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More "Labyrinth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it was necessary to paint the one green and the other red; but in portions of ornamentation where there was nothing which could be definitely construed into either an oak-leaf or a rose, but a mere labyrinth of beautiful lines, becoming here something like a leaf, and there something like a flower, the whole tracery of the sculpture might be left white, and grounded with gold or blue, or treated in any other manner best harmonizing with the colors around ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... property laws against human laws, it was not a socializing force. While the craftsmanship period strengthened personal claims on workmanship and interest in it, mechanical power and division of labor have impersonated industry.[A] In the labyrinth of mechanical processes and economic calculation it is not to-day possible for a worker to think or speak of a product as his. He has no basis for ownership claims in any article; even the price is arranged between buyer and seller and he is not the seller. An article owes its existence ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot
... ground-floor, therefore, is occupied by the royal apartment; around this, and communicating with it by means of numerous entrances, are a number of cells used by the attendants on the queen (s). These little chambers are surrounded by a labyrinth of passages. The central room and its dependencies constitute a solid mass, around which other chambers are grouped. The whole space between it and the general wall is filled by vast storehouses, divided into many very spacious compartments. Within them are piled up the provisions which ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... silence had succeeded the myriad sounds that go up from the noisiest city in the world. Charles of Durazzo, quickly walking away from the square of the Correggi, first casting one last look of vengeance at the Castel Nuovo, plunged into the labyrinth of dark streets that twist and turn, cross and recross one another, in this ancient city, and after a quarter of an hour's walking, that was first slow, then very rapid, arrived at his ducal palace near the church of San Giovanni al Mare. He gave certain instructions in a harsh, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... necessity of finding out new forms of expression, and to the occasional faults to which it led, for a poetical language rich and varied and magnificent beyond all former, and almost all later example. His versification is, at once, the most smooth and the most sounding in the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds, "in many a winding bout of linked sweetness long drawn out"—that would cloy by their very sweetness, but that the ear is constantly relieved and enchanted by their continued variety of modulation— dwelling on the pauses of the action, or flowing on in a fuller tide ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... time the steamship "Hungarian," on which the wretched pair had embarked, was ploughing the waters of Lake St. Louis. After a time they passed through the Beauharnois and Cornwall canals, and entered the labyrinth of beautiful patches known as the "Thousands Islands." As they emerged from this lovely spot the saloon became suddenly filled with smoke, and in a few minutes cries of "Fire! Fire!" were heard on ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... More damp, dark, gloomy dens of stone and iron the imagination can not conceive. Down the dripping and slippery steps she was led, groping her way by the feeble light of a tallow candle, until she approached, through a labyrinth of corridors, an iron door. It grated upon its hinges, and she was thrust in, two soldiers accompanying her, and the door was closed. It was midnight. The lantern gave just light enough to show her the horrors of her cell. The floor was covered ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... humility. I do not profess to under- stand the plan of Chambord, and I may add that I do not even desire to do so; for it is much more entertaining to think of it, as you can so easily, as an irresponsible, insoluble labyrinth. Within, it is a wilderness of empty chambers, a royal and romantic barrack. The exiled prince to whom it gives its title has not the means to keep up four hundred rooms; he contents himself with preserving the huge outside. The repairs of the prodigious roof alone must ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... so closely imitate what they see. Such are the Indians, when observed on the outside surface of their aspect; but when one penetrates into the interior of their dispositions, peculiarities, and customs, they are a labyrinth, in which the most sagacious man loses his way. They appear ingenious and simple in countenance and words, but they are masters eminent in deceit and feigning; under an apparent simplicity they conceal an artful and crafty dissimulation. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... high shot up in ayre; Greece will the olde Ephesian buildings blaze, And Nylus nurslings their Pyramidcs faire; The same yet vaunting Greece will tell the storie Of Ioves great image in Olympus placed; Mausolus worke will be the Carians glorie, And Crete will boast the Labyrinth, now raced; The antique Rhodian will likewise set forth The great Colosse, erect to Memorie; And what els in the world is of like worth, Some greater learned wit will magnifie. But I will sing above all moniments Seven Romane Hils, the ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... To cut one of his drawings was a crucial experiment. His hand was not sure in its touch; he always drew six lines instead of one; and in the portrait of a lady from his pencil, the agonized engraver had to hunt through a Cretan labyrinth of faces before he found the particular countenance which Mr. Doyle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... it is awful! We have been lost a long time—it seems a month, but of course it isn't. We can't find our way out of this wilderness. It is a labyrinth, and we dare not go far from this hut for fear we shall never find it again. It has been terrible. But if you are lost you cannot help us. What shall ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... all the arts architecture is perhaps the most aesthetic, the most mysterious, and the most nourished by ideas. How true this is you feel as you look at the Great Pyramid by night. It seems to breathe out mystery. The immense base recalls to you the labyrinth within; the long descent from the tiny slit that gives you entrance, your uncertain steps in its hot, eternal night, your falls on the ice-like surfaces of its polished blocks of stone, the crushing weight that seemed to lie on your heart as you stole ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... were in the studio or out of it; but it seemed that Ted's powers were either paralysed or diverted into another channel from the moment she came in. The baby was trying to solve a problem which had puzzled wiser heads than his. But he had no clue to the labyrinth of Audrey's soul; he was not even certain whether she was an intelligent being, though to doubt it was blasphemy against ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... used with reference to the labyrinthiform pores; so named after Daedalos, the builder of the labyrinth ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... excellent method of demonstration, marred by a single fault, a habit of relapsing into fits of silence, broken by starts and interjections that went off like bombs. Outside of that he was the best of masters, intelligent, patient and faithful. Paul learned to find his way through the complicated labyrinth of books of account and resigned himself to the necessity of ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... without paying much attention, absorbed in watching the quaint little songster close to me and his curious gestures when emitting his sustained reeling sounds. In the end the persistent distressed calling of the drake lost in a brambly labyrinth got a little on my nerves, and I felt it as a relief when it finally ceased. Then, after a short silence, another sound came from the same spot—a blackbird sound, known to everyone, but curiously interesting when uttered in the way I now ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... Creation, the product of His supreme wisdom and almighty power. The task is one of considerable difficulty,—difficulty arising not so much from the nature of the subject, as from the metaphysical and abstruse manner in which it has been treated. We must follow Spinoza through the labyrinth of his Theological Politics and his Geometrical Ethics; we must follow Schelling and Hegel into the still darker recesses of their Transcendental Philosophy; for a philosophy of one kind can only be met and neutralized by a higher and a better, and the first firm step ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... remains of palaces are the pavilion of Rameses III. at Medinet Abou, and another at Semneh. The Royal Labyrinth has so completely perished that even its site is uncertain. The Egyptians lived so much out of doors that the house was a less important edifice than in colder climates. Egyptian dwellings were probably in most cases built of wood ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... the silent charnel-house of oblivion. We peruse the past, like a map of pleasing or melancholy recollections, and observe lines crossing and re-crossing each other in a thousand directions; some spots are almost blank; others faintly traced; and the rest a confused and perplexed labyrinth. A thousand feelings that, in their day and hour, agitated our bosoms, are now forgotten; a thousand hopes, and joys, and apprehensions, and fears, are vanished without a trace. Schemes, which cost us much care in their formation, and much anxiety ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... horizon, glimmered blue, rose, ochre, and white, like coloured marble or a Moorish mosaic. Again we flashed past a troglodyte village in a hillside; crossed a magnificent bridge, which even Dick approved; wound through a labyrinth of strange streets like the streets in a nightmare, and roads to match; smelt mingled perfumes of incense, burning braziers, cigarettes, and garlic (the true and intimate smell of country Spain); saw Duenas, where fair Isabel la Catolica met Ferdinand in the making of the most romantic of ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... had a more legitimate occupation we know, for it was that flippant man whose outrageous comment on the Home Office Administration is popularly supposed to have sent one Home Secretary to his grave, who traced the Deptford murderers through a labyrinth of perjury and who brought to book Sir Julius Waglite though he had covered his trail of defalcation through the balance sheets ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... swimming-bath, with most admirable baths in three stages, well furnished with all necessary accommodation, and store of myrtle-water. By the river-side was the fair garden of pleasure, and in the midst of that a fair labyrinth. Between the two other towers were the tennis and fives courts. Toward the tower Criere stood the orchard full of all fruit-trees, set and ranged in a quincunx. At the end of that was the great park, abounding with all sort ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... streets are narrow, hot, and dusty; the day, too, advances; but the gardens are yet cool. So we dash at a venture through a labyrinth of byways and crossways till we find ourselves in the wide street that runs immediately along ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... hound and arms to hug like a bear—in converse with the fishmonger, saw the master at first refusing, then gradually giving reluctant assent to some demand. Next Phormio was half leading, half carrying the fugitive aboard the ship, guiding him through a labyrinth of bales, jars, and cordage, and pointing to a hatchway ladder, ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... in its prime when I came thither, yet enough of its ancient power and influence remained to show the comprehensive mind of Pedro Blanco. As I entered the river, and wound along through the labyrinth of islands, I was struck, first of all, with the vigilance that made this Spaniard stud the field with look-out seats, protected from sun and rain, erected some seventy-five or hundred feet above the ground, either on poles or on isolated trees, from which the ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... of the most brilliant green, and they made a pleasing miniature-likeness of broken forest land. When the thistles are full grown, the great beds are impenetrable, except by a few tracts, as intricate as those in a labyrinth. These are only known to the robbers, who at this season inhabit them, and sally forth at night to rob and cut throats with impunity. Upon asking at a house whether robbers were numerous, I was answered, "The thistles ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... more of these there might be, or how much loftier, no one could tell. Nor could the foundations of the castle in the rock on which it was built be determined with the smallest approach to precision. Those of the family who had given themselves to exploring in that direction, found such a labyrinth of vaults and passages, and endless successions of down-going stairs, out of one underground space into a yet lower, that they came to the conclusion that at least the whole mountain was perforated and honeycombed in this fashion. They had a dim ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... the dog came back just then, and stood regarding her with his clear, honest eyes. She strove to evade him, and gleams of angry shame stole across her cheeks as she laid down the watch, and stole, like the thief that she was, through the sash door, along the pretty labyrinth of flowers, and into another door that opened upon one end of ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... beset the Duke of Parma at the commencement of the siege. Sluys was built upon the only piece of solid ground in the district, and it was surrounded by such a labyrinth of canals, ditches, and swamps, that it was said that it was almost as difficult to find Sluys as it was to capture it. Consequently, it was impossible to find ground solid enough for a camp to be pitched upon, and the first labour was the erection of wooden huts for ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty
... herself again in the heart of the forest where she had lost her way in the morning. She was so tired, there was nothing to do but to sit down and rest, but she had not given up. Of course, she would find her way out of this labyrinth of trees somehow. However, just for the time, she ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... ceremonies going on, I was the only stranger amidst an assemblage of the common people and peasantry, who had come to lounge there till the lighting up of the Cross. I walked on and on, hour after hour, lost in amazement, and wondering where and when this glorious labyrinth was to end; successive galleries fitted up with the gay splendour of an Oriental Haram, in which the books and manuscripts are all arranged and numbered in cases; the beautiful perspective of hall beyond hall vanishing away into immeasurable distance; the refulgent light ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... lagoons, across sluggish streams, and into cypress swamps, the lurking-place of reptiles, the dreary haunt of bats and vultures. The road, at best, was an indifferent bridle path, and at worst, a blind labyrinth of seldom trodden ways in the woods. Arlington carried in his saddle-bags a supply of bread and cheese, and he kept ready primed, in holster at his pommel, a ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... main object on that patrol trip of ours was the stopping of rice-running, the preservation of our lake blockade. We had had some firing a few days ago at presumptive stores, also at a dhow and lighter dimly descried (they were in the papyrus-fringed labyrinth of a boat-passage). But of late we had been lying up for the most part off a lonely island. Perhaps they would think we were out of the way, perhaps not. We should see what we should see.' I suppose that the gunnery lieutenant was almost as sanguine of adventure as I ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... long passage. The men of the Post-Office returned to their food and their duties. Those who manage the details of her Majesty's mails cannot afford to waste time when on duty. The policeman, left to himself, lost himself in the labyrinth of the basement. He made his way at last into the warm and agreeable room in which are kept the boilers that drive the engine that works the lifts. He was accosted by a stalwart stoker, whose appearance and air were as genial as the atmosphere of ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... to secular uses. For some time it was used as a stable and storehouse for the Master. Then later it was fitted up with floors and turned into chambers. It was approached by a tortuous passage at the eastern end of the Chapel, and was popularly known as the Labyrinth. When the Infirmary was taken down a very beautiful double piscina was found covered up on the walls; this is preserved ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... some rocks, we made up our minds to hurry on, thinking to come upon a stream; a vain hope!—the rocks soon came to an end, and were succeeded by a perfect labyrinth of trees. If there had only been a little grass, we should have set to work to construct our hut; for the dry heat, blown up by the south ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... walked behind. Every now and then he had attempted a little conversation, but in that he had been immediately pulled up by the conscientious and energetic Mr. Trigger. As for asking for votes, he hardly knew, when he had been carried back into the main street through a labyrinth of alleys at the back of Petticoat Yard, whether he had asked any man for his vote or not. With the booking of the votes he had, of course, nothing to do. There were three men with books;—and three other men to open the doors, show ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... becomes long, and proparoxytones become paroxytones when the ultimate becomes long, while paroxytones with a short penult remain paroxytones. Each of this class of rules, however, having about sixteen exceptions, which hold good except in three or four other exceptional cases under them, the labyrinth becomes delightfully wilder and wilder; and the crowning beauty of the whole is, that, when the bewildered boy has swallowed the whole,—tail, scales, fins, and bones,—he then is allowed to read the classics in peace, without the slightest occasion to refer ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... sinning, from whom a great many people in the nineteenth century have taken their point of departure, departing as far as they chose; but if a straight line of progress could be traced at all through the labyrinth of philosophy, Kant would not lie in that line. His thought is essentially excentric and sophisticated, being largely based on two inherited blunders, which a truly progressive philosophy would have to begin by avoiding, thus leaving Kant on one side, and weathering his philosophy, ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... silver rivers; the meadows enamelled with all sorts of flowers; the fields garnished with roses, which made the earth blush as bashful at its own beauty—with other imagery which, after the lapse of more than three hundred years, shines out through the tangled labyrinth of the story of The Arcadia, like golden threads, the lustre of which time has no power ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... give the reader too favourable an opinion of the original sentence. In order to make the story at all intelligible, I have had to pick out my facts, from a perfect labyrinth of sentences and parentheses. All I, or any one else can state is, that these seem to be the facts, which seem to have been proved by the witnesses. What the character of the evidence was, or what was the relative credibility of ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... laws, was liable to be rendered fruitless by what was called an accident. One's instinct to retain life, to grasp at happiness, was so strong; and yet, again and again, one was taught that it was all on sufferance, and that one must count on nothing. One was set, it seemed, in a vast labyrinth; one must go forward, whether one would or no, among trackless paths, overhung by innumerable perils. The only thing that seemed sure to Hugh was that the more one allowed the awe, the bewilderment, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... edge of the petticoat, risking to go still further, not only his lips, which he held of little count, but his two ears and something else besides. He followed into the town the lady, who returned by the Rue des Trois-Pucelles, and led the gallant through a labyrinth of little streets, to the square in which is at the present time situated the Hotel de la Crouzille. There she stopped at the door of a splendid mansion, at which the page knocked. A servant opened it, and the lady went in and closed the door, leaving the Sieur de ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... King of Athens at this time, was one of their great heroes. And you must read about his slaying the Minotaur in Crete, and about the beautiful Ariadne who fell in love with him, and gave him the clue to the labyrinth where her father, Minos, kept the monster hid. These things about the classic little island have an especial interest ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 25, April 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of Alsatia, and the citizens on the other, had long been calling on the government and the legislature to put down so monstrous a nuisance. Yet still, bounded on the west by the great school of English jurisprudence, and on the east by the great mart of English trade, stood this labyrinth of squalid, tottering houses, close packed, every one, from cellar to cockloft, with outcasts whose life was one long war with society. The best part of the population consisted of debtors who were in fear of bailiffs. The rest were attorneys struck off ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... clutches of the bear; you leave yourself surrounded by a band of fierce Dacotahs thirsting for your blood; and poor Noggin even in a worse predicament; indeed, I would not wish to be in the skins of either Short or Blount; and now you suddenly stop short, and leave us all lost in a labyrinth of doubt as to how they got ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... break-up of the brief, bright companionship near Nether Stowey. Coleridge went with Wordsworth and his sister to Germany, but soon parted from them and passed on alone to Gottingen, there to study German, and lose himself in the labyrinth of German metaphysics. Wordsworth and Dorothy remained at Goslar, and, making no acquaintances, spent the winter—said to have been the coldest of the century—by the German stoves, Wordsworth writing more lyrical poems in the same vein which had been opened so happily at Alfoxden. There ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... Girondists, detested band! Long with the show of freedom they abused Her ardent sons. Long time the well-turn'd phrase, The high fraught sentence, and the lofty tone Of declamation thunder'd in this hall, Till reason, midst a labyrinth of words, Perplex'd, in silence seem'd to yield assent. I durst oppose. Soul of my honour'd friend, Spirit of Marat, upon thee I call— Thou know'st me faithful, know'st with what warm zeal I urged the cause of justice, stripp'd ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... turning away from the windows, looked further around him. In striking contrast to the undisturbed disorder, so redolent of middle-age alchemy, was the big table that flanked the laboratory through its whole length. It began with a powerful galvanic battery, succeeded by a wiry labyrinth of coils and helices, with little keys in front of them like a telegraph-office retired from business; these gave place to many-necked jars wired together by twos and threes, like oath-bound patriots plotting treason; beyond them stood a great glass globe, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... will never suffer you to become entangled in the labyrinth of my affairs. You don't know what a hopeless wilderness you would enter if you were desperate enough to attempt my rescue. I have been past redemption for the last ten years, ever since I left Oxford. Nothing but ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... another discovered by the naturalist Adolf Schmidl in 1856. Two entrances give access to the grotto, an old one extremely narrow, and a new one, made in 1890, through which the exploration of the cavern can be made in about 8 hours, half the time it took before. The cavern is composed of a labyrinth of passages and large and small halls, and is traversed by a stream. In these caverns there are numerous stalactite structures, which, from their curious and fantastic shapes, have received such names as the Image of the Virgin, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Morton at a desk on the far side of the big, high-ceilinged room and crossed over, weaving his way through a labyrinth of desks, chairs and tables. Morton, who had been glancing over a newspaper, ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... come of doing wrong. I never loved you so much as now. I never saw duty so plainly. Dearest, in one way I suffer for you, but still I was never so happy. I have grasped the end of the clue that will surely lead us safely through the labyrinth, no matter what life brings. You will see, mamma dear, after a while you will see. Don't go back. ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... general occurrence, to which every individual figure is subservient. But this plan cannot be executed with propriety, probability, or success, without a principal personage to attract the attention, unite the incidents, unwind the clue of the labyrinth, and at last close the scene by virtue of his importance."[178] But Smollett presents the "different groups" and "various attitudes" of his "diffused picture" with a luxuriance of imagination, a fidelity to ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... a queer little double-fronted, old-fashioned cottage near Bonfire Corner. This is close up against the dockyard wall, and not far from the Marlborough Gate, you must know, if you be a stranger to the old town of Portsmouth and that labyrinth of narrow streets lying to the north of Hardway and the harbour. Yes, a labyrinth of rectangular rows, arranged in parallel lines and all precisely alike, of twin two-storied, russet-bricked houses of the same size and pattern, all looking as if they had been turned out of a mould, ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... we must not go without our guide, lest we wander in this wilderness, and it prove a labyrinth to us. We must take Christ with us all along; he must teach us to understand his own face, and to read the glorious characters of that excellent glory which is to be seen in his face. He must be our interpreter, and teach us how to read this book, ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... thirty feet high, are all built of small trimmed blocks of granite such as I have already described, without mortar, but neatly fitted together. They are in excellent preservation, and are skilfully constructed in a sort of labyrinth, so as to cover all the places where an enemy might approach. From the openings in the wall, where doors were probably placed, passages are carried inward, very narrow and winding, so that only one person at ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... our way for about a quarter of an hour along the passage, suddenly it took a sharp turn, or else was bisected by another, which we followed, only in course of time to be led into a third. And so it went on for some hours. We seemed to be in a stone labyrinth that led nowhere. What all these passages are, of course I cannot say, but we thought that they must be the ancient workings of a mine, of which the various shafts and adits travelled hither and thither as the ore led them. This is the only way in which we ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... oneness could be felt! It is impossible for us to throw ourselves completely back to the condition of things which the Gospel found. The world then was like some great field of cooled lava on the slopes of a volcano, all broken up by a labyrinth of clefts and cracks, at the bottom of which one can see the flicker of sulphurous flames. Great gulfs of national hatred, of fierce enmities of race, language, and religion; wide separations of social condition, far profounder than anything of the sort which we know, split mankind into fragments. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... however, she moved leisurely down the hill. Her easy gait lasted just so long as she was in the open; the moment she entered the forest her indifference vanished and she raced along in the dark shadow with all the speed she could summon. The silence, the heavy, depressing atmosphere, the labyrinth of trees so dark and confusing; these things were no deterrent to her. Her object was distinct in her mind and she gave heed to nothing else. She ran on over the snow with the silent movements of some ghostly spirit, and with a swiftness which told of the Indian blood in her veins. Her dilating ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... ensemble of a stupendous panorama, a thousand square miles in extent, that lies wholly beneath the eye, as if he stood upon a mountain peak instead of the level brink of a fearful chasm in the plateau whose opposite shore is thirteen miles away. A labyrinth of huge architectural forms, endlessly varied in design, fretted with ornamental devices, festooned with lace-like webs formed of talus from the upper cliffs, and painted with every color known to the palette in pure transparent ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... not only in front and at the sides, but also at our back, by these reefs, which closed in behind us so near together that they seemed to form a single chain of rocks. At the same time the hurricane was so broken by the rocks in our rear that the further we sailed through this ever-changing labyrinth of projecting rocks, the calmer the sea became, until at last the vessel's progress was perfectly smooth and quiet as we entered one of those long sea- roads running through a giant ravine—for such the Norwegian fjords appeared ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... rhapsodists together with their poets and romancers, kings became gods and their adventures of gallantry were transformed into immortal allegories. According to M. Chompre, licentiate in law, the classic author of the Dictionary of Mythology, the labyrinth was 'an enclosure planted with trees and adorned with buildings arranged in such a way that when a young man once entered, he could no more find his way out.' Here and there flowery thickets were presented to his view, but in the midst of a multitude of alleys, which ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... with which he was acquainted, except London, did the buildings completely shut out the woods and fields. Large as Bristol might then appear, it occupied but a very small portion of the area on which it now stands. A few churches of eminent beauty rose out of a labyrinth of narrow lanes built upon vaults of no great solidity. If a coach or a cart entered those alleys, there was danger that it would be wedged between the houses, and danger also that it would break in the cellars. Goods were therefore conveyed about the town almost exclusively in trucks ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at this that my eye traced, a little distance beyond, the form of a ship's spars and rigging. Through the labyrinth of the ice outlines I clearly made out two masts, with two square yards on the foremast, the rigging perfect so far as it went, for the figuration showed no more than half the height of the masts, the lower parts being apparently ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... his account of Powell's second expedition, Dellenbaugh tells of ancient ruins found below Labyrinth Canyon. "Small huts for storage were found there in the cliffs, and on a promontory, about thirty feet above the water, were the ruins of stone buildings, one of which, twelve by twenty feet in dimensions, had walls still standing about six feet high. ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... hornbeam, which rose tall and close on every side. There were thickets of flowery shrubs, a bower, and an arbor, to which access was obtained through a little maze of contorted walks calling itself a labyrinth. In the centre of the bower was a splendid Platanus, or Oriental plane—a huge hill of leaves—one of the noblest specimens of that regularly beautiful tree which I remember to have seen. In different parts of the garden were ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... her park, superintends the planting of trees, and "a labyrinth from which one could not extricate one's self without the thread of Ariadne;" she fills her garden with orange trees and jessamine until the air is so perfumed that she imagines herself in Provence. She sits in the shade and embroiders while her son "reads trifles, comedies which he plays ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... with a ring in his voice as of one who knew—"the labyrinth cannot appal the man who has found a clue to its windings. A mind that has attained to thought lives in itself, and the world becomes its slave. Its formerly distracted powers rally home; it is central, possessing, not possessed. The world no longer frightens, being understood. Its sinister ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... These islands are six in number, all very pleasant, and taken together may extend some thirty leagues. They are situated twenty-five leagues westward of the Pernicious Islands. We named them the Labyrinth, because we could only leave them by a ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... at the head of the Burdekin River, there are unmistakeable signs of an upward effort of the imprisoned waters to free themselves. One main tributary, a creek called Fletcher's Creek, takes its rise in a labyrinth of basaltic rocks, that for years defied the efforts of the whites to penetrate. This stream rising from its cradle in the dead lava, winds in and out of the encompassing stretches of rocks, until ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... more domestic attention. The great gaudy hotel—The Pocahontas, but carried out largely on "Du Barry" lines—made all about him, beside, behind, below, above, in blocks and tiers and superpositions, a sufficient defensive hugeness; so that, between the massive labyrinth and the New York weather, life in a lighthouse during a gale would scarce have kept him more apart. Even when in the course of that worse Thursday it had occurred to him for vague relief that the odious certified facts couldn't be all his misery, ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... Hippias in the toils of the voluntary and involuntary, is obliged to confess that he is wandering about in the same labyrinth; he makes the reflection on himself which others would make upon him (compare Protagoras). He does not wonder that he should be in a difficulty, but he wonders at Hippias, and he becomes sensible of the gravity of the ...
— Lesser Hippias • Plato
... enjoy a peanut hunt, or a spider party where they follow a twine through a labyrinth of loopings and find a small prize at the end, or a book party, where each guest represents the title of some book. Thus Ouida's "Under Two Flags" could be very easily represented. Young folks always enjoy "dressing up," and any hostess ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... involves the fatal labyrinth for Minos; builds an impregnable fortress for the Agrigentines; adorns healing baths among the wild parsley fields of Selinus; buttresses the precipices of Eryx, under the temple of Aphrodite; and for her temple itself—finishes in exquisiteness the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... change of fortunes. He had just stood and gaped and asked questions. After all, what the devil did it matter how she came to be here? He had anticipated a long and tedious search for her through the labyrinth of New York, and here Fate had brought her to his very door, and all he could do was to ask why, instead of being thankful. He perceived that he was not ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... crying, between her groans, for her mother. Del Ivory sat in a little open space, cushioned about with reels of cotton; she had a shallow gash upon her cheek; she was wringing her hands. They were at work from the outside, sawing entrances through the labyrinth of planks. A dead woman lay close by, and Sene saw them draw her out. It was Meg Match. One of the pretty Irish girls was crushed quite out of sight; only one hand was free; she moved it feebly. They could hear her calling for Jimmy Mahoney, ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... regulated fire, all that denotes or beautifies the home life of man, began to draw her as with cords. The pillar of smoke was now risen into some stream of moving air; it began to lean out sideways in a pennon; and thereupon, as though the change had been a summons, Seraphina plunged once more into the labyrinth of the wood. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her naked Charms." [4] To the man who could write thus, and, who, in later pages of his great 'Epic,' could humbly desire of Genius "do thou kindly take me by the Hand, and lead me through all the Mazes, the winding Labyrinth of Nature. Initiate me into all those Mysteries which profane Eyes never beheld,"—to this man the material surroundings of life must have seemed of little greater import than the fittings of that narrow box to the occupation of which he looked forward with so calm ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... vitiated air had slowly mounted to the brain; soon a third of the spectators nodded in their chairs scarcely able to keep awake; others moved restlessly with a dull sense of physical discomfort, while the law, expressing itself in archaic terms, wound its way through a labyrinth of technicalities, and reached out hungrily ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... cut, she assured us; but I think she did so quite as much simply in order to show that she felt at home in Naples, and knew the city thoroughly. Indeed, she needed to know it very thoroughly to venture by night into that labyrinth of subterranean alleys and flights of steps. If ever any many showed absolute docility in allowing himself to be guided, that man was myself. Dante never followed the steps of Beatrice with more confidence than I felt in following those of ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... in existence, and how long they had lain there as sad mementos of the law's delay. Others were fresh and clean, the japanned ink in strong contrast with the glossy parchment,—new cases of litigation, fresh as the hopes of those who had been persuaded by flattering assurances to enter into a labyrinth of vexation, from which, perhaps, not to be extricated until these documents should assume the hue of the others, which silently indicated the blighted hopes of protracted litigation. Two massive iron chests occupied ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... about ten o'clock when the Emperor and Princess Irene appeared on the portico, and, moving toward the northern side, wended slowly through the labyrinth of flowers, palms, and shrubs. The courtiers and dignitaries, upon their approach, received them in respectful silence, standing in groups about ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... river, through the early summer, toward her western lover who was hastening down the self-same primeval highroad to meet her. Oh, he would be very happy with Peggy! Thus imagining himself on through the labyrinth of passionate fancy, he floated down stream, shrouded in the morning mist. He had to go slowly, for he could not see far ahead, and travel by water was still treacherous by reason of belated floes ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Sybarite drew a long, sane breath, laughed wholesomely at himself, and thereafter had eyes only to keep the girl in sight, however far and involved her wanderings through the labyrinth ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... no Northeast Passage existed by way of the Straits of Fuca, Vancouver headed inland, close to the south shore, where craggy heights offered some guidance through the labyrinth of islands and fog. Eight miles inside the straits he anchored for the night. The next morning the sun rose over one of the fairest scenes of the Pacific coast—an arm of the sea placid as a lake, gemmed by countless craggy islands. On the land side were the forested ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... often incomprehensibly to violate it, and like rebellious spirits to do outrage to it, while, in fact, they only made it the more striking, picturesque, and mysterious. But, after all explanations have been made, the conclusion must be that there is no one and only thread to guide us through the labyrinth to the heart of this singular trait, and each of us must follow that which his own nature renders intelligible or congenial for him. To us, who know the awful closing acts of his life-drama, it seems so appropriate that there should be an impressive unity, and so an inevitable ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... Rosamond's corpse was deposited. It was at Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, then a royal palace, that in the twelfth century Henry II. built "Fair Rosamond's Bower" for his charmer, who was the daughter of Lord Clifford. This bower was surrounded by a labyrinth. Queen Eleanor, whom the king had married only from ambitious motives, was much older than he, and he had two sons by Rosamond, whom he is said to have first met at Godstow Nunnery. The bower consisted of arched vaults underground. There are various legends of the discovery ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... first, had hopelessly lost her way in this labyrinth of subterranean scandals, rivalries and jealousies; and finding Lansing's hand within reach she clung to it with pathetic tenacity. But if the young man's value had risen in the eyes of his employers it had deteriorated in his own. He was condemned to ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... however, by his manner towards Middleton, indicated that he was now to take his leave. He did so, after settling the hour at which the excursion of the next day was to take place. This arranged, he departed, with much to think of, and a light glimmering through the confused labyrinth of thoughts which ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... say it would," groaned Larry. "I'm sick of being in a labyrinth. Even the worst can't be much worse than not knowing. You don't know how tough it has been, ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... under logs and fallen trees, sometimes issuing forth and spreading into a broad, clear pool; and on its banks in little nooks cleared away among the trees, miniature log-houses in utter ruin and neglect. A labyrinth of narrow, obstructed paths connected these habitations one with another. Sometimes we met a stray calf, a pig or a pony, belonging to some of the villagers, who usually lay in the sun in front of their dwellings, and looked on us with cold, suspicious eyes as we approached. Farther ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... friend and landlord, Mr. Mesman, was a good specimen of the Macassar-born Dutchman. He was about thirty-five years of age, had a large family, and lived in a spacious house near the town, situated in the midst of a grove of fruit trees, and surrounded by a perfect labyrinth of offices, stables, and native cottages occupied by his numerous servants, slaves, or dependants. He usually rose before the sun, and after a cup of coffee looked after his servants, horses, and dogs, until seven, when a substantial breakfast of rice and meat was ready in a cool ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... For in this labyrinth and whirl of things, in this heat and hurry of observation and imagination, the special intoxication of Balzac consists. Every great artist has his own means of producing this intoxication, and it differs in result ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... Sprot through the labyrinth of his confessions and evasions, as attested by the authentic reports of his private examinations between July 5 and the day of his death. It will be observed that, while insisting on his own guilt, and on that of Logan, he ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... herself again and continued on her errand; crossed Tottenham Court Road, plunged into a labyrinth of blocked alleys, of dark courts, and, suddenly, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... to Illahun and the brick Pyramid of Hawara. There was much laughing and shrieking among the girls of the Set (I don't count Monny, who shrieks for nothing less terrible than the largest spiders) as Arabs pushed our trolley cars along the line; and we were frivolous even on the site of the labyrinth which was, perhaps, copied from ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... surrounded by his drummers, and other distinguished persons, who made room for the travellers as they drew near. But the chief arose as soon as he saw them, and beckoning them to follow him, they were ushered through a labyrinth of low huts, and still lower doors, till at last they entered the innermost apartment of the whole suite, and here they were requested to sit down and drink rum. The doors they had seen were covered with figures of men, which exactly resembled ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... towers, crags and pinnacles. I thought I had found my pipe organ, and began to climb toward a narrow opening in the rim. But I lost it. The extraordinarily cut-up condition of the wall made holding to one direction impossible. Soon I realized I was lost in a labyrinth. I tried to find my way down again, but the best I could do was to reach the verge of a cliff, from which I could see the canyon. Then I knew where I was, yet I did not know, so I plodded wearily back. Many a blind cleft did I ascend ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... was lost he knew! A single glance at his judges made him certain of it, and from this moment his features wore a calm and contemptuous smile, an unchangeable expression of scorn. With an ironic curiosity he followed his judges through the labyrinth of artfully contrived captious questions by which they hoped to entangle him; occasionally he gave himself, as it were for his own amusement, the appearance of voluntarily being caught in their nets, until he finally by a side spring tore their whole web to pieces and laughingly derided his judges ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... at the last price of them. But what signifies the fate of those tickets of despotism? The despotism will find despotic means of supply. They have found the short cut to the productions of nature, while others, in pursuit of them, are obliged to wind through the labyrinth of a very intricate state of society. They seize upon the fruit of the labour; they seize upon the labourer himself. Were France but half of what it is in population, in compactness, in applicability ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... own fashion. Many times since the days of Priestley real researchers after truth have proceeded without compass and uncovered most astonishing and remarkable results. They had the genuine research spirit and were driven forward by it. Priestley knew little of the labyrinth of analysis and cared less; indeed, he possessed little beyond an insatiable desire to ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... smile to guide the young and guileless apprentice to conjugal arts through the labyrinth of her palace. They came to a back-staircase, which led up to the reception rooms. As Madame de Carigliano pressed the secret springlock of the door she stopped, looking at Augustine with an inimitable gleam of shrewdness and grace. ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... Taupo, and the cold of the morning, increased by the altitude, was very keen. Dim outlines of hills and mountains rose behind one another; but Glenarvan only thought how best to get lost among them. Time enough by and by to see about escaping from the labyrinth. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... too good natured and tell my story in that way; besides, it would be a very difficult matter to tell it; and why should an author, merely to oblige people, get himself involved in a labyrinth of difficulties, and rack his unfortunate brain to pick and choose words properly to tell his story, yet at the same time to lead his readers through the mazes of this very ticklish adventure, without a single thorn scratching their delicate feelings, or as much ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... according to the soundest principles, that all those different substances had been concreted in the same manner. Thus, having once departed one step from the path of just investigation, our physical science is necessarily bewildered in the labyrinth of error. Let us then, in re-examining our data, point out where lies that first devious step which had been impregnated with fixed air, or carbonic acid gas, (as it is called), dissolves a certain portion of mild calcareous ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... of pleasantries we took the road, and followed our guide across a great thorough-fare and into Kearney Street. Thence into the labyrinth of Chinatown. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... within the labyrinth Of clouds of purple and pale hyacinth, That are the frontlet of the sister Sky Kissing her brother Ocean; and they lie Bathing in blushes, till the rival queen Night, with her starry tiar, floateth in— A dark and dazzling beauty! that doth ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... theological attainments;)—the indications of a truer individual judgment, (discoverable throughout by one who knows the author's private worth, and is himself happily in possession of the clue by which to escape from this tangled labyrinth:)—these escape the common reader. To ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... understand? It was all a sham then, you say? No, it was all real as far as it went. You are young—you haven't learned, as you will later, the thousand imperceptible signs by which one gropes one's way through the labyrinth of human nature; but didn't it strike you, sometimes, that I never told you any foolish little anecdotes about him? His trick, for instance, of twirling a paper-knife round and round between his thumb and forefinger while he talked; his mania for saving the backs of notes; ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... sinuosities between processes projecting from the inner wall of each chamber "seem to be the first rudiments of those which, in the higher classes (i.e. in animals with a spinal column), are extended in the form of canals and spiral chambers, within the substance of the dense nidus of the labyrinth."[59] ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... foreigners spoke of the principal residence of our sovereigns, and often said that it was a pity that the great fire had not spared the old portico of St. Paul's and the stately arcades of Gresham's Bourse, and taken in exchange that ugly old labyrinth of dingy brick and plastered timber. It might now be hoped that we should have a Louvre. Before the ashes of the old palace were cold, plans for a new palace were circulated and discussed. But William, who could not draw his breath in the air of Westminster, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is the old hill-and-dale labyrinth of an Upper-Elbe Country; only too well known to his Majesty and us, for almost forty years past: here again are the Austrians waiting the King; watching diligently this new Invasion of his out of Glatz and the East! In ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and, with a last hysterical laugh, we followed him into the earth, through long, narrow, humid passage-ways, the temperature not unpleasant, other passage-ways branching off and suggesting the labyrinth which we knew extended for a great distance in every direction. We finally came to a lighted chamber, the entrance to the shaft. The flickering lights showed us the end of a great, smooth, wooden beam, which, at an angle of forty-five degrees, seemed to be going ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... stage, through a labyrinth of scenery and corridors, the pair climbed several flights of stairs and reached a little room on a third floor, Nathan ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... who leads the soul from the depths of life to its sunary heights. Mozart transposed life into music, Wagner and his pupils transposed problems of life. Wagner questions and receives no answer. Mozart affirms life. His "Don Juan" liberates, "Tannhaeuser" leads into the labyrinth of bothersome renunciation. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... could reach us. My young guide had made us take this route as a short cut, she assured us; but I think she did so quite as much simply in order to show that she felt at home in Naples, and knew the city thoroughly. Indeed, she needed to know it very thoroughly to venture by night into that labyrinth of subterranean alleys and flights of steps. If ever any many showed absolute docility in allowing himself to be guided, that man was myself. Dante never followed the steps of Beatrice with more confidence than I felt in following those of ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... everyone with the least aptitude for drawing started a sketchbook. Like most ancient buildings, the old hall, while preserving its principal rooms in good repair, was growing shaky in the upper stories. The labyrinth of attics that lay under the roof had been neglected till the latticed windows were almost off their hinges, and the plaster had fallen in great patches from the ceilings. Fearing lest the worm-eaten floors were really unsafe, Miss Beasley ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... succeeded by his brother, the King of Poland, under the title of Henry III. The persecutions of the Huguenots were renewed, and the old scenes of treachery, assassination, and war were acted over again. The cause of religion was lost sight of in the labyrinth of contentions, jealousies, and plots. Intrigues and factions were endless. Nearly all the leaders, on both sides, perished by the sword or the dagger. The Prince of Conde, the Duke of Guise, and his brother, the Cardinal ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the Pyrenees stretched across Wellington's path, a tangle of mountains sixty miles in length; a wild table-land rough with crags, fierce with mountain torrents, shaggy with forests, a labyrinth of savage and snow-clad hills. On either flank a great fortress—San Sebastian and Pampeluna—was held by the French, and Wellington was besieging both at once, and besieging them without battering trains. The echoes of Vittoria had aroused Napoleon, then fighting desperately on the Elbe, ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... gentler expression which some prefer, lendingat interest. The theologians always have opposed usury; but, since they have admitted always the legitimacy of rent, and since rent is evidently identical with interest, they have lost themselves in a labyrinth of subtle distinctions, and have finally reached a pass where they do not know what to think of usury. The Church—the teacher of morality, so jealous and so proud of the purity of her doctrine—has always ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... cried, 'You shall not go, my son, the light of my old age, to whom alone I look to rule this people after I am dead and gone. You shall not go, to die horribly, as those youths and maidens die; for Minos thrusts them into a labyrinth, which Daidalos made for him among the rocks,—Daidalos the renegade, the accursed, the pest of this his native land. From that labyrinth no one can escape, entangled in its winding ways, before they meet the Minotaur, the monster who feeds upon the flesh ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... a life as his had grown, he cared little; his chief misery was, that those Officers who had known of the thing should come to misfortune by his means. If the King would pardon these poor gentlemen, he would tell him everything. For the rest, begged Seckendorf to help him in this labyrinth;—nothing could ever so oblige him as help now;" and more of the like sort. These things he said, at Bonn, to Seckendorf, the fountain of all his woes. [Ibid.] What Seckendorf's reflections on this his sad handiwork now were, we do not know. Probably he ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... Religion, as in this magnificent world, treasures and harvests which might be called forth in incalculable abundance; but had decreed that through our exertions only should they be called forth a palace more gorgeous than the palaces of enchantment was before us, but its chambers were a labyrinth which required a clew." ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The labyrinth and abyss of infinity is also a new course Sir Isaac Newton has gone through, and we are obliged to him for the clue, by whose assistance we are enabled to trace its ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... negotiations with his Majesty, it was attempted to separate his cause from that of France. What a mass of intrigues! Let one bless with a thankful heart his mediocrity when he compares himself with men condemned to live amid this labyrinth of high impostures and honorable hypocrisies! A sad certainty was obtained that the foreigners wished a war of extermination, and renewed consternation ensued where hope had begun to reign; but the genius of his Majesty had not yet deserted him, and from this time all his efforts were ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... with his army to repulse them and carry war into their countries? Dost Thou suppose that Egypt will not find armed men and treasures for the war? We will go, all of us, for each man can gain something, and in some way make his life independent. Treasures are lying in the temples but the labyrinth." ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... origin of his endeavours, and the aim of his ambition. M. de Bassompierre had found himself forced, in a manner, to descry the direction and catch the character of his homage. Slow in remarking, he was logical in reasoning: having once seized the thread, it had guided him through a long labyrinth. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... Eusebius set Anacletus before him; Epiphanius and Optatus, both Anacletus and Cletus; Augustinus and Damasus, with others, make Anacletus, Cletus, and Linus all to precede him. What way shall we find to extricate ourselves out of this labyrinth?" [65:1] The different lists preserved attest that there was no such continuous and homogeneous line of bishops as the doctrine of the apostolical succession implies. When Irenaeus speaks of Polycarp as ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... at the north end, there are patches of sand, which are covered only at high water, and which are to be discerned at some distance. Being now convinced that there was no passage to sea but through the labyrinth formed by these shoals, I was altogether at a loss which way to steer, when the weather should permit us to get under sail. It was the master's opinion that we should beat back the way we came, but this would have been an endless labour, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... hot haste—literal hot haste—the time of the singing of birds had come. It was early in the season when the Macleods returned to their summer home, but "lily-footed spring" was there before them. Earth, air, and sky were bathed in a glory of sunlight, which strove to penetrate the dark labyrinth of the pines through which the wind sang. The bay was embowered in gleaming foliage. In its clear waters the Indians plunged or paddled, or lay in attitudes picturesquely inert upon its shores. Above it in graceful curves the ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... some difficulty, notwithstanding the minuteness of the directions supplied by Ailie, to pilot himself in safety through the dark labyrinth of passages that led from the back-door to the little kitchen; but Henry was too well acquainted with the navigation of these straits to experience danger, either from the Scylla which lurked on one side in shape of a bucking tub, or ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the earthquake had done away forever with the underground labyrinth of the Chinese quarter—those thousands of pens inhabited by creatures that shunned the light of day, those mole-holes which served as headquarters for a subterranean agitation, the mysterious methods of which ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... across her appointed boundaries, into the land of perplexity and shadow. From the truths of astronomy he wandered into astrological fallacy; from the secrets of chemistry he passed into the spectral labyrinth of magic; and he who could be sceptical as to the power of the gods, was credulously superstitious as to the power ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... Batten and Sir J. Minnes, and having done our work with him walked to Westminster Hall, and after walking there and talking of business met Mr. Rawlinson and by coach to the 'Change, where I did some business, and home to dinner, and presently by coach to the King's Play-house to see "The Labyrinth," but, coming too soon, walked to my Lord's to hear how my Lady do, who is pretty well; at least past all fear. There by Captain Ferrers meeting with an opportunity of my Lord's coach, to carry us to the Parke anon, we directed it to come to the play-house door; and so we walked, my wife ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... woman's voice in the old orthodox hymns, and laid hold unknowingly, by means of it, of the love and force which are at the roots of things for the strengthening of the world. With weak and false starts and tardy retrogrades he had woven around his feet a labyrinth of crossing paths of life, but now, of a sudden, he saw clearly his way out. He trampled down the scruples which hampered and blinded him like thorns and had their roots in a false pride of honor, and recognized that divine call of love to worship ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... system—what is this word? Is it permitted me to play thus with men, to regard them as numbers for working out a thought, which perhaps is false? I overturn the framework of the throne. What if, without knowing it, I sap its foundations and hasten its fall! Yes, my borrowed power has seduced me. O labyrinth! O weakness of human thought! Simple faith, why did I quit thy path? Why am I not a simple priest? If I dared to break with man and give myself to God, the ladder of Jacob would again descend ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... But I have the magic talisman, the 'open sesame.' I am safe enough even if I am mistaken. Though my fires are burning low, it will take more than your Grey Room to extinguish them. I hold the clue of the labyrinth, and shall pass safely in and out again. To-morrow I can tell you ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... persons more formed to whet each other's faculties by discussion, as on few points of common interest between them did their opinions agree: and that this difference had its root deep in the conformation of their respective minds, needs but a glance through the rich, glittering labyrinth of Shelley's pages ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... interest. We notice in all his works a careful study to meet the emergency then pressing upon society. We will not say that Herder wrote every work just as it should have been, and that he was evangelical throughout. This he was not, but he was greatly in advance of his predecessors. Amid the labyrinth of philosophical speculations it is interesting and refreshing to meet with an author who, though endowed with the mind of a philosopher, was content to pass for a poet, or even for an essayist. His was ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Gnostics, but rather by the aid of simple and essentially Biblical ideas. Moreover, a few decades later, he and Melito, an author unfortunately so little known to us, were already credited with this merit. For the author of the so-called "Little Labyrinth" (Euseb., H. E. V. 28. 5) can indeed boast with regard to the works of Justin, Miltiades, Tatian, Clement, etc., that they declared Christ to be God, but then continues: [Greek: Ta Eirenaiou te kai Melitonos kai ton loipon tis agnoei biblia, theon kai anthropon katangellonta ton Christon] ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... that Hugh was really sleeping, stole softly to his bedside and bent down to look at him, starting quickly at the strong resemblance to somebody seen before. Who was it? Where was it? she asked herself, her brain a labyrinth of bewilderment as she tried in vain to recall the time or place where a face like this reposing upon the pillow before her had met her view. Suddenly she remembered Irving Stanley, and that between him and Hugh there was a relationship, and then she ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... has gone on so fast that the place seems a million years old, and from its style of dress, a visitor might think he was put back almost to the days of Columbus." There have been changes since that time, but the old charm is still there, the narrow and crooked streets, forming almost a labyrinth, the old buildings, and much else that I earnestly hope may never be changed. There is now an up-to-date hotel, connected with the railway company, but if I were to go there again and the old hotel was habitable, I know I should go where ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... even in secret, felt a disrespect for a priest. To the poor multitude the earth was a kind of enchanted forest, full of demons ready to devour, and theological serpents lurking, with infinite power, to fascinate and torture the unhappy and impotent soul. Life to them was a dim and mysterious labyrinth, in which they wandered weary, and lost, guided by priests as bewildered as themselves, without knowing that at every step the Ariadne of reason offered ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... arsenal quarter, but in vain. Nobody seems to have thought it worth while preserving what would surely be a notable economic document for future generations. Out of sheer curiosity I also tried to procure a plan of the old quarter, that labyrinth of thick-clustering humanity, where the Streets are often so narrow that two persons can barely squeeze past each other. I was informed that no such plan had ever been drawn up; it was agreed that a map of this kind might be ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... ships anchored near los Gallos in the Gulf of Paria. Twenty miles of sea were crossed 'in a great billow' to Guanipa Bay, where dwelt savages who shot poisoned arrows. Then the expedition was entangled in a labyrinth of rivers. These were the eight branches of the Orinoko. 'All the earth,' wrote Ralegh, 'doth not yield the like confluence of streams.' That is hardly an exaggerated statement about the Orinoko, which is fed by more than 436 rivers, and a couple of thousand ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... arrived. M. de Tregars guided Maxence through the labyrinth of corridors of the building, until he came to a long gallery, at the entrance of which an usher ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... the house from cellar to garret, but there was no trace of him. It is, as I have said, a labyrinth of an old house, especially the original wing, which is now practically uninhabited; but we ransacked every room and cellar without discovering the least sign of the missing man. It was incredible to me that he could have ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... thy work, imperious Child, Thine's this labyrinth of love, That thus hast our desires beguiled, Nor seest how thine arrows rove. Then, prithee, to compose this stir, Make her love ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... you allow me to repeat a question which you inserted in Vol. v., p. 346., as to a list of these officers, and any account of their origin and history? Surely some of your correspondents, devoted to legal antiquities, can give note a clue to the labyrinth which Madox has not ventured to enter. The office still exists—with peculiar duties which are still performed—and we know that it is an ancient one; all sufficient grounds for inquiry, which I trust will ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... with that labyrinth of sombre streets and alleys. Selecting a devious course, stooping low beneath the black shadows of walls and fences, he yet set so swift a gait with his confounded long legs it kept me puffing to follow. But we found clear passage, seeing no one close ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... a small vault full of very well carved enrichments. Above, you can see the bell tower, very delicately pierced. There is also a pleasant garden, which consists of a pond, an aviary, an echo, a mall, a labyrinth, a house for wild beasts, and a quantity of leafy alleys very agreeable to Venus. There is also a rascal of a tree which is called 'the lewd,' because it favored the pleasures of a famous princess and a constable of France, who was a gallant and a wit.—Alas! we poor philosophers ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... of me. At first, I built no castles in the air; I had got quite sick of doing that aloud with my late school-fellows, and passing them all off as facts. Still, it must be confessed that my feelings were altogether pleasurable. It was a soul-cheering relief to have escaped from out of that vast labyrinth of lies that I had planted around me, and no longer to dread the rod-bearing Root; even novelty, under whatever form it may present itself, is ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... men: each has the privilege of inventing, and the far wider privilege of borrowing and new modelling from all that preceded him. Thus, though tradition may have but one root, it grows, like a banian, into a whole overarching labyrinth of trees." ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... a trace that might lead him on the right track; nowhere a clew that might conduct him through this labyrinth of horrors. ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... become so luminous to him as it had to the minister. A darkness, which the obscurity of the night faintly typified, closed round him, pierced by one ray only, and from this he tried to turn his face. It was the gleam that lights up every labyrinth where our feet wander and stumble, but it is not always easy to know it from those false lights of feeble-hearted pity, of mock-sacrifice, of sick conscience, which dance before us to betray to worse ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... with a letter at the "General's" office and asked to see him. He had, he insisted, orders to deliver the letter into nobody's hands but those of the "General" himself, and on this pretext in due course found himself, after being led through a labyrinth of passages and stairs, in ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... asking Raoul to deaden the sound of his footsteps, led him down passages which Raoul had never seen before, even at the time when Christine used to take him for walks through that labyrinth. ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... and beautiful in the sunlight. Theology became visibly a shrivelled thing. Men grew to be conscious of the vastness of the universe. At the same time and by the same process the Encyclopaedia gave them a key to the plan, a guiding thread in the immense labyrinth. The genealogical tree, or classification of arts and sciences, which with a few modifications was borrowed from Bacon and appeared at the end of the Prospectus, is seen to be faulty and inadequate. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... completely shut out the woods and fields. Large as Bristol might then appear, it occupied but a very small portion of the area on which it now stands. A few churches of eminent beauty rose out of a labyrinth of narrow lanes built upon vaults of no great solidity. If a coach or a cart entered those alleys, there was danger that it would be wedged between the houses, and danger also that it would break in the cellars. Goods were ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... my hours of silence, which became less and less broken by the talkative vein. His forefinger rubbed away defects in the aspect of faces or animals with a lion-like suppleness of sweep that seemed to me to wipe out the world. We also had a delicious game of a labyrinth of lines, which it was necessary to traverse with the pencil without touching the hedges, as I called the winding marks. We wandered in and around without a murmur, and I reveled in ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... voice that was unnaturally hoarse, possibly from the dampness of the underground labyrinth to which the man's business often ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... his way in the labyrinth of streets round the Place des Victoires, but eventually found the shop he was looking for in the Rue de la Banque. As he entered he thought he saw Diener at the back of the long, dark shop, arranging packages of goods, together with some of ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... his work, and was forever looking for something better to come, even when it was too late. His manuscripts were often disordered, and at the last moment, after he began to read, appeared to take the form in his mind of a forgotten labyrinth through which he must wait to find his way in some more ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... episode that something beyond her knowledge had taken place in the house. The things beyond her knowledge—numerous enough in truth—had not hitherto, she believed, been the things that had been nearest to her: she had even had in the past a small smug conviction that in the domestic labyrinth she always kept the clue. This time too, however, she at last found out—with the discreet aid, it had to be confessed, of Mrs. Wix. Sir Claude's own assistance was abruptly taken from her, for his comment on her ladyship's game was to start on the spot, quite alone, for Paris, evidently because ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... Chevreuse in 1657, she linked probably with her own destiny by one of those "marriages of conscience"[4] then somewhat fashionable. It was not our purpose to follow her step by step through the last civil war, and so plunge the reader into the labyrinth of the Fronde intrigues. Suffice it to say, therefore, that she played therein one of the most prominent parts. Attached, heart and soul, to that faction and its essential interests, she steered it through all the shoals and quicksands which ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... half an hour, was compelled to break off the dance and throw himself, totally exhausted, on a couch, exclaiming he had been dancing not with a woman, but with an ignis fatuus. Other whispers averred, that while she played with her young companions in the labyrinth and mazes of the castle gardens at hide-and-seek, or similar games of activity, she became animated with the same supernatural alertness which was supposed to inspire her in the dance. She appeared amongst her companions, and vanished from them with a degree of rapidity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... Mittie, who had been watching her father's varying countenance, and felt somewhat awed by the deep solemnity and sadness that settled upon it. Her manner, if not affectionate was respectful, and he dismissed her with a gleaming hope that the clue to her heart's labyrinth—that labyrinth which seemed now closed with an immovable rock, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... cautiously and anxiously as though they had been soldiers expecting an ambuscade; the graceful forms of the women bowing and bending over their horses' manes, and often leaving fragments of their mantillas and rebozas on the branches and thorns of the labyrinth through which we were struggling. But it was no time to indulge in contemplation of the picturesque, and of this we were constantly made aware by the anxious vociferations of the Mexicans. "Vamos! Por Dios, vamos!" cried they, if the slightest symptom of flagging became visible in the movements ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... steed by the bridle, Don Rafael advanced as rapidly as was possible through the labyrinth of bushes and climbing plants that thickly covered the ground. The sun occasionally coming in view, enabled him to guide his course towards the south—the direction which Zapote ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... Minos a labyrinth, a wonderful structure, that covered many acres of ground. The passages in this edifice met and crossed each other with such intricacy, that a stranger who had once entered the building, would have been starved to death before he could find his way out. In this labyrinth Minos shut up the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... by the strangely carved horsemen, and having consented to the woman's request, allowed her to fasten our sashes securely over our eyes; then, led by her, we slowly advanced through what appeared to be a labyrinth of ways until we were stopped by someone who spoke to the woman in a calm, grave tone. There was a whispered conversation between the two, directly following which our eyes were uncovered, and we found ourselves facing a strangely-robed hermit. His long ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... daughter of Walter, Lord Clifford. The lady was loved, not wisely, but too well, by Henry II., who kept her for concealment in a labyrinth at Woodstock. Queen Eleanor compelled the frail fair one ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of cast iron, spiral, broad and easy. Below there burned a lamp, and farther down, another. They stood in a labyrinth of endless halls and arched passages, all communicating with each other. All the streets and lanes of Paris were to be seen here again, as in a dim reflection. The names were painted up; and every house above had its ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... eagle's flight, the serpentine mountain chains, southwards from the great purple dome of Taconic—the St. Peter's of these hills—northwards to the twin summits of Saddleback, which is the two-steepled natural cathedral of Berkshire; while low down to the west the Housatonie winds on in her watery labyrinth, through charming meadows basking in the reflected rays from the hill-sides. At this season the beauty of every thing around you populates the loneliness of your way. You would not have the country more settled if you could. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... themselves. In conformity with this character, the line claimed by the United States for the most part presents, when seen at a distance, the appearance of lofty and deeply serrated ridges, while to one who traverses it it is a labyrinth of lakes, morasses, and short but steep elevations which hide its peaks from ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... us at once that we are in a street, one of the principal ones, that, in fact, they are all like this, and no wheeled vehicle can pass in any part of Jerusalem! This is so bewildering that we feel as if we were in a labyrinth, and huddle close up to the guide anxious not to lose sight of ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... and economical relations of slavery, it may be expected that we shall say something of its moral relations. In attempting this, we choose not to traverse that interminable labyrinth, without a thread, which includes the moral character of the system, as it respects the relation between the master and the slave. The only aspect in which we care to consider it, is in the moral relations which the consumers of slave labor products ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... worth mentioning. These islands are six in number, all very pleasant, and taken together may extend some thirty leagues. They are situated twenty-five leagues westward of the Pernicious Islands. We named them the Labyrinth, because we could only leave ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... picturesque appearance. Lofty mountains clothed to their very peaks with dense and gloomy forests form the background of the picture. At the entrance of the bay rises Mount Edgecumbe, an extinct volcano 2800 feet above the sea-level. On entering the bay the visitor finds himself in a labyrinth of islands, behind which rise the fortress, towers, and church of New Archangel, which consists of but one row of houses with gardens, a hospital, a timber-yard, and outside the palisades a large village of Kaloche Indians. At this time the population consisted of a mixture of Russians, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... well worth inspection. The most remarkable thing in the neighbourhood of Maastricht is the Montagne de St Pierre, which from having been much excavated for the purpose of procuring stone, forms a labyrinth of a most intricate nature. I advise every traveller to visit it, and if he has a classical imagination he may fancy himself ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... Hudson, to the neighbourhood of Crown Point, where the French had a strong place in the woods, upon Lake Champlain. But to have done this directly were too perilous; and it was accordingly gone upon by such a labyrinth of rivers, lakes, and portages as makes my head giddy to remember. These paths were in ordinary times entirely desert; but the country was now up, the tribes on the war-path, the woods full of Indian scouts. Again and again we came upon these parties when ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... preserved by Roman historians,—grudging the glory of rivals so long and masters so often, though finally subjects of the irresistible force of crescent empire,—and from the gold-work known after so many centuries of sepulture. We know that Porsenna built himself a tomb in the solid rock,—a labyrinth whose secret no searchers of modern times have yet found, though they have burrowed around Clusium like marmots; and that over this he raised himself a monument,—five towers of stone, on the top of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... no word during the journey, nor was Beale inclined for conversation. At Baker Street Station they stopped and the cab was dismissed. Together they walked in silence, turning from the main road, passing the Central Station and plunging into a labyrinth of streets which was ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... rugged precipices which obstructed our progress: the intricacy of the path required us to follow one another very closely, that we might not lose the track, which became so tortuous in its course, as would puzzle any one but a muleteer accustomed to the road to find the clue of this volcanic labyrinth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... came on, and most of them got inside the village, but they were entangled in the labyrinth of narrow streets, and were obliged to retire. Another assault ended with another repulse, 'and the victorious Murids, driving the broken columns before them, followed until stopped by ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... billows were in the Catholic League," replied the old man, making a wry face. "However, the God of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps, and I rejoice to have chanced upon thee, were it only to be guided back to my lodgings amid this water labyrinth." ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the roof of one of those caves over there; a cave that runs inland just under the wood, and indeed IS connected by tunnels and secret passages with other openings miles and miles away. It is a sort of labyrinth used by smugglers and such people for ages past. This doubtless explains many of those disappearances we have heard of. But to return to the well that is not a well, in case some of you still don't know about it. When the sea rises very high at certain seasons it ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... complexness &c adj.; complexus^; complication, implication; intricacy, intrication^; perplexity; network, labyrinth; wilderness, jungle; involution, raveling, entanglement; coil &c (convolution) 248; sleave^, tangled skein, knot, Gordian knot, wheels within wheels; kink, gnarl, knarl^; webwork^. [complexity if a task or action] difficulty &c 704. V. complexify^, complicate. Adj. gnarled, knarled^. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Lucy. Into what labyrinth of fearful shapes My simple project has conducted you— Were but my wit as skilful to invent A clue to lead you forth!—I call to mind A letter, which your wife received from the Cape, Soon after you were married, with ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... displays all her sylvan grandeur; here she has scattered, with a liberal hand, every charm that foliage can give to earth, and many a lovely flower to scent the evening breeze. Descend, and in this immense labyrinth you will find a tangled skein of forest paths, in which it is never prudent to ramble alone; as will be seen by the following adventure, which befell a young student who once went to Le Morvan, anticipating infinite pleasure in spending a few weeks at the house ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... low in the saddle which she rode astride. Her well-accustomed pony twisted and turned, threading its way almost miraculously through the labyrinth of bald tree-trunks. These pot-hunts, which were of such frequent occurrence, were the recreation which alone made ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... indeed, one more source of perplexity: it is the interest of that man whose cause is bad to speak unintelligibly in the defence of it, and of him whose actions cannot bear to be examined, to hide them in disorder, to engage his pursuers in a labyrinth, that they may not trace his steps and discover his retreat; and what intricacies may be produced by fraud cooperating with subtilty, it is not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... to work and followed that wire. It was not an easy job; indeed once or twice it reminded me of that story of the old Greek hero who found his way through a labyrinth by means of a silken thread. I forget whether it were a bull or a lady he was looking for, but with care and perseverance he found one or the other, or ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... a labyrinth of narrow, dirty, crowded streets, crossing the Tiber by the fine bridge of St. Angelo. The picturesque castle of this name was a very important fortress in the Middle Ages. It was commenced by Hadrian, and ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... what Hughie thought, Hughie's wife—oh, jealous thought, only to be met by prayer! But later on—joy of joys—Hughie's children! He realized it, now and then, vaguely, momentarily, but never as fully as last Sunday. He shrank from the remembrance, and his mind wandered anew in the labyrinth of broken, twisted thought, from which he ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... very evidently, a perfect labyrinth of complexity. But it was the labyrinth for which the earlier economist held, so he thought, the thread. No matter how dark the passage, he still clung tight to it. And his thread was his "fundamental equation of value" ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... risks himself in the labyrinth of galleries and stairways in the Palais de Justice, and mounts to the third story in the left wing, will find himself in a long, low-studded gallery, badly lighted by narrow windows, and pierced at short intervals by little doors, like ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... short flights of marble steps, and through irregularly shaped and unsymmetrically disposed halls. If he had any idea of the points of the compass when he entered, he is completely confused in five minutes, and comes out at last with the sensation of having been walking in a labyrinth. He will find it hard to give anyone an impression of the sort of building in which he has been, and certainly he cannot have any knowledge of the topographical relations of its parts. Yet in his passage through the museums and galleries he has seen but a very small part of the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... labyrinth of rocks brought us out in front of a stony rampart more than a hundred feet in ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... hung reluctant, wanting little of the host who came so late to see his guest. Then, as if a sudden flash of lightning had revealed it, I realized, as I had not before, how I had set the feet of my dear lady in a most hideous labyrinth of deception; how this lie that I had told to bridge a momentary gap must leave her neither maid nor widow ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... wooden incline to where their sleepy black chairmen lay on the grass, waiting; and presently the two double chairs wheeled away toward that amusing maze of jungle pathways cut through the impenetrable hammock, and popularly known as the labyrinth. ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... forms. This cathedral is odorous with the rotting of Correggio's frescoes in the Cupola. Heaven knows how beautiful they may have been at one time. Connoisseurs fall into raptures with them now; but such a labyrinth of arms and legs: such heaps of foreshortened limbs, entangled and involved and jumbled together: no operative surgeon, gone mad, could imagine in ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... and into every farming community. So vigorously has the work been pushed that Washington now outranks every other state, except Colorado, in the facility and directness with which its mountain recesses may be reached. Upwards of 50,000 miles have been already completed, presenting altogether a labyrinth of broad thorofares, boulevards, and country highways. The most important highways built and maintained at state expense are the Pacific, the Sunset, the Inland Empire, the ...
— The Beauties of the State of Washington - A Book for Tourists • Harry F. Giles
... were in love with Timpany—though it seemed incredible that anyone could be in love with Timpany—suppose her life depended on Timpany, suppose she couldn't live without him? He was fumbling his way along this clueless labyrinth of suppositions when the clock struck twelve. On the last stroke, like an automaton released by the turning clockwork, a little maid, holding a large covered tray, popped out of the door that led from the kitchen regions into the hall. From his ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... feeble exponents of the peculiar power of Mr. Latham's works,—a power of unmitigated dulness. What his views are on the great questions of the science—the origin of races, the migrations, the crossings of varieties, and the like—no mortal can remember, who has penetrated the labyrinth of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... behind us so near together that they seemed to form a single chain of rocks. At the same time the hurricane was so broken by the rocks in our rear that the further we sailed through this ever-changing labyrinth of projecting rocks, the calmer the sea became, until at last the vessel's progress was perfectly smooth and quiet as we entered one of those long sea- roads running through a giant ravine—for such the Norwegian fjords appeared ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... of Powell's second expedition, Dellenbaugh tells of ancient ruins found below Labyrinth Canyon. "Small huts for storage were found there in the cliffs, and on a promontory, about thirty feet above the water, were the ruins of stone buildings, one of which, twelve by twenty feet in dimensions, had walls still standing about six feet high. The Canyon here was some ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... he said, "here is doubtless one end of the thread which will guide us to the truth through this labyrinth ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... was necessary for some time to ride with great precaution, in order to avoid the pitfalls, snares, and similar contrivances which were placed for the annoyance of strangers. The Gascon was, however, completely possessed of the clew to this labyrinth, and in a quarter of an hour's riding they found themselves beyond the limits of Plessis le Parc, and not far distant ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... in an instant. We scrambled down the narrow stairs, and out into the starlit night. Leiden was a city of the dead. Not even a dog played sentinel for the sleeping townsfolk; not a cat sprang out of the shadows as I led my band through a labyrinth of canal-streets, floored as if with jet nailed down with stars. But suddenly the spell of silence was broken by an explosion of sound which crashed into it like breaking glass. A brassy blare of music that ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... with what has hitherto been effected, the clue to the labyrinth of what is yet to be done is given us. —HERDER: ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... state costumes, and regalia generally; including in the latter department the royal robes of Peter the Great as well as his crown, in which there are about nine hundred diamonds; and that of his widow Catharine I., which contains three thousand of these precious stones. One comes away from the labyrinth of palaces, churches, arsenals, museums, and the treasury, after viewing their accumulation of riches, quite dazed and surfeited. To examine the latter properly requires more than a single day. It is a marvel of accumulated riches, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... the thing with which he associates; or, on the other hand, we say he "sinks self" for the time, whereas the truth is that in his own nature he comprehends the Whole. Shakespeare being the Universal Man, we lose him in the labyrinth of his winding and wondrous imagination. The greater comprehends ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Older Children.—Older children enjoy a peanut hunt, or a spider party where they follow a twine through a labyrinth of loopings and find a small prize at the end, or a book party, where each guest represents the title of some book. Thus Ouida's "Under Two Flags" could be very easily represented. Young folks always enjoy "dressing ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... crossing and running into one another, with blind alleys and courts leading out of them, and low arched passages, and dark gullies, and unsuspected slums, hiding away at the back of the narrowest streets; forming altogether such a labyrinth of roads and dwellings, that one needs a guide to thread a way among them, as upon pathless solitudes or deserts of shifting sands. In the wider streets it is possible for two conveyances to pass each other; for in some of them, towards the ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton
... with more than womanly tenderness. There upon that desolate beach, cold, hungry, homeless, shelterless, she was happier than she had been for months. But she trembled as she thought of the future; everything was so uncertain. She seemed involved in a labyrinth of dangers and difficulties from which she could see no escape. She knew that both store and home had gone, and probably most, if not all, of her father's fortune. She felt that these losses might greatly modify his plans, and really ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... those good old religious names which their fathers bore, and which are endeared to us by many hallowed associations, they now repudiate them with a sneer as too vulgar and tasteless. They are out of fashion, too common, don't lead us into a labyrinth of love-scrapes and scenes of refined iniquity, and are now only fit for ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... my part to lead him into conversation and familiarity. If he had really been trying to excite my interest, he could not have succeeded more effectually. I felt towards him much as a man feels in a labyrinth, when every fresh failure in gaining the centre, only produces fresh obstinacy in renewing the effort to ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... historic emotion which is satisfied in the eternal cities of the Mediterranean. I felt in America what many Americans suppose can only be felt in Europe. I have seldom had that sentiment stirred more simply and directly than when I saw from afar off, above that vast grey labyrinth of Philadelphia, great Penn upon his pinnacle like the graven figure of a god who had fashioned a new world; and remembered that his body lay buried in a field at the turning of a lane, a league from my ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... emerge no more. Then a moment's examination would reveal the fatal cave. I am certain that I heard a good half-score of such histories. The cave, by the way, was not always fatal, for I heard of cases in which the dog had been known to find his way out of the underground labyrinth, and return home dreadfully thin and hungry, but otherwise undamaged. These cases gave me some faint hope for Schwartz, but as day after day went by the hope faded, and I made up my mind that I had seen the last of him. I was sorry ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... ourselves on a narrow ledge overlooking the valley. The fog had spread until literally choked up between the bills and I could hardly persuade myself that it was not the sea that rolled below me. Even the signal lamps on the distant railway line rose out of the labyrinth like a lighthouse in ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... was bordered by mountains and obstructed by rocks and rapids. Indians might thread such a labyrinth in their light canoes, but it would never admit the transportation of troops and military stores. Washington kept on for thirty miles, until he came to a place where the river fell nearly forty feet in the space of fifty yards. There ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... "royal" except for some special but accidental reason such as can in this case be divined. There are other instances in which a term that becomes specific has been derived from some one specimen accidentally named. "Labyrinth" is one case in point, and "basilica" may be another. It is true that we do not know what was the shape of the King Archon's portico, but the same name ([Greek: basileios stoa]) was given to the grand structure erected by Herod the Great ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... intermingled in wild confusion. The roots spread along the uneven surface of the ground so thickly that they seemed to form a vast net-work, and apparently covered the greater part of the surface of the ground. The task of clearing such a labyrinth seemed utterly hopeless. My heart almost sickened at the prospect of clearing such land, and I was greatly confirmed in my resolution of buying a farm cleared to ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... at length out of the labyrinth, and on the following Monday ventured once more within its mazes, though not exactly at six o'clock, which was the hour appointed for the preliminary experience of tea. I had experienced that kind of thing once or twice before, and never found myself in ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... to a close when Carson set out for camp, which was not reached until after dark. His companions did not feel any special alarm over his continued absence, for the good reason that they were confident he could take care of himself no matter in what labyrinth of ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... and the Javanese Hooden; through the clam bakes and the Casino, with the miscellaneous objects of interest about them. Uncle thought he was entering the Liberal Arts building when he walked past the guard at the southeast entrance of the Casino. He wandered into a labyrinth of side-rooms, where he heard an amazing medley of excited voices in as many different languages. They were evidently quarreling over something that displeased them very much. Presently a guard caught him by ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... much danger in annihilating the individual as in exalting him. History furnishes us with memorable examples of this. It does not allow us to go astray in the narrow ways of a peevish and jealous personality, nor to lose ourselves in the vague labyrinth of a chimerical and false communism. The latter would destroy what constitutes the power and dignity of man. It would wipe out the most prominent features of his noble nature, by destroying the support of energy and activity and the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... of palaces are the pavilion of Rameses III. at Medinet Abou, and another at Semneh. The Royal Labyrinth has so completely perished that even its site is uncertain. The Egyptians lived so much out of doors that the house was a less important edifice than in colder climates. Egyptian dwellings were probably ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... means something engraved, or written, and recalls the tables inscribed by God's finger. 'Judgments' are the divine decisions or sentences as to what is right, and therefore the infallible clue to the else bewildering labyrinth. To obey these commandments, to read that solemn writing, and to accept these decisions as our guides, is man's perfection and blessedness; and for that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... heap with the labour of his mouth rather than his brain and hands. He values himself, as a carman does his horse, by the money he gets, and looks down upon all that gain less as scoundrels. The law is like that double-formed, ill-begotten monster that was kept in an intricate labyrinth and fed with men's flesh, for it devours all that come within the mazes of it and have not a clue to find the way out again. He has as little kindness for the Statute Law as Catholics have for the Scripture, but adores the Common Law as ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... poetry—one adverse to the national school and finally overcome by it, but one that long exercised a considerable sway. Another poet of the court of John II. is Juan de Mena, historiographer of Castile. His principal works are, "The Coronation" and "The Labyrinth," both imitations of Dante. They are of consequence as marking the progress of the language. The principal poem of Manrique the younger, one of an illustrious family of that name, who were poets, statesmen, and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... results already achieved by science are well fitted to inspire us with a cheerful confidence in the soundness of its method. Here at last, after groping about in the dark for countless ages, man has hit upon a clue to the labyrinth, a golden key that opens many locks in the treasury of nature. It is probably not too much to say that the hope of progress—moral and intellectual as well as material—in the future is bound up with the fortunes of science, and that every obstacle placed in the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... cardinals. A rare, precious, and never interrupted race of philosophers to whom wisdom, like another Ariadne, seems to have given a clew of thread which they have been walking along unwinding since the beginning of the world, through the labyrinth of human affairs. One finds them in all ages, ever the same; that is to say, always according to all times. And, without reckoning our Pierre Gringoire, who may represent them in the fifteenth century if we succeed in bestowing upon ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... says, awaited her and her fellow-traveller at the bank of the river. They crossed; a palanquin was ready to receive them. Soon they arrived at the stately gateway which forms the entrance to the palace. The interior proved to be a labyrinth of irregular courts and small unsymmetrical chambers. In one of the courts a hall, surrounded by plain columns, served as a reception-room. This was cumbrously loaded with lamps, glass lustres, ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... conditions of the case.... For the same reason he failed to make any single discovery which holds its place as one of the steps by which science has in any direction really advanced. The clew with which he entered the labyrinth did not reach far enough; before he had nearly attained his end he was obliged either to come back or to go ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... said that of all the arts architecture is perhaps the most aesthetic, the most mysterious, and the most nourished by ideas. How true this is you feel as you look at the Great Pyramid by night. It seems to breathe out mystery. The immense base recalls to you the labyrinth within; the long descent from the tiny slit that gives you entrance, your uncertain steps in its hot, eternal night, your falls on the ice-like surfaces of its polished blocks of stone, the crushing weight that seemed to lie on your heart as you stole uncertainly ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... the leading facts of this narrative, Waverley was easily enabled to apply the clue which they afforded to other mazes of the labyrinth in which he had been engaged. To Rose Bradwardine, then, he owed the life which he now thought he could willingly have laid down to serve her. A little reflection convinced him, however, that to live for her sake was more convenient ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... but nothing that she said elicited any reply from Mrs. Markland, who seemed half stupefied, and sat through the evening in a state of deep abstraction, answering only in brief sentences any remarks addressed to her. It seemed to her as if her feet had wandered somehow into the mazes of a labyrinth, from which at each effort to get free she was only the more inextricably involved. Her perceptions had lost their clearness, and, still worse, her confidence in them was diminishing. Heretofore she had reposed all trust in her husband's ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... is Harrington, in the centre of the Canadian Labrador, which runs in from the Strait of Belle Isle to Natashquan, more than two hundred miles along the north shore of the Gulf, among a perfect labyrinth ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... and knew the history of almost every stone or quarry of glass, was the best of lionisers, and gave her much attention when he perceived how intelligent and appreciative she was. He showed her the plan of the old conventual buildings, and she began to unravel the labyrinth through which she had been hurried. The Close and Deanery were modernised, but he valued the quaint old corner where he lived for its genuine age. The old house now divided between him and Mr. Shapcote had been the infirmary; and the long narrow building opposite, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you have the way,—you are no novice in the labyrinth of love,—you have the clue. But as I am a person, Sir Rowland, you must not attribute my yielding to any sinister appetite or indigestion of widowhood; nor impute my complacency to any lethargy of continence. I hope you do not think me prone to any ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... them, but their head-quarters were at Caius, whither they were attracted by Mr. Clayton, who was at that time senior tutor, and among the sizars of St. John's. Behind the then chapel of this last-named college was a 'labyrinth' (this was the name it bore) of dingy, tumble-down rooms," and here dwelt many Simeonites, "unprepossessing in feature, gait, and manners, unkempt and ill-dressed beyond what can be easily described. ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... care. A year ago, Mag, this sort of thing—the risk, the nearness to danger, the chances one way or the other—would have intoxicated me. I used to feel as though I was dancing on a volcano and daring it to explode. The more twistings and turnings there were to the labyrinth, the greater glory it was to get out. Maggie darlin', you have before you a mournful spectacle—the degeneration of Nancy Olden. It isn't that she's lost courage. It's only that she used to be able to think of only one thing, and now—What do you suppose it is, Mag? If you know, don't you dare ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... opened it, and with a lowly bow gave the lady what she had wished for; she took it without any attention to the giver, and without a word of thanks. The wound was bound up, and they ascended the hill, from whose brow they admired the wide prospect over the park's green labyrinth, extending even to the ...
— Peter Schlemihl • Adelbert von Chamisso
... shallow, till at last it sinks into the sand, and perishes in the effort to bear its little tribute to the main. Here some vagary appears to have bewildered us; for our tracks go round and round, and are confusedly intermingled, as if we had found a labyrinth upon the level beach. And here, amid our idle pastime, we sat down upon almost the only stone that breaks the surface of the sand, and were lost in an unlooked-for and overpowering conception of the majesty and awfulness of the great deep. Thus, by tracking our footprints in the sand, we track our ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... minutes the ladies met their gallants in the green labyrinth of which Agnes had spoken, and falling into pairs, for the walk was too narrow to allow them all four to walk abreast, they strolled ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... with the roughest kind of boulders. Above the tide-line, a ragged mass of driftwood interspersed with undergrowth separated the water from the tangled Bush. Both George and Nasmyth were aware that one could readily tear one's clothes to pieces in an attempt to struggle through such a labyrinth. Judging by the shouts he uttered at intervals, Martial appeared to be floundering along the ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... was astir early. He wandered through a thick-walled labyrinth of corridors and patios, and came at last into a rankly luxuriant tropical garden, where the soft perfume of china-tree blossoms filled his nostrils. Keeping on he passed many of the hacienda buildings, a sugar mill, a cotton factory, warehouses, stables with corrals, and entered ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the political acts of our ancestors, we have a right to bring them to the standard of the political science of their age, but we have no right to bring them to the higher standard of our own. Montesquieu could give them but an imperfect clue to the labyrinth in which they found themselves involved; and yet no one had seen farther into the mysteries of social and political organization than Montesquieu. Hume had scattered brilliant rays on dark places, and started ideas which, once at work in the mind, would never rest till ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... did you find out my poor boy?" asked Lady Oldfield, as they hurried along through a labyrinth of by-streets, each dirtier and more dismal than ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... mountaineer kindly. "You have been deeply wronged, but some day you will pick up the thread in the labyrinth, and there will be light forward. I myself shall see what can ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... interesting woman, and the peculiar nature of the events in which he was sharing, and saw only Clare Hazard's ruined life, Luke Freeman's despair, and the fatal 26th of January, so near at hand. He could see no way out of the labyrinth of disgrace. It unnerved him more than anything that had ever happened to him, and he turned bewildered towards the door. He saw that while Gabrielle lived, a dead misfortune would be ever crouching ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... get to India from Sydney, ships must go either inside or outside the Great Barrier. The inside passage has been called the Inner Route in consequence of its desirability for steamers, and our business has been to mark out this Inner Route safely and clearly among the labyrinth-like islands and reefs within the Barrier. And a parlous dull business it was for those who, like myself, had no necessary and constant occupation. Fancy for five mortal months shifting from patch to patch of white sand in latitude from 17 to 10 south, living on salt pork and beef, and seeing ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... occasioned by the motor nerves, and how these nerves are in their turn excited by the cells of the central organ. But here again his knowledge comes to an end. True, he sees indications of the bridge which is to carry him from excitation of the sensory to that of the motor nerves in the labyrinth of intricately interwoven nerve cells, but he knows nothing of the inconceivably complex process which is introduced at this stage. Here the physiologist will change his standpoint; what matter will ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... these irregular forms, and there are, in fact, an infinite number of irregularities which the slow and grave process of our tribunals can neither take cognizance of, nor put a stop to, nor foresee, nor punish. The audacious or subtle delinquent would triumph in the winding labyrinth of our civil laws. The laws of the police, more direct, watch him, press him, and surround him mose closely. The abuse, is contiguous to the benefit, I admit; but a great many private acts of violence, base and shameful crimes, are repressed by ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... errors and mistakes, of former days. Let it be considered for how many ages a great part of the world appears not to have thought at all; how many more they have been busied in forming systems and conjectures, while reason has been lost in a labyrinth of words, and they never seem to have suspected on what frivolous matters their minds ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... disarm criticism, but he has disarmed the disciple. He gives us his philosophy through the medium of wit, and is never so pathetic as when he is humorous. To turn truth into a paradox is not difficult, but George Meredith makes all his paradoxes truths, and no Theseus can thread his labyrinth, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... nerves are discouraging and forbidding by their immensity and labyrinth of scientific technical terms. They are fine for teachers, but discouraging for ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... to Castile now for a time, in the labyrinth of this much involved period, where the duplication of names and the multiplicity of places makes it difficult to thread one's way intelligently, it will be found that the court, during the reign of Henry IV., was chiefly distinguished by its scandalous immorality. Quintana, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... specimen of the "genus homo" evince any unusual ignorance of woman's work, whose endless routine and diversified drudgery ofttimes require the patience of a Job and the wisdom of a Solomon. In the labyrinth of domestic entanglement more is needed than the silken clue of Ariadne, and the vexed question of domestic economy requires the unerring skill of the diplomatist, the subtle tact of the politician, ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... equal and contemporary, this was what added to her act the long train of its effect. Light broke for him at last, indeed, quite as a consequence of the fear of breathing a chill upon this luxuriance of her spiritual garden. As at a turn of his labyrinth he saw his issue, which opened out so wide, for the minute, that he held his breath with wonder. He was afterwards to recall how, just then, the autumn night seemed to clear to a view in which the whole place, everything round him, the wide terrace where ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... indications of a truer individual judgment, (discoverable throughout by one who knows the author's private worth, and is himself happily in possession of the clue by which to escape from this tangled labyrinth:)—these escape the common reader. To him, all is ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... she laughed—"I shall tell you no more. It will be a proof of your sagacity to find the clue to the labyrinth." ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... while in the Music-room a hundred or so lorries could be parked without attracting observation too glaringly. Should the need arise, the Library could accommodate a battalion on parade, a rifle range or sufficient office room for Q branch of a division. A labyrinth of corridors and servants' bedrooms harbours the rank and file, and it is said that the number of kitchens, pantries and cellars in the north and east wings runs into ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... its front, long and low, is picturesquely diversified with oriel windows, gable ends, and shadowy angles. Behind is a steep, craggy range of woody hills; in front, a terraced garden of great extent; full of old-fashioned bowers, and labyrinth-like walks, and sloping down to a noble park, whose oaks and beeches are of wonderful beauty, and whose turf is soft as velvet and greener than any artist ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... north of the lake lies the Ramble, which covers an area of about thirty-six acres, and is a labyrinth of wooded walks, abounding in the prettiest rustic nooks, with tiny bridges over little brooks, wild flowers and vines, and bits of lawn, and rock work, all so naturally and simply arranged that it is hard to believe ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... money and men. When the lagging contingents came together at last, under a commander whom none of them trusted, they were met by strategical difficulties which would have perplexed older soldiers and an abler general; for they were forced to act on the circumference of a vast semicircle, in a labyrinth of forests, without roads, and choked with ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... and he did not have a rapping medium on his staff. Moreover, of the twenty-four hundred and sixty effectives with which he had started, he had not two thousand left. He could get fights enough to employ this force handsomely, without running into a labyrinth of streets, and among houses (each one of which might be made a fortification), with the hope that the town might be unoccupied with troops, or that it might be surrendered. Our "Copperhead friends," who could ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... indeed, with all natural objects known to the ancients, the Ivy was the subject of a myth or religious allegory, and in investigating this myth, we find ourselves in a labyrinth of strange mystery. The ordinary works on mythology, indeed, inform the reader that it was the plant sacred to Bacchus, the god of wine, because, as Loudon states, 'this wine is found at Nyssa, the reputed birthplace of Bacchus, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
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