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More "Enigmatical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the bank, and that exclamation, "It was this very place!" Whew! Jonah had tied a bit of his bootlace on the hedge just under the spot, and could find it again within a foot. Then the rencontre with the two boys and the strange, enigmatical talk in the shed, pointing to the plot of a new crime of which he—Trimble—was to be the victim. Ha, ha!—and the business over that tricycle too, in the candle-light. Jonah could see through that. He could put a spoke in a wheel ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... to know anything;" and then, with an enigmatical smile, promptly admitted: "However, I'm afraid ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the old language which, after having become moldy from age to age, ended by dissolving, by reaching that deliquescence of the Latin language which expired in the mysterious concepts and the enigmatical expressions of Saint Boniface and ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the afternoon Lola was in a state of great depression; "What is the matter?" I asked. "er in or ist aus!" I questioned her more closely, so as to get at the meaning of this enigmatical remark: "What 'in ear'?" (or being meant for Ohr ear). She replied: "eid zu sagen" ( oath to tell—or to say) adding "ich auch aus" ... ( I also done for). She looked absolutely miserable, and dropped down in a limp heap between rapping out each word, as though bereft of all will-power. ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... and he has advanced a new hypothesis about comets and their long tails. . . Our chief botanical occupation this summer is the careful observation of all our plants, even the commonest, and the explanation of whatever is unusual or enigmatical in their structure. We have already cracked several such nuts, but many remain to be opened. All such puzzling specimens are spread on single sheets and set aside. . .But more of this when we are together again. . .Dr. Leuckart begs you to study carefully the "Hebammen Unke;"* (* ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Cary, don't imagine the discoveries of character and temperament, of idiosyncrasies and peculiarities, are all on the woman's side. A man has to stand much. There are times when a woman may be an angel, but others when she behaves as if her ancestry was in a different direction. No wizard works such enigmatical changes as that master of human destinies called Love. Lives are glorified or ruined by it, and no man or woman experiences it who is not more or less, in the process of experiencing, some sort of a fool. They play ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... parlor we are all tarred with the same brush, all daubed with the same dauber; we have nothing, as the rather enigmatical phrase goes, on one another. Indeed, we hardly look at one another, and are as remote as strangers sitting side by side in a theatre. Individually, in a steady, subconscious way, I think we are all wondering how we are going to get down ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... of her enigmatical and mocking smile, where her teeth had a cruel look between her red lips, and glistened as if they were ready to bite and to heighten the pleasure of the most delightful, the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of this was enigmatical to Rainey, but there was no mistaking Lund's tremendous seriousness and, duly impressed, Rainey promised ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... an age, Jones and Eleanor turned, still close in talk, still solemn and enigmatical, and drew toward us very slowly and deliberately. When they had got quite close, and the tension was at the breaking point, Eleanor suddenly made a little rush, and, with a loud sob, threw her arms ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... town again. There they stumbled upon a little bookseller's shop blinking in a quiet corner, and bought three or four guides and small histories of Ansbach, which they carried home, and studied between drowsing and waking. The wonderful German syntax seems at its most enigmatical in this sort of literature, and sometimes they lost themselves in its labyrinths completely, and only made their way perilously out with the help of cumulative declensions, past articles and adjectives blindly seeking their nouns, to long-procrastinated ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... All this reading remained enigmatical, of course, and as I could make nothing of it to connect it with the events I have narrated, I went on to the writing, which was fine and small, as the writing of an exact man. And the words upon the ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... strange parting message, not reassuring and quite enigmatical. I took my Mauser and also hid in the cuff of my coat my cyanide of potassium. The Baron was quartered in the yurta of the military doctor. When I entered the court, Captain Veseloffsky came up to me. He had a Cossack sword and ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... is enigmatical, as the original type seems to be involved in dense obscurity. Buffon considered the shepherd dog to be the least modified by domestication—very erroneously, according to Dr Prichard; it is still a vexata questio, whether the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... be content to win ten on behalf of a cause I know of, and to fall in the tenth—then, indeed, I would die blessing the Lord.' A year or two later, he unearthed and reassumed the ancient motto of the House of Savoy: 'J'attends mon astre.' Nevertheless, to the outward world his intentions remained enigmatical, and it was therefore with extreme surprise that Massimo d'Azeglio (who, on his return from the Roman states, asked permission to inform the King of the impressions made on him by his travels) received ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... herself on the verge of desertion by the one person who made life worth living in intermittent spots. He was nervous and overanxious to appear to advantage. The young thoroughbred at the head of the table who had given him a swift all-embracing look, an enigmatical smile and a light laughing question as to whether he would like to be called "Father, papa, Uncle George or what" awed him. He couldn't help feeling like a clumsy piece of modern pottery in the presence of an exquisite specimen of porcelain. His hands and feet multiplied ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... feels very—sweet," was the enigmatical response. And Mr. Starr muttered something about women and geometry and went away, shaking his head. And ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... These enigmatical instructions bothered their hearer far more than any of the strange proceedings of ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... to understand," he exclaimed, and bending an enigmatical look upon the startled judge and his daughter, he picked the page up in his arms with the utmost tenderness, and ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... figure was slender with well-balanced fullness. The strong, fine lines of her features were accentuated by the darker more deeply colored complexion which the years had given her; the smile of her widely sweeping lips was very sweet; an almost enigmatical youth in the dewy luminosity of her brown eyes softened and mellowed everything again. And yet she also had the round fullness of cheek, the strong-willed ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... departure. She would tell her how she loved her—better than any one else she had ever known except her mother—and how she had never been so happy in her life as with her. Then she would make the same enigmatical but satisfactory reference to her future and how it made the step imperative, adding that if Cousin Julia could understand, she would agree that she couldn't have ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... become a Fellow of Clare Hall in Cambridge, I may say, and subsequently brought out a respectable edition of Polyaenus—contained among other things the notes which the old Vicar had made upon the occasion of Sir Matthew Fell's death. And for the first time Sir Richard was confronted with the enigmatical Sortes Biblicae which you have heard. They ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... miles in diameter and surrounded by a saw-edged rampart, some of whose pinnacles are 6,000 or 7,000 feet high. Plato is a favorite subject for study by selenographers because of the changes of color which its broad, flat floor undergoes as the sun rises upon it, and also because of the existence of enigmatical spots and streaks whose visibility changes. South of Plato, in the Mare Imbrium, rises a precipitous, isolated peak called Pico, 8,000 feet in height. Its resemblance in situation to the conical mountain Pico in ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... that spare, clear brilliancy that the recent removal of ashes imparts to a wood fire. All the world was still beclouded with mists, and the windows and doors looked forth on a blank white nullity—as inexpressive, as enigmatical, as the unwritten page of the unformulated future itself. The present seemed eliminated; he stood as it were in the atmosphere of other days. But whither had blown the incense of that happy time? The lights on the shrine had dwindled to extinction! What had befallen his strong young hopes, ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... lamps came upwards one by one with the greeting, "Good luck to you!" and, receiving the same salutation from us, went onwards and upwards. Something like a friendly and quiet, yet, at the same time, painful and enigmatical recollection flitted across my mind as I met the deep glances and earnest pale faces of these young and old men, mysteriously illuminated by their lanterns, and thought how they had worked all day in lonely and secret places in the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... (1126-1157), is a dignified and somewhat enigmatical figure. A vague tradition had always assigned the title of emperor to the sovereign who held Leon as the most direct representative of the Visigoth kings, who were themselves the representatives of the Roman empire. But though given in charters, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... solitary wigwam, and a small quantity of corn in store. Crockett wore a large hat. Taking it from his head, he offered the Indian a silver dollar if he would fill it with corn. But the little bit of silver, with enigmatical characters stamped upon it, was worth nothing to the Indian. He declined the offer. Speaking a little broken English, he inquired, "You got any powder? You got any bullets?" Crockett told him he had. He promptly replied, "Me will swap my ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... was over; only the maize was still standing, otherwise they saw nothing but monotonous fields of stubble. None of them spoke; all three found it hard to keep awake. In the afternoon Timar could no longer endure the silent looks, the enigmatical expression of his wife; under pretense of wanting to smoke he took a seat by the driver in the open coupe, and remained there. When they got out at a post-house, Athalie grumbled at the bad roads, the dreadful heat, the annoying flies, the stifling ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... murmur of pleasure, vaguely joined by Adrian Fellowes, who glanced quickly round the little group, and met an enigmatical glance from Byng's eye. Byng was remembering what Barry Whalen had told him three years ago, and he wondered if Jasmine was cognizant of it all. He thought not; for otherwise she would scarcely bring Al'mah to Glencader and play ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Scott's novels were filled with perpetual lacunae. I hoped it might be otherwise with the philosophers, and so it was; but even here it was curious to see what strange ravages the visitation had wrought. Some of the most beautiful and comprehensive of Bacon's Aphorisms were reduced to enigmatical nonsense. ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... wounds, having been dressed by his mother in an invulnerable garment. After this action, more blood being shed than usual in an Icelandic engagement, Thorarin returned to Mahfahlida, and, being questioned by his mother concerning the events of the skirmish, he answered in the improvisatory and enigmatical poetry of his ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... to enigmatical utterances of this kind has long ago passed away; and, if any meaning ever attaches to them, it is apt to be sadly commonplace. Nevertheless, when Balder was born, and the hereditary blue eyes were found wanting, the circumstance was doubtless the occasion of much half-serious ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... of Russia, they made the first formal renunciation of territory which had been consecrated to Islam by the solemnities of religion,—a circumstance which has sunk deep into their imaginations; there is an enigmatical inscription on the tomb of the Great Constantine, to the effect that "the yellow-haired race shall overthrow Ismael;" moreover, ever since their defeats by the Emperor Leopold, they have had a surmise that ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... purest, blackest type, with the eyes of a white man, of a man from the North, pale, cold, clear, blue eyes, and his surprise increased, when, after a few words of excuse for his untimely visit, he added, with an enigmatical smile: ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... philosopher was as good as his word, and the letter met the traveller at Florence. 'The charms of sweet Siena detained me no longer than they should have done, I required the hardy air of Corsica to brace me, after the delights of Tuscany,' an enigmatical turn of expression upon which light is thrown later, when we discuss the love affairs of Boswell, by a reference to a dark-eyed 'signora' on whom the tender traveller had glanced. At Leghorn he was within one day's sail ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... bounty of its operations he trusts implicitly. The stores of judgment and knowledge he finds in his father, prompt him to trust it. In many instances where it appeared at first obscure and enigmatical, the event has taught him to acknowledge its soundness. The mutinousness of passion will sometimes excite a child to question the decrees of his parent; it is very long before his understanding, as such, comes to set up a separate system, and teaches him to controvert ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... dense foliage stood a temple. The doors and courts were in ruins. The walls, inner and outer, in disrepair. An inscription on a tablet testified that this was the temple of Spiritual Perception. On the sides of the door was also a pair of old and dilapidated scrolls with the following enigmatical verses. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... in whole-hearted agreement for example about a certain impresario, Maxfield Ware, who created a sensation among the company and staff by turning up ostentatiously unaccounted for from New York and looking intensely enigmatical whenever any one asked him any questions. He was a sufficiently well-known figure in that world for surmises to spring up like round-eyed dandelions ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... and turned, and rested her hands on the counter. She looked at him and again her lips turned at the corners in that faint, enigmatical beginning ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... page is it transcribed that their heads, or brains, or hearts are the regions wherewith they argue; and, when this honey had been gathered, Hod's rotundity of countenance was not all cheer. This, because man's sense of humor is an enigmatical product, afforded Jess many pleasant chuckles as he trudged, now with a full bucket of the golden prize, back to his horse; and, in order to portray Hod's antics more vividly to the several acquaintances he met on his way to town, he not infrequently dismounted. But, entering the Court ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... German youthlet. The two words "infinity" and "meaning" were sufficient for this: at their sound the youthlet immediately began to feel exceptionally happy. Wagner did not conquer these boys with music, but with the "idea":—it is the enigmatical vagueness of his art, its game of hide-and-seek amid a hundred symbols, its polychromy in ideals, which leads and lures the lads. It is Wagner's genius for forming clouds, his sweeps and swoops through ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... once with that benevolent resignation some old people display towards the fugue of youth. Older by a quarter of a century than General D'Hubert, he looked upon him in the secret of his heart as a rather troublesome youngster in love. He had heard his enigmatical words very well, but attached no undue importance to what a mere man of forty so hard hit was likely to do or say. The turn of mind of the generation of Frenchmen grown up during the years of his exile was almost unintelligible to him. Their sentiments appeared to him ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... day the girl was enigmatical both to Horace and to Ann. Weary hours, crowding one upon another, offered her no relief. The thought of Lon's letter shattered hope and made her desolate. She did not stop to reason that her relations with Horace demanded that she tell him of Everett's perfidy. Had not her loved ones been ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... proved abortive, Mr. Egremont's disappointment and anger were great, and he could not be persuaded that all was not the fault of Mr. Dutton's suspicion and precaution in holding back the money, nor could any one persuade him that it was mere imposture. When another ill-written enigmatical letter arrived, he insisted that it was from the same quarter, and made Broadbent conduct the negotiations, with the result that after considerable sums had been paid in circuitous fashions, the butler was directed to a railway arch where the child would be deposited, and where he found a drab-coloured ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... looking at Freya with enigmatical eyes while, in his thought, wrath was beginning to bubble. He almost hated her on recalling the arrogance with which she had treated him, fleeing from that room. "Hypocrite!..." She was just amusing herself with him. She was a playful and ferocious cat prolonging the death-agony ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the tone was enigmatical. She gave an inward gulp of envy, however, excited by the cut of the French girl's black and white cotton. Then she dropped Elise's hand, and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... equations, adventurers have many chances in their favor. Even if this family were of gypsy extraction, it was so wealthy, so attractive, that fashionable society could well afford to overlook its little mysteries. But, unfortunately, the enigmatical history of the Lanty family offered a perpetual subject of curiosity, not unlike that aroused by the novels of ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... days, the anguish of his loss was so cruelly poignant that he thought he must die of it. His jealousy, lulled to sleep by the persistent ardour of Elena's affection, awoke now with redoubled vigour, and the suspicion that a man was at the bottom of this enigmatical affair increased his sufferings a hundredfold. Sometimes he would be seized with sullen anger against the absent woman, a bitter rancour, almost a desire for revenge, as if she had mystified and duped him in order to give herself ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... but is it not sheer abuse of reason to argue as though the character of God were at all analogous to theirs; or rather, is it not a shocking abuse of our reasoning faculties to employ them at all about a Being whose existence, if it really have an existence, is perfectly enigmatical, and allowed to be so by those very men who pretend to explain its character and attributes? We find no less a sage than Newton explicitly declaring as incontestable truth, that God exists necessarily—that the same necessity obliges ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... undignified interest. It was strange how the enigmatical personality of the owner of Far End kept ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... those sudden flights of thought so common in dreams I heard the hoarse falsetto of the bric-a-brac dealer, repeating like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with so enigmatical an intonation: ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... gallants consisted, for the greater part, of witticisms at one another's expense, which, though evoked for Ariel's benefit (all eyes furtively reverting to her as each shaft was loosed), she found more or less enigmatical. The young men, however, laughed at each other loudly, and seemed content if now and then she smiled. "You must be frightfully ennuied with all this," Eugene said to her. "You see how provincial ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... it, but for that sub-vigorous element in his character, that saving strain of practical rationality, which had brought him thus far in life without sheer overthrow. An hour after receiving Alma's enigmatical note, he was oppressed by inertia; another hour roused him to self-preservation, and supplied him with a project. That night he took the steamer from Harwich to Antwerp, and for the next four days wandered through the Netherlands, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... according to our passage, the dominion of Judah was to culminate, must then necessarily belong to the house of David. Further,—If the passage under review be understood of the Messiah, we have an excellent fountainhead for all the prophecies of a personal Messiah; in its significant, enigmatical, and expressive brevity, it is most suitable for such a purpose. But if its reference to the Messiah be explained away, we are deprived altogether of a suitable starting-point. In the Davidic psalms, the Messianic prophecy already more strongly resembles a stream ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... prophecies fulfilled, He declares here, in the second part, the future events before they spring forth, before the facts begin to sprout forth from the soil of the Present, and hence could have been known and predicted by human combination. The words, "before they spring forth," become completely enigmatical, if it be denied that Isaiah [Pg 185] wrote the second part; inasmuch as, in that case, it would have in a great part, to do with things which did not belong to the territory of prophetic foresight, but ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... were the busiest that Blue Bonnet had known since her entrance to the school. Lessons grew in length and importance. There were endless themes to write in English; mathematics became more and more enigmatical; music more difficult. In addition to this were rehearsals ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... sudden change, and catching, with all the mysterious rapidity of instinct peculiar to the lower animals, at the enigmatical character of the situation, turned his pleading, melancholy eyes from one to another of the motionless three, as if begging that his humble intellect (pardon me, naturalists, for the use of this word "intellect" in the matter of a monkey!) should be enlightened ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... word!" was the enigmatical remark the smiling Quimby made as he entered. Then, catching sight of the festive board, he stopped short and stared, with an utterly confounded face, at that, at the embarrassed Nattie, at Cyn, behind the door, and at the saucepan cover, which, embellished with potato parings, occupied a prominent ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... the first time her too-ready tongue tripped. She looked away and recovered herself to the end of the sentence. She could not resist another look, however, and this time her words came more slowly. She paused—wavered—and then fixed her gaze in silence upon the enigmatical device. There was a unanimous smothered sigh as the bystanders recognized their good fortune. Guido, frightened half to death, slipped unobserved out of a side door, and was never seen at Greenwich again. Nor has that fatal newspaper been ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... shall see," was the queen's enigmatical rejoinder. She swept to her chariot, and with her brilliant train, soon left Stafford ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... Pilate to Herod as a kind of peace-offering. The two had been squabbling about some question of jurisdiction; and so, partly to escape from the embarrassment of having to deal with this enigmatical Prisoner, and partly out of a piece of politic politeness, Pilate sends Jesus to Herod, because He was in his jurisdiction. Think of the Lord of men and angels being handed about from one to the other of these two scoundrels, as a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... doom. How am I to interpret your enigmatical conduct? But now I thought you a friend, come to give me timely warning to guard against threatened danger, when, all at once, you declare my situation a hopeless one! If you are my friend, why not warn ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... by no means decided to descend into the plain. In presence of the Constable, my Lord the Bastard and the captains, he consulted the holy Maid, who gave him an enigmatical answer: "See to it that you ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... bricks and mortar. I liked the situation; it was just far enough away from a town to enable me to escape all the smoke and traffic, and near enough to make shopping easy. The only obstacles were the shadows—the strange, enigmatical shadows I had seen in the hall and passages, and the figure of the walker. Dare I take a house that knew such visitors? At first I said no, and then yes. Something, I could not tell what, urged me to say yes. I felt that a ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... little while. The new order may have gone far towards shaping itself, but just as in that sort of lantern show that used to be known in the village as the "Dissolving Views," the scene that is going remains upon the mind, traceable and evident, and the newer picture is yet enigmatical long after the lines that are to replace those former ones have grown bright and strong, so that the new England of our children's children is still a riddle to me. The ideas of democracy, of equality, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... begun his crusade against various abuses, he had cast a suspicious eye on all matters through which he could trace the trail of William Farbish, and now, when Farbish saw Horton, he eyed him with an enigmatical expression, half-quizzical ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... enigmatical attachment which impelled Mrs. Thrale to her second marriage, is now as well known as her name: but its details belong not to the history of Dr. Burney; though the fact too deeply interested him, and was too ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... word of enigmatical meaning, lest any should think that He was speaking only of some far-off judgment. The destruction of Jerusalem seems to be the event intended, which was, in fact, the beginning of retribution for Israel, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... unsteady gait, all seem to me to indicate a weak and sluggish disposition. He does not appear as though he could be energetic enough ever to be stubborn; he never frowns, sets his teeth, or clenches his fists. There is some- thing enigmatical about him; however, I shall study him closely, and do what I can to understand the man who, as commander of a vessel, should be to those around him ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... extended. With all their vividness of imagery, however, Caucasian sayings are sometimes as mysterious and unintelligible as the darkest utterances of the Delphian Oracle. Take, by way of illustration, the enigmatical proverb, "He lets his hasty-pudding stand over night, hoping that it will learn to talk." Only the rarest penetration would discover in this seemingly absurd statement a satire upon the man who has a disagreeable confession to make or an unpleasant message to deliver, and who puts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... the rules to smoke?" Without a word the Texan complied, and as he held a match to the cigarette he stared straight into the man's eyes: "You've started out good," he remarked gravely. "I'm just wonderin' if you can play your string out." With which enigmatical remark he turned to the cowboys: "The drinks are on me, boys. Jerk off that rope, an' go back to town! An' remember, this lynchin' come off as ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... meaning of these enigmatical lines, the knight at once explained them, by relating his own story, and added, that in eight days time the ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... unhappy,—in a mood that savoured of misanthropy; my fate was growing cross-grained, enigmatical. Mr. Hamilton's frown had struck cold to my heart; I was beginning to lose patience (to lose hope was impossible),—to ask myself why he ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... finest moral instincts spontaneously using the forces of a quick, powerful, and well-balanced intellect as their organ of expression. She perceives at once how subtile and acute of apprehension he is; so, lest her speech should have too much edge, she veils the matter in figures of a somewhat enigmatical cast, because she knows that he will instantly take the sense. Her instinctive knowledge of the human heart guides her directly to his secret springs of action. With a tact that seems like inspiration, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... to assign to the eastern chain of Bolivia and Central Chile, a later origin than the western chain (the nearest the Pacific), but that the circumstance of the rivers of a lower mountain chain having forced their way through a higher chain seems, without this supposition, to be enigmatical. Mr. Darwin is of opinion that the phenomenon is assignable to a periodical and gradual elevation of the second mountain line (the Andes); for a chain of islets would at first appear, and as these were lifted up, the tides would be always ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... girl knew nothing of Colonel Henry; she understood very little about the Dreyfus case; and all she had to go upon was the enigmatical telegram and M. Zola's talk during the evening, when he was expressing his thoughts aloud. But at that moment he had foreseen no death, murder, or suicide, and if the possibility of any arrest had occurred to him it was that of M. du Paty ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... pause, in which every one stood silent as if thunderstruck, there arose from all the nobles, young and old, the terrible war-cry—"Jodute! Jodute! [Footnote: The learned have puzzled their heads a great deal over the etymology of this enigmatical word, which is identical in meaning with the terrible "Zettergeschrei" of the Reformation era. It is found in the Swedish, Gothic, and Low German dialects, and in the Italian Goduta. One of the best essays on the subject—which, however, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... leading us back by the persons and traditions mentioned in them to the later years of the Roman occupation. The second class, of greater antiquity than the first, at least on the ground of subject, is also distinguished by a much more mythological character, a bolder use of the miraculous, an enigmatical form, a style full of alliteration and plays upon words. Of this number are the tales of Pwyll, of Bramwen, of Manawyddan, of Math the son of Mathonwy, the Dream of the Emperor Maximus, the story of Llud and Llewelys, and the legend of Taliessin. To the Arthurian cycle belong the ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... favorite phrase with Tourgueneff when speaking of his country, and he used it as the title of his last novel. It seemed to him to explain everything in Russian conditions that to the rest of the world appeared enigmatical. The whole of Dr. Brandes's book is interpenetrated with this consciousness of the vast possibilities hidden in the virgin bosom of the new earth, even though they may be too deeply hidden to sprout up into the daylight for centuries ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... exhibited, to drive home the charge which Trumbull had made earlier in the campaign. Prompted by Trumbull, probably, Lincoln reviewed the shadowy history of the Toombs bill and Douglas's still more enigmatical connection with it. The substance of the indictment was, that Douglas had suppressed that part of the original bill which provided for a popular vote on the constitution to be drafted by the Kansas convention. In replying to Trumbull, ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... listened to the course of this conversation, which had sufficiently explained to her whatever was enigmatical in the first appearance of the bailiffs. The painful and incredible reality that was thus presented effectually dissipated the illusions of frenzy to which she had just been a prey. "My dear Madam," said she to Mrs. Hammond, "do not ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... means required. The possibility of such an infinite derivation, without any initial member from which all the others result, is certainly quite incomprehensible. But, if you are rash enough to deny the enigmatical secrets of nature for this reason, you will find yourselves obliged to deny also the existence of many fundamental properties of natural objects (such as fundamental forces), which you can just as little comprehend; ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... to leave your store, whether you want to or not," retorted Foster, and with this enigmatical remark, the very suggestiveness of which caused an expression of fear to settle on the face of the grocer, the reporter turned on his heel and left ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... nothing new appeared in the other planets, yet he soon communicated to the world another discovery of no slight interest. The enigmatical letters in which it was ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... long silence he spoke again to ask his wife to get him a book from his bedroom, which he had been reading that morning, to find in it many sweet comforting things. She had been seated at some distance from him, apparently paying no attention to his enigmatical words, but now quickly put down her work and got the book for ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... homewards, upon nautical principles, by fixing my eye on the pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and such sphynx's riddles of streets without thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters and confound the intellects of hackney-coachmen. I could almost have believed at times ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... was still in Limerick, Strongbow died in Dublin. As it was of the highest political importance that his death should be concealed until some one was present to hold the reigns of government, his sister, Basilia, sent an enigmatical letter[301] to her husband, which certainly does no small credit to her diplomatic skill. The messengers were not acquainted with the Earl's death; and such of the Anglo-Normans in Dublin as were aware of it, had too much prudence to betray the secret. Raymond at once set out on his journey. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... few men whose keen natural perception of genius enabled them to discern it in spite of the eccentricity and inequality of his work; but to the general public, on whose recognition depends the reputation of the artist, his verses as well as his drawings were a sealed, or at least an enigmatical, book. His verses have no literary atmosphere about them: they smell neither of the midnight oil nor of that smoke of fame the fumes of which Byron tells us "are frankincense to human thought." They seem to have been written as spontaneously as a bird might warble on a bough, and no bird ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... sir, is enigmatical: But, for my will, my will is your good will May stand with ours, this day to be conjoin'd In the state of honourable marriage: In which, good friar, ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Fitu-Ivan widow had driven him into the ranks of the backsliders. It was not a case of apostasy. The effect of Darwin had been one of intellectual fatigue. What was the use of trying to understand this vastly complicated and enigmatical world, especially when one was married to a nagging woman? As Ieremia slackened in his labours, the mission board threatened louder and louder to send him back to the atolls, while his wife's tongue grew correspondingly sharper. Tui Tulifau was a sympathetic monarch, whose queen, ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... first collection of 'Men and Women' was the poem called 'Two in the Campagna'. It is a vivid, yet enigmatical little study of a restless spirit tantalized by glimpses of repose in love, saddened and perplexed by the manner in which this eludes it. Nothing that should impress one as more purely dramatic ever fell from Mr. Browning's pen. We are told, nevertheless, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... remark of Mrs Clinton's. He did not read the paper in the evening as he had been used to do, but would go upstairs to the top of the house, and stand by an open window looking at the stars. He had an enigmatical way of smiling which Mrs Clinton could not understand. Then he had lost his old punctuality—he would come home at all sorts of hours, and, when his wife questioned him, would merely shrug his shoulders and smile strangely. ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... have done? What could he have done? What would his single arm or declamation have availed? No man more than Goethe longed for the rehabilitation of Germany. In his own way he wrought for that end; he could work effectually in no other. That enigmatical composition,—the "Maerchen,"—according to the latest interpretation, indicates how, in Goethe's view, that end was to be accomplished. To one who considers the relation of ideas to events, it will not seem ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... will be," was Bridge's enigmatical reply, and then, with a sudden exclamation of surprise he pointed over Rozales' shoulder. "What's that?" he cried in ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... for all time, passing from one into another, and that each would possess its own charm, its own secrets to be solved, its own life to be learned. To him they were largely inscrutable; they were cryptic, as enigmatical as life itself, hiding their treasures as they droned through the centuries, giving birth to multitudes of the living, demanding in return other multitudes of the dead. As he looked off through the sunlit space he wondered what the ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... himself to his feet and extended a hand to Malcolm Sage. Then turning to Sir Jasper, who had also risen, he added, "You leave it to Mr. Sage, Sir Jasper. Before long you won't see him for dust. He's about the livest wire this side of the St. Lawrence," and with this enigmatical assurance, he walked to the door, whilst Malcolm Sage shook hands ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... up many gaps in my own limited experiences of that enigmatical being who was half divine (though, I think, rather wicked or at any rate unmoral in her way) and yet all woman. It is true that it showed her in lights very different from and higher than those in which she had presented ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... going to lower the glass when from behind the massive angle of the stockade there stepped out into the brilliant immobility of the landscape a man in a long white gown and with an enormous black turban surmounting a dark face. Slow and grave he paced the beach ominously in the sunshine, an enigmatical figure in an Oriental tale with something weird and menacing in its sudden emergence ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... were to be enacted, and he was reported skilful in the arrangement of these saturnalia of civilised society, or, as he himself expressed it, he was "up to all the dodges connected with the minor domestic enigmatical melodrama". By Harry's recommendation I despatched a letter to Mr. Frampton, claiming his promise of visiting me at Heathfield Cottage, urging as a reason for his doing so immediately, that he would meet four of his old Helmstone acquaintance, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... hope of salvation; the mysterious epistle, signed with the enigmatical scarlet device; the clear, peremptory directions; the parting from the Comte de Tournay, which had torn the poor wife's heart in two; the hope of reunion; the flight with her two children; the covered cart; ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... without. Having entered his own share of the protest, Uncle Mo announced his intention of seeking Mr. Bartlett the builder, to speak to him about them rats. This saying Aunt M'riar did not even condemn as enigmatical, so completely did all that relates to buildings lie ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Corson and I were lunching with him in Warwick Crescent," said Dr. Corson, "he told us a most amusing incident. On that morning Browning was particularly 'an embodied joy.' He told several good stories, one of which showed that the enigmatical character attributed to his poetry by some of his critics was to him a good joke. I have no doubt he must have enjoyed the Douglas Jerrold story, that Jerrold, in endeavoring to read 'Sordello,' thought ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... man, whose position remains to some extent enigmatical, appeared about this time and unquestionably had some intercourse with Jesus. About the year 28 of our era there spread through the whole of Palestine the reputation of a certain John, a young ascetic, full of fervour and passion. The fundamental practice ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... sidereal science besides that of stellar aggregation, Herschel may justly be styled a pioneer. He was the first to bestow serious study on the enigmatical objects known as "nebulae." The history of the acquaintance of our race with them is comparatively short. The only one recognised before the invention of the telescope was that in the girdle of Andromeda, certainly familiar in the middle of the tenth century to the Persian astronomer Abdurrahman ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... you." She thought they meant that she would be delivered in safety as she had been hitherto, her wounds healing, her sacred person preserved from any profane touch. But yet such promises have always something enigmatical in them, and it might be, as proved to be the case, that they meant rather consolation and strength to endure than deliverance. For the first time the Maid was often sad; she feared nothing, but the shadow was heavy on her heart. Orleans and Rheims had been clear as daylight, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... of my own race there would be no question of it," he said coldly. "You would be for the eyes of no other man than me. But since you are not——" He broke off with an enigmatical jerk of ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... ranges of spears, parallel to themselves, a bright forest hedge of pines, awaiting their orders for war or warlike pomp. I have frequently passed this forest range of lances, and looked up fearfully to the dark enigmatical figures or shapes of human beings, reclining in the most profound death-like silence, not exchanging a word with one another. A most trivial call of attention, a rustling or breath of an accident of novelty, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... religious sentiments which we have been considering! One can never fathom an emotion or divine its dictates by standing outside of it. In the glowing hour of excitement, however, all incomprehensibilities are solved, and what was so enigmatical from without becomes transparently obvious. Each emotion obeys a logic of its own, and makes deductions which no other logic can draw. Piety and charity live in a different universe from worldly lusts and fears, and form another centre of energy altogether. ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... (Vol. vii., pp. 235. 342.).—In one of Dr. Byrom's Common-place Books now in the possession of his respected descendant, Miss Atherton, of Kersal Cell, is the following arrangement and translation of this enigmatical inscription, probably made by ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... Luh Tan Fah Pao Tan King (Roku-so-ho-bo-dan-kyo), a collection of his sermons. It is full of bold statements of Zen in its purest form, and is entirely free from ambiguous and enigmatical words that encumber later Zen books. In consequence it is widely read by non-Buddhist scholars in China and Japan. Both Hwui Chung (E-chu), a famous disciple of the Sixth Patriarch, and Do-gen, ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... assigned for it, were intended to be a Sterne-like jest, apitiful one. Why Goedeke should suggest "Meine Randglossen" is quite inexplicable, since Gchhausen himself in the very first chapter indicates the real title. Beneath the enigmatical title stands an alleged quotation from Shandy: "Ein Autor borgt, bettelt und stiehlt so stark von dem andern, dass bey meiner Seele! die Originalitt fast so rar geworden ist als die Ehrlichkeit."[65] The book itself, like Sterne's Journey, is divided into brief chapters unnumbered but ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... of it? It has less the appearance of notes or fragments prepared by Rabelais than of a first attempt at revision. It is not an author's rough draft; still less is it his manuscript. If I had not printed this enigmatical text with scrupulous and painful fidelity, I would do it now. It was necessary to do it so as to clear the way. But as the thing is done, and accessible to those who may be interested, and who wish to critically examine it, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... xxxvii. Fifty-five[DT] Enigmatical Characters, all very exactly drawn to the Life, from several Persons, Humours, Dispositions. Pleasant and full of Delight. By R. F. Esq.; London: Printed for William Crook, at the sign of the Three Bibles on ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... these bas-reliefs represents two soldiers of the Swiss guard, the next a Turk and a Slav tilting at each other, and then comes a scroll entwined round a thistle, and inscribed with this enigmatical motto: "Giane le sur ou rien." In the third bas-relief a couple of passionate Italians are winding up a gambling dispute with a hand-to-hand combat, in the course of which table, cards, and dice have got cantered ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... affixed so infernal a frontispiece to the sacred poem chanted by the rest of the edifice. Archdeacon Claude had the credit also of having fathomed the mystery of the colossus of Saint Christopher, and of that lofty, enigmatical statue which then stood at the entrance of the vestibule, and which the people, in derision, called "Monsieur Legris." But, what every one might have noticed was the interminable hours which he often employed, seated upon the parapet of the area in front of the church, in contemplating ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Goldsmith, 1765, pp. 234-6, where it forms Essay xxvii. In the second edition of 1766 it occupies pp. 246-8 and forms Essay xix. The text here followed is that of the second edition, which varies slightly from the first. In both cases the poem is followed by the enigmatical initials '*J. B.,' which, however, as suggested by Gibbs, may simply stand for 'Jack Bookworm' of 'The Double Transformation'. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... earthquake which invisible powers heave up out of the knotty entanglement of our dark enigmatical being! which in boisterous senseless noises announces that within, in the unseen world, the soul neither recks of nor knows truth or falsehood, and has just been murdering the innocent herald who was bringing these phantasms before it! These rude unmeaning ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... liberal sentiment in politics. One, the stately Artemis Prologuizes, is the sole remaining fragment of a classical drama, "Hippolytus and Aricia," composed in 1840, "much against my endeavour," wrote the poet,—a somewhat enigmatical phrase—"while in bed with a fever." A considerable number of the poems may be grouped together as expressions or demonstrations of various passions, central among which is the passion of love. A few, and these conspicuous for their masterly handling of novel themes, treat of art, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... be made of two Arabian stories overlooked by Bolte and Polivka, in one of which a woman sends supper to a stranger, and along with the food an enigmatical message describing what she has sent. The Negress porter eats a part of the food, but delivers the message. The stranger shrewdly guesses its meaning, and sends back a reply that convicts the Negress of theft of a part of the gift. The other story opens ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... whatever as to the ownership of the money in his pocket, when one fine morning he walked into his own door, as dictatorial, as set in his own opinion as ever; the only change to be detected in his manners and conversation thereafter was the enigmatical assertion at times that he was a "ransomed saint," followed by a low chuckle of enjoyment. Those who heard this often made bold to say to one another that he "didn't act like it," and this opinion was shared by the sheriff who futilely sought some information from him touching ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... cautious, even in his cups, in his choice of an audience, and was a little enigmatical in his revelations. For he was afraid of Sir Bale, though he hated him for employing a lawyer who lived seven miles away, and was a rival. So people were not quite sure whether Mr. Twyne was telling lies or truth, and the principal fact that corroborated his story was Sir Bale's manifest hatred of ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... carefully undressed him, laid him in the bed, enveloped him in the coverings, and sat up the rest of the night watching over his foster-brother, in vain seeking in his head the explanation of the, to him, enigmatical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... afterwards), somebody indicated by seven asterisks and possessing an income of L1200 a-year, was "totally transformed into baseness." There is certainly not much light here, any more than in the equally enigmatical description of the third sorrow as being "in some sort included in the second," so that "what the former was to friendship the latter was to a still more inward bond." The truth is, that all Coleridge's references to himself ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... more and more enigmatical," said Mrs. Orville, smiling; "my daughter has lost neither her health nor fair fame, as you express it. I received a letter from her last week. She was well, and purposes to return ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... without being observed, I did not know, but at least we did find that the basement and dark storeroom were deserted, as we cautiously made our way again it to the corner where Craig had made his enigmatical discoveries of ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... being invited to stay to tea at one of those visits, he stayed the whole evening. Kenelm was more and more fascinated in proportion as he saw more and more of a creature so exquisitely strange to his experience. She was to him not only a poem, but a poem in the Sibylline Books; enigmatical, perplexing conjecture, and somehow or other mysteriously blending its interest with visions ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... recess of the window, resting her cheek upon her tremulous hand as she watched the gentlemen proceed on their way to the castle. Her mind was overflowing with thoughts and fancies, new, enigmatical, yet delightful. Her nervous manner did not escape the loving eye of her aunt; but she spoke not—she was silent under the burden of a secret joy that found not vent ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... street, in sixes and sevens, like so many reliefs on army duty. A gang would enter the sitting room occupying the chairs and sofa, look on with open mouths for ten or fifteen minutes and listen to what must have been enigmatical to them; then looking one at the other, the entire party would rise together, stalk back to the store, where they would relate their experience to others, who in turn would brace up and make a descent on the lion ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... like a tonic, and her face was full of gratitude as she bade him goodnight, and turned to confer with Frank. Carroll stood by the reporters' tables, irresolutely, until presently Silvia beckoned her. The two women exchanged looks which were enigmatical to Frank, but evidently perfectly intelligible to them, for Carroll turned away with a sound like a strangled sob, and the pall of weariness and depression which had lifted for a moment again settled over Silvia, now that there were no longer any prying or unfriendly ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... as to the result. He was determined to secure Antwerp, but he yet thought it possible to secure it by negotiation. The enigmatical policy maintained by France perplexed him; for it did not seem possible that so much apparent solemnity and earnestness were destined to lead to an impotent and infamous conclusion. He was left, too, for a long time in ignorance of his own master's secret schemes, he was at liberty to guess, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with the same double reference which prevails throughout, when he once more declares the annihilation of the monarchy, which, rather than a particular person, is meant by 'the king.' 'In the morning' is enigmatical. It may mean 'prematurely,' or 'suddenly,' or 'in a time of apparent prosperity,' or, more probably, the Prophet stands in vision in that future day of the Lord, and points to 'the king' as the first victim. The force of the prophecy does not depend on the meaning of this ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... at the country store opposite and poured across the street, in sixes and sevens, like so many reliefs on army duty. A gang would enter the sitting room occupying the chairs and sofa, look on with open mouths for ten or fifteen minutes and listen to what must have been enigmatical to them; then looking one at the other, the entire party would rise together, stalk back to the store, where they would relate their experience to others, who in turn would brace up and make a descent on the lion of the hour. They did not rap for admittance, did not remove their hats on ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... at Ocean View, days in which there was no worriment about the packet of diamonds. Allen was allowed to keep the mysterious box and the original of the cipher, but he was never able to discover the meaning of it, nor who the enigmatical "B. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... shapely hand had a seductive frankness, a sort of exquisite virility. I do not know why she should have felt so friendly to me. It may be that she thought I understood her much better than I was able to do. The most precise of her sayings seemed always to me to have enigmatical prolongations vanishing somewhere beyond my reach. I am reduced to suppose that she appreciated my attention and my silence. The attention she could see was quite sincere, so that the silence could not be suspected of coldness. It seemed to satisfy ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... for example about a certain impresario, Maxfield Ware, who created a sensation among the company and staff by turning up ostentatiously unaccounted for from New York and looking intensely enigmatical whenever any one asked him any questions. He was a sufficiently well-known figure in that world for surmises to spring up like round-eyed ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... extensive conclusions, then she ceased altogether to recall it; now she thought again of it, forgetting her painted chrysanthemums, which, on the blue satin, seemed to gaze at her, having as subtle and enigmatical a look as ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... against the Protestants of Saintes, was: "Agimus a gagne Pere Eternel!" As Agimus was the first word of the customary grace said at meals by devout Roman Catholics—"Agimus tibi gratias, omnipotens Deus," etc.—this apparently enigmatical expression was only a profane formula to celebrate the triumph of the Roman over the reformed church. See Bulletin, xii. ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... was not at all gracefully acknowledged. The unfortunate brickfields were pelted again; it was enigmatical; that Mr. Rhodes should be reckoned "a brick," by Boers, was improbable; rumour had it that his blood was hungered for. Some shells were hurled also at the grand stand of the race-course. Finally, the enemy appeared to suspect that the cattle might have had ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... collection of 'Men and Women' was the poem called 'Two in the Campagna'. It is a vivid, yet enigmatical little study of a restless spirit tantalized by glimpses of repose in love, saddened and perplexed by the manner in which this eludes it. Nothing that should impress one as more purely dramatic ever ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Pohlenz, instead of having to conduct a vocal quartette, a cantata, or an Italian aria, took his place at the desk to undertake this highly complicated instrumental work, with its particularly enigmatical and incoherent opening, one of the most difficult tasks that could possibly be found for a musical conductor. I shall never forget the impression produced upon me at the first rehearsal by the anxiously and ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... know how they bored these long barrels, which seemed perfectly true and are said to shoot admirably; and, on asking the Gusti, received the enigmatical answer: "We use a basket full of stones." Being utterly unable to imagine what he could mean, I asked if I could see how they did it, and one of the dozen little boys around us was sent to fetch the basket. He soon returned with this most extraordinary ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... glanced towards Avery, but she did not raise her eyes. She worked on, still with that faint, enigmatical smile ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... was in a state of great depression; "What is the matter?" I asked. "er in or ist aus!" I questioned her more closely, so as to get at the meaning of this enigmatical remark: "What 'in ear'?" (or being meant for Ohr ear). She replied: "eid zu sagen" ( oath to tell—or to say) adding "ich auch aus" ... ( I also done for). She looked absolutely miserable, and dropped ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... sordid tragedy came out in broken snatches, to the last particle. For once in her life Evelyn Desmond spoke the unvarnished truth, adorning nothing, extenuating nothing; and Honour listened in an enigmatical silence—a silence which held even after the last word had been spoken. Evelyn looked up at ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... turned to him with puzzled questioning look and enigmatical reply. "Thinking?" asked her eyes. "I wasn't thinking," ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... so—ha—my dear, we can't blame the porridge," said Mr. Somers with slight jocularity which pleased at least himself. "But Pattaquasset is about as near the impossible state as most places, that I know. What have you heard of, Mrs. Somers? You deal in rather—a—enigmatical construction, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... problems which the Tuebingen school set itself. An attempt to write the biography of Paul reminds us sharply of our limitations. We know almost nothing of Paul prior to his conversion, or subsequent to the enigmatical breaking off of the account of the beginnings of his work at Rome. Harnack's Mission und Ausbreitung des Christenthums, 1902 (translated, Moffatt, 1908), takes up the work of Paul's successors in that cardinal activity. It ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... A stray volume of Darwin, a nagging wife, and a pretty Fitu-Ivan widow had driven him into the ranks of the backsliders. It was not a case of apostasy. The effect of Darwin had been one of intellectual fatigue. What was the use of trying to understand this vastly complicated and enigmatical world, especially when one was married to a nagging woman? As Ieremia slackened in his labours, the mission board threatened louder and louder to send him back to the atolls, while his wife's tongue grew correspondingly ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... evidently determined to remain enigmatical; but Valerie Upton quietly drew aside her reserves. "That is the trouble, you think; ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814. He was one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished man of the world. People said that he resembled Byron—at least that his head was Byronic; but he was a bearded, tranquil Byron, who might live on a thousand years ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... an odd and enigmatical condition, entirely remote from the subject at issue? Yet from the moment of the first impassioned pleadings of the stricken George, De Jussac had insisted upon it as one from which there should be ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... words of doom. How am I to interpret your enigmatical conduct? But now I thought you a friend, come to give me timely warning to guard against threatened danger, when, all at once, you declare my situation a hopeless one! If you are my friend, why not warn ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... era of Pericles demanded the tragedy, and such a tragedy as only Aeschylus and Sophocles could originate; while the foibles of an earlier era made the comedy imperative. On like principles, the writings of Lucretius are not enigmatical, but easy ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... met before, to be sure, nevertheless they were enemies. Was it because of the discharge of the workmen? Then Martinez' mind flashed back to the scene in Vorse's saloon when Gordon had showed such sudden emotion at the engineer's name and his enigmatical reference to some event in the past. That was it! Something which had occurred thirty years ago, probably something crooked. Men committed deeds in those early days that they would now like to forget. He, Martinez, would ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... pp. 235. 342.).—In one of Dr. Byrom's Common-place Books now in the possession of his respected descendant, Miss Atherton, of Kersal Cell, is the following arrangement and translation of this enigmatical inscription, probably made by the ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... This enigmatical utterance produced a startling effect. Mr. Perkins turned a pale green and hastily excused himself, his breakfast wholly untouched. Mrs. Holmes dropped her fork and recovered it in evident confusion. Mrs. Dodd's face was a bright scarlet and appeared about ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... contrary, my sweet friend: only the poet is talking in riddles after the fashion of his tribe. For all poetry has by nature an enigmatical character, and it is by no means everybody who can interpret it. And if, moreover, the spirit of poetry happen to seize on a man who is of a begrudging temper and does not care to manifest his wisdom but keeps ...
— Alcibiades II • An Imitator of Plato
... the missive finally reached its destination. This visitor had hardly departed when another was announced in the person of a Dr. Scholtz, whom, with his wife, I had met at Groot Schuurr as Mr. Rhodes's friends. This gentleman, who is since dead, had always seemed to me somewhat of an enigmatical personage. German by origin, he combined strong sympathies with the Boers and fervent Imperialism, and I was therefore always a little doubtful as to his real sentiments. He came very kindly on this occasion to pay a friendly call, but also to inform me that he was playing a prominent part in ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... youth whom in her innocence she called her lover was almost enigmatical to Pierrette, she believed in it with all her virgin faith. Her heart was filled with that sensation which travellers in the desert feel when they see from afar the palm-trees round a well. In a few days her misery would end—Jacques said so. ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... was first issued in 1885, by Messrs. Sampson Low, in two slim volumes, with the longer, and to most persons, enigmatical title of The Purple Land That England Lost. A purple land may be found in almost any region of the globe, and 'tis of our gains, not our losses, we keep count. A few notices of the book appeared in ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... which did not occur till seven years afterwards), somebody indicated by seven asterisks and possessing an income of L1200 a-year, was "totally transformed into baseness." There is certainly not much light here, any more than in the equally enigmatical description of the third sorrow as being "in some sort included in the second," so that "what the former was to friendship the latter was to a still more inward bond." The truth is, that all Coleridge's references to himself in his later years are shrouded ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... it hard reading the character of John Charles Fremont, calling it enigmatical and baffling. Not so with those who knew him best. "His unwritten history," writes one of these, "gives the clew ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... sure that I gave you my name, Miss Killigrew." He was secretly confused over this enigmatical reception. ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... message, not reassuring and quite enigmatical. I took my Mauser and also hid in the cuff of my coat my cyanide of potassium. The Baron was quartered in the yurta of the military doctor. When I entered the court, Captain Veseloffsky came up to me. He had a Cossack sword and a revolver without its holster beneath his girdle. ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... nautical principles, by fixing my eye on the pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and such sphynx's riddles of streets without thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters and confound the intellects of hackney-coachmen. I could almost have believed at times that I must be the first discoverer of some of these terrae incognitae, and doubted ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... next forty-eight hours Walker hung about the hotel like a culprit. He would have sacrificed even a glimpse of Edith to feel free to go away. He couldn't go away while the other man's plans remained enigmatical; but he wished he hadn't come. He felt his position undignified, grotesque, like that of a boy detected in some bit of ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... who stand here to witness," said the messenger, "that I showed him my blazon, and explained my character. He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar,"and he slid his enigmatical ring from one end of the baton to the other, being the appropriate symbol of his having been forcibly interrupted in ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... him what he meant, for, with all his honesty, Phil could be enigmatical when he chose. Moreover, it really didn't much matter, for, as she tacitly admitted to herself, fond as she was of him, he no longer occupied the place of honour in her thoughts, and she was not vitally interested in him now that the ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... crowd of people struggling toward the hostess across Mrs. Denton Frostwinch's handsome drawing-room. Mrs. Frostwinch belonged, beyond the possibility of any cavilling doubt, to the most exclusive circle of fashionable Boston society. Boston society is a complex and enigmatical thing, full of anomalies, bounded by wavering and uncertain lines, governed by no fixed standards, whether of wealth, birth, or culture, but at times apparently leaning a little toward each of these three great factors of American ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... the money in his pocket, when one fine morning he walked into his own door, as dictatorial, as set in his own opinion as ever; the only change to be detected in his manners and conversation thereafter was the enigmatical assertion at times that he was a "ransomed saint," followed by a low chuckle of enjoyment. Those who heard this often made bold to say to one another that he "didn't act like it," and this opinion was shared by the sheriff ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... goin' to be with us long, I'm afeerd:" and, without looking up, June knew the wireless significance of the speech was going around from eye to eye, but calmly she pulled her thread through a green pod and said calmly, with a little enigmatical shake of her head: ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... the asa-faith. The two Eddas constitute, as it were, the Odinic Bible. The Elder Edda is the Old Testament, the Younger Edda the New. Like the Old Testament, the Elder Edda is in poetry. It is prophetic and enigmatical. Like the New Testament, the Younger Edda is in prose; it is lucid, and gives a clue to the obscure passages in the Elder Edda. Nay, in many respects do the two Eddas correspond with the two ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... an enigmatical answer, but the only true one I can give," said Lafayette, turning to his companion and putting both hands upon his shoulders. "The face is still the face of the boy I knew, and of whom I have thought often; there is exactly that courage ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... given to the enigmatical words by Daniel put an end to the merry-making of the feasters. They scattered in dread and fear, leaving none behind except the king and his attendants. In the same night the king was murdered ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... "Your question is as enigmatical as an ancient oracle. I must have a little more light. Do these differences of feeling or opinion touch action? - either ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... said Lesley's father, with a slight enigmatical smile. "Especially with the Earl of Courtleroy. Hallo! there's the dinner bell. We have wasted all our time talking up here: you'll stay ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... his mysterious charge out of the boat, a gentle pressure from the warm soft hand which for a moment rested upon his, quickened every pulse in his frame; and long after the enigmatical being had disappeared behind the angle of a palace, he stood gazing, like one entranced, at the spot where he had last seen her imposing and graceful figure. The approach of Jacopo, still crossing himself, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... and under the steadiness of her silent gaze, his momentary reassurance wilted. He had foreseen the possibility of encountering a woman turned Valkyrie, but was unaccoutred to face this enigmatical calm. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... scholars, philosophers, and statesmen. They will then remember, with strange tenderness, many objects once familiar to them, the avenue and the terrace, the busts and the paintings, the carving, the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical mottoes. With peculiar fondness they will recall that venerable chamber, in which all the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly blended with all that female grace and wit could devise to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to spoil her child. She may say, with a loving and enigmatical smile, that she prefers to "spoil" it; but that is only her way of saying that she knows better than some stern and misguided people what is best for its tender wants. If she thought for a moment she was really spoiling the child's character, she would ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... resignation some old people display towards the fugue of youth. Older by a quarter of a century than General D'Hubert, he looked upon him in the secret of his heart as a rather troublesome youngster in love. He had heard his enigmatical words very well, but attached no undue importance to what a mere man of forty so hard hit was likely to do or say. The turn of mind of the generation of Frenchmen grown up during the years of his exile was almost unintelligible ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... ears and dulcet tones, facts, and rumours of facts, which none the less often determined events by stirring the strong feelings of your ancestors, whose conduct, unless explained by this light, must remain enigmatical. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... in politics. One, the stately Artemis Prologuizes, is the sole remaining fragment of a classical drama, "Hippolytus and Aricia," composed in 1840, "much against my endeavour," wrote the poet,—a somewhat enigmatical phrase—"while in bed with a fever." A considerable number of the poems may be grouped together as expressions or demonstrations of various passions, central among which is the passion of love. A few, and these conspicuous for their masterly handling of novel themes, treat of art, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... equally ready in all forms of writing that his neighbours followed he, of course, wrote Characters. They were "Fifty-five Enigmatical Characters, all very exactly drawn to the Life, from several Persons, Humours, Dispositions. Pleasant and full of Delight. By R. F., Esq." The Duke of Newcastle admired, and wrote, in lines ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... may have gone far towards shaping itself, but just as in that sort of lantern show that used to be known in the village as the "Dissolving Views," the scene that is going remains upon the mind, traceable and evident, and the newer picture is yet enigmatical long after the lines that are to replace those former ones have grown bright and strong, so that the new England of our children's children is still a riddle to me. The ideas of democracy, of equality, and above all of promiscuous fraternity ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... sudden flights of thought so common in dreams I heard the hoarse falsetto of the bric-a-brac dealer, repeating like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with so enigmatical an intonation: ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... so enigmatical, that I am forced to conclude you resort to this method of defence. The exigencies of professional duty compel me to assume toward you an attitude, as painfully embarrassing to me as it is threatening to you. Because the stern and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... recruiting man, as they came," she replied. As always the deeps of her eyes were enigmatical; but the surfaces, at least, of her mood ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... understood what she meant, and her father only half heard these mysterious words without pondering over their thoroughly enigmatical meaning. ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... the girl knew nothing of Colonel Henry; she understood very little about the Dreyfus case; and all she had to go upon was the enigmatical telegram and M. Zola's talk during the evening, when he was expressing his thoughts aloud. But at that moment he had foreseen no death, murder, or suicide, and if the possibility of any arrest had occurred to him ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... keep my word!" was the enigmatical remark the smiling Quimby made as he entered. Then, catching sight of the festive board, he stopped short and stared, with an utterly confounded face, at that, at the embarrassed Nattie, at Cyn, behind the door, and at the saucepan cover, which, embellished ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... seen the yachtsman. He came up the street and hung about a little, pretending to look at the shops, then walked away briskly, which showed Charlotte that the plot was thickening, and greatly excited her. Beth smiled and nodded as though well satisfied when she heard the news, but preserved an enigmatical silence. ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... delusion of being independent of every power except himself, freely and arbitrarily controlling his own destiny, owing no gratitude except to his own might, and being compelled to yield to nothing save the enigmatical, pitiless power of eternal laws or their co-operation, so incomprehensible to the human intellect, called "chance," which took no heed of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the least idea what you mean, my dear sir," he stammered. "All that you say is entirely enigmatical to me. What have I to do with this ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... perils, travels, scenes, joys, and sorrows; loves and hates; friendships and indifferences. My mind followed the various and rapid transition of my life's passages; it drew the lengthy, erratic, sinuous lines of travel my footsteps had passed over. If I had drawn them on the sandy floor, what enigmatical problems they had been to those around me, and what plain, readable, intelligent histories they had been ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... something enigmatical to me, between Frank and the money account. I could not conceive how he should want the means immediately to furnish such a sum as would have been sufficient for the poor fugitive. And this again reminded me how assiduously Frank had ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... folds produced by lateral pressure— faults of various width— intrusive dikes of trap— organic bodies of diversified shapes, and other causes of unevenness in the planes of deposition, both on the small and on the large scale, will interfere with parallelism. If complex and enigmatical appearances did not present themselves, it would be a serious objection to the metamorphic theory. Mr. Sorby has shown that the peculiar structure belonging to ripple-marked sands, or that which is generated when ripples are formed during the deposition of the materials, is ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... walls, inner and outer, in disrepair. An inscription on a tablet testified that this was the temple of Spiritual Perception. On the sides of the door was also a pair of old and dilapidated scrolls with the following enigmatical verses. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... know anything;" and then, with an enigmatical smile, promptly admitted: "However, I'm afraid ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... the worship of the gods of Greece. At the appointed season of festival to each several deity, his praises were sung, his traditionary achievements were recited. One of the divinities last introduced into Greece—the mystic and enigmatical Dionysos, or Bacchus, received the popular and enthusiastic adoration naturally due to the God of the Vineyard, and the "Unbinder of galling cares." His festival, celebrated at the most joyous of agricultural seasons [7], was ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was the consciousness that he was using rather grandiloquent language in the wording of this enigmatical little speech, that caused the good professor to look so red and embarrassed. Abbie drew her hand away, and laid her finger on ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... It was an enigmatical reply, and Dick saw that it was useless to ask them questions. Robertson mounted, and Dick, without another word, sprang up behind him. Two of the privates rode up close, one on either side, and the other kept immediately ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... aspirations, could not compass his desires, in short, could not fully assert himself. Here, indeed, we have lit upon the tragic motive of Chopin's life-drama, and the key to much that otherwise would be enigmatical, certainly not explicable by delicacy and disease alone. His salon acquaintances, who saw only the polished outside of the man, knew nothing of this disparity and discrepancy; and even the select few of his most intimate friends, from whom he was not ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... an advocate worth having, Miss Leyburn,' he said at last, an enigmatical smile he could not restrain playing about his mouth. 'I could not argue with you; I had ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... children, we were blind to the enigmatical hatred which has to an appalling extent developed all around us. This hate which has been nourished systematically and with satanic cleverness probably originated in a slight feeling of jealousy, and the tendency ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... doubt that is what I must have meant," said Holmes, with his enigmatical smile. Lestrade had learned by more experiences than he would care to acknowledge that that brain could cut through that which was impenetrable to him. I saw him ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... again, come back twa!" was the enigmatical sentence with which the landlady made her adieu, and a faint colour flickered in Margot's cheek as ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... entered the Mosque, and presently returned with the Fakir's answer, in these enigmatical words:—"He who would see the sun rise must watch ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... the girl was enigmatical both to Horace and to Ann. Weary hours, crowding one upon another, offered her no relief. The thought of Lon's letter shattered hope and made her desolate. She did not stop to reason that her relations with Horace demanded ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... "Perhaps," was her enigmatical reply. "Who knows? It is, however, evident that Il Passero is seriously concerned at the tragic affair at the ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... of those highly condensed and somewhat enigmatical expressions of which Sun Tzu is so fond. This is how it is explained by Ts'ao Kung: "Make it appear that you are a long way off, then cover the distance rapidly and arrive on the scene before your opponent." Tu Mu says: "Hoodwink ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... and erratic confessions of Solness, to his doubts, his craven timidities, his selfish secrets, and his terror at the uniformity of his "luck." It is less easy to see exactly what Ibsen believed himself to be presenting to us in the enigmatical figure of Hilda, so attractive and genial, so exquisitely refreshing, and yet radically so cruel and superficial. She is perhaps conceived as a symbol of Youth, arriving too late within the circle which Age has trodden for its steps to walk in, and luring it too rashly, by the ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... ministry of Christ in the early conflict against human slavery in this country would be enigmatical in the extreme, utterly beyond apprehension, if it were not matter of history that the representatives of the Christian Church, in conflicts with every giant wrong, have always been the strongest supporters, the most obsequious ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Injin Charley, silent and enigmatical as ever, had constructed a log shack near a little creek over in the hardwood. There he attended diligently to the business of trapping. Thorpe had brought him a deer knife from Detroit; a beautiful instrument made of the best tool steel, in one long piece extending through the buck-horn handle. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... caressing cadences in the voice of Lance Lorrigan, any provocative tilt to his eyebrows, any tenderness in his smile, anything enigmatical in his personality, none of these things were apparent when he set the first bucket of water on the stove to heat. He had added to his charms a broad streak of soot across his forehead and a scratch on his neck, acquired while putting up the stovepipe. He ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... now; but I shan't be long," answered the young hostess, with a confident wink in Alfaretta's direction. To which that matter-of-fact maid replied by a contemptuous toss of her head and the enigmatical words: ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... stand to each other? That question cannot at the present time be fully answered. Even should it be proved, as it appears likely to be, that Egyptian civilisation was derived originally from Mesopotamia, much will still be dark and enigmatical. The foremost scholars in Egyptology confess that no history of Egyptian religion can as yet be written. Those who have tried to sketch it differ from each other as widely as possible, some alleging monotheism as its starting-point, and some the worship of animals. The religion also comes into ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... many crimes pass unsuspected it is none the less obvious that they have been committed; now while some of them are due to ordinary criminals, others are the work of enigmatical beings who are difficult to trace and too clever or intelligent to let themselves be caught. History is full of stories of such mysterious characters, the Iron Mask, for instance, and Cagliostro. In every age there have been bands ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... Gardens. The moment I entered her drawing-room, I became aware of an occult presence that seemed to be hovering around her. Wherever she moved, it moved with her, and I FELT that its strange, fathomless, enigmatical eyes were fixed on her, noting and guiding her innermost thoughts and her every action ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... shall, perhaps, best grasp the whole depth of that meaning according to the Messianic reference which we give to the text, if we consider the sad and solemn conception of man's life that underlies it; the enigmatical and obstinate hope which it holds out in the teeth of all experience—'A man shall be a refuge'; and the solution of the riddle ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... puerile abbreviation as well as the reasons assigned for it, were intended to be a Sterne-like jest, apitiful one. Why Goedeke should suggest "Meine Randglossen" is quite inexplicable, since Gchhausen himself in the very first chapter indicates the real title. Beneath the enigmatical title stands an alleged quotation from Shandy: "Ein Autor borgt, bettelt und stiehlt so stark von dem andern, dass bey meiner Seele! die Originalitt fast so rar geworden ist als die Ehrlichkeit."[65] The book itself, like Sterne's Journey, is divided into brief chapters ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... passage is enigmatical, as the original type seems to be involved in dense obscurity. Buffon considered the shepherd dog to be the least modified by domestication—very erroneously, according to Dr Prichard; it is still a vexata questio, whether the original progenitor of the dog be a wolf, a jackal, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... most elegantly dressed of those whom the enigmatical masquerade attracted, was a young man, of whom it would have bee difficult to say to what race he belonged. His face was covered by a closely-fitting silken mask, in which every hue of the rainbow was blended, but which, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... moment. It was shared—at least it was pleasant to think so—by my old Annamite friend of the Penguin experience, who stood by his flag nodding his head at me. He said, "Beaucoup bon," showing his polished black teeth in an approving grin. I forgot for the moment that "beaucoup bon" was his enigmatical comment upon all occasions, and that he would have grinned just as broadly had he been dragging me out from a mass ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... in Cambridge, I may say, and subsequently brought out a respectable edition of Polyaenus—contained among other things the notes which the old Vicar had made upon the occasion of Sir Matthew Fell's death. And for the first time Sir Richard was confronted with the enigmatical Sortes Biblicae which you have heard. They amused ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... cross-grain was in the men, not in the timber." The king, on historical evidence, and by what he said in his own works, claims the honour of discovering the gunpowder plot, by the sagacity and reflection with which he solved the enigmatical and ungrammatical letter sent on that occasion. The train of his thoughts has even been preserved to us; and, although a loose passage, in a private letter of the Earl of Salisbury, contradicted by another passage in the same letter, would indicate that the earl was the man; yet even Mrs. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... she was very curious. The steam from the cauldron of Mystery seldom arose in the little "dwelling in amity" save about Christmas time or just previous to Nan's birthday. But Papa Sherwood certainly was enigmatical and Momsey was mysteriously happy, as Dr. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... forehead, were of a deep, blue black, and the warm, dark coloring of the skin betokened rather a son of the south than of German parentage. Neither did the eyes, which flashed in the youthful countenance, belong to the cool, earnest north; they were enigmatical eyes, dark as the night, and full of hot, passionate fire. Beautiful as they were, however, there was something uncanny hidden in their depths, and though the laughter which accompanied Hartmut's words was free and unrestrained, it was not ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... of memory there came to her some half-enigmatical words; they had been quoted by Charles Osmond in his speech, but she did not remember where she had heard them, only they began to ring in ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... fifty times over with those enigmatical proverbs of yours," said the Parson testily, "you would not make it ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... was the enigmatical answer, given with a shake of the head, "but I have 'em all right. However, that's another matter. What we have to do now is to get ready to meet any of these sheep men if they come up and try ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
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