"Mysterious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts; wherein, by the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... by silent sympathy is {24} referred to by one who writes: 'The many words of kindness, but more particularly the silent sympathy he conveyed in some mysterious manner, will ever keep him present ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... experienced in wagons and railroad trains exerts such a fascinating influence on older children, that all boys, at least at one time in their lives, want to become conductors and drivers. They are wont to ascribe to railroad activities an extraordinary and mysterious interest, and during the age of phantastic activity (shortly before puberty) they utilize these as a nucleus for exquisite sexual symbolisms. The desire to connect railroad travelling with sexuality apparently originates ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... Consciousness of the Universe—Consciousness taken captive by matter and struggling to free himself from it. We personalize the All in order to save ourselves from Nothingness; and the only mystery really mysterious is the mystery ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... port of safety, where thou shalt find those who will carry thee to thine own country: and all this shall be fulfilled to thee, so thou pronounce not the name of God." I started up from my sleep and hastening to do the bidding of the mysterious voice, found the bow and arrows and shot at the horseman and overthrew him; whereupon he fell into the sea, whilst the horse dropped at my feet and I took it and buried it. Then the sea grew troubled and rose till it reached ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... by John Broom's mysterious disappearance, and he comforted himself as the farm-bailiff did, but to a larger extent. And Thomasina winked at many irregularities in consideration of the groans of sympathy with which he responded to her tears as they sat round the hearth where John ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... useful art. Here the smith has erected his forge, and his sooty mansion is crowded by curious natives, who voluntarily perform the hardest and most dirty work, and consider themselves fully recompensed by a sight of his mysterious labours, every portion of which fills them with astonishment. Here is heard daily the sound of the sawpit, while piles of neat white planks appear arranged on the beach. These laborious and useful Scotchmen interfere with no one, and pursue successfully their industrious career, ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... fishing the Itchen, or Shawford Brook. The Angler's Vade Mecum recommends eighteen-feet rods: preferring a fir butt, fashioned by the arrow-maker, a hazel top, and a tip of whalebone. This authority, even more than Walton, deals in mysterious 'Oyntments' of gum ivy, horse-leek, asafoetida, man's fat, cat's fat, powdered skulls, and grave earth. A ghoulish body is the angler of the Vade Mecum. He recommends up-stream fishing, with worm, in a clear water, and so is a predecessor of Mr. Stewart. 'When you have ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... glory The mysterious clouds dispel, Grateful shall I tell my story, Grateful say ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... consists in an unfair assumption of the point at issue. The word [Greek: atestai], in Aristotle's name for it points to the Greek method of dialectic by means of question and answer. This fact is rather disguised by the mysterious phrase 'begging the question.' The fallacy would be committed when you asked your opponent to grant, overtly or covertly, the very proposition ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... had seen his Tydeus at the Academy, and my picture was nothing to it: a profound admirer bade him persevere—would make herself known to him ere long. (Paolina, my little friend of the Fenice, 120 transcribes divinely.) And in due time, the mysterious correspondent gave certain hints of her peculiar charms—the pale cheeks, the black hair—whatever, in short, had struck us in our Malamocco model: we retained her name, too—Phene, which is, by interpretation, sea-eagle. Now, 125 think of Jules finding ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... the face commonly give a man a certain fierce and martial air, which sets him off to advantage; but it was quite the contrary with him, and this remarkable plaister so well suited his mysterious looks, that it seemed an addition to his gravity ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... by this time in mid-Pacific, untold miles away, heading for that vast and mysterious East into which a man could so easily disappear. He was approaching gloomy and tangled waterways that threaded between islands which could not even be counted. He was fleeing towards dark rivers which led off through barbaric and mysterious silence, into the heart of darkness. ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... country may be dismissed as a myth, for few really understand their true significance, or place any real reliance upon such fanciful relics of a former age—an age of superstition, when people blindly clutched at any mysterious protective power or emblem. ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... well served by his associates. Sir EDWARD ELGAR wove a delightfully patterned music of mysterious import through the queer tangle of the scenes and gave us an atmosphere loaded with the finest star-dust. Lighting and setting were admirably contrived; and the grouping of the little prologue scenes, where that kindly handsome ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... Yes, that, too, was mysterious. Whence came that undertone like the moan of a weary wastrel tortured with dreams of idyllic innocence long lost? Why did her utterance, like her glorious face, always suggest some inner, darker meaning? There were ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... the Pope is also styled the Chief Pilot of the Church. It was not without a mysterious significance that our Lord entered Peter's bark instead of that of any of the other Apostles. This bark, our Lord has pledged Himself, shall never sink nor depart from her true course. How can you imagine a ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... she is and what she wants to see Mr. Grainger for?" she said excitedly, as she mopped her florid face: "doesn't know him, and yet wants to see him particularly. There is something mysterious about her." ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... the successor of the Sakya, who could have caused the 'Three Precious Ones'(11) to be proclaimed so far, and the people of those border lands to know our Law? We know of a truth that the opening of (the way for such) a mysterious propagation is not the work of man; and so the dream of the emperor Ming of Han(12) had its ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... tend the machine immediately opened the great bundle of wool, and then she took up a handful of it, and began to spread it evenly over the cloth. When she had got the cloth pretty nearly covered she pulled a handle pretty near her, and that, in some mysterious way or other, set the machinery a-going. The cloth, with all the wool upon it, began to move towards the great rollers of the machine. These rollers were covered with card teeth, and the wool, as it was drawn in between them, was carded fine, and spread evenly over all the surface; and in a few ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... precious to her, and her tears added fuel to the flame of the knight's anger, while Undine held her hand over the side of the vessel, dipping it into the water, softly murmuring to herself, and only now and then interrupting her strange mysterious whisper, as she entreated her husband: "My dearly loved one, do not scold me here; reprove others if you will, but not me here. You know why!" And indeed, he restrained the words of anger that were trembling on his tongue. Presently in her wet hand which she had been ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... prince instantly recognized the features of the Armenian, and the words he was about to utter expired on his tongue. We were all as it were petrified with fear and amazement. Silent and motionless, our eyes were fixed on this mysterious being, who beheld us with a calm but penetrating look of grandeur and superiority. A minute elapsed in this awful silence; another succeeded; not a ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... far-away gaze in the priest's dark eyes as he knelt by the bedside; but his prayers, his faint words of comfort, had fallen like drops of ice upon his quickened desire to be brought a little nearer to that mysterious, shadowy essence of goodness which was all his mind could conceive of a God. It had seemed like a dead form of words, lifeless, hopeless, monotonous; and all that faint striving to attain to some knowledge of the truth—if indeed ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... from the proud empire. But neither bribes, nor alliances, nor the sword in the hands of enervated Rome, could effectually check the incursions of these bands, who were ever emerging, like wolves, from the mysterious depths of ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... And they will, by the cunning and the mysterious arts of the evil one, work some great mystery which we cannot understand, which will keep us down to be servants to their words, and also servants unto them, for we depend upon them to teach us the word; and thus will they keep ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... mysterious, I love you. You're beautiful, intelligent, and virtuous, and that's the rarest ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... enemies were awed by our sudden disappearance, it was soon robbed of its mysterious character. Our faces, and the dark barrels of our rifles, visible around the edges of the white rock, must have dispelled all ideas of the supernatural. Having hastily disposed of our horses, we had placed ourselves thus—in case of a ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... the hills, and the earliest notes of his harp echoed the deep tones. He learned courage as well as tenderness from his daily tasks, and patience from the contrast between them and the high vocation which Samuel's mysterious anointing had opened before him. If we remember how disturbing an influence the consciousness of it might have wrought in a soul less filled with God, we may perhaps accept as probably correct the superscription which refers one sweet, simple psalm to him, and may venture to suppose ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... sort of shudder; "you never saw a neater fellow, nor one, to do him justice, who takes more time in dressing than he does in general. And talking of shoes, he rushed out with the right boot on the left foot, and the left boot on the right. Very mysterious!" And a third time Lord Spendquick shook his head,—and a third time that head seemed ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... informed, would not only continue to supply Walworth with their produce, but, from motives of caprice or economy, would deliver it himself. Accordingly, the man you have seen pass this evening appeared; and all was uniform and punctual as before. In a few days, however, he came, attended by that mysterious female, dogged precisely as you have seen him an hour ago, and at once the heart of every cook and kitchen-maid in the parish was on fire with curiosity and suspicion. From the kitchen the contagion spread to the drawing-room, and commissions of enquiry, in the shape of tea-parties, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... thereby being quickened and made strong. But it is unmistakable, that Luther and Butzer conceived in different ways both the manner of the Presence and the manner of partaking,—each of these, indeed, in a mysterious sense and one very difficult to be defined. Luther could scarcely have failed to observe the difference, which still remained between them, and the defect from which, according to his own convictions, the doctrine of the South Germans still suffered. The question ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... skill and power are confined to so selecting and arranging the incidents as to provide his psychological data with the freest possible development. In the present case I might easily have devised a stage and a series of events for Malmaison, which would have brought his mysterious affection into somewhat more prominent and picturesque relief. But that affection is itself so absorbing a problem, that the fashion of its statement becomes of comparatively small import; and I may add that the setting ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... exchange the idea of eternal sovereign justice for that of blind-fatality? How can one judge without hesitation between the moral sense which has given way and the instinct which displays itself? how not exclaim that the designs of a Creator who retains the one and impels the other are sometimes mysterious and inexplicable, and that one ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... is made chiefly by the natives of the northern part of the Amazonian valley. It is looked upon as an important and somewhat mysterious operation. Waterton and Schombergh describe it. The Indian, when preparing to concoct this deadly compound, goes into the wilds where grows a vine—the strychnos toxifera. After this he collects a ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... to its dim golden age, and which ever expresses the bright dream of our youth, ere the rigor of misfortune or the dulness of experience has spoilt it. The dramatis personae are three individuals, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. There are the mysterious tree, with its wonderful fruit,—the beautiful, but inquisitive woman,—the thoughtful, but too compliant man,—and the insinuating reptile. One speaks, the other rejoins, and the third fills up the chasm of interest. The plot thickens, the passions are displayed, and the tragedy hastens ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the literature about the "protocols" that appeared in various parts of the world in 1920 is based on the "documents" vouched for by the mysterious Sergius Nilus, and fortified by the irresponsible Jew-baiter and ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... thoughts. The boys looked at the steamer, and then at Captain Corbet, in some wonder; but as he said nothing, they were silent, and waited to see what was going to happen. Meanwhile Solomon, roused from some mysterious culinary duties by the report of the gun, had scrambled upon the deck, and stood with the others looking out over ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... the sun set, and the fowls gathered round us, and picked up the scattered crumbs of biscuit. My wife then took out her mysterious bag, and drew from it some handfuls of grain to feed her flock. She showed me also many other seeds of useful vegetables. I praised her prudence, and begged her to be very economical, as these seeds were of great value, and we could ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... was in making the shopman understand that I really and truly wanted old clothes. But after fruitless attempts to press upon me new and impossible coats and trousers, he began to bring to light heaps of old ones, looking mysterious the while and hinting darkly. This he did with the palpable intention of letting me know that he had "piped my lay," in order to bulldose me, through fear of exposure, into paying heavily for my purchases. A man in trouble, or a high-class criminal from across the ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... the rings of Saturn? How was Uranus discovered? What was the intellectual triumph which brought the planet Neptune to light? Then, as to the other bodies of our system, what are we to say of those mysterious objects, the comets? Can we discover the laws of their seemingly capricious movements? Do we know anything of their nature and of the marvellous tails with which they are often decorated? What can be told about the shooting-stars ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... of Acol seems full of queer folk, good Sir Marmaduke," said Mistress Pyncheon. "I have heard talk among my servants of a mysterious prince hailed from France, who has lately made one of ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... was too much absorbed in her own mysterious mental processes to take note of or analyze this observation. For a few moments she was lost in a brown study, and gazed about her with a glance that struck me as ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... here all the time!" said he, rising, and to his astonishment Sneak stood at his elbow, whither he had glided softly, his quick ear having caught the hum of Joe's soliloquy, and his curiosity leading him to find out the meaning of the mysterious jargon ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... through the "Familiar Phrases" is so inexhaustible that space forbids further quotation from this portion of the book, which may be appropriately closed with "Help to a little most the better yours terms," a mysterious adjuration, which a reference to the original Portuguese leads one to suppose may be a daring guess at "Choisissez un pen mieux ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... Nowhere do the wild roses seem so pure, or are the aloes so jaunty and so gay. The smell of the karoo bush is sweeter than attar, and the bog-myrtle and mimosa, where they shelter a house or fringe a river, have a look of Arcady. It is a world where any mysterious thing may happen—a world of five thousand years ago—the air so light, so sweetly searching and vibrating, that Ariel would seem of the picture, and gleaming hosts of mailed men, or vast colonies of green-clad archers moving ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and made acquainted with the uses of money. He is come 'on pressing business,'—perhaps not of stage-diamonds alone? Here now is DOCUMENT SECOND; nearly of the same date; may be of the very same;—more likely is a few days later, and betokens mysterious dialogue and consultation held on Tuesday 10th. It is in two hands: written on some scrap or TORN bit of paper, to judge by ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... a stylish-looking man, and the spinster received his attentions very favorably. She knew very little about him except that he was in some mysterious business about which he did not speak definitely, except that it required him to travel constantly. Matters progressed until they became engaged. At this point, rather reversing the usual order of things, Miss Marden gave her suitor the ring which ...
— The Erie Train Boy • Horatio Alger
... further revealed, meant to her the Campagna and the Catacombs. On the former she had taken walks, and in the very bowels of the latter she had seemingly burrowed for days, following some mysterious purpose of her own. Her favorite time for a promenade on the Campagna, and one she paused to recommend to me, was at dusk, the place then being quiet and peaceful, owing to the fact that tourists, foolishly fearing the fever, kept away ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... it to rest. It is said that their eyes and hair are blue, and that they are crowned with white and red water plants; that at times the foam reveals their shapely forms, whiter than the foam itself, and that when night descends completely they begin their divine sports, playing mysterious airs like those of AEolian harps. But let us turn to our young people and listen to the end of their conversation. Ibarra was speaking ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... chamber fitted for its protection and maintenance during the protracted process of gestation. Here, when subjected to the required conditions, this minute and apparently insignificant particle of living matter becomes animated by a new and mysterious activity. The germinal vesicle and spot cease to be discernible (their precise fate being one of the yet unsolved problems of embryology), but the yelk becomes circumferentially indented, as if an invisible knife had been drawn round it, and thus ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... his spread. Kneeling, with sleeves rolled from his hard forearms, he broiled a steak over hickory forks. The torches of gum tree knots lighted his banquet, and the faces of the two girls, rosy in the blaze and mysterious in the shadow, were piquant inspiration. Even the sharp features of Don Anastasio stirred him into a phase of whimsical benevolence. He knocked two chickens from their perch in a tree and baked them ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... twice up and down the room in profound thought, endeavouring to find some plausible reason for transactions of a nature so mysteriousbut his ingenuity was totally at fault. He then placed himself before ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... scene, sea and river alike fringed with the richest foliage, birds flying about (I saw a large blue bird, a parrot, I suppose), fish jumping, the perfectly still water, the mysterious smoke of a fire or two, the call of a man heard in the bush, just enough of novelty to quicken me to the full enjoyment of such a lovely bay as no English eyes save ours ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... father's study, pausing for a moment at the sound of voices within. She recognized, however, that it was her cousin, Tom Craigie, who was speaking, and without more delay she entered. Then in a moment she understood why M. Noirol had been so mysterious. Tom was speaking quickly and strongly, and there was a glow of anger on his face. Her father was standing with his back to the mantlepiece, and there was a sort of cold light in his eyes, which filled Erica with dismay. Never in the most anxious days had she ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... would answer, at the same time putting into your hand a paper on which was written some cabalistic sign. One day I had taken it into my head to go and spend two hours at Bougival, and my pass bore the strange word "Carnivolus" written on it. Provided with this mysterious document, I was enabled to procure a first-class ticket and jump into the next train that started. I was free, and nothing could have prevented my going, if such had been my wish, to proclaim the Commune ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... whilst directly over against it, on the farther side of the valley, rose the perpendicular side of the rival hill, which, to a considerable extent intercepting the light, flung its black shadow over the upper end of the pass, involving it in mysterious darkness. Emerging from the centre of this gloom, with thundering sound, dashed a river, white with foam, and bearing along with it huge stones and branches of trees, for it was the wild Sil hurrying to the ocean from its cradle in the heart of the Asturian ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... memento of the happy termination to the temporary misunderstanding, Sir ARTHUR, in a truly generous mood, designed to call the character "Sir Brian de Bois-Gilbert-and-Sullivan." Whether the mysterious librettist, whose name has only lately been breathed in the public ear, insisted on SCOTT's original name being retained or not, it is now pretty certain that there will be no departure from the great ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... decrees meant to operate on the obedience, to actuate the moral conduct of man: it is quite usual with most legislators to render their laws as explicit as possible, to adapt them to the meanest understanding; in short, it would be reckoned want of good faith in a government, to throw a thick, mysterious veil over the announcement of that conduct which it wished its citizens to adopt; they would be apt to think such a procedure was either meant to cover its own peculiar ignorance, or else to entrap them into a ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... living stream; The secret ceremonies I conceal, Uncouth, perhaps unlawful, to reveal: 200 But such they were as Pagan use required, Perform'd by women when the men retired, Whose eyes profane their chaste mysterious rites Might turn to scandal, or obscene delights. Well-meaners think no harm; but for the rest, Things sacred they pervert, and silence is the best. Her shining hair, uncomb'd, was loosely spread, A crown of mastless oak adorn'd her head: When to the shrine approach'd, the spotless ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... by the mere charm of her pliant intellect and her bright beauty? Had a new, strong passion awakened within him? Was he in danger of seeing the will which urged him to preserve his freedom conquered? Had he cause to fear that some day, constrained by a mysterious, invincible power, in defiance of the opposition of calm reason, he might perhaps bind himself for life to this Barine, the woman who had once been the wife of a Philostratus, and who bestowed her smiles on all who found ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of rogueries, frauds, rapine, and excesses which the law does not punish. The masses, in truth, have no idea of religion; what is called religion, is but a blind attachment to unknown opinions and mysterious dealings. In fact, to deprive the people of religion, is depriving them of nothing. If we should succeed in destroying their prejudices, we would but diminish or annihilate the dangerous confidence which they have ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... is universally acknowledged, that the mind of man alone, regulates all the actions of his corporeal frame. Mind, therefore, may be regarded as a distinct genus, in the scale ascending above brutes, and including the whole of intellectual existences; advancing from thought, that mysterious thing! in its lowest form, through all the gradations of sentient and rational beings, till it arrives at a Bacon, a Newton; and then, when unincumbered by matter, extending its illimitable sway through Seraph and Archangel, till we are lost in the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... the granite ledges, where yet this couple glided with the terrifying dexterity of somnambulists who, forgetting their own weight and the dangers of the slightest deviation, hurry along a ridge-pole and keep their equilibrium by the power of some mysterious force. ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... the high mountain range, you know!—The house-wall there would have rapped out a speedy, babbling response at once; but the mountain!—I not long ago was visiting the Custom House at Salem, the place in which your father discovered those mysterious records that unfolded into 'The Scarlet Letter.' Ah, how suddenly and easily genius renders the spot rare and full of a great and new virtue (however ordinary and bare in reality) when it has looked and dwelt! A light ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... in the firing trench. Fixing the camera, and the rest of the apparatus, I began taking scenes of actual life and conditions in the trenches—that mysterious land about which millions have read but have never had the opportunity of seeing. No mere verbal description would suffice to describe them. Every minute the murderous crack of rifles and the whir of machine-guns rang out. Death hovered all round. ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... (iii. 242) and many others are puzzled about the use of these articles. In many cases they are suspended to trees in order to transfer sickness from the body to the tree and whoever shall touch it. The Sawahili people term such articles a Keti (seat or vehicle) for the mysterious haunter of the tree who prefers occupying it to the patient's person. Briefly the custom still popular throughout Arabia, is African ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... Desire. It was ninety miles to the nearest wire. The stage came in but occasionally from the distant railroad. Yet—and this was one of the strange things of that strange country, which we accepted without curiosity and without argument—there was, in that far-away region, a mysterious fashion by which news got about over great distances. Perhaps it was a rider in by the short trail over Lone Mountain who brought the word that he had seen, thirty miles away by the longer road up the canon, ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... study he found not only Lord Wellington, but Colonel Grant, and by the cold gravity of both their faces he had an inspiration that in some mysterious way the whole hideous truth ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... with the garret of a country home can ever forget its mysterious charm. But I must remember that I am writing of flowers, and leave the captivating subject of garrets. Multitudes of potent herbs may now be found in the woods, by the road-side, everywhere: tansy, camomile, wormwood, everlasting, wild basil, lavender, germander, pennyroyal, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... theologico-scientific explanations, it was still held meritorious to believe that all fossils were placed in the strata on one of the creative days by the hand of the Almighty, and that this was done for some mysterious purpose, probably for the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... happened, and, as I became colder and colder, I began to think that, after all, I had been mistaken. Was it possible that they were only heaps of peat? At last I summoned up enough courage to crawl out and approach one of the mysterious forms. Still nothing happened, and my confidence increased considerably. I had only gone a few yards when I saw that it was actually only a heap of peat with a large piece lying near the top which protruded sideways, this having formed the supposed ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... that the prophecy of "Oom Niklaas" was still standing. The fact that the uprising had failed did not seem in the least to invalidate the vision. If the mysterious number did not mean Aug. 15, then perhaps it did mean ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... am endeavoring to introduce for the benefit of mankind, comprehends the whole of the theory and practice of Occultism, and there is no need for seeking mysterious societies for a species of knowledge which is no longer a secret, and which will be fully illustrated in my ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... informed; but few of my readers need to be told that "intilt" is a Scotch provincialism for "into it," and that the landlady meant by using it to signify that the particulars enumerated entered as constituents into her mysterious dish. ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... doing her best to believe that there was no concealment in the case of any man with whom she could have friendly relations. She scorned the female cynic; she disliked the carelessly liberal in moral judgment. Profoundly mysterious to her was everything covered by the word "passion"—a word ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... indeed, in classical literature many references to supposed islands and countries out beyond the Atlantic. The ancients called these places the Islands of the Blessed and the Fortunate Isles. It is, perhaps, not unnatural that in the earlier writers the existence of these remote and mysterious regions should be linked with the ideas of the Elysian Fields and of the abodes of the dead. But the later writers, such as Pliny, and Strabo, the geographer, talked of them as actual places, and tried to estimate how ...
— The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada • Stephen Leacock
... whole matter in a nutshell: Your life machine is the most wonderful, the most mysterious, and at the same time the most "runnable" thing that the great God has created; but to run it successfully, as God designed it to be run, you must get your instructions from Him, the Maker of it. His Book of Rules, the Bible, must be your daily guide, and through it He will speak to ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... is the thirst for knowledge—the daring of our immortal powers—the enterprise of the soul, to raise itself again to its original high estate. It was curiosity which stimulated the great Newton to search into the laws of heaven, and enabled his master-mind to translate the vast mysterious page of Nature, ever before our eyes since the creation of the world, but never, till he appeared, to be read by mortal man. It is this passion which must be nurtured in our childhood, for upon its healthy growth and vigour depends the ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... his head as Redcap had told him to do, and stood listening with all his might. A strange sullen muttering came from the chest, of which he could only distinguish these mysterious words, "Beware of a coming tree," and then the lid shut as slowly as it had opened, and the locks were locked with a jerk, as if by ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... gave up the attempt to read. She felt lonely and depressed. Nobody had been to the house since Kenwardine left, and Dick and Jake were away. She did not see Dick often and he was, of course, nothing to her; for one thing, he was in some mysterious way her father's enemy. Still, she missed him; he was honest, and perhaps, ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... evening there was further news of the progress of the bacillus. From Cleobury-Mortimer, ten miles from Ludlow, and twenty from Birmingham, it was reported that the measles epidemic there had been cut short in the same mysterious manner as noticed in Ludlow. But next morning a paragraph of considerable length appeared which I read out in a ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... had taken a chair by Mary's, looked with a half-conscious pleasure round the velvet sward on which the shadows of the trees lay long. The trees were at their full summer foliage, dark as night, mysterious, magnificent. ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... the steely bed of a glacier, hoary with age and immovable as the very bedrocks of the mountains themselves. It sloped away into the distance, and lost itself in the heart of a mighty canyon. Even to these men on their trail of death, living, as they did, so adjacent to these mysterious wilds, the scene was not without ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... made to these mysterious verses, gives them an especial interest. The first apostasy, the fall of the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... too near the Supreme Being of 1793 to talk about divine justice; he therefore spared the jury all reference to the intervention of heaven; but he said that earthly justice would be on the watch for the mysterious accomplices who had set the senator at liberty, and he sat down, ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... Unmolested, she passed the hotel and on down the street to the foot of the hill, where she evidently spent the night; for the tinkle of the bell became permanent and blended with and became a part of the subtle, mysterious sounds ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... Carrie looked mysterious and answered, "I never knew anything of her father, and indeed, I reckon no one does"—then after a moment she added, "Almost every family has some objectionable relative, with which they ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... some mysterious impulse, the thirteen sprang to their feet, and again their hands flashed out in that curious crisscross motion over the breast, the forehead, the eyes, and a murmur went from mouth to ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... was that this other woman, who was a frail, poor-spirited thing, should be ready to support herself and child out of love for Blake. In Charlotte's mind, which was pitilessly clear and active, there was room for a passing wonder at the mysterious power which so weak a man could exert over women, even without his will. She was wondering, too, if her own passion for him would ever rise again. At present she was far from loving him; she felt only a bitter resentment, a desire to punish him by holding to him, and a towering obstinacy and pride ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... out" the other. Dick fully expected to find it so, for he had often seen such evidence of vandalism and hatred during his long marches through the State. The boys afterward learned that Dick's father and mother had taken refuge with friends in Little Rock, while Mr. Percival's family had, in some mysterious way, succeeded in reaching St. Louis. Rodney was depressed by the sight of the ruins, and thanked his lucky stars that his father and mother lived in a State in which such things never could be done. The few Union men there were in and around Mooreville would never dare trouble his folks, and ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... with the songs of superior beings—this is a faculty that bears no unequivocal mark of a divine descent, and that nothing but prejudice or pride can deem of trivial or inferior rank. But when to this is added a mastery over the mysterious combinations of harmony, a spirit that can make subservient to its one object immense masses of dissimilar and sometimes discordant, sounds; and, like the leader of a battle, can ride on the whirlwind and direct the storm, till it subdue the whole soul, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... returned from his mysterious errand, he looked at her a moment and then fetched an armful of wood. The fire, to serve better the purposes of cooking, had been allowed to burn down to coals, and the smouldering embers now gave so little light that the face and ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... in afterwards weighing the immobility of their public representatives under this mysterious clangor, dwelt upon the fact ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... hastily darted into his cabin for his magazine weapon but when he reappeared there was only a crimson circle on the water to mark where the terrible, man-killing shark had vanished with his prey. Attracted, no doubt, by the mysterious sense that tells these sea tigers where they can snap up a meal, other dark fins now began to cut through ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... was found in the chamber of Mr. Diedrich Knickerbocker, the old gentleman whose sudden and mysterious disappearance has been noticed. It is published in order to discharge certain debts he has ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... the discovery of the Popish Plot had excited; and we may easily suppose him to have done so without any impeachment to his monarchial tenets, since North himself admits, that at the first opening of the plot, the chiefs of the loyal party joined in the cry. Indeed, that mysterious transaction had been investigated by none more warmly than by Danby, the king's favourite minister, and a high favourer of the prerogative. Even when writing Absalom and Achitophel, our author by no means ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... with superstitious awe on the vast barrier over which the white and foaming waters were pouring. The unwonted roar of the falls, a roar that seemed to increase every moment as the swelling waters rushed over the rocks; the sight of the wreck of the mysterious bridge, foreshadowing the direst calamities,—all this awed the wild children of the desert. They approached the falls ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... without ever having lived (see p. 201). Speaking generally, we may say that no word is ever created de novo. The names invented for commercial purposes are not exceptions to this law. Bovril is compounded of Lat. bos, ox, and vril,[15] the mysterious power which plays so important a part in Lytton's Coming Race, while Tono-Bungay suggests tonic. The only exception to this is gas, the arbitrary coinage of the Belgian chemist Van Helmont in the 17th century. But even this is hardly ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... were in a position to further my plans—I hurried back to the United States to organise the undertaking. My plan was to enter, at some convenient point in the State of Sonora, Mexico, that great and mysterious mountain range called the Sierra Madre, cross it to the famous ruins of Casas Grandes in the State of Chihuahua, and then to explore the range southward as extensively as ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... strangeness of circumstances, thus causing me to meet this plain, old body, and learning from her incidents about my own dead parents I might otherwise never have known; besides she told it in such a realistic way that, in some mysterious fashion, like mind reading, I seemed to see it all myself through her ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... vastness of the sandy plains and the utter desolation they had traversed; but that only appeared now to be the threshold of the place he had come to search. All the vast continent of Africa seemed to be before him, dim, shadowy, and mysterious, and as he sank at last into a feverish sleep, it was with his brother's despairing face gazing at him, the reproachful eyes sunken and strained and looking farewell before all was dark with the ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... detective story woven around the mysterious death of the "Man in Lower Ten." The strongest elements of Mrs. Rinehart's success are ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... for an hour tonight, with no result whatever. My soothing day has chased them away. I wonder whether I shall ever penetrate what they all mean? I examined the mirror this evening under a good light, and besides the mysterious inscription "Sanc. X. Pal.," I was able to discern some signs of heraldic marks, very faintly visible upon the silver. They must be very ancient, as they are almost obliterated. So far as I could make out, they were three spear-heads, two above and one below. I will show ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... which has fallen in, forming a short rocky valley, but the other retains its original regular shape. In the circular funnel, whose walls consist of masses of lava stone, rests a quiet, black lake, that looks very mysterious to the wanderer. Only low juniper bushes grow near the crater, bearing witness to the barrenness of the land. From the foot of this mountain an immense stream of lava, as wide and deep as a glacier, broke forth and flowed into the valley, where the end of the stream is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... and Moon's Eclipses, by all which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (un-miraculously enough) be quite overset and reversed? Such a minnow is Man; his Creek this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable All; his Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious course of Providence through AEons of AEons.'[10] The inalterable relativity of human knowledge has never been more forcibly illustrated; and the two passages together fix the limits of that knowledge with a sagacity truly ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... coast-guard camel and I were getting acquainted. I tried to distract my thoughts from the end of my spine, by concentrating them in admiration upon the scene. There was the Sphinx welcoming us with an immense smile of benevolence, as suitable to the sunshine as had been her mysterious solemnity to the moonlight. There, far away to the left, the spire-crowned Citadel floated in translucent azure. Its domes and minarets, and the long serrated line of the Mokattam Hills were carved against the sky in the yellow-rose of pink topaz. Shafts of light gave to jagged shapes and ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... commonly used by the Northern Pacific tribes. An hour or two's trial with the astonished Jim gave him an increased vocabulary and a new occupation. Each day the incongruous pair took a lesson from the lexicon. In a week Pomfrey felt he would be able to accost the mysterious stranger. But he did not again surprise her in any of his rambles, or even in a later visit to the sweat-house. He had learned from Jim that the house was only used by the "bucks," or males, and that her appearance there had been accidental. He recalled that he had had the ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... Percy; I anticipate your observation. But, more than that, she believes she is obliged to give her hand to my cousin, the squire. It's an intricate story relating to money. She does not care for Algy a bit, which is not a matter that greatly influences him. He has served her in some mysterious way; by relieving an old uncle of hers. Algy has got him the office of village postman for this district, I believe; if it's that; but I think it should be more, to justify her. At all events, she seems ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I guess. She's 'most always sick on the ocean. I'm going to give the stewardess fifteen dollars for looking after her. I don't go down more 'n I can avoid. It makes me feel mysterious to pass that butler's-pantry place. Say, this is the first time ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... It was roomy, draughty, and inconvenient. The large rafters were here and there engraven with rude marks and patterns; the hand-rail of the stair was carved in countrified arabesque; a stout timber pillar, which did duty to support the dining-room roof, bore mysterious characters on its darker side, runes, according to the Doctor; nor did he fail, when he ran over the legendary history of the house and its possessors, to dwell upon the Scandinavian scholar who had left them. Floors, doors, and rafters made a great variety of angles; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like a man," I retorted. Then, sorry I had been so harsh, I added: "We must take good care of Mrs. Bashford, Antoine. It would be your old master's wish. It will do no harm to keep a guard at the house for the present in case your mysterious stranger turns ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... man's words a terrible fear gripped Sammy's heart. "POSSE," that could mean only one thing,—officers of the law. But her father's name and her home—in an instant Jim's strange companionship with Wash Gibbs, their long mysterious rides together, her father's agitation that morning, when he said good- by, with a thousand other things rushed through her mind. What terrible thing was this that she had happened upon in the night? What horrible trap had they set for her Daddy, her Daddy Jim? For trap it was. It could be nothing ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... other Sister at once plunged into the midst of the scramble. She was small, slender, and gentle, with a meditative air and mysterious eyes, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... heart of a man or a nation's convictions, or is the heart and soul of all their thoughts and actions, "the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain concerning his vital relations to this mysterious universe, and his ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... nickel spoon sank slowly, and the boy paid out about a hundred feet of line. Taking up the oars and with the rod ready to hand, Colin rowed slowly, parallel with the shore. Two or three times the boy had a sensation that the boat was being followed by some mysterious denizen of the sea, but though in the distance there seemed a strange ripple on the water, nothing definite appeared, and he forgot it for the moment as the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... dramatic. The birds sang, filling the valley with a sweet, vague melody that quivered in the air. If a quiet imagination will picture to itself these rich fluctuations of light and shade, the vaporous outline of the mountains, the mysterious perspectives which were seen where the trees gave an opening, or the streamlets ran, or some coquettish little glade fled away in the distance; if memory will color, as it were, this sketch, as fleeting as the moment when it was taken, ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... Their specialty is Nerves. To hear the frequency with which they attribute to these all uncomfortable sensations, one would imagine that the victims were made by a special pattern, like the tongue, of ends of nerves, all super-sensitive. The Nerves are a mysterious portion of their being, to whose account everything is laid, from extreme irritability and vexation, to nausea and rheumatism. "My nerves are that sensitive!" is ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... at Harwell, and so, when at about nine the two boys beard many footfalls outside their door, and when in response to West's loud "Come" five mysterious and muffled figures in black masks entered they were ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... host took Don Quixote into a distant room, which contained no furniture except a table, on which was a pedestal supporting a head made of what seemed to be bronze. After having acted in the most mysterious manner, and having carefully ascertained that all the doors to the room were shut and no one listening, Antonio swore the knight to secrecy. Then he proceeded to tell Don Quixote that the head he ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... laughter answered her, and the knives and forks fell to the plates with a clatter. One of the chairs pushed back from the table, and this was so astonishing and mysterious that Dorothy was almost tempted to run ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... Prophet reigned at Tippecanoe, performing his mysterious rites, seeing visions, and dreaming dreams. Indians from the most remote tribes were drawn by tales of his miraculous deeds to this chosen seat of the Great Spirit, the centre from which radiated ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... to fly, for I do not care to poke my nose into strange places; I might get lost or hurt, you know; I was contented enough until the other day, when I saw a great rope come down into the water, and fasten itself in some mysterious way about the gills of a sweet little cousin of mine, and she was hauled and dragged out of the water before my eyes, wriggling and struggling with fright and pain. It scared me terribly, your worshipful honor; for I thought this dreadful rope might some time fasten upon me. Now, all I desire, ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... and would demand your instant execution, and, as he has a great majority of votes in the senate, his demand would be complied with. You would, I am convinced, throw away your life for no good purpose, while your presence and your mysterious escape from prison would be made the pretense for a fresh series of persecutions of our partisans. I understand as well as you do the urgency for reinforcements being sent to Italy; but in order to do this the navy, now rotting in our harbours, must be repaired, the command of ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty |
