"Perplexing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... should. Well, I did. And the next time one of my new-married friends circuitously asked for a bit of light on what was to him a dark and perplexing question, I suddenly felt very light-hearted about my domestic affairs. Somehow we hadn't any troubles at all. Dodo kept well; we lived very comfortably and it cost far less ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... almost similar magnitude, accomplishes a wide orbital ellipse round the other two in 500 or 600 years. These stars have been closely observed by astronomers during the past forty years, with the result that their motions have appeared most perplexing, and complicated beyond precedent. 'If this be really a ternary system,' wrote Sir John Herschel, 'connected by the mutual attraction of its parts, its perturbations will present one of the most intricate problems in physical astronomy.' The second star revolves round ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... life, how sad and perplexing its contradictions! Why should such an exhibition as that be supposed to give pleasure? Perhaps it does not give pleasure, but is only a necessary fulfilment of one of the many delusions we are in with regard to each other in this bewildering world. They are ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... school days drew to a close, it became necessary for Lee to determine his future calling. But the choice of a career, often so perplexing to young men, presented no difficulty to "Light Horse Harry's" son. He had apparently always intended to become a soldier and no other thought had seemingly ever occurred to any member of his family. Appointments to the United States Military Academy were far more a ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... secret place of repose where the one is transmuted into the other, as a sacred temple wherein is prepared a mystery of resurrection. Mothers know some things that cannot be told except in symbolism, and not very clearly then, symbols being as perplexing as unresolved diminished sevenths which may be understood in many different senses. I read the riddle of the eggs in the sense suggested by the context of the Gloria, and I think I read it aright, for in Catania on that Easter morning ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... created by the Queen's death was both perplexing and menacing.[2] Dona Juana, wife of the Archduke Philip, inherited the crown of Castile from her mother in default of male heirs, but her mental state excluded the possibility of her assuming the functions of government. Already ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... been with the mysteriously alluring Chiquita. If only she were all American, or even all Spanish, perhaps he would know better how to act. But, unfortunately, she was both-just enough of both to be perplexing and wholly unreliable. And then, too, ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... foreigner has been Canada's greatest danger from within, the coming of the Oriental has been one of her most perplexing problems from without. It is not only a perplexity to herself. It is a perplexity in which ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... boyish sports, we think of no more; they are as if they had never been, till perhaps some accidental occurrence, some words in conversation, some object by the wayside, or some passenger in the street, attract our notice—and then, as if awaking from a perplexing trance, a light darts in upon our darkness; and we discover that thus some one long ago spoke; that there something long ago happened; or that the person, who just passed us like a vision, shared smiles with us long, long years ago, and added a double zest to ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... later they were still bent over the much marked bit of paper. But their interest in it was not that of those who would solve a perplexing problem. It was the lingering, satisfied contemplation of a ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... confidences and rife with exhausting and depressing reactions from intense imagination and other severe intellectual exercise. Not only must the repression of this period have amounted at times to positive anguish, but there was also the perplexing perception that his life's fairest possibilities were still barren. "Every individual has a place in the world, and is important to it in some respects, whether he chooses to be so or not." So runs one of the extracts from the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... and the first years of ministerial life may be a time of great perplexity and pain. I suspect our congregations have often a good deal to suffer while we are endeavouring to preach ourselves clear. It is vicarious suffering; for they do not know what is perplexing us. They have to stand by and look on while their minister is fighting his doubts. But, if he is a true man, it is worth their while to wait. If these are the pangs of intellectual birth, and the truth is merely divesting itself of a traditional form in order to invest itself in a form which ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... midnight we sat and talked it all over; and racked our brains in vain to invent any theory to account for the appearance of the letters on that cellar stairway. My uncle's tender interest in the poor dead Esther was fast being overshadowed by the perplexing mystery. ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... surreptitious, but with some connivance, not yet explained, from Pope, were printed in Dublin and in London. But the first quarto and acknowledged edition was published in London early in "1728-9," as the editors choose to write it, that is, (without perplexing the reader,) in 1729. On March 12 of which year it was presented by the prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole, to the king and queen at ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of the species. Similar variations occur in all the various groups of marine invertebrata, and in the great sub-kingdom of the mollusca they are especially numerous. Thus, Dr. S.P. Woodward states that many present a most perplexing amount of variation, resulting (as he supposes) from supply of food, variety of depth and of saltness of the water; but we know that many variations are quite independent of such causes, and we will now consider a few cases among ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... this perplexing state of affairs, when all deliberation was at a stand, and a kind of torpor had seized on men's minds, Laevinus, the consul, observed, that "as the magistrates were more honoured than the senators, and the senators ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... clothed us with brilliant but false colors. Endless were the questions put to us about the health and looks of the Holy Father, whom they believed to be kept in a dungeon and fed on bread and water—a diet, however, turned into heavenly food by the angels. Perhaps the most perplexing question of all was, whether the Herr Baron Flinkenhorn, who had been born in exactly the same year as the Holy Father, bore the faintest resemblance to that saintly martyr. We could but shake our heads as the old nobleman was pointed out to us on the morning of the festival. Decrepit and bent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... leaving the court he found his carriage, with post-horses, standing before the door; he stepped in and was driven off at a rapid rate, leaving his mother and his sister behind him. They would perhaps never see him again, he wrote, along with other perplexing statements. Roderick's astonishment at this unexpected turn which the case had taken was very great; he pressed V—— to explain to him how this wonder had been brought about, what mysterious power was at work in the matter. V——, however, evaded his questions ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... interlocking forms; doorways and niches were covered with stalactite corbelling, and pavements and wall-incrustations, whether of marble or tiling, combined brilliancy and harmony of color with the perplexing beauty of interlaced star-and-polygon patterns of marvellous intricacy. Stained glass added to the interior color-effect, the patterns being perforated in plaster, with a bit of colored glass set into each perforation—adevice not very ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... painting.... He was considered the first wit in Berlin, where he died in 1870." In 1812, when Byron wrote his note to the third edition of Childe Harold, Gropius must have been barely of age, and the statement "that he has for years assumed the name of his (a noble Lord's) agent" is somewhat perplexing.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... perplexing, and not altogether pleasing. Flint was not sorry to have it interrupted by a call upon his attention in the appearance of two figures below, looming dim and ghostlike in the fog. Just beneath his window, they paused in their ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... sensibility adds creative power, is to my mind the best of the bunch: while Leger, Gris, Gleizes, and Metzinger are four painters who, if they did not limit themselves to a means of expression which to most people is still perplexing, if not disagreeable, would be universally acclaimed for what they are—four exceptionally inventive artists, each possessing his own peculiar and precious sense of colour ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... power displayed in this (I will not hesitate to say) sublime print, it seems to me the extreme narrowness of system alone, and of that rage for classification, by which, in matters of taste at least, we are perpetually perplexing, instead of arranging, our ideas, that would make us concede to the work of Poussin above mentioned, and deny to this of Hogarth, the name of a ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... newly-married girl might receive my halting story. For it would not do to conceal anything vital to the case. Her clear, wise eyes would see instantly through any evasion, not to say deception—even a harmless deception. No; if she were to be of any aid in this deeply-perplexing business, I must tell her the story of Lois—not betraying anything that the girl might shrink from having others know, but stating her case and her condition as briefly and ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... English sow contempt of us all over Europe. We cannot but be despised. One comes abroad foredoomed to share the sentiment. This is your middle-class! What society can they move in, that sanctions a vulgarity so perplexing? They have the air of ornaments on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... need never go along a passage more than once, which is not the case. Take your pencil and try to find the shortest route. You will soon discover that there is room for considerable judgment. In fact, it is a perplexing puzzle. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... had a sunny little coop with a padlocked door for her, and she always locked it very carefully every night. So it was doubly perplexing when the hen disappeared. Dame Penny remembered distinctly locking the coop-door; several circumstances had served to fix it on her mind. She had started out without her overshoes, then had returned for them because the snow was quite deep and she ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... strong illustration of the popular adulterations. They in our country confound the 'Romans,' a vulgar expression for the Roman Catholics, with the ancient national people of Rome. Here one element of a mythus B has melted into the mythus X, and in far-distant times might be very perplexing to antiquarians, when the popular tradition was too old for them to see the point of juncture where the alien ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... not a book to be read and forgotten on a railway journey, but it is rather a study of the perplexing problems of life, to which the reflecting mind will frequently return, even though the reader does not accept the solutions which the author suggests. In these days, when the output of merely amusing novels is so overpowering, ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... he veered to a rather showy technique, at others to a cold and even harsh simplicity. Yet always in the main he had color, beauty, emotion, poignance when necessary. Like his idol, de Maupassant, he had no moral or strong social prejudices, no really great or disturbing imagination, no wealth of perplexing ideas. He saw America and life as something to be painted as all masters see life and paint it. Gifted with a true vein of satire, he had not, at the time of his death, quite mastered its possibilities. He still retained prejudice of one type or another, which he permitted ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... perplexing question as to how the man had reached Hilarity when Creed was known to have arrived there with the team eight hours after the burning ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... destroyed by a flood, and that the Good Spirit, to repeople the earth, had changed animals into men. It is to J. S. Kohl we owe our acquaintance with the version of the Chippeways—full of grotesque and perplexing touches—in which the man saved from the Deluge is called Menaboshu. To know if the earth be drying, he sends a bird, the diver, out of his bark; then becomes the restorer of the human race and the founder of ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... made such a stir that the neighbors said he must have heard of it, even though he were in London, and if he had the heart of a stone he could not desert his bairn. They argued thus among themselves, less as people who were sure of it than to escape the perplexing question, what to do with Grizel if the man never claimed her? and before her they spoke of his coming as a certainty, because it would be so obviously the best thing for her. In the meantime they overwhelmed her with offers of everything she could need, which was kindly but ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... that time knew the Berlin philosopher only by name, and sentences like "unity with one's self," "to grasp and fulfil," "inward purity of life," etc., which every one who was taught by Middendorf must remember, at first seemed perplexing; but our teacher, who considered it of the utmost importance to be understood, and whose purpose was not to give us mere words, but to enrich our souls with possessions that would last all our lives, did not cease his explanations until even the least gifted ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... better, and I ride about again. My office here is no sinecure, so many parties and difficulties of every kind; but I will do what I can. Prince Mavrocordato is an excellent person, and does all in his power; but his situation is perplexing in the extreme. Still we have great hopes of the success of the contest. You will hear, however, more of public news from plenty of quarters: for I have little time ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... is not to be forgotten that there is a taint of insanity in Eldredge's blood, accounting for much that is wild and absurd, at the same time that it must be subtile, in his conduct; one of those perplexing mad people, whose lunacy you are continually mistaking for wickedness or vice versa. This shall be the priest's explanation and apology for him, after his death. I wish I could get hold of the Newgate Calendar, the older volumes, or ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the gravest problem that can occupy the human mind, and continually puts before us this perplexing question: "Should the purpose of life be only the search for happiness and beauty, or must we admit, as a law of nature, the dogma of suffering and death?" The former of these conceptions found its supreme formula in Greek paganism. The ultimate expansion ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... Ante-Cadmeans born, or have lain sucking out the sense of an Egyptian hieroglyph as long as the pyramids will last, before they should find it. These pests worrit me at business and in all its intervals, perplexing my accounts, poisoning my little salutary warming-time at the fire, puzzling my paragraphs if I take a newspaper, cramming in between my own free thoughts and a column of figures, which had come ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... not only because she had on a previous occasion already fought this principle of duty out with herself, but because to-night, unlike that other night, the way and the means seemed to present no insurmountable difficulties, and because she was now far better prepared, and free from all the perplexing, though enormously vital, little details that had on the former occasion reared themselves up in mountainous aspect before her. The purchase of a heavy veil, for instance, the day after the Hayden-Bond affair, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... wounded man was recognized at once, as belonging to the train ahead of them; but how he came in that sad plight, and who had placed the warning torpedoes to which he owed his escape from death, were perplexing questions that ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... up a point that you have overlooked. Nor is it possible to go back and follow the characters who have been temporarily dispensed with. If they reappear, it must be in a scene which naturally follows, and does not come with a sense of perplexing surprise. Remember this: When characters are reintroduced they must not have been too long absent from the plot-movement, but they must have been all the time consciously or subconsciously present in the mind of the spectator as being essentially ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... In such cases there always is a main question; but in this case that question is a perplexing compound—Union and slavery. It thus becomes a question not of two sides merely, but of at least four sides, even among those who are for the Union, saying nothing of those who are against it. Thus, those who are for the Union with, but not without, slavery; those for it ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... afterpart, had broken from its fastenings, and was now tossing and heaving in a most remarkable manner. From beneath it came the smothered cries of the Elmers, who had been suddenly wakened to find themselves mixed together in the most perplexing way, and entangled in their blankets and the ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... debating this somewhat perplexing question, he felt the ground begin to quiver under him. Through the hum of London there gradually arose a louder roar, and in a minute the head-lights of an engine flashed out of the tunnel. One after another ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... purpose, since a large portion of the tunes contained in these books are unavailable for such use, being prepared with a view to the wants of thoroughly trained singers; besides which, the reference to two books, one for the words and the other for the music, is to many persons perplexing, and to all inconvenient. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... much more complicated in its rules than either of the others. It closely resembled in some respects several of our modern gambling games. The French found it very difficult to comprehend and hence the accounts of it which they have given are often confused and perplexing. Boucher [Footnote: p. 57.] says, "Our French people have not yet been able to learn to play it well; it is full of spirit and these straws are to the Indians what cards are to us." Lafitau [Footnote: Vol. II, p. 351.] after quoting from Boucher says, "Baron de LaHontan also made ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... is there here for us! God is acquainted with our every trouble; He knows (far better than we know ourselves) every pang we heave, every tear we weep, every perplexing path we tread; but the knee must be bent, the message must be taken, the prayer must ascend! It is His own appointed method,—His own consecrated medium for obtaining blessings. Jesus may have gone, and probably would have gone to ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... in the village began to be discussed by members of the race. As it would be the first school for Negro children that had ever been opened in that part of Virginia, it was, of course, to be a great event, and the discussion excited the wildest interest. The most perplexing question was where to find a teacher. The young man from Ohio who had learned to read the papers was considered, but his age was against him. In the midst of the discussion about a teacher, another young coloured man from ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... our girls has been a far greater perplexity to me than in the case of boys. In the present state of our schools and our streets our boys must get to know evil. Hitherto it was possible to say that our girls might get to know evil, and between that "must" and "might" lay a great and perplexing chasm. We do not want our garden lilies to smell of anything but pure dews and rains and sun-warmed fragrance. But is this ideal possible any longer, except in a few secluded country homes, where, hidden like Keats's nightingale "among ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... the little lids in sunder Or love could lift them for the sun to smite, His fiery birth-star as a sign of wonder Had risen, perplexing the presageful night With shadow and glory around her sphere and under And portents prophesying by sound and sight; And half the sound was song and half was thunder, And half his life of lightning, half of light: And in the ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... new federal constitution, the character of which, owing to the scanty and somewhat perplexing nature of our evidence, we can only approximately determine. The league embraced an indefinite number of city-states which maintained their internal independence practically undiminished, and through ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... where his mother had obtained the bill, it was plain enough to him that he had given it to her himself. He could not, for the life of him, see why this gentleman, wealthy and liberal though he was, should give her such an immense sum of money. It was a very perplexing problem, and he could not solve it. His kind friend conducted him to the house. Grace was so glad to see him, that she actually kissed him this time; and Bobtail felt as though he had tumbled into a cream-pot. Mrs. Montague was very demonstrative, and the ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... her, and take away those evil things that separated her from Him. On the day following she came again to the missionaries, and, with many tears, declared her thanks to the Lord, that he had delivered her from her perplexing thoughts, and granted to her his peace in her soul, and therefore begged to be admitted to the holy communion. On the 3d of December they partook of this heavenly feast; and it proved a time of refreshing to them ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... Mather took her into his own family, to see whether he could not exorcise her. His account of her conduct, while there, is highly amusing for its credulous simplicity. The cunning and ingenious child seems to have taken great delight in perplexing and playing off her tricks upon the learned man. Once he wished to say something in her presence, to a third person, which he did not intend she should understand. He accordingly spoke in Latin. But she had penetration enough to conjecture what he had said: he was amazed. He then tried ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... on the river in a canoe, or sitting in his hammock, philosophises over the perplexing questions of life, he is assisted in his dreary analysis by the gloomy and hair-raising cry of the mother of the moon. When the first four notes strike his ear, he will listen, thinking that some human being in dire distress is somewhere out in the swamps, pitifully calling for ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... not the wine, but the woman, that was perplexing him. Not often had the lure of gold failed so signally. And why was she so manifestly startled at the last moment? Had he gone too far? Was he mistaken in the assumption that Millicent Jaques had said little or nothing concerning him to her friend? And this ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... instructions, I said very little, never asking any questions, only telling her a few of the unimportant happenings of the town. She seemed uninterested and lay apathetically quiescent except when some apparently perplexing question corrugated her brows. They told her of Jim's death early in the week, but far from being shocked, she had appeared almost indifferent, showing only too plainly how little he meant in her life. Woods she never ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... other his intimate living personality, exposed down to its salacious corners as the soul of no contemporary can ever be exposed. Of those double strands it is I have to write, of the subtle protesting perplexing play of instinctive passion and desire against too abstract a dream of statesmanship. But things that seemed to lie very far apart in Machiavelli's time have come near to one another; it is no simple story of white passions struggling ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the hereditary Peerage. The Whig-Radical writers seem puzzled to reconcile this anomalous circumstance with the indisputably forlorn finances of their faction in general. Now, this little tract on the 'Spirit of Whiggism' may perhaps throw some light upon this perplexing state of affairs. For myself, I see in it only a fresh illustration of the principles which I have demonstrated, from the whole current of our history, to form the basis of Whig policy. This union of oligarchical ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... wise to think aloud; but impulsive people will do it sometimes. I suppose we all occasionally have questions to decide that to us are perplexing and important, though of little consequence to the world. Come; if we are to see the old garden, we must make the most of the fading light. After my interview with Old Plod, I can't descend to cows and pigs; so ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... remained practically the same, only the people were different. But could the old interests and friendships and associations compensate her for the loss of the man that had come into her life to remain for the rest of her days whether she chose to keep him or not? These new and perplexing questions she was forced to ask herself for the first time, and she knew that there could ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... infamous sinner!" exclaimed Gomez Arias; "an unconscionable dog, to be talking of money and filthy wages when his master is labouring under the most perplexing dilemma in which ever mortal man was placed. Roque, I do not see what prevents me from shaking thy rascally ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... directly on her faith and fascinations. But these might grow jejune, nor is it safe to trust the tender mercies of a butcher. Better know what you want, and know if you get it. Therefore you will study the anatomy of animals, as laid down in all modern cook-books. But really it is a little perplexing. I confess I am near concluding that every beef creature is a special creation; for one never finds the same joint twice, and apparently the only things common to all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... religion stop there, and might not those who refused to conform be permitted to hold their conventicles freely outside the Established Church, and to believe and worship in their own way? Some such idea of Toleration, but still with perplexing limitations as to the amount of deviation that should be tolerated, was, I believe, the idea that had dawned on the minds of men like the loveable Hales and the hardy Chillingworth. It is much the sort of Toleration that accredits itself to the average ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... mysterious picture. A boy of quick and enthusiastic temper grows up into youth in a dream of love. The lady of his mystic passion dies early. He dreams of her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction—quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; but, on the other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep feeling. It is a first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied with his work, but with the resolution of raising at a future day ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to act in these circumstances in the spirit of the most earnest and disinterested friendship. It is our purpose in whatever we do or propose in this perplexing and distressing situation not only to pay the most scrupulous regard to the sovereignty and independence of Mexico—that we take as a matter of course to which we are bound by every obligation of right and honor—but also to give every possible evidence that we act in the interest of Mexico alone, ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... vale of the Arno to the westward; where, as we had been visited by several rainy days, and now at last had a very fine one, the whole prospect was in its highest beauty. The mass of buildings, chiefly on the other side of the River, is sufficient to fill the eye, without perplexing the mind by vastness like that of London; and its name and history, its outline and large and picturesque buildings, give it grandeur of a higher order than that of mere multitudinous extent. The Hills ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... except by cutting Gordian knots in a way which none but plain sensible people can tolerate. Strictly speaking, there is only one place, one time, one action, and one individual or thing; of this thing or individual each one of us is a part. It is perplexing, but it is philosophy; and modem philosophy like modern music is nothing if it is ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... him. He was quite sure that he started them with a creditable gruffness, but the Christmas air mellowed them in a highly unsatisfactory fashion, so that they fell on his own ears quite otherwise than as he had meant they should sound. Moreover the general tenor of the conversation was exceedingly perplexing. It was all about how fine it was of him to come this evening, and how they had often regretted the hard feeling, and how things always did get exaggerated. Of course he would not have believed a word of it, if he had been able to get any grip on the situation, ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... is not love that steals the heart from love: 'Tis the hard world, and its perplexing cares; Its petrifying selfishness, its pride, its low ambition, and ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... used to have great fits of crying at night, when they passed Caroline's door; and more than once she was so inconsolable, that Marian was obliged to come and stay in her room, and sleep all night with her arm clinging round her. Altogether, it was very desolate and perplexing; and Marian was grieved at herself for dwelling more on this, and on the loss of her dear companion and friend, than on the hope and happiness that ought to occupy her. How different in the two deaths she had known before, where there was none of this weary, harassed, doubtful, careworn ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... passage early in Chief Justice Fuller's opinion for the Court, sets forth the conception of the Federal System that controlled the decision: "It is vital that the independence of the commercial power and of the police power, and the delimitation between them, however sometimes perplexing, should always be recognized and observed, for while the one furnishes the strongest bond of union, the other is essential to the preservation of the autonomy of the States as required by our dual form ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... was difficult and complicated. A great many perplexing questions arose, and a special court had to be created to deal with them. [Footnote: This court was constituted of four judges of the Court of the Queen's Bench and nine judges of the Superior Court of Lower Canada, as follows: Sir Louis H. La Fontaine, Chief Justice; ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... reduce these variations to law and system was pursued by thousands of investigators, with varying but at all times perplexing and disappointing results. But in the year 1900 the scientific world awoke to the surprising fact that a patient obscure investigator had already solved most of the puzzles of variation and heredity some thirty-five ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... made good progress, it had been accomplished under great difficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the mean time. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Governor Franklin, of New Jersey, passed through Hartford, on his way to Governor Trumbull. Mr. Franklin is a noted Tory and ministerial tool, and has been exceedingly busy in perplexing the cause of liberty, and in serving the designs of the British ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... off, accompanied by my black guide mounted, for the top of Marga, and we reached it this time by a route in which the native displayed the usual skill of his race. Certainly I never ascended a hill of more perplexing features, all these heights being also of extremely difficult access, very steep and extending in the direction of 10 and 12 degrees East of North. They consist of the sharp edges of inclined strata of hard purple-coloured clay-slate. I was however rewarded ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... outline of the principal facts known with regard to these interesting but perplexing bodies. We must be content with the recital of what we know, rather than hazard guesses about matters beyond our reach. We see that they are obedient to the great laws of gravitation, and afford a striking illustration of their truth. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... not understood it, and could only half believe it. Kate must know far more about all this painful business than he did, for her father's letter would tell her all he wished her to know. Therefore, why should he discuss that most distressing and perplexing subject, which he knew so little about and which she knew all about. So he merely touched upon Major Bonnet and his vessel, and hoped that she might soon write to him and tell him what she cared for him ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... of the writer to cover briefly every subject that is usually encountered by patentees in disposing of their patents, not only in the matter of selling, but also in the equally important and perplexing questions of arriving at the value of patents, legal forms, statistics, ...
— Practical Pointers for Patentees • Franklin Cresee
... your thoughts, and talked them aloud. Her mind was evidently cultivated with great care, but she was perfectly void of pedantry. A hint, an allusion, sufficed to show how much she knew, to one well instructed, without mortifying or perplexing the ignorant. Yes, there probably was the only woman my father had ever met who could be the companion to his mind, walk through the garden of knowledge by his side, and trim the flowers while he cleared the vistas. On the other hand, there was an inborn nobility in Lady Ellinor's ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... but from sound. But she could not be sure of this; and she would have extinguished her fire by heaping sand upon it, and left herself in total darkness in a labyrinth which was always sufficiently perplexing, if Rollo had not held her hand. He stepped cautiously through the sand to the nearest point to the foe, listened awhile, and then smiled and nodded to Lady Carse, and seemed wonderfully delighted. This excited her ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... All was enjoyment. Not a cloud obscured Present or future. "He is now at rest; And praise and blame fall on his ear alike, Now dull in death. Yes, BYRON, thou art gone, Gone like a star that through the firmament Shot and was lost, in its eccentric course Dazzling, perplexing. Yet thy heart, methinks, Was generous, noble—noble in its scorn Of all things low or little; nothing there Sordid or servile. If imagined wrongs Pursued thee, urging thee sometimes to do Things long regretted, oft, as ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... came to feel that we would be like the soldiers of Xenophon once we spied the sea. But the cry "Thalassa" was denied us. Eventually we turned back, and tried keeping the hill on the right. This was as perplexing as keeping it on the left had been. A pair of famished explorers, hungry enough to eat canned tuna-fish and crackers with relish, reached a little town inland from Mandelieu about seven o'clock that night with no clear knowledge of from where or ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... consolation as the Koran could afford. Omar commanded Abdallah, as soon as ever he came near the camp and before he delivered the letter, to cry out, "Good news!" in order to comfort the Mussulmans and ease them in some measure of the perplexing apprehensions they labored under. As soon as he received this letter and message, together with Omar's blessing, he prepared to set out on his return to the army; but suddenly he remembered that he had omitted to pay his respects at Mahomet's tomb, which it was very ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... documents to which he gave the title of 'Chronica Monasterii Sancti Albani'—a series occupying twelve thick volumes, and which furnish us not only with a priceless apparatus, by the help of which a hundred problems perplexing the historian are furnished with a clue towards their solution—but which afford such an insight into the life of the greatest monastery in England during its best times as nobody expected could ever be forthcoming. ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... transcripts in the club book clear away a great deal of that unknown which is so convertible into the magnificent. It was extremely perplexing to understand that the elephant was profusely represented upon memorials familiar to the eyes of the inhabitants of Scotland, at a period, if we might credit some theories, anterior to the time when Roman soldiers were appalled ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... shaving-case as with a velvet dressing-gown; indeed he'd hardly know the difference. Joy should have a pretty white velvet hair-ribbon. But what for mother? She lay awake a whole half hour one night, perplexing herself over the question, and at last decided rather falteringly on a photograph frame of shell-work. Gypsy's shell-work was always pretty, and her mother had ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the error of assuming that they can think out the whole—or at any rate completely think out definite parts—of the purpose and future of man, clearly and finally; they have set themselves to legislate and construct on that assumption, and, experiencing the perplexing obduracy and evasions of reality, they have taken to dogma, persecution, training, pruning, secretive education; and all the stupidities of self-sufficient energy. In the passion of their good intentions they ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... of kicking it to pieces. After a number of such apparent exceptions and the ease with which they submitted to the test of absolute balance from the centre, on the scheme of the steelyards, I am now entirely convinced that what writers have termed the "very vague subject of composition," "the perplexing question of arrangement of parts," etc., yields to this simplest law, and which, in its directness and clearness, affords the simplest of working rules. Those whose artistic freedom bids defiance to the slavery of rule, ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... a shotgun. It also mentioned the hour of the alarm, which was close on to midnight last night. It added that the case was undoubtedly one of murder, but that no arrest had been made, and that the case was one which presented some very perplexing and extraordinary features. That's absolutely all we have at ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... Henrik was saying, "this restored gospel answers so many of life's perplexing questions. It is broad, full of common sense, and mercy. Father, as you well know, was not a religious man. When he died, Pastor Tonset gave it as his opinion that father was a ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... added mystery to the already perplexing matter. It certainly looked now as though some cunning method had been ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... there are other points, connected with religion, where you feel that perplexing difficulties exist, I should be glad to know of them in order to see whether I can see my way to ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... are, and why things happen to us as they do; it is a question we none of us understand, and in this world never shall. But if we know what we ought to be, and how we may make the best of every thing, good or bad, that happens to us, surely that is enough without perplexing ourselves about ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... I only wish to observe that the land from which he hails has not yet outlived the revolutionary heresies of a century ago, that his people is still afflicted with those crude fever fantasies, of which Europe was only cured by a severe and prolonged bleeding. It has always been a perplexing problem to me, how a man who has seen the Old World can deliberately choose such a land as his permanent abode. I, for my part, should never think of taking such a step until I had quarrelled with all the other countries of the world, one by ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... must have been more excited, however, than was at all usual with her; for though she thought she had remarked everybody in the dim drawing-room,—where the ladies in their pretty toilets and the men in their black coats stood about in a perplexing manner, chiefly against the light, which made it difficult to distinguish them, instead of sitting down all round the room, which in the country would have seemed the natural way,—it proved that there ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... that she was growing cold; but she sat quite still for at least five minutes, thinking hard, and wondering why she felt so sorry to give up Gregory Kinnaird. It was a somewhat perplexing thing that one could be really fond of an eligible man and yet shrink from marrying him, and there was no doubt whatever that the one she had just sent away had in several respects a good ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... conclude my London letters,-and without any regret; for I am too inexperienced and ignorant to conduct myself with propriety in this town, where everything is new to me, and many things are unaccountable and perplexing. ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... greater drawback, without any knowledge of English! But, nothing daunted, with his usual energy he set about the task of acquiring the language, which he did in an incredibly short time—commencing, like a child, by naming all familiar objects, and going on, until, without perplexing himself with rules or their exceptions, he had acquired facility enough to lecture in public. His work on Music and Education shows with what force and purity of style he could afterwards write in English. It was the same principle—that of commencing with practice and letting theory ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... true that in some of the States the demoralizing effects of the war are to be seen in occasional disorders; but these are local in character, not frequent in occurrence, and are rapidly disappearing as the authority of civil law is extended and sustained. Perplexing questions are naturally to be expected from the great and sudden change in the relations between the two races; but systems are gradually developing themselves under which the freedman will receive the protection to which he is justly entitled, and, by means of his labor, make ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... inquired Maitland, reverting suddenly to what both felt to be a painful and perplexing problem. "What are ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... face of this mystery, two explanations may be offered, both equally perplexing. On the one hand, we shall have to admit that the sheet of paper handed to the psychometer and impregnated with human "fluid" contains, after the manner of some prodigiously compressed gas, all the incessantly renewed, incessantly recurring images that surround a person, all his past and ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... afford; and he who steers the vessel must be chief of the crew. Shame were it to accept the praise of other men's labours; and, in my poor mind, all the praise which can be bestowed on him who undertakes a task so perilous and perplexing, is a meed beneath his merits. Misfortune to him would deprive him of an iota of it! Assume, therefore, your authority to-night, and proceed in the preparations you judge necessary. Let the Chapter be summoned to-morrow after we have heard mass, and all shall be ordered ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... doubts as to the intrinsic divergence between my inner aims and my outward success; at the same time a decisive and fatal change in my fortunes was brought about by my acceptance of the conductorship at Dresden, under circumstances as perplexing in their way as those preceding my marriage. I had met the negotiations which led up to this appointment with a hesitation and a coolness by no means affected. I felt nothing but scorn for theatrical life; a scorn that was by no means lessened by a closer ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... on this perplexing problem when I espied a pleasant-faced fellow leaning over a gate; ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... and put myself on guard before he thrust at me. Nor was that all. The superiority in position no longer lay with me. I found myself fighting between walls close to the opening in the door, through which the light fell athwart my eyes, baffling and perplexing me. Fresnoy was not slow to see the aid this gave him, and pressed me hard and desperately; so that we played for a full minute at close quarters, thrusting and parrying, neither of us having room to use the edge, or time ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... consider the subject under another point of view, it will appear less perplexing. We do not steadily bear in mind how profoundly ignorant we are of the conditions of existence of every animal; nor do we always remember that some check is constantly preventing the too rapid increase of every organised being left in a state of nature. The supply of food, on an average, remains ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... into my observation of Nature—and perhaps into my hearing of music—the same thing that many people experience only in their relations with other people. To myself relations with others are cheerful enough, interesting, perplexing—but seldom absorbing, or overwhelming; such experiences never seem to say the ultimate word or to sound the deeper depth. I suppose that this is the deficiency of the artistic temperament. I write looking ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the influence of the quantity of money on prices, or the price of a commodity on the value of money respectively, and, though I carefully read all that appears in the daily papers on the subject, I am compelled to own that I do not seem to be nearer a solution of the perplexing difficulty. However, it is, no doubt, a highly absorbing, if not a very useful, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... I'd better flavour this cake with lemon or vanilla. It's the most perplexing thing I ever ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... who acts and who effects all that is real in the sin of the creature. This objection leads us to consider the physical co-operation of God with the creature, after we have examined the moral co-operation, which was the more perplexing. Some have believed, with the celebrated Durand de Saint-Pourcain and Cardinal Aureolus, the famous Schoolman, that the co-operation of God with the creature (I mean the physical cooperation) is only general and mediate, and that God creates substances and gives them the force ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... madame Wang discussing certain domestic occurrences with the messengers, who had arrived from her elder brother's wife's home, and conversing also about the case of homicide, in which the family of her mother's sister had become involved, and other such relevant topics. Perceiving how pressing and perplexing were the matters in which madame Wang was engaged, the young ladies promptly left her apartments, and came over to the rooms of their widow sister-in-law, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... assured her, "an insight into many things in life which I had found most perplexing. You see, you have traveled and I haven't. You have mixed with all classes of people, and I have gone steadily on in one groove. You have told me many things which I shall find ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... its silken meshes for the disport of self—in a quiet disbelief that angered him no longer, because he had given over all fight with it. But the great dome, flaming with its letters, AEdificabo meam Ecclesiam, shining there for ages, kindled the fight anew. And strange as it may seem, and perplexing as it was to the Doctor (when he received Reuben's story of it), he came out from his first visit to the great Romish temple with his religious nature more deeply stirred than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... things, and, when the logic becomes perplexing, we are apt to grow rhetorical about them. But rhetoric is only misleading. Whatever the truth may be, it is best that we should know it; and for truth of any kind we should keep our heads and hearts ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... self-exiled, through it, to this quaint Southern city a thousand miles from his former home. Here he had dwelt for longer than a year, knowing but few, keeping in a subjective world of shadows which was invaded at times by the perplexing bulks of jarring realities. Then he fell in love with a girl whom he met in a cheap restaurant, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... II. Chron. xxxv. 21. This may be only the reflection of later Jewish piety on so perplexing a disaster; but it rings ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... and passionate love, he recalled every word she had spoken, every passing shade of thought reflected on her face, and while these reveries occupied his mind, there was a tender look in the deep black eyes and a smile on his lips. But these pleasant memories were apparently often followed by more perplexing thoughts. One afternoon he had been standing for some time lost in a dream, while he looked with eyes that saw nothing over the heaving waters to the distant horizon, when the captain's voice at his elbow ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... quelling all tumult. She had resolutely taken up her new burden, which was so infinitely easier than the old, and she found a strange happiness in the bearing of it. The management of her husband's estate kept her very fully occupied, so that she had no time for perplexing problems. She took each day as it came, and each day ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... said he, "need not be afraid of being put upon severe or harsh methods of proceeding, where things will do without; and he can always befriend an honest man; by which means the province will be entirely such a one as suits with his inclination. If any thing difficult or perplexing arises," continued he, "or where a little knowledge in law-matters is necessary, Longman shall do all that: and your father will see that he will not have in those points a coadjutor too hard-hearted for his wish; for it was a rule my father set me, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Monsieur Stangerson," he said, "that in an affair so perplexing as this, we cannot neglect anything; we must know all, even the smallest and seemingly most futile thing concerning the victim—information apparently the most insignificant. Why do you doubt that this marriage will take place? You expressed a hope; but the hope implies a doubt. ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... a wonderful evening—those grand old Romans walking on and off the stage, the music playing, the people applauding and the calm, stately man on her right hand explaining this and that, and looking into her eyes in such a delicious, perplexing way that past and present were all mingled like the waving ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... bayonets. Heavy cannon, for battering the British fortifications, were much wanted. There was but a small quantity of powder and ball, few tools to build entrenchments with, and a great deficiency of provisions and clothes for the soldiers. Yet, in spite of these perplexing difficulties, the eyes of the whole people were fixed on General Washington, expecting him to undertake some great enterprise against the ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sections into which the history of English literature is divisible, there is no one in which the absence of collective materials is more seriously felt—no one in which we are more in need of authentic notes, or which is more apt to raise perplexing queries—than that which relates to the authorship of anonymous ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... Mrs. Finch, he must at least pay off what he owes me;' and he began perplexing himself with reckonings. Theodora saw his brow drawn together, and his lips moving, and begged him to desist and ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very perplexing," said Bice, shaking her head, but with a smile in her eyes which somewhat belied her air of simplicity. "What may that be—the real thing? Shall I find it in the dictionary?" she asked; and then their eyes met and there was another burst of laughter, somewhat boisterous on his ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... be going down now, in a little while; then the cool piazzas, and the raspberries and cream, and the iced milk,—yellow Alderney milk,—would be delightful. Once or twice she did think of "Argie" in New York,—gone thither on some perplexing, hurried errand, which he had only half told her, and the half telling of which she had only half heard,—and remembered that the heat must be "awful" there. But to-night he would be on board the splendid Sound steamer, coming home; and to-morrow, if this lasted, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... The most perplexing and least successful part of the Bureau's work lay in the exercise of its judicial functions. The regular Bureau court consisted of one representative of the employer, one of the Negro, and one of the Bureau. If the Bureau could have maintained a perfectly judicial attitude, this arrangement would ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... found myself alone I could think of nothing but this perplexing subject. As I dwelt upon my situation, I told myself I must be careful, and avoid getting into trouble. Mona was becoming more and more tender toward me every day, and now Avis had come, unconsciously storming the seat of my affections with Mona's own voice. I felt that I was in some danger of ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... he attached himself to Jefferson's fortunes and served for eight years as his first counselor, the Secretary of State. The principles of the Constitution, which he had helped to make and interpret, he was now as President called upon to apply in one of the most perplexing moments in all American history. In keeping with his own traditions and following in the footsteps of Jefferson, he vainly tried to solve the foreign ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... warm for us because, forsooth, we showed without a license. And this, mind you, in what we regard as a free country. Ye gods! Well, be that as it may, you can readily see we were in a bad box, and how to get out of it was the perplexing ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... has been tested in many later experiences, the most dramatic of which came when I was called upon by a manufacturing company to act as one of three arbitrators in a perplexing struggle between themselves, a group of trade-unionists and a non-union employee of their establishment. The non-union man who was the cause of the difficulty had ten years before sided with his employers in a prolonged strike and had bitterly ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... pictorial power he possessed in a rare degree. His mental eye perceived the truth most vividly. Some minds are moving in a constant mystery. They see men like trees walking. The different doctrines of the Bible all wear dim outlines to them, jostling and jumbling; and after a perplexing morrice of bewildering hints and half discoveries, they vanish into the misty back-ground of nonentity. To Bunyan's bright and broad- waking eye all things were clear. Thee men walked and the trees stood ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... an Indian woman of Panama; but from early years had followed the troubled fortunes of his father, to whom he bore much resemblance in his free and generous nature, as well as in the violence of his passions. His youth and inexperience disqualified him from taking the lead in the perplexing circumstances in which he was placed, and made him little more than a puppet in the hands ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... to keep her appointment with her brother-in-law. She showed so much alarm and dread that Aurelia could not but utter assurances and encouragements, which again awoke that arch manner, partly bantering, partly flattering, which exercised a sort of pleasant perplexing fascination on ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the practice of art in those days, were the fruit of the old, not the seed of the new order of things: but a stirring and hopeful time it was, and many things were newborn then which have since brought forth fruit enough: and it is strange and perplexing that from those days forward the lapse of time, which, through plenteous confusion and failure, has on the whole been steadily destroying privilege and exclusiveness in other matters, has delivered up art to be the exclusive ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... not exceeding twelve months, and to "provide in such leases, or otherwise, for the employment and general welfare" of the freedmen. Most of the army officers greeted this as a welcome relief from perplexing "Negro affairs," and Secretary Fessenden, July 29, 1864, issued an excellent system of regulations, which were afterward closely followed by General Howard. Under Treasury agents, large quantities of land were leased in the Mississippi Valley, and many ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... he is one of the few Irish poets we have who is always thinking as he goes along. He does not rebel against love because he is not himself sweet at heart, for the best thing in the book is its unfeigned humanity. So we have a personal puzzle to solve with this perplexing writer which makes us all the more eager to hear him again. A man might be difficult to understand and the problem of his personality might not be worth solution, but it is not so with James Stephens. From a man ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... perplexing and confounding circumstance in my difficulties, that when the ape had finally had his way, he rewarded me for it by a feeling of physical refreshment and comfort, by a consciousness of renewed and invigorated life, a clearing of thought, an increased ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... in reference to her adventure. Her two confidants (for such they were, on all ordinary subjects) had not failed to ask an explanation of the mystery, since undeniably a mystery there was, and one sufficiently perplexing in itself, without any help from the imaginative faculty. And, sometimes responding to their inquiries with a melancholy sort of playfulness, Miriam let her fancy run off into wilder fables than any which German ingenuity or Italian superstition ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... September, which, while refusing to recognize the Indians as sovereign nations in the treaty, proposed a stipulation that would leave them in possession of their former lands and rights. This solution of a perplexing problem was finally accepted after another exchange of notes and another earnest discussion at the American hotel, where Gallatin again poured oil on the troubled waters. Concession begat concession. New instructions from President Madison ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... the husbandman and the cobbler go simply and fairly about their business, speaking only of what they know and understand; whereas these fellows, to make parade and to get opinion, mustering this ridiculous knowledge of theirs, that floats on the superficies of the brain, are perpetually perplexing, and entangling themselves in their own nonsense. They speak fine words sometimes, 'tis true, but let somebody that is wiser apply them. They are wonderfully well acquainted with Galen, but not at all with the disease of the patient; they have already deafened you with a long ribble-row of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... pain and great prostration of strength. The salivation was accompanied with a burning or scalding sensation in the mouth and stomach, which proved excessively irritating to the patient, as well as perplexing to me. On examining her case, I found the nervous system entirely deranged and much broken by the habit of smoking, which she had practiced to great excess from the age of eleven years. I learned, to my surprise and regret, that she commenced this habit, which ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister
... given to tears, this one in particular, the brightest of them all, so that this genuine bust of grief was the more perplexing. ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... at the close of the last chapter, that after the perplexing visions of the night, by the use of charms of which he well knew the power, Mr. Norton had cleared his brain of the unpleasant phantoms that had invaded it during his slumbers. Being quick and forgetive in his mental operations, even while completing his toilet, he had formed a plan ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... found perplexing in Eunice was now made clear. I understood how her agony at the loss of her lover, and her keen sense of the wrong that she had suffered, had been strengthened in their disastrous influence by her experiment on the sleeping draught intended for her father. In mind and body, both, the ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... 3rd instant, N.S., inform us, that his Royal Highness employs all his address in alarming the enemy, and perplexing their speculations concerning his real designs the ensuing campaign. Contracts are entered into with the merchants of Milan, for a great number of mules to transport his provisions and ammunition. His Royal Highness has ordered ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... perplexing," said Duke Deodonato, and he knit his brows; for as he gazed upon the beauty of the damsel, it seemed to him a thing unnatural, undesirable, unpalatable, unpleasant, and unendurable, that she should wed Dr. Fusbius. Yet if such were the law—Duke Deodonato sighed, and he glanced at the ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... Goldsmith's remark upon the ease of gaining an argumentative victory when you are at once opponent and respondent. It must be added, however, that any man who is at all fond of speculation finds in his second self the most obstinate and perplexing of antagonists. No one else raises such a variety of empty and vexatious quibbles, and splits hairs with such surprising versatility. It is true that your double often shows a certain discretion, and whilst obstinately defending certain untenable positions contrives to glide over some weak places, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... torturing, doubt-raising, perplexing thing this Love was! A few hours ago he had known nothing whatever of it ... had merely imagined cold, austere, wrong things about it ... and now it had hold of him and was hurting him. Every particle of his mind was concentrated on this girl by his side ... a stranger to ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... can define love promptly by following out natural laws, the moralist finds a far more perplexing problem before him if he attempts to consider love in all its developments due to social conditions. Still, in spite of the heresies of the endless sects that divide the church of Love, there is one broad and trenchant line of difference in doctrine, a line that all the discussion ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... whereupon he retires from his first position to the extent of admitting that the papers, though rightfully his, were earned by his father. He does not seem to think this detracts much from their value. Others will come, with less pronounced characteristics, and, therefore, more perplexing. The Madrassee will be there, with his spherical turban and his wonderful command of colloquial English; he is supposed to know how to prepare that mysterious luxury, "real Madras curry." Bengal servants are not common in Bombay, fortunately, for they would only add to the ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... animal, can cause inherited modifications. It is equally or even more unintelligible on any ordinary view, how the effects of the long-continued use or disuse of any part, or of changed habits of body or mind, can be inherited. A more perplexing problem can hardly be proposed; but on our view we have only to suppose that certain cells become at last not only functionally but structurally modified; and that these throw off similarly modified gemmules. This may occur at any period of development, and the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... never so great, it is impossible he should have fifty or an hundred scholars under his eye any longer than they are in the school together." But then, Sir, if there be such a difficulty as Mr. Locke says, to meet with a proper tutor for the home education, which he thus prefers, what a perplexing thing is this. But still, according to this gentleman, another difficulty attends a home education; and that is, what I hinted at before, in my second article, the necessity of keeping the youth out ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... relation to publisher and parent, to the library's adult open shelves of current fiction enter into the problem. The children's over-reading, and their reluctance to "graduate" from juvenile books, these and many other perplexing questions grow ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... sympathy, would reply that her own sentiments was hidentically simular, that things in general was to her most amazin', and that there was no accountin' for nothin' in this life, but that w'atever came of it she 'oped the family would live long an' 'appy in a world, w'ich was, she must confess, a most perplexing mixture of good and evil, though of course she wasn't rightly able to understand or explain that, but she was sure of this anyhow, that, although she was by no means able to explain 'erself as well as she could wish, she knew that ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne |
