"Obscurity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dozen words, but he chuckled now and again, rolled about in his seat and gave other tokens of satisfaction at the turn which things were taking. This, however, did not prevent him, from the comparative obscurity of the corner which he occupied, closely watching the features of the visitor, and ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... friends who can properly delineate her; for we must always have recourse, in some degree, to conjecture, in order to discover the genuine qualities of the soul. They may be concealed from our knowledge by celebrity as well as obscurity, if some sort of sympathy does not assist us to penetrate them." He enlarged upon her talent for extemporisation, which did not resemble any thing of that description known in Italy. "It is not only to the fecundity of her mind that we ought to attribute it;" said he; ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... lock he turned. The gaoler had left him with no light but the rays of the moon, which, shining through a barred window some eight or ten feet from the ground, shed a gleam upon a miserable truckle-bed and left the rest of the room in deep obscurity. The prisoner stood still for a moment and listened; then, when he had heard the steps die away in the distance and knew himself to be alone at last, he fell upon the bed with a cry more like the roaring ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... reached Sommers. He learned, chiefly through the newspapers, that Mr. R. G. Carson had emerged from the obscurity of Chicago and had become a celebrity upon the metropolitan stage after "the successful flotation of several specialties." Mr. Brome Porter, he gathered from the same source, had built himself a house in New York, and altogether shaken the dust of Chicago from his feet. Sommers passed him ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Sceptic Soul' was too fine for ordinary intellects, Mab?" he said. "You lost yourself in an ocean of obscurity. You knew what you meant, but there's no man alive who could follow you. You ought to have remembered Voltaire's definition of a metaphysical discussion, a conversation in which the man who is talked to doesn't understand the man who talks, and the man who talks doesn't understand ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... of sickly yellow light shone for a moment and was then suddenly blotted out by a rolling mass of vapour. The clouds had closed in again once more. The obscurity was ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... than with the deliberate intention of betraying their country. Kosciuszko was ill-versed, either by nature, training, or inclination in the art of politics; but through this tangled web of perplexity and uncertainty, when present and future were equally enveloped in obscurity, his singleness of aim supplied him with the unerring instinct with which through the whole of his life he met and unmasked the pitfalls that were spread before the unhappiest and the most cruelly betrayed ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... commands. "When ten o'clock strikes, tap at this window with your sword." He pointed as he spoke to the wall of the castle, and in that wall Lagardere, peering through the obscurity, could faintly discern a window about a man's height from the moat. The speaker went on: "A woman will open. Whisper very low, 'I ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a certain spot some red and yellow lamps, lamps the beams of which seemed to be saying, "Come up hither!" were shining through the obscurity. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... in his home, at one stroke of his magic brush Murillo raised himself and a monastic order from obscurity to greatness. In his native city was the order of San Francisco. The monks had long wished to have their convent decorated in a worthy manner by some artist of repute; but they were poor and had never been able to engage such a painter. When Murillo got back ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... discovered a gate of steel, and the old man told Dakianos to open it. Dakianos obeyed with such eager haste that he broke the door open with his foot, though the key was in the lock. They both of them entered into a vault, without being discouraged by the great obscurity which reigned there. After having gone some steps, a faint light enabled them to distinguish objects. The farther they advanced, the more the light increased. They found themselves at last before a large and magnificent palace, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... same root as the word "ignorance." It means an unknown, inglorious person. And no more singular follies have been committed by weak human creatures than those which have been caused by the instinct, pure and simple, of escaping from this obscurity. Instinct, which, corrupted, will hesitate at no means, good or evil, of satisfying itself with notoriety—instinct, nevertheless, which, like all other natural ones, has a true and pure purpose, and ought always in a worthy ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... would endure her presence if it could be avoided! She had sufficient insight to the minds and feelings of those around her to be aware of this. And now her husband had told her that her tyranny to him was so overbearing that he must throw up his great position, and retire to an obscurity that would be exceptionally disgraceful to them both, because he could no longer endure the public disgrace which her conduct brought upon him in his high place before the world! Her heart was too full for speech; and she left him, very quietly ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... TENEBRIS.—The device of "Lux ex tenebris" teacheth, that when man is enlightened by reason, he is able to penetrate the darkness and obscurity which ignorance ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... penetrated to Myrtle Forge. It was a most fortunate accident. The vulgarity consequent upon discovery would have been unbearable. Stephen Jannan, his cousin, a lawyer of wide city connections, must have learned something of the truth; but Stephen, properly, had said nothing; a comfortable obscurity had hid him from gabbled scandal. Now, soon, it would all be over. Unconsciously he drew a deeper breath of ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... struck Mary that Katharine, in the shade of her broad-brimmed hat, and in the midst of the smoke, and in the obscurity of her character, was, perhaps, smiling to herself, not altogether in the maternal spirit. What she said was very simple, but her words, even "Your tea, William," were set down as gently and cautiously and exactly as the feet of a Persian cat stepping among China ornaments. ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... portion of our country is veiled in the deepest obscurity. Here we shall have the free-thinking German, the bigoted Roman Catholic, the atheistic Frenchman, and the latitudinarian Yankee, in one grand heterogeneous conglomeration of nations and ideas such as the world has never seen. Whether these diverse peculiarities ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... substituted, amended and unamended, is contained in twenty-seven closely printed pages. I venture to assert boldly that any competent lawyer who is also a good parliamentary draftsman could put those twenty-seven pages of obscurity into four pages, at most, of lucidity, with two days' honest work. By how little wisdom the world is governed! And how little the representatives of the people care for the litigation or trouble or expense that their own slovenliness causes the people! For the necessity of political compromise is ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... north of Germany; one place after another was lost; and at Leipzic the flower of the Austrian army had fallen. The intelligence of this defeat soon reached the ears of Wallenstein, who, in the retired obscurity of a private station in Prague, contemplated from a calm distance the tumult of war. The news, which filled the breasts of the Roman Catholics with dismay, announced to him the return of greatness and good fortune. For him was Gustavus ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... periods, moreover, hieroglyphic writing was a branch of decorative art, and it may have been that the ancient Egyptian, like the modern Turk, resented too much lucidity, and liked his literary compositions to be veiled in a certain obscurity. The alphabet devised by the Egyptians consisted of twenty-four letters. Egyptologists are at variance on the question whether this alphabet was the original, or had any influence upon the development of the Phoenician alphabet. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... dramatic critics (and many of them are personal friends) fell on Salome with all the vigour of their predecessors twelve years before. Unaware of what was taking place in Germany, they spoke of the play as having been 'dragged from obscurity.' The Official Receiver in Bankruptcy and myself were, however, better informed. And much pleasure has been derived from reading those criticisms, all carefully preserved along with the list of receipts which were simultaneously pouring in from ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... their prey, and, with the joy Of meaner natures, far and wide From deep obscurity they glide, The dying ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... but the preposition ex gives to the word the idea of something brought out of its obscurity to light. The matter had already been discussed on the ground of certain rumours. [150] About decrevit, with the mere subjunctive, without ut, see Zumpt, S 624. [151] Parare should properly be parandi; but ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... of Samaria; I feel a passion for glory; give me leave to seek it amidst the perils of war. My father, the sultan of Harran, has many enemies. Why does he not call me to his assistance? Why does he leave me here so long in obscurity? Must I spend my life in sloth, when all my brothers have the happiness to be fighting by his side?" "My son," answered Pirouz, "I am no less impatient to have your name become famous; I could wish you had already ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... by a nom de guerre. Dropping the 'Richardson,' I signed my productions 'George Anthony,' and as 'George Anthony' the playgoing public now discusses me. For some while, I will confess, the precaution was superfluous, the managers having apparently entered into league to ensure me as much obscurity as I had any use for. But at length in an unguarded moment the manager of the Duke of Cornwall's Theatre (formerly the Euterpe) accepted a three-act farce. It was poorly acted, yet for some reason it took the town. 'Larks ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... highest degree." Whether for the reason suggested, or for some other, Clerk never actually gained any other distinction so great as his friendship with Scott conferred upon him. Probably Scott had discerned the true secret of his friend's comparative obscurity. Even while preparing for the bar, when they had agreed to go on alternate mornings to each other's lodgings to read together, Scott found it necessary to modify the arrangement by always visiting his friend, whom he usually found in bed. It was William Clerk who sat for ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... Ourson knew which way to turn their steps in order to reach the farm. They were in the midst of a wood. Violette was reclining against the tree which had been her refuge from the wild boar. They dared not quit this spot lest in the obscurity they might not find as comfortable ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... statements made, concerning the condition of widows in India. The condition of a widow is of necessity a trying one in any country. She often has to exchange a position of affluence and importance for one of poverty and obscurity. The Indian widow is at any rate sure of a home and support from her relations, which is not always the case with the English widow. The stripping of the ornaments, the shaving of the head, the shabby garments, the meagre food, the hard work, and the despised position of the Indian ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... and lie flat on his stomach. He then opened the carriage door and found within a young man and lady motionless with fright. Whispering to me to imitate him, we began to enter one door and go out the other, so that in the obscurity the poor young people thought they saw a procession of bandits ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... one year more of obscurity. I may be able to do much more that way. In one year from now I shall be married, as I told you. Well, when I have a wife she must come to town, and make acquaintances; and so I shall be known in any case. Let me have it then, if I want it—as a wedding gift; ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... debates whether to become a clergyman; is "Pippa Passes" a drama? estimate of the poem; Browning's rambles on Wimbledon Common and in Dulwich Wood, where he composed his lines upon Shelley; asserts there is romance in Camberwell as well as in Italy; "Sordello"; the charge of obscurity against "Sordello"; the nature and intention of the poem; quotations therefrom; anecdote about Douglas Jerrold; Tennyson's, Carlyle's, and M. Odysse Barot's opinions on "Sordello"; "enigmatic" poetry; in 1863 ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... on the top rail, intently surveyed my neighbour's pasture. No brown cow was to be seen. At the crossing of the brook I shouldered my way from the road down a path among the alders, thinking the brown cow might have gone that way to obscurity. ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... went forth to a foreign land bearing the full blessings of our reformed Church, was consecrated to his Apostolic office, not amid the solemn pomp and august ceremonial of an English minister, no, nor in the privacy of an episcopal palace, but in the obscurity of an upper chamber in a common dwelling-house in Aberdeen." [Footnote: Bishop of St. Andrews; Mending of the Nets, p.17 (ed. 1884).] If, as has sometimes been generously said, this noble act of faith and charity has afforded a new and signal illustration of our ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes" given them as new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden; it was ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... of the Epistolae and the Dialogue is involved in obscurity. That Ulrich von Hutten had a large share in their concoction there can be no doubt; and that he was assisted by Crotus Rubianus and Hermann von Busch, if not by others, seems highly probable. The authorship of Lamentationes ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... and probably in the immediate vicinity of York; he was descended from affluent and noble parents; but history is especially barren on this subject, and we have no information to instruct us respecting the antiquity of his Saxon ancestry. But if obscurity hangs around his birth, so soon as he steps into the paths of learning and ranks with the students of his day, we are no longer in doubt or perplexity; but are able from that period to his death to trace the occurrences of his life with all ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... privately, if not publicly, assert themselves as immeasurably superior. The success of a Dumas is to them a puzzle and an irritation. They do not understand that a man becomes distinguished in virtue of some special talent properly directed; and that their obscurity is due either to the absence of a special talent, or to its misdirection. They may probably be superior to Dumas in general culture, or various ability; it is in particular ability that they are his inferiors. They ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... took up exactly the same ground as the bishop, and resigned his office as a protest against the policy of the Association. His action had the desired effect; the shadowy "dean and canons of Lyttelton" vanished into obscurity, and the Association itself shortly afterwards came to an end. It was composed of many noble and high-minded men; but, as one of them put it, they were an "association of amateurs," and they made mistakes ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... association, and of imagination, which aroused thoughts that were intensely animating and absorbing. The taunt of a Virginia newspaper that Harrison should remain in his log cabin on the banks of the Ohio made the log cabin "a symbol," as Weed happily expressed it, "of virtue that dwells in obscurity, of the hopes of the humble, of the privations of the poor, of toil and danger, of hospitality and charity and frugality." Log cabins sprang up like gourds in a night. At the door, stood the cider barrel, and, hanging by the window, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... has much that is interesting to say about men and women, and packs her thought (I risk the "her") into a quasi-Meredithian form of phrasing which does not always escape obscurity. But how much better this than a limpid flow of words without notable content! Souls in the Making (CHAPMAN AND HALL) is mainly an analysis of two love episodes in the life of a young man, the liberally ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... Swiss, Morgarten has always taken the first place in the long record of heroic victories that since 1315 has made the fame of Swiss arms second to none in Europe. This victory at once brought the Waldstaette out of their long obscurity, and placed them in the front rank as powerful and respected states ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Don Alvaro, she is beside herself," gasped out Alvarado hoarsely. "'Tis all my fault. I loved her so deeply that she caught the feeling in her own heart. When I am gone she will forget me. You have raised me from obscurity, you have loaded me with honor, you have given me every opportunity—I will be true. I will be faithful to you. 'Twill be death, but I hope it may come quickly. Misjudge me not, sweet lady. Happiness smiles not upon my passion, sadness marks me for her own. I pray God 'twill be but for a little ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... him. "My dear, this is really charming—almost as charming as the Posthof." The crowd spread from the open vestibule of the hotel and the shelter of its branching pavilion roofs until it was dimmed in the obscurity of the low grove across the way in an ultimate depth where the musicians were giving the afternoon concert. Between its two stationary divisions moved a current of promenaders, with some such effect as if the colors of a lovely garden should have liquefied and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... in small affairs as well as in great, and the human mind has not changed materially since the first days of story telling. Indeed, some one has said that all the stories ever told can be traced to less than a dozen original plots, whose origin is lost in obscurity. But if we can neither find nor invent a new story we can at least ring the changes on the old ones, and in this lies our hope to-day. Each one of these old plots is capable of an infinite variety of phases, and what ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... extract from Brayley's "London" to the above in the form of a note: "Hurlingham Field is now the property of the Earl of Ranelagh, and the site of his house. It was here that great numbers of people were buried during the plague." The origin of the name seems lost in obscurity, though it has been suggested, perhaps facetiously, it was derived from the custom of hurling the bodies of the plague dead into any grave without care or compunction. Broom House, next door, with adjoining grounds, is noticed in Rocque's ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... the revelations of Zechariah were too obscure to be understood by the prophet without explanation, as appears from his narration of them; the visions of Daniel could not be understood by him even after they had been explained, and this obscurity did not arise from the difficulty of the matter revealed (for being merely human affairs, these only transcended human capacity in being future), but solely in the fact that Daniel's imagination was not so capable for prophecy while he ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... the shop, and the smell of fustian absorbed the air. The owner, who wore an intricately-patterned tie, stood on the pavement and talked to a friend, while a youth, pale through living in obscurity, lured Helen in. ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... of Napoleon" killed Sir Walter Scott. Industry and intellectual power, if unaided by more attractive qualities, will equally fail of success; they will produce a respectable work, valuable as a book of reference, which will slumber in forgotten obscurity in our libraries. The combination of the two is requisite to lasting fame, to general and durable success. What is necessary in an historian, as in the elite of an army, is not the desultory fire of light troops, nor the ordinary steadiness of common soldiers, but the regulated ardour, the burning ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... assistance was requisite in procuring addresses from the Catholic counties; then they were cajoled and caressed, feared and flattered, and given to understand that "the Union would do every thing;" but the moment it was passed, they were driven back with contempt into their former obscurity. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... by the name of Malays. This is a more considerable error, and productive of greater confusion than the former. By attempting to reduce things to heads too general we defeat the very end we propose to ourselves in defining them at all: we create obscurity where we wish to throw light. On the other hand, to attempt enumerating and distinguishing the variety, almost endless, of petty sovereignties and nations into which this island is divided, many ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... a curious one, being in the form of a vast hall, with three smaller chambers opening out of it. The central hall seemed to have no roof, for although brightly lighted by several torches fixed to its rugged walls the upper part was lost in profound obscurity. ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... falling on his knees he went to the window and lifted his face to the whitening sky . . . . Slowly out of the obscurity of the earth's shadow emerged the vague outlines of familiar things until they stood sharply material, in a silence as of death. A sparrow twittered, and suddenly the familiar, soot-grimed roofs were bathed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... that nothing befalls us that is not of the nature of ourselves. There comes no adventure but wears to our soul the shape of our everyday thoughts; and deeds of heroism are but offered to those who, for many long years, have been heroes in obscurity and silence. And whether you climb up the mountain or go down the hill to the valley, whether you journey to the end of the world or merely walk round your house, none but yourself shall you meet on the highway of fate. If Judas go forth to-night, it is towards ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... which Lord Byron is not unlikely to have consulted, I find a passage quoted from Gillies's History of Greece, which contains, perhaps, the first seed of the thought thus expanded into full perfection by genius:—"The present state of Greece compared to the ancient is the silent obscurity of the grave contrasted with the vivid lustre of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... things on the Puritan side, combined to render it a general favorite. The reception of Part II., which appeared a year subsequent, was equally flattering. Yet its author seems to have fallen into the greatest poverty and obscurity, from which be never was enabled to emerge. It appears to have been his strange fate to flash all at once into notoriety, which lasted precisely two years, to fill the court and town during that time with continuous laughter, intermingled with inquiries who and what he was, and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Grandfather, "our chair, after all, was not destined to spend the remainder of its days in the inglorious obscurity of a garret. Thomas Hutchinson, lieutenant-governor of the province, was told of Sir Francis Bernard's design. This gentleman was more familiar with the history of New England than any other man alive. He knew all the adventures and vicissitudes through which ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... completed by expert hands; she like the ship gathers way and slides forth into an ocean: but, unlike the ship which is certain to float, the waters may close over and engulf her, or perchance she may be towed back to that haven of obscurity from which she emerged, to rust there in silence and neglect. There is excitement in the breast of one man alone—to wit, the author. If his book possesses one supreme qualification she will escape the fate mentioned, and this qualification is—interest. As the weeks lengthened into ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... the obscurity, the uncertainty, the shyness of it that charmed him most. It was the shyness, the uncertainty, the obscurity in her that held him, made it difficult to remove himself when he sank into that deep chair by her fireside, and she became silent and turned from him her small brooding face. It was ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... this cavern wherein she has plunged me. I will foment 'my lord's' passion, till 'my lord' thinks 'the passion' (a butterfly's passion!) worth any price. I will then make my own terms, bind 'my lord' to secrecy, and get rid of my wife, my shame, and the obscurity of Mr. Welford forever. Bright, bright prospects! let me shut my eyes to enjoy you! But softly! my noble friend calls himself a man of the world, skilled in human nature, and a derider of its prejudices; true enough, in his own little way—thanks not ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and found himself almost in darkness, for the big windows on either side of the door were shuttered, and only a tiny flame, like a spark, burned somewhere among the dense shadows of the interior at some distance from him. Pretending to be alarmed at the obscurity, he put out his hand gropingly, and let it light on her arm, then slip down to her ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... loss what to do in this dilemma, and our path seemed enveloped in obscurity. We remembered, that "to the upright there ariseth a light in the darkness," (Ps. 112, 4): that is, to them who fear and trust in the Lord, and sincerely desire to know and do His will, He will reveal it. In His name we had entered ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... ignorant of the Latin language is like being in a fine country on a misty day. The horizon is extremely limited. Nothing can be seen clearly except that which is quite close; a few steps beyond, everything is buried in obscurity. But the Latinist has a wide view, embracing modern times, the Middle Age and Antiquity; and his mental horizon is still further enlarged if he ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the world," he said to himself often; "that is a great mercy. No doubt there is evil here, as everywhere; but it is not gilded, it is not attractive. For my children's sake I am glad to live in obscurity, to keep them ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... reconcile his feelings with the frightful addition to his hoard of knowledge: in other words, he sought strenuously to mix the sketch of the prince with the dregs of the elixir coming from the portrait of Adiante; and now she sank into obscurity behind the blackest of brushes, representing her incredible husband; and now by force of some natural light she broke through the ugly mist and gave her adored the sweet lines and colours of the features he had lost. There was an ebb and flow of the struggle, until, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the sense of sight—except for that, it might have been, from its suddenness and overwhelming force, some mob of phantoms trooping on a sudden out of some vista of the spiritual world visible across an open space, and about to vanish again in obscurity. That empty street was full now on this side and that so far as she could see; the young men were gone—running or walking she hardly knew—round the corner to the right, and the entire space was one stream of heads ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... is a thing not hastily to be condemned, to clothe and adorn the obscurity even of philosophy itself with sensible and plausible elocution. For hereof we have great examples in Xenophon, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, and of Plato also in some degree; and hereof likewise there is great ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... resigned his post and returned to Austria, where his brother, the emperor, refused even to see him, probably fearing assassination. Matthias took up his residence at Lintz, where he lived for some time in obscurity and penury. His imperial brother would neither give him help nor employment. The restless prince fretted like a tiger ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... there is that something exists other than what I see I have sought whether this God of Whom every one talks may not have left some marks of Himself. I search everywhere, and see only obscurity everywhere. Nature offers me nothing but matter of possible doubt and disquiet. If I saw there nothing to mark a divinity, I should make up my mind to believe nothing of it. If I saw everywhere the marks of a Creator, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... he was passing a certain mean-looking house in one of the less important thoroughfares, his attention was attracted to a scene which caused him to stop before the house; and, resting in the obscurity of a great recessed doorway on the opposite side of the way, to observe with much interest what took place in the ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... and, perhaps, if we look five or six hundred years backwards, might be related to some persons of very great figure at present, whose ancestors within half the last century are buried in as great obscurity. But suppose, for argument's sake, we should admit that he had no ancestors at all, but had sprung up, according to the modern phrase, out of a dunghill, as the Athenians pretended they themselves did from the earth, would not this autokopros[A] have been justly entitled ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... turn of mind; many years ago they established a subscription library, to which Mr Telford, the celebrated engineer, who was a native of the parish, bequeathed a legacy of a thousand pounds. The rustic poet suddenly emerged from his obscurity, when he was encouraged to publish a volume entitled "The Vale of Esk, and other Poems," Edin., 1833, 12mo. About the same period he became a contributor of poetry to Blackwood's Magazine, and a writer of prose articles in the provincial newspapers. On the death of Dr Brown, in 1837, he took, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... present at academic robings. Within six months of leaving school, M. P. married and settled down in her native township; and thereafter she was forced to adjust the rate of her progress to the steps of halting little feet. Cupid went a-governessing, and spent the best years of her life in the obscurity of ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... the long, fumbling process of partial disrobing. They scarcely looked at one another, and yet they were acutely conscious of the interest each felt in the other. The grateful warmth of the room, the abrupt transition from gloom and cheerlessness to comfortable obscurity, had a more pronounced effect on the ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... seas, the sun, the infernal shade, And all his worlds. In one collected beam Heaven's various rays around his temples gleam, Yet veil with dusky cloud the lustre pure, Whose fulness no archangel can endure. In bright obscurity he sits sublime, And tranquil looks thro' all the ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... progress; they crowded along the foot of the cliffs like protecting bulwarks, and the trail wound around them on a higher plane. But this trail she dared not follow, there was not enough darkness on it. She crept along the base, the sense of danger coming to her with the increasing obscurity, until suddenly she stood before a cleft of almost inky hue. Here she remembered was the ascent to the estufa, here she had to perform the work, and here overpowered by emotion and excitement she dropped behind an angular block ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... undoubted talent. By his own individual efforts, though with small scruple as to the means he employed, he had raised himself from obscurity to a very enviable position. He had only once in his life been carried away by the weakness of a personal enmity, and he had been made to pay heavily for his caprice. If Donna Tullia had abandoned him when he was driven out of Rome by the influence ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... dedication of "The Traveller," Goldsmith refers to his brother Henry as "a man who, despising fame and fortune, has retired early to happiness and obscurity, with an income ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... the sepulcher of care, and in a few months found a deeper and far more quiet grave. His mercantile embarrassments had dragged his father-in-law to ruin; and, too aged to toil up the steep again, the latter resigned himself to spending the remainder of his days in obscurity, and perhaps want. To Clara's gifted mother he looked for aid and comfort in the clouded evening of life, and with unceasing energy she toiled to shield her father and her child from actual labor. Thoroughly acquainted with music and drawing, her days were spent in giving lessons in those ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... know. There are plenty of shabby, low aims in all of us which do not bear being dragged out into the light of day. I beseech you to try and get hold of the ugly things and bring them up to the surface, however much they may seek to hide in the congenial obscurity and twist their slimy coils round something in the dark. If you dare not put your life's object into words, bethink yourselves whether it ought to be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... Lamotte was apprehended at Bar-sur-Aube; her husband had already gone to England. From the beginning of this fatal affair all the proceedings of the Court appear to have been prompted by imprudence and want of foresight; the obscurity resulting left free scope for the fables of which the voluminous memorials written on one side and the other consisted. The Queen so little imagined what could have given rise to the intrigue, of which she was about to become the victim, that, at the moment when the King was interrogating ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... million dollars, is called Riverside; but, save in the rainy season, one looks in vain for the stream from which it takes its name. The river has retired, as so many western rivers do, to wander in obscurity six feet below the sand. "A providential thing," said a wag to me, "for, in such heat as this, if the water rose to the surface it would all evaporate." The sun was, indeed, ardent as we walked through the ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... on a proceeding so easy to be understood. The drift of these evasions, and of this affected obscurity, is obvious enough—at least, it will appear so by the observations which remain ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... yellow cover, which was the best part of it, for at least it was unassuming; it ran four months in undisturbed obscurity, and died without a gasp. The first number was edited by all four of us with prodigious bustle; the second fell principally into the hands of Ferrier and me; the third I edited alone; and it has long been a solemn question who it was that edited the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... king of Troy, and Paris, the shepherd and seducer of Helen, was his son. Paris had been brought up in obscurity, because there were certain ominous forebodings connected with him from his infancy that he would be the ruin of the state. These forebodings seemed at length likely to be realized, for the Grecian armament now in preparation ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... pudgy man was cursing, two more men came from obscurity with fish dangling from birch twigs. The pudgy man made an obviously herculean struggle and a meal was prepared. As he was drinking his cup of coffee, he suddenly spilled it and swore. The little man ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... As I traverse the obscurity of these endless halls, a vague instinct of self-preservation induces me to turn back again, and look behind. And it seems to me that already the woman with the baby is slowly raising herself, with a thousand precautions ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... by male issue, of the Counts of Auvergne, and to claim all kinds of distinctions and honours in consequence. They had, however, no proofs of this, but, on the contrary, their genealogy proved it to be false. All on a sudden, an old document that had been interred in the obscurity of ages in the church of Brioude, was presented to Cardinal Bouillon. It had all the marks of antiquity, and contained a triumphant proof of the descent of the house of La Tour, to which the Bouillons belonged, from the ancient Counts of Auvergne. The Cardinal ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... guess but one thing more: that when no looker-on was by, he pushed away the grass, and wrote his little jokes, safe in the kindly tolerance of the dead. This was the identical soul who should, in good old days, have been carving gargoyles and misereres; here his only field was the obscurity of Tiverton churchyard, his only monument these grotesqueries so ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... others. Here she could forget the bestial horrors of marriage; here she would fear no scornful pointing at her birth-brand of shame. She and Rod could be poor without shame; they could make their fight in the grateful darkness of obscurity. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... lips, that she now knew her—he didn't then say "Ah, see what you've done: isn't it rather your own fault?" He behaved differently altogether: eminently distinguished himself—for she told him she had never seen him so universally distinguished—he yet distinguished her in her obscurity, or in what was worse, her objective absurdity, and frankly invested her with her absolute value, surrounded her with all the importance of her wit. That wit, as discriminated from stature and complexion, a sense for "bridge" and a credit for pearls, could ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... left, the smooth, cemented surface curves away and upward, brick buttresses appear constantly, but always with the courses of brick laid slanting to the earth's level, and perpendicular to the thrust of the dome. Every possible effect of light and obscurity makes the strange vistas yet more weird, and, now and then, there is a feeling of standing upon the vast, rounding slope of some planet that shines at one's feet, then gradually falls away into ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... steamer's pipe. And then came nightfall and the northern stars; and, later at night, a new luminary on the edge of the horizon—Sambro' light; and then a sudden quenching of stars, and horizon, lighthouse, ropes, spars, and smoke stack; the sounds of hoarse voices of command in the obscurity; a trampling of men; and then down went the anchor in the ooze, and the Canada was fog-bound in the old harbor of Chebucto for the night, within a few miles of ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... destroyer of another division, Goblin, who for the moment had not been caught by the enemy's searchlights and had profited by this decent obscurity to fire a torpedo at the hindmost of the cruisers. Almost as Shaitan took station behind Goblin the latter was lighted up by a large ship and heavily fired at. The enemy fled, but she left Goblin out of control, with a grisly list of casualties, and her helm jammed. Goblin swerved, ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... with power, with a large income, with influence throughout all the world around him, courted, feted, feared and almost worshipped,—that he should desire to share her fortunes, her misfortunes, her struggles, her poverty and her obscurity, was not within the scope of her imagination. There was a homage in it, of which she did not believe any man to be capable,—and which to her would be the more wonderful as being paid to herself. She thought so badly of men and women generally, and of Mr Broune and herself as a man and ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Unintelligibility.— N. unintelligibility; incomprehensibility, imperspicuity[obs3]; inconceivableness, vagueness &c. adj.; obscurity; ambiguity &c. 520; doubtful meaning; uncertainty &c. 475; perplexity &c. (confusion) 59; spinosity[obs3]; obscurum per obscurius[Lat]; mystification &c. (concealment) 528; latency &c. 526; transcendentalism. paradox, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of this prominence, Taylor, after his defeat for reelection in 1875, retired to his farm and to obscurity. His vivid personality was not again to assert itself in public affairs. It is difficult to account for the fact that so few of the farmers during the Granger period played prominent parts in later phases of the agrarian crusade. The rank and file of the successive parties must have been much the ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... in an old barn to which it had been conveyed, until some engagement on the part of the heir should liberate it; while the aforesaid heir, as soon as the shadows of evening had shrouded the river in obscurity, conveyed the remains, which the myrmidons of the law fancied they possessed, to its quiet and lonely resting-place. The raft was taken in tow by a boat carrying two of the boys, and pulled by four lusty retainers of the departed chief, while Gustavus himself stood on the raft, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... and as a class of no importance at all. The clergy were a picturesque element in the social landscape, but they were as a body very poor representatives of learning, religion, and morality. They ranged from hedge parsons and Fleet chaplains, who had slunk away from England to find a desirable obscurity in the new world, to divines of real learning and genuine piety, who were the supporters of the college, and who would have been a credit to any society. These last, however, were lamentably few in number. The mass of the clergy were men who worked their own lands, sold tobacco, were the boon ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... females, there seems to be no such obscurity; especially as to their connexions with the men. If a young man and woman, from mutual choice, cohabit, the man gives the father of the girl such things as are necessary in common life; as hogs, cloth, or canoes, in proportion ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... the risk of the truth becoming known by telling it to so much as one person. No, no! Another, perhaps—not you! You have had one dream all your life—to rise out of obscurity, to get on in the world, to hold the high positions. Everything and every one has been sacrificed to its fulfilment. Oh, who should know better than I?" and she struck her hands together sharply as she uttered that bitter cry. "You have lain down late and risen early, and you have got on. Well, ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... In the obscurity he could not see her sudden burning flush, and since her hand was not on his arm he had no knowledge of her startled tremor. All that he knew was that she was silent for a moment or two, and then she asked quietly, "Is Mr. Warren Hilland ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... one time the chief favourite of Henry VIII. He was raised from obscurity by that sovereign to be Archbishop of York, Lord Chancellor of England, and Cardinal. As legate of the Pope, he gained the ill will of Henry by his failure to secure that king's divorce. He was deprived of his offices, his property was confiscated ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... his star had shot up from the nadir of obscurity, not very far, but enough to bring his versatility under the notice of the discerning Secretary of State, who, having been a friend of the father, offered the son a berth in the diplomatic corps. A consulate in a South American republic, during a revolutionary ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... bed, and snored as loud as a man; whilst the other two, their heads falling forward, and almost touching their knees, slept before the fire. At daybreak, a shudder awoke them. Mother Coupeau's candle had again gone out; and as, in the obscurity, the dull trickling sound recommenced, Madame Lorilleux gave the explanation of it anew in a loud voice, so ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... resolutions, and that Madison drew them up. Giles brought them forward. In a vociferous speech he asserted that no man could understand the Secretary's report, that his methods and processes were clothed in a suspicious obscurity. It was his painful duty to move the adoption of the following resolutions: That copies of the papers authorizing the foreign loans should be made; that the names of the persons to whom and by whom the French debt had been paid be sent to Congress; that a statement of ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... of greatest value to him, for he is in sore straits for want of evidence to make good certain claims. It is not forth-coming, and he alleges that it was destroyed by the Spaniards when they captured Fort Caroline. Be that as it may, he who should be loaded with honors and riches now suffers obscurity and poverty, and perchance thou art the very one ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... bustle and commotion among the garrison, who, roused from sleep by the appalling sound of the alarm bell at that late hour, were hastily arming. Throughout the obscurity might be seen the flitting forms of men, whose already fully accoutred persons proclaimed them to be of the guard; while in the lofty barracks, numerous lights flashing to and fro, and moving with rapidity, attested the alacrity ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... "Robinson Crusoe" or "Paul and Virginia" would be returned unread to their authors, with a civil note of "extremely sorry to decline," &c. "The Man of Feeling" would be made to feel his insignificance. "Thinks I to Myself" might think in vain; and the "Cottagers of Glenburnie" retain their rural obscurity. So much for the measure of the maw of the circulating library. Of its taste and palate it is difficult to speak with moderation; for those of Caffraria or Otaheite might ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... tale, and it found no place in official communiques. Just one of those regrettable incidents that fade into the limbo of forgotten things, it served as a topic of conversation to certain ribald subalterns, and then it gradually disappeared into obscurity along with Percy FitzPercy. Only it took several months for the topic to fade; Percy beat it ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... to us, that this obscurity in speaking of things spiritual, which, after all, can at best be seen but as through a glass darkly, is not so peculiar to Buddhism as M. Huc and his companion suppose; and that the dogmas of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... The obscurity was in his favour. Tom made his bow and accepted the chair offered him, less awkwardly than was to be expected from ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... As medical men in this Country employ the word infection and contagion in various senses, I shall, generally substitute transmissible or communicable, to avoid obscurity.] ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... noble, named Demetrius, whose decayed fortunes did not correspond with the general prosperity of the times. He was a youth of ardent disposition, and very handsome in person: pride kept him from bettering his estate by the profession of merchandise, yet more keenly did he feel the obscurity to which adverse fates had reduced him, that in his lot was involved the fortune of one dearer ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... can," she replied, adjusting with the steady hand of an expert the patching over the muzzle of the discharged weapon in the semi-obscurity. ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... reptiles of the Mesozoic period, for instance, seem to have been as secure as humanity is now in their pre-eminence. But they passed away and left no descendants when the new orders of the mammals emerged from their obscurity. So, too, the huge Titanotheria of the American continent, and all the powerful mammals of Pleistocene South America, the sabre-toothed lion, for instance, and the Machrauchenia suddenly came to ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... church's vesture was of divers colors; whereupon he saith, In veste varietas sit, scissura non sit; they be two things, unity and uniformity. The other is, when the matter of the point controverted, is great, but it is driven to an over-great subtilty, and obscurity; so that it becometh a thing rather ingenious, than substantial. A man that is of judgment and understanding, shall sometimes hear ignorant men differ, and know well within himself, that those which so differ, mean ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... assimilate him more essentially with those resistless influences of nature, which, rising from we know not what, and operating we know not how, execute the penalties of Heaven:—those moral pestilences which, like the physical, springing from some spot of obscurity, and conveyed by the contact of the obscure, suddenly expand into universal contagion, and lay waste ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various |
