|
|
|
More "Enigma" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... John Poley (Vol. i., p. 214. and 372.).—Your correspondent GASTROS suggests that "to the Low Countries, the land of frogs, we must turn for the solution of this enigma," (Vol. i., p. 372.); accordingly, it appears from the treatise of Bircherodius on the Knights of the Elephant, an order of knighthood in Denmark, conferred upon none but persons of the first quality and merit, that a frog is among the devices adopted ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... red-eyed ships of the Phoenician traders were founding trading posts among the barbarians of the coast of Valencia. And there they stand on their shelves, the real and the false inextricably muddled, and stare at the enigma with ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... perilous fords, tireless, hardy, hungry, frolicked along ledges of precipices and over crevassed glaciers, was absolutely fearless, and his slender legs and the use he made of them were the marvel of all. He was an enigma to the end. He was quite untamable, rejected all dainties with indignation, swung his heels into people's faces when they went near him, ran at them with his teeth, seized unwary passers-by by their kamar bands, and shook them as a dog shakes a rat, would ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... courtly Rex was an enigma. In her own mind she liked him all the better because he had not fallen down and worshiped her at once. Most ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... real poverty a thing of the past. Disappointment, however, after disappointment has followed. Discovery upon discovery, invention after invention, have neither lessened the toil of those who most need respite nor brought plenty to the poor. The association of poverty with progress is the great enigma ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... belonging to the high priests at Jerusalem, and this, too, made the Jews smart uncomfortably. (12) The Persian king had wanted to mount the throne of Solomon besides, but herein he was thwarted, because its ingenious construction was an enigma to him. Egyptian artificers tried to fashion a throne after the model of Solomon's, but in vain. After two years' work they managed to produce a weak imitation of it, and upon this Ahasuerus sat during his ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... Ah, that was it! But where had he gone? Why should he rise up in the middle of the night, take the flock and dogs, and steal off in this noiseless fashion? The boy could not solve the enigma. ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... there was no mystery in their neither sending nor receiving letters. But where did they get their groceries? I do not mean the money to pay for them—that is an enigma apart—but the groceries themselves. No express wagon, no butcher's cart, no vehicle of any description, was ever observed to stop at their domicile. Yet they did not order family stores at the sole establishment in the village—an inexhaustible little ...
— Our New Neighbors At Ponkapog • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... brush fantastical, And of imperial idleness, Your fellah-sphinx presents us all With an enigma worth the guess. ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... the Old-World belief that land, in itself, is desirable. But this land was an enigma. It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces. He had an idea that no one understood how to farm it properly, and this he often discussed with Alexandra. Their neighbors, certainly, knew even less about farming than he ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... vocation enigma over again, Charlie, isn't it? But don't let it make you miserable, and don't ever say such a thing as that you just said again. Do you know, when I came to you in the hospital that morning, I had not slept one moment for two long days and nights! Now try and be ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... here the motives for this change, because we believe it is very difficult to lift the veil which covers the mysteries of the political inconstancy of the Cabinet of St. James's; and leaving the solution of this enigma to time, that great OEdipus of history, we will here make only this remark, that English diplomacy has allowed a favourable opportunity to escape for taking the initiative in all the great questions which concern the general ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... extraordinary," said Lady Keith, "how after living among a parcel of thick-headed and thicker tongued Yankees she could come out and speak pure English in a clear voice; it is an enigma ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... fresh and candid, so elegant, so violent and complete a contrast to James Ollerenshaw; so absurdly sagacious and sure of herself, and perhaps because of a curve in her cheek, and a mysterious suggestion of eternal enigma in her large and liquid eye. When she looked right away from him, as she sometimes did in the conversation, the outline of her soft cheek, which drew in at the eye and swelled out again to the temple, resembled a map of the coast of some ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... great-grandfather, an Oliverian justice. "These," says he, "I conveyed to my lodging-room, and there became acquainted with the manners and principles of many excellent old Puritans, and then laid the foundation of my own." The enigma is now solved! Archdeacon BLACKBURNE, in his seclusion in Yorkshire amidst the Oliverian justice's library, shows that we are in want of a Cervantes but not of a Quixote, and Yorkshire might yet be as renowned a country as La Mancha; for ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... discovery upon earth, where the materials are in our own hands. But it was soon shown how spectrum analysis might be applied to the investigation of the sun and stars; and this result was reached through the solution of a problem which had been long an enigma to natural philosophers. The scope and conquest of this problem we must now endeavour to comprehend. A spectrum is pure in which the colours do not overlap each other. We purify the spectrum by making our beam narrow, and by augmenting the number of our ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... to his feet slowly. His face was an enigma. The Rajput stood at attention facing him and they met each other's eyes—East facing West—in such fashion that manhood seemed to fill the smoky room. Every one was silent. Even Maga held her breath. Monty strode toward Rustum Khan; the Rajput was ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... lady vainly sought some solution of the enigma—why she had been brought thither. She could not solve it; but she determined, if her capture had been made by any lawful authorities, to confess her guilt and submit ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was something of an enigma to Hector Strong. He was making more than a million pounds a year, and yet she did not want to marry him. Sometimes he wondered if the woman were quite sane. Yet, mad or sane, ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... silence fell over the little party. After the first few moments of dismay, conjecture, and exclamation, there did not seem to be much that any one could say. Each girl was busy with her own thoughts and private interpretation of a most sorrowful enigma. What were they to do? How were they to live without separation, and without taking a solitary plunge into an unknown and most ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... at the head of the little household soberly settled there. Never were princesses and women more unlike than Caroline of Brunswick and Victoria of Coburg; But poor Queen Caroline was not destined to remain long an awkward enigma—a queen and yet no queen, an aunt and yet no aunt, a scandal and a torment ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... and possessing such simplicity of tastes,—an enigma, I grant, to an age like ours, as indeed it may have been to his,—Jerome bade adieu to the honors and luxuries and excitements of the great city (without which even a Cicero languished), and embarked at Ostia, A.D. 385, for those regions consecrated by the sufferings of Christ. Two years afterwards, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... expected to jump into a whirlwind of instantaneous applause is an enigma. Nothing that is out of the conventional rut succeeds at the start. There must be patience, perseverance and a struggle. Otherwise life would be very easy, which it is not. The rosy little scheme at the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... feeling more than ever that his guest was an enigma. But he was too busy to stop just ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... this apparently insoluble enigma lies in the fact that the building of the bridge had only then been begun—the bridge of Manas, or mind, destined to unite in the perfected individual the upward surging forces of the animal and the downward cycling spirit of the God. The animal kingdom of to-day exhibits ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... readers who have lived since Browning's first publication have seen as many attitudes taken toward one of the ablest poetic spirits of the century. To the first he appeared an enigma, a writer hopelessly obscure, perhaps not even clear in his own mind, as to the message he wished to deliver; to the second he appeared a prophet and a philosopher, full of all wisdom and subtlety, too ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... enigma—a deceiver, Ivan Mikhailovitch! Here it is a week since you arrived. You profess to know no one. But you managed immediately to join quarters with me; and now "—he stopped, turning from the wind to light his cigarette—"now, on the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... ballast, and such like, for the repairs of the harbour; they does all the rough and dirty jobs as is to be done about the works and place—indeed, we calls 'em the Port Admiral's skippers." I now fully understood the import of the term Portsmouth Greys, which had before been an enigma to 183me; and comprehended that the unhappy beings before me ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... here a barrier chamber (cf. the notes which he has appended to the English translation of my Archeologie egyptienne, p. 327, note 27,) but he confesses that the arrangement of the grooves and of the flagstone is still an enigma to him. Perhaps only one of the four intended barriers was inserted in its place—that which ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... matters, studying some agreeable surprise for her husband, and trying for his sake to be very neat and orderly. Then when the clock pointed the hour for his return, she would station herself at the gate, and William, as he kissed the moisture from her rosy cheek, thought her a perfect enigma to weep when he went away, and ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... to these meetings, pursuing their own humble duties, indifferent to the follies of fashionable society. The fencing schools flourished—what memories cluster around that odd, strange master of the blade, Spedella, a melancholy enigma of a man, whose art embodied much of the finest shading and phrasing peculiar to himself; from whom even many of Bonaparte's discarded veterans were not above acquiring new technique and temperament! Men in those days were most punctilious about ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... feelings in the unequivocal language of love! Yet she seemed so hideously unhappy as she stretched before him in her white robes of death. Why? What secret was this disclosed at the twelfth hour of life, on the very brink of the grave? Did death, then, hold the solution to the enigma of the conquering Sphinx! ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... mansion, but could have prepared a list of the out-door employees as well. He stood there, calm and impassive as Fate, and, without knowing it, represented Fate in her most inexorable mood; for had he betaken himself elsewhere, the shrewdest brains of Scotland Yard might have been defeated by the enigma they were asked to solve before Mortimer Fenley's murderer ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... was a relief to her mind, and it seemed an enigma that Barbara, whose beauty increased her interest, and whom the physician had extolled as a famous singer, could have given her confidence, in her days of health, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... is but a specimen of the jargon and slang of Ghibelline freemasonry. When Italians write thus, they degrade the greatest name of their country to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. It is to solve the enigma of Dante's works by imagining for him a character in which it is hard to say which predominates, the pedant, mountebank, or infidel. After that we may read Voltaire's sneers with patience, and even enter with gravity on the examination of Father Hardouin's historic doubts. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the dull enigma, We shall guess it all too soon; Failure brings no kind of stigma - Dance we to another tune! String the lyre and fill the cup, Lest on sorrow we should sup; Hop and skip to Fancy's fiddle, Hands across and ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of most ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... ideas of the last century which had almost exclusively considered the action of the "legislator." But what in its turn did these "conditions of property" depend on? Guizot is unable to answer this question, and after long, vain efforts to find a solution of the enigma in historical circumstances, he returns, falls back nolens volens, upon the theory of human nature. Augustin Thierry, another eminent historian of the Restoration, found himself in almost the same case, or rather he would have done so if only he had tried to investigate ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... I came here, eh?" In a flash he had solved the enigma. "It is as I imagined. Have you the ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... never awaken the phantasy of this malevolent thing. The perfect government of woman is a task to rend a man's heart, and we are compelled to remain in perfect submission to them; that is, I imagine, the best manner in which to solve the most agonising enigma of marriage. ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... wholly forgotten by her, and he stepped silently away to join another of his guests. The new English girl presented an enigma to him, but it was one in which he did not take much interest. All her fairness notwithstanding, she was not even pretty, according to his standard, and he had seen a good ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... broken sleigh with rifled boxes and papers scattered about. Near them were also torn garments and bodies. Who were these pitiful ones? What tragedy was staged in this wild wood? We tried to guess this enigma and we began to investigate the documents and papers. These were official papers addressed to the Staff of General Pepelaieff. Probably one part of the Staff during the retreat of Kolchak's army went through this wood, striving to hide from the enemy approaching ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... MR. CROSSLEY—than whom no one is more competent—would favour us with such an article. The following communication from MR. FORBES is only one of several we have received, showing that the interest in this enigma ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... to explain in detail the whole enigma of first love. But a general explanation is suggested by evolutional philosophy,—namely, that the attraction depends upon an inherited individual susceptibility to special qualities of feminine influence, and subjectively represents a kind ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... ones, together with their own youngsters, Goethe grew quite excited about this fact. He saw in it a confirmation of his pantheistic views, and said:—"If it be true that this feeding of a stranger goes through all Nature as something having the character of a general law—then many an enigma would be solved. "He returned to this matter on the next day, and most earnestly entreated Eckermann (who was, as is known, a zoologist) to make a special study of the subject, adding that he would surely come ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... sake of brevity, to compress—we have the suggestion of Pascal’s philosophy both of human nature and of Divine revelation. He recurs over and over again to the same idea, that man is great and yet weak, full of capacity and yet miserable, and that the Gospel alone holds the key to this enigma of human nature. This, more than any other, is the pervading thought round which ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... time: Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate, tunc autem facie ad faciem; wherein nevertheless there seemeth to be a liberty granted, as far forth as the polishing of this glass, or some moderate explication of this enigma. But to press too far into it cannot but cause a dissolution and overthrow of the spirit of man. For in the body there are three degrees of that we receive into it—aliment, medicine, and poison; whereof aliment ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... not understand—the relation between the spark of eternity in your soul and the Power above, and the whole of endless space—has all of a sudden become so clear that you lie here trembling with joy at seeing to the very bottom of the infinite enigma. ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... well in Mr. Meeker's case, Honora had previously applied to others of his sex. Like most people with a future, she began young. Of late, for instance, Mr. George Hanbury had shown a tendency to regard her as his personal property; for George had a high-handed way with him,—boys being an enigma to his mother. Even in those days he had a bullet head and a red face and square shoulders, and was rather undersized for his age—which ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... following from a friend in the quaint spirit in which it is written, and understand not by bad company aught that is evil—for if we read the word of the enigma, the 'bad' among her 'friends of the future' is indeed goodness-that saving salt which is often found among many who are too hastily banned as lost in the world. So, we pray you, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Would you like us to go down to Monsieur de Saint-Aignan's rooms? Perhaps we shall be able to find the solution of the enigma there." ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... moment, as if seeking to unravel some enigma, then she smiled and shook her head with a little fugitive shadow ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... muse to journalism, humiliating Art, as woman was humiliated and prostituted in those shameless galleries without, and the provincial took a terrible lesson to heart. Money! That was the key to every enigma. Lucien realized the fact that he was unknown and alone, and that the fragile clue of an uncertain friendship was his sole guide to success and fortune. He blamed the kind and loyal little circle for painting the world for him in false colors, for preventing him ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... Kathlyn went the rounds of the cages. She was a veritable enigma to Bruce. Tigers lost their tenseness and looked straight into her eyes. A cheetah with cubs permitted her to touch the wabbly infants, whereas the keeper of this cage dared not go within a foot of it. By the time ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... warning, nor reproach. They hope all things, believe all things, trust all things, and make shipwreck on the breakers that all eyes but their own see leaping and foaming in their course. Yes, woman is truly an enigma! ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... attentive enough, by this time, and every eye was turned, not unkindly, upon the youth who had so long been an enigma to them all—except, perhaps, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... President of the Royal Society I cannot precisely say. Let him who penned, and those who supported this resolution solve the enigma: ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... had started the previous evening, and had only returned an hour since. He was charming. Whether he kept a watch over himself, or whether by accident he did not sound the acrimonious chords that in other circumstances had been touched, he was to-night like everybody else. The man was an enigma to Franz. The count must feel sure that Franz recognized him; and yet he had not let fall a single word indicating any previous acquaintance between them. On his side, however great Franz's desire was to allude to their former ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I knew," returned the colonel. "If there were any birds around here big enough we might suspect that one of them had carried him off, but we will evidently have to await Pepper's own explanation of the enigma." Then he ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... inarticulate cries. These men have not justified to us their confidence. It will be shared, not justified. They have divined what they cannot orderly publish, and their meaning will be by the same greatness divined again. The work of such men remains a haunting, commanding enigma to following ages. They do but repeat the promise and obscurity of Nature, for she herself has the same largeness, is such another raptus, proceeding to no end, but to a circle or complexity of ends. Men are again and again divided over the images of Paul, of Plato, of Dante, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... subsiding into anxious inquiry; still above them are those who, having caught a gleam of the sources of consolation, express in their faces a solemn calmness; and still higher, rising in the air, figures with clasped hands, and absorbed, upward gaze, to whose eye the mystery has been unveiled, the enigma solved, and sorrow glorified. One among these, higher than the rest, with a face of rapt adoration, seems entering the ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... his words. Was he at last going to find out the truth? Was he going to solve this enigma and discover the name of his family, the land of his birth? Truly the scene appeared to him almost chimerical. He fastened his eyes upon the wounded man, ready to drink in his words with avidity. For nothing in the world would he have interfered with his recital, ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... to the good of her husband, home and family, was as willing and honorable as the man's self-surrender to the good of his lord and country. Self-renunciation, without which no life-enigma can be solved, was the keynote of the Loyalty of man as well as of the Domesticity of woman. She was no more the slave of man than was her husband of his liege-lord, and the part she played was recognized as Naijo, ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... most admire. The whole character is the triumph of the external over the innate; and yet like one of her country's hieroglyphics, though she present at first view a splendid and perplexing anomaly, there is deep meaning and wondrous skill in the apparent enigma, when we come to analyze and decipher it. But how are we to arrive at the solution of this glorious riddle, whose dazzling complexity continually mocks and eludes us? What is most astonishing in the character of Cleopatra is its antithetical construction—its consistent inconsistency, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... and upright soul of Peter was in torture. He made a sign to John to endeavor to ascertain of whom the Master spoke. John, who could converse with Jesus without being heard, asked him the meaning of this enigma. Jesus having only suspicions, did not wish to pronounce any name; he only told John to observe to whom he was going to offer a sop. At the same time he soaked the bread and offered it to Judas. John and Peter alone ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... to hover about the enigma of the scarlet letter seemed an innate quality of her being. From the earliest epoch of her conscious life, she had entered upon this as her appointed mission. Hester had often fancied that Providence had a design of justice and retribution, in endowing the child with this marked propensity; ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... should be added that, stirring and eloquent as were the opening sentences, they were not listened to by the House with that extraordinary enthusiasm which, on other occasions, sentences of this splendid eloquence would have elicited. For what really the House wanted to learn was the great enigma which had been kept for seven long years—in spite of protests, hypocritical appeals, and, ofttimes, tedious remonstrance from ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... identical with ours, was much closer than the tortured dialect of the Eastenders of the Isle of Wight. The longer I talked with her the more hopeful I became of finding here, among her people, some records, or traditions, which might assist in clearing up the historic enigma of the past two centuries. I asked her if we were far from the city of London, but she did not know what I meant. When I tried to explain, describing mighty buildings of stone and brick, broad avenues, parks, palaces, ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... only of their one fixed stare? Why is it then that their motionless regard surprises and chills us, even while we are obsessed by the smile of the sealed lips that seem to hold back the answer to the supreme enigma? . . . ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... arrested by observing a kind of opening under a little arbor, thickly covered with a mat of vines. Thinking, perhaps, that it was the retreat of some animal, he thrust in his hand, and to his surprise drew forth a glass bottle, partly full of whisky. The enigma of his master's walks and inequalities of temper stood immediately deciphered. After the reflection of a moment, he carefully replaced the bottle in its position, and returned to his place in school. In the evening ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... the man with a smile, "at any question which aims at the investigation of that great enigma styled the human mind? I am fond of the study of character, and of those principles of good and evil which influence men. Under given circumstances and conditions, the commission of a certain sin is greatly more blameworthy than the commission of the same sin ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... nightmare, this scene just past. What an incredible, a preposterous request for a woman to make! And the more thought he fed to the enigma the more incredible and ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the great discomfort of maintaining contact with this mind, he extended his explorations in search of the answer. A growing suspicion was quickly confirmed beyond question, explaining at once the sickening deformities of the wasted mind and the enigma of the alternative means of communication. There simply was no adequate communication! From that, all else stemmed. Each of these creatures, these—he searched for the term—these "Man" as they called themselves, was an island, an ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... times—four. Then he began again. He had read them a dozen times before he closed them. He had read them word by word, poring over each character, each turn of phrase, as a man might pore over an enigma or a document written in a foreign language of which he only knew stray words. If his hands had shaken at first, he had not turned a page before his whole body was shaking and his palms, his forehead, his hair ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... slipping along with some chewing-gum between his teeth and a warm sensation in his stew-crammed stomach, whistling, dreaming, happy; youth, that can, without premeditation, remain away from home and leave udders untapped and pigs unfed; sublime enigma; angering bit of irresponsibility to the Martins of a fiercely practical world. Bill was that rare kind of boy who could pull away from the traces just when he seemed most thoroughly broken ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... an enigma as obscure for those who gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Bluecher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports; the bulletins are confused; the commentaries ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... bestowed a happier futurity!" This writer also drew a comparison between Napoleon and Charlemagne, in which he designated the latter a barbarous despot and the former the new savior of the world. He says, "Napoleon first solved the enigma of equality and liberty—his chief aim was the prevention of despotism—his chief desire, to eternalize the dominion of virtue." In the course of 1808, it was said in the essay, "On the Regeneration of Germany," ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... jewels and whose perfect independence was the most precious thing in the world. At his age he could not marry a volcano, a revolution, a new radio-active element exhibiting properties which were an enigma to social science. Concepcion would turn his existence into an endless drama of which she alone, with her deep-rooted, devilish talent for the sensational, would always choose the setting, as she had chosen the ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... through the gates of death! Was it not worthy of a God to, descend to these dim valleys, in order to clear up the clouds gathered over the dark mount beyond—to satisfy the doubts of sages—to convert speculation into certainty—by example to point out the rules of life—by revelation to solve the enigma of the grave—and to prove that the soul did not yearn in vain when it dreamed of an immortality? In this last was the great argument of those lowly men destined to convert the earth. As nothing is more flattering to the pride ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... OF ALEXANDRIA.—In Joann. Evang., 1. ii., c. 5: "For those things which are spoken concerning it [the Divine Nature] are not spoken as they are in very truth, but as the tongue of man can interpret, and as man can hear; for he who sees in an enigma also speaks in ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... ordinary, disproportion between moral worth and worldly prosperity has at all times led the observant and reflecting few to a nicer consideration of the current belief, whether instinctive or traditional. By forcing the soul in upon herself, this enigma of saint and sage, from Job, David, and Solomon to Claudian and Boetius, this perplexing disparity of success and desert, has been the occasion of a steadier and more distinct consciousness of a something in man, different in kind, which distinguishes and contra-distinguishes him from animals—at ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... earth—to me the dearest—the woman I love. In ten days or less, by her own showing, she will be away from it; why should I care for it then? Now, Dona Carmen, I've given you the key to what you've called an enigma." ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... succeed in forming an imperfect and broken system which perplexes men's minds to the extent of making them forget the clearest notions, and to render uncertain the most palpable truths. By the aid of this systematic nonsense, all nature has become an inexplicable enigma for man; the visible world has disappeared to give place to invisible regions; reason is obliged to give place to imagination, which can lead us only to the land of chimeras which she herself ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... perpetration; yet at this moment in possession of the only clue which will enable justice to seize the murderer. Conscious of her innocence, she braves peril that would chill the blood of men, and extort almost any secret; and shall I tell you the reason? Shall I give you the key to an enigma which ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... What it can mean is not easily discovered: if mail for a packet or bag was a word then in use, no salve in the mail may mean, no salve in the mountebank's budget. Or shall we read, no enigma, no riddle, no l'envoy—in the vale, sir—O, sir. plantain. The matter is not great, but one would wish for some ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... sacrificed himself, on his lips, as if it had been an ecstatic prayer, and he intrusted his will 'to the priest who administered extreme unction to him, and requested him to give it to me. In it, without mentioning anybody, and without in the least lifting the veil, he at last explained the enigma, and cleared himself of those accusations the terrible burden of which he had borne ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... possessed, and which Caligula was the earliest to understand. Augustus was the first magistrate of Rome, Tiberius the first citizen. Caligula was the first emperor, but an emperor hallucinated by the enigma of his own grandeur, a prince for whose sovereignty the ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... so, he accepted the challenge of no mere enigma. Of his own volition, he entered upon the path that led through untrod and dangerous ground. It was his problem to cut the Gordian knot of Anglo-Saxon icy reserve that in the end fair England might assume as a policy of world administration the award of citizenship ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... did. It was an enigma which puzzled many wiser heads than his in the long run; but I think the part which astonished him most was to be discovering, bit by bit, that the story of my visit to the house in Monmouth Street, as related to him and his brother, the "tip-top ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... Volume are upon a novel plan, and will, at a glance, convey more information regarding the types of Greek, Roman, and English Coins, than can be obtained by many hours' careful reading. Instead of a fac-simile Engraving being given of that which is already an enigma to the tyro, the most striking and characteristic features of the Coin are dissected and placed by themselves, so that the eye soon becomes ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various
... who perished in an August afternoon, was a party shibboleth in the Wars of the Saints against the Malignants, the strife of Cavaliers and Roundheads. The problem has ever since attracted the curious, as do the enigma of Perkin Warbeck, the true character of Richard III, the real face behind 'The Iron Mask,' the identity of the False Pucelle, and the innocence or ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... the question, and I wish you would answer it. I've been driving myself wild over it for the past few days, but I don't seem to get to the solution. Can't your Familiar," pointing downward, "help you guess the enigma, Miriam?" ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... awaking for the first time the woman within her heart. Hitherto her girlhood's fancies had been like summer zephyrs, disturbing but briefly the still, clear waters of her soul; but now she became an enigma to herself as she slowly grew conscious of her own heart and the law of her woman's nature to love and give herself to another. But she had too much of the doughty old major's fire and spirit, and was too fond of her freedom, to surrender easily. Both Graham and Mrs. Mayburn were ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... his efforts and hurried back to the long-boat. The spectacle of the girl struggling with the stuff she was jettisoning put new determination into him. Her amazing fortitude at the time when he had looked for hysterics and collapse gave him new light on the enigma of femininity. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... man he was an enigma to the world, and doubtless to himself: he was bad, but he was bold. If he was vindictive, he was generous; if he was misanthropic and sceptical, it was partly because he despised shams: in all his actions, we see that implicit working out of his ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... mysticism, contradictions, which have made of a science the most obvious and best demonstrated, an unintelligible science, mysterious and uncertain to those for whom it is designed. In the hands of the priests, morality has become an enigma; they have founded our duties on the attributes of a Deity whom the mind of man cannot comprehend, in place of founding them on the character of man himself. They have thrown in among them the foundations of an edifice which is made for this earth. They have desired ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... himself; perhaps there was something in the light in Joan's eyes and in the way in which she sometimes placed her hand upon the hilt of the dagger in her belt which warned him not to try her too far. Joan was something of an enigma to him still. She was like no other woman with whom he had ever come in contact. He did not feel certain what she might say or do. It was rather like treading upon the crust of some volcanic crater to have dealings with her. At any moment something quite unforeseen might take ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... out; and from Mrs. Heron, a woman of some diplomatic talent, he learnt nothing. Once after they were married he asked her, "What made you refuse me so often?" She had answered by a strange silence. An enigma to him from the day that he first saw her, she was an enigma to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... cutlasses, they gathered at a discreet distance from his hook, and squinted through their ferret eyes at this extraordinary man. Elation must have been in his heart, but his face did not reflect it: ever a dark and solitary enigma, he stood aloof from his followers in ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... punishment; but that in the mean time it was very interesting to watch the progress of this startling little drama; and that he himself, instead of merely being the Curate of St Roque's, had become a most captivating enigma, and had made church-going itself half as ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... of mankind is man;" and man remains an enigma for man, if he do not rise to God. So it is that our very nature is a living protest against atheism, and never allows its triumphs to be either general, or of long duration. A solid limit is thus set to our wanderings; ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... carried them into the bedroom, and, barricaded within, commenced an inventory. There were two complete suits of men's clothes in the Douglas livery. The queen was at a loss, when she saw a letter fastened to the collar of one of the two coats. Eager to know the meaning of this enigma, she immediately opened it, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... anything unusual in his wife's action he made no mention of it when I went into his study at nine o'clock. And it was so much of an enigma to me that I was not ready to venture ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... the chorus of Handel, are inarticulate cries. These men have not justified to us their confidence. It will be shared, not justified. They have divined what they cannot orderly publish, and their meaning will be by the same greatness divined again. The work of such men remains a haunting, commanding enigma to following ages. They do but repeat the promise and obscurity of Nature, for she herself has the same largeness, is such another raptus, proceeding to no end, but to a circle or complexity of ends. Men are again ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the right or west had not had even bird's-eye exploration. Until the Major's unrivalled first descent in 1869 the river was equally unknown. Even above Gunnison Crossing, despite the spasmodic efforts at exploration referred to, the river had remained a geographical enigma, and to the Major belongs the sole credit for solving this great problem throughout its length from the Union Pacific crossing in Wyoming to the mouth of the Virgin River—the last problem of this kind within the United ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... His attention was arrested by observing a kind of opening under a little arbor, thickly covered with a mat of vines. Thinking, perhaps, that it was the retreat of some animal, he thrust in his hand, and to his surprise drew forth a glass bottle, partly full of whisky. The enigma of his master's walks and inequalities of temper stood immediately deciphered. After the reflection of a moment, he carefully replaced the bottle in its position, and returned to his place in school. In the evening he communicated his discovery ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... that the means by which such extraordinary experience was acquired are not included in the sphere of his knowledge, and that any attempt to explain them at present would only increase his incredulity. He would only see one enigma solved by another apparently more insoluble than itself. The Editor, therefore, would call especial attention to the practical value of the revelations here communicated, convinced as he is that they are so replete with instruction to terrestial mankind, that the difficulty of giving credence ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... there? By what decree has salt been sown on this dwelling? Has God been mocked here? Or was France betrayed? These are the questions we ask ourselves. Reptiles crawl over it, but give no reply. This empty and deserted house is a vast enigma of which the answer ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... "what do we know," etc., heaped together, a shapeless and unconnected system is formed, perplexing mankind, by obliterating from their minds, the most clear ideas and rendering uncertain truths most evident. By reason of this systematic confusion, nature is an enigma; the visible world has disappeared, to give place to regions invisible; reason is compelled to yield to imagination, who leads to the country of ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... thought disturbing and distasteful. It was long past midnight before she could dismiss the enigma from her thoughts ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Penrose is an enigma to those who know him only casually, especially those who view life through the rose glasses of culture. They marvel at the extent to which he has been able to dictate to men who appear to be his superiors. I have heard him called a ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... We had been taught physics and science; we had been drilled to fundamentals. If this thing could be, then the foundations upon which we stood were shattered. But one little law! Back in my mind was buzzing the enigma of the Blind Spot. They were woven together. Some law that had ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... events of formidable grandeur whose imminence neither had suspected. Still assuring himself that his position was absolutely safe, Louis nevertheless was aware of a sinking in the stomach. He could rebut any accusation. "And yet ...!" murmured his craven conscience. What could be the enigma between Mrs. Maldon and Rachel? He was now trying to convince himself that Mrs. Maldon had in fact divided the money into two parts, of which he had handled only one, and that the impressive mystery ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... heard of his existence. How often does a revolution like that of Greece, when the very organization of society is shaken, compress the progress of a century within a few years! There remained nothing for me but to visit the monastery, and seek a solution of the singular enigma from my friend's own mouth; so, joining a party of travellers who were about to visit the marble quarries of Pentelicus, and continue their excursion to the plain of Marathon, I set out on such a morning as can only be witnessed under the pure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... the same faults that he always had, young and vigorous in his seventy-fifth year, and having succeeded in his policy, is now considered the head of a clique, the man of intrigue, past his work, etc., etc.—in fact hated! and this throughout the country. I cannot explain the enigma except by supposing that people had before joined in a cry which they thought was popular without themselves believing what they said and wrote, and that they now do the same; that the Radicals used his name to destroy other statesmen ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... from personal choice; and, as they leaned over the broken paling at the bottom of the garden in front of the stars, it had pleased her that he should put his arm round her, take her face in his hand and to kiss her lips. The forest, too, the enchantment of the tall trees, and the enigma of the moonlight falling through the branches and lighting up the banks over which he helped her, had wrought upon her imagination, upon her nerves, and there had been moments when she had thought that she could love him ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... day Walker made himself amends for Corey's reticence by talking a great deal. He talked about Lapham, who seemed to have, more than ever since his apparent difficulties began, the fascination of an enigma for his book-keeper, and he ended by asking, "Did you see ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Jacques did wrong to leave behind him the weapon with which the crime was committed and, as he occupied the attic immediately above Mademoiselle Stangerson's room, the builder's job ordered by the examining magistrate will give us the key of the enigma and it will not be long before we learn by what natural trap, or by what secret door, the old fellow was able to slip in and out, and return immediately to the laboratory to Monsieur Stangerson, without his absence being noticed. That, of ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... mechanically as the car drove off. His mind was already busy with the problem suggested by Miller's appearance in these parts. For the first few minutes of his drive he was back again in the turmoil which he had left. Then with a little shrug of the shoulders he abandoned this new enigma. Its solution must be close ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... affected, simple, languishing, accordingly as she feared she was too like her natural self—the Netta of the Farm was no more, and her representative was, to Owen at least, an anomaly. How she could have acquired such an amount of small talk, and such a mincing speech in nine months, was an enigma to him. London, Paris, the opera, the fashions, even the picture galleries, were alternately in her mouth; and she poured out tea and coffee, and laughed a silly laugh, much to her own satisfaction, and Owen's disgust, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... begining of February 1666 came Comoedians to Poictiers. I went and saw them severall tymes. The first was called Odip, who resolved the Sphinx his enigma: was so unfortunat to slay his father by ignorance, marry his mother, and to conclud al to put out his oune eyes: the fellow acted his griefe exceeding lifelylie. The farce was le Marriage du rien. A fool fellow in a scoolmasters habit wt a ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... he did. It was an enigma which puzzled many wiser heads than his in the long run; but I think the part which astonished him most was to be discovering, bit by bit, that the story of my visit to the house in Monmouth Street, as related to him and his brother, the "tip-top London detective," ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... serenity, and awaking for the first time the woman within her heart. Hitherto her girlhood's fancies had been like summer zephyrs, disturbing but briefly the still, clear waters of her soul; but now she became an enigma to herself as she slowly grew conscious of her own heart and the law of her woman's nature to love and give herself to another. But she had too much of the doughty old major's fire and spirit, and was too fond of her freedom, to surrender easily. Both Graham ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... am not going to say. your newspapers perhaps have given you a long roll of opposition names, who were coming into place, and so all the world thought; but the Wind turned quite round, and left them on the strand, and just where they were, except in opposition which is declared to be at an end. Enigma as all this may sound, the key would open it all to you in the twinkling of an administration. In the mean time we have family reconciliations without end. The King and the Duke of Cumberland have been shut up together day and night; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... planets, together with an eighth representing Bacchus; and perhaps there were good mythological reasons why the god of wine, together with so large a portion of our solar system, should be done in copper by Jacob Jongeling, to honour the triumph of Alexander, although the key to the enigma has been lost. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... upon all such hopes and prospects, to mention a singular and interesting case of sudden conquest over a difficulty that once had seemed insuperable. For a period of three centuries there had existed an enigma, dark and insoluble as that of the Sphinx, in the text of Suetonius. Isaac Casaubon had vainly besieged it; then, in a mood of revolting arrogance, Joseph Scaliger; Ernesti; Gronovius; many others; and all ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... is, we believe, a fact of paramount importance for efficiency and economy; and the loyalty of God in committing such trust to us, when He presumably knows exactly how unworthy we are of it, is the explanation of life's enigma. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... with a paternal smile, his gloomy creations marching in dismal procession across the frontiers of France. Byron replied to him by a cry of grief which made Greece tremble, and suspended "Manfred" over the abyss as if nothingness had been the answer of the hideous enigma, with ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... it is all a mystery; no one can tell what the composer intended to express by this symphony. We know that the theme is a noble one,—but what? that the soul of the writer must have been powerfully moved during its composition,—by what influences? It is an enigma: each listener may guess at the theme, and each will associate it with the subject most in harmony with ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... branched off, nor in all likelihood will ever meet again. My life has been a quiet one, and has not lain much in the way of extraordinary men, but I doubt if many such as Simon Colliver exist. He is a perfect enigma to me. That such a man, with such attainments (for besides his wonderful conversation and power of singing, he has an amazing knowledge of foreign tongues), that such a man, I say, should be a mere attorney's clerk is little short of marvellous. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... she was, Fledra was an enigma to him. There was but one way to make her his woman,—his wife,—that was to force her confidence, and, once obtained, keep it. But his longing to caress her was stronger than his desire to conquer her,—the warmth and softness of her lips he would not ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... problem has become more precise, both as to variation and as to heredity. The inner conditions of life have in both respects shown a greater independence than Darwin had supposed in his theory, though he always admitted that the cause of variation was to him a great enigma, "a most perplexing problem," and that the struggle for life could only occur where variation existed. But, at any rate, it was of the greatest importance that Darwin gave a living impression of the struggle for life which is everywhere going on, and ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... for a time he was, as Dr. Gosse has expressed it, "not all for Apollo, and not all for Christ." The same writer quotes as applicable to him an interesting phrase of Daudet's, "His brain was a disaffected cathedral," and likens him to that mysterious face of Mona Lisa, of whose fantastic enigma Pater himself has given the most brilliant and the most intricate description. From an early Christian idealism, through a period of humanistic paganism, he passed gradually and naturally back to the abandoned faith again, but in readopting it he never surrendered the humanistic gains of the ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... moon is down. The sound of dance is stilled in the city. So go we into the Rue Croissant, with its shaveless thuggeries and marauding cabs. It is dark, very. And very quiet. And the sniff of unknown things is to be had in the air. Dens of drink with their furtive thieves ... the enigma of the shadows of the church of Saint Eustache ... slinking feet to the rear of you ... at length, the Rue Pirouette and the sign of the angel Gabriel on the lantern before the house. Here is good company to be found! Well do I remember the bon-camaraderie of Henri Laverte, that most successful ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... prodigal and barbaric display of learning; and last, because it is said to have had the effect of making the most indolent man of letters of the eighteenth century get up betimes in the morning. Why Dr. Johnson needed to get up in order to read the Anatomy of Melancholy will always be an enigma to some. Perhaps he did not get up. Perhaps he merely sat up and reached for the book, which would have been placed conveniently near the bed. For the virtue of the act resided in the circumstance of his being ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... travellers who had any baggage were forced to keep it between their legs, already tortured by being squeezed into a sort of little box in shape like a bellows. The original color of coach and running-gear was an insoluble enigma. Two leather curtains, very difficult to adjust in spite of their long service, were supposed to protect the occupants from cold and rain. The driver, perched on a plank seat like those of the worst Parisian "coucous," shared in the conversation by reason of ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... this letter may have been written? It may have been written at Henry Dunbar's dictation, and under coercion. Be it as it may, the mystery of the Winchester murder shall be set at rest, if patience or intelligence can solve the enigma. No mystery shall separate me from the ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... over his own. He thought he could see the hopelessness of staying longer. "A woman's love," he said, gloomily, "is a wonderful thing. It clings through trouble and tragedy—never faltering." She looked at him, startled, trying to solve the enigma of this speech. He laughed, bitterly. "That's what makes a woman superior to mere man. Love exalts her. It makes a savage of a man. I suppose it is 'good-bye.'" He held out a hand to her and she took it, holding it limply, looking at him in wonderment, her heart heavy with regret. "I wish ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... while yet so soft in manner, seemed a thing out of all nature to the vivacious Frenchmen; that unchanging stillness and serenity in one who was such a reckless, resistless croc-mitaine, swift as fire in the field, was an enigma that the Cavalry and the Demi-cavalry of Algeria never solved. His corps would have gone after him to the devil, as Claude de Chanrellon had averred; but they would sometimes wax a little impatient that he would never ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... horse could have got there to have dropped a tooth,—a foal of a week old could not have pressed itself through the opening; and how the single grinder, evidently no recent introduction into the cave, could have got mixed up in the straw with the human bones, seemed an enigma somewhat of the class to which the reel in the bottle belongs. I found in Edinburgh an unexpected commentator on the mystery, in the person of my little boy,—an experimental philosopher in his second year. I had spread out on the floor the curiosities ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... another world upon the business of this one; that I am among you, but not of you; that your motives and aims to me are utterly unintelligible; that you can give no account of them to which I can attach any sense; that I have no clue to the enigma you seem so lightly to solve by your religion, your philosophy, your science; that your hopes are not mine, your ambitions not mine, your principles not mine; that I am shipwrecked, and see around me none but are shipwrecked too; yet, that these, as they cling ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... understand, but in turning to care for her brother she ceased to puzzle over the enigma. Shortly afterwards the patient closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep. Immediately the girl led the way on tiptoe from the room. She locked the door behind her ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... crawl; I feel sure it is not a fish, though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not. It merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its feet up. I have not seen any other animal do that before. I said I believed it was an enigma; but she only admired the word without understanding it. In my judgment it is either an enigma or some kind of a bug. If it dies, I will take it apart and see what its arrangements are. I never had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have been a brilliant woman, a power in affairs. Yes, and an enigma, and to none more than to yourself. You show that now. You only loved what Elisabeth loved. As woman, then, you were born for the first time, touched by that throb of her heart, not your own. 'Twas ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... result of his making the loveliest of God's gifts into his God, and worshipping and serving the creature more than the creator. Oh my child, it is a terrible thing to be! Except he knows God the saviour, man stands face to face with a torturing enigma, hopeless of solution! ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... for such a performance. One is not at all surprised to find that Mrs. Mitchell was among the last of his earthly thoughts; but were there not ample proof of the falsity of these careless assertions, then indeed would Hamilton be an enigma. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... view of the duties and rights of citizens, as those of Machiavelli. Yet so it is. And even from The Prince itself we could select many passages in support of this remark. To a reader of our age and country this inconsistency is, at first, perfectly bewildering. The whole man seems to be an enigma, a grotesque assemblage of incongruous qualities, selfishness and generosity, cruelty and benevolence, craft and simplicity, abject villainy and romantic heroism. One sentence is such as a veteran diplomatist ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it squarely—"I love Emily Brunell. Whatever her father is, or has done, she is guiltless of any complicity, and I can't stand by and see her suffer, much less be the one to precipitate her grief by bringing her father to justice. I told you the truth when I said that the cipher letter was an enigma to me. I could not solve the cryptogram, nor will I be the means of bringing it to the hands of those who might solve it. I don't want any further connection with the case; in fact, sir, I want to get out of the sleuth game altogether. ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... I saw the stigma Still of death; and life's enigma Filled her eyes: around her shimmered Folds of silence; and afar, Faint above her forehead, glimmered Lone the light of one ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... look after your own interest, say you had fair warning. For my own part, I am rather embarrassed than gratified by the prospect of such an affair, when I have on the tapis another of a different nature. This enigma ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... hostess at the tea table, and was obliged to keep up a conversation with her and her sister, who was sitting opposite him. Madame Sviazhskaya was a round-faced, fair-haired, rather short woman, all smiles and dimples. Levin tried through her to get a solution of the weighty enigma her husband presented to his mind; but he had not complete freedom of ideas, because he was in an agony of embarrassment. This agony of embarrassment was due to the fact that the sister-in-law was sitting opposite to him, in a dress, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... statesman who read Dickens and re-read in two languages Uncle Tom's Cabin and sometimes played the flute, and the Premier of a bilingual country who had a passion for the study of the war which emancipated the negro, was the kaleidoscopic enigma of ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... tell you how strange this is to me," she said slowly, "you must know that you proposed an enigma which I ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... worst was that our failure to unriddle the enigma In the "rags" of rival towns was made a byword and a scoff, Till each soul in the community felt branded with the stigma Of the unexplained suspicion ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... military energy of the Tartar government, and the abject weakness of their own; and certainly knew, from their brethren in Kathay, the significant name of the Tartar general; on which foundation, they constructed the enigma of their prophecy, which, like many others, contributed towards ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... last night, whose unrevealing eyes seemed to have looked out over the desert for centuries, until its infinite heart was as an open page to her, and she repressed in the scarlet curves of her mouth its eternal, secret enigma. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... have induced Mrs. Irwin to appeal to him was still an enigma, for his relations to the beautiful young wife had until then not been of a confidential nature. He had met her on several occasions in big society functions, at the officers' polo-parties, and at similar gatherings, and if, attracted ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... by stealth Breaks out,—of power, fame and wealth Deserted you shall be! The foam upon your lip is rife; The last enigma now of Life Shall Death resolve ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... unequivocal language of love! Yet she seemed so hideously unhappy as she stretched before him in her white robes of death. Why? What secret was this disclosed at the twelfth hour of life, on the very brink of the grave? Did death, then, hold the solution to the enigma of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... returning him the slip, "I am as much in the dark as ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda awaiting me on my solution of this enigma, I am quite sure that I should ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... of Waterloo is an enigma as obscure for those who gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Bluecher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports; the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... gesture escaped him. How well he knew the turn of her head and the sudden flash of her face as they entered a theatre, and her eyes swept the house, eager, expectant, dubious; how well he knew the excited touch on his sleeve, the breath half-drawn, the look that was a confidence and an enigma; knew, too, the despondent droop of her eyes when the play was done and it was all over; the tightening of her hand upon his arm, and the shrinking of the whole tiny figure as they made their way out through the crowd. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... wonder," returned the man with a smile, "at any question which aims at the investigation of that great enigma styled the human mind? I am fond of the study of character, and of those principles of good and evil which influence men. Under given circumstances and conditions, the commission of a certain sin is greatly more blameworthy ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... be, is simpler than some imagine. The key to the enigma may lie closer to our hands than we have any idea of. Many devices have been tried, and many have failed, no doubt; it is only stubborn, reckless perseverance that can hope to succeed; it is well that we recognise this. How many ages did men try ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... pale death of the day, lying like a flower on the water, seemed to symbolise her thought, and she felt more distinctly than she had ever done before. And there arose in her a nervous and passionate interest in herself. She seemed so strange, so wonderful. Her childhood was in itself an enigma. That sad and sorrowful childhood of hers, passed in that old London house; her mother's love for her; her cruel, stern stepfather, and the endless quarrels between her father and mother, which made her young life so unbearable, so wretched, that ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... beautiful woman and the most repulsive they had ever set eyes on. I have spoken to a man who saw her, and I assure you he positively shuddered as he tried to describe the woman, but he couldn't tell why. She seems to have been a sort of enigma; and I expect if that one dead man could have told tales, he would have told some uncommonly queer ones. And there you are again in another puzzle; what could a respectable country gentleman like Mr. Blank (we'll call him that if you don't mind) want in such a very queer ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... for her dislike. She was an orderly, busy, competent woman, the counterpart of endless millions of her sex, who liked to understand what she saw or felt, and who had no happiness in reading riddles. To her he was at times an enigma, and at times again a simpleton. In both aspects he displeased and embarrassed her. One has one's sense of property, and in him she could not put her finger on anything that was hers. We demand continuity, logic in ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... obscure in his other comment upon an employer who told his tired servant to serve his master first, ending with the enigma, "We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... and there had been nothing to repulse. Once during Charlie's absence he had come in a rowboat, hailed her from the beach, and gone away without disembarking when she told him Benton was not back. He was something of an enigma, she confessed to herself, after all. Perhaps that was why he came so frequently into her mind. Or perhaps, she told herself, there was so little on Roaring Lake to think about that one could not escape the personal element. As ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... because they are in fact expressions of the whole character. It is necessary to take them into account in order really to understand either the merits or the shortcomings. When they are softened or omitted, the whole story becomes an enigma, and we are often tempted to substitute some less creditable explanation of errors for the true one. We should not do justice to Johnson's intense tenderness, if we did not see how often it was masked by an irritability pardonable in itself, and not affecting ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... invisible but consummate artist who had been passing before you all manner of photographs made lurid by the glare of the stereopticon: photograph now of sunset cloud, now of lover's scene in the lane, now of a dyspeptic, long-haired, wrinkled old man. The writer Turgenef has thus been for years an enigma. Katkof, the pillar of Russian autocracy, claims him as his, and the revolutionists claim him as theirs; the realists point to him as one of the apostles of their new gospel, and the idealists point to him as the apostle of theirs. Now he defies public ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... hitherto always bowed reverently before the saint, as the enigma of self-subjugation and utter voluntary privation—why did they thus bow? They divined in him—and as it were behind the questionableness of his frail and wretched appearance—the superior force which wished to test itself ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... pronunciation, while far from identical with ours, was much closer than the tortured dialect of the Eastenders of the Isle of Wight. The longer I talked with her the more hopeful I became of finding here, among her people, some records, or traditions, which might assist in clearing up the historic enigma of the past two centuries. I asked her if we were far from the city of London, but she did not know what I meant. When I tried to explain, describing mighty buildings of stone and brick, broad avenues, parks, palaces, and countless people, she ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his own top-floor room with the rakish back wall. There he cautiously lighted the gas, drew the blinds, and locked himself in. Next, he dragged a chair over to the bedside, sat down on it, and carefully untied the parcel string. Then, with somewhat accelerated pulse, he unwrapped the paper-screened enigma. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... sat weary beyond expression, exulting like a conqueror, sleepless and entranced as if before a profound, a fateful enigma. ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... and then Albert would row a few strokes, and at almost any time when the populated shore glanced toward them, Sadie would be seen photographing Albert, or Albert would be seen photographing Sadie, but the tennis racket remained an enigma. Oarsman and passenger appeared to have no conversation whatever—not once was either seen or heard to address a remark to the other; and they looked as placid as their own upside-down reflections in one of the still pools they slowly floated ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... kept her eyes constantly cast down; intimidated, dazzled, and with impeded respiration, she withdrew herself as much as possible aside, unaffected even by the nudges Montalais gave her with her elbow. The whole scene was a perfect enigma for Raoul, the key to which he would have given anything to obtain. But no one was there who could assist him, not even Malicorne; who, a little uneasy at finding himself in the presence of so many persons of good birth, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... themselves of the religious sentiment or to appease its craving for satisfaction. There being no God, they find it necessary, as Voltaire predicted it would be, to invent one, not for the purposes of police (they are far above such sordid Jesuitism), but as the solution of the otherwise hopeless enigma of our spiritual nature. Science takes cognizance of all phenomena, and this apparently ineradicable tendency of the human mind is a phenomenon like the rest. The thoroughgoing Materialist, of course, escapes all these philosophical exigencies, but he does it by denying Humanity as well ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... more than anger Blake; they maddened him. For years now he had been compelled to face her obliquities, to puzzle over the enigma of her ultimate character, and he was tired of it all. He made no effort to hold his feelings in check. Even into his voice crept that grossness which before had seemed something of ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... attention, Where shall we find an object for the tremendous judgment to be inflicted by the third and last woe? This question requires a solution. It demands it; and he who succeeds in the application of history to solve this apparent enigma in the Apocalypse, will be able to attain to a satisfactory, a certain, understanding of much that is yet to most readers as if the "sealed book" were to this day in the "right hand of Him that sitteth on the throne." Let us humbly attempt ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... awaited the solution of this enigma. Fabian armed himself with a pride which equalled that ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... intermixed and confused, that the clearest head gets puzzled with the entanglements of the story; and confusion gets worse confounded as the farrago proceeds. How M. Sue will manage ever to come to a close is an enigma to us; and we shall wait with some impatience to see how he will distribute his poetic justice, when he can't get his puppets to move another step. Horror seems the great ingredient in the present ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... rubbed his eyes sleepily, as if newly awakened. Then the first guard drew bolts from a stout door and pulled it open, revealing a dark chasm like the entrance to a cell. Both Wilhelm and the Emperor viewed this black enigma with deep suspicion, but their guide with his lantern plunged into it and they followed, after which the door was closed and ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... any precocious wisdom. Certainly, one can get at the substance of things. True, there is enough mystery and perplexity about the system of the world, and at times all life looms up a terrible enigma, so increasing in difficulty of solution that Death's key to knowledge seems the one thing to be desired. But it is well for a man not to lose himself in labyrinths of conjecture, but to resolutely put aside his spirit of philosophical inquiry, and do something useful for himself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... him, of that he felt convinced. Man like, he did not understand to the full that great and wonderful enigma, which has puzzled the world since primeval times: ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... silent in her brother-in-law's presence because recent events had rather bewildered her. Her countenance was stamped with a wondering expression as though she were gazing at the upsetting of the most elemental physical laws. In reflective silence she was puzzling over the Marne enigma, unable to understand how it was that the Germans had not conquered the ground on which she was treading; and in order to explain this failure, she resorted to the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... distractedly, caressing her and soothing her. "What a world it is! Why, why cannot you and Maurice see how delightful you both are? It is an enigma. No one can solve it. Tita darling, take heart. Why—why, if Marian were so bad as you think her—which I pray God she isn't—still, think how far you can surpass her in ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... of the inhabitants of Lincoln Island were solely occupied with the intended search. Everything incited them to discover the answer to this enigma, an answer which could only be the name of a man endowed with a truly inexplicable, and in some degree superhuman power. In a few minutes, the settlers re-entered the house, where their influence soon restored to Ayrton ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... also an evil-smelling dark bottle in the Italian's inside coat-pocket, which was an enigma. It was not ginger pop or beer, or any kind of soda water; Black Bruin knew all of these drinks himself, and this drink was like ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... of all the patience and perseverance the boys could muster the magic message remained an enigma and at the end of an hour both were ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... who, from his point of view—that painting may fairly deal with a chapter of history—is perfectly right. The prevailing strain of the story is the strength of weakness—ex dulci fortitudo, to invert the old enigma. "O God, O my God, hear me also, a widow. Break down their stateliness by the hand of a woman!" It is the refrain that runs through the whole history of Israel, that reasonable complacency of a little people ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... friend Edie, is an absolute enigma, and would require a second OEdipus to solve itwho OEdipus was, I will tell you some other time if you remind meHowever, whether it be owing to the wisdom or to the maggots with which you compliment me, I ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... pretend to explain in detail the whole enigma of first love. But a general explanation is suggested by evolutional philosophy,—namely, that the attraction depends upon an inherited individual susceptibility to special qualities of feminine influence, and subjectively represents a kind of superindividual recognition,'" ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... an aid in understanding the stages of European development, affirming that colonial settlement is for economic science what the mountain is for geology, bringing to light primitive stratifications. "America," he says, "has the key to the historical enigma which Europe has sought for centuries in vain, and the land which has no history reveals luminously the course of universal history." There is much truth in this. The United States lies like a huge page ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... looked around her with an air of triumph; but whether that look communicated the triumph of success, or that of her inveterate enmity and contempt for them ever since the death of old Hamilton, was as great a secret to them as the Bononian enigma. There was a dead silence, much to her mortification, for she would have given a great deal that her husband had interrupted her just then, and taken ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgment, appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... I answered; 'but I should hesitate before saying unaccountable. Now, there is that River Hall place up the river. There must be some rational way of explaining the appearances in that house, though no one has yet found any clue to that enigma.' ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... serpent languishing in the snow, where a labourer has thrown it, and a naked child burning in the midst of the fire, with certain other details and circumstances, with the legend which says: "Idem, itidem non idem." This seems more like an enigma than anything else, and I do not feel sure that I can explain it at all; yet I do believe that it means that the same fate vexes, and the same torments both the one and the other—that is, immeasurably, without mercy and unto death, by means of various instruments ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... all very well, and yet as he turned Comet's head toward the Poison Hole ranch the blood was still hot on his brow, his thoughts were still busy with Winifred Waverly and the enigma she was to him, while his mind, still touched with the opiate of the loveliness of her, was filled with the picture she made in the moment of her ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... trackless, and oblivious whence it blows. Demand of lilies wherefore they are white, Extort her crimson secret from the rose, But ask not of the Muse that she disclose The meaning of the riddle of her might: Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite, Save the enigma of herself, she knows. The master could not tell, with all his lore, Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped; Ev'n as the linnet sings, so I, he said;— Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale, That ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... His murdered sons were the last sight which he saw before he was blinded, according to the ferocious practice of the East. It was ingenuity of cruelty to let him see for so long, and then to give him that as the last thing seen, and therefore often remembered. Note how the enigma of Ezekiel's prophecy (Ezek. xii. 13) and its apparent contradiction of Jeremiah's (Jer. xxxii. 4; xxxiv. 3) are reconciled, and learn how easily the fact, when it comes, clears the riddles of prophecy, and how easily, probably, the whole facts, if we knew them, would clear the difficulties ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fitted for a new age. He suggests that the Pagan ideal will be the ultimate good of man; but if that is so, we must at least ask with more curiosity than he allows for, why it was that man actually found his ultimate good on earth under the stars, and threw it away again. It is this extraordinary enigma to which I propose to attempt ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... have undergone a complete revolution. When Marx began his work with the labor movement there was absolute ignorance among both masters and men concerning the nature of capitalism. It was a great and terrible enigma which no one understood. The working class itself was broken up into innumerable guerilla bands fighting hopelessly, aimlessly, with the most antiquated and ineffectual weapons. They were in misery; but why, they knew not. They left their work to riot for ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... scientific tests to be applied to the action of the brain alleged to be the subject of partial or incipient disease. There is nothing in the facts as they stand to supply the materials for a judgment. Precise scientific inquiry can alone solve the enigma each case presents. ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... belief at the earliest age in such a way as to result in a kind of partial paralysis of the brain; this then shows itself throughout their whole life in a silly bigotry, making even extremely intelligent and capable people among them degrade themselves so that they become quite an enigma to us. If we consider how essential to such a masterpiece is inoculation of belief in the tender age of childhood, the system of missions appears no longer merely as the height of human importunity, arrogance, and impertinence, but also of absurdity; in so far as it does not confine itself ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... contradictions, which have made of a science the most obvious and best demonstrated, an unintelligible science, mysterious and uncertain to those for whom it is designed. In the hands of the priests, morality has become an enigma; they have founded our duties on the attributes of a Deity whom the mind of man cannot comprehend, in place of founding them on the character of man himself. They have thrown in among them the foundations of an edifice which is made for this earth. They have desired to regulate ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... in all her glory and sweetness, is but a specimen of the jargon and slang of Ghibelline freemasonry. When Italians write thus, they degrade the greatest name of their country to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. It is to solve the enigma of Dante's works by imagining for him a character in which it is hard to say which predominates, the pedant, mountebank, or infidel. After that we may read Voltaire's sneers with patience, and even enter with gravity on the examination of Father Hardouin's historic doubts. The fanaticism ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... heaven, sir, say nothing to him!" she uttered, and disappeared within an inner door. The sight of Roy, entering, explained the enigma; she must have seen him from the window. Roy took off his cap ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Jack to question a word of the narrative that had reduced a dismal enigma to luminous, connected facts. With the swift processes of reason and the promptness of decision of which he was capable on occasion, he had made up his mind as to his future even as he ascended the stairs to his room. The poignancy of his father's appeal had struck ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... generous sentiment to betray itself to another, he veiled his earnest friendship under a guise of mere clerkly companionship, rarely giving way to those bursts of tender feeling, which rendered him, in Guly's young eyes, an absolute enigma. ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... it, she leaps over it, she turns and twists, and jumps and frisks, in all directions, in the vain attempt to reach the fair illusion; and, at length, turns away in weariness from that incomprehensible enigma—the image of herself. ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... "This nation is an enigma, whose import no man as yet may fully know. She is a germ of boundless things. The unfolded bud excites the hope of one-half the human race, while it stirs the remainder with both anger and alarm. Who ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... look from Sintram stopped the flow of his words. With a gentle smile, Weigand bowed towards him, and said: "You know now all the deep, unutterably deep, sorrow which preyed upon me. My fear of you, and my yearning love for you, are no longer an enigma to your kind heart. For, dear youth, though you may be like your fearful father, you have also the kind, gentle heart of your mother; and its reflection brightens your pallid, stern features, like the glow of a morning ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... by its masters to bring it into submission, is truly one of the most amazing spectacles which we have witnessed since the war broke out. General von Bissing has declared that the Belgians are an enigma to him. No wonder. They are an enigma to themselves. I am not going to explain the miracle. I will only attempt to show how inexplicable, ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... good deal on his own powers of influence. Life had been to him so far one long social success of the best kind. Very likely as he walked on to the great house over whose threshold lay the answer to the enigma of months, his mind gradually filled with some naive young dream of winning the squire, playing him with all sorts of honest arts, beguiling him back ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his name, or the formula of incantation that binds him, you can control the spirit, genie, afrite, or whatever the power may be. Solomon knew the names of all the spirits, and having their names, he held them subject to his will. So the universe has always appeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, of which the key must be sought in the shape of some illuminating or power-bringing word or name. That word names the universe's PRINCIPLE, and to possess it is, after a fashion, to possess the universe itself. 'God,' 'Matter,' 'Reason,' 'the Absolute,' ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... meaning, the term still leaves me reluctant; for I cannot hide from myself the weakness of a hypothesis which, in order to explain (only in part) one enigmatical fact (in this case, that of "thinking animals"), must have recourse to another unsolved enigma (in this case that of the ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... first years at school was extremely idle. Although by no means lacking in intelligence, all the efforts spent on her failed to bring about a proper advance. All at once she became most industrious; no task was too hard for her, and everyone wondered at the sudden change, until after a time the enigma was explained. The child, having conceived a great fondness for her schoolmistress, wished to please the latter by attention to her lessons. In addition, she was jealous; afraid lest the mistress ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... barefoot child will tell you belong to the palace of 'La Reino Joanno.' Walls have been altered, gates have disappeared, but down those time-worn steps once paced the liege lady of Provence, the incomparable 'fair mischief' whose guilt ... must ever remain one of the enigmas of history." This "enigma" has strange analogies to one which has puzzled and impassioned the writers of many generations, the mystery of that other "fair mischief" of a later century, Mary Queen of Scots. Like Mary, Jeanne was accused of the murder of her young husband, and being pressed by the vengeance of his brother—no ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... no wish, cardinal," the king kindly replied, "to find you guilty. Explain to me this enigma. Account for all those maneuvers with Boehmer. Where did you obtain these securities and these promissory notes, signed in the queen's name, which have been given ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... him with wondering eyes, her shrewd intellect had already deciphered the enigma, but her eyes ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... married, but the priest was ordained by my master, and the license was of his own granting, and so they are not married, and now the enigma's explained. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... Ralph had never seen before. He could not take in its full meaning all in a minute. His puzzled mind went groping for some reasonable solution of the enigma. Before he could think things out, however, there was a sound at the rear door of the car. Some one on the platform outside had turned the knob and held the door about an inch ajar, and Ralph glided towards it. Through the crack ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... So this was the explanation of the Monny puzzle! Yet it was but the first word of another enigma. Who was responsible for the wild story? There was more than met the eye—or ear—in this. I could hardly believe that Monny would have chosen, or Rachel dared, to start this rumour, though it might have amused the real heiress, and suited the false one, to watch it run. I dared not contradict ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... and complexities. The testimony of Papias remains an enigma that can only be solved—if ever it is solved—by close and detailed investigations. I am bound in candour to say that, so far as I can see myself at present, I am inclined to agree with the author of 'Supernatural Religion' against his critics [Endnote 159:1], ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... upon them; for He alone who has power to check or permit them, can know how and why they happen, whither they tend, and what will be their ultimate consequence. To the mind of man all is dark; he is an enigma to himself: let him live, therefore, in the hope of once seeing clearly; and happy indeed is he who in this manner passes ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... prison, considering one day with myself the different kinds of liberty and confinement, freedom and bondage, I took my pen, and wrote the following enigma ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... that it had taken any shape but that!) the enigma developed itself. Returning home one day, I had straightened my collar and smoothed my hair before opening the door (feeling a proper pride in my personal appearance, these preparations are usually a preliminary ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... head that minted probrosis as a verb! Vernon, you are an enigma. No! This Side will not always be patient of unheavenly gases and waters. I will make representations to our so-called Moderns. Meantime (who shall say I am not just?) I remit you your accrued pains and penalties in regard to probrosim, probrosis, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... England, which had sheltered him, to claim his seat in the National Assembly of republican France, and even when made President of the republic by the suffrages of the nation, he was regarded as an enigma. Some thought him dull though bold, and others looked upon him as astute and long-headed. His heavy look, his leaden eye, his reserved and taciturn ways, with no marked power but that of silence and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... that may be true; but it is well enough known that she can love very deeply. It says that, like most queens, and for precisely the same set of reasons, she later on makes a bad mother; but it is easy to point to queens who are the best of mothers. In short, she remains an enigma, and, like all ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... am I saying? people don't dream as he has lived. No one has ever extracted out of a destiny more than he has. The preposterous and the commonplace are equally familiar to him. He has shone, he has suffered, he has dragged along a humdrum existence: nothing has escaped him.... He is an enigma, a riddle that can ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... a token show of interest; he twice lost his temper in boast against boast, but he was more often a blunt enigma. He saw much and said little. Those times when he did speak, so extravagant were his grunt and ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... face, the man's large mouth covering the twitching lips of the girl. The shrouding red hair hid the squatter faces from the professor, and he turned his eyes away. He could not look upon them without distressing emotion. The strange maid was an enigma to him and he found himself wishing that he might guide her future. When Young glanced again, the fisherman had seated himself and had slipped Tessibel from his shoulders, gathering her closely into his great embrace—for she was the brawn ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... They never approach normal life. They scorn it. They have a horror of it. They class politics with the differential calculus. They have heard of Lloyd George, the rise in the price of commodities, and the eternal enigma, what is a sardine; but only because they must open a newspaper to look at the advertisements and announcements relating to the arts. The occasional frequenting of this circle may not be disadvantageous to the creative artist. But let him keep himself inoculated against ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... our heads, our limited intelligence, the grievous and contradictory enigma of human destiny, falsehood, hatred, corruption, suffering, death—what can we think, what do? To all these questions a sublime and mysterious voice has answered: Love your fellow-men. Love must indeed be divine, like faith and hope, since ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... pronouncedly Spanish features. One is an oldish man, greyheaded, thin-faced, and wearing spectacles. In a great city he would be taken for a savant, though difficult to tell what he may be, seen in the Llano Estacado surrounded by a desert. In the same place, the other and younger man is equally an enigma, for his bearing proclaims him both gentleman and soldier, while the coat on his back shows the undress uniform of an officer of more than ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... too intemperate to be ingenuous. It would probably occur to him, that he would be likely to find the precautions he was in search of in the primitive compact between the States. Here, at length, he would expect to meet with a solution of the enigma. No doubt, he would observe to himself, the existing Confederation must contain the most explicit provisions against military establishments in time of peace; and a departure from this model, in a favorite point, has occasioned ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... studied him for a few moments. The man had always been an enigma to her. She could not understand a nature that soared into the spiritual empyrean one moment, and in the next fell floundering into the bottomless pit of materialism. The undulating curve which marked the development of the Rincon mind was to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... provisions had been exhausted. He should now take measures to procure a supply. Leaving me, therefore, in the charge of his comrade, in whom he appeared to have implicit confidence, he departed, assuring me, that in less than two hours we should make a good dinner. Where it was to come from was an enigma to me, though it was evident these beings had their secret friends ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
Copyright © 2024 Free Translator.org
|
|
|
