"Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the scourge of mankind, the destroyer of Europe, the great robber, the infidel, the modern Attila, and Heaven knows by what other names. Really, gentlemen remind me of an obscure lady, in a city not very far off, who also took it into her head, in conversation with an accomplished French gentleman, to talk of the affairs of Europe. She, too, spoke of the destruction of the balance of ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... on an obscure trail; and he went astray sometimes, through blackness of woods that roofed out the stars. We floundered in swales sponging full of dead leaves, and drew back, scratching ourselves ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the lords of the council ten years later directing all goldsmiths to find shops for themselves either in Cheapside or Lombard Street within the next six months, inasmuch as the practice of setting up their shops in obscure places in different parts of the city offered facilities for abuses, and more especially "in passing away of ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... superstition of the members, and bringing the whole force of Bible argument to bear against the right of woman to her property, it was lost. Had Miss Brown been there, she might have beaten him with his own weapons. For my part, I see no need to appeal to any written authority, particularly when it is so obscure and indefinite as to admit of different interpretations. When the inhabitants of Boston converted their harbor into a teapot rather than submit to unjust taxes, they did not go to the Bible for their authority; ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... with them, using the scrupulous care they demanded. Nevertheless the results well repaid the trouble. They gave me an interesting and unexpected view of the number of the operations of the mind, and of the obscure depths in which they took place, of which I had been little conscious before. The general impression they have left upon me is like that which many of us have experienced when the basement of our house happens to be under thorough sanitary repairs, and we realise ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... of almost morbid perversity. Mrs. Touchett easily remembered that the girl had refused an English peer; and that a young lady with whom Lord Warburton had not successfully wrestled should content herself with an obscure American dilettante, a middle-aged widower with an uncanny child and an ambiguous income, this answered to nothing in Mrs. Touchett's conception of success. She took, it will be observed, not the sentimental, but the political, view of matrimony—a ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... the founders to make them centers of evangelical power. Piety, however, should not be a substitute for honest scholarly work. They should never permit their enthusiasm for an intellectual training and the growth of the sciences to obscure or conceal Him who is the Light and Life of all men. Their immediate and primary aim should be to promote intellectual culture, but this in nowise involves a departure from the spirit of the forefathers who made ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... that there was a stranger in his deep-withdrawn cell. Diligently as a lace-maker shifts her bobbins, he shifted and arranged his balls. Flashes of meaning would now pass from them to Tangle, and now again all would be not merely obscure, but utterly dark. She stood looking for a long time, for there was fascination in the sight; and the longer she looked the more an indescribable vague intelligence went on rousing itself in her mind. For seven years she had ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... by stopping the cab in Charterhouse Street, and walking the short remaining distance to Barbican. Norbury Row was an obscure street behind it, at the corner of which stood "The Compasses," the public-house which Plummer had mentioned. We did not venture to show ourselves in Norbury Row, but hastened into the nearest door of "The Compasses," which chanced to be that of ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... that island! When Miss Trevor had spoken of it Leslie pictured to himself some tiny, obscure, bare atoll of perhaps a mile in length, and not more than a dozen feet high at its highest point—knowing from his reckoning that, at the time of the fatal outbreak, the brig had not been near enough any known land ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of the cattle population; desertification; limited natural fresh water resources natural hazards: periodic droughts; seasonal August winds blow from the west, carrying sand and dust across the country, which can obscure visibility international agreements: party to - Climate Change, Endangered Species, Law of the Sea, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection; signed, but not ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... terrific burden. He alone, of the whole cabinet, was fit to bear it; beside him, the others were mere pigmies: Premier Caillaux, an amiable financier; Foreign Minister de Selves, a charming amateur of the fine arts; War Minister Messimy, an obscure army officer with a love for uniforms; Minister of Commerce Couyba, a minor poet, tainted with decadence—above all these, Delcasse loomed as a Gulliver among Lilliputians. But greatness has its penalties. While the Minister of Foreign Affairs spent his days in collecting plaques, ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... as he has been called, a scholastic adventurer, a philosophical and theological freelance, and it was after the Calamity that he followed those courses that resulted finally in his silencing and his obscure death. It is almost impossible for us of modern times to understand the violence of partisanship aroused by his actions and published words that centre apparently around the placing of the hermitage he had made for ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... his degenerate state to his affectionate child. No one else ever beheld him in the details of his humiliation. Little recked the Collegians who were laughing in their rooms over his late address in the Lodge, what a serious picture they had in their obscure gallery of ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... has led us to a great ending. If I were to put the bit of chalk with which we started into the hot but obscure flame of burning hydrogen, it would presently shine like the sun. It seems to me that this physical metamorphosis is no false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to write in his prison, is an endeavour to put together the materials of Universal History as they lay before him from ancient times, and so make them more intelligible. He touches on the events of his age only in allusions, which excited attention at the time, but remain obscure ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... diversion among the milliners.) He could not say, however, which drew the slung-shot or which threw the grenade. (It was generally remarked by those in the court room, that the evidence of the witness was obscure and unsatisfactory. Upon questioning him further, and confronting him with the parties to the case before the court, it transpired that the faces of Jones and Smith were unknown to him, and that ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... place," said I—"can that be an obscure place which has produced a poet? I have long had a respect for Cerrig y Drudion because it gave birth to, and was the residence of a poet of ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... in a manly manner without some trumpery local newspaper letting loose a volley of abuse against "the disgraceful exhibition," in which abuse it is sure to be sanctioned by its dainty readers; whereas some murderous horror, the discovery, for example, of the mangled remains of a woman in some obscure den, is greedily seized hold on by the moral journal, and dressed up for its readers, who luxuriate and gloat upon the ghastly dish. Now, the writer of Lavengro has no sympathy with those who would shrink from striking a blow, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... second reason, more obscure. I wanted to keep for a while the little mystery of the lady who had come to the farmhouse room in the dark of the night. She was pure romance, a rare incident in a prosaic age. My table had been bare of such ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... you were a little less pathetic," said the king. "You not only assert, but you declaim. There is too little of nature and truth in your tone; you remind me a little of the stilted French tragedies, in which design and premeditation obscure all true passion; in which love is only a phrase, that no one believes in, dressed up with the tawdry gilding of sentiment ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... gratitude such as only the native generosity of his temper could bestow. The man had once served him in his extremity. Even to this day he never quite realised how the thing had come about, and Leslie Standing refused to talk of it. All he knew was that as mill-boss of an obscure mill, far in the interior of Quebec, away down south of Sachigo, he had fought one of those sudden battles with a lumber-jack which seem to spring up without any apparent reason. And in the desperateness of it, in the fierce height to which his battling temper had arisen, he had killed his ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... thought the Indian tone of feeling was not rightly appreciated—their customs not 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
... obtain a clear, full, and discriminating view of gospel truth yourself. This is indispensable, if you would impress the same upon the minds of others. If your general views of truth are obscure, indefinite, and unsatisfactory to yourself, your instructions will be ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... the student's reach, and equally the niceties of spelling are beyond his reach, too. In ordinary speaking, many vowels and even some consonants are slurred and obscured. If the ear is not trained to exactness, this habit of slurring introduces many inaccuracies. Even in careful speaking, many obscure sounds are so nearly alike that only a finely trained ear can detect any difference. Who of us notices any difference between er in pardoner and or in honor? Careful speakers do not pass over the latter syllable quite so hastily as over the former, but only ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... an obscure Milanese family, had succeeded to Paul IV. in 1559. Pius IV. felt a true admiration for Michelangelo. He confirmed the aged artist in his office by a brief which granted him the fullest authority in life, and strictly ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... creep out of my cave, the day was far advanced. I walked awhile among the rocks: the sky was perfectly clear, and the sun so hot, that I was forced to turn my face from it: when all on a sudden it became obscure, as I thought, in a manner very different from what happens by the interposition of a cloud. I turned back, and perceived a vast opaque body between me and the sun moving forwards towards the island: it ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... to think about it, it was an insult. On the other hand, technically, Bruce was in the wrong. Having accepted he ought to have turned up on the right night. It may have served them right (as he said), but the fact of going on the wrong night being a lesson to them seemed a little obscure. Edith found it ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... the poor, although, like your railroad-contract robber the poor Italian brigand has not the chance of having his name published in the newspapers, or read out from the pulpit, as a good, charitable, and humane gentleman. Of the two charities, I think that of the obscure brigand is the ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... found himself on a small island of the latter group, caught in a storm of wind and hail, which had come on suddenly. It was in vain to look about for any shelter; for not only did the storm entirely obscure the landscape, but there was nothing around him save ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... kings shall be our senators. Jove sometime masked in a shepherd's weed; And by those steps that he hath scal'd the heavens May we become immortal like the gods. Join with me now in this my mean estate, (I call it mean, because, being yet obscure, The nations far-remov'd admire me not,) And when my name and honour shall be spread As far as Boreas claps his brazen wings, Or fair Bootes [57] sends his cheerful light, Then shalt thou be competitor [58] with me, And sit with ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... curious and useful branch of antiquarian research to read the manners and sentiments of an age in its public solemnities and pastimes, we will not leave the church without a wish for a better investigation of an obscure and singular custom, that antient carnival of Leicester, "the riding the George." The horse of this chivalrous saint, which, when the reformation had overthrown the monkish mummeries that so inconsistently blended religion with pastime, was sold for twelve pence, stood at the west end of the ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... for Tom has a weakness for reading aloud the good things from his own manuscripts. There is only one of the company who is not now sick to death of Nash's satires on Martin Marprelate; and perhaps even he has had enough of them, only he is as yet too obscure a person to say so. That is Will; and Nash detains him for a moment just to listen to his last words on the Marprelate controversy. Marprelate now appears "with a wit worn into the socket, twingling and pinking like the snuff of a candle; ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... may admit of question. Emerson said to Scott: "We [Americans] scarcely take to the Rossetti poetry; it does not come home to us; it is exotic." The sonnets of "The House of Life" have appeared to many readers obscure and artificial, the working out in language of conceptions more easily expressible by some other art; expressed here, at all events, through imagery drawn from a special and even technical range of associations. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... celebrate the virtues of the most incomparable of all our native plants, should be totally unknown in that new world, with whose discovery it was nearly contemporaneous! But perhaps our Jeremiad may be premature; for in some obscure corner in Virginia, (the garden of this weed,) a copy of the poem may at this very moment exist, like unobtrusive merit, disregarded and despised. For the honour of our country, we hope this may prove true; since it may lessen the odium with which men habitually load poor republics, a name which ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... the most distinguishing testimonies which that hero gave of his fortitude, constancy, and love, was his retiring to the Poor Rock when in disgrace with his mistress Oriana, to do penance under the name of Beltenebros or the Lovely Obscure.—Cervantes, Don Quixote, I. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... one another. The idea of calling books thus prepared illuminated, is taken partly from the meaning of the word illuminate, to adorn with ornamental letters, substituting, however, in this case, useful for ornamental, and partly from one of its other meanings, to throw light on, as on obscure subjects. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... immortals, Faust, Coster, and Gutenberg, invented the Book, craftsmen as obscure as many a great artist of those times appropriated paper to the uses of typography. In the fifteenth century, that naive and vigorous age, names were given to the various formats as well as to the different sizes of type, names that bear the impress of the naivete of the times; and the various ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... a tooth, like taking her life-blood drop by drop. Could it be that she was not very sorry after all that the scheme had fallen through, secretly glad, indeed? It was conceivable that this was Mrs. de Tracy's view, but her grandson's motive was still obscure. ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to be used as a hatchet. On the left was the hunting-knife, powder-horn, bullet-pouch, and other appendages indispensable for a hunter. Each person bore his trusty rifle, and as the party made its toilsome way amid the shrubs, and over the logs and loose shrubs, that accident had thrown upon the obscure trail they were following, each man gave a sharp lookout, as though danger, or a lurking enemy were near. Their garments were soiled and rent; the unavoidable result of long travel and exposure to the heavy rains which had fallen, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... door in one corner of the quadrangle, which had been, used instead of the chief entrance! It seems natural to a man of decayed fortune to shut up his hall-door and sneak in and out of his habitation by some obscure portal. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... son to Sir John More, Knight, and one of the Justices of the King's-Bench, a man held in the highest esteem at that time for his knowledge in the law and his integrity in the administration of justice. It was objected by the enemies of Sir Thomas, that his birth was obscure, and his family mean; but far otherwise was the real case. Judge More bore arms from his birth, having his coat of arms quartered, which proves his having come to his inheritance by descent. His mother was likewise a woman of family, and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... of view. I am interested in these obscure phases of human life. If they are real they are natural. To me the spiritistic 'demonstrations' are intensely human and absorbingly interesting as dramatic material, and yet I hope I am sufficiently the scientist to be alive ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... were the results of palace intrigues, sometimes petty but more often bloody. Corruption ate its way through the entire office- holding element of the Ottoman state: positions were bought and sold from the Divan down to the obscure village, and office was held to exist primarily for financial profit and secondarily as a means of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... becoming a rector, dignified and chaste in its language. It was the letter of a dignitary of the Church to an unknown and obscure child in a distant land, but it told of a father and mother's gratitude for a son's life saved, it breathed an admiration for the little girl's devotion and heroism, and a love for her that would last as ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... the question to a Scottish friend, the odds were that the Scottish friend could not answer. He might be a member of the Scottish 'Episcopal' community, and as ignorant as any Anglican. Or he might not have made these profound studies in Scottish history, which throw glimmerings of light on this obscure subject. ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... It is one with my right hand, And the dark sap that keeps it burning flows Out of my heart; and yet, for all my faith, It shows me only darkness. Was I wrong? Did I forget the subtler truth of Rome And, in my pride, obscure the world's one light? Did I subordinate to this moving earth Our swiftlier-moving God? O, my Celeste, Once, once at least, you knew far more than I; And she is ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... which I had been looking forward with considerable interest as one likely to bring fresh surprises, arrived at last: it brought only extreme discomfort. I was conducted (without a flat candlestick) along an obscure passage; then, at right angles with the first, a second broader, lighter passage, leading past a great many doors placed near together. These, I ascertained later, were the dormitories, or sleeping-cells, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... manfully; sustain misfortune bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment courageously. The influence of the brave man is a magnetism which creates an epidemic of noble zeal in all about him. Every day sends to the grave obscure men, who have only remained in obscurity because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort; and who, if they could have been induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great lengths in the career of usefulness and fame. "No great deed ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... native population of the Sandwich Islands, at the rate of one fortieth of the entire population annually. They seem to be a doomed people. The curse of a people calling themselves Christian, seems to follow them everywhere; and even here, in this obscure place, lay two young islanders, whom I had left strong, active young men, in the vigor of health, wasting away under a disease, which they would never have known but for their intercourse with Christianized Mexico and people from Christian America. One of them was not so ill; and was moving ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... secret of my strength is my ability to reject every element that is harmful or inessential to the completion of my self. This did not come to me easily, nor without a struggle. But now, looking back upon my life, many things become transparent that were obscure even to me at the time. I can now follow the fine-spun threads in the intricate web of my fate, and discover in the wilderness of meshes a ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... Reconquest of Spain by our race over the Asiatics as a disaster: its final triumphant instrument, the Inquisition, which saved Spain from a Moorish ravage was made out a monstrosity. Every revolt, however obscure, against the unity of European civilization in the Middle Ages (notably the worst revolt of all, the Albigensian), was presented as a worthy uplifting of the human mind against conditions of bondage. Most remarkable of all, the actual daily life ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... Laborious, the Simple, the Honest part of his People. Mechanick Employments and Operations were very justly the first Objects of his Favour and Observation. With this glorious Intention he travelled into Foreign Nations in an obscure Manner, above receiving little Honours where he sojourned, but prying into what was of more Consequence, their Arts of Peace and of War. By this means has this great Prince laid the Foundation of a great and lasting Fame, by personal Labour, personal Knowledge, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... colonists were yet able to follow its descent through the waves. The powerful light it gave forth lighted up the translucent water, while the cavern became gradually obscure. At length this vast effusion of electric light faded away, and soon after the "Nautilus," now the tomb of Captain Nemo, reposed ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... "the slipper will again be in the Museum from which the man of evil stole it. So it is written; obscure are the ways. We met last night, you and I, but at that time much was dark to me that now is light. The holy 'Alee spoke to me in a vision, saying: 'There are two keys to the case in which it will be locked. ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... because you're king," she said. But she did not allow her vexation to obscure her perception. Her frown gave place to a smile as she looked up, saying: "It would be rather fun if you flirted ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... fountain who shall tell? Before the Sun, 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, Though ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... there are some poor widows. It is a work of great charity, and one that prevents great offenses to God. But it receives so little aid that the girls are in need. They are barefoot and almost naked, have wretched food, and live in very narrow, obscure, and damp, and consequently unhealthy, quarters. They are treated at the hospital. They have a church, so poor that it has no one to give it a shred as an ornament. The rearing of the girls suffers great injury from their being mingled with the married women, for there is no ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... not a book in that pack. John Mackenzie, schoolmaster, had been a bondslave of books in that country for four obscure, well-nigh profitless years, and he was done with them for a while. The less a sheepman knew about books, the more he was bound to know about sheep, for sheep would be the object and aim of his existence. Mackenzie knew plenty of sheepmen ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... meaning is somewhat obscure," she retorted. "However, whether you don't mean it, or do mean it, I'll trust myself to you ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... quite out of keeping with the devout and reverential intention implied by the book spread open before her. She was not theologically instructed enough to discern very clearly the relation between the sacred documents of the past which she opened without method, and her own obscure, simple life; but the spirit of rectitude, and the sense of responsibility for the effect of her conduct on others, which were strong elements in Nancy's character, had made it a habit with her to scrutinize her past feelings and actions with self-questioning solicitude. Her mind not being courted ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... to-night—that to do His work among men He needs to use men. He needs you. "Oh!" you say, "it is hardly possible that you mean that: I am not a minister: I have no special ability for christian work: I am just an obscure, humble christian: I have no gift in that direction." Listen with your heart while I remind you that He needs not your special abilities or gifts, though He will use all you have, and the more the better, ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... became a denizen of Dreamthorp; it will be sufficient to say that I am not a born native, but that I came to reside in it a good while ago now. The several towns and villages in which, in my time, I have pitched a tent did not please, for one obscure reason or another; this one was too large, t'other too small; but when, on a summer evening about the hour of eight, I first beheld Dreamthorp, with its westward-looking windows painted by sunset, its children playing in the single ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... to press hard on men. It was driving them into an iron cul-de-sac, from which there was no escape. Suicide and madness, obscure and hideous maladies of the brain herded in it. Perhaps, after all, there had been some value in those old fairy stories. And he remembered, with a faint movement of impatience, Francey Wilmot's final shaft: "If there isn't ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Atkinson and Meyers and even the volatile Mexican lawyer, Martinez, remained unstirring, for in the situation they suddenly sensed something beyond their ken, some current of deep unknown forces, some play of fierce, obscure and fateful passion. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... my lunges prouokes me to rediculous smyling: O pardon me my stars, doth the inconsiderate take salue for lenuoy, and the word lenuoy for a salue? Pag. Doe the wise thinke them other, is not lenuoy a salue? Ar. No Page, it is an epilogue or discourse to make plaine, Some obscure precedence that hath tofore bin faine. Now will I begin your morrall, and do you follow with my lenuoy. The Foxe, the Ape, and the Humble-Bee, Were still ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... of a youthful mother with a golden-haired babe on her breast; close by showed the head and horns of a cow; the mule was mercifully sheltered too, and stood near, munching his fodder; a cluster of sheep pressed after the steps of half a dozen men, that somehow in the clare-obscure reminded him of the shepherds of old summoned by good ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... exclaims of flattery, and expectation of a large requital. Every blessing hath somewhat to disparage and distaste it; children bring cares, single life is wild and solitary, eminency is envious, retiredness obscure, fasting painful, satiety unwieldy, religion nicely severe, liberty is lawless, wealth burdensome, mediocrity contemptible. Everything faulteth, either in too much or too little. This man is ever headstrong and self-willed, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... 'Nam cum ... auspicia nostra Liguribus felix portitor nuntiasti, et sapientiae tuae allocutione firmasti, in errorem quem de occasu conceperant, ortum nostri imperii in gaudia commutabant.' Does this obscure passage indicate some revolutionary movements in Liguria after the death of Theodoric, perhaps fomented by the Frankish neighbours ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... dealt with have any claim to be called poets of the first order, and some stand very low in the scale of poetry, as a whole the poets of this period have suffered greater neglect than they deserve. Their undeniable weaknesses tend in many cases to obscure their real merits, with the result that they are at times either ignored or subjected to unduly sweeping condemnation. I have attempted in these pages to detach and illustrate their excellences without in any ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... change in her tone? The letter gave me the strongest impression of a new, warm, almost anxious interest on her part. My fancies, as first at Wampsocket, began to play all sorts of singular pranks: sometimes she was rich and of an old family, sometimes moderately poor and obscure, but always the same calm, reposeful face and clear gray eyes. I ceased looking for her in society, quite sure that I should not find her, and nursed a wild expectation of suddenly meeting her, face to face, in the most unlikely places and under ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... have been much regarded, and Whitlocke talks of one Milton, as he calls him, a blind man, who was employed in translating a treaty with Sweden into Latin. These forms of expression are amusing to posterity, who consider how obscure Whitlocke himself though lord-keeper and ambassador, and indeed a man of great abilities and merit, has become in comparison ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... in a given direction, and controlled by given attractive forces, we can determine its place at a future moment. Or given a vegetable organism in a given environment, we can predict within certain limits the way in which it will grow, although the laws are too obscure and too vague to enable us to speak of it with any approach to the precision of astronomy. And we should have reached a similar stage in sociology if from a given social or political constitution adopted by a given population, we could ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... of the ways of men unnoticed and unmourned; as a rebel, under the obscure name of another and bearing another's sins upon my shoulders, I was to pass almost unheeded to the gallows. Bardelys the Magnificent—the Marquis Marcel Saint-Pol de Bardelys, whose splendour had been a byword in France—was to go out like ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... the discard pile of a local university library. I find the book to be of exceptional historical interest in the insights it gives into the development of early modern entomological science. It also is of practical value as a source for terms that are obscure to modern users because they are ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... shortly after the apparent dismissal of Mr. Clavering. F——, then, was the only town I could think of which combined the two advantages of distance and accessibility. Although upon the railroad, it was an insignificant place, and had, what was better yet, a very obscure man for its clergyman, living, which was best of all, not ten rods from the depot. If they could meet there? Making inquiries, I found that it could be done, and, all alive to the romance of the occasion, ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... been delivered here within nine months; only last week 120 were taken in on one day, of which, at one time, no less than 16, and, at another, 30, letters were delivered. This No. 1, Park Place, is up an obscure court, consisting of three small houses, of about 5/6 rent per week. No. 1 is occupied by a man and woman, and the next door by their daughter. The proceedings of these persons have been closely watched. ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... fortunately, few communities in America that have not electric power-plants. Indeed, I know of many obscure little towns of a thousand inhabitants that have had the luxury of electric lights for years, and have as yet no gas or water-works! Miraculously, also, the smaller the town the cheaper is the cost of electricity. ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... think she should soon grow weary of a convent life; she resolved, then, to risk something in order that she might know how to act afterward. Desirous of seeing how far the discretion of the good abbess would go, she began to tell a story, obscure at first, but very circumstantial afterward, about the cardinal, relating the amours of the minister with Mme. d'Aiguillon, Marion de Lorme, and ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a decent show of gratitude, for I knew too well what it meant. It was not the enlightened, liberal Minister I had to deal with, but the hard, proud uncle, full of expediencies, and calculating schemes for family advancement, and the exaltation of a lately obscure name. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... forced to pay her scanty dollars. There were bulletins, rules, counter-rules. As she talked, Sommers caught the atmosphere of the great engine to which she had given herself. A mere isolated atom, she was set in some obscure corner of this intricate machine, and she was compelled to revolve with the rest, as the rest, in the fear of disgrace and of hunger. The terms "special teachers," "grades of pay," "constructive work," "discipline," etc., had no special significance to him, typifying ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... defending Thucydides, whom he has so admirably translated, from the charge of some obscurity in his design, observes that "Marcellinus saith he was obscure, on purpose that the common people might not understand him; and not unlikely, for a wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men), that wise men only should be able to commend him." Thus early in life Hobbes had determined on a principle which produced all his studied ambiguity, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... undertaking as equally important from the religious and from the political side. The twofold purpose of his expedition was, as he himself stated it, "to establish the Catholic faith among a numerous heathen people, submerged in the obscure darkness of paganism, and to extend the dominion of the King, our Lord, and protect this peninsula from the ambitious views of foreign nations." From the first it was his intention that the Cross and the flag of Spain should be carried side by side in the task of dominating ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... with extraordinary plainness, and often going without a fire in winter; so that she was able, through her self-sacrifice, to keep from want a large band of poor relatives and friends. The society she mixed with was various, but, for the most part, obscure. There were occasional visits from the now triumphant Mrs. Siddons; there were incessant propositions—but alas! they were equivocal—from Sir Charles Bunbury; for the rest, she passed her life among actor-managers ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... stirred below my conscious self, have felt That perfect disenthralment which is God; Nor know I which to hold worst enemy, 460 Him who on speculation's windy waste Would turn me loose, stript of the raiment warm By Faith contrived against our nakedness, Or him who, cruel-kind, would fain obscure, With painted saints and paraphrase of God, The soul's east-window of divine surprise, Where others worship I but look and long; For, though not recreant to my fathers' faith, Its forms to me are weariness, and most That drony vacuum of compulsory ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... is galloping along let us see what has happened in France, and clear up the points in the conversation between Bonaparte and his aide-de-camp which must be obscure to the reader's mind. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... manners and customs of the Merovingian epoch we cannot do better than to tell the stories of these queens, Fredegonde and Brunehild by name, whose rivalry and enmity, with their consequences, throw a striking light on the history of those obscure times. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... asperse any one; for though everything is copied from the book of nature, and scarce a character or action produced which I have not taken from my I own observations and experience; yet I have used the utmost care to obscure the persons by such different circumstances, degrees, and colours, that it will be impossible to guess at them with any degree of certainty; and if it ever happens otherwise, it is only where the failure characterized is so minute, that ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... one of her hands she bare serpents, in the other, blades of corne, her vestiment was of fine silke yeelding divers colours, sometime yellow, sometime rosie, sometime flamy, and sometime (which troubled my spirit sore) darke and obscure, covered with a blacke robe in manner of a shield, and pleated in most subtill fashion at the skirts of her garments, the welts appeared comely, whereas here and there the starres glimpsed, and in the middle of them was placed the Moone, which shone like a flame of fire, ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... accept your spirit-hypothesis. There are men, and very great investigators, who would say that your daughter's trances and all phenomena connected therewith were pathologic, explainable on the grounds of some obscure neural derangement. I do not say this is the case, but I do say that if she persists in these practices she will lose control of her mental faculties. I have had a consultation to-day with Dr. Tolman, a man who makes ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... celebrated traveller, and that European whom the savages of New France have most honored, left a description of this game in his manuscript Memorial. I would gladly have inserted it here but it is so obscure that it is nearly unintelligible." Charlevoix admits that he could understand nothing of the game, except as played by two persons in its simplest form and adds that he was told that "there was as much ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... either lessen or increase the sterility of self-sterile species; and why the individuals of some species should be even more fertile with pollen from a distinct species than with their own pollen. And so it is with many other facts, which are so obscure that we stand in awe before ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... partiality. To fail in treating all alike. Even that small programme isn't much—nor likely to please any girl; but you have failed to carry it out, small as it is. Here in this house, there on the dunes, what have I been—and where? Put into any obscure corner, lost in the woods, left off somewhere on the edge ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... effect. But, as many have raised the question, and asserted that caste had an idolatrous origin, and was the invention of an idolatrous priesthood, it may be worth while to gather together such facts as we can lay our hands on regarding this somewhat obscure subject. And it seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to clear away the rubbish which has been piled upon it in common with most Indian institutions—to ask what is evidence, and what is not. Our missionaries have asserted that caste can be clearly ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... remained. There was food in abundance at this place—raspberries, bananas, and mangoes grew in profusion; whilst the marshes were inhabited by vast flocks of geese, ducks, white ibis, and other wild-fowl. Indeed in the swamps the birds rose in such prodigious numbers as actually to obscure the face of the sun. Here for the first time I saw ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... through his exertions had amassed the large fortune which he was now enjoying. He was a merry-hearted man, with excellent sound sense on all points except one—that one being the fair sex, with which he was about as well acquainted as an alligator with a camera-obscure. The attentions paid to him by Arthurine seemed to please the old bachelor uncommonly. There was a mixture of kindness, malice, and fascination in her manner, which was really enchanting; even the matter-of-fact Richards could not take his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... are about to refer, under the title noted beneath,[8] is in some respects a curiosity. The writer, a minister settled in a mountainous parish in Lanarkshire, may be said to have made a remarkable escapade for one in his obscure situation and reverend calling. With an immense and unclerical flow of animal spirits, evidently as fond of travelling as old William Lithgow, and as garrulous as Rae Wilson, of whose class he is a surviving ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... three: Always be in the fashion. They are not very hard to remember, because they art neither obscure nor profound. ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... 1880, and 1881 will tell you of their deeds. But things were happening fast when those deeds took place. There was, if one may be allowed to use a poetic figure, a good deal of powder-smoke floating in the air to obscure the vision. And so although no men were ever more just in passing judgment than these same old-timers, the story ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... have a little conversation with you. You are aware how much I feel indebted to you for the service you have rendered me, and how anxious I am to show my gratitude. You are born for better things than to remain an obscure forester, and perhaps a deer-stalker. I have now an offer to make to you, which I trust, upon reflection, you will not refuse—and I say reflection, because I do not wish you to give an answer till you have well reflected. I know that you will not accept any thing under the present ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... as the time when preparation flowered into achievement, solid, durable, and brilliant. It may be interesting to Americans to recall that his age was nearly the same as that of Farragut when the latter assumed the charge in which, after long years of obscure preparation, he also reaped his harvest of glory. It is likewise worthy of note that this happy selection was made wholly independent of the political bias, which till then had so often and unworthily controlled naval appointments. Jervis belonged ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... more could be furnished by the owners of other "Spelling Dogs." Indeed, the more reckoning and spelling dogs there are the sooner will the value of this new method become generally recognized and the easier will it be to rid the truth of any errors that may still obscure it. Here in Stuttgart my Lectures delivered on the subject have so far led to the training of four dogs in counting as well as spelling, this having been done with best results. In addition to these, I myself have a dog, "Ava," by name a daughter of Lola, who is already proficient in both ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... the deck, sits on the companion-seat, and in a pensive mood watches the fading hills where slavery stains the fair name of freedom,—where oppression rears its dark monuments to for ever torture and disgrace a harmless race. She looks intently upon them, as one by one they fade in the obscure horizon, seeming to recall the many associations, pleasant and painful, through which she has passed. She turns from the contemplation to the deep blue sea, and the unclouded arch of heaven, as they spread out before her: they are God's own, man cannot pollute them; ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... result until after the third paroxysm. If symptoms of improvement had become manifest, no other remedy was given, and the improvement was permitted to progress from day to day. If the signs of psoric complication were obscure at the beginning of the attack, Apis was at once given. If no improvement became visible after the third paroxysm, or if other symptoms developed themselves, this was looked upon as a proof of the existence of psora, and Natrum mur. 30 was given, and no other ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... Charles I., one Peter Crewys, an adventurous younger son of this obscure but ancient Devonshire family, had gained local notoriety by raising a troop of enthusiastic yeomen for his Majesty's service; subsequently his own reckless personal gallantry won wider recognition in many an affray with the parliamentary troops; and on the death of his ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... however, as he disliked the accumulation of accidental variations, he disliked not claiming the theory of descent with modification still more; and if he was to claim this, accidental his variations had got to be. Accidental they accordingly were, but in as obscure and perfunctory a fashion as Mr. Darwin could make them consistently with their being to hand as accidental variations should later developments make this convenient. Under these circumstances it was ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... of the Negro's work in the army and the record of its brilliant achievements may in some degree obscure the service rendered our country and its Allies by the Negro in the navy, but the Negro was represented in this branch of the military service almost in the same proportion, and, just as with Perry on Lake Erie, Farragut on the Mississippi, Dewey at Manila Bay, ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... to know. I can quite appreciate your state of mind, maternal anxiety, and all that. To have been in terror for fear your son would marry Marcia Oldham and then discover that he is really interested in me! It illuminates that passage in Paradise Lost, does it not? It is sometimes considered obscure. You doubtless recall it. Something about 'and in the lowest depths a lower ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... the Astor House, notwithstanding the trouble he had taken to ask his way thither. He coasted along the more obscure thoroughfares, seeming to find something congenial in them. Here were people, many of whom had also committed crimes, whose eyes he need not shun to meet, who were his brethren. To be sure, they gave him no friendly glances, taking him for some dainty aristocrat, whom idle curiosity ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... which compels its victims to recognize that to denounce it means the utter ruin, so far as all their worldly interests are concerned, of those who dare to do so. This infamous organization for making merchandise of girls and boys, and defenceless men and women, has adroitly sought to obscure a situation concerning which all honest people are entirely clear, by saying that vice cannot be wholly suppressed. Nobody has made upon the authorities of New York any such grotesque demand. All that our citizens have asked is that the government of the ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... slowly and sorrowfully he directed his course to Armine. Had they arrived? The stern presence of reality was too much for all his slight and glittering visions. What was he, after all? This future conqueror was a young officer on leave, obscure except in his immediate circle, with no inheritance, and very much in debt; awaited with anxiety by his affectionate parents, and a young lady whom he was about to marry for her fortune! Most impotent ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... great persuasion was needed to turn a simple, imaginative, fatalistic people from a few vague animistic deities to the systematic iconology and the elaborate ritual of the Spanish Church. An obscure Bathala or a dim Malyari was easily superseded by or transformed into a clearly defined Dios, and in the case of any especially tenacious "demon," he could without much difficulty be merged into ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... time that the horseman left Lieursaint for Paris, the Lyons mail arrived there from Paris, and changed horses. It was about half-past eight, and the night had been obscure for some time. The courier, having charged horses and taken a fresh postilion, set forth to traverse the long forest of Senart. The mail, at this epoch, was very different from what it is at present. It was a simple post-chaise, with a raised box behind, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... In an obscure lodging, Dyce awaited the day of destiny. One evening he went to dine at West Hampstead; though he was rather late, Iris had not yet come home, and she had left no message to explain her absence. He waited a quarter of an hour. When at length his betrothed came hurrying into ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... American genealogy for you, said Marmaduke, laughing. It does very well till you get across the water, where, as everything is obscure, it is certain to deal in the superlative. You are sure that your English progenitor was great, Dickon, whatever his profession might ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... think, the only history worth any man's pursuit must push its way, again and again, through this same tangled territory which infests the region lying between truth and fantasy; one passes suddenly into a world that seems pure falsehood, so askew, so obscure, so twisted and coloured is it. One is through, one looks back and it lies behind one as the clearest truth. Such an experience makes one tender to other men's fancies and less impatient of the vague and half-defined travellers' tales ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... good to talk of him, his Biographers, in time subsequent, are called to notice the matter, as part of his Life-element, and characteristic of the world he had round him. Friedrich's affairs were much a wonder to his contemporaries. Especially his Domesticities, an item naturally obscure to the outer world, were wonderful; sure to be commented upon, to all lengths; and by the unintelligent, first of all. Of contemporary mankind, as we have sometimes said, nobody was more lied of:—of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... identity is lost among them. Occasionally you talk with a man whom you have never before heard of, and are struck by the brightness of a thought, and fancy that there is more wisdom hidden among the obscure than is anywhere revealed among the famous. You adopt the universal habit of the place, and call for a mint-julep, a whiskey-skin, a gin-cocktail, a brandy-smash, or a glass of pure Old Rye; for the conviviality ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... this kingdome, or that I will ascribe vnto my selfe to giue any iudiciall approbation or allowance to things mearely vnfrequented, doe I publish, within my booke, this relation of the setting of Corne, but onely because I would not haue our English Husbandman to be ignorant of any skill or obscure faculty which is either proper to his profession, or agreeable with the fertillitie and nature of our clymates, and the rather, since some few yeeres agoe, this (as it then appeared secret) being with much admiration bruted ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... humanity as He measured them. And now, in the perfect mercy of God, there is no man but may dwell in the house of God alway and feel life's sacredness amidst a thousand desecrations, and know its preciousness amidst all that seeks to obscure, defile, and cheapen it. ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... I had which, as it could be had only on a Saturday night, occasionally struggled with my love of the Opera; for at that time Tuesday and Saturday were the regular opera nights. On this subject I am afraid I shall be rather obscure, but I can assure the reader not at all more so than Marinus in his Life of Proclus, or many other biographers and autobiographers of fair reputation. This pleasure, I have said, was to be had only on a Saturday night. ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... well! The data obtainable about the ancient gods in their days of adversity are few and far between: a quotation here and there from the Fathers; two or three legends; Venus reappearing; the persecutions of Apollo in Styria; Proserpina going, in Chaucer, to reign over the fairies; a few obscure religious persecutions in the Middle Ages on the score of Paganism; some strange rites practiced till lately in the depths of a Breton forest near Lannion.... As to Tannhaeuser, he was a real knight, and a sorry one, and a real Minnesinger not of the best. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... many women busy with the obscure daily tasks of the household. Why did you single me out and bring me away from the cool shelter of ...
— The Gardener • Rabindranath Tagore
... Mr. Muller's theory is, that it makes the mystery no clearer. When Greeks were so advanced in Hellenism that their own early language had become obsolete and obscure, they invented the god [Greek], to account for the patronymic (as they deemed it) [Greek], son of [Greek]. But why did they tell such savage and revolting stories about the god they had invented? Mr. Muller only ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... so early dots the sunny slopes, and upon which the bee languidly grazes, wallowing to his knees in the golden but not over-succulent pasturage. From the blooming rye and wheat the bee gathers pollen, also from the obscure blossoms of Indian corn. Among weeds, catnip is the great favorite. It lasts nearly the whole season and yields richly. It could no doubt be profitably cultivated in some localities, and catnip honey would be a novelty in the market. It would probably partake of the aromatic ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... ill-judged step than the removal of the Choir hither, towards the latter portion of the last century. To give it such stinted proportions, and for this purpose to displace some of the fine old monuments, and to hide others, to obscure the pillars, and, above all, to erect the miserable organ gallery which we now behold, may surely be pronounced most tasteless performances"[24] When he wrote, the proposal was to replace Walsingham's stalls ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ely • W. D. Sweeting
... introduced. Instance also the inestimable favour which he conferred on me by receiving you into his house, when you had only the unpleasant alternative of remaining, though a grown-up lad, in the society of mere boys. [The diminutive and obscure place called Brown's Square, was hailed about the time of its erection as an extremely elegant improvement upon the style of designing and erecting Edinburgh residences. Each house was, in the phrase used by appraisers, 'finished within itself,' or, in the still newer ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... which had been often whispered and repeatedly denied, the Rajah of Kashgar had presented this officer with the sixth largest known diamond of the world. The gift transformed General Vandeleur from a poor into a wealthy man, from an obscure and unpopular soldier into one of the lions of London society; the possessor of the Rajah's Diamond was welcome in the most exclusive circles; and he had found a lady, young, beautiful, and well-born, who was willing to call the diamond hers even at the price of marriage ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... edition is the first in which any attempt has been made to illustrate, in footnotes, not merely the obscure passages in the text, but also the subsequent experience of the United States and other countries where they relate to the views expressed by the authors. The most authentic text has been used; the antiquated and often absurd punctuation—largely due to ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... more evil; this is the nature of man. If we do not like a man, we wish that he may become worse than he is, and then we are glad. This forms part of the obscure philosophy of hate—a philosophy which has never yet been written, because it is everywhere the pudendum ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... blood-circulating chemical substances, have been discovered the real governors and arbiters of instincts and dispositions, emotions and reactions, characters and temperaments, good and bad. A huge complex of evidence, as various, complicated and obscure as human nature ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... following account of the innate love of flesh displayed by the tiger:—"A party of gentlemen from Bombay, one day visiting the stupendous temple of Elephants, discovered a tiger's whelp in one of the obscure recesses. Desirous of kidnapping the cub, without encountering the fury of its dam, they took it up hastily and cautiously retreated. Being left entirely at liberty, and extremely well fed, the tiger grew rapidly, appeared tame, and in every respect domesticated. At length, when it had ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... midst of these fetes, amid all this acclamation of whole cities rushing out to meet him, eager to serve as his escort, under these arches of triumph which were erected to him sometimes even at the entrance of an obscure village, his abstraction was deeper than ever, and his heart more oppressed with care; for his thoughts were from this time filled with the expedition to Russia. And perhaps into this amenity of manner, this friendliness, and these acts of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and there, which bore him out. It was the first time that Martin Hillyard had come across this symbol, and he was utterly at a loss to conjecture the kind of man the symbol hid. He might be quite obscure, the tenant of some suburban shop, or, again, quite prominent in the public eye, the owner of a fine house, and generous in charities; he might be of any nationality. But there he was, somewhere under the oak-trees of ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... wartime feeling in every political campaign. His admiration for the heroes of the war was in no wise shaken at New Haven, but he first realized there that new issues demanded attention. He grew impatient of all attempts to obscure these by harking back to questions that the war had finally determined, if it had served any purpose whatever. He broke a lance frequently with the young men who turned over the books in Wright and Fitch's ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... officer ignored the obvious needling, saying merely, "It is quite true that the glider was first flown by an obscure inventor in the Ukraine, however, that is not what particularly interests us today, major. Perhaps the commission will find that the use of the glider is permitted for observation, however, it is obvious that before the year 1900 by no stretch ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... pass him by— We dare be poor for a' that. For a' that, and a' that, Our toils obscure and a' that; The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson |
