there was to learn about the Terranovans, so that finally he would understand them ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... the mark of human imperfection. I am, however, far from intending to insinuate, that feelings of this nature will prevail on your Lordship to consider real blemishes merely as the effects of an inadvertency, which is excusable in proportion to the intricacy of a subject. I have been induced to throw together the preceding remarks, with an intention to rescue Lyric Poetry from the contempt in which it has been unjustly held by Authors of unquestioned penetration, to prove that it is naturally ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... was well adapted to the founder's views, and to suggest the name it originally received of La Trappe, from the intricacy of the road which descends to it, and the difficulty of access or egress, which exists even to this day, though the woods have been very much thinned since the revolution. Perhaps there never was any thing in the whole universe ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... position. A truly amazing insight has been gained into the space relations of the molecules of carbon compounds in particular, and other compounds are under investigation. But these results, wonderful though they seem when the intricacy of the subject is considered, are, after all, only tentative. It is demonstrated that some molecules have their atoms arranged in perfectly definite and unalterable schemes, but just how these systems are to be mechanically pictured—whether ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... the French playwrights are unequalled and inexhaustible, as is proved by the constant transfer of their productions into both the English and German languages. They do not think it necessary to have a plot of much intricacy, or even of great interest. The point and brilliancy of the dialogue, and the perfection of the actors, render that a matter of subordinate consequence. The Two Eagles, by Bayard and Bieville (these partnerships are frequent ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... wall hangings, is a thing very difficult of attainment—indeed it is said that it takes as long as fifteen years of constant application to acquire the necessary knowledge and skill. To carry out designs of less magnitude and intricacy is a very different matter; success in this smaller way is far more easily attained, and is well within ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... sufficiently absurd; here within a stone's throw of his own palace, and stretching almost to the doors of the House of Legislature whereto he went in so much state every year, lay an unknown territory which he had never thought to explore. The intricacy of back streets was quite unknown to him, and he seemed at almost every corner to be stepping into yards and cul-de-sacs, from which he had perforce to turn back again. In a short time all sense of the points of the ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... performed; so I remained to hear it, and to see what I could of the cathedral. What a total and admirable contrast between this and a Gothic church! the latter so dim and mysterious, with its various aisles, its intricacy of pointed arches, its dark walls and columns and pavement, and its painted glass windows, bedimming even what daylight might otherwise get into its eternal evening. But this cathedral was full ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... this? That Nature is not more natural to my body than God is to my soul. Every animal and plant has its own Environment. And the further one inquires into the relations of the one to the other, the more one sees the marvelous intricacy and beauty of the adjustments. These wonderful adaptations of each organism to its surroundings—of the fish to the water, of the eagle to the air, of the insect to the forest bed; and of each part of every organism—the fish's swim-bladder, the eagle's eye, the insect's breathing ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... new hostile expeditions from British ports. The Emperor of France has by a like proceeding promptly vindicated the neutrality which he proclaimed at the beginning of the contest. Questions of great intricacy and importance have arisen out of the blockade and other belligerent operations between the Government and several of the maritime powers, but they have been discussed and, as far as was possible, accommodated in a spirit of frankness, justice, and mutual good will. It is especially ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... palpable description; and the difficulties and embarrassments of the characters, of a nature to be easily comprehended and entered into by readers of all descriptions. Now, the leading incidents in this poem are of a very narrow and peculiar character, and are woven together into a petty intricacy and entanglement which puzzles the reader instead of interesting him, and fatigues instead of exciting his curiosity. The unaccountable conduct of Constance, in first ruining De Wilton in order to forward Marmion's suit with Clara, and then trying ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the assortment of paper containers. Monstrosities of hearts, cupids, and entwining fretwork were embossed on each, but save for the intricacy of design, there was little difference between them. He indicated ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... than once to note with a kind of aghast dismay those trophies of feminine industry, the quilts; some were of the "log cabin" and "rising sun" variety, but others were of geometric intricacy of form and were kaleidoscopic of color with an amazing labyrinth of stitchings and embroideries—it seemed a species of effrontery to dub one gorgeous poly-tinted silken banner a quilt. But already it bore a blue ribbon, and its owner was the richer ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... of the period at which these commissioners were to assemble, the idea was carried by those who saw and deplored the complicated calamities which flowed from the intricacy of the general government, much further than was avowed by the resolution of Virginia. "Although," said one of the most conspicuous patriots[31] of the revolution, in a letter to General Washington, dated the 16th of March, 1786, "you have wisely retired from public employments, and ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... houses makes Cordova the most difficult place in the world wherein to find your way. The streets are exactly alike, so narrow that a carriage could hardly pass, paved with rough cobbles, and tortuous: their intricacy is amazing, labyrinthine; they wind in and out of one another, leading nowhither; they meander on for half a mile and stop suddenly, or turn back, so that you are forced to go in the direction you came. You may wander for hours, trying to find some point that from the ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... the complicated character of the general subject, as it presents itself to the minds of children—that is, the intricacy to them of the question when there must be a strict correspondence between the words spoken and an actual reality, and when they may rightly represent mere images or fancies of the mind—there is another great difficulty in their way, one that is very little considered and ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... brain in a multiform subdivision of its structure, every convolution and every group of fibres and cells having a function appreciably distinct from the functions of all neighboring parts, the vast multiformity and intricacy of its structure corresponding to the vast multiformity and intricacy of our psychic nature, which has never yet been thoroughly portrayed ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various |
