"Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looking across to where the smoke curled up into the intense Blue of the sky. If a man wanted to reach the Medina ranch by the most obscure route, he thought, this would be one way to get there. He went back to where the automobile had stood and searched there for some sign of those who had ridden this far. But if any man left that machine, he had stepped from the running board upon ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... origin seemed doubtful to Scala in the case of a creature so fond of warmth; a fish were perhaps the better comparison, or, when the power of flying was in question, an eagle, or indeed, when the darkness was taken into consideration, a bat or an owl were a less obscure and more apposite parallel, etcetera, etcetera. Here was a great opportunity for Politian. He was not aware, he wrote, that when he had Scala's verses placed before him, there was any question of sturgeon, but rather of frogs and gudgeons: made short work with Scala's defence of his ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... overcome the propensity I feel to add Mr. Burke to this illustrious catalogue, though the name of this gentleman leads me out of the circle of the cabinet. Mr. Burke raised himself from an obscure situation, by the greatness of his abilities, and his unrivalled genius. Never was distinction more nobly earned. Of every species of literary composition he is equally a master. He excels alike in the most abstruse metaphysical disquisition, ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... Canadian schools, and afterwards studied law, becoming in due course a member of the Upper Canada Bar. He only practised for a few years. He found the profession profitable enough but uncongenial—as it could not well help being, in an obscure Canadian, village, twenty years ago—and very probably he was already cherishing ambitious dreams of literary labors, which he was eager to begin in the world's literary centre, London. He accordingly relinquished his practice as soon as he felt himself in a position to do so, and went to England. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... have called it Saxifraga cotyledon; yet, in spite of its long name, it is beautiful and poetic. London-pride is the commonest of all the saxifrages; but the one of which I speak is as different from London-pride as a Plantagenet upon his throne from that last Plantagenet who died obscure and penniless some years ago. It is a great majestic flower, which plumes the granite rocks of Monte Rosa in the spring. At other times of the year you see a little tuft of fleshy leaves set like a cushion ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... of spending my days in groping through musty law-books, hunting up obscure precedents, convincing an enlightened jury, through the medium of my persuasive arguments and impassioned eloquence, of the innocence of rascals carrying the word "rogue" legibly imprinted upon their countenances, and other operations of a kindred nature, had no attractions ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... received, as I believe, the selling price of a thousand copies of their books as compensation for the copyright.[1] Such being the facts in regard to well-known authors, some idea may be formed in relation to the compensation of those who are obscure. The whole tendency of the "cheap labor" system, so generally approved by English writers, is to destroy the value of literary labor by increasing the number of persons who must look to the pen for means of support, and by diminishing the ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... at this crisis is also somewhat obscure. If the German Government wished to attack France, the natural plan would have been to keep that design secret until the time for action arrived. But it did not do so. Early in the month of April, von Radowitz, a man of high standing ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... the natural beauties or artificial luxuries of BRIGHTON—the Daphne of our metropolis—will feel some curiosity respecting its origin and progress from an obscure fishing-town to such a focus of wealth and fashion as at this moment it presents. The celebrity of Brighton, we may observe, extends throughout the empire, and is almost as well known to the plodding and stay-at-home ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... [Footnote 142: An obscure publication appeared at Jamaica in 1824, designated a Defence of the Settlers of Honduras: a work intended to refute the imputations on which his anti-slavery policy had been justified. Whether the book itself really existed, or the passages professedly ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... most interesting of the archaeological remains are the coins which are found in great abundance on the frontier and all over the Panjab. These take us back through the centuries to times before the invasion of India by Alexander, and for the obscure period intervening between the Greek occupation of the Frontier and the Muhammadan conquest, they are our main source of history. The most ancient of the Indian monetary issues are the so-called punch-marked coins, some of which were ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... exasperated his impatience to get on. And so one trip came to an end, then another, and he had begun his third before he saw an opening by which he could step in with any sort of effect. It had all been very queer and very obscure; something had been going on near him, as if separated by a chasm from the common life and the working routine of the ship, which was exactly like the life and the routine of any other ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... break up into fragmentary collections, in which the words of many different and obscure prophets are grouped under the name of some great prophet, as was quite natural in an uncritical age; the whole mass being arranged ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... this heading a wide range of causative factors which play an important part in marital discord. Some of them are better understood by the social worker than was formerly the case; but many of them are obscure even to the practitioner of mental medicine, to whom their results come daily. Distasteful as the task may be, the social worker should familiarize herself, through reading or through instruction by a qualified physician, ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... emperors, and popes, and everywhere they are represented among medical writers. The position occupied in the Arabian world by Israeli, in the Occident was occupied by Sabattai Donnolo, one of the Salerno school in its early obscure days, the author of a work on Materia medica, possibly the oldest original production on medicine ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... associations; it sold for ten cents a copy. The only other college publication was the Quarterly, a solid magazine of about one hundred pages. None of the fraternities then existing, I think, possessed a chapter-house; their rooms were in more or less obscure quarters, over stores or in private houses. There was quite as much rivalry between them then as now, and poorer spirit. There was also an Anti-Secret Confederation, of which General Garfield in his time was the leader; ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... or countess dowager descends to mingle with a person of obscure birth, does she not then degrade herself? and is she not effectually degraded? And will any duchess or ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest The rising World of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless Infinite! Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian Pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight, Through utter and through middle Darkness borne, With other notes than to the Orphean lyre I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture down The dark descent, and up to re-ascend, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... likeness of Theban Ammon crowned with the solar disk between serpents, and the old Berber religion, with its sun and animal worship, has many points of resemblance with Egyptian beliefs. All this implies trade contacts far below the horizon of history, and obscure comings and goings of restless throngs across incredible distances long before the Phenicians planted their first trading posts on the north African coast ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... I did then, and yet she is the very last person in the world that I would marry. I trust, I believe, that my conduct, if it have clouded for a moment her life, will not ultimately, will not long obscure it; and she has every charm and virtue and accident of fortune to attract the admiration and attention of the most favoured. Her feelings towards me at any time could have been but mild and calm. It is a mere abuse of terms to style such sentiments love. But,' ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... or twelve years before, a shower of small frogs had fallen, as is credibly attested by a contemporaneous chronicle, the record concluding with a somewhat obscure statement to the effect that the chronicler considered ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... defining their sheer, or with a row of painted ports decking in warlike decoration their robust flanks of cargo-carriers that would know no triumph but of speed in carrying a burden, no glory other than of a long service, no victory but that of an endless, obscure contest with the sea. The great empty hulls with swept holds, just out of dry-dock, with their paint glistening freshly, sat high-sided with ponderous dignity alongside the wooden jetties, looking more like unmovable buildings than things meant ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... the streets to his obscure lodging, seeking to keep pace, as it were, with the rapidity of the thoughts which crowded upon him, many doubts and hesitations arose in his mind, and almost tempted him to return. But what would they gain by this? Supposing he were ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... to gain the prize. Do your devoir, valiantly, for should you chance to be thrown in this course, or slain by misadventure, you have lost your desire. None will ever hear of this adventure; all your life you will remain little and obscure. Your maiden will be led away by the victor, seated on the good Castilian horse you have gained by right of courage. Fight bravely. The trappings of the destrier are worth the spoil of a king's castle, and as for the horse himself ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... has delivered the Philistine into my hands," and, rising, he hurled back at the bishop the indignant reply, "I should far rather owe my origin to an ape than I would owe it to a man who would use great gifts to obscure the truth." The bishop had made the mistake, and the struggle was on. Year by year it raged. One by one the scientists, first of England, and then of Germany, took their stand by Darwin. Huxley in England and Haeckel in Germany were the foremost advocates of ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... father, his mother? How had a baby so richly dressed come to be abandoned in a small obscure village outside the walls of Panama, which would have escaped the ravages of the buccaneers on account of its insignificance, had it not lain directly in their backward path. They had destroyed it ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... he skimmed the morning papers. Him Mr. Hawkehurst saluted with an absent nod, and went in search of the steward of the club, from whom he obtained Mr. Burkham's address, with some little trouble in the way of hunting through old and obscure documents. ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the meaning contained in the work of art, that is, to its significance. An expressive face is one that reveals character. Its lines are suggestive of something. They are associated, like the lines of purely decorative beauty, with more or less obscure tracts of our experience, but they arouse a keen mental interest. They stimulate, they are packed closely with meaning, with fact, with representative quality. The same thing is true of certain landscapes. Witness Thomas Hardy's famous description of Egdon Heath in The Return ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... one of those dewy, clear, starry nights, oppressing our spirit, crushing our pride, by the brilliant evidence of the awful loneliness, of the hopeless obscure insignificance of our globe lost in the splendid revelation of a glittering, soulless universe. I hate such skies. Daylight is friendly to man toiling under a sun which warms his heart; and cloudy soft nights are more kindly to ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the dim twilight of the palanquin she saw the darkness of Androvsky's tall figure sitting in the crouched attitude rendered necessary by the peculiar seat, and swaying slightly to the movement of the camel. The light was so obscure that she could not see his eyes or clearly discern his features, but she felt that he was gazing at her shadowy figure, that his mind was passionately at work. Had he, too, been silently praising God for ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... to find a dozen women who sincerely do," broke in Denzil. "That's all humbug! Such twaddle only serves to obscure the great questions at issue. What we have to do is to clear away the obvious lies and superstitions that hold a great part of the people in a degrading bondage. Our need is of statesmen who are bold enough ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... of rubbish, and that untilled land, were, twenty years ago, the property of two families, who then found happiness in this solitude. Their history is affecting; but what European, pursuing his way to the Indies, will pause one moment to interest himself in the fate of a few obscure individuals? What European can picture happiness to his imagination amidst poverty and neglect? The curiosity of mankind is only attracted by the history of the great, and yet from that knowledge little use can be derived."—"Father," I rejoined, "from your manner and ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... morning he had heard about the strike—had heard other things, too—in the cheap hotel where he had spent the night—obscure but alarming rumours which had led him to change his plans about an immediate return to his ship. A bit here, a bit there, he had pieced the story of the strike together—a story which spared no names, and would ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... their Author. Hear him discussing S. Mark's "characteristics," at p. 151:—"In the consecution of his narrations, Mark puts them together very loosely." "Mark is also characterised by a conciseness and apparent incompleteness of delineation which are allied to the obscure." "The abrupt introduction" of many of his details is again and again appealed to by Dr. Davidson, and illustrated by references to the Gospel. What, in the name of common sense, is the value of such criticism as this? What is to be thought of a gentleman who blows hot and cold in the ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... layer of thought sometimes makes itself felt through the superincumbent strata, thus:—The usual single or double currents shall flow on, but there shall be an influence blending with them, disturbing them in an obscure way, until all at once I say,—Oh, there! I knew there was something troubling me,—and the thought which had been working through comes up to the surface clear, definite, and articulates itself,—a disagreeable duty, perhaps, or ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... also they have removed, in appointing, by an inviolable law, that very thing which the former punished with excommunication, and the latter gave a powerful reason for disapproving. There was a father[31] who asserted the temerity of deciding on either side of an obscure subject, without clear and evident testimonies of Scripture. This landmark they forgot when they made so many constitutions, canons, and judicial determinations, without any authority from the word of God. There was a father[32] who upbraided Montanus with having, among ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... grate, a strip of old, but gay carpet before it, two chairs and a table were covered with a harlequin patchwork made of bright odds and ends of all sizes and shapes. The fog in all its murky volume could not quite obscure the brightness of the often rubbed window and its harlequin curtain drawn across upon ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... this costly multitude was subservient to the use, or even to the splendor, of the throne. The monarch was disgraced, and the people was injured, by the creation and sale of an infinite number of obscure, and even titular employments; and the most worthless of mankind might purchase the privilege of being maintained, without the necessity of labor, from the public revenue. The waste of an enormous household, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... sought was beating wildly. She felt glad that she was there. The man didn't care for her and she—well, she supposed that she disliked him, but she wasn't going to let him die there alone in a corner, like a wounded animal in some obscure den among the rocks. For the moment her own troubles were pretty nearly forgotten, for there was something for her to do. She had been but a useless by-product of humanity in the great melting pot of the world and had proved incapable of rising above the ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... attributes much to the imprudence, or imbecility of the enemy, whose plan of saving an army he likens to Sterne's marble sheet. However, others are just enough to him, to feel that no faults of the enemy's commander lessen his merit, or obscure the courage necessary to follow up, attack, and take half at least of a fleet of seventy sail,[121] well found and provisioned, and full of ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... that even when peace was made between him and my sister, as it certainly soon would be, the future looked very black before them, unless he were too obscure for the royal thunderbolts ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pompous doctor feeling the Duke's heart and hear him give utterance to his parrot cry, and she was particularly sorry for the Cupids, who stood in their fools' caps in obscure places and, every time they heard that "Cold, quite cold," bowed ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... started across the ice; the light coating of snow made walking comparatively easy. We strode on silently, Stoddard leading. Their plan was to take an accommodation train at the first station beyond Annandale, leave it at a town forty miles away, and then hurry east to an obscure place in the mountains of Virginia, where a religious order maintained a house. There Stoddard promised Larry ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... under the pressure of their new surroundings to change in type so as to resemble the ancient peoples of the land? Or, as the strains mingled, has the new strain dwindled and vanished, from causes as yet obscure? Has the blood of the Lombard practically disappeared from Italy, and of the Visigoth from Spain, or does it still flow in large populations where the old physical type has once more become dominant? Here in England, the long-skulled men of the long barrows, the short-skulled ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... passing from poetry to prose: it is certainly passing from the poetic in spirit and surroundings to the profoundly prosaic in fundamental conception and in every individual detail. But those who do not allow accidental and external dissimilarities to obscure for them the inward and essential resemblances of things, must often, I think, have experienced from one of the Shandy dialogues the same sort of impression that they derive from some of the most nobly humorous colloquies between ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... actually at her side, her clothes touched his, and he could have flung his arms around her. But it was the move next after that which seemed obscure. He wondered what her reply would be; and, moving the lantern a little, she read the hesitation in his eyes—the wavering between desire for vengeance, a soldierly regard for sex, and mistrust of her apparent helplessness. And, being Yasmini, ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... essayed. Above all, it is ever to be kept in mind, that not by material but by mental power, are men and their actions governed. How noiseless is thought! No rolling of drums, no tramp of squadrons or immeasurable tumult of baggage-wagons, attends its movements; in what obscure and sequestered places may the head be meditating which is one day to be crowned with more than imperial authority; for kings and emperors will be among its ministering servants; it will rule not over, but in all heads, and with these, its solitary combinations of ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... ruffled shirt worked a spell peculiarly their own. They carried with them an air of polish and authority. Hamilton, though of obscure birth and small stature, is represented by those who knew him to have been dignity and grace personified; and old Ben Franklin, even in woolen hose, and none too courtier-like, was the delight of the great nobles and fine ladies, in whose ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... to Miss Weeks. I will take Reuther and fly to some wilderness so remote and obscure that ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... worm-eaten? James was willing now to float along the stream, sociably, with his fellows, and had no doubt that he would soon find a set of high-sounding phrases to justify his degradation. What importance could his actions have, who was an obscure unit in an ephemeral race? It was much better to cease troubling, and let things come as they would. People were obviously right when they said that Mary must be an excellent helpmate. How often had he not told himself that she would be all that a wife should—kind, helpful, trustworthy. ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... very fond of using the word caecus with reference to abstruse and obscure philosophical and ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... of Bacon's power as an orator; and another on facile and ready genius, and translates it, adapting it to his recollection of his fellow-playwright, Shakespeare. To call such passages—which Jonson never intended for publication—plagiarism, is to obscure the significance of words. To disparage his memory by citing them is a preposterous use of scholarship. Jonson's prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of his masques, and in the 'Discoveries', is characterised by clarity and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... clearly stated, perhaps not fairly estimated. The red man, considered generally as a creature to be carried about and exhibited for money, was, in very truth, a being immortally endowed, though under a dispensation obscure to the more highly-favored white race. As they affirmed a belief in the traditions of their tribe, with what strength and beauty of diction they clothed their thoughts—how energetic in gesture! Alas! for the ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... their bill of directions to their own agents—a grant authorizing the exercise of certain powers, and prohibiting that of others. In the Constitution of the United States, whatever else may be obscure, the clause granting power to Congress over the Federal District may well defy misconstruction. Art. 1, Sec. 8, Clause 18: "The Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation, in all cases whatsoever, over such District." Congress may make laws for the District "in all ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... if they can fancy that you, too, take an interest in such matters, they will not only think you perfectly sane, but will begin to give you credit for some more than human powers of forcing the obscure earth to show you its hoards ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... was it, standing there? Some grim Prussian sentinel? Had they, in this remote wilderness, stumbled upon some obscure pass which the all-seeing eye of German militarism had not forgotten? Was there, after all, any hope of escape from ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... sending for me. In your recital, however, there are many points that are obscure. Thank you for warning me. You asked me, a few moments since, if I loved Esperance. I look upon him as my brother, and I would give my life to spare ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... be finally determined by a man's own conscience alone. Ultimately there can be no collision of duties as such. Once a man recognises a certain mode of conduct to be right for him there is really no choice. In judgment he may err; passion or desire may obscure the issue; but once he has determined what he ought to do there is no ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... China are adverse to missionaries and express their opinions with such vehemence as to generally obscure criticisms of a more temperate nature. According to this majority the missionaries do nothing but harm. Frequently of poor education, and lacking altogether in tact and discretion, they thrust themselves in where they are not wanted, they interfere in local matters, ignore local customs, ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... Mr. Chambers. There is perhaps no other writer of the present day who has done so much to encourage struggling talent as this gentleman. I have for many years observed that publications, however obscure, in which he finds aught really praiseworthy, are secure always of getting, in his widely-circulated periodical, a kind approving word—that his criticisms invariably bear the stamp of a benevolent nature, which experiences more of pleasure in the recognition of merit than in the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... four millions he left to his daughter, if they do not prove that he could make gold, certainly prove that he could save it. The worthy old woman told me he had given her a manuscript in which the whole process was explained, but that she found it very obscure. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... like that of a river—may be determined and affected by very trivial circumstances. It is rather curious—at least it is interesting to me to remember—that it was by a picture I was first led to take an interest in ragged schools—by a picture in an old, obscure, decaying burgh that stands on the shores of the Frith of Forth, the birthplace of Thomas Chalmers. I went to see this place many years ago; and, going into an inn for refreshment, I found the room covered ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... way for a successor upon some basis which might make an accommodation between the two wings of the party possible; and there was an attempt by a small group of Liberal M.P.'s to bring this about. The treatment of this incident in Professor Skelton's volume is obscure. In any case it had no significance and it came to nothing. Laurier alike by choice and ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... this great congregation, which now, from its mother-house at Neuilly, is sending out Catholic life and faith all over the world, and the pulse of which is beating higher in France to-day than at any time since that true and simple servant of God, Dujarie, took it upon himself, from his obscure little parsonage, to begin the restoration of the Church from the crash of the Terror and the calamities ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... founded on impiety, immorality, fraudulent currencies, the confiscation of innocent individuals, and the pretended rights of man,—and which, in effect, excluding the whole body of the nobility, clergy, and landed property of a great nation, threw everything into the hands of a desperate set of obscure adventurers, who led to every mischief a blind and bloody band of sans-culottes. At the head, or rather at the tail, of this system was a miserable pageant, as its ostensible instrument, who was to be treated with every species of indignity, till the moment when he was conveyed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... window-pane, I seem rather to be seeking, as it were 'asking', a symbolical language for something within me that already and for ever exists, than observing any thing new. Even when that latter is the case, yet still I have always an obscure feeling, as if that new phoenomenon were the dim awaking of a forgotten or hidden truth of my inner nature.—It is still interesting as a word, a symbol! It is the [Greek: logos], the Creator! and the Evolver! ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... country before the Roman Conquest is, as is history everywhere in the West before that event, vague and obscure. But this at least may be said: it was first in the occupation of the Etruscans, who in time were turned out, destroyed, or enslaved by the Gauls, those invaders who crossed the Alps from the west and who during nearly two hundred years, continually, though never with an enduring success, invaded ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... explained that the great majority of these books contained the words only, very few of them being furnished with the musical notes. Dickens has made use of considerably over a hundred different songs. In some cases the references are somewhat obscure, but their elucidation is necessary to a proper understanding of the text. An example of this occurs in Chapter IX of Martin Chuzzlewit, where we are told the history of the various names given to the young red-haired boy at Mrs. Todgers' commercial boarding-house. ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... way, but giveth so sweete a prospect into the way, as will intice any man to enter into it. Nay he dooth as if your journey should lye through a fayre Vineyard, at the first give you a cluster of Grapes, that full of that taste you may long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent with interpretations and load the memory with doubtfulnesse: but hee commeth to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well-inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... caprices, in well-turned verse. He was a patron of art, having brought back ivories and bronzes from Italy, pictures and china from the Low Countries, and enamels from France. He was a student, and collected the many rare and handsome leather-bound volumes telling of curious arts, obscure speculations, half-fabulous histories, voyages, and adventures, which still constitute the almost unique value of the Brockhurst library. He might claim to be a man of science, moreover—of that delectable old-world science ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... latter made from calves' feet? Montgomery assured his guest that it was not; but, added he, with a conscientious regard for his visitor's scruples, from ivory dust. We believe the poet fancied the hypothesis of an animal origin of this viand could not be very obscure; it was, however, swallowed; the clever bibliopole perhaps believing, with some of the Sheffield ivory-cutters, that elephants, instead of being hunted and killed for their tusks, shed them when fully grown, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... announcements. In those early days there was one Richmond Nolley, a preacher in the new Southern country. He was a man of great zeal, energy, and courage, and omitted no opportunity of doing good to persons of any color or condition in whatever obscure corner he could find them. On one occasion, while travelling, he came upon a fresh wagon-track, and following it, he discovered an emigrant family, who had just reached the spot where they intended to make their home. The man, who was putting out his team, saw at once by the bearing and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... blindly into snares, where all your boasted aid would avail you nothing? for, should I call aloud your name, even here, in the dark and dreary passages of this obscure edifice, the cry would echo through the country ere the morning, and a whole people would be found in arms to punish ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in a merely general way, with the result that the point is wholly or partly missed. With a reasonable amount of explanation, and a general caution to the student not to pass over words or phrases that appear obscure, there is no reason why these passages should not be understood by all in a much ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... coast a normal girl, obscure and lovely, makes a quest for happiness. She passes through three stages—poverty, wealth and service—and ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... will exist.' The ex-dictator of Venice was eking out a scanty livelihood by giving lessons in Paris; he had only three years left to live, and was not destined to see his words verified. But, poor and sick and obscure though he was, his ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... position in the eyes of foreigners. A year before his death, it was my good fortune to be a shipmate of this great and excellent man; for great and excellent I do not hesitate to call him, although the remoteness of his sphere of action has left his name comparatively obscure. Like all who came in contact with him, I was deeply impressed with his pure, high, determined, and chivalric character. In a grove, near the village, he selected a spot for his burial; and there rest the remains of a finished gentleman, an accomplished ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... alone? Others tell him that that "fixing" of hers means nothing—that she is, simply, a coquette. But he "can't tell what her look said." Certainly not any "vile cant" about giving her heart to him because she saw him sad and solitary, about lavishing all that she was on him because he was obscure, and she the queen of women. Not that, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... but it has been explained to me by a person who knows him well. He was originally a merchant, and had a quantity of counting-house knowledge. He became member of a club of political economists, and a scholar of M'Culloch's. In this club there were some obscure but very able men, and by them he got crammed with the principles of commerce and political economy, and from his mercantile connections he got facts. He possessed great industry and sufficient ability to work up the materials he thus acquired into a very plausible exhibition of knowledge upon ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... sailors' eyes, like eyes in prayer, Turn unto them for guiding ray: If storms obscure their radiance, The great ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... rare. Danger, peril, jeopardy, hazard, risk. Darken, obscure, bedim, obfuscate. Dead, lifeless, inanimate, deceased, defunct, extinct. Decay, decompose, putrefy, rot, spoil. Deceit, deception, double-dealing, duplicity, chicanery, guile, treachery. Deceptive, deceitful, misleading, fallacious, fraudulent. Decorate, adorn, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... thing, separate life from religion, what is left except the words, "Have mercy on me"? They are therefore sure to maintain that salvation is instantaneous, accomplished by these words, even if uttered at the hour of death, if not before. What does the Word become to them then but an obscure and cryptic utterance issuing from a tripod in a cave, or like an incomprehensible response from the oracle of an idol? In a word, if you remove repentance, that is, sever life from religion, what is human nature then but evil aglow with infernal fire or a ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... of such contradictions, wherefore such an imposing array of geographical research, of historical lore, of political and moral philosophy, for the accomplishment of so simple a purpose? And why is the purpose so scrupulously concealed, that confessedly it can be gathered only from obscure intimations, and those of ambiguous import? Besides, there are passages whose tendency must have been directly counter to either of these alleged aims (cf. note Sec. 33). The author does indeed, in the passage just cited, seem to appreciate ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... artistic sense it is not necessary to think that the world is good. It is enough to believe that there is no impossibility of its being made so.... I would ask that in his dealings with mankind he [the writer] should be capable of giving a tender recognition to their obscure virtues. I would not have him impatient with their small failings and scornful of ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... ascendency she had obtained in her obscure empire daily increased. At twelve, she was sent to a convent at Halifax, where she remained three years. At the end of that period, she returned to Miramichi, and resumed at once her regal sceptre. The sway she held over the people was really one of love, grounded on a recognition ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... of mixed feeling about the war—admiration of our valiant men, burning desires to cut the Emperor of Russia's throat, and something like despair to see how the old cannon-smoke and blood-mists obscure the wrongs and sufferings of the people at home. When I consider the Patriotic Fund on the one hand, and on the other the poverty and wretchedness engendered by cholera, of which in London alone, an infinitely ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... Hurstwood. In the old days the world had seemed to be getting along well enough. He had been wont to see similar things in the "Daily News," in Chicago, but they did not hold his attention. Now, these things were like grey clouds hovering along the horizon of a clear day. They threatened to cover and obscure his life with chilly greyness. He tried to shake them off, to forget and brace up. Sometimes he ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... and character; having been successively opposed and commended by physicians, condemned and eulogized by priests, vilified and venerated by kings, and alternately proscribed and protected by governments, this once insignificant production of a little island or an obscure district, has succeeded in diffusing itself throughout every clime, and—exhilarating and enriching its thousands—has subjected the inhabitants of every country to its dominion. And every where it is a source of comfort and enjoyment; in the highest ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Belpher in the billiard-room. Percy was alone. The house-party, so numerous on the night of the ball and on his birthday, had melted down now to reasonable proportions. The second and third cousins had retired, flushed and gratified, to obscure dens from which they had emerged, and the castle housed only the more prominent members of the family, always harder to dislodge than the small fry. The Bishop still remained, and the Colonel. Besides these, there were perhaps half ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... I had been able to do. This unhappy man must have been possessed of abilities which (under favouring circumstances) would, I don't hesitate to say, have ranked him among the greatest physicians of our time. The language in which he writes is obscure, and sometimes grammatically incorrect. But he, and he alone, has solved a problem in the treatment of disease, which has thus far been the despair of medical men throughout ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... common For women to lament, for men to remember Gaul derided the Roman soldiers as a band of pigmies Great science of political equilibrium Holland, England, and America, are all links of one chain Long succession of so many illustrious obscure Others go to battle, says the historian, these go to war Revocable benefices or feuds Taxation upon sin The Gaul ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... cannot pierce a wink beyond] That this is the utmost extent of the prospect of ambition, the point where the eye can pass no further, and where objects lose their distinctness, so that what is there discovered, is faint, obscure, ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... assassinated by a Burgundian partisan. The Duke of Burgundy, though he at first withdrew from Paris, speedily returned, avowed the act, and was received with plaudits by the mob. For a few years the strife continued, obscure and bad; a great league of French princes and nobles was made to stem the success of the Burgundians; and it was about this time that the Armagnac name became common. Paris, however, dominated by the "Cabochians," the butchers' party, the party of the "marrowbones ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... had been issued came the gentry and freeholders of the county to elect their representatives. [Footnote: Dalton, Officium Vicecomitum, chap. xcii.] There was often a great concourse and much excitement, and the petty disputes of poor suitors and the labors of obscure officials were for the time completely superseded. The sheriff, as presiding official at this election, as the returning officer of the elected members, and as the official charged with levying money for the payment of their wages and expenses, had an ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... yourself unhappy by associating with such a simple people?" That was the suspicious fact. Men in Robinson's position could not understand why Penn should join his fortunes with those of people so different from himself, poor, ignorant, and obscure, unless there were some hidden motive. He must be either a political conspirator, or, as many said, a Jesuit in disguise, which amounted to the same thing. "You do nothing," said Sir John, "but stir up the ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... most of them excellently, all well, drawn and sustained. The fact that certain episodes had to be cut in representation in order to bring the comedy within a reasonable time limit, though it may have tended to obscure the connection of the intrigue, could not have insured in spite of its many real merits so absolute a doom for the much maltreated play, a sentence which seems to have wantonly ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... during the last twelve months is amazing. Official opposition to the conservation movement, whatever damage it has done or still threatens to the public interest, has vastly strengthened the grasp of conservation upon the minds and consciences of our people. Efforts to obscure or belittle the issue have only served to make it larger and clearer in the public estimation. The conservation movement cannot be checked by the baseless charge that it will prevent development, or that every man who tells the plain truth is either a muck-raker ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot
... love affairs as well as the other ladies of the court, only mine shall be more extraordinary, more romantic. To be loved by a baron or a count is indeed commonplace; but to be adored by a gardener, who is beautiful as the god Apollo, and whose obscure birth is his only fault—this is original, this is piquant. Ah, Madame von Brandt laughed at me yesterday, at my stupidity and innocence; she was merry at my expense, because I had never been kissed, never received a stolen embrace, which she declared to be the most ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... craftsmen work in rivalry, without doubt the good intellects, exercising themselves with much study, discover new things every day in order to satisfy the various tastes of men; and some, speaking for the present of painting, executing works obscure and unusual and demonstrating in them the difficulty of making them, make known by the shadows the brightness of their genius. Others, fashioning the sweet and delicate, thinking these to be likely to be more pleasing to the eyes of all who behold them ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... Italian for The Night. The night meant by the title is that on which Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea. It was at a time known in history as the Augustan Age, when Rome was the great world-power. Judaea was only an obscure province of the vast Roman Empire, but here was the origin of the influence which was to shape later history. The coming of Jesus brought a new ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll |
