"Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no riddle," said Dolly. "I knew him when I was at school, a little girl, and I have ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... riddle, which puzzled all the magicians and wise men, was given by an old woman, who came up to the palace and told the chamberlain that, for two handfuls of gold, she would reveal ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... Viewed from the street, the town houses of well-known personages seem quite inadequate for their purpose; viewed from within, they are all that is stately and appropriate. Those of us who live in less favoured neighbourhoods would fain solve the riddle. ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... could look beyond them we might read the Riddle of the Universe. I think we could—I think so!" Here was the undercurrent of sadness again, sounding through an odd intensity of tone. "Surely, there is something beyond them. There must be! ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the least objection to telling one everything that it is doing. Unfortunately, it speaks its own language, which is incomprehensible to the civilian. But you will find it all in "The Channel Pilot" and "The Riddle of the Sands." ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... started to land. In spite of this, I followed him, because his was the only enemy machine in sight. I stuck to him and fired, but he would not fall. The pilot of a Farman machine is well protected by the motor, which is behind him. Though you can kill the observer, and riddle the engine and tanks, they are always able to escape by gliding. But in this case, I think I wounded the pilot also, because the machine made the typical lengthwise tilt that shows it is out of control. But as the fight was too far behind ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... echo their delicious duet ran the risk of becoming the dullest of monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier he had resented her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment he found himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and to be agreed ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... the path it showed, and there"—and he pointed to the dead men—"is the witch-seed's flower. Now to-day we sit in Atli's hall and here we must stay this winter at Swanhild's side, and in all this there lies a riddle that ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... what he can weigh and measure, and looking up to find above himself that which is too high for him to understand, would be an anomaly as lawless and incredible as the wildest fabled monster, the Minotaur or the Chimera, the Titan—the Sphynx itself—nay a more delirious riddle than any that in dreams it ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... mystery story. It may contain a certain element of the supernatural—be tinged with mysticism—but its motive and the revelation thereof must be frankly materialistic—of the earth, earthy. In this respect it is very closely allied to the detective story. The model riddle story should be utterly mundane in motive—told in direct terms. Here again the genius of that great modern master asserts itself, and in "The Oblong Box" we have an early model of its kind. The stories of this collection ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... a passive patience. He meant that the method of social reconstruction was still a riddle, that no effectual rearrangement was possible until this riddle in all its tangled aspects was solved. 'I tried to talk to those discontented men,' he wrote, 'but it was hard for them to see things as I saw them. When I talked of patience and the larger ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... exclusive and abhorred people, how came He to tower above all teachers, and to sway the world? 'With whom took He counsel? and who instructed Him, and taught Him?' The character and work of Christ, compared with the circumstances of His origin and environment, are an insoluble riddle, except on one supposition—that He was the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... drills, because we were ordered to go. And we went to sleep at night, because we felt tired. All our existence seemed to be only for the sake of discipline; and that discipline, again, seemed a thing in itself. But the moment they told us of mobilization and war, our riddle was solved. It suddenly became clear to us why we had been caught and brought to where we were, and why we had been suffering all the time. It looked as if year in, year out, we had been walking in the darkness ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... by giving to simple folk A silly riddle to read, And when they failed she drank their blood In cruel and ravenous greed. But at last came one who knew her word, And she perished in pain and shame, - This bastard Sphinx leads the same base life And his ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... that under existing entanglements, the girl's speedy death would prove the most felicitous solution of this devouring riddle, which so unexpectedly crossed his smooth path; then what meant the vehement protest of his throbbing heart, the passionate longing to snatch her from disease, and disgrace, and keep her safe forever in the close ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... me at all. He was a man of perhaps fifty years of age, with the countenance of one who had suffered and gained a victory of contemplation—a look as if no suffering could be new to him, and before whom no riddle of human vicissitudes could stay unread; but over all this penetration and sagacity was diffused a cast of genial philanthropy and good-fellowship which told of his forgiveness of the world for what he had suffered in it. With ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... certain forms of matter may be a residuum of some original form of energy which is inherent in great cosmical masses, and has fed our sun during all the ages required by the geologist for the structure of the earth's crusts? It may be that in this phenomenon we have the key to the great riddle of the universe, with which profounder secrets of matter than any we have penetrated will be opened to ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... p. 44.).—I cannot pretend to set up my judgment against that of MR. SQUEERS, who has in his favour the proverbial wisdom of the Schools. Riddle, however, who I believe is an authority, gives the word LEGO no such meaning as "to hearken." If Plautus uses the word in that sense, as it is an uncommon one, the passage should have been quoted, or a reference given. The ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... princess is said to have visited Solomon, "to prove him with hard questions," by which have generally been understood enigmatical puzzles. Some of these are to be found in sacred writ, of which the riddle which Samson proposed to the young men of Timnath, is a very ancient and curious specimen. It appears from the writings of the ancients, that the Greeks and all the Eastern nations, were singularly attached to enigmas. Plutarch, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... terra-cottas I must also mention three pots with three rows of perforations; they have the usual handle on one side and three feet on the other; also three large vases with perforations right round, on all sides, from the bottom to the top; their use is a riddle to me; can they have served as bee-hives? Also a vessel in the form of a pig, with four feet, which are, however, shorter than the belly, so that the vessel can not stand upon them; the neck of the vessel, which is attached to the back of the pig, is connected with ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... by the silent land, removed from all human company but Marc'antonio's, with no clock but the sun and no calendar but the creeping change of the season upon the macchia, what wonder if I forgot human probabilities at times in piecing and unpiecing solutions of a riddle which ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... riddle for us to try and read. And our surroundings at that particular moment were not the most favorable to coherent thought or plausible theory-building. When a man has been robbed at the point of a gun, and set afoot in the heart of an unpeopled waste, with a dead man ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... his sprig of box. "The Sphinx was a woman, and every woman is an incarnate riddle! Why don't you care for ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... and it was madness to stay and confront the thing. What, then, could he do? The sun had slid down the sky and the red of another swift dusk was heralding the short night before he shook his head somberly and gave the fatal riddle up. ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... observes that perhaps it is only possible to understand Rembrandt by interpreting his pictures not as paintings but as psychological documents. "A picture by Rembrandt in the Dresden Gallery," he says, "represents Samson Putting Riddles to the Philistines; and Rembrandt's entire activity, a riddle to the philistines of his time, has remained puzzling to the present day.... As no other man bore his name, so the artist, too, is something unique, mocks every historical analysis, and remains what he was, a puzzling, intangible, Hamlet nature—Rembrandt." The author's theory of ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... mask is a riddle to which everyone wishes to guess the answer. Some say that he was the Duc de Beaufort: but the Duc de Beaufort was killed by the Turks at the defence of Candia, in 1669; and the man in the iron mask was at Pignerol, in 1662. Besides, how would one have arrested the Duc de Beaufort ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... think of no other way to rob an apple tree but by standing a-tip-toe, or climbing up to the apples, when they should come down to thee?" said the second boy. "Truly thy head will never save thy heels; but here's a riddle ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... combination between a mystic philosopher and a mere political charlatan displays Disraeli's peculiar irony. Intellect with him is a double-edged weapon: it is at once the faculty which reads the dark riddle of the universe, and the faculty which makes use of Tapers and Tadpoles. Our modern Daniel is also a shrewd electioneering agent. Cynics, indeed, have learned in these later days to regard mystery as too often synonymous with nonsense. The difficulty of interpreting esoteric doctrines to the ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... a meaningless riddle and uninteresting to most people because it is not rightly divided. It is assumed that all parts of the Bible are addressed to everybody. This is far from the truth. While we must recognize the unity and interdependence of the entire Bible and that each part teaches great ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... "I know another riddle," went on Laddie. "It's about how do the tickets feel when the conductor punches them. But I never could ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... I have played the fool in the motley?"—finding the strength of his voice. "Why I have submitted in silence to your just humiliations? Why I have acted what you term generously? Do you mean to tell me that you have not guessed the riddle?" ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... acceptance among the majority of the students of the subject. The problem whether a correct understanding of mediaeval economic life can be best attained by first studying the teaching or the practice is possibly no more soluble than the old riddle of the hen and the egg; but it may at least be argued that there is a good deal to be said on both sides. The supporters of the view that practice moulded theory are by no means unopposed. There is no doubt that in many respects the exigencies of everyday commercial ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... without rudimentary form of sensation and will,—or, as it is better expressed, of feeling (aesthesis), and of inclination (tropesis),—that is to [221] say, a universal soul of the simplest kind." I may quote also from Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe the following paragraph expressing the monistic notion of substance as held by ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... us in the 'Riddle of the Ivy,' he happened to be leaving Battersea, and being asked where he was going, calmly replied to 'Battersea.' Which is really to say that we find our way to Brixton more eagerly by way of Singapore than by way of Kennington. In a few words, ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... of the abject poor, the half-starved, half-naked masses who hung about the outer lines of the assembled throng on the plaza; men and women living a mere animal existence, and yet who represented such grand and noble possibilities. Ah! the puzzle of it all! Who can solve the riddle? Lazarus and Dives jostle each other not alone in Guadalajara, but ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... that came down,' is intelligible as a free comment near the end of the first century; but has no meaning in our Lord's mouth at a time when the Ascension had not been heard of." (p. 84.)—"The Apocalypse" in like manner, to "cease to be a riddle," must be "taken as a series of poetical visions which represent the outpouring of the vials of wrath upon the City where our LORD was slain." (p. 84.) ... (Is it possible that a Minister of the Gospel of CHRIST can speak thus concerning ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... saw not long ago writing for the booksellers, had become affluent enough to pay a yearly allowance to Barry, the painter, in order to enable him to study the pictures in the great European galleries, and to make a prolonged residence at Rome. A little later he took a step which makes the riddle still more difficult, and which has given abundant employment to wits who are maximi in minimis, and think that every question which they can ask, yet to which history has thought it worth while to leave no answer, is somehow a triumph of their own ...
— Burke • John Morley
... Grablied ("The Grave Song"), Von der Wissenschaft ("Of Knowledge"), Der Genesende ("The Convalescent"—the soul delivered of its desires), Das Tanzlied ("Dancing Song"), Nachtlied ("Night Song"). We are shown a man who, worn out by trying to solve the riddle of the universe, seeks refuge in religion. Then he revolts against ascetic ideas, and gives way madly to his passions. But he is quickly sated and disgusted and, weary to death, he tries science, but rejects it again, and succeeds in ridding himself of the uneasiness its knowledge brings by laughter—the ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... initial success of the Russians; and unless that self-control was proof against panic, the design could not but break down at the crucial point. Signs are not wanting that in the suggestions here tentatively offered, we find a key that unlocks the riddle of the Danubian ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... grow as you draw the bow O'er the yielding strings with a practised hand! And the music's flow never loud but low Is the concert note of a fairy band. Oh, your dainty songs are a misty riddle To the simple ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... pleased to be facetious," returned O'Sullivan sourly. "But I would ask you to remember that you are not yet out of the woods, Mr. Montagu. My Lord seems satisfied, but here are some more of us waiting a plain answer to this riddle." ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... long, that a lesser riddle would have been to stand in the manufactory of the Faubourg St. Marcel, and abolishing the pattern of the designers, the directing touch of Lebrun, the restraint of the heddle, demand that the blind, insensate automatic warp and woof should originate, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... I must own! Already fire and eddying smoke I view; The impetuous millions to the devil ride; Full many a riddle will be there untied. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... tutch, Are these the Blessings which you have enjoy'd, Are these the arts your lustful thoughts imploy'd; 'Tis plain your roving fancy is far worse, Than that Blest state which you esteem a Curse; You make it so by your insatiate mind, Unbounded lust can never be confin'd. It is a Riddle which I can't unfould That any Man, can such base notions hold, Disgrace all order, Marriage Bed defy And gives Mankind and God himself the lye, It is a shame, that any Man of Sense, Should have so damn'd a stock of Impudence; Controul his Maker; and ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... that Science will solve the riddle by casting aside the works and improvements of a thousand years,—the "wave line," the spar, the sail, and all,—and with them the men of the sea. It may be that "Leviathans" will march unheedingly through the mountain waves,—that steam ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... fellow, it's a riddle; and, as I said before, I'm not good at guessing enigmas. There, my boy; go home and sleep upon this; and come back to me to-morrow morning, and tell me to throw this stupid letter in the fire—that's the wisest thing ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a simple and convenient solution of the riddle if the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type, to the realization of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But there is no warrant for such an expectation. Their dreams are generally full of the ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... puzzling again over the mystery of their suspicion of him. He tried to recall some careless act, some imprudent question, an ill-considered remark. He was giving up the riddle again when that trained memory of his flashed before him a picture that, trivial as it was in itself, yet was as enlightening as the white paper of the cigarette on ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... a riddle—I said we are as fit as a fiddle!" cried Tom. "Never mind. No use trying to talk with the racket this motor makes, and it isn't the noisiest of its kind, either. I'll tell you when we get ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... he was in some ways more of a riddle than ever. He talked curiously little about the war—at least to her. He had a way of finding out, both at Chicksands and Mannering, men who had lost sons in France, and when he and Beryl took a walk, it seemed to Beryl ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sake, and in the name of One Whom mayhap ye will know one day. He died that ye should live! Bear that in mind and ponder on it. Mayhap ye will find the solution to that riddle. That such as you should live in eternity, therefore did He die.... When ye have understood this and can explain the value of your lives as compared with His, come and tell it to the praefect of Rome and he will shower on you wealth ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... we make nothing better than that out of our lesson, we shall have to go on spelling at it and stumbling over it, through all the days of our life, till we make our last stumble, and take our final header out of this riddle of a world, which we once dreamed we were to rule over, exclaiming "vanitas vanitatum" to the end. But man's spirit will never be satisfied without a kingdom, and was never intended to be satisfied so; and One wiser than Solomon tells us ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... practice of all good authors, as they are to the common grammars, which he ridicules. Surely, such expressions as, "Harris's Hermes, Philips's Poems, Prince's Bay, Prince's Island, Fox's Journal, King James's edict, a justice's warrant, Sphinx's riddle, the lynx's beam, the lass's beauty," have authority enough to refute the cavil of this writer; who, being himself wrong, falsely charges the older grammarians, that," their theories vary from the principles of the language correctly spoken or written."—Ib., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... their desire to excel at all times. We see it in the pleasure felt by the child when he outstrips his fellows in the race,—when he catches his companion at "hide and seek,"—when he finds the hidden article at "seek and find,"—in winning a game, expounding a riddle, or gaining a place in his class. In all these instances there is a feeling of pure satisfaction and delight;—a feeling of self-estimation, which is at once the guardian and the reward of virtue. Now, when the catechetical exercise is conducted in its purity,—that ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... she had become, as if her baby was grown too big for her slight arms, even then I was light-hearted. Without attempting to follow her, I sauntered homeward humming a snatch of song with a great deal of fal-de-lal-de-riddle-o in it, for I can never remember words. I saw her enter another shop, baby linen shop or some nonsense of that sort, so it was plain for what she had popped her watch; but what cared I? I continued to sing most beautifully. I lunged gayly with my stick at a lamp-post and ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... the burnt house of a child of his, adding,—"She perished in it, and we have all removed from our own huts and built here round her, in order to weep over her grave." From some of the people he received great kindness; others were quite different. Their character, in short, was a riddle, and would need to be studied more. But the prevalent aspect of things was both distressing and depressing. If he had thought of it continually, he would have become the victim of melancholy. It was a characteristic ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... why? why?" she urged him, her flexible eyebrows raised in the eagerness of her inquiry. "I feel just as though I were going to hear the answer to a perfectly maddeningly unanswerable riddle." ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... of mystery! We can't take this obstinate fellow by surprise, that's clear. He'll give us the word of the riddle when we have guessed it; not before. He is as strong as we, my darling; he only needs a little practice. But look you—if he has found something which has escaped us, he must have previous information, that we don't ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... you is, that his mind (when I happen to meet him) seems to be as completely absorbed as ever in brains and nerves. But, what they can have to do with chemical experiments, secretly pursued in a lonely field, is a riddle to which I have ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... statement so absurd that Mallow proceeded to riddle it. It was, upon its face, a contradiction, for none but smart men could be crooked, and the laws of logic proved the converse to be ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Notes-our wit quintuple hear; Five able-bodied editors combine Their strength prodigious in each laboured line!" O wondrous vintner! hopeless seemed the task To bung these drainings in a single cask; The riddle's read-five leathern skins contain The working juice, and scarcely feel the strain. Saviours of Rome! will wonders never cease? A ballad cackled by five tuneful geese! Upon one Rosinante five stout knights Ride fiercely into ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... he saw of her the graver seemed the mystery; and the more deeply he wondered. But he no longer dreaded the answer to the riddle; nor did he fear to meet at some turn or corner a Megaera head that should freeze his soul. Wickedness there might be, cruelty there might be, and shame; but the blood ran too briskly in his veins and he had looked too often into the girl's ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... that prolific tree, the cocoanut palm, is propagated was a curious and interesting study for a leisure hour, the germination having been with us heretofore an unsolved riddle. Within the hard shell of the nut, among the mass of rich creamy substance, near the large end, is a small white lump like the stalk of a young mushroom, called the ovule. This little finger-like germ of the future tree gradually forces itself ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... for him on the earth, young Caddies chose this time to come out of his chalk pit and see the world. His brooding came at last to that. There was no answer to all his questions in Cheasing Eyebright; the new Vicar was less luminous even than the old, and the riddle of his pointless labour grew at last to the dimensions of exasperation. "Why should I work in this pit day after day?" he asked. "Why should I walk within bounds and be refused all the wonders of the world beyond there? What have I done, ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... until you knew whether I had finished with it. But, however, what was the answer to that silly riddle?" ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... glasses and slowly shook his head. Something was forming itself in his mind, this was evident. He walked around the ledge and back again. Finally, he said: "I wish it were night, it might help to solve the riddle." ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... and appreciate the meaning of life and of the universe of which life is the most significant product. Life is not merely the most notable product of our universe; it is the most persuasive key for solving the riddle of the universe, and is the only universe product which aspires to interpret the processes by which it has reached its ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... other, and he knows what we'll do with him if he should. Though he has made some clever escapes, I'll admit, that may not always be his fortune. The pitcher may go to the well once too often. He's a cunning rascal—no doubt knows this riddle—and therefore I begin to fear he has taken himself off,—at least for a long while. He may return again, but how the deuce are we to sustain this constant espionage? It would weary down the devil! It will ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... Axel, starting at the thought, said: "No." Then said Sveggum: "I don't trust that man. They ought to know of this at Nystuen." For there was to be the really important meeting. But how to let them know was the riddle. Borgrevinck was going there at once ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... thereupon appointed to succeed him, while Missiessy held command at Rochefort. The choice of Villeneuve has always been considered strange; and the riddle is not solved by the declaration of Napoleon that he considered that Villeneuve at the Nile showed his good fortune in escaping with the only French ships which survived that disaster. A strange reason ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... ... There's a riddle here to which I should like to know the answer. That sheet of paper, the marks of those teeth: what ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... principles. In Vetch's presence, she realized that she invariably lost sight of these structural or surface blemishes, and judged him by some standard which was different from the one she had inherited with the shape of her nose and the colour of her eyes. What troubled her was not so much the riddle of Vetch's personality as the fact that there was another mental world beyond the one she had always inhabited, and that this other world was filled, like her own, with obscure moral ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... the nest-building instinct, turned by the Devil himself into an institution to hold the human soul in chains. The whole story of marriage is told in the old riddle: "Why do birds in their nests agree? Because if they don't, they'll fall out." That's it. Marriage is a nest so small that there is no room in it for disagreement. Now it may be all right for birds to agree, but human beings are not built that way. They disagree, and home becomes a little ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... this essay to the public as a riddle which would probably be unintelligible at the time, but which might perhaps find an interpreter after many days, when the hints contained in it should be verified. Since its first appearance commentators have exercised their ingenuity upon it, perceiving it to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... our measures as to the Indians, as to slavery, as to religious freedom, were all in consonance with their professions. Yet I never expected we should get a vote from them, and in this I was neither deceived nor disappointed. There is no riddle in this, to those who do not suffer themselves to be duped by the professions of religious sectaries. The theory of American Quakerism is a very obvious one. The mother society is in England. Its members are English by birth and residence, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... life. A letter from him to his friend explaining matters crossed a letter from the friend, in which he told how he also had been aware of his presence. The incident is narrated in detail in Mr. Funk's "Psychic Riddle." ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... inured to slavish obedience, confirmed in him the faith that for his "I wish" there were no limits. At present his vanity, too, was wounded painfully. There was, besides, in Lygia's opposition and resistance, and in her flight itself, which was to him incomprehensible, a kind of riddle. In trying to solve this riddle he racked his head terribly. He felt that Acte had told the truth, and that Lygia was not indifferent. But if this were true, why had she preferred wandering and misery ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... give an explanation of mysterious phenomena in human relationships. For my own part, I am just as much in the dark as my mother. My father, who was a shrewd man, was always puzzled, and could not read the riddle. He used to say that he never thought George could have "made up" to any young woman, and it was quite clear that Miss Leroy did not either then or afterwards display any violent affection for him. I have heard her criticise and patronise him as a "good soul," ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... knowledge now entered as if taking it by storm, was that of the radioactive processes of the mineral stratum of the earth. Many new and surprising properties of electricity were discovered there - yet the riddle of electricity itself, instead of coming nearer, ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... ever shall be to those for whom Time has ceased to be—which is a riddle that Ma-Rim[o]n may even now learn, since his soul has been purified and his spirit strengthened by earnest devotion through many lives to the search ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... go to bed, it is late. She is a bit of a tease, John. Mark Rivers says she is now just one half of the riddle called woman." ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... riddle that I could not read. Among my last actions of this day was one that had been almost my earliest, and bedtime found me staring at his letter, as I stood, half undressed, by my table. The calm moon brought back Udolpho and what had been said there, as ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... just that light, impalpable, aerial essence which they've never got into their confounded books yet. The novelist who could interpret the common feelings of commonplace people would have the answer to 'the riddle of the painful earth ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... attempt to solve the riddle of the Universe, and to adjust the relations of mankind with the various forces represented by the deities. The priests systematized existing folk beliefs and established an official religion. To secure the prosperity of the State, it was considered necessary to render homage unto ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... The riddle of the young stranger's peculiarity did not seem likely to find any very speedy solution. Every new suggestion furnished talk for the gossips of the village and the babble of the many tongues in the two educational institutions. Naturally, the discussion was liveliest ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... asked Sir Wulfric haughtily. 'Thy speech is dark, and eke scarce courteous. Unravel me this riddle!' ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... Grandmother let fall I was sure it had a history; it was the one thing she never explored in her periodical overhaulings. When I grew tired of playing I liked to creep up on it and sit there, picturing out my own fancies concerning it—of which my favourite one was that some day I should solve the riddle and open the chest to find it full of gold and jewels with which I might restore the fortune of the Laurances and all the traditionary splendours ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and a cold eerie wind whined and sighed over us. We spoke little, having no breath to spare, for the ground was growing more steep and broken towards the second rise, up which we clambered, sliding and falling, grasping frozen heather till we reached the top. The hill was now a riddle of peat hags and binks, like a bee's skep, a place of treachery and slimy death, although the frost would have most of the sinking pools in its iron hand; but we never stopped the long stride that seemed so slow to me at first. Dan bent and twisted through the peat banks like a hound on ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... house, we wander at random through the streets; at last, overdone with fatigue, we sit down at a table in a cafe. We mechanically take up a copy of L'Illustration and our eyes fall at once upon the solution of its last riddle: Against death, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... have a fancy that if I should take it up now, I should think it a wiser and truer conception of the world than I thought it then. It is no solution of the problem; men are not going to answer the riddle of the painful earth by building themselves shanties and living upon beans and watching ant-fights; but I do not believe Tolstoy himself has more clearly shown the hollowness, the hopelessness, the unworthiness of the life of the world than Thoreau did in that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... appeared among the folds of his raiment, and he strode about the room in silence, as if he thought it necessary to give Joseph a few moments in which to consider his war gear (intended as an elaborate piece of symbolism). In response to the riddle presented, Joseph began to wonder if Nicodemus regarded himself rather as a riddle than as a reality—a riddle that might be propounded again and again, or if he could not do else than devise gaud and trappings to conceal his inner emptiness, ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... DECEMBER, 1740 [day after his Majesty left]. Everybody here is on tiptoe for the Event; of which both origin and end are a riddle to the most. I am charmed to see a part of your Majesty's Dominions in a state of Pyrrhonism; the disease is epidemical here at present. Those who, in the style of theologians, consider themselves entitled ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... will not reveal the destination of the fugitives; but we have learned, through your clever little daughter, that they have gone to a country where there is order, but where there are no police. That, methinks, is not a very difficult riddle to solve. You need only journey from place to place until you find such a country. The fugitives will be certain to betray themselves by their secrecy, and I have not the least doubt but your search will be rewarded ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... life is like a pilgrimage Whats his life then that lives in mariage Tis Sisiphus his toyle that with a stone Doth doe what surely for ease must be done His laboures Journey's endles, tis no Riddle Since he's but halfe on's way that stands ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... it, seemed, itself, to be something wonderful. Here in Geometry and Arithmetic, here was order and harmony unsurpassed and unsurpassable. What wonder then that Pythagoras concluded that the solution of the mighty riddle of the Universe was contained in the mysteries of Geometry? What wonder that he read mystic meanings into the laws of Arithmetic, and believed Number to be the explanation and origin of ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... birds did or dreamed, this bird could say. Then down he shot, bounced airily along The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. Sweet science, this large riddle read me plain:— How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon ...
— Bird Day; How to prepare for it • Charles Almanzo Babcock
... another man's riddle, and if he succeeds in guessing its solution he cries out that it is a sham and was not worth ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... attain to the proper mountain spirit. There is a further point, however, in which they also recall Derbyshire, but in which they are far preeminent. This is the vast agglomeration of caves and vertical potholes—like those in Craven, but here called etonnoirs—that riddle the rolling wolds in all directions. Chief among these is the mammoth cave of Han, the mere perambulation of which is said to occupy more than two hours. I have never penetrated myself into its sombre and dank recesses, but something may be realized of its character and scale merely by visiting ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... out the riddle yet? Hath she a fitting phrase selected? But time flies and she doth forget They long at home have her expected— Whither two neighbouring dames have walked And a long time about her talked. "What can be done? She is no child!" Cried the old dame with anguish filled: ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... A riddle is it still unto me, this dream; the meaning is hidden in it and encaged, and doth not yet fly above ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... however, that Daniel could not understand. He did not know wherein the riddle lay, he merely knew that there was one. If she gave him her hand, it seemed to him that there was something unreal about it. If he requested that she look at him, she did so, but it seemed that her glance was divided, half going to ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... that lie in the Turkish-looking sobriquet of "Mufti;" its vowels and its consonants are full of strict intention I never saw cause why the most charming of essayists hid himself in "Elia," but he may for all that have had pregnant reasons; even so, (but that slender wit could read my riddle,) you shall perhaps find fault with my Mussulman agnomen; still you and I equally participate in this shallow secret, and within so brief a word is concealed the key to unlock the casket that tempts your curiosity: however, the less said of so diaphanous ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the riddle of Time Is, That offers choice of glory and of gloom; The solver makes Time Shall Be surely his.— But hasten, Sisters! for even now the tomb Grates its slow hinge and calls ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... the mission of Jesus: whether, in short, we may not throw the gospels into the waste-paper basket, or put them away on the fiction shelf of our libraries. I venture to reply that we shall be, on the contrary, in the position of the man in Bunyan's riddle who found that "the more he threw away, the more he had. "We get rid, to begin with, of the idolatrous or iconographic worship of Christ. By this I mean literally that worship which is given to pictures and statues ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... meantime their opponents had taken advantage of the aeroplane's plight to riddle her ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... do? Long ago, in the dark ages when I was a child, I remember being asked a riddle a propos of short words. I will ask it to you now. What three letters contain everything in ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... passion With their fate they strove; but out of the pang of the conflict, Through such costly triumph as wins a waste and a famine, Victors they came, and Love retrieved the error of loving. So, foreknowing the years, and sharply discerning the future, Guessing the riddle of life, and accepting the cruel solution,— Side by side they sat, as far as the stars are asunder. Carked the cricket no more, but while the audible silence Shrilled in their ears, she, suddenly rising and dragging the thistle Out of her clinging ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... almost fear, in her cold eyes. What held her speechless? Was it remembrance of another life, when the stern word of the Church had been law? or was she merely troubled by so mysterious an appearance, her guilty soul swayed by superstitious terror? She was all too strange a riddle for my reading, but some occult power held her helpless, silent. The vengeful cries of her savage followers died away into threatening murmurs; the pere remained motionless, one hand on Eloise's bowed head, his white face ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... kit, I played it from start to finish, bating only Waterloo and the years of exile. For, mark you, I was always the victor. Here, too, are coloured prints from Epinal. It was on them that I began to spell out those signs which to the learned reveal a few faint traces of the Mighty Riddle. Yes, the sorriest little coloured daub that ever came out of a village in the Vosges consists of print and pictures, and what is the sum and substance of Science after all but just pictures ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... answer came like the next line in the book—Mrs. King proved him right, and so on till she was quite tired of the proofs, and began to trust him. Alfred asked how he could possibly do such things, which seemed to him a perfect riddle. ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... car made the distance back to the city Dundee had shrugged off the riddle and was concentrating on all the facts he knew regarding the Maginty case. It was his first real assignment from Sanderson, and he ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... Silver said was a riddle to him, but you would never have guessed it from his tone. As for me, I began to have an inkling. Ben Gunn's last words came back to my mind. I began to suppose that he had paid the buccaneers a visit, while they all lay drunk together round their fire, and I reckoned up with glee that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... solicit. During an existence of more than two centuries you have had a familiar intercourse with men who were esteemed the wisest of their day. Doubtless, with your capacious understanding, you have treasured up many an invaluable lesson of wisdom. You certainly have had time enough to guess the riddle of life. Tell us, poor mortals, then, how we ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... martyrs to the front, who perish in the effort to solve the deadly riddle. We would pour out billions of money in the fight if need come. Rich men will spend all they possess rather than die, and see those they love die of it. Nations will do the same. Compromises are not considered; no one talks of reforming the Black Death. Unless it be jettisoned from the Ship ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... be the more difficult to identify, must be referred to Mr. Taylor, the only person who has attempted both. His cogent argument on the political secret is not unworthily matched in his treatment of the theological riddle. He sees the solution in [Greek: euporia], which occurs in the Acts of the Apostles as the word for wealth in one of its most disgusting forms, and makes 666 in the most straightforward way. This explanation ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... mainstream Japanese in that sense, but native speakers do not recognize the Discordian question-denying use. It almost certainly derives from overgeneralization of the answer in the following well-known Rinzei Zen teaching riddle: ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... reading of the riddle. There is never a "Might-have-been" that touches with a sting, but reveals also to us an inner glimpse of the wide and beautiful "May Be." It is all there; somebody else has it now while we wait; but the years of God are full of satisfying, each soul shall have its turn; it is His good pleasure ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... The riddle was perhaps more easily solvable by an inveterate novelist than by the average member of the community. It was of a kind which Langholm had been ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... ANTI-SLAVERY PARTY was headed by the industrious and indomitable Horace Greeley. His claim to the feelings of humanity should never be disputed; but as a practical man who sought to solve the riddle of every-day life he placed his practical views in the foreground. As a political economist he reasoned that slave labor was degrading to free labor; that free labor was better than slave labor, and, therefore, he most earnestly ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... this new-found faculty! Whenever I choose, I can have the talking bird, the singing tree, and the laughing water! I always thought those peeps into irrational nature the chief charm of the Arabian tales. How little did I dream of ever being able to read with my own eyes the riddle of the world! By-the-way, let me look at my Graces, and see if they, too, are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... humble and yielding. In the midst of her humility she was proud, and sure of success and victory; one moment she was the glowing, ardent, and yielding woman; the next the proud, genial, imposing artiste. Such was Barbarina; an incomprehensible riddle, unsearchable, unfathomable as the sea—ever changing, but great ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... from the language of one period into that of another; it may also be a statement giving the doubtful or hidden meaning of that which is recondite or perplexing; as, the interpretation of a dream, a riddle, or of some difficult passage. Definition, explanation, exposition, and interpretation are ordinarily blended in a commentary, which may also include description. A comment is upon a single passage; a commentary may be the same, but is usually understood ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Venus' Oracle in turn I leaned the Secret of my Love to learn. The Answering Riddle came: "She loves you, yes, In just Proportion ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... in a changed tone, "listen to me. It's a big subject, this subject of love and liking—too big for me to riddle out, perhaps. But this I know, the world was made as it is, and neither you nor I can change it; no, nor ten thousand cleverer than we! It's all a mystery, and the queerest bit of mystery in it is that a man may go down into ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... down his dress, and as soon as it touches a woman she commences to tone hers up with all the hot house appliances to imitate the spring time of life. I don't ask this in a snarly spirit; but as a psychological riddle. Why is it that in November, with all her brown foliage and scarlet leaves and wind reddened sky, cannot be content with being handsome and natural, but should resort to the buds and flowers and bird-like airs of beautiful ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... to the princess, in the midst of a profound silence, "I hardly dare guess; and yet in this riddle I plainly perceive my own happiness. I dared to think that your questions would have no difficulty for me, while you thought the contrary; you have the goodness to believe that I am not unworthy to ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... "mystery" and "secrecy" upon any man's house, and you at once make him a riddle for the cunning, envious, and crafty to try to solve; and this has been the case with the Gipsies for generations, and the consequence has been, they have trotted out kings, queens, princes, bishops, nobles, ladies and gentlemen of all grades, wise men, fools, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the Indians. In the course of the next summer (after doing much mischief in a smaller way in the meantime), they gathered together to the number of six hundred, and led on by Colonel Bird, a British officer, came down upon Riddle's and Martin's stations, at the forks of Licking river. They had with them six cannons, and managed their matters so secretly, that the first news of their approach was given to the settlers by the roar of their guns. Of course ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... the insolence of attendants, and OEdipus kills Laius. The brother of Laius, Creon, succeeds to the throne of Thebes. The country around is vexed with a terrible monster, with the face of a woman, the wings of a bird, and the tail of a lion, called the Sphinx, who has learned from the Muses a riddle, which she proposed to the Thebans, and on every failure to resolve it one of them was devoured. But no person can solve the riddle. The king offers his crown and his sister Jocasta, wife of Laius, in marriage to any one who would explain the riddle. OEdipus solves it, and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the 2nd of December in Paris seemed to me absolutely incredible, and I thought the world was surely coming to an end. When the news was confirmed, and events which no one believed could ever happen had apparently occurred and seemed likely to be permanent, I gave the whole thing up like a riddle which it was beneath me to unravel, and turned away in disgust from the contemplation of this puzzling world. As a playful reminiscence of our hopes of the year 1852, I suggested to Uhlig that in our correspondence during that year we should ignore its existence and should date our letters December ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Rugen, and we enter into the delight of your having so good a pilot. Why are you like Queen Elizabeth? Because you know how to chuse wise ministers. Does not this prove you as great a Captain as she was a Queen? This may serve as a riddle for you to put forth among your officers, by way of increasing your proper consequence. It must be a real enjoyment to you, since you are obliged to leave England, to be where you are, seeing something of a new country and one which ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... Angelo, begun to play before its Time, being kindled by a Flash of Lightning. The Author hath written his Poem [1] in the same kind of Style, as that I have already exemplified in Prose. Every Line in it is a Riddle, and the Reader must be forced to consider it twice or thrice, before he will know that the Cynick's Tenement is a Tub, and Bacchus ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... king was so unhappy he could eat nothing, and besides, gingerbread nuts were too hard for him. It was decided that John should come to the palace the next day, when the judges and the whole of the counsellors would be present, to try if he could guess the first riddle. If he succeeded, he would have to come a second time; but if not, he would lose his life,—and no one had ever been able to guess even one. However, John was not at all anxious about the result of his ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... ye will, sorr," heartily echoed Tim. "I mint to riddle his carkiss an ownly winged him. The ugly black divil sames to kape a charmed loife, an' I dare say his ould frind ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in those Voltaire Letters, chaotic as they are; small sparks, elucidative, confirmatory of your dull History Books, and adding traits, here and there, to the Image you have formed from them. Yielding you a poor momentary comfort; like reading some riddle of no use; like light got incidentally, by rubbing dark upon dark (say Voltaire flint upon Dryasdust gritstone), in those labyrinthic catacombs, if you are doomed to travel there. A mere weariness, otherwise, to the outside reader, hurrying forward,—to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... vague rumors of battles said to have been fought at San Francisco, Port Townsend, and Seattle, had arisen, even these sources of information ran dry. The question from where all the hostile troops had come, remained as much of a riddle as ever. That was a matter of indifference after all; the chief consideration was to adopt measures of ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... truth of Fatalism by superficial twaddle and foolish evasion, a man should attempt to get a clear knowledge and comprehension of it; for it is demonstrably true, and it helps us in a very important way to an understanding of the mysterious riddle of our life. Predestination and Fatalism do not differ in the main. They differ only in this, that with Predestination the given character and external determination of human action proceed from a rational Being, and with Fatalism from an irrational one. But in either case the result ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... romantic episode, a dramatic centre of interest, from the heroic endurance and brilliant gallantry displayed by its garrison; but, from the practical side, the action of friend and foe, the fact of occupation and the conduct of {p.113} the siege, present a military riddle ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... with good dinners. But come—solve for me this riddle in brown. My friend usually gives but little heed to the feminine conundrums that smilingly ask to be answered, but for some occult reason he is in a state of sleepless interest over this one, and I know that his waistcoat is selling with gratitude to me for having the courage ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... a wonder—a riddle surpassing any of Solomon's," the inquisitor said next. "As you see, I am in the time of life when curiosity is as ungovernable as it was in childhood, when to trifle with it is cruelty. Tell me further, and I will honor you as kings honor each other. ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... a little drily, "is a riddle to her best friends, and probably to herself; she does a thousand wild, imprudent, bad things if you will, but she is the greatest actress the modern world has seen, and that's something to have done for your generation. To have moved the ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it leaves me whirling in space, with nothing to help me to interpret realities. It is magnificent in theory, but it is a mere gas-bubble in the face of existing conditions. It is majestic, but sterile. Then where is the answer to the riddle of the world? Who ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... that I think of it well, I'm no nearer The riddle's solution than ever—for how's My pretty invented word, "tose," any clearer In point of its signification ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... should have been so may seem very strange to us who now have been told the answer to the riddle; for the upper waters of this great river were known of before Christ and spoken of by Herodotus, Pliny and Ptolemy, and its mouths navigated continuously along by the seaboard by trading vessels since the fifteenth century, but they were not ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... most significant historical fact of this Fourth Book is the connection which it makes between Egypt and Greece. In another Greek legend, that of OEdipus, the same connection is made through the Sphinx, whose riddle the Greek hero solves, whereat the ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... to see the day after, the Journal des Debats of the 13th of September, an extract from his narrative, copied almost literally: he then endeavoured to discover whence the editors could have obtained these details; it cost him but little time to solve the riddle. ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... no proof is offered to us of the actual existence, as a vera causa, of the process by which a saying. 'Apollo pursues Daphne,' remains in language, while the meaning of the words is forgotten. This process is essential, but undemonstrated. See the chapter here on 'The Riddle Theory.' ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... all that is was ever bound to be; Since grim, eternal laws our Being bind; And both the riddle and the answer find, And both the carnage and the calm decree; Since plain within the Book of Destiny Is written all the journey of mankind Inexorably to the end; since blind And mortal ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... persistent coldness of heart is the cause of an unfailing passion in some of you; other men ask for an untiring devotion, to be idolized at every moment; some for gentleness, others for tyranny. No woman in this world as yet has really read the riddle of man's heart." ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... not undertake to account for personality." We reply, "That is a part of your problem. You have undertaken to solve the riddle of the universe by excluding all evidence of an existing and active God, and we can not release you because a feature of the problem may be unusually difficult or embarrassing, or even fatal to your theory. ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... all at their guns, the Americans off guard, lounging on the lumber piles. Quick as flash a cannon shot rips across the Chesapeake's bows, followed by a broadside, and another, and yet another, that riddle the American decks to kindling wood before the astonished officers can collect their senses. Six seamen are dead and twenty-three wounded when the Chesapeake strikes her colors to surrender; but the Leopard ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... courtesy and kindness of General Early, the author is greatly indebted for the key to the riddle. Under date of Lynchburg, Virginia, November 6, 1890, he writes: "The signal message . . . was altogether fictitious. As Sheridan's troops occupied the north bank of Cedar Creek in such a strong position as to render it impracticable for me to attack them in front, I went to the signal station ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... Liddell Or Scott; and Smith, and White, And Lewis, Short, and Riddle Are 'emptied of delight.' Todhunter and Colenso (Alas, that friendships end so!) He curses in extenso ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... red, russet, all bright colors, brightened by the mild brilliancy of the descending sun; it was strange to recognize the sober old friends of spring and summer in this new dress. By the by, a pretty riddle or fable might be made out of the changes in apparel of the familiar trees round a house, adapted for children. But in the lake, beneath the aforesaid border of trees,—the water being, not rippled, but its glassy surface somewhat moved ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... silhouette of the man at the window for an answer to the riddle. But Matheson's face was set, and the answer to the riddle was such as Lars Larssen could never have guessed. It lay outside the shipowner's pale of thought—beyond the limitations ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... I lay a-dreaming, I tried so hard to read this riddle through, To catch some golden cord that I saw gleaming Like gossamer against ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris |
