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More "Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Encyclopaedia Biblica says (s.v. 'Mandrakes'): 'The Hebrew name, duda'im, was no doubt popularly associated with dodim, [Hebrew: dodim], "love"; but its real etymology (like that of [Greek: mandragoras]) is obscure". ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... his seat in Congress, the movement for the abolition of slavery was begun by a few obscure agitators. It did not at first attract much attention, but as it went on it gradually exasperated the overbearing temper of the Southern slaveholders. One fruit of this agitation was the appearance of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the House of Representatives. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... phenomena of asexual propagation are so obscure, that at present we cannot be said to know much about them; but if we turn to that mode of perpetuation which results from the sexual process, then we find variation a perfectly constant occurrence, to a certain extent; and, indeed, I think that a certain amount of variation from the primitive stock ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley
... admit any ambition. He has no society. His friends are nearly all obscure people, like those you heard him speak of ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... Dr. Moekel, while many more could be furnished by the owners of other "Spelling Dogs." Indeed, the more reckoning and spelling dogs there are the sooner will the value of this new method become generally recognized and the easier will it be to rid the truth of any errors that may still obscure it. Here in Stuttgart my Lectures delivered on the subject have so far led to the training of four dogs in counting as well as spelling, this having been done with best results. In addition to these, I myself have a dog, "Ava," by name a daughter of Lola, who is already ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... uncle gave me the idea that I should find a good-for-nothing hack-writer, a dweller in some obscure garret." ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... was evident that they were dissatisfied with the senator himself, but had not any one to substitute for him; for it was of no use that the same persons should be nominated again, to no other purpose than to hear of their vices, and the rest were much more mean and obscure than those who first occurred to their recollection. Thus the assembly separated, affirming that every evil which was most known was easiest to be endured, and ordering the senate to ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... To hear an obscure creature, whose name was but faintly known in the remote parts even of the parish in which he lived, draw the long-bow at such a rate, was highly amusing. The credulous character of his auditory, however, was no slight temptation ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... his look, his dress, his dialect, his strange scruples, had been, ever since the time of Elizabeth, favourite subjects with mockers. But these peculiarities appeared far more grotesque in a faction which ruled a great empire than in obscure and persecuted congregations. The cant, which had moved laughter when it was heard on the stage from Tribulation Wholesome and Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, was still more laughable when it proceeded from the lips of Generals and Councillors of State. It is also to be noticed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... master, would not accept of the high dignity offered him, but sent to let Pericles know their intentions, that he might return home and resume his lawful right. It was matter of great surprise and joy to Simonides, to find that his son-in-law (the obscure knight) was the renowned Prince of Tyre; yet again he regretted that he was not the private gentleman he supposed him to be, seeing that he must now part both with his admired son-in-law and his beloved daughter, whom he feared to trust to the perils of the sea, because Thaisa was with child; and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... which have been propounded on the cause of gout and the part played by uric acid; many have had to be discarded or greatly modified. Though much light has recently been thrown on the subject, there remains much that is obscure. The subject is one which is surrounded with great difficulties, and would not be suitable for discussion here, were it not for the following reason: Certain views on uric acid as the cause of gout and several other diseases, are at the present time ...
— The Chemistry of Food and Nutrition • A. W. Duncan
... when the marriage has lost the inward and spiritual grace of which the marriage ceremony is the outward and visible sign. In vain do bishops stoop to pick up the discarded arguments of the atheists of fifty years ago by pleading that the words of Jesus were in an obscure Aramaic dialect, and were probably misunderstood, as Jesus, they think, could not have said anything a bishop would disapprove of. Unless they are prepared to add that the statement that those who take the sacrament ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... credulous and confiding. Children of that character if reared by timid and over-fond parents, are deprived of the rough contact with society that is necessary to their development. There are many whom the lack of self-confidence, the lack of ambition, and lack of business energy condemn to an obscure life, when their intellectual capacities would fit them for an influential position. A kind but mistaken system of training confirms the defect, and dooms them to an inefficient life, or a stern system ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... respect to the first point, it will be remembered that the child does not begin to reach for anything that it sees until about the fourth or sixth week; so it is evident at what a remarkably fast rate those obscure factors of size, perspective, light and shade, etc., which signify distance to the eye, become associated with arm movements of reaching. This method, applied with proper precautions, obviates many of the difficulties of the others. There are certain requirements of proper procedure, however, which ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... months passed away, and it was now the season of summer—that delicious season, fraught with more voluptuous pleasures than virgin spring, gloomy autumn or hoary winter. It was in rather an obscure street of Boston—in a modest two-story wooden house—and in an apartment plainly, even humbly furnished, that two ladies were seated, engaged in an ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... eighteenth century to believe absolutely in (their) own slogans about patriotism, purity, and a better system of conducting government."[25] On the other hand they differed as to what these terms meant. The intent was good, the timing was wrong. Pitt, for reasons still somewhat obscure, accepted a peerage and became Lord Chatham and opened the door to cries of corruption and sell-out by the "Great Commoner." More significantly, Chatham was trying to lead a ministry from the House of Lords. ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... are, my convictions, and upon them I shall act. I fervently hope that the question is at rest, and that no sectional or ambitious or fanatical excitement may again threaten the durability of our institutions or obscure the light of ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... Mrs. Mallowe, in a tone of one who has successfully tracked an obscure word through a ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... music from the solemn hymns and psalms of austere church music than from any species of theatrical singing. A single flute or pipe was the ordinary accompaniment; and it is not to be supposed, that any display of musical power was allowed to obscure the distinct hearing of the words. On the contrary, the evident purpose was to render the words more audible, and to secure by the elevations and pauses greater facility of understanding the poetry. For the choral songs ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... who never felt able to help in the house-work herself, owing to something obscure about the legs, would persist in talking all breakfast time about the dust and Caroline's other shortcomings. "Never know when you have her. This week she is eating at all sorts of hours because she has to go to the promenade and free the other girl ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... the deep sophistication of Anthony an understanding formed, nothing atavistic or obscure, indeed scarcely physical at all, an understanding remembered from the romancings of many generations of minds that as she talked and caught his eyes and turned her lovely head, she moved him as he had never been moved before. The sheath that held her soul had assumed significance—that was all. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... army. I sent back orders for him to fight defensively to save time, and that I would come up with reenforcements from the direction of Cog's Bridge, by the road which we had reached near Falling-Creek Church. The country was very obscure, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... The part I have acted has been in open day; and to hold out to a conduct which stands in that clear and steady light for all its good and all its evil, to hold out to that conduct the paltry winking tapers of excuses and promises,—I never will do it. They may obscure it with their smoke, but they never can illumine sunshine by such a flame ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... became interested in the work of an obscure chemist over in Brooklyn, Morgan Prescott. Prescott claims, as I understand, to be able to transmute copper into gold. Whatever you think of it offhand, you should visit his laboratory yourselves, gentlemen. I am told it is wonderful, though I have never seen it ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... generation past? Was it not the result of the study and hard-earned experiences of many men for many years? Men whose humble lives had been spent along the rough coast in daily struggles with the storms of ocean and of life? Many of them now slept in obscure graves, some in the deep sea, others under the tender, green turf; but here was the concentration of their ideas, the ultimatum of their labors, and I inwardly resolved, that, since to me was given the enjoyment, to them should be the honor, and that it should be through ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... are inductive material. Can there be any doubt that Jesus had a spontaneous love for his fellow-men and a deep sense of the sacredness of human personality? Physical deformity and moral guilt could not obscure the divine worth of human life to him. To cause any soul to stumble and go down, or to express contempt for any human being, was to ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... Peter, perhaps being too much afraid to utter a word of what they knew. Then there occurred more frigate actions, resulting in so heavy a pressure of work, that nobody seemed to have any time to think about the mysterious disappearance of a somewhat obscure young lieutenant. But now that I had unexpectedly turned up again, safe and sound, I was overwhelmed with congratulations, while the admiral sent a party of police to the house to which I had been conveyed, with instructions that the two negroes were to be at once found and arrested. ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... to seek the happiness that is to be found by virtue in all conditions; in which consists the true moral equality of mankind, and not in that monstrous fiction which, by inspiring false ideas and vain expectations into men destined to travel in the obscure walk of laborious life, serves only to aggravate and embitter that real inequality which it never can remove, and which the order of civil life establishes as much for the benefit of those whom it must leave in an ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... counseled them, in case they were beaten, to cherish no hard feelings towards their rivals. Not a shadow of envy or ill-will was to obscure the harmony of the occasion. And if they were so fortunate as to win the race they were to wear their honors with humility; and most especially, they were not to utter a word which could create a hard feeling in the minds of their competitors. Whatever the result, there was to be the ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... by the critical spirit alone, and, indeed, may be said to be one with it. For who is the true critic but he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure. And who is the true man of culture, if not he in whom fine scholarship and fastidious rejection... develops that spirit of disinterested curiosity which is the real spirit, as it is the real fruit of the intellectual ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... languages, still it will be acknowledged as no uninteresting subject, that tribes wandering through the mountains of Nubia, or the plains of Romania, have conversed for centuries in a dialect precisely similar to that spoken at this day, by the obscure, despised, and wretched people in England, whose language has been considered as a fabricated gibberish, and confounded with a cant in use among thieves and beggars; and whose persons have been, till within the period of the last year, an object ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... acts and joint resolutions, which fill more than 6,000 closely printed pages and are scattered through many volumes. Many of these acts have been drawn in haste and without sufficient caution, so that their provisions are often obscure in themselves or in conflict with each other, or at least so doubtful as to render it very difficult for even the best-informed persons to ascertain precisely what the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... free, intelligent, and unbiassed, the true manifestation of the public will, I desire to prepare the country for another appeal, which I perceive is about to be made to popular prejudice, another attempt to obscure all distinct views of the public good, to overwhelm all patriotism and all enlightened self-interest, by loud cries against false danger, and by exciting the passions of one class against another. I am not mistaken ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... Kant in the history of philosophy, no idea can be given here. The important document which follows was published in 1785, and forms the basis of the moral system on which he erected the whole structure of belief in God, Freedom, and Immortality. Kant is often difficult and obscure, and became more so as he grew older; but the present treatise can be followed, in its main lines, by any intelligent person who is interested enough in the fundamental problems of human life and conduct to give it serious and concentrated attention. To such a reader the subtle yet clear distinctions, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... hanged himself in his cell. Law, like medicine, has its victims. In the first case, one man suffers for the many, and in the second, he dies for science," he added, and an ugly smile stole over his lips. "Well, I know the risks myself, you see; poor and obscure little attorney as I am, the law has been the ruin of me. My experience was dearly bought—it ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... eighteenth century. His couplets are almost all characteristic of eighteenth-century couplets, which seem to seek perfection within themselves. The aim of Waller, Dryden, Pope, and Johnson was primarily to exalt the couplet and extract from it all its potentialities, not to obscure it by varied pauses and run-on lines. Waller was praised by the best critics of his own and the following generation for the great 'sweetness' and ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... blinded, like Cleonice, into the belief that a law so fundamental in Sparta, and so general in all the primitive States of Greece, as that which forbade intermarriage with a foreigner, could be cancelled for the Regent of Sparta, and in favour of an obscure maiden of Byzantium. Every visit Pausanias paid to Cleonice but served, in his eyes, as a prelude to her ultimate dishonour. He lent himself, therefore, with all the zeal of his vivacious and ardent character, to the design of removing Pausanias ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... business of life and death. A young mathematician may be excused for langour in studying curves to be described only with a pencil; but not in tracing those which are to be described with a rocket. Your knowledge of a wholesome herb may involve the feeding of an army; and acquaintance with an obscure point of geography, the success of a campaign. Never waste an instant's time, therefore; the sin of idleness is a thousandfold greater in you than in other youths; for the fates of those who will one day be under your command hang upon your knowledge; lost moments now will be ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... themselves, and yet of being able to give Alda the luxuries to which she had become accustomed; and Wilmet's joy was beyond expression. The contrast between the twins—one admired, praised, followed, esteemed, as one of the brightest ornaments of London society; the other toiling in an obscure poverty-stricken home, a teacher in a small third-class school, her beauty unheeded or viewed as a real disadvantage—all this never occurred for one moment to Wilmet, she only felt elevated in ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... language, the history, and the habits of the people; of their origin and connections with other nations; and, even after such knowledge has been obtained, it is no easy task to separate fable from metaphor, and truth from fiction. For these reasons, the religion of China appears to be fully as obscure and inexplicable as that of almost any other of the oriental nations. The language of the country, added to the jealousy of the government in admitting foreigners, have thrown almost insuperable obstacles in the way of clearing up this intricate ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... the Med Ship. It bore on through space. There were tiny noises from the communicator. There were whisperings and rustlings and the occasional strange and sometimes beautiful musical notes whose origin is yet obscure, but which, since they are carried by electromagnetic radiation of wildly varying wave lengths, are not likely to be the fabled music of ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... translated, require a library of volumes. In the case of the contracts the repetition of scores of examples of the same sort would be wearisome. In the case of the letters, the translation alone would be almost as obscure as the original, without copious comment on the relationships, customs, and events referred to. In both cases it must be noted that many of the most interesting examples are incomplete and unavailable as specimens. The object of this work ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... obscure movement somewhere on this part of the Platform. A tiny figure came out of a crevice that would someday be an air lock. Joe didn't move his eyes toward it. He said awkwardly: "Just tell him Joe Kenmore's in town and needs him. He'll remember me, I think. ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... to assent to the removal, the letter of the rule having been observed. But as he did not wish to seem moved by opposition to his neighbour at Sidlinch, he had stipulated that the act of charity should be carried out at night, and as privately as possible, and that the grave should be in an obscure part of the enclosure. 'You had better see the young man about it at once,' ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Truth's way, not mine—that I, whose service failed In action, yet may make amends in praise. Fabricius, Cesalpinus, say your word, Not yours, or mine, but Truth's, as you receive it! You miss a point I saw? See others, then! Misread my meaning? Yet expound your own! Obscure one space I cleared? The sky is wide, And you may yet uncover other stars. For thus I read the meaning of this end: There are two ways of spreading light: to be The candle or the mirror that reflects it. I let my wick burn ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... were yet able to follow its descent through the waves. The powerful light it gave forth lighted up the translucent water, while the cavern became gradually obscure. At length this vast effusion of electric light faded away, and soon after the "Nautilus," now the tomb of Captain Nemo, reposed ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... concerns the public most properly admits of a public discussion. But, of late, the press has turned from defending public interest to making inroads upon private life; from combating the strong to overwhelming the feeble. No condition is now too obscure for its abuse, and the protector has become the tyrant of the people. In this manner the freedom of the press is beginning to sow the seeds of its own dissolution; the great must oppose it from principle, and the weak from fear; till at last every rank of ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... nonnullorum detrectationibus in hoc aliquantisper fama sua laesa fuerit." Some writers have built very unadvisedly on this expression. It is at best obscure, and capable of a very different interpretation; and, even at the most, it only implies that the Prince was then the object of calumny at the hand of some persons who could not effect any ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... took the chances on his dying, as thousands of other wives do every day, and for his good she put on the best face possible, and kept her tears back. But how many obscure women have done the same thing, as they sat by the side of their dying husbands, and made the patient believe that he was getting better, and smiled while their hearts were breaking? Was Mrs. Garfield braver than the sister of charity, God ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... that for strangers to talk of his own published books or of gipsies appeared to him to be “prying,” though there I should have been quite at home. I knew, however, that in the obscure English pamphlet literature of the last century, recording the sayings and doings of eccentric people and strange adventurers, Borrow was very learned, and I too chanced to be far from ignorant in that direction. I touched on Bamfylde Moore Carew, but without effect. Borrow evidently considered ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... an unwilling confession, impossible. And if it had seemed that further information might have been extracted relative to my own personal danger, a stronger tie, a deeper obligation, bound them to the supposed object of the last obscure imputation, and none was willing to elicit further charges or clearer evidence. Probably also they anticipated that, when the word was extended to the Initiates, I should take up my ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... to trace the history of the various members of the Council of the Commune. A few have been already alluded to; but the majority came forth out of obscurity, and their fate is as obscure. Eight were professional journalists. Among these were Rochefort, Arnould, and Vermorel. Arnould was probably the most moderate man in the Commune, and Vermorel was one of the very few who, when the Commune was at its last gasp, neither deserted nor disgraced it. He sprang on a barricade, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... attempt to realise the ancient religion there than in a busier or more prosaic place. Yet at every point I have felt how much would have been gained could an old Celt or Druid have revisited his former haunts, and permitted me to question him on a hundred matters which must remain obscure. But this, alas, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... listened with a far-away look on her face, and little Donald Marsh gazed with round eyes of awe at the great man who had been so very generous; while over in an obscure corner of the hall a pale little woman stealthily rearranged the folds of her gown, that she might hide from inquisitive eyes the great darn on the front breadth of her ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... numbers, they are not at all obscure. Reference to the dictionary makes the cipher ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... quite agree with you. Indeed, I differ from all the ordinary biographers of that independent gentleman, Don't Care. I believe Don't Care came to a good end. At any rate he came to some end. Whereas numbers of people never have beginning, or ending, of their own. An obscure dramatist, Milverton, whom we know of, makes one of his characters say, in ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... decorous life. And here it may be mentioned—though in the course of this volume a penetrating reader may have guessed as much—that, whatever that secret, it did not refer expressly or exclusively to the late lord's singular and ill-assorted marriage. Upon that point much was still left obscure to arouse Lumley's curiosity, had he been a man whose curiosity was very vivacious. But on this he felt but little interest. He knew enough to believe that no further information could benefit himself personally; ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... desperate lies, for which he could not account, then a passion for music, and later for French novels. Rousseau at this age was discontented, immensely in love, wept often without cause, etc. Keats had a great change at fourteen, wrestling with frequent obscure and profound stirrings of soul, with a sudden hunger for knowledge which consumed his days with fire, and "with passionate longing to drain the cup of experience at a draft." He was "at the morning hour when the whole world turns to gold." "The boy had suddenly ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... relationship to them, he could hardly even in the days of his fame have ventured thus publicly to challenge it, unless there had been some acknowledged ground for it. There are obscure indications, which antiquarian diligence may perhaps make clear, which point to East Lancashire as the home of the particular family of Spensers to which Edmund Spenser's father belonged. Probably he ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... significance of great world changes, before Time has fully done his work, is difficult. While mighty events are still in their formative period the future is obscure. But our inability to outline the future cannot blind us to the unmistakable trend of the evolutionary forces at work. One thing that is clear is that our boasted Christian civilization is the theater in which has been staged the most un-Christian war of recorded history and ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... dashed to the ground. Some obscure individual, according to the local press, had produced from his humble cottage garden a marrow weighing thirty-four ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... means of something already known; and a mind so enlarged by contemplation, and inquiry, that it has always many objects within its view, will seldom be long without some near and familiar image through which an easy transition may be made to truths more distant and obscure. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... alphabet, by the Moravian missionaries, about 1733; but at present a modified form of the English alphabet is in use. They had a very definite and curious tribal history, full of strange metaphors and obscure references. It was, according to old authorities, "written in red and black characters, on the skin of a young buffalo," and was read off from this symbolic script by their head-chief, Chekilli, to the English, in 1735, and skin and translation were both sent to London, ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... father, his mother? How had a baby so richly dressed come to be abandoned in a small obscure village outside the walls of Panama, which would have escaped the ravages of the buccaneers on account of its insignificance, had it not lain directly in their backward path. They had destroyed ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... practised navigation, which they must have learned by intercourse with the great island, in which Plato expressly says there were many ships, and carefully constructed harbours. These, in my opinion, are the most probable conjectures which can be formed on this obscure subject of antiquity; more especially as we can derive no lights from the Peruvians, who have no writing by which to preserve the memory of ancient times. In New Spain, indeed, they had certain pictures, which answered in some measure ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... parts one and two (which alone were written in youth) is so choked with images and descriptions as to be almost obscure. It is the story, practically, of a love like that of Paul and Virginia, but the love is not returned by the girl, who prefers the friend of the narrator. Like the hero of Maud, the speaker has a period of madness and illusion; while the third part, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... Coxwel" who built the house, by Cornelius Jansen, dated 1613. The house did not appear remarkable either for size or grandeur; yet there is always something particularly pleasing to me to alight unexpectedly on buildings of this kind, and to find that although they are obscure and unknown, they are on a small scale as interesting to the antiquarian as Knole, Hatfield, and other more famous mediaeval houses. Some lattice windows, evidently at some time out of doors, but now on the inner walls, showed that in more recent times the house had been enlarged, and the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... flowered into achievement, solid, durable, and brilliant. It may be interesting to Americans to recall that his age was nearly the same as that of Farragut when the latter assumed the charge in which, after long years of obscure preparation, he also reaped his harvest of glory. It is likewise worthy of note that this happy selection was made wholly independent of the political bias, which till then had so often and unworthily controlled naval appointments. Jervis belonged to the ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... inner life during these weeks had passed in one obscure continuous struggle—a sort of dull fever of the soul. And she had simply held herself ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Exchange, and the merchants held their meetings in an old building which John Law, the celebrated financier, once occupied. They afterward met in the Palais Royal, and still later, in a comparatively obscure street. The first stone of the Bourse was laid on the 28th of March, 1808, and the works proceeded with dispatch till 1814, when they were suspended. It was completed in 1826. The architect who designed it died when it was half completed, ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... the burden of her maintenance,—she was steadily earning a small independent income by working incessantly at every spare moment snatched from her studies. She worked at all sorts of designs for the most insignificant and obscure cheaply illustrated books and periodicals which cannot exist entirely on old plates excavated from forgotten stores, bought by the thousand at trade sales, procured by transfer from America, or even—now that national costumes are dying ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... shocks. He was awestruck by the appalling suddenness of death and destruction. Daring no inquiry, avoiding those whose faces he dreaded to read, he forsook his former luxurious resorts and almost slunk into the corners of obscure eating-places and cafes ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... brought from behind the centuries and spread before us like a huge map. Whatever meaning lay hidden under the musical theories of the ancients was explained in a clear and conscientious way. Short decisive sentences swept into every obscure corner, and from all sides we saw reflected Professor MacDowell's resolute ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... state of the inquiring soul; the learned man who studies Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, is filled with doubts arising from 'philosophy and vain deceit, profane and vain babblings'; the unlettered mechanic is tried not by logic, but by infernal artillery; the threatenings of God's Word are made to obscure the promises. It is a struggle which, to one possessing a vivid imagination, is attended with almost intolerable agonies—unbelief seals up the door ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... origin of Gaudin de Sainte-Croix was not known: according to one tale, he was the natural son of a great lord; another account declared that he was the offspring of poor people, but that, disgusted with his obscure birth, he preferred a splendid disgrace, and therefore chose to pass for what he was not. The only certainty is that he was born at Montauban, and in actual rank and position he was captain of the Tracy regiment. At the time when this narrative opens, towards the end of 1665, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... From his knowledge of the world, he thought it very probable that a young officer in the French brigade would be well contented to be heir to his brother's fortune, without encumbering himself with an Irish wife, taken from an obscure part of the country. Corny, therefore, eagerly inquired from O'Tara what became of White Connal's property. O'Tara answered, that the common cry of the country was, that all White Connal's profitable ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... a fair, delicate, gentle child. Twelve summers and winters had passed over her little head without a cloud to obscure the sunshine of her life save one—but that one was a terribly dark one, and its shadow lingered over her for many years. When Alice lost her mother, she lost the joy and delight of her existence; and although six years had passed since that awful day, and a fond Christian father had done ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... expressions of approbation, but contain invaluable promises. They are made in the language of the old testament, but to those blessed with gospel light, their meaning is not obscure or difficult. The promise secured the continuance of this family, and a succession of men of piety and virtue in it as long as God's people continued—They should never want a man to stand before the Lord—to serve him. That family had no office at the temple, but in a course of regular devotion, ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... Bible, which Professor Stuart quaintly calls "the good old book," by turning away from "self-evident truths" to receive its instructions? Can these truths be contradicted or denied there? Do we search for something there to obscure their clearness, or break their force, or reduce their authority? Do we long to find something there, in the form of premises or conclusions, of arguing or of inference, in broad statement or blind hints, creed-wise or fact-wise, which may set us free from the light and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... belongings—his books, his manuscripts, opera innumerable. There was room in his portmanteau for everything—now he had no clothes. On the Monday the long nightmare would be over. He would go down to some obscure seaside nook and live very quietly for a few weeks, and gain strength and calm in the soft spring airs, and watch hand-in-hand with Mary Ann the rippling scarlet trail of the setting sun fade across the green waters. Life, no doubt, would be hard enough still. Struggles ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... reflections which none other than a son in such circumstances can conceive, he was lost amidst the obscure alleys of Tottenham Court Yard, when loud and frequent cries recalled his attention. A quantity of smoke, with flashes of light, led him to suppose that they were occasioned by a fire; and a few steps further the awful ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... giddiness incident to his age, he had not tamed his mind to investigation; had not subdued his heart to regular and devout thoughts; that his passions or his indolence had made the truths of religion somewhat obscure, and shut them out, not properly from his conviction, ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... would go again seafaring, and that I would go with him. Up at La Rabida, Fray Juan Perez was kind. I had a cell, I could come and go; he did not tell Palos that here was the Admiral's physician, who knew the Indies from the first taking and could relate wonders. I lived obscure, but in Prior's room, by a light fire, for it was November, he himself endlessly questioned ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... received a further check from the free confidence with which she turned to greet an approaching figure. Longmore distinguished in the fading light a stoutish gentleman, on the fair side of forty, in a high grey hat, whose countenance, obscure as yet against the quarter from which it came, mainly presented to view the large outward twist of its moustache. M. de Mauves saluted his wife with punctilious gallantry and, having bowed to Longmore, asked her several questions ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... microscope, for from between the little lenses are projecting, straight, stiff hairs. As the insect is quite active, it must be that this fringing of the tiny eyelets with hair does not materially obscure its vision. When the minuteness of this singular arrangement is considered, it is surely remarkable. This general hairiness of the female especially, and that about the head, neck, and forward part of the thorax, stands correlated to a beautiful structure found ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... school; so that the fear which is the shadow of sensitive and imaginative natures is turned into the wrong channels, and becomes a mere dread of doing the unpopular and unimpressive thing, or a craven determination not to be found out. And the dread of being obscure and unacceptable is what haunts the minds of boys brought up on these ambitious and competitive lines, rather than the fear which ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... we moved onward down from the hill In the west cloud's murked obscure, And looking back we could see the handpost still In the solitude of ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... what it was, whether man or beast and the dusk only served to make it more obscure. Then the object scrambled up on to the trail and Jim at once recognized the dwarf Mexican with his high-crowned sombrero and his velvet suit richly slashed. With his crooked back and one eye, he was ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... the other to leave Shann and the animals on this island, the island Thorvald had called a starting point in his search for the natives of Warlock? Or had every bit of that tall tale been invented by the Survey officer for some obscure purpose of his own, certainly no sane purpose? Against that logic Shann could only set the carved disk, and he had only Thorvald's word that ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... and that none other may follow on its heels to exercise that new-fledged military skill which the existing quarrel will have produced on the other side of the Atlantic. I have written my book in obscure language if I have not shown that to me social successes and commercial prosperity are much dearer than any greatness that can be won by arms. The Americans had fondly thought that they were to be exempt from the curse of war—at any rate from the bitterness of the ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... all manner of new terrors, if he so much as dared to close an eye; and the presence in the smoking-room, and under an obvious disguise, of the loiterer from Box Court convinced him that he was once more the centre of obscure machinations. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... crown was favoured, for the question is put upon the legitimacy of the original capture; and to confirm this, there is a letter from the Sovereigns to one of their household, from which it may be inferred, though the wording is rather obscure, that they, too, gave up the slaves which had come over ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... page—save perhaps a dismal story or two—in the 609 pages of Pickwick is good; but there are two or three passages which are obscure, if not forced in humour. Witness Mr. Bantam's recognition of Mr. Pickwick, as the gentleman residing on Clapham Green—not yet Common—"who lost the use of his limbs from imprudently taking cold after port wine, who could not be moved in consequence of acute suffering, and who ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... made a bad bet and five thousand dollars was wiped out, a whole year's salary. I tried again, and wiped out five thousand more. I was at my wits' end. I have borrowed under fictitious names, used names of obscure persons as borrowers, have put up dummy security. It was possible because I controlled the audits. But it has done no good. The losses have far outbalanced the winnings and to-day I am in ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... friend, he could have forgiven all else, and placed at her service the full force of his professional power,—even though by doing so he might have lowered himself in men's minds. And what reward did he expect? None. He had formed no idea that the woman would become his mistress. All that was as obscure before his mind's eye, as though she had been nineteen ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... lofty hall, with fitful flashes of red light flickering on the walls, as the flame of the wood fire on the hearth rose or fell beneath the efforts of a half distinguishable figure, extended at full length on the floor, and puffing the enormous log with a pair of gigantic bellows. In the palpable obscure, Jane could scarcely make out the persons of the occupants of the apartment; but when the flame burnt up a little more powerfully than usual, she observed the figure of a tall man dressed in black, who shook hands with Reginald, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... so devoutly to be wished," but it is ambitious to be a potent factor in all the tendencies that make for such a condition of life in the heart of the South. So important is this aim and idea of Tuskegee, that it allows no criticism to affect, interfere, or obscure its vision. Tuskegee says to the world that it is determined not only to be a school, but an agent of civilization, a missionary for a better life, that shall stand for a kindlier relationship between ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... the amount of differentiation of the parts of the same organic being, in the adult state, as I should be inclined to add, and their specialisation for different functions; or, as Milne Edwards would express it, the completeness of the division of physiological labour. But we shall see how obscure this subject is if we look, for instance, to fishes, among which some naturalists rank those as highest which, like the sharks, approach nearest to amphibians; while other naturalists rank the common bony or teleostean fishes as the ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... philosophy, and in the consideration and discussion of a poetical production proceed in a manner that what they intend as an elucidation is only intelligible to philosophers of their own school, while for other people it is far more obscure than the work upon which they intended to throw a light, M. Ampere, on the contrary, shows himself quite practical and popular. Like one who knows his profession thoroughly, he shows the relation between the production and the producer, and judges the different poetical productions as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... August winds blow from the west, carrying sand and dust across the country, which can obscure visibility ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... in that admirable digest of worldly wisdom, The Characters of La Bruyere.] The date of his birth carries us back towards the middle of the fifteenth century, before the times of Ferdinand and Isabella. He was of obscure parent age, and born, as it is said, at Arevalo. For forty years he served in the Italian wars, under the most illustrious captains of the day, Gonsalvo de Cordova, Navarro, and the Colonnas. He was an ensign at the battle of Ravenna; witnessed the capture of Francis the First at Pavia; and followed ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... spent at Covent Garden, devoted to a thorough examination of this vast establishment, from its extensive catacombs to the leads which overlook the panorama of London; persuaded as we are that the public has but an obscure idea of the capital, labour, and ingenuity expended in the production of what is visible to the eye of the audience. Access to the stage during rehearsal is strictly confined to the performers, although that is the least part of the exhibition; but by special favour, we were taken in charge by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... a well-known authority on this subject, asserts that at this date Shakespeare was still one of the company. It is a shadowy trace enough, but in view of the bare outlines of the life and death of this man, whose name is almost universal and whose history is almost completely obscure, we seize on any tiny fact that may help to bring before us so wonderful a personality. That Shakespeare was in Barnstaple, went up and down Boutport Street, the old street that half encircles the town, running "about the port," that he acted ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... near me, why hadn't he waited to see what I would do, where I would go, instead of taking a compartment, carefully reserving it, and trusting to such an unlikely chance as that I might force myself into it with him? Even if the three men had been in some obscure way playing into each others' hands, I could not see how their game had been arranged ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... hatred to the Catholics is very obscure. You will find all that is known in Dean Milman's History of Latin Christianity. A simple explanation may be found in the fact that the Catholics considered the Arians, and did not conceal their opinion, as all literally and actually doomed to the ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... other passage, especially adapted to quick exit in case of danger from the way of the roof, was about as spacious as the first, but much shorter and steeper. It was crooked, moreover,—for a reason doubtless adequate to the architects, but obscure to mere human observers. The exits of both passages were always in open water, no matter how fierce the frosts of the winter, how thick the armour of ice over the surface of the pond. In the neighbourhood of the house were springs bubbling up through the bottom, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... pride, and to aggravate their misery. But happiness is exclusively and unalterably attached to the cultivation of the affections,—to the acquisition of moral excellence;—so that it is equally within the reach of every individual, however obscure, or however talented. Few men can be intellectually great,—fewer still can be rich or powerful; but every man may, if he pleases, be good,—and therefore happy. In choosing the subjects and exercises then for the education of the young, ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... wandering rivers; at which Styx, and the horrid seat of detested Taenarus, and the utmost boundary of Atlas were shaken. The Deity is able to make exchange between the highest and the lowest, and diminishes the exalted, bringing to light the obscure; rapacious fortune, with a shrill whizzing, has borne off the plume from one head, and delights in ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Buchanan's biographers generally attributed the attack to the influence of Cardinal Beaton, the Franciscans, or the Jesuits, and the whole history of Buchanan's residence in Portugal was extremely obscure. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... From his youth he had been schoolmaster at St. Laurent, and it seemed never to have occurred to him that he might claim a more distinguished post. Unconscious of any special self-sacrifice, he told us about his work, heroic through its quiet faithfulness, in that obscure hamlet. He enumerated with pride the various pastors and teachers who had been his scholars—among the former his eldest son, among the latter two of his daughters. Listening to his talk, we understood the intelligence of expression ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... muse does not go about prying into obscure corners, or collecting idle curiosities, but shows her laughing face, and points to her rich treasure—the follies of mankind. She is garlanded and crowned with roses and vine leaves. Her eyes sparkle with delight, and her heart runs ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... explanation, apology, appeal, or even terror from his wife would check his rage and weaken his purpose. His perfect knowledge of the house and the security of its inmates would enable him from some obscure landing or gallery to participate in any secret conclave they might hold in the patio—the only place suitable for so numerous a rendezvous. The absence of light in the few external windows pointed to ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... Rabbis to guard their followers from the influences surrounding them, there is frequent reference, open or implied, to Babylonish practices, to the festivals of the Babylonians, to the images of their gods, to their forms of incantations, and other things besides; but these notices are rendered obscure by their indirect character, and require a commentary that can only be furnished by that knowledge of the times which they take for granted. To this difficulty, there must be added the comparatively late date of the notices, which demands an exercise ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... and more than that, the history of this person is given in the Word of God. He is not a divine being, but a creature. His origin, his work and his final destiny are revealed in the Scriptures. Yet it needs to be stated that much in connection with this person is obscure and that certain facts can only be learned by inference. Questions are often asked concerning this being, which no one can answer. We mean these questions "Why God created such a being, if He knew that he would be His enemy and do ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... through which winds a little brook, with pools and tiny waterfalls, over the great roots of trees. The glen is deep and narrow, and filled with trees; so that, in the summer, it is all in dark shadow. Now, the foliage of the trees being almost entirely of a golden yellow, instead of being obscure, the glen is absolutely full of sunshine, and its depths are more brilliant than the open plain or the mountain-tops. The trees are sunshine, and, many of the golden leaves having freshly fallen, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... Kipling); a dialogue comedy (Mr. Pett Ridge); a panorama of selected landscape, a vision of the sordid street, a record of heroism, a remote tradition or some old belief vitalized by its bearing on our lives to-day, an analysis of an obscure calling, a glimpse at a forgotten quarter ... but one thing it can never be—it can never be ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... very good, good uncle, save that it seemeth somewhat brief and short, and thereby methinketh somewhat obscure and dark. ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... all the glow of his imagination and all the strength of his judgment to believe it? Let us who are seeing the fulfilment of this vision, utter the fervent prayer that no sullen clouds of coldness or estrangement may ever obscure these fair relations, and that the madness of man may never mar the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... he left Port Royal for the college of Harcour, at Paris. When he was twenty-one Louis XIV. was married, and invited every versifier in the kingdom to write in honor of the occasion. Racine was an obscure student and was unknown as a poet. He wrote a poem on the marriage, and it was shown to M. Chapelain, who was the poetical critic of Paris at that time. He thought it showed a good deal of promise and suggested a few ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... marriage and loved glory, and being a popular hero, he was forgiven all his amorous sins, which were by many looked upon as being part of his heroism. His laughable efforts to obscure the facts might have satisfied those who wished to rely on Hamilton's benedictory absolution, had not Nelson and Emma, as I have already said, left behind them incriminating letters and documents which leave no doubt as to what they were to each other. The great ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... praise of the style or conception of the Eryxias. It is frequently obscure; like the exercise of a student, it is full of small imitations of Plato:—Phaeax returning from an expedition to Sicily (compare Socrates in the Charmides from the army at Potidaea), the figure of the ...
— Eryxias • An Imitator of Plato
... our useful toil, Our homely joys and destiny obscure, Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... human race. Unhistorical is the attribute applied to peoples that have not yet broken away, or have not departed very far, from the state of primitive savagery, as, for instance, the barbarous races of Asia and Africa who were the prehistoric ancestors of the Europeans, or the obscure, untutored tribes of the present, like the Tartars and the Kirghiz. Unhistorical peoples, then, are ethnic groups of all sorts that are bereft of a distinctive, spiritual individuality, and have failed to display normal, independent capacity ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... principals; the teachers' institutes to which the poor teacher was forced to pay her scanty dollars. There were bulletins, rules, counter-rules. As she talked, Sommers caught the atmosphere of the great engine to which she had given herself. A mere isolated atom, she was set in some obscure corner of this intricate machine, and she was compelled to revolve with the rest, as the rest, in the fear of disgrace and of hunger. The terms "special teachers," "grades of pay," "constructive ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and imagination on high and hard questions has a right to demand a corresponding closeness of attention, and a right to say with Bishop Butler, in answer to a similar complaint: 'It must be acknowledged that some of the following discourses are very abstruse and difficult, or, if you please, obscure; but I must take leave to add that those alone are judges whether or no, and how far this is a fault, who are judges whether or no, and how far it might have been avoided—those only who will be at the trouble to understand what is here said, ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... not go to the Astor House, notwithstanding the trouble he had taken to ask his way thither. He coasted along the more obscure thoroughfares, seeming to find something congenial in them. Here were people, many of whom had also committed crimes, whose eyes he need not shun to meet, who were his brethren. To be sure, they gave him no ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... more offensive than usual, with reflective eyes as if marking him in order to know him at a future time. As is always the case, it was the smaller officials who were the most offensive—the little Jacks-in-office from the postal administration, the common officers, the hundred obscure civil servants who wear a sword and uniform unworthily in any one of the three European empires. On the other hand, the men in real authority, and notably the officers of the better regiments, sought to conciliate by politeness and a careful retention of themselves ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... was the usual character of these hybrids; and it has suggested itself to my mind as a possibility, which I have not, at present, sufficient data either to prove or to disprove, that the sterility of hybrids in general (still a somewhat obscure subject) may perhaps be partly due to hybridism having a tendency to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... future is obscure as in Petersburg. Berlin is now to the front; I do nothing one way or another; as soon as I have my credentials for Paris in my pocket I will dance and sing. At present there is no talk of London, but all may change ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... if we add a proviso to it—a proviso, to be sure, of no small importance. Hazlitt is always the same when he is not different, when his political or personal ails and angers do not obscure his critical judgment. His uniformity of principle extends only to the two subjects of literature and of art; unless a third may be added, to wit, the various good things of this life, as they are commonly called. He was not so great a metaphysician as he thought himself. ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... title of Helarctos. There is no reason whatever for this inundation of generic names. It has served no good purpose; but, on the contrary, renders the study of natural history more complicated and obscure; and to no family of animals do these remarks more pointedly apply, than to that of the bears. So similar are all these quadrupeds to one another— so perfect is the family likeness between them—that to separate them into different genera is ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... even a message of brotherly pity (which costs nothing), I shall know my last hope is gone. And you, in the lap of luxury, counting your thousands, and monarch of all you survey, will be able to breathe again. Either you will hear of my arrest, or, if my courage befriends me, you may read in an obscure corner of the paper of a wretch, hounded to death, who escaped his pursuers after all, and preferred to die by his own hand rather than that of his brother. ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... the main roads, and all towns, with suspicious care. But sometimes they paused, for food and rest, at the obscure hostel of some scattered hamlet: though, more often, they loved to spread the simple food they purchased by the way under some thick, tree, or beside a stream through whose limpid waters they could watch the trout glide and play. And they often preferred the chance shelter of ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had feared for years had happened. Quintana had found him,—Quintana, after all these years, had discovered the identity and dwelling place of the obscure American soldier who had robbed him in the wash-room of a Paris cafe. And Quintana was now in America, here in this very wilderness, tracking the man who ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... The first was that he lacked the moral courage boldly to do either right or wrong. That explained why, in spite of his talents for impressing people both privately and from the platform, he was at the end of his political career. The second weakness was that he was ashamed of his very obscure and humble origin. He knew that his being "wholly self-made" was a matchless political asset, and he used it accordingly. But he looked on it somewhat as the beggar looks on the deformity he exhibits ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... names, the word "culverin" has a metaphorical meaning. It derives from the Latin colubra (snake). Similarly, the light gun called aspide or aspic, meaning "asp-like," was named after the venomous asp. But these digressions should not obscure the fact that both culverins and demiculverins were highly esteemed on account of their range and the effectiveness of fire. They were used for precision shooting such as building demolition, and an expert gunner could cut out a section of stone wall with these ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... we with them. At times they appear to our eyes to be not quite devoid of life, not entirely deaf to our voice. Not unfrequently the meaning of some sculpture, of some character, of some painting,—till then obscure, unintelligible, puzzling,—all of a sudden becomes clear, easy ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... carried too far, the grotesque imaginings to which great humourists are prone; which lie indeed deep in their nature; and from which they derive their genial sympathy with eccentric characters that enables them to find motives for what to other men is hopelessly obscure, to exalt into types of humanity what the world turns impatiently aside at, and to enshrine in a form for eternal homage and love such whimsical absurdity as Captain Toby Shandy's. But Dickens was too conscious of ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... say," continued the man, "that it is one of the wonders of the world, but that it is the only wonder of the world; since nothing so grand, rich, and magnificent was ever beheld. Certainly you must have come from a great distance, or some obscure corner, not to have heard of it, for it must have been talked of all over the world. Go and see it, and then judge whether I have told you more than the truth." "Forgive my ignorance," replied the African magician; "I arrived here but yesterday, and came from the farthest part of Africa, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... accurately to diagnose a case, there cannot be much doubt as to the appropriateness or not of electrical treatment, and in cases whose origin is obscure, which may be considered practically functional and therefore treated more or less empirically, electricity holds out as much or more hope than any other remedy. Whether electricity should be employed locally or in the form of baths, must depend on the features presented ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... describe how a plain case was, as usual, made obscure by the lawyers, how Acts of Parliament were consulted, how the magistrate doubted, how indignant Alaric's attorney became when it was suggested that some insignificant piece of evidence should be admitted, which, whether admitted or rejected, could ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... concerned, however, viewed the matter in a very different light. To them, this letter, with its obscure half-hints, opened up a chance of solving at last the mystery of their position which had so long oppressed them. They might now perhaps find out who they really were, if only they could follow up this pregnant clue; and the clue ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... intellectual impotence of so-called wise men who think all idealists mere dreamers. Who is the dreamer—the despiser or the upholder of an ideal whose upheavals already have burst through old caste systems, upset old slave systems, wrecked old aristocracies, pushed obscure and forgotten masses of mankind up to rough equality in court and election booth and school, and now are rocking the foundations of old racial and international and economic ideas? The practical applications of this ideal, as, for example, ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... they catch at the first ugly thing they see, and take it for old, because it is new to them, and then usher it pompously into the world, as if they had made a discovery; though they have not yet cleared up a single point that is of the least importance, or that tends to Settle any obscure passage in history. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... aside, in the hope that his fleet pursuers would pass him unseen. A sheer was accordingly given to the boat, and instead of pulling directly toward the land the fugitives inclined to the westward; the sea appearing the most obscure in that direction, on account of the proximity of Capri, This artifice was completely successful. Yelverton was so eager in the chase, that he kept his eyes riveted before him, fancying from time to time that he saw the boat ahead, and he passed within ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... composed of some of the brightest men and most profound thinkers in the State; and it was utterly repudiated and denounced as fallacious and un- Christian in its teachings, and calculated to do inestimable harm. The idea of an obscure woman setting herself up as a reconstructor of the religious faiths of the world! It is simply the height of presumption and absurdity," he concluded, ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... from its depths, circled around the house with a few quick strokes of its wing, and then sped away—a black bolt—in one straight undeviating line towards the paling north. He still gazed into the abyss—half expecting another, even fancying he heard the occasional stir and flutter of obscure life below, and the melancholy call of nightfowl. A long-forgotten fragment of old English verse began ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... prince she heard and saw no more. There were times when she fancied, from oblique and obscure hints, that the Dominican had been aware of Don Juan's disguise and visit. But, if so, that knowledge appeared only to increase the gentleness, almost the respect, which Torquemada manifested towards her. Certainly, since that day, from some cause or ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... comprehended the matter, as after an infinite deal of pains he did, his astonishment knew no bounds. It absolutely struck him speechless, and there he stood in the middle of the little shop, lost to the fact that he was a small grocer on an obscure street. He was the father of Jack, hitherto obliged to go with boys of the neighborhood, not of specially nice families, with manners and aims to match, now—oh, joy!—with a chance for something better, that might ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... hated than Conklin himself was Isaacs. The latter, always fastidious, wore a blue-striped vest, without a coat to obscure it, and about his throat was knotted a flaming vermilion necktie, fastened in place with a diamond stickpin—obviously the spoil of some recent robbery. ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... unknown to him, and instead of a welcome would deserve an unceremonious invitation to betake himself elsewhere forthwith; so, I suppose, in presenting myself before you, my honored Public, it is no more than civil to say something by way of introduction. At least, I have observed from my obscure retreat in the quiet village of Addlebrains, that the fashion in this respect, which has prevailed, certainly, since the time of St. Luke, who commences his Gospel with a preface to Theophilus, has come down to the present day, differing ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... that the divine is in some image in every created thing, but is less and less manifest with the descent over degrees, and still less when a lower degree, parted from the higher by being closed, is also choked with earthy matter. These concepts cannot but seem obscure unless one has read and understood what was shown in the treatise Divine Love and Wisdom about the spiritual sun (nn. 83-172), about degrees (nn. 173-281) and about the creation ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... the slightest injury intended, far indeed from that; and so on!—"people are surprised at its brevity; and, studying it as theologians do a passage of Scripture, can make almost nothing of it. Clear as crystal, says one; dexterously obscure ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Fretful), a playwright, whose dramas are mere plagiarisms from "the refuse of obscure volumes." He pretends to be rather pleased with criticism, but is sorely irritated thereby. Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), noted for his vanity and irritability, was the model of this character.—Sheridan, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... inuisible to anie other, except amongst themselues; which may also be possible in my opinion. For if the deuil may forme what kinde of impressiones he pleases in the aire, as I haue said before, speaking of Magie, why may he not far easilier thicken & obscure so the air, that is next about them by contracting it strait together, that the beames of any other mans eyes, cannot pearce thorow the same, to see them? But the third way of their comming to their conuentions, is, that where in I think them deluded: for some of ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... all-seeing eye, like that of Providence itself, could equally take in a hemisphere at a glance, or examine the private life of any individual. Her boundless influences enveloped kings in their palaces, and relieved the beggar at the monastery gate. In all Europe there was not a man too obscure, too insignificant, or too desolate for her. Surrounded by her solemnities, every one received his name at her altar; her bells chimed at his marriage, her knell tolled at his funeral. She extorted from him the secrets of his life at her confessionals, and punished ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... to conclusions, as the earlier sociologists used to do. Such a case would require careful analysis. Its very uniqueness would suggest that it may not be due to the ordinary causes of hermaphroditism, but might arise from some obscure and unusual cause such as the fusion of two embryos at a very early stage. The biochemistry involved is so intricate and so little understood that any deduction from the known ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... is a thing so great that those who would not take the pains to seek it if it is obscure, should be deprived of it. What do they complain of, then, if it is such that they could find it by ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... own shortcomings. A strange fatality had marked his friendships. He had been no help to Jim; he had brought no happiness to Susy or Mrs. Peyton, whose disagreement his visit seemed to have accented. Thinking over the mysterious attack upon himself, it now seemed to him possible that, in some obscure way, his presence at the rancho had precipitated the more serious attack on Peyton. If, as it had been said, there was some curse upon his inheritance from his father, he seemed to have made others share it with him. He was riding onward abstractedly, ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... conveyed—an aptitude to be so dazzled by the luminousness with which an idea is set forth as to mistake it for the luminousness of the idea itself. The error is one exactly analogous with that which leads the immature poet to think himself sublime wherever he is obscure, because obscurity is a source of the sublime—thus confounding obscurity of expression with the expression of obscurity. In the case of Macaulay—and we may say, en passant, of our own Channing—we assent to what he says too often because we so ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... a blurred line where the ink had run, with only a letter or two distinct at intervals. Then half a blank line, and then, very much blurred and obscure, more resembling a row of blots ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... other reflex symptoms following the correction of optical defects by glasses." In 1874 and 1876 he wrote two articles that "impressed upon the general profession the grave significance of eye strain." Since that time, "in Philadelphia at least, no study of the rebellious cause of headache or of the obscure nervous diseases has ever been considered complete until a careful examination of the eyes has included them as a possible cause of ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... balked of high endeavour and rich experience, by lack of talent and by adverse circumstances; but in the supreme, the crowning experience, that of death and all which, for joy or sorrow, lies beyond it, even the most obscure, the most uncultured and untravelled ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... Mediterranean lands. The process was extended by state aid. Republics or monarchs founded colonies to extend their power or to house their veterans, and the results were equally towns springing up full-grown in southern Europe and, western Asia and even northern Africa. So too in remoter regions. Obscure evidence from China suggests that there also in early times towns were planted and military colonies were sent to outlying regions on somewhat the same methods as were used by ...
— Ancient Town-Planning • F. Haverfield
... philology, I always answer that it is what I work at."[4] Again, in reference to J. G. Droysen's Precis of the Science of History, a certain critic expressed an opinion which was meant to be, and was, a commonplace: "Generally speaking, treatises of this kind are of necessity both obscure and useless: obscure, because there is nothing more vague than their object; useless, because it is possible to be an historian without troubling oneself about the principles of historical methodology which they claim to exhibit."[5] The ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... which also waved lightly over the gilded looking-glass, and was reflected airily therein. Asparagus plumes waved over all the old pictures also. The whole room from this delicate garnishing, the faded green tone of the furniture covers and carpet, from the wall-paper in obscure arabesques of green and satiny white, appeared full of woodland shadows. Miss Camilla, swaying her feather fan, served to set these shadows slowly eddying with a motion of repose. She had dozed in her chair, and her mind had lapsed into peaceful ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... good one and that there were some extremely witty things in it. The jokes were about bishops in gaiters, about garden-parties, about curates or lovely young ladies or rectors' wives and rustics, about Royal Academicians or esthetic poets. Their humor appealed to him as little and seemed as obscure as his ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... obtained what he considered reliable information that they had proceeded in the direction of the Borders, to be married at Gretna Green, a village celebrated as a place where many distinguished and obscure persons have been married by a blacksmith. As the reader already knows, the offended father went in ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... race, therefore, constitutes one of the most obscure, as well as one of the most interesting, chapters of man's development, for during this period not only did he reach true humanity, but his body underwent the greatest physical changes, while the processes of reproduction ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... June I shall go away to an obscure place where I cannot be reached. My mail will be forwarded to me by a gentleman who knows how I feel in relation to the wants and needs of ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... the good ship Clara had dealt her a heavier blow than she at first realized, for the mind suffers from obscure internal injuries as the body does after a great shock. She understood what bitter tragedies threaten the business man no less than the monarch, the warrior, the poet, and the lover, though there has not been many an AEschylos or Euripides or Dante to make poetry of ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the Pacific coast a normal girl, obscure and lovely, makes a quest for happiness. She passes through three stages—poverty, wealth and service—and works out a ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of one of the smallest 'livings' in England,— an obscure, deeply-hidden, but perfectly unspoilt and beautiful relic of mediaeval days, situated in one of the loveliest of woodland counties, and known as the village of St. Rest, sometimes called 'St. Est.' Until quite lately there had been considerable doubt as to the origin of this ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... curious and useful branch of antiquarian research to read the manners and sentiments of an age in its public solemnities and pastimes, we will not leave the church without a wish for a better investigation of an obscure and singular custom, that antient carnival of Leicester, "the riding the George." The horse of this chivalrous saint, which, when the reformation had overthrown the monkish mummeries that so inconsistently blended religion with pastime, was sold for twelve pence, stood at the west end of the ...
— A Walk through Leicester - being a Guide to Strangers • Susanna Watts
... of Nemesis in the Agora stood the tanner Anytos chatting with Thrasybulos, a hitherto obscure but ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... courage, and vowing in my heart that all one man could do to defend him I would do, I felt that he was not altogether a lovable man. He spoke with a sort of superiority which I did not admire, while he seemed to think greatly of himself. I know it sounds like presumption for me, an obscure, ignorant man, to write this, especially when I think of the good he has done; nevertheless, such thoughts came into my mind as I watched him. Perhaps his consciousness of his power over the multitudes ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... distinct, and that the test of a good style is that it seizes on the essential points in which letters differ, and puts aside the flourishes and ornaments which disguise the simple form, we shall see how much a strong influence was needed to prevent writing from becoming obscure and degraded. That influence was found in Charles ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... irrelevant to the critical exposition of this verse; but the consideration may help to clear up an apparently obscure passage in the New Testament, namely, Matt. xvi. 16-19. When Simon made the declaration in verse 16., "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," he might have thought of or expressed the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... to stand in need of them. The part I have acted has been in open day; and to hold out to a conduct which stands in that clear and steady light for all its good and all its evil, to hold out to that conduct the paltry winking tapers of excuses and promises,—I never will do it. They may obscure it with their smoke, but they never can illumine sunshine by such a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Department seems to have been to make details and bookkeeping a secondary consideration. The names of all, their organizations and officers were faithfully kept, but distinctions between whites and blacks were very obscure. Until the complete historical records of the Government are compiled, it will be impossible to ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... done was to bring the game to a close. His opponent had made his move, and concentrating on the game, Phil saw an obscure move, which, once made, would give his opponent the game. Without further hesitation, he made it, and the other player seized the advantage and won ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... hammered, and stethoscoped, and punched, and holding my breath till I was purple, and hopping on one leg, he said I was a very obscure case ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... thinking of a legend," he said. "I don't remember whether I have read it somewhere or heard it, but it is a strange and almost grotesque legend. To begin with, it is somewhat obscure. A thousand years ago a monk, dressed in black, wandered about the desert, somewhere in Syria or Arabia. . . . Some miles from where he was, some fisherman saw another black monk, who was moving slowly over the surface of a lake. ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... we have made the American people conscious of their interrelationship and their interdependence. They sense a common destiny and a common need of each other. Differences of occupation, geography, race and religion no longer obscure the nation's fundamental unity in thought and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... hospitality—were all brought to the hammer for payment of a tailor's bill for gewgaws to grace a court pageant; and the nominal inheritor of the wide domains and honours of his lordship's house, is an obscure and useless, though good-natured dependent upon Hebrew usurers and Gentile pettifoggers—a mere cumberer of the ground—a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... to act as so many persisting and unadjusted stimulus-ideas. These are embodied in the feeling we now have, that a summary should be made of what has gone before concerning the Scratch-Reflex dream and the various methods of interpreting it. Thus, our "unfinished feeling" represents in itself an obscure demand for a resolution of the unadjusted; it corresponds to that inner compulsion which operates upon the imperfect consciousness of the dreamer, or upon the mentality of any person seeking the solution of a problem or "perplex," either asleep, or awake—as I trust ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... said Paul. "Great things grow out of little ones. Such a land as this is sure to have a great population some day and what we five do now, obscure and few as we are, may help to decide what that ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... San Francisco of 1849; very different from that it is to-day, and equally unlike what it was twelve months before the aforesaid date, when the obscure village of Yerba Buena yielded up its name, along with its site, entering on what may be ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... thronged with men who believe in themselves. Of Francis it is far truer to say that the secret of his success was his profound belief in other people, and it is the lack of this that has commonly been the curse of these obscure Napoleons. Francis always assumed that everyone must be just as anxious about their common relative, the water-rat, as he was. He planned a visit to the Emperor to draw his attention to the needs of "his little sisters the larks." He ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... but a limited influence. Again, the poetry of Robert Browning, though less frankly altruistic than that of Cowper or Wordsworth, is inherently ethical, and reveals strong sympathy with sinning and suffering humanity, but it is masked by a manner that is sometimes uncouth and frequently obscure. Owing to these, and other instances, idealism suggests to the world at large a vague sentimentality peculiar to the poets, a bloodless abstraction toyed with by philosophers, which must remain a closed ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... you like, is simply shifting the question. Let it be the medium or myself that discovers the unknown personality in the object or tracks it across time and space: all that we do is to widen the scope of our riddle, while leaving it no less obscure. Nevertheless, there is some interest in knowing whether we have to do with a general faculty latent in all men or an inexplicable privilege reserved to rare individuals. The exceptional should always be eliminated, if possible, and not left to hang over ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... so much flattered at being treated like a reasonable being, and Dr. Downie, who was chief spokesman, played his part so discreetly, without attempting to obscure even the most compromising issues, that though his Majesty made some show of displeasure at first, it was plain that he was heartily enjoying the ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... many men, as we must all know, without the Church, who are doing their best to fight their way to God; and orthodoxy is supposed to pass a cruel condemnation on these, because they have not assented to some obscure theory, their rejection or ignorance of which has plainly stained neither their lives nor hearts. And of orthodoxy under certain forms this is no doubt true; but it is not true of the orthodoxy of Catholicism. There is no point, probably, connected with this question, ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... 1840, those who tried to read its first pages declared they were incomprehensible. It seems that critics in those days had either less intelligence than we have, or were more impatient and less attentive, for not only Sordello but even In Memoriam was said to be exceedingly obscure. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... content to collect their prey only in obscure and little-known regions, for a chance was seen to commercialize the small birds of the forests and fields. Warblers, Thrushes, Wrens, in fact all those small forms of dainty bird life which come about the home to cheer the hearts of men and women and gladden the eyes of little children, ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... from, cold in the head. It is characterised by early and marked debility and depression; though usually of short duration, attacks must not be disregarded; fatal results often ensue on carelessness. Convalescence is slow, and complications may ensue. The cause of the malady is obscure; sporadic cases always occur, but from time to time great epidemics of this disease have travelled westward over the world. Their movement seems to depend on atmospheric conditions, but is independent of the season of the year and often ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... object of desire to all things, so far it appears to be in a certain respect indigent of the things to which it is related. It has therefore, if it be lawful so to speak, an ultimate vestige of indigence, just as on the contrary matter has an ultimate echo of the unindigent, or a most obscure and debile impression of the one. And language indeed appears to be here subverted. For so far as it is the one, it is also unindigent, since the principle has appeared to subsist according to the most unindigent ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... the queen, "this case is different from that of the adventurer Neal. The rank of her husband would be sufficient to permit us to draw a veil over the obscure birth ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... bones. The deformity sometimes consists in a lateral deviation of the nose, but more frequently in flattening of the bridge—traumatic saddle nose. Within a few hours of the injury the swelling is often so great as to obscure the nature of the deformity and to render the diagnosis difficult. Subcutaneous emphysema is not a common symptom; when it occurs, it is usually due to the patient forcing air into the connective tissue while blowing his nose. The lateral cartilages may be separated from the nasal ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... Bowring's case. She could remember everything and everybody in her life. But her father was not in her memories, and there was a little motionless grey cloud in the place where he should have been. He had been a soldier, and had been killed in an obscure skirmish with black men, in one of England's obscure but expensive little wars. Death is always very much the same thing, and it seems unfair that the guns of Balaclava should still roar "glory" while ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... limitations in spite of their money, must ascribe it privately if not publicly to other potencies than their own. These cathedral tours de force, however, do not, if the truth be told, convince like the miracles of the obscure ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... it, that darkness should so obscure us, that America with all her transcending glory, should be stigmatized with the infamous reproach of oppression, and ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... of wings. Queer glowing balls of yellow connected with obscure, shadowy figures stared at him. The wings winnowed the air, and again he ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... glad. In the morning I arose with the lark; and at night I slept where the sunset overtook me.... My first day's journey brought me at evening to a village, whose name I have forgotten, situated about eight leagues from Orleans. It is a small, obscure hamlet, not mentioned in the guide-book, and stands upon the precipitous banks of a deep ravine, through which a noisy brook leaps to turn the ponderous wheel of a thatch-roofed mill. The village inn stands upon the highway; but the village itself ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... drenched victim crawls out. Morning after morning the chief man of the realm visits the boxing-saloon, and learns to batter the faces and ribs of other noble gentlemen. We hear of visits paid by royalty to an obscure Holborn tavern, where, after noisy suppers, the fighting-men were wont to roar their hurricane choruses and talk with many blasphemies of by-gone combats. Think of that succession of ugly and foul sports compared with ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... Memories, and only memories, weave the web of our dreams. They are "such stuff as dreams are made on." Often we do not recognize them. They may be very old memories, forgotten during waking hours, drawn from the most obscure depths of our past, or memories of objects we have perceived distractedly, almost unconsciously, while awake. They may be fragments of broken memories, composing an incoherent and unrecognizable whole. In a waking state our memories ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... invasion of necessity and of baseness. There are noble and mysterious triumphs, which no eye sees, which no renown rewards, which no flourish of trumpets salutes. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battle-fields, which have their heroes,—heroes obscure, but sometimes greater than those who become illustrious. The Mason should struggle in the same manner, and with the same bravery, against those invasions of necessity and baseness, which come to nations as well as to men. He should meet them, too, foot to foot, even in the darkness, and protest ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the issue of his anti-Christian decree at Hakata, Hideyoshi maintained a tolerant demeanour. But in 1597, his forbearance was changed to a mood of uncompromising severity. Various explanations have been given of this change, but the reasons are obscure. "Up to 1593 the Portuguese had possessed a monopoly of religious propagandism and oversea commerce in Japan. The privilege was secured to them by agreement between Spain and Portugal and by a papal bull. But the Spaniards in Manila had long looked with somewhat jealous eyes on this Jesuit ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... blindly led, and others run, And make both haste and speed to be undone; This alters not the Case in any wise, But that a Man sometimes may get a Prize, If some be wanton in obscure Nookes, And Ape the Saint, by framing modest Looks; Deceive the Husband, with her cunning Wiles, And cheat his Senses with her feigned smiles, These (I confess,) are hardships to be born, And worse to think ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... Espaa maintain in the seas of the Orient, in order to oppose them to the numerous enemies who are trying to overthrow our power in those seas, and have the desire to end it, one would believe that they were directed with especial purpose to weaken and obscure that power, and thereby to extinguish the best and most creditable [finest—MS.] military post that this great monarchy possesses outside of Europa. And inasmuch as the matter pertains not only to the conservation of those vassals, but also to the general subject of your ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... outlet of the lake; and ere it was dark she was running through the narrow channels on her way to the long-sought station. At nine o'clock, however, Cap insisted that they should anchor; for the maze of islands became so complicated and obscure, that he feared, at every opening, the party would find themselves under the guns of a French fort. Jasper consented cheerfully, it being a part of his standing instructions to approach the station under such circumstances as would prevent the men from obtaining any very accurate notions ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... van of a pack, or perhaps merely a few unleashed as scouts to others held in reserve; for no more were seen or heard for sometime. Meanwhile, Mr. Huertis seems to have struck out a brilliant scheme. He collected his whole party into that obscure branch of the cavern, near its entrance, which has been described as a depository of animal bones, and ordering them to sling their rifles at their backs, bade them stand ready with their knives. Almost instantly, they observed a party of ten dismounted natives, in scarlet ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... same time that the horseman left Lieursaint for Paris, the Lyons mail arrived there from Paris, and changed horses. It was about half-past eight, and the night had been obscure for some time. The courier, having charged horses and taken a fresh postilion, set forth to traverse the long forest of Senart. The mail, at this epoch, was very different from what it is at present. It was a simple ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... member of the household who could touch him with impunity, and toward Craven his attitude was a curious mixture of hatred and fear. To Mouston—her only confidant—she whispered now the new projects she had formed during the last two solitary days for a better understanding of the obscure mind that had hitherto baffled her, for a further endeavour to break through the barrier existing between them. To speak, if only to a dog, was relief and she was too engrossed to notice the sound the poodle's quick ears caught directly. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... acts of another person, since there is no personality. The 'I' that was and the 'I' that is represent in the chain of transitory being aggregations momentarily created by acts and thoughts; and the pain belongs to the aggregates as condition resulting from quality." All this sounds extremely obscure: to understand the real theory we must put away the notion of personality, which is a very difficult thing to do. Successive births do not mean transmigration in the common sense of that word, but only the self-propagation of [226] Karma: the perpetual multiplying of certain ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... number of ladies in blue dresses adorned with large white crosses, who, regardless of the present shortage of nurses, were visiting every home in the place on some mission of invitation whose details remained obscure. So far as I was able to elucidate this project, it was in the nature of a magic incantation; a satisfactory end of the war was to be brought about by convergent prayer and religious assiduities. The mission was shy of dealing with me personally, although as a lapsed ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... black cloud of legitimacy is suspended over the world, save only one bright spot, which breaks out from the political hemisphere of the West, to enlighten and animate and gladden the human heart. Obscure that by the downfall of liberty here, and all mankind are enshrouded in a pall of universal darkness. To you, Mr. Chairman, belongs the high privilege of transmitting, unimpaired, to posterity the fair character ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... confined to the genus if the difference be removed, the substance of the genus cannot remain the same: for the same animal nature does not remain, if another kind of soul constitute the animal. Hence it is impossible for the identical knowledge, which was previously obscure, to become clear vision. It is therefore evident that, in heaven, nothing remains of faith, either identically or specifically the same, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... surrounded him with a number of men who, being for the most part of obscure birth, have no sympathy with John of Gaunt's faction, and ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... occasionally did in literature, though in saner moments he felt how impossible this was. Beyond a reference from Mr. Hubbell to some piece of March's which had happened to meet his eye, no one in the management ever gave a sign of consciousness that their service was adorned by an obscure literary man; and Mr. Hubbell himself had the effect of regarding the excursions of March's pen as a sort of joke, and of winking at them; as he might have winked if once in a way he had found him a little ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... most interesting of the archaeological remains are the coins which are found in great abundance on the frontier and all over the Panjab. These take us back through the centuries to times before the invasion of India by Alexander, and for the obscure period intervening between the Greek occupation of the Frontier and the Muhammadan conquest, they are our main source of history. The most ancient of the Indian monetary issues are the so-called punch-marked coins, some of which were undoubtedly in existence ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... the limits he had prescribed to himself. His decent lodging alone costs him a great part of his revenue, and obliges him to be strictly parsimonious of the rest. This drives him to associate chiefly with his own countrymen, to dine at obscure coffee-houses, and pay his court to opera-dancers. He sees, indeed, our theatres, our public walks, the outside of our palaces, and the inside of churches: but this gives him no idea of the manners of the people in superior life, or even of easy fortune. Thus he goes home, and asserts to his untravelled ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Only the name of one obscure epigrammatist has been embalmed for us in the verses of ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... imagined this to myself, and at once there came into my mind people, all people I knew, who had been slowly done to death by their nearest relations. I remembered the tortured dogs, driven mad, the live sparrows plucked naked by boys and flung into the water, and a long, long series of obscure lingering miseries which I had looked on continually from early childhood in that town; and I could not understand what these sixty thousand people lived for, what they read the gospel for, why they prayed, why they read books and magazines. What ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... enemy's calculations; and Selkirk utterly discounted ours by sending his hardy, dare-devil De Meurons across country under the leadership of that prince of braggarts, Captain D'Orsonnens. Indeed, we had only heard the rumor of their coming, when we awakened one morning after an obscure, stormy night to find them encamped at St. James, westward on the Assiniboine River. Day after day the menacing force remained quiet and inoffensive, and we began to look upon these notorious ruffians as harmless. For our part, vigilance was not lacking. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... in the thirteenth century, obscure and plebeian in the middle of the fourteenth, and wealthy bankers and leaders of the democratic party at its close, culminated in the early part of the fifteenth in the person of Cosmo. The Pater Patriae,—so called, because, having at last absorbed all the authority, he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... white across the track. They were silent, having, in sooth, very little to say to each other just at this time. Vixen was nursing her wrathful feelings; Rorie felt that his future was confused and obscure. He ought to do something with his life, perhaps, as his mother had so warmly urged. But his soul was stirred by no ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... great, in a way, was still his power over her, that there were moments when she almost believed in the illusion he created. She had committed some grave fault. She was not worthy of his trust. Somewhere, at some time forgotten, in some obscure and secret way, she ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... of retiring, to which I had been looking forward with considerable interest as one likely to bring fresh surprises, arrived at last: it brought only extreme discomfort. I was conducted (without a flat candlestick) along an obscure passage; then, at right angles with the first, a second broader, lighter passage, leading past a great many doors placed near together. These, I ascertained later, were the dormitories, or sleeping-cells, and were placed side by side in a ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... family has grown since 1911 to three members which for lack of better names are now called vitamines "A," "B," and "C." There are now rumors of another arrival and none dare predict the limits of the family. Had these new substances been limited to their relation to an obscure oriental disease they would have of course commanded the medical attention but it is doubtful whether the general public would have found it worth while to concern themselves. It is because on better acquaintance they have compelled us ...
— The Vitamine Manual • Walter H. Eddy
... with is that magical one when South Africa unnoted and obscure was startled from the simplicity of her bucolic life by the discovery of gold and diamonds. This was, of course, some years before the fountains of her boundless potential wealth had become fully unsealed. I was one of that band of light-hearted, haphazard pioneers who, rejoicing in youthful ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... histories of the universe; in the knowledge of which the Atlantians seem to have instructed their brethren the Herculeans. The Grecians, in their accounts, by putting one person for a people, have rendered the history obscure; which otherwise would be very intelligible. There is a passage in Eusebius, which may be rendered very plain, and to the purpose, if we make use of the clue above-mentioned. [208][Greek: Herodotos de legei ton Eraklea mantin kai phusikon genomenon para Atlantos tou Barbarou tou ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... that change is going on, then the way to deliverance is neither difficult nor obscure. It does not lie in the direction of crushing anybody. It lies in the taking of certain determinations, and the embodying of them in ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson
... were called for. The state of aimlessness in hot perplexity demands a show of action. Whither to go first was as obscure as what to do. Diana said of the Englishman's hat and coat, that she supposed they were to make him a walking presentment of the house he had shut up behind him. A shot of the eye at the glass confirmed the likeness, but with a ruefully wry-faced repudiation ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to him that I take an Interest in him, even though he is the Offspring of an Obscure and Ignorant Workingman, while I am probably the Grandest Thing that ever Swept up the Boulevard. I must go now, but I will Return. Next time I come I hope to hear that your Husband has stopped Drinking and is very Happy. Tell ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... Artillery—he was president of my second court- martial—came up, in company with a lady, and ordered my brother and sister to get up and let him have their camp-stools, and he actually took away the camp-stools and left them standing, while a different kind of a gentleman—an 'obscure citizen,' with no aristocratic West Point dignity to boast of—kindly tendered his ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... terraces diversity its interior slopes; but it is the mysterious bright rays that chiefly surprise us. When the sun rises on Tycho, these streaks are utterly invisible; indeed, the whole object is then so obscure that it requires a practised eye to recognise Tycho amidst its mountainous surroundings. But as soon as the sun has attained a height of about 30 deg. above its horizon, the rays emerge from their obscurity and gradually ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... scaffolding of the tale had been put together. But the question of treatment was as usual more obscure. We had long been at once attracted and repelled by that very modern form of the police novel or mystery story, which consists in beginning your yarn anywhere but at the beginning, and finishing it anywhere but at the end; attracted by its peculiar interest when done, and the peculiar difficulties ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that in this my endeavour to be clear and plain, to follow the threads of every thought to the very ends, and to place the web of every argument clearly and fully before my readers, I have always been successful. Several of the subjects treated in these essays are, no doubt, obscure and difficult: but there is no subject, I believe, in the whole realm of human knowledge, that cannot be rendered clear and intelligible, if we ourselves have perfectly mastered it. And now while the two last volumes of my edition of the Rig-veda are passing through the press, I thought the time ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... and a young man of obscure birth—wholly uneducated, and, generally speaking, a savage, though a harmless one," said the lady, returning to the charge. "Now, Redbud, you cannot fail to perceive that it is impossible for you ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... departure from France. Then people saw, at last, where all the golden schemes that had flooded upon popular credulity had borne us;—not to the smiling and fertile shores of Prosperity and Confidence, as may be imagined; but to the bleak rocks and dangerous sands of Ruin and Mistrust, where dull clouds obscure the sky, and where there is no protection ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... she chirped, "and, do you know, I am afraid it is rather demoralizing in its effects on young people. No, of course, I didn't think of bringing the children, Mr. Charteris—Shakespeare's language is not always sufficiently obscure, you know, to make that safe. And besides, as I so often say to Mr. Rabbet, it is sad to think of our greatest dramatist having been a drinking man. It quite depressed me all through the play to think of him hobnobbing with Dr. Johnson at the ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... tongue, and every heart, a hymn for the longevity of Wucics and Petronievitch. "The solemn song for many days" is the expressive title of this sublime chant. This hymn is so old that its origin is lost in the obscure dawn of Christianity in the East, and so massive, so nobly simple, as to be beyond the ravages of time, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... and posted his letter, taking care to word it so that it would be hard for anyone except Colonel Throckmorton to understand it. And, even after having purposely made the wording rather obscure, he put it into code. And, after that, he thought of still another precaution that might be wise. "We won't need the credentials we've got in there tonight, Dick," he said. "Nor our copies of the ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... doorway below had frightened her. He had been so uncompromising in his ugliness. The shock of her awakening had been rudely unexpected, and had bewildered her with its brutal significance. She was a prisoner in this Turkish house, in an obscure quarter of a half Oriental town, and night was imminent, a night which seemed to possess untold possibilities for evil. What was to happen? Why had not Captain Goritz returned? Enemy though she now knew him to be, even Goritz was a refuge in this perilous ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... the grounds of this maxim, not to go beyond the evidence, not to distribute a term that is given as undistributed, it is one of the things so plain that to try to justify is only to obscure them. Still, we must here state explicitly what Formal Logic assumes to be contained or implied in the evidence afforded by any proposition, such as 'All S is P.' If we remember that in chap. iv. Sec. 7, it was assumed that every ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the honest mate were open to a reasoning which the reader may find a little obscure: for his mind contained a sort of chart of the ocean, to which he could at any time refer, with a proper discrimination between the various winds, and all the different points of the compass. When properly ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... themselves upon the attention of the moose. They appreciated too well the fury of her mother wrath, the swiftness and deadliness of the stroke of her knife-edged forehooves. They were not going to let their curiosity obscure their discretion, you may be sure, like some of the childish deer and antelope ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... made to stand out with undue distinctness, and though the vowels should not be distorted into a wrong form, they should be obscured. In "gentlemen," for example, the "e" is, according to the dictionary, an "obscure" vowel, and the word is pronounced almost as "gentlem'n,"—not "gentlemun," of course, but not "gentlemen." The fault in such forms is more easily avoided by throwing a sharp accent on the accented syllable, letting the other syllables ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... experiment, I had supposed that every man, whose wealth or power gave him influence in society, would start up, the moment it was known that an obscure individual, the usher of a school, had written a tragedy; not only to protect and produce it to the world, but to applaud and honour the author! Would secure him from the possibility of want, load him with every token of respect, and affectionately clasp him to their bosom! The indifference ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... he had not waited for her to succeed before discovering how charming she was; and, in fact, their liaison had begun when she was making an obscure first appearance at the Odeon in a revival ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... Russian army was regaining power and receiving adequate munitions. The captures of Erzerum and Trebizond were a warning that deserved, but did not earn, attention in Berlin and the British failure and surrender at Kut-el-Amara served to obscure the Eastern situation. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... mounting on a camel, offered to guide us on our way during the night. It is no easy matter at any time, even for the Arabs, to find the way in a direct line across the boundless Desert; and when clouds obscure the stars, it is almost impossible without a compass. The old recluse, on seeing white strangers, cast a look of disgust and disdain at us, expressing his surprise that any true believers should allow infidel Nazarenes to remain in their company. ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... other's sorrows, and each other's fears. And now, child of my heart, be happy if you can. Let nothing of gloom, of suffering, or of bitterness, be connected with my thoughts of you; let no cloud ever obscure your spotless character; let your name never be pronounced but with blessings; your presence never be hailed but with joy. Then, when in absence, I call to mind your loved features, your proud smile, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... number of books in its library is 2,630. The number of its books relating to the fine arts is 233. The number of its art illustrations is 3,284. Still it has no convenient rooms for its books, pictures, casts. They are highly valuable, but are scattered in different and obscure places. It has a good cabinet of specimens illustrating conchology. Where is the cabinet? A large part of it I have never seen. It is kept in the boxes in which it was sent to the academy. Where is the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... all time study with advantage the acts of such obscure and almost forgotten men as these. For, through them, Napoleon was now teaching the world that a fortified place might be made stronger than any had hitherto suspected. That he should turn round and teach, on the other hand, ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... politicians, corruption. I, think that, by holding the subjects of your majesty in pay, he trespasses upon the royal prerogative, and cannot, if this continues so, be long in placing your majesty among the weak and the obscure." ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... chair and gradually the others settle themselves; FARRANT seeking an obscure corner. But there follows an uncomfortable silence, which O'CONNELL at ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... In the blackness of the hazy light from the sky, and the vague tossing of the candle behind him, he saw that the hammock in which Frank so often lay was tenanted. A gleam of white shirt was there, as if a man sitting up in it, but across that there was an obscure dark shadow, and as he approached the acrid odor grew ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... Raymount's utterance may perhaps seem obscure to a better thinker. He concluded merely that his host was talking for talk's sake, so talking rubbish. The girl came in again, and the conversation dropped. Mr. Raymount went to his writing, Vavasor toward the piano. Willing to please Cornelius, whom he almost regarded ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... results to civilization. Of these the principal were gunpowder, the mariner's compass, and printing by movable types. Gunpowder was not first made by Schwartz, a monk of Freiburg, as has often been asserted. We have notices, more or less obscure, of the use of an explosive material resembling it, among the Chinese, among the Indians in the East as early as Alexander the Great, and among the Arabs. It was first brought into use in firearms in the middle of the fourteenth century. The effect was to ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... would add nothing, my Lord, to the fame with which your genius has surrounded you, for an unknown and obscure individual to express his admiration of it. I had rather be numbered with those who wish and pray, that 'wisdom from above,' and 'peace,' and 'joy,' may enter such ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... in large part made up the passenger list, since her beauty was her one endowment for the position in the great world which all her life she had intended and expected to occupy. She was anxious, therefore, to know whether the personal appearance which had been rated so high in the obscure places hitherto known to her would or would not hold its own when she got out into life, ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... the inscrutable and mysterious union existing between matter and mind, or to endeavour to point out the manner in which the body influences the mind, and the mind the body. Such subjects we do not think to be legitimate objects of inquiry. The medical philosopher is engaged in less obscure and less uncertain researches; he does not attempt to solve the question regarding the intimate union subsisting between the natural and intellectual portions of our nature, but he wisely confines himself ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... "An obscure village in Pennsylvania," he explained with dignity, "where your wood and your river will likely have definite ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... the Fortune told disappears. The Fortune-teller no longer possesses the singleness of mind or purpose necessary to a clear reading of the symbols he or she consults. The amount of the fee is the first consideration, and this alone is sufficient to obscure the mental vision and to bias the judgment. This applies to the very highest and most conscientious of Fortune-tellers—persons really adept at foreseeing the future when no taint of monetary reward intervenes. The greater number, however, of so-called Fortune-tellers ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... forms themselves are but partially shaded, yet wonderful harmony and beauty pervade the whole. All honor to Nai Dang! who alone, amid the national decay of art and culture, preserved this germ of glorious life and strength, wrapped in his own obscure, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... in immediate connection with this enlarged view of universal immutable natural order that I have regarded the narrow notions of those who obscure the sublime prospect by imagining so unworthy an idea as that of occasional interruptions in the physical economy ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... was not sorry to be left to himself in his utter bewilderment! Flo, separated from her detrimental uncle, and placed in a convent school! Tarbox, the obscure pioneer, a shrewd speculator emerging into success, and taking the uncle's place! And all this within that month which he had wasted with absurd repinings. How feeble seemed his own adventure and advancement; how even ludicrous his pretensions to any patronage and superiority. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... "the Divine commission to exterminate the Manchus, and to possess the empire as its true sovereign"; and, as it was also at this time that his followers became commonly known as Taepings, it may be noted that the origin of this name is somewhat obscure. According to the most plausible explanation it is derived from the small town of that name, situated in the southwest corner of the province of Kwangsi, where the rebel movement seems to have commenced. Another derivation ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... sparkling with pleasure, brighter than the rich jewels which covered her raiment, her cheeks suffused with the blushes of maidenhood. No one had, he thought, ever seen so much beauty before. As the silver moon obscures the light of the stars by its superior splendour, so did Kriemhild obscure the beauty of the ladies who surrounded her. When he beheld her each hero drew himself up more proudly than ever and appeared as if ready to do battle for such a paragon of beauty. She was preceded by chamberlains in rich attire, but no ushers might keep back the knights from sight of her, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Schermerhorn. I, in common with the rest of the world, had imagined him anchored safely in Philadelphia, immersed in chemical research. Here he bobbed up at the other end of the continent, making shady bargains with obscure shipping captains, and paying a big premium for absolute secrecy. It ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to the worship of the human knowledge. Man must die in the body, but in his knowledge he was immortal. Such, somewhere, was her belief, quite obscure and unformulated. She believed in the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... trained eye, in the complexion and features of those that occupy them. So in the vegetable world—the bright and endlessly varied hues of flowers, and their sweet perfumes—even their very production—depend on sunlight. In obscure light plants grow lanky and become pale and feeble. They seldom produce flowers, and uniformly fail to ripen their seeds. In even partial darkness the green hue of their foliage gradually pales and disappears, and new growths, when they appear, are ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... charming visit from Sir Henry Taylor a few days ago, a long quiet real "crack" about many books and many authors, with a little touch of the events of the day-change of Ministry, causes of our utter defeat, which he thinks obscure, so do I—not creditable to the country, so do I—in so far as Disraeli can hardly be reckoned more trustworthy or consistent than Gladstone, and Gladstone's untrustworthiness and inconsistency are supposed to have caused his overthrow. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... having made his meaning clear. As I have written elsewhere of Tristan, "Wagner's consummate dramatic art, stage-craft and knowledge of stage effect have combined to make all clear as the day"; but the commentators have rushed in with their comments between the stage and the audience only to obscure everything and bamboozle people who are at least as capable as themselves of understanding the drama. The platitudes read into Tristan are of two sorts, truisms and lying commonplaces. To take one of the latter ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... themselves along to the brook, trembling with hope and fear; then entered the obscure path, a little reanimated by the soft twittering of Pensive. The sun had set; they walked in the twilight for some hours, and, when the moon rose, they were out of danger. They had still to journey over a painful and dangerous ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... the day were doing, and a number of artists who would live out their lives in obscurity, so that some day in the future some journalist might have the glory of discovering them and posing as their friend—and the little army of industrious and obscure men of learning who, without ambition and careless of their fame, were building stone by stone the greatness of the past history of France, or, being vowed to the musical education of the country, were preparing ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... the already glanced at group of Arthur's sisters or half-sisters, left mere sketches and hints, but most interesting. Not to be tedious, we need not dwell on Palomides, a very promising Lancelot unloved; on Lamoracke, left provokingly obscure, but shadowing a most important possibility in the unwritten romance of one of those very sisters; Bors, of whom Tennyson has made something, but not enough, in the later Idylls; and others. But it is probably unnecessary ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... celebrated traveller, and that European whom the savages of New France have most honored, left a description of this game in his manuscript Memorial. I would gladly have inserted it here but it is so obscure that it is nearly unintelligible." Charlevoix admits that he could understand nothing of the game, except as played by two persons in its simplest form and adds that he was told that "there was as much of art as of ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... ladder and sliding gently down, gradually losing not only the hope of finding a situation to suit me, but also relinquishing my previous strong faith in my own wonderful merits. I was ready to give it up as a bad job, and go and tell my uncle I must decline all his kind suggestions, when, in an obscure corner of one paper, my ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... of Captains, and of Kings, Of cities founded, Commonwealths begun, For my mean pen are too superior things: Or how they all, or each their dates have run Let Poets and Historians set these forth, My obscure Lines shall not so dim ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... scarcely have been the author; for he was then at the height of a vicious and ephemeral popularity; and any book, however trashy, with his name to it, would have been sure to sell. This "Life in Paris" was very probably the work of some obscure hack, who, when he was describing the "eccentric characters in the French metropolis," may not impossibly have been vegetating in the Rules of the King's Bench Prison. But crafty Mr. Cumberland, to insure the success of his enterprise, secured the services ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the most mobile portions of the earth's crust."[1] Whether the movements attending mountain elevation and denudation are a connected and integral part of those wide geographical changes which result in submergence and elevation of large continental areas, is an obscure and complex question. We seem, indeed, according to the views of some authorities, hardly in a position to affirm with certainty that such widespread movements of the land have actually occurred, and that the phenomena are not the outcome of fluctuations of oceanic ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... Marguerite stood, stunned and appalled by the Marquis de Valorsay's audacity, and by the language of this letter, which was at once so obscure and so clear, every line of it threatening her future. The reality surpassed her worst apprehensions, but realizing the gravity of the situation, she shook off the torpor stealing over her. She felt that every second was precious, and that she must act, and act at ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... discipline. There were for three centuries severe wars, especially on the banks of the Rhine and of the Danube, where Romans fought fierce barbarians in a swampy country, uncultivated, covered with forests and bogs. The imperial army exhibited, perhaps, as much bravery and energy in these obscure wars as the ancient Romans in the conquest ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... The informer has sometimes been directed to carry it fair towards his accomplices, and to let the evil design come to full maturity. As soon as his work is done, he is generally snatched from the public gaze, and sent to some obscure village or to some remote colony. The use of spies, even to this extent, is in the highest degree unpopular in England; but a political spy by profession is a creature from which our island is as free as it is from wolves. In France the race is well-known, and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and sixpence a head. As this method of earning a livelihood did not allow him to sojourn long in one place—which, indeed, was far from his desire—he spent a great part of his time upon the cheaper seats of obscure country vehicles. He delighted in this life of perennial transience, and enjoyed painting the portraits which justified it; and was, on the whole, one of the happiest ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ill, though not seriously. Mary Ann volunteered to nurse the old lady. It must now be evident that Mary Ann was a 'carrier' of an obscure sort of intestinal fever, because soon after her appearance in her mother's place the old ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... slightly paler, more set and determined, not unlike that of a man, who, strongly assailed, has made up his mind to do battle to the end. With whom? How many? He might put out his hand, clench it; the thin air made no answer. He regarded the shadows now; they seemed to wave around him, intangible, obscure. A dark day in town, the streets were oppressive; the people below passed like poorly done replicas of themselves; the rattle of the wheels resembled a ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... to the light of his own lanthorn he saw nothing. Presently he heard another splash and the sound of blowings and of puffings, but still unable to see clearly whence they came, he was forced in bewilderment to resume his march. But he had no sooner entered the next bend of that obscure and winding avenue than the most lamentable, lusty cries assailed him. Again he stood still, blinded by his own light. Somewhere at hand a citizen was being beaten, for vague, quick-moving forms emerged into the radiance of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the object of a liberal education not only to obscure the knowledge of one sex by another, but to magnify the natural differences between the two. Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords; and the little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with confidence, and with affection. Everywhere the black cloud of legitimacy is suspended over the world, save only one bright spot, which breaks out from the political hemisphere of the West, to enlighten and animate and gladden the human heart. Obscure that by the downfall of liberty here, and all mankind are enshrouded in a pall of universal darkness. To you, Mr. Chairman, belongs the high privilege of transmitting, unimpaired, to posterity the fair character and liberty of ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... situation well, the reporter had to admit; the only evidence he gave of strain was that the hands with which he lighted a cigarette were unsteady. He surveyed the obscure hotel at which the cab stopped with a sneering smile, and settled his collar as ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... being free from the obstructions of traffic; of sweeping forward smoothly, swiftly, and serenely—the land stretching below in an ever-changing panorama, with the drone of the motor in one's ears, and a wine-like exhilaration in the rush of the air: these, and others more obscure, are among ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... Garden, devoted to a thorough examination of this vast establishment, from its extensive catacombs to the leads which overlook the panorama of London; persuaded as we are that the public has but an obscure idea of the capital, labour, and ingenuity expended in the production of what is visible to the eye of the audience. Access to the stage during rehearsal is strictly confined to the performers, although that is the least part of the exhibition; but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... regret. As it gradually died into silence a mist seemed to pass from before my eyes, and I became suddenly conscious of the sweet face of my beloved, growing more and more distinct, until, as the last note died away, I was fully conscious that the music had passed between us, like a cloud, to obscure my sight utterly, and to recede as slowly, leaving her face ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... entangled in the process of his thought. The thought itself was as yet obscure to her. She inquired, therefore, where Miss Holland was to be "shown in." Was she a drawing-room author ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... the object of Paul. The means to accomplish that object were the necessities of the age to convert that generation. He could not dream of the idea that the means would obscure the object, that the servant would occupy the master's seat. His was a fearless, powerful, and unyielding character, terribly in earnest to break down the ancient world and create a new one, and his success, though incomplete, was wonderful. Men like Jesus and Paul, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... world should they direct their course, in order to sell the vessel and cargo and make their escape with their ill-gotten booty; for they knew the deed would soon be known and the avengers of blood be upon their heels. They, finally, concluded to shape their course to the northward, and enter some obscure port in Norway, where no very strict inquisition would probably be made into the character of the vessel of their intentions, and from which place they could easily find means of proceeding to other parts of Europe. Onion, who was a skilful penman, was directed to manufacture some new invoices ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... great mercantile and mechanical enterprises. I know a man who might have been the poet, the essayist, perhaps the critic, of this country, who chose to become a country judge, to sit day after day upon a bench in an obscure corner of the world, listening to wrangling lawyers and prevaricating witnesses, preferring to judge his fellow-men ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... written in a foreign tongue, a country given over to that worst tyranny, the tyranny of caste over caste, should have become the seat of civil liberty, the object of the admiration and envy of surrounding states, is one of the most obscure problems in the philosophy of history. But the fact is certain. Within a century and a half after the Norman conquest, the Great Charter was conceded. Within two centuries after the Conquest, the first ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this proposal, and promising to visit Tchang the following morning, returned to his home. In the evening, when Ming-Y left the house of Tchang, a servant followed him unobserved at a distance. But on reaching the most obscure portion of the road, the boy disappeared from sight as suddenly as though the earth had swallowed him. After having long sought after him in vain, the domestic returned in great bewilderment to the house, and related what had taken place. Tchang ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... becomes the present; the veil of three thousand years is raised, and the living picture is a witness to the exactness of the historical description. At the same time there is a light thrown upon many obscure passages in the Old Testament by a knowledge of the present customs and figures of speech of the Arabs, which are precisely those that were practised at the periods described. I do not attempt to enter ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... English; and in each case I had special reasons for hope and longing that the sermon might bring some spiritual help. Instinctively, I avoided every expression which could in the least complicate my English and thus obscure the message to my foreign friends. And so thankful was I for the pruning of periods that resulted, that I am much disposed, in all future preaching, to put mentally before ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO; his real name was Luciani, and he was a native of Venice (1485-1547). This artist excelled in his coloring and in the effect he gave to the atmosphere of his work, making it a broad chiaro-scuro, or clear-obscure, as it really means. This is an art term which is frequently used, and denotes a sort of mistiness which has some light in it, and is gradually shaded off, either into a full light or a deep shadow. But from the earliest efforts of this artist, it was plain that he had no gift of composition, ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... "we have learned little more than the fact, that a child was made to take a false character, without possessing any other clue to the circumstances than is given in the names of the parties, all of whom are evidently obscure, and one of the most material of whom, we are plainly told, must have borne a fictitious name. Even poor Monday, in possession of so much collateral testimony that we want, could not have known what was the precise injustice done, if any, or, certainly, with the intentions he manifests, he ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... that "he was perhaps never surpassed by any man in brilliancy of intellect and indefatigable activity." His career was a most varied one. He was at all times a boisterous reveller, but whether flaunting gayly among the guests of an emir or biding in some obscure apothecary cellar, his work of philosophical writing was carried on steadily. When a friendly emir was in power, he taught and wrote and caroused at court; but between times, when some unfriendly ruler was supreme, he was hiding ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... be plain. I enter the lists one of the last I have read all that my predecessors have published confident that all I state is true. I have no interest in deceiving, no disgrace to fear, no reward to expect. I ether wish to obscure nor embellish his glory. However great Napoleon may have been, was he not also liable to pay his tribute to the weakness of human nature? I speak of Napoleon such as I have seen him, known him, frequently admired and sometimes blamed him. I state what I saw, heard, wrote, and thought at ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... see these Puppets act a play called 'St. Helena, or the Death of Napoleon.' It began by the disclosure of Napoleon, with an immense head, seated on a sofa in his chamber at St. Helena; to whom his valet entered with this obscure announcement: ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... scepticism; we must doubt nearly every traditional or received notion, that we may hold fast one or two. The being of God in a personal or impersonal form was a mental necessity to the first thinkers of modern times: from this alone all other ideas could be deduced. There had been an obscure presentiment of 'cognito, ergo sum' more than 2000 years previously. The Eleatic notion that being and thought were the same was revived in a new form by Descartes. But now it gave birth to consciousness and self-reflection: it ...
— Meno • Plato
... a Western canal through a long stretch of wilderness, and stopping to spend the night at an obscure settlement of a dozen houses. We were directed to lodgings in a common frame house at a little distance, where, it seemed, the only hotel was kept. When we entered the parlor, we were struck with utter amazement at its prettiness, which affected us before we began to ask ourselves how ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Keats; and my scrivener—if I had one—might knock them both down with the name of Milton. It would be a pretty set-to; but I cannot see that it would affect the relative merits of mutton and laudanum and the obscure products of scrivenage. Nor, conversely (as they say at Cambridge), is it certain, or even likely, that the difference between a butcher or a doctor is the difference between Kirke White and Keats. And this talk about "University" poets ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... three thousand dollars. Then came another breaking up, with all of its harrowing consequences—consequences which to persons of their habits and mode of thinking, are so deeply mortifying,—followed by their shrinking away, with a meagre remnant of their furniture, into a couple of rooms, in an obscure part ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... discussion of this dark and difficult question to those whose studies have qualified them to give judgment on so obscure a subject, it so far appears clear that the Witch of Endor, was not a being such as those believed in by our ancestors, who could transform themselves and others into the appearance of the lower animals, raise and allay tempests, frequent the company ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... the one certainty for me! Fog may obscure the goal I aim at, the road I have to I read, the very ground I stand on; doubts may even for a while attack my faith; but my love for you ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... a-plundering," one of his first achievements being to go and pull down London Bridge. This peculiar kind of "distraction" (as the French call it) seems to have had the desired effect, as is evident in the romantic incident of his second marriage, when the Irish Princess Gyda chooses him—apparently an obscure stranger—to be her husband, out of a hundred wealthy and well-born aspirants to her hand. But neither Gyda's love, nor the rude splendours of her father's court, can make Olaf forgetful of his claims upon the throne of Norway—the inheritance of his ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... beneath which Canon Wilton, as Canon-in-Residence, would soon be sitting at right angles to her, at the distant altar lifted on high and backed by a delicate marble screen, beyond which stretched a further, tranquilly obscure vista of the great church. The sound of the bells ringing far above her head in the gray central tower was heard by her, but only just heard, as we hear the voices of the past murmuring of old memories and of deeds which are ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... anger of his own brother, whose cause he had so splendidly championed, he was forced to fly for refuge to the north, and was ultimately done to death. This most cruel return for glorious deeds has invested his memory with a mist of tears tending to obscure the true outlines of events, so that while Yoritomo is execrated as an inhuman, selfish tyrant, Yoshitsune is worshipped as a faultless hero. Yet, when examined closely, the situation undergoes some modifications. Yoritomo's keen insight discerned in his half-brother's ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... as it went, but Edmonds was quite aware that the gentlemen referred to usually played a very deep and obscure game. He had also reasons for believing that they were doing it now. It was, however, evident that Hawtrey's hesitation ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... that this Ananelus, the new high priest, was "of the stock of the high priests," and since he had been just telling us that he was a priest of an obscure family or character, ch. 2. sect. 4, it is not at all probable that he could so soon say that he was "of the stock of the high priests." However, Josephus here makes a remarkable observation, that this Ananelus was the third that was ever unjustly ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... "Obscure ideas," "metaphysical jargon," "pretentious and empty language," "puerile and superannuated personifications." Mr. Darwin has many and hot opponents on this side of the Channel and in Germany, but we do not recollect to have found precisely these sins in the long catalogue of those hitherto ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to the other side of the argument. Under domestication we see much variability, caused, or at least excited, by changed conditions of life; but often in so obscure a manner, that we are tempted to consider the variations as spontaneous. Variability is governed by many complex laws, by correlated growth, compensation, the increased use and disuse of parts, and the definite action ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... glimpses of another, still more brilliant existence, that life of the inaccessible "Faubourg" of which the first tantalizing hints had but lately reached her. Hitherto she had assumed that Paris existed for the stranger, that its native life was merely an obscure foundation for the dazzling superstructure of hotels and restaurants in which her compatriots disported themselves. But lately she had begun to hear about other American women, the women who had married ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... first that his capture was due to the fact that the boys' enemies knew that he had overheard their conversation in the stateroom of the Princeton, but it was now evident that they had some other motive in luring him to their obscure meeting place, and had no idea that he had played eavesdropper on their plan to forestall the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... her Majesty, but that passed, and when at last his eye met that of the Duke's Daughter he grew steady; for she gave him as plainly as though her tongue spoke, a message from Angele. Angele herself he did not see—she was kneeling in an obscure corner, her father's hand in hers, all the passion of her life ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to more than half a century before the rise of the curtain, and with its chief actors all dead. And the irritating mystery in which it was wrapped only made things worse. Further, I suffered a considerable strain on both my head and my heart in consequence of obscure hints (vaguely involving a photograph on his mantelpiece) as to the reason why Fishpingle remained a bachelor to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... Mr. Parkinson Chenney's father was a rich but eccentric man, who had a grudge against a certain popular seaside resort for some obscure reason, and had initiated a movement to found a rival town. So he had started Lynhaven, and had built houses and villas and beautiful assembly rooms; and then, to complete the independence of Lynhaven, he had connected ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... is very obscure. Uluka is explained by Nilakantha as a brand (used for want of lambs). The line, however, is elliptical. The Burdwan Pundits ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and loved glory, and being a popular hero, he was forgiven all his amorous sins, which were by many looked upon as being part of his heroism. His laughable efforts to obscure the facts might have satisfied those who wished to rely on Hamilton's benedictory absolution, had not Nelson and Emma, as I have already said, left behind them incriminating letters and documents which leave no doubt as to what they were to each other. ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... partiality for meadows in which cattle are browsing in tranquil content. Thys Maris has a very different style. He paints grey and misty figures and landscapes all hazy and scarcely visible. His love of the obscure and the suggestive led to the common refusal of his portraits by patrons, who complained that they lacked distinctness. No painter, however, commands such large prices as he, and from L2000 to L3000 is no rare ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... bore it, but life—bursting life was behind it, and behind that seemed to come a driving and a mighty spirit. Beyond the growth of the wheat, beyond its life and perennial gift, was something measureless and obscure, infinite and universal. Suddenly Dorn saw that something as the breath and the blood and the spirit of wheat—and of man. Dust and to dust returned they might be, but this physical form was only the fleeting inscrutable moment on earth, springing ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... with the idea of organisation which promises most I am not satisfied, but endeavour to get beyond and outside it, so that the time now necessary may be shortened. Besides which, I see that many of our difficulties arise from obscure and remote causes—obscure like the shape of bones, for whose strange curves there is no familiar term. We must endeavour to understand the crookedness and unfamiliar curves of the conditions of life. Beyond that still there are other ideas. Never, never rest contented ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... visited the chamber of one who walks, obscure and lonely, on his mortal pilgrimage. He will leave not many living friends, when he goes to join the dead, where his thoughts often stray, and he might better be. I steal into his sleep, and play my part among the figures of his dreams. I glide through the moonlight ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... appearance nobody cared for it—it was regarded as nothing but a hopeless puzzle by a bewildered and defeated public. Even now, when Mr. Browning has long since formed his own public, "Sordello" is probably less read than any other work of his; it is too obscure and confused both in plot and in thought. But all the same, there are many interesting things in "Sordello," and among them, especially at this moment, are the references to the place which, for fifty yours, has fascinated the poet. Only the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Renard, scarcely able to repress a smile, interrogates the comical little figure at his leisure. Behind him stands Sorrocold, the surgeon; and in the farther corner Mauger (the headsman), Nightgall, and an assistant torturer, recline against the wall. The feeble rays of the lantern throw an obscure light upon the gloomy walls decorated with the stock in trade of the torturers, thumb-screws, gauntlets, collars, pinchers, saws, chains, and other horrible and suggestive implements. Affixed to the ceiling is a steel pulley, the rope which traverses ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... should move in a Circle, or in an Ellipsis; and proved it improbable that it should move in a Strait Line, he concludes, that there can be no other genuin, or at least, no other more probable cause of its Emersion and Occultation, than this, That the bigger part of that round Body is obscure and inconspicuous to us, and its lesser part lucid, the whole Body turning about its own Center, and one Axe; whereby for one determinate space of time it exhibits its lucid part to the Earth, for another, subducts it: it not being ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... the workers is greater by one-half than it was in 1834. The chief centre of this industry is Lancashire, where it originated; it has thoroughly revolutionised this county, converting it from an obscure, ill-cultivated swamp into a busy, lively region, multiplying its population tenfold in eighty years, and causing giant cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, containing together 700,000 inhabitants, and their neighbouring ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... clouds hanging in the sky, momentarily awaiting the transforming violence of a fresh onset. Sometimes continents of pale light are separated by narrow straits of comparative darkness; elsewhere obscure spaces are hemmed in ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... there not Authors, which, touching the verity of this Art, write more plainly, then all the number of them, which, concerning it, utter words so obscure, as perhaps they themselves did not understand, unless they adhibited the. Commentaries, and Annotations of evident Paraphrasists. I suppose you have in times past read them, and therefore are best able to inform me, ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... Schreiner during the months preceding the war is obscure. While refusing help to Kimberley he was allowing munitions of war, which were way billed as pianos and hardware, to pass through the Cape Colony to the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. He does not appear to have been actively disloyal to the Imperial Government and in his own ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... vacant place in the carriage back with Mrs. Stone. This was no way to treat me! But I was almost glad when Virginia came out to the carriage wearing a pink silk dress, and looking so fearful to the eyes of her obscure adorer that he could scarcely speak to her—she was so ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... of Jacob had mysteriously all the shapeliness of a character which Bonamy thought daily more sublime, devastating, terrific than ever, though he was still, and perhaps would be for ever, barbaric, obscure. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... means and appliances of language. On all he has impressed the stamp of his mighty spirit. His images and figures, in their unsought, nay, uncapricious singularity, have often a sweetness altogether peculiar. He becomes occasionally obscure from too great fondness for compressed brevity; but still, the labour of poring over Shakspeare's lines will invariably meet an ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... literary statesmen and the politicians at Will's and Button's. Perhaps some advocate of Free Trade might try upon a modern audience the lines in which Pope expresses his aspiration in a footnote that London may one day become a "FREE PORT." There is at least not one antiquated or obscure phrase in the whole. Here are ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... was delivered with much earnestness of enunciation; but of its use or meaning, probably, the speaker was fully as ignorant as his hearers. Even at the fountain-head his ideas were sufficiently obscure, but when fairly rolling forth from the spring, they sometimes begat such a froth and turbidity in their course, that no reasonable discernment could fathom their ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... already Friday afternoon. He gathered together his few personal belongings—his books, his manuscripts, opera innumerable. There was room in his portmanteau for everything—now he had no clothes. On the Monday the long nightmare would be over. He would go down to some obscure seaside nook and live very quietly for a few weeks, and gain strength and calm in the soft spring airs, and watch hand-in-hand with Mary Ann the rippling scarlet trail of the setting sun fade across the green waters. Life, no doubt, ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... to read its first pages declared they were incomprehensible. It seems that critics in those days had either less intelligence than we have, or were more impatient and less attentive, for not only Sordello but even In Memoriam was said to be exceedingly obscure. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... power that had compelled the spirit and the lips to an unwilling confession, impossible. And if it had seemed that further information might have been extracted relative to my own personal danger, a stronger tie, a deeper obligation, bound them to the supposed object of the last obscure imputation, and none was willing to elicit further charges or clearer evidence. Probably also they anticipated that, when the word was extended to the Initiates, I should take up ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... dance. Struck by her skill in dancing, he courted her in the larrikin fashion. At night he stood in front of the house, and whistled till she came out. Then they went to the park, where they sprawled on the grass in obscure corners. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... matter of anxious consideration. Willy was fearful of detection, and all sorts of stratagems were resorted to. Sometimes they would walk down to the Old Steyne, and suddenly double and get back through a medley of obscure streets, or else they would publicly walk up and down the King's Road, and when they thought no one was looking, hurry up one of the by-streets, and so gain their haven, the lane. Once they were in the lane they slackened ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... little paper. "Here is the note, monsieur," said he; "it would be difficult to read it to you by this obscure light: but it is short, and I know it by heart, if ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... motor and physical phenomena. Here is, it seems to me, a rational explanation of the facts, and one which is in accord, not only with ordinary psychological phenomena, but with those more puzzling and obscure manifestations witnessed from time ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... beans, I should know what it means— This blaze, which I certainly cannot endure; It is evil, too, For its colour is blue, And the sense of the matter is quite obscure. Celestial truth Is the food of youth; But the music was dark as a moonless night. The facts in the song ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... them all strangely at the farm; his mind was alternately so clear and so obscure. He would chat with Phoebe, and sometimes give her a good practical hint; but the next moment, helpless for want of memory, that great faculty without which judgment cannot act, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... least was the last man whom she could blame for rendering justice to the widow of her father's brother. But, then again, what reliance could be placed upon anonymous information—information which, after all, was but limited and obscure? Yet it was evident that the writer—a female beyond question—whoever she was, must be perfectly conversant with his motives and his objects. And if in volunteering him directions how to proceed, she had any purpose adversative to his, her note was without ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... to a Doctor Mayle, who was conducting a special research into the cause of an obscure fever; and to the other officers of this headquarters of a Province. They were all young, Hillyard himself was older than ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... every tongue, and every heart, a hymn for the longevity of Wucics and Petronievitch. "The solemn song for many days" is the expressive title of this sublime chant. This hymn is so old that its origin is lost in the obscure dawn of Christianity in the East, and so massive, so nobly simple, as to be beyond the ravages of time, and the caprices ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... assumed the form of a permanent and regular system. The agitation occasioned by so many unexampled scenes is succeeded by an habitual terror, and this depressing sentiment has so pervaded all ranks, that it would be difficult to find an individual, however obscure or inoffensive, who deems his property, or even his existence, secure only for a moment. The sound of a bell or a knocker at the close of the evening is the signal of dismay. The inhabitants of the house regard ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... only all hang together, but supplement each other to a remarkable extent. Unless a course of study such as this is undertaken many critics may think various statements and inferences in this volume to be far fetched or find them too obscure for comprehension. ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... soon came to consider the young clerk as a "deuced good fellow," fell into the habit of calling him by his Christian name, and whenever they were going to drink their coffee or to play a game of dominoes, they invariably invited him to join them. An obscure tradition of large means and mysterious relationship once more emerged from the abyss of past years, but, to do the squadron justice, it was not this which prompted their kind attentions to their countryman. Anton himself was more exalted by this good fellowship with these noble ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... of the most curious revolutions in literary history is the sudden bull's-eye light cast by M. Longnon on the obscure existence of Francois Villon[6]. His book is not remarkable merely as a chapter of biography exhumed after four centuries. To readers of the poet it will recall, with a flavour of satire, that characteristic passage in which he bequeaths his spectacles—with a humorous reservation of the case—to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... decidedly light nor dark. There might, indeed, to have been moonlight, but clouds veiled the light though they could not altogether obscure it; thus there was just enough to ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... to imagine any connexion between this portentous scene and the purpose that I had meditated, yet a belief of this connexion, though wavering and obscure, lurked in my mind; something more than a coincidence merely casual, appeared to have subsisted between my situation, at my father's bed side, and the flash that darted through the window, and diverted me from my design. It palsied ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... person is sufficiently courageous and robust to engage in anything approaching a serious examination of these families of books. The authors were true enthusiasts, labouring to their lives' last thread in some obscure cell or dim closet, where pride of authorship, as we may feel and enjoy it, there was none, when beyond the walls of a convent or those of a native town their names were unknown, their personality unrecognised. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... forgery it should be copied very frequently, as the clues and suggestions the experiments will produce are of much greater service than will at first appear, and of more practical value than pages of theory, as the how and why will be revealed for much that would be obscure without this assistance. As experience grows, it will not be necessary to adopt this copying process so often, for the eye soon becomes alert at detecting slight shades of difference in strokes, and a glance will convey more than could be explained ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... may be gathered not only from the literature, which is singularly devoid of hopefulness and enterprise, but from the rapid spread of monasticism and eremitism in this period. The prevalence of this world-weariness of course needs explanation, and the cause is rather obscure. It does not seem to be connected with unfavourable external conditions, but rather with a racial exhaustion akin to senile decay in the individual. But there is no real analogy between the life of an individual and that of a nation, and it would be very rash ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... aid, Disperse our hopes, and frustrate our designs, Yet shall the conscience of the great attempt Diffuse a brightness on our future days; Nor will his country's groans reproach Demetrius. But how canst thou support the woes of exile? Canst thou forget hereditary splendours, To live obscure upon a foreign coast, Content with ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... himself. He upon whom Richard had conferred the distinction of guarding his banner was no longer an adventurer of slight note, but placed within the regard of a princess, although he was as far as ever from her level. An unknown and obscure fate could not now be his. If he was surprised and slain on the post which had been assigned him, his death—and he resolved it should be glorious—must deserve the praises as well as call down the vengeance of Coeur de Lion, and be followed by the regrets, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... war, Stephen! Were your chivalrous notions any good, then? And, what was winked at in an obscure young Member is anathema for an Under Secretary ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Roentgen-ray, Xray; photography, heliography; photometer &c. 445. [Science of light] optics; photology[obs3], photometry; dioptrics[obs3], catoptrics[obs3]. [Distribution of light] chiaroscuro, clairobscur[obs3], clear obscure, breadth, light and shade, black and white, tonality. reflection, refraction, dispersion; refractivity. V. shine, glow, glitter; glister, glisten; twinkle, gleam; flare, flare up; glare, beam, shimmer, glimmer, flicker, sparkle, scintillate, coruscate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... "Lycidas"; of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing. What beauty there is we must therefore seek in the sentiments and images. It is not to be considered as the effusion of real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arthur and Mincius, nor tells of rough satyrs and "fauns with cloven heel." Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... misgivings in our mind; for, if Mr. Wilson was already in possession of the truth, independently of historical research,—whether by communications from the spirits of the Conquistadores, or by any other of the easy and popular methods of solving obscure problems,—what need was there of his consulting the standard authorities at all? But we were somewhat cheered, when, a little farther on, we found him stating, that the writer who enters into these discussions must ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... adjudged guilty of death, and accordingly was thrown down from a high Rock into the Sea, where he perished [73]in the waters. Execution being done upon him, the rest were pardoned for what was past, which being notified abroad, they returned from those Defait and Obscure places, wherein ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... should think not indeed! It is true, if you allude to the mechanical process of caligraphy, here is close to my elbow a big book, in which I enter all passages I meet with in my various readings tending to elucidate obscure parts of the Bible: I do not mean disputed points of theology, mysteries, or significations more or less mystical, but simply any notices whatever which I meet with relating to the customs of the Jews, their history, their language, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... sombre group of six, after protracted discussion, seemed almost to have exhausted the evidence, suggestion and counsel which could be brought to bear upon a crime so sudden and so obscure. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... stain in the middle of its back, produced by the touch of generations of damp and excited thumbs now fleshless in the grave; and the kings and queens wore a decayed expression of feature, as if they were rather an impecunious dethroned race of monarchs hiding in obscure slums than real regal characters. Every now and then the comparatively few remarks of the players at the round game were harshly intruded on by the measured jingle of Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner from ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... it was I." It was as some secret appointment of heaven. They were both grown men when they first met, and death separated them soon. "If I should compare all my life with the four years I had the happiness to enjoy the sweet society of this excellent man, it is nothing but smoke; an obscure and tedious night from the day that I lost him. I have led a sorrowful and languishing life ever since. I was so accustomed to be always his second in all places and in all interests, that methinks I am now no more than half a man, and ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... doubt, and so have done the best thing I know of. I have written to my old friend and master, Professor Van Helsing, of Amsterdam, who knows as much about obscure diseases as any one in the world. I have asked him to come over, and as you told me that all things were to be at your charge, I have mentioned to him who you are and your relations to Miss Westenra. This, my dear fellow, is in obedience to your wishes, for I am only too proud and happy to do ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... Hermitage, My gay Apparrell, for an Almes-mans Gowne, My figur'd Goblets, for a Dish of Wood, My Scepter, for a Palmers walking Staffe, My Subiects, for a payre of carued Saints, And my large Kingdome, for a little Graue, A little little Graue, an obscure Graue. Or Ile be buryed in the Kings high-way, Some way of common Trade, where Subiects feet May howrely trample on their Soueraignes Head: For on my heart they tread now, whilest I liue; And buryed once, why not vpon my Head? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the culture of mind in Greece, and that which resulted in the empire of Rome—only appear to have purpose and value when viewed in connection with, or rather as subsidiary to...the great stream of Anglo- Saxon emigration to the west." Obscure as is the problem of the advance of civilisation, we can at least see that a nation which produced during a lengthened period the greatest number of highly intellectual, energetic, brave, patriotic, and benevolent men, would generally prevail over ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... library always makes me melancholy, where the best author is as much squeezed and as obscure as a ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... courts, or the tangles of the distant alleys, where the dull little oil- lamps vied with the tapers burning before the street-corner shrines of the Virgin, [Footnote: In the early times these tapers were the sole means of street illumination in Venice.] in making the way obscure, and deepening the shadows about the doorways and under the frequent arches. I remember distinctly among the beautiful nights of that time, the soft night of late winter which first showed me the scene you may behold from ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... civilization everywhere, and to see the nations of the world bound so closely together by social and commercial relations. But we must remember that when they were uttered the true God was known and adored only in an obscure, almost isolated, corner of the earth, while triumphant idolatry was the otherwise ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... about which we are to study to-day is no ordinary visit. I think it is one of the most beautiful stories to be found in literature. This visit was made many centuries ago. It was made in an obscure corner of the earth, and yet it has never been forgotten. It never will be. The Inspirer of the Word saw in it too much of worth and winsomeness to allow it to slip out of the memories of men. It is remembered to-day, not because ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... two centuries Russian orthodoxy has been undermined by obscure sects, unknown to foreigners, and little known to Russians themselves. Beneath the imposing pile of the official Church have been hollowed out vast underground burrows and a labyrinth of gloomy crypts, which form a retreat for the popular beliefs and superstitions. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... victim of all whom he encounters—conceive him, in disgust, flying from the world that had deceived him, and divesting himself of those accidents of existence which, however envied by others, appeared to his morbid imagination the essential causes of his misery—conceive this man, unknown and obscure, sighing to be valued for those qualities of which fortune could not deprive him, and to be loved only for his own ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... said, addressing the other, "I am perfectly and entirely in my senses; I have not a single obscure or confused idea. All is clear and calm. Fielding, I made a will a short time ago; I wish to change it—to make another. Open that desk, and you will find parchment, pens, and ink. Now, come sit near me—so. Begin and write the ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... Rev. Thomas Twyford, a lean and lively old gentleman with a red, eager face and white hair. He was in the ordinary way a country clergyman, but he was one of those who achieve the paradox of being famous in an obscure way, because they are famous in an obscure world. In a small circle of ecclesiastical archaeologists, who were the only people who could even understand one another's discoveries, he occupied a recognized and respectable place. And a critic might have found even in that day's journey at least as ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... renowned astrologer, 'in the county of Leicester, in an obscure town, in the northwest part thereof, called Diseworth, seven miles south of the town of Derby, one mile from Castle Donnington.' 'This town of Diseworth is divided into three parishes; one part ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... pretext of showing him several picturesque sights, promenaded him, in the morning dew, through the lettuce in the kitchen garden and the underbrush in the park. But he knew through experience that all was not roses in a lover's path; watching in the snow, climbing walls, hiding in obscure closets, imprisonment in wardrobes, were more disagreeable incidents than a quiet tete-a-tete ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... wholly without justification, either as an occupation by consent or as an occupation necessitated by dangers threatening American life and property. It must be accounted for in some other way and on some other ground, and its real motive and purpose are neither obscure nor far to seek. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... Britain a fen of immense size which begins from the river Granta, not far from the city, which is named Grantchester ... a man named Tatwine said that he knew an island especially obscure, which ofttimes many men had attempted to inhabit, but no man could do it on account of manifold horrors and fears, and the loneliness of the wild wilderness.... No man ever could inhabit it before the holy man Guthlac ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... processes of digestion, respiration, and circulation, and the condition of various organs according to their state of nutrition, etc. During our waking life these organic feelings coalesce for the most part, forming as the "vital sense" an obscure background for our clear discriminative consciousness, and only come forward into this region when very exceptional in character, as when respiration or digestion is impeded, or when we make a special effort of attention to single them out.[85] When we are asleep, ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... been able to learn little about her father's death as yet. A Paris paper reported, and Boston papers copied, the statement that an American of his name, stopping at an obscure French town, was missing for two days, and found on the third, murdered, robbed, horribly disfigured. Mr. George Breynton had been traveling alone in the interior of the country, and had written home that he should be in this town—St. Pierre—at precisely ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... in India under the leadership of Champat Rai, the contemporary of Jahangir and Shah Jahan, in the first half of the seventeenth century. The line of Chandel kings was continued in the persons of obscure local chiefs, whose very names are, for the most part, forgotten. The story of Durgavati, briefly told in the text, casts a momentary flash of light on their obscurity. The principal nobleman of the Chandel race now occupying a dignified position is the Raja of Gidhaur in the Mungir (Monghyr) ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of the many testimonies in favour of Sir Bartle Frere, because he,—a man beloved and respected by many of us,—was the subject of a hastily formed judgment which continues in a measure even to this day, to obscure the memory ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... CHILDREN,—... We had a charming visit from Sir Henry Taylor a few days ago, a long quiet real "crack" about many books and many authors, with a little touch of the events of the day-change of Ministry, causes of our utter defeat, which he thinks obscure, so do I—not creditable to the country, so do I—in so far as Disraeli can hardly be reckoned more trustworthy or consistent than Gladstone, and Gladstone's untrustworthiness and inconsistency are supposed to have caused his overthrow. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... therefore from the former doctrine, that that God whose words they are, is able to make a reconciliation and most sweet and harmonious agreement with all the sayings therein, how obscure, cross, dark, and contradictory soever they seem to thee. To understand all mysteries, to have all knowledge, to be able to comprehend with all saints, is a great work; enough to crush the spirit, and to stretch ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... this limit is relief enough, Sweet bottom-grass and high delightful plain, 236 Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough, To shelter thee from tempest and from rain: Then be my deer, since I am such a park; 239 No dog shall rouse thee, though ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... horse on the instant, he felt an icy shudder pass through his frame. The same voice rose higher and called him again. He recognized it as the voice of Madame de Tecle. Looking around him in the obscure light with a rapid glance, he saw a light shining through the foliage in the direction of the cottage of the sabot-maker. Guided by this, he put spurs to his horse, crossed the cleared ground up the hillside, and found himself face to face with Madame ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... this moment that Mrs. Shiffney came into a box at the back of the stalls followed by Jonson Ramer. Without taking off her sable coat she sat down in a corner and looked quickly over the obscure space before her. Immediately she saw Charmian and the dressmaker, who sat within a few yards of her. Claude was not visible. Mrs. Shiffney sat back a little farther in the box, and whispered ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... confidence, do not suspicion and jealousy on her part appear strange? Were Mr. L—— and I shut up for life in the same prison, were we left together upon a desert island, were we alone in the universe, I could never think of him. And Leonora does not see this! How the passions obscure and degrade the finest understandings! But perhaps I do her injustice, and she felt nothing of what her countenance expressed. It is certain, however, that she was silent for some moments after she joined us, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... you read history more and more, you will believe, as I do, that men, and even children, of high birth, are surer to be brave and courageous than those in more obscure station. They may have other faults—dreadful ones—but it seems as if they dare not be cowards, because their whole race is looking at them, and expecting them to be noble. In this country, where we know so little about our ancestors, we need a still ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... theory has presented itself in its stead. The old one has become useless; and the crowd has looked into the secret sanctuaries of the high priests, and has seen that there is nothing there, and that there has been nothing there, save very obscure and senseless words. This has ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... is not whether we shrink from our country's cause when the dangers to us are obvious and dose at hand, but, rather, whether we carry on when they seem obscure and distant—and some think that it is safe to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Lyndon B. Johnson • Lyndon B. Johnson
... galloping along let us see what has happened in France, and clear up the points in the conversation between Bonaparte and his aide-de-camp which must be obscure to the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Almamoulin cried out, "I have at last found the use of riches; I am surrounded by companions, who view my greatness without envy; and I enjoy at once the raptures of popularity, and the safety of an obscure station. What trouble can he feel, whom all are studious to please, that they may be repaid with pleasure? What danger can he dread, to whom every man is ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... a climate you can depend on," said the General, quite conscious that he was talking absurdly, yet none the less determined to talk, by way of relief to some obscure annoyance. "Here we are sweltering in this abominable heat, and in New York last week they had a blizzard, and here, even, it was cold enough to give me rheumatism. The climate's always in ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... adopting this uncompromising tone, and boldly setting the national above the personal interest, I was in point of fact best consulting the welfare of our friends who were in durance. But it was not to be expected that all persons would view in the same light a question of policy so obscure; and apart from the warm personal interest which I feel in their safety, your Lordship can well understand that it relieves me from a great load of anxiety to learn from the result that the course which I have followed was not ill- calculated ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... radiation; irradiation, illumination. actinic rays, actinism; Roentgen-ray, Xray; photography, heliography; photometer &c 445. [Science of light] optics; photology^, photometry; dioptrics^, catoptrics^. [Distribution of light] chiaroscuro, clairobscur^, clear obscure, breadth, light and shade, black and white, tonality. reflection, refraction, dispersion; refractivity. V. shine, glow, glitter; glister, glisten; twinkle, gleam; flare, flare up; glare, beam, shimmer, glimmer, flicker, sparkle, scintillate, coruscate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the nation seemed on the eve of possessing a drama of its own. Antonio Jose, an obscure Jew, composed a number of comic operas, in the vernacular tongue, which had long been banished from the theatre of Lisbon. In spite of much coarseness, their genuine humor and familiar gayety excited the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the burdensome Irish Church and improved the land laws, the franchise, and the opportunities of education in Ireland, and made an English statesman's name beloved in the Emerald Isle for the first time since Charles James Fox. Nor should his great work for Ireland obscure the grand achievements of the earlier years when he led the Liberal party through its wonderful program of reform in England; nor should any prejudice against the friend of Ireland dull our perception to the clear voice ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... satisfaction too manifest to be repressed, and we were told of it with expressions of the most triumphant exultation on every occasion. It was indeed curious, though ridiculous, to observe that, even among these simple people, and in this obscure corner of the globe, that little gossip and scandal so commonly practised in small societies among us were very frequently displayed. This was especially the case with the women, of whom it was not uncommon to see a group sitting in a hut for hours together, each relating her ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... his box from a small door which stood ajar, sat the little priest, behind the lattice of the confessional, silently wiping away the sweat that beaded on his brow and rolled down his face. At distant intervals the shadow of some one entering softly through the door would obscure, for a moment, the band of light, and an aged crone, or a little boy, or some gentle presence that the listening confessor had known only by the voice for many years, would kneel a few moments beside his waiting ear, in prayer for blessing and in review ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... which would seem to convey the exact reverse of what Phizanties intends—that he did not know Hermione's birth, but, presuming him to be of obscure birth, did not wish him ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... bars that hinder his advance And half obscure the goal, The stubborn bond of circumstance That irritates his soul, The countershafts of arrogance, All ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... more got rid of the old gentleman, and pursued his way. As he was passing under the porch, leading his horse by the bridle, a soft voice called him from the depths of an obscure path. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... third epoch, is even more calculated to encourage revolutionary principles, for in it was displayed the elevation to the highest grades in the army and in the state of those who in the ancien regime would have remained as the Revolution found them, in the most obscure stations, but who by that event had brilliant opportunities afforded for ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... whose jaws are at all times open to intelligence, informs me that there are a few enormous weapons still in being; but that they are to be met with only in gaming houses and some of the obscure retreats of lovers, in and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... like Earl Spencer, and the other exalted personages to whom the poet addressed his pathetic notes, should enter upon such a study. They saw before them nothing but large sheets of paper, of coarse texture, full of ill-spelt and ill-connected sentences, made more obscure by an utter absence of punctuation; and the not unnatural judgment thereupon was that the man who wrote such letters was a thoroughly vulgar and uneducated person. There came doubts into the minds of many, who ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... Spaniards, the oppressor of the Indians. For himself, he assumed the character of a redresser of grievances and champion of the injured. He pretended to feel a patriotic indignation at the affronts heaped upon Spaniards by a family of obscure and arrogant foreigners; and professed to free the natives from tributes wrung from them by these rapacious men for their own enrichment, and contrary to the beneficent intentions of the Spanish monarchs. He connected himself closely ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... sex. Fifty miles from a doctor or a friend, except her weary and perhaps morose husband, she must keep strong under labor, and be patient under suffering, till death. And thus the household, the hamlet, the village, the town, the city, the state, rise out of her "homely toils, and destiny obscure." Truly she is one of the founders of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... that time on, he went almost nightly to the neighbourhood of Washington Square, regardless of weather or inconvenience. He saw her come and go, night after night, and he saw people enter the house to which he held a key,—always he saw from obscure points of vantage and with the stealth ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... towns founded by the American colonists of the seventeenth century. In their centres the parish churches, 'First,' 'Second,' or otherwise, stand forth challenging everybody's attention. There is no lack of self-assertion here, nothing at all like the shrinking of the Old English Presbyterian into obscure alleys and corners. Spacious, well appointed, and secure, these Unitarian parish churches, in the words of a popular Unitarian poet, 'look the whole world in the face, and fear ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... lady striking him as before all things excited, as, in the native phrase, keyed-up, to a perception of more elements in the occasion than he was himself able to count. She was accessible to sides of it, he imagined, that were as yet obscure to him; for, though she unmistakeably rejoiced and soared, he none the less saw her at moments as even more agitated than pleasure required. It was a state of emotion in her that could scarce represent ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... Friday afternoon. He gathered together his few personal belongings—his books, his manuscripts, opera innumerable. There was room in his portmanteau for everything—now he had no clothes. On the Monday the long nightmare would be over. He would go down to some obscure seaside nook and live very quietly for a few weeks, and gain strength and calm in the soft spring airs, and watch hand-in-hand with Mary Ann the rippling scarlet trail of the setting sun fade across the green waters. ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... borrow that vivacity, which we diffuse over the correlative idea. But when we have not observed a sufficient number of instances, to produce a strong habit; or when these instances are contrary to each other; or when the resemblance is not exact; or the present impression is faint and obscure; or the experience in some measure obliterated from the memory; or the connexion dependent on a long chain of objects; or the inference derived from general rules, and yet not conformable to them: In all these cases the evidence diminishes by the ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Police. Certain of their findings made it inadvisable for Rene to appear again in the towns, and that autumn he spent in the outlands, avoiding the posts, stopping a day here—a week there, in the cabins of obscure trappers and camping the nights between, for he dared not show his face at any post. Then it was he bethought himself of his brother's cabin as a refuge and, for the time being laying aside thoughts of ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... flatly renounce, and those who cordially embrace the doctrine of Redemption by Christ. This class has a sort of general, indeterminate, and ill understood dependence on our blessed Saviour. But their hopes, so far as they can be distinctly made out (for their views also are very obscure) appear ultimately to bottom on the persuasion that they are now, through Christ, become members of a new dispensation, wherein they will be tried by a more lenient rule than that to which they must have been otherwise subject. "God will not now be extreme to mark what is done amiss; but will dispense ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... who had been a stirring though not very eminent politician in Jacksonian days. The choice is interesting as being the first example of a phenomenon recurrent in subsequent American politics, the deliberate selection of a more or less obscure man on the ground of ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... she had tried to see what influence she could command. Socially, as the rather wild-headed daughter of an impoverished and obscure Earl, she could do but little. She too was a poor intriguer. She could only demand with blatant vividness. Once on a flying visit to Lord Mountshire, she tried to interest him in the man whom, to her indignation, he persisted in styling her protege. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... reached a depth of bestiality below which a gaff in Shoreditch could net descend. Ah! Those bonny lads, how they roared with laughter, and how they exchanged winks with grinning elders! Not a single obscure allusion to filth was lost upon them, and they took more and more drink under pressure of the secret excitement until many of them were unsteady and incoherent. I think I should shoot a boy of mine if I found him enjoying such a foul entertainment. It was leze-Humanity. The orgie rattled on, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... CADGER (a word of obscure origin possibly connected with "catch"), a hawker or pedlar, a carrier of farm produce to market. The word in this sense has fallen into disuse, and now is used for a beggar or loafer, one who gets his living in more or less ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... His Name in all His works. His action must be all self-manifestation. But after all it is obscure and hidden. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... with passion; but she knew her niece too well to doubt her putting her threat into execution, and there was distraction in the idea of the vulgar obscure Grizzy Douglas being presented to a fashionable party as her aunt. After a violent altercation, in which Mary took no part, an ungracious permission was at length extorted, which Mary eagerly availed herself of; and, charged with kind messages from Lady Emily, set ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Forge. It was not a great history, it had no brilliant and vivid style, but the simple facts were enough for Dick. He read once more of the last hope of the great man, never greater than then, praying in the snow, and his own soul leaped at the sting of example. He was only a boy, obscure, unknown, and the fate of but two rested with him, yet he, too, would persevere, and in the end his triumph also would be complete. He read no further, but closed the book and returned it carefully to his pocket. Then he stared into the fire, which he built up ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... little towns, dotted at intervals of a few miles apart, lit up the banks with the lights of homes, but their shining domesticity seemed to mock him. The birth of a new creature was a painful process; and yet, through all his confused sensations and obscure elemental suffering, he kept the conviction that a new creature was somehow ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... it is beautiful and poetic. London-pride is the commonest of all the saxifrages; but the one of which I speak is as different from London-pride as a Plantagenet upon his throne from that last Plantagenet who died obscure and penniless some years ago. It is a great majestic flower, which plumes the granite rocks of Monte Rosa in the spring. At other times of the year you see a little tuft of fleshy leaves set like a cushion on cold ledges ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... journey. The fortunate mortals are rare who can, without a heartache or regret, pass through their disused and abandoned dwellings; who dare to open every door and enter all the silent rooms; who do not hurry shudderingly by some obscure corners, and return with a sigh of relief to the cheerful sunlight and murmurs ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... were read above the ashes of Betty Higden, in a corner of a churchyard near the river; in a churchyard so obscure that there was nothing in it but grass-mounds, not so much as one single tombstone. It might not be to do an unreasonably great deal for the diggers and hewers, in a registering age, if we ticketed their ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... man, made so by subsequent events, under the command of Don Pedro. His name was Francisco Pizarro. He was a man of obscure birth and of very limited education, save only in the material art of war. He could neither read nor write, and was thus intellectually hardly the equal of some of the most intelligent of the natives. We have briefly alluded to him as entrusted with the command of one portion of the army ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... said, "When you have walked here a little longer perhaps you will not walk so bravely." There was an obscure smile on his lips ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... further proof of the truth of what I am saying, given by one whose testimony is worth much more than mine, go and read that eloquent and kindly and painfully fascinating book lately published by Dr. Forbes Winslow, on Obscure Diseases of the Brain and Mind; and you will leave off with the firmest conviction that every breathing ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... spirit." He was aware that his body would soon be consigned by the fury of persecution to its native dust; but this excited comparatively little concern. To him it was of no importance whether his grave was with the rich or the poor, whether his burying-place were an obscure or an illustrious spot: he was anxious for the salvation of his soul. Unhappily, mankind in general lavish all their cares upon the body, to embellish or preserve it, to pamper its appetites, or to minister to ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... in days when men had not yet intercalated into Holy Writ that line of an obscure modern hymn, which proclaims to man the good news that 'There is no repentance in the grave.' Let that be as it may, Cyril has gone to his own place. What that place is in history is but too well known. What it is in the sight of Him unto ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... If Hawthorne had been a young Englishman, or a young Frenchman of the same degree of genius, the same cast of mind, the same habits, his consciousness of the world around him would have been a very different affair; however obscure, however reserved, his own personal life, his sense of the life of his fellow-mortals would have been almost infinitely more various. The negative side of the spectacle on which Hawthorne looked out, in his contemplative saunterings ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... flame of the wood fire on the hearth rose or fell beneath the efforts of a half distinguishable figure, extended at full length on the floor, and puffing the enormous log with a pair of gigantic bellows. In the palpable obscure, Jane could scarcely make out the persons of the occupants of the apartment; but when the flame burnt up a little more powerfully than usual, she observed the figure of a tall man dressed in black, who shook hands with Reginald, and bowed very coldly and formally to her, when he was introduced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... "of an aged man of no plebeian mien or bearing, albeit most shabbily attired in the skins, now fabulously cheap, of the vermin that torment us; who, professing to practise as an herbalist, some little time ago established himself in an obscure street of no good repute. A tortoise hangs in his needy shop, nor are stuffed alligators lacking. Understanding that he was resorted to by such as have need of philters and love-potions, or are incommoded by the ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... radiated over the entire neighborhood. The pride seemed to be, not that the new bonnet was a superb affair, but that such a fashionable artist produced it, and that it cost so much money. Had it been equally beautiful at half the cost, or the handiwork of an obscure milliner, it would have been considered mean. Thus, instead of a necessity for being extravagant, it struck me there was a desire to be so, and principally in order that others, when they looked on the display, might be awed into deference, if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... was seemed to be of the mind rather than the body, and Ralph could find nothing in his father's circumstances calculated to worry any one in the slightest degree. He planned, vaguely, to invite a friend who was skilled in the diagnosis of obscure mental disorders to spend a week-end with him, a little later on, and to ask him to observe his father closely. He did not doubt but that Anthony Dexter would see quickly through so flimsy a pretence, but, unless he improved, something ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... repair its little bark; but it too often happens, that before he can regain it, it is by a species of shipwreck, dashed to pieces on the shore. Thus wretchedly situated, this hero of the testaceous tribe seeks some obscure corner "where to die," but which seldom, if ever, happens, until after he has made extraordinary exertions to establish himself anew. What a fine picture of virtue ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... is wisdom's light. Because I followed after you; When clouds obscure the moon by night, 'Tis hard to find a guide so ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... fields. Already in 1842 a law had been passed regulating labor in mines. This act was passed in response to the needs shown by the report of a commission which had been appointed in 1840. They made a thorough investigation of the obscure conditions of labor underground, and reported a condition of affairs which was heart-sickening. Children began their life in the coal mines at five, six, or seven years of age. Girls and women worked like boys and men, they were less than half clothed, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... life and play for the stake of a world. His generals of division were themselves men of mark—personages no less than Massena, Augereau, Laharpe, and Serurier. Of Massena some account has already been given. Augereau was Bonaparte's senior by thirteen years, of humble and obscure origin, who had sought his fortunes as a fencing-master in the Bourbon service at Naples, and having later enlisted in the French forces sent to Spain in 1792, rose by his ability to be general of brigade, then division commander in the Army of Italy. He was rude in ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... be little doubt that the mysterious 'Lhasis,' referred to by Sir William Davenant[5]—a word whose etymology is so obscure—is nothing else than the mandrake or mandragora; if so, then we see that the plant was valued for its exciting and stimulating effects rather than ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... which the trail passes we find the inscription: "Ashley 18-5." The third figure is obscure—some of the party reading it 1835, some 1855. James Baker, an old-time mountaineer, once told me about a party of men starting down the river, and Ashley was named as one. The story runs that the boat was swamped, ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... Frank gave a "coo-ey," and in about the space of a minute the words "help, help,—come, come," in scarcely, audible sounds, answered to the call. We penetrated about thirty yards farther, and a few low groans directed us to a spot more obscure, if possible, than the rest. There, firmly bound to two trees close together, were two men. A thick cord was passed round and round their bodies, arms, and legs, so as to leave no limb at liberty. They seemed faint and exhausted at having ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... his mother? How had a baby so richly dressed come to be abandoned in a small obscure village outside the walls of Panama, which would have escaped the ravages of the buccaneers on account of its insignificance, had it not lain directly in their backward path. They had destroyed ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... merit; when cupidity succeeds to honorable industry; when vice and meanness are titles to distinctions, and the true means of making a fortune; when honours are no longer synonimous with honour; then society presents only disorder and anarchy, then people renounce obscure virtue, and laborious acquisition to follow the easy ways of corruption; then enlightened men, for whom public esteem is a sterile recommendation, the true servants of the king, the faithful friends of their country, are forced to disappear, to withdraw from employments, and the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... came from Sicily, and some authorities speak of him as a Syracusan. But in his 'Lament' he alludes to his 'Ausonian' song, apparently as distinguished from that of Theocritus 'of Syracuse.' The passage, however, is rendered obscure by an hiatus. Another tradition made Theocritus a native of the island of Cos. More probably it was between the time of his leaving Syracuse and that of his settling at Alexandria that he was the pupil of the Coan ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... indeed it is the natural consummation of an epoch such as ours. Given a general insincerity of mind for several generations, you will certainly find the Talker established in the place of honor; and the Doer, hidden in the obscure crowd, with activity lamed, or working sorrowfully forward on paths unworthy of him. All men are devoutly prostrate, worshipping the eloquent talker; and no man knows what a scandalous idol he is. Out of whom in the mildest manner, like comfortable natural ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... gloom and despondency. And yet distressing inward struggles and depression arise sometimes in the midst of outward prosperity and even of unusual religious enjoyment. In truth, among all the phenomena of the Christian life none are more obscure or harder to seize than those connected with spiritual conflict and temptation. They belong largely to that terra incognita, the dark back-ground of human consciousness, where are the primal forces of the soul and the mustering-place of good and evil. A certain mystery enshrouds all profound ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... in the earliest periods of which we have any record is necessarily somewhat obscure, owing to the scarcity of the documents that have come down to us. The earliest of these have been carefully collected and printed in one volume by Dr Sweet, entitled The Oldest English Texts, edited for the Early English Text Society in 1885. Here we already ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... teachers aim to produce? First, a vital respect for facts and for sound reasoning therefrom; second, the power so to analyze and marshal the facts in an obscure and complicated case as to bring order and light out of confusion; and third, the appreciation of other men's point of view and training in the tact which will influence them. Incidentally a good course ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... was done by Lincoln and one that was to have an immediate effect upon the course of the war. This was the appointment of General Ulysses S. Grant to the position of Commander in Chief of the Union forces. General Grant, like Lincoln, came from obscure beginnings. He had volunteered his services at the beginning of the war, and had won his way upward through sheer merit. On the Fourth of July, 1863, he had captured the Southern city of Vicksburg, while General Meade in the same year beat ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... of "cook and steward." The story of how poor boys of the beginning and middle of the century and right up to the latter part of the 'sixties started sea-life is always romantic, often sensational, and ever pathetic. They were usually the sons of poor parents living for the most part in obscure villages or small towns bordering on the sea, which sea blazed into their minds aspirations to get aboard some one of the numerous vessels that passed their homes one way or the other all day long. The notion ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... board of ministers, whose appointments or dismissals were the results of palace intrigues, sometimes petty but more often bloody. Corruption ate its way through the entire office- holding element of the Ottoman state: positions were bought and sold from the Divan down to the obscure village, and office was held to exist primarily for financial profit and secondarily as a means of oppressing ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... illimitable in their compass of effect, are often, for the same reason, obscure and untraceable in the steps of their movement. Growth, for instance, animal or vegetable, what eye can arrest its eternal increments? The hour-hand of a watch, who can detect the separate fluxions of its advance? Judging by the past, and the change ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... affirmed this truth, and invented a formal mode of interpretation, upon which he wrote his multitudinous octavos, themselves mystical volumes, and whose effect has been to involve a subject already obscure in still deeper darkness, and to transfer the adoration of a small portion of the Christian world from the letter of the Scriptures to the letter of Swedenborg,—a questionable benefit to his followers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and subdivisions, though intended to make clear, too often entangle the ground unnecessarily, and keep the mind upon the stretch to remember, when it should only feel. We think this a fault with Mr Fuseli; it often renders him obscure, and involves his style of aphorisms in the mystery ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... droughts; seasonal August winds blow from the west, carrying sand and dust across the country, which can obscure visibility ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... he ran the risk of having his mandate withdrawn, and for some obscure reason he disliked the prospect. Now that the job had been thrust on him he did not propose to relinquish it; and, to guard against the possibility, he saw that he must reassure the unimaginative old man who was the legal conscience of ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... is of obscure birth, mother, I will at once give him up; but you, on your part, must be good enough not to insist upon my marriage with the Marquis ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... day spent at Covent Garden, devoted to a thorough examination of this vast establishment, from its extensive catacombs to the leads which overlook the panorama of London; persuaded as we are that the public has but an obscure idea of the capital, labour, and ingenuity expended in the production of what is visible to the eye of the audience. Access to the stage during rehearsal is strictly confined to the performers, although that is the least part of the exhibition; but by special favour, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... present you close against men of talents that broad, that noble entrance which belongs to them, and which ought to stand wide open to them; and in exchange you open to them a bye entrance, low and narrow, always obscure, often filthy, through which, too often, they can pass only by crawling on their hands and knees, and from which they too often emerge sullied with stains never to be washed away. But take the most favourable case. Suppose that the member ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... young soldiers the sublime and perilous task of rushing upon the enemy when he is hidden behind the shelter of his fougades, his parapets, and his artificial brambles; and entrust to the brave Territorials the more obscure but not less glorious work of mounting guard ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... those that have burst out from an obscure original to great eminence. He was born July 21, 1664, according to some, at Winburn, in Dorsetshire, of I know not what parents; others say, that he was the son of a joiner of London: he was, perhaps, willing enough to leave his birth unsettled[1], ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... handed back the book and quitted the office, thence pursuing his way to an obscure coffee-house by the Strand, where he now partook of a light dinner. But rest seemed impossible with him. Some absorbing intention kept his body continually on the move. He paid his bill, took his bag in his hand, and went ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... truth, when it is spoken for some useful purpose, must necessarily seem obscure, extravagant, or merely false; for, were it of common knowledge, it would not be worth expressing. And truth being fact, and therefore hard, must irritate and wound; but it has that power of growth and creation peculiar ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... journey brought us within thirty miles of our future retreat, and we put up at an obscure inn in a village by the way. At the inn was a gentleman who, the landlord told me, had been so liberal in his charity that he had no money left to pay his reckoning. I could not avoid expressing my concern at seeing a gentleman in such circumstances, and offered ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... of the Street, and therein he was a being transformed, case hardened, supremely selfish, asking no quarter; no, nor giving any. Fouled with the clutchings and grapplings of the attack, besmirched with the elbowing of low associates and obscure allies, he set his feet toward conquest, and mingled with the marchings of an army that surged forever forward and back; now in merciless assault, beating the fallen enemy under foot, now in repulse, equally merciless, trampling down the auxiliaries of ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... the man of Macedonia which drew Paul across the water from Troas to Philippi speaks to us. 'Come over and help us,' comes from many voices. And if we, in however humble and obscure, and as the foolish purblind world calls it, 'small,' way, yield to the invitation, and try to do what in us lies, then we shall find that, like Paul by the riverside in that oratory, we are building better than we know, and planting a little seed, the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... was in singular sympathy with his task, and has written of his favourite master enthusiastically, yet with consummate judgment. Among living authorities, Dr. Gronau, Herr Wickhoff, Signor Venturi, and Mr. Bernhard Berenson have contributed effectively to the elucidation of obscure or disputed points, and the latter writer has probably come nearer than anyone to recognise the scope of Giorgione's art, and grasp the man behind his work. The monograph by Signor Conti and the chapter in Pater's Renaissance ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... before Day, they set out on their Journey, not in a Postchaise, or any Publick Vehicle, for fear of a Discovery, but on Foot; and lodging every Night at some obscure Village, till their Arrival ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... regard to facts relates to the principle of causation, and the foundation of all our beliefs in causation is experience, while the foundation of inference from experience is habit. As a matter of fact, it is strange how often an obscure event becomes suddenly clear by an inquiry into the possibility of habit as its cause. Even everything we call fashion, custom, presumption, is at bottom nothing more than habit, or explicable by habit. All new fashions ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... told, "your objective is clear, but your methods must be most indirect—even unclear. Some things you must obscure in a mass of obviously imaginative detail, while you bring others to the fore. You must hint. You must suggest. You should never fully explain or deny. And you must never be ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... manner without some trumpery local newspaper letting loose a volley of abuse against 'the disgraceful exhibition,' in which abuse it is sure to be sanctioned by its dainty readers; whereas some murderous horror, the discovery, for example, of the mangled remains of a woman in some obscure den, is greedily seized hold on by the moral journal and dressed up for its readers, who luxuriate and gloat upon the ghastly dish. Now, the writer of 'Lavengro' has no sympathy with those who would shrink from striking a blow, but would not shrink from the use of poison or calumny; ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... domestic animals, symptoms of liver diseases are more obscure than in the small animals. In certain parasitic diseases and in mixed and specific infectious diseases, the liver ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... about poisons than almost anybody," I explained. "Well, my idea is, that perhaps he's found some way of making strychnine tasteless. Or it may not have been strychnine at all, but some obscure drug no one has ever heard of, which produces much the ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... third vestibule is the old hall of the Chamber of Peers, which was built in 1805 for the Senate. This hall, which is small, narrow and obscure; supported by meagre Corinthian columns with mahogany-coloured bases and white capitals; furnished with flat desks and chairs in the Empire style with green velvet seats, the whole in mahogany; and paved with white marble relieved by lozenges of red Saint Anne marble,—this hall, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... theories of salvation, which, right or wrong, are not the things to be presented for men's reception—now any more than in the days of the first teachers who knew nothing of them: they serve but to obscure the vision of the live brother in whom men must believe to be lifted out of their evil and brought into the air of truth and the room for growing deliverance. Hester spoke of Christ, the friend of men, who came to save every one by giving him back to God, as one gives back to ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... several broken coffins, some skulls, and potsherds of glazed and crudely painted earthenware, of which, however, it was impossible to find two pieces that belonged to each other. A narrow hole led from the large cavern into an obscure space, which was so small that one could remain in it only for a few seconds with the burning torch. This circumstance may explain the discovery, in a coffin which was eaten to pieces by worms, and quite mouldered away, of a well-preserved skeleton, or rather a mummy, for in many places ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... whose composition was so obscure that Gil Blas could not comprehend the meaning of a single line of his writings. His poetry was verbose fustian, and his prose a maze of far-fetched ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the obscure diseases of children arise from worms. In all doubtful cases, therefore, this fact should be borne in mind, in order that a thorough investigation may ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... of doubt. Dreading the resentment of the people whom he had so often and so wantonly oppressed, and having on his back that uniform which was never so dishonoured before, he skulked under a servant's bed in an obscure chamber of his house, but was at length discovered in this disgraceful hole, and conducted pale, trembling, and covered with flue,*** before the officer who had commanded his arrest; nor could this ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... of caverns, deserts, quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven; of cannibals, the anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. Count Abel spoke to Mlle. Moriaz of the fortunes and vicissitudes of partisan warfare, of vain exploits, of obscure glories, of bloody encounters that never are decisive, of defeats from which survive hope, hunger, thirst, cold, snow stained with blood, and long captivities in forests, tracked by the enemy; then disasters, ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... love is the one certainty for me! Fog may obscure the goal I aim at, the road I have to I read, the very ground I stand on; doubts may even for a while attack my faith; but my love for you shines ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Your husband, dear lady, has robbed me of my joy in life, the only happiness I have known since I became a widower. Yes, if I had not been so unlucky as to come across that old rip, Josepha would still be mine; for I, you know, should never have placed her on the stage. She would have lived obscure, well conducted, and mine. Oh! if you could but have seen her eight years ago, slight and wiry, with the golden skin of an Andalusian, as they say, black hair as shiny as satin, an eye that flashed lightning under long ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... strength, but their doom is upon them, and after numerous adventures they slay their fathers or some other unfortunate relative. But the most characteristic part of what seems an almost universal legend is that these children are born in the most obscure circumstances, afterward rising to a height of splendour which makes up for all they previously suffered. It is not necessary to explain nowadays that this is characteristic of nearly all sun-myths. The sun is born in obscurity, and rises to a ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... in the house of Fledermausse; only, in some distant room, an obscure light was burning. Some one was on the watch. "That is well," said I, closing the curtain. "I have ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... and fairly aching with cold and fatigue, he reached the little hotel, which appeared more miserable, obscure, and profane than ever. But a tempting fiend seemed to have got into the gin and whiskey bottles behind the red-nosed bartender. To his morbid fancy and eyes, half-blinded with wind and cold, they appeared to wink, beckon, and suggest: "Drink and be merry; drink and forget your ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... day ever opened with a fairer promise. Not a single cloud flecked the sky, and the sun coursed onward through the azure sea until past meridian, without throwing to the earth a single shadow. Then, low in the west, appeared something obscure and hazy, blending the hill-tops with the horizon; an hour later, and three or four small fleecy islands were seen, clearly outlined in the airy ocean, and slowly ascending—avant-couriers of a coming storm. Following these were mountain peaks, snow-capped and craggy, with desolate valleys between. ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... and the fruits of his own limited capacity among the grievances of the oppressed nationality to which he belonged. Years of want, his little dilapidated dwelling—granted him in his capacity of village teacher but shoved away into an obscure corner of Hetfalu—his meagre barley-bread, his sordid frock-coat—all these things aggravated the anguish of ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... not a great blessing that the Marchesino should be prevented from throwing himself away in that manner? The first match in Ravenna to be carried off by an obscure and plebeian Venetian artist. Truly it was all for the best ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... their engagement, Richard Barry promptly made trouble—the very worst kind of trouble. He descended on Bridgeport and completely overwhelmed poor Miss Sara in his wrath. He laughed at the idea of countenancing an engagement between a child like Marcella and an obscure country doctor. And he carried Marcella off ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... entertained by the Gipsies in England are derived from the English peasantry, were brought from India, or picked up on the way. This must be left for ethnologists more industrious and better informed than myself to decide. In any case, the possible common Aryan source will tend to obscure the truth, just as it often does the derivation of Rommany words. But nothing can detract from the inexpressibly quaint spirit of Gipsy originality in which these odd credos are expressed, or surpass the strangeness of the ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... this country, seen any churchyard comparable to this one; happy, serene dead, to sleep amid such blossoms and consecration! Good taste prevailed here; distinguished men lay beneath memorial stones that came no higher than your waist or shoulder; there was a total absence of obscure grocers reposing under gigantic obelisks; to earn a monument here you must win a battle, or do, at any rate, something more than adulterate sugar and oil. The particular monument by which young John Mayrant and I found ourselves ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... Obscure and without place or name, She gloried in another's fame. Poor, plain and humble in her dress, She thrilled when beauty and success And wealth passed by, on pleasure bent; They made earth seem so opulent. Yet none of quicker sympathy, When need or sorrow ...
— New Thought Pastels • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... cases the causes are obscure. Chronic digestive and intestinal disorders, anaemia, chlorosis, continued exposure to heat or cold, menstrual and uterine irregularities, and the too free use of spirituous liquors, tea, etc. are often ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... what they decided should be their destination, almost at the end of the road and in a dense bit of wooded section which would obscure them from enemy observers, they brought their tractor to a stop. With pick and shovel they began building an earthen oven, in which they might cook their food, and from which they might keep reasonably comfortable, without ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... populous empire, under cloud of night and distance and utter poverty, Mark that—of utter poverty. Wealth is power; but it is a jest in comparison of poverty. Splendour is power; but it is a joke to obscurity. To be poor, to be obscure, to be a baker's apprentice or a tailor's journeyman, throws a power about a man, clothes him with attributes of ubiquity, really with those privileges of concealment which in the ring of Gyges were but fabulous. Is it a king, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... cannot be called a conspicuous literary character; indeed few mortals that have left so visible a work, or footmark, behind them can be more obscure. One other of those vanished Existences, whose work has not yet vanished;—almost a pathetic phenomenon, were not the whole world full of such! The builders of Stonehenge, for example:—or, alas, what say we, Stonehenge and builders? The writers of the Universal Review and Homer's ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... riding in long sweeping semicircles, methodically searched for Purdy's trail. With set face and narrowed eyes the man studied every foot of the ground, at times throwing himself from the saddle for closer scrutiny of some obscure mark or misplaced stone. So great was his anxiety to overtake the pair that his slow pace became a veritable torture. And at times his struggle to keep from putting spurs to his horse and dashing wildly on, amounted almost to ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... argument would have been occupied with hopes rather than achievements. Not that it would be literally true to say that music was wholly a negligible quantity in the homes of higher education until the twentieth century, but the seat assigned to it in the few institutions where it was found was an obscure and lowly one, and the influence radiating therefrom reached so small a fragment of the academic community that no one who was not engaged in a careful, sympathizing search could have been aware of its existence. It ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... added a few short notes in the first Appendix. It is not, I think, desirable otherwise to modify the form or add to the matter of a book as it passes through successive editions; I have, therefore, only mended the wording of some obscure sentences; with which exception the text remains, and will remain, in its original form, which I had carefully considered. Should the public find the book useful, and call for further editions of it, such additional notes as may be necessary will be always placed in the first Appendix, where ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... the departure from usage by the Austro-Hungarian press in prominently reporting the remarks of the most obscure Serbian newspapers, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... to me, in unrolling a compact Latin sentence, as if I were writing out in words the meaning of an algebraic formula. A single word often requires three or four as its English equivalent. Yet the language is not made obscure by compression. On the contrary, there is no other language in which it is so hard to bury thought or to conceal ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... latter's lectures he became acquainted with Middendorf. At first he obtained little from either. Schleiermacher seemed to him too temporizing and obscure. "He makes veils." He thought the young Westphalian, at their first meeting, merely "a nice fellow." But in time he learned to understand the great theologian, and the "favourite teacher" noticed him and took him into ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... humourists are prone; which lie indeed deep in their nature; and from which they derive their genial sympathy with eccentric characters that enables them to find motives for what to other men is hopelessly obscure, to exalt into types of humanity what the world turns impatiently aside at, and to enshrine in a form for eternal homage and love such whimsical absurdity as Captain Toby Shandy's. But Dickens was too conscious of these excesses from time to time, not ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... us were grouped at the port anchor davit, staring with no less assiduity, but with far less hope on the obscure horizon. Islands we beheld in plenty, but they were of 'such stuff as dreams are made on,' and vanished at a wink, only to appear in other places; and by and by not only islands, but refulgent and revolving lights began to stud the darkness; lighthouses of the mind ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scurry of wings. Queer glowing balls of yellow connected with obscure, shadowy figures stared at him. The wings winnowed the air, and again he ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... the Nile. It had reference to the waters of Meribah, the waters of strife, and how they would cause his death in the desert, before he had completed his task of leading the people into the promised land. Pharaoh, misled by the obscure vision of his astrologers, thought that the future redeemer of Israel was to lose his life by drowning, and to make sure that the boy whose appearance was foretold by the astrologers might not escape his fate, he had ordered all boys, even the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... discuss whether this time of anticipation and desire, of endeavor and partial success, in which the new struggles with the old without conquering it, and the opposite tendencies in the conflicting views of the world interplay in a way at once obscure and wayward, is to be classed as the epilogue of the old era or the prologue of the new. The simple solution to take it as a transition period, no longer mediaeval but not yet modern, has met with fairly general acceptance. Nicolas of Cusa (1401-64) was the first to announce fundamental principles ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... best he could adopt about here, with large black whiskers. He is stopping about three miles off, he said, in some obscure hiding-place. And now," continued Barbara, "I want you to advise me; had I better inform mamma that Richard is here, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... translator has preserved Pedro Sancho's spelling of proper names, calling attention to the modern equivalent on the first occurrence of each name. In a few instances, where the text was unusually obscure, close translation ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... exercendas rationales mentes figurata et obscure posita."—Aug. De Unit. Eccl. c. v.—"Obscuritates Divinarum Scripturarum quas exercitationis nostr caus DEUS esse voluit."—Id. Ep. lix. ad Paulinum, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... have passed unobserved through life like millions of other men, looked upon as possessing a good-natured and affectionate disposition, but without either elevation of mind or brightness of intellect. During many years of his life the Duke of Clarence was an obscure individual, without consideration, moving in a limited circle, and altogether forgotten by the great world. He resided at Bushey with Mrs. Jordan, and brought up his numerous children with very tender affection: with them, and for them, he seemed entirely to live. The cause of his separation from ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... a rack of tempest-driven clouds hanging in the sky, momentarily awaiting the transforming violence of a fresh onset. Sometimes continents of pale light are separated by narrow straits of comparative darkness; elsewhere obscure spaces are hemmed in by luminous inlets ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... together, the Duc d'Orleans was foully assassinated by a Burgundian partisan. The Duke of Burgundy, though he at first withdrew from Paris, speedily returned, avowed the act, and was received with plaudits by the mob. For a few years the strife continued, obscure and bad; a great league of French princes and nobles was made to stem the success of the Burgundians; and it was about this time that the Armagnac name became common. Paris, however, dominated by the "Cabochians," ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... sun was in the tree-tops, and a softer or sweeter light could not have been chosen for such a ceremony. Most of the fields still lay in the soft brightness of the hour, though the forest was rapidly getting the more obscure look of night. A broad and gloomy margin was spreading from the boundary of the woods, and, here and there, a solitary tree cast its shadow on the meadows without its limits, throwing a dark ragged line, in bold relief, on the glow of the sun's ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... a Papal "Chapel" in St. Peter's that morning, with a procession of white vestments in honour of the Mass of the Resurrection, but the Pope did not attend. He sat alone in his simple chamber, with curtains drawn across the marble columns to obscure the bed, fingering the crucifix which hung from his neck, and waiting for the ringing of the ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... escutcheons, and here and there, in the spaces between them, brown pictures, which I perceived to be bad, in battered frames, were suspended. With the exception of several straw-bottomed chairs with their backs to the wall, the grand obscure vista contained nothing else to minister to effect. It was evidently never used save as a passage, and little even as that. I may add that by the time the door opened again through which the maidservant had escaped, my eyes had grown used ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... story that, when Thetis laid him in the fire, one of his lips, which he had licked, was consumed (Tzetzes on Lycophron, 178); "restrainer of the people,' (eche-laos); "healer of sorrow'' (ache-loios); "the obscure'' (connected with achlus, "mist''); "snakeborn'' (echis), the snake being one of the chief forms taken by Thetis. The most generally received view makes him a god of light, especially of the sun or of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Newton and Jeremy Taylor, Descartes and Spinoza, Leibnitz and Wesley, Spencer and Newman. And even these have authority not through any divine right of genius or acquired claim of learning, but because they illumine and interpret obscure suggestions of our own thoughts. Indeed, to the sacrament of historic communion with the past, as well as to the chief rite of the Church, the apostolic injunction is applicable: "Let a man examine himself; and so let him eat of ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... yearning to see his old home again, to hear his native language spoken, to hear the folk songs and familiar German airs sung once more and to look upon the faces of his fellow-countrymen again. Now that he knew his child was happy, he felt that he would be content simply to sit placidly in an obscure corner of the market-place in Leipsic, and watch the ebb and flow of life as it is lived over there in the beloved Fatherland. He did not ask to take part in it or to be one with his countrymen; all he asked was the privilege of watching their life for the few remaining ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... borrowed strength and courage from Bessie's vigorous counsels. She felt braced by mere contact with such a strong, healthy organization. She was always less fretful and impatient when Bessie was near; her cheery influence cleared away many a cloud that threatened to obscure Hatty's horizon. ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that Mrs. Shiffney came into a box at the back of the stalls followed by Jonson Ramer. Without taking off her sable coat she sat down in a corner and looked quickly over the obscure space before her. Immediately she saw Charmian and the dressmaker, who sat within a few yards of her. Claude was not visible. Mrs. Shiffney sat back a little farther in the box, and whispered to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... thy wings When far away upon a barbarous strand, In fight unequal, by an obscure hand, Fell the last scion of thy brood ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... of praising Strauss the Writer. I sought and sought, but my purpose remained unfulfilled. Meanwhile, however, another duty seemed to press itself strongly on my mind—that of enumerating the solecisms, the strained metaphors, the obscure abbreviations, the instances of bad taste, and the distortions which I encountered; and these were of such a nature that I dare do no more than select a few examples of them from among a collection which is too bulky to be given in full. By ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... creative art, but we must nip in the bud our dreams of discovering it. If the critics take up a scientific attitude no good will come of it: they will waste a dozen years, write a lot of rubbish, make the subject more obscure than ever—and nothing more. It is always a good thing to think scientifically, but the trouble is that scientific thinking about creative art will be bound to degenerate in the end into searching for ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... we had no trouble in trailing them down the Arkansas river, which they had crossed at Sand Creek, and then had gone up the latter stream, in the direction of Denver, to which place they were undoubtedly bound. When nearing Denver their trail became so obscure that we at last lost it; but by inquiring of the settlers along the road which they had taken, ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... months, high interest rates have had a severe impact on the nation's housing market. Yet the current pressures and uncertainties should not obscure the achievements of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... observe, is most needed where it is least likely to be regarded, i. e., in circumstances where the voice of conscience is not so decided as in the case of temptations to palpable vice. Our danger is often greatest, where we have to resist only an obscure sense of right and wrong, in seeking the lower gratifications of life. So much the more scrupulous ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... honest poverty, That hangs his head, and a' that? The coward slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, and a' that, Our toils obscure, and a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a number of illustrious obscure are going about. But I have still something else to tell you. I'm going to set my ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Of Literature are closed To me a bard obscure I Have a consolation The Copyreaders crude and rough Can't monkey with my Humble stuff and ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... gilte* tresses clear; *golden Esther, lay thou thy meekness all adown; Hide, Jonathan, all thy friendly mannere, Penelope, and Marcia Catoun, Make of your wifehood no comparisoun; Hide ye your beauties, Isoude and Helene; My lady comes, that all this may distain.* *outdo, obscure ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... this frank and unaffected expression of some obscure disgust with his own present position had no other implication, that the Colonel did not except to it. Yet the man did not go on. He stopped and seemed lost in sombre contemplation ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... self-communion, she would sometimes fall into a shallow delirium. In all her delirium she was invariably wandering to and fro, lost, in the long underground passage leading from the scullery past the coal-cellar and the cinder-cellar to the backyard. And she was afraid of the vast-obscure of those regions, as she had been in ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... within the tent, they might have beheld Colonel Witham, seated at a table upon which a light was thrown, its object being not so much to illuminate the occupant of the seat as to obscure his vision. It served to render more shadowy a vague figure that occupied a little booth across which a gauze curtain hung, and from which a voice ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... we have been considering the struggles of men who have risen from obscure positions in life, by the aid of their own genius, industry, and courage, to the front rank of their respective callings. We shall now relate the story of one who having already won fortune, periled ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... (5). The whole of the provisions as to the Exchequer Judges are extremely obscure. The jurisdiction and the powers of the Court, should it ever be formed, will need to be defined by a special Act of Parliament. There are special laws regulating the action of the Federal Judiciary both in the United States and in Switzerland. As the matter at present stands the jurisdiction ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... terminated, it stands as it were to indicate the line at which the march of human knowledge has now arrived. We see it rising on the extreme verge of the boundary which separates the clear and the palpable from the indistinct and the obscure. The explored province of past research, with all its many party-coloured fields, stretches out from it in long perspective on the one hand,—luminous, well-defined, rejoicing in the light. The terra incognita of future discovery lies enveloped in ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... struck me that she was an American of the kind that subsidizes households like that of Etchingham Manor. Perhaps my aunt had even forced her to take the family name, to save appearances. The old woman was capable of anything, even of providing an obscure nephew with a brilliant sister. And I should not be thanked if I interfered. This skeleton of swift reasoning passed between word and word ... "You are no sister of mine!" I was ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... most important qualification for an arguer to possess is the faculty of clearly presenting his case. New ideas, new truths are seldom readily accepted, and it is never safe to assume that the hearer or the reader of an argument will laboriously work his way through a mass of obscure reasoning. Absolute clearness of expression is essential. The method of arriving at a conclusion should be so plain that no one can avoid seeing what is proved and how it is proved. Lincoln's great success as a debater was due largely ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... nightly to the neighbourhood of Washington Square, regardless of weather or inconvenience. He saw her come and go, night after night, and he saw people enter the house to which he held a key,—always he saw from obscure points of vantage and with the stealth and caution ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... commands. She received them with the greatest kindness; and ordering them to withdraw, she thus addressed the astonished prince. "Do not imagine, dear prince, that I have always been a cat, or that I am of obscure birth. My father was the monarch of six kingdoms; he tenderly loved my mother, leaving her always at liberty to follow her own inclinations. Her prevailing passion was to travel; and a short time before my birth, having heard of some fairies who were in ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... not content to collect their prey only in obscure and little-known regions, for a chance was seen to commercialize the small birds of the forests and fields. Warblers, Thrushes, Wrens, in fact all those small forms of dainty bird life which come about the home to cheer the hearts of men and women ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... rest a place is noticed, which enabled the natives to defy intrusion or discovery, near the "Three Thumbs' Mountain,"—an almost impenetrable forest, of seven miles extent: the spreading branches obscure the sky, and lofty plants grow entwined, and conceal an object at the distance of a few feet. The attempt of the blacks to cross the line discovered their retreat. It was resolved to assemble forces sufficient ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... up, however, in a totally different frame of mind. He was pre-eminently a person of moods, dependent, probably, as all moods are, on certain obscure physical variations. And his mental temperature had run down in the night. The house, the people who had been fresh and interesting to him twelve hours before, were now the burden he had more than half expected them to be. He lay and thought of the unbroken solitude of his college ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wound, he poured upon him such a flood of solemn remonstrance, in a tone of such injured feeling, that the pup was evidently cut to the heart—his self-condemned, appealing looks proving beyond a doubt that the meaning of what was said was plain to him, though the language might be obscure. ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the rise of the Empire of Majapahit, in the age immediately following our Traveller's voyage, is very obscure. But there is some evidence of the existence of a powerful dynasty in the island about this time; and in an inscription of ascertained date (A.D. 1294) the King Uttungadeva claims to have subjected five kings and to ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a movement in the obscure corner where sat the unnamed and unintroduced lady. This lady rose and came towards the table. She was very elegant in dress and manner, and she ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... shall dare interrupt this flow of poetry to object to the palpable obscure, or to ask how feet can wander upon that ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... all round and below and above them stretches the blind mass of earth, endless and unexplored. Yes, give me the Tube and Cubismus every time; give me ideas, so snug and neat and simple and well made. And preserve me from nature, preserve me from all that's inhumanly large and complicated and obscure. I haven't the courage, and, above all, I haven't the time to ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... his reasons for being in any particular place," remarked M. Dudouis, "and, in this case, his reasons seem to me obscure. The writing-desk has not been broken open nor the pocketbook stolen. There is even gold ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... pitch dark, and ranging themselves in a line near a large tree, they each lit a small fire, and had a supply of dry leaves to give effect to the acting. On their commencing their chanting, the men came forward, emerging from the darkness into the obscure light shed by the yet uncherished fires, like spectres. After some performance, at a given signal, a handful of dry leaves was thrown on each fire, which instantly blazing up lighted the whole scene, and shewed the dusky figures of the performers painted and agitated with admirable effect, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... (their) own slogans about patriotism, purity, and a better system of conducting government."[25] On the other hand they differed as to what these terms meant. The intent was good, the timing was wrong. Pitt, for reasons still somewhat obscure, accepted a peerage and became Lord Chatham and opened the door to cries of corruption and sell-out by the "Great Commoner." More significantly, Chatham was trying to lead a ministry from the House of Lords. He ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... the lessons to be learned from the career of William McKinley by the young men who make up the student body of our university. These lessons are not obscure or difficult. They teach the value of study and mental training, but they teach more impressively that the road to usefulness and to the only success worth having, will be missed or lost except it is sought and kept by the light of those qualities of heart, which it is sometimes supposed ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... the last years of his life; and there I came across persons who were familiar with him. I find myself in a position to throw light on just that part of his tragic career which has remained most obscure. If they who believe in Strickland's greatness are right, the personal narratives of such as knew him in the flesh can hardly be superfluous. What would we not give for the reminiscences of someone who had been as intimately acquainted ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... projected long before the idea of a transcontinental line to the Pacific coast had taken full possession of men's minds. As early as 1858 a plan was worked out for the construction of a line of about forty miles within the State of Kansas to connect what were then the obscure and unimportant townships of Atchison and Topeka. At that time not a mile of railroad had been built in Kansas or in any Territory west of that State, except on the Pacific coast, to which there had ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... are already enjoying the bliss of heaven or writhing in the flames of hell, what need of a future judgment? The teachings of God's word on these important points are neither obscure nor contradictory; they may be understood by common minds. But what candid mind can see either wisdom or justice in the current theory? Will the righteous, after the investigation of their cases at the judgment, receive the commendation, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... conclusions are separated from their premises, the nexus is lost, and the argument with its rightful conclusions, becomes correspondingly obscure." Page 34. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... down in the bottom of the boat and gazed thoughtfully at the stone perch. Frank, to whom the nature of the problem was obscure, also gazed at the stone perch, but without much hope of finding inspiration. Priscilla looked ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... nobly," added Reilly, "and in a truly Christian spirit. Were it not for the shelter and protection which I myself received from one of them, my mangled body would probably be huddled down into some obscure grave, as a felon, and my property—which is mine only by a necessary fiction and evasion of the law—have passed into the hands of Sir Robert Whitecraft. I am wrong, however, in saying that it could. Mr. Hastings, a generous and liberal Protestant, took it in his own name for my father, but gave ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... glittering Corinthian colonnades, Webster of vaulted crypts, . . . Marlowe of masoned clouds, and Marston, in his better moments, of the fragmentary vigour of a Roman ruin,' one begins to regret that any one ever thought of the unity of the arts. Similes such as these obscure; they do not illumine. To say that Ford is like a glittering Corinthian colonnade adds nothing to our knowledge of either Ford or Greek architecture. Mr. Symonds has written some charming poetry, but his prose, unfortunately, is always poetical prose, never the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... man must have his way. You are, as you told me yesterday, your own master, free to do as you please. To Miss Darrell personally I have no objection; she is beautiful, well-bred, and, I believe, a noble girl. Her poverty and obscure birth are drawbacks in my eyes, but, since they are not so in yours, I will allude to them no more. The objections I made yesterday to your marriage I would have made had your bride been a duke's daughter. I had hoped—it was an absurd hope—that you would not think of marriage ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... came back, and they were rich and sweet, and worth while. But—he was shocked when he found courage to ask it—if they did not come back, what could he do? He was part of a great web—a little filament in one obscure corner, and he was spinning a fabric whose faintest plan he ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... although with the eschatological element preponderating. The most authentic Catholic ethic, monastic asceticism, is an ethic of eschatology, directed to the salvation of the individual soul rather than to the maintenance of society. And in the cult of virginity may there not perhaps be a certain obscure idea that to perpetuate ourselves in others hinders our own personal perpetuation? The ascetic morality is a negative morality. And, strictly, what is important for a man is not to die, whether he sins or not. ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... required all the glow of his imagination and all the strength of his judgment to believe it? Let us who are seeing the fulfilment of this vision, utter the fervent prayer that no sullen clouds of coldness or estrangement may ever obscure these fair relations, and that the madness of man may never mar ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... forward without terror!—These reflections strengthened by every cross accident!—And what but cross accidents befal me!—All my darling schemes dashed in pieces, all my hopes at an end; deny me not the liberty to refuge myself in some obscure corner, where neither the enemies you have made me, nor the few friends you have left me, may ever hear of the supposed rash-one, till those happy moments are at hand, which shall ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... based assertions of those who say that less silver will be sent to Manila from a kingdom where conditions are such [i.e., Espana] than Mexico [now] gives—I, at least, no matter how long may be the argument, do not comprehend so obscure a secret; on the contrary, I am persuaded that Espana will be no poorer thereby. For, if this mouth be stopped, Espana must be drained, by those that remain (as is done today), of all of this article that other kingdoms are offering it, as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... mind, to which the ennui of a court was insupportable. He loved its scandal and rumours—even the report of incest was not displeasing to him. Every evening, he assembled his roues, his mistresses, some danseuses from the Opera, often his daughter the Duchess de Berri,[3] and some persons of obscure birth, but brilliant for their talent or renowned for their vices. At these suppers the choicest viands, the finest wines, exhilarated the guests, all the disorders and scandal of court and the city were passed in review. They ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... a lust of the flesh that brings disease upon the body, destroys the vitality of human life and sows the seeds of death in the soul, which shall be harvested in the eternal fires of torment. These sins of the dark have gone far to obscure the pure light of a Christian life. "Ye are the light of the world," can never be spoken of those who yield to the temptations of this monster vice. The Moon in her clear reflection of the Sun is unspotted by such evils. Young reader, have you any admiration for a pure life? Does there not ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes, catch the golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its original bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart, shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that my understanding also did not remain ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... physical one. Theres something abnormal about his brain. That means, probably, some morbid condition affecting the spinal cord. And that means the circulation. In short, it's clear to me that he's suffering from an obscure form of blood-poisoning, which is almost certainly due to an accumulation of ptomaines in the nuciform sac. I'll remove ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... character is supplied by the fact that both these needy persons seemed to know him intimately, and that each called him Bill. All Lord Dawlish's friends called him Bill, and he had a catholic list of them, ranging from men whose names were in 'Debrett' to men whose names were on the notice boards of obscure clubs in connexion with the non-payment of dues. He was the sort of man one ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... pulling down the strongholds of bigotry, scepticism, and spiritual death. Sir James Mackintosh somewhere says, that the great movement which shook Christendom to its centre, and did more to change and reform society than the political revolutions and wars of a thousand years, originated with an obscure Augustinian monk preaching the doctrine of justification by faith. This acute Scotchman saw, what all must see who read Luther's writings with any attention, that it was no accident, no temporal interest, which led him to lay such stress on this doctrine. It was ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... strange period," he went on, "when the teeming Time was great with the revolution that was speedily to be born, I was on a mission in Paris with my excellent, my maligned friend, Cagliostro. Mesmer was one of our band. I seemed to occupy but an obscure rank in it: though, as you know, in secret societies the humble man may be a chief and director—the ostensible leader but a puppet moved by unseen hands. Never mind who was chief, or who was second. Never mind my age. It ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... things lasted three years, some say four, but the monks of Saint Benoist have not wormed out the date, which remains obscure, like the reasons for the quarrel between the two friends. Probably the Venetian had the high ambition to reign without any control or dispute, and forgot the services which the Frenchman had rendered ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... that the son of a king was to travel, in the dress of a private subject, on some merciful and condescending errand to a distant and obscure part of his territory. Surely it would be very ungenerous and ungrateful, if the poor villagers, whom he came to serve, were to deny to him the honors of a king's son merely because they could not believe that so great a person could stoop so low as to come among them, especially ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... toward intellectual greatness as to allow to Milton, Addison, and Shakspeare modest monuments behind a door. The place is called the Poets' Corner; and so famed and celebrated is this vast edifice every where, that the phrase by which even this obscure and insignificant portion of it is known is familiar to every ear and every tongue ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... his strange fancy; "but there's only one about, and it seems a deuce of a long way off—however, I'll try;" and, with that, I reached my arm up in the direction of the solitary planet, which lay in the vast obscure like a small silver candlestick, with a greenish tinge in its icy sparkling, mirrored far below in the indigo flood of the abysmal sea, while a grey scud came sweeping up, no one quite knew whence, and hung about the glossy face of the silent luminary like the shreds of a wedding veil, scattered ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... analogy with what regards the Elements of Chemistry. Just about one half of the known elements of matter occur with frequency, and enter into useful and ordinary combinations to produce the great mass of known substances. The remaining half are unfrequent, obscure, and relatively unimportant; some of them never having been seen even by many of our most eminent chemists. Even should a few new elements be discovered, it cannot be anticipated that any one of them should prove to be of leading importance, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... well as the peculiar economic and industrial conditions which have made it unlike the other newly settled countries of the world. Seeing these things and talking with the leading men in every part of the country, I began to comprehend many things that had previously been obscure to me, and saw how the political troubles of the land were connected with the life which nature imposed on the people. Immediately after my return to Europe, fresh political troubles broke out, and events occurred in the Transvaal which fixed the eyes of the whole world upon South ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Fortunately for them the Government were aware of the state of affairs in the country and did not remain indifferent to it; and, as I have heard yourself explain to the Indians, Her Gracious Majesty has at heart the welfare of even the most obscure of her subjects. In the summer of 1874, I was travelling amongst the Blackfeet. It was painful to me to see the state of poverty to which they had been reduced. Formerly they had been the most opulent Indians in the country, and now they ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... Daughters, and would willingly Whip them, did they dare do so, Grown Women as they are, for Spite. I do know Fathers, Men of Parts and Rank, forsooth, jealous of their Sons, and that have kept the Youngsters in the Background, and even striven to Obscure their Minds that they might not cross the Paternal Orbit. And has it not almost passed into a proverb, that my Lord Duke's Natural and most Inveterate Enemy is my Lord Marquis, who is his Heir? But not to the World of Gold and Purple are these Jealousies and Evil Feelings confined. You shall ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... intelligent beings for it. Far higher was the Hebrew spiritualism, and worship of One Supreme, and far higher is Isaiah than Homer, David than Sophocles; and no Hebrew prophet ever said, "Offer a cock to Esculapius." So is Christianity far beyond Buddhism; and far beyond Sakya Muni, dim and obscure as he is, are the concrete realities of the life of Jesus. Whether anything further is to come, I tremble to ask; and yet I do ask it.[351] To ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... colossal wealth and world-dominion, before the exigencies of which mere abstract ethical theories must not be permitted to stand. The same argument that justified the conquest of an inferior nation could not be denied to those who sought the suppression of an inferior race. In the South, an obscure jealousy of the negro's progress, an obscure fear of the very equality so contemptuously denied, furnished a rich soil for successful agitation. Statistics of crime, ingeniously manipulated, were made to present ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... have no details given us as to the process or the time required for purification, we have certain suggestions. In the Old Testament there is a reference to "prisoners of hope." The reference is somewhat obscure, and taken by itself it is of doubtful meaning. But in the New Testament it is intimated that Christ went and "preached to the spirits in prison." There we have a gleam of light as to what is meant by "prisoners of hope." There were imprisoned souls to whom Christ took some joyful message. We ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... losing money hand over fist," Thorny stated, gloomily, with that intimate knowledge of an employer's affairs always displayed by an obscure clerk. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... merely skulks in an obscure and contemptible impunity. Does not the public behold with indignation, persons not only generally scandalous in their lives, but the identical persons who, by their society, their instruction, their example, their encouragement, have drawn this man ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... us, both name and thing. That those evils of prelaty, which before from five or six and twenty sees were distributively charged upon the whole people, will now light wholly upon learning, is not obscure to us: whenas now the pastor of a small unlearned parish on the sudden shall be exalted archbishop over a large diocese of books, and yet not remove, but keep his other cure too, a mystical pluralist. He who but of late cried down the ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... happened afterwards, I alone am responsible. I brought it on myself. By sheer quixotic fuss and interference with what, after all, wasn't my affair. For little Jevons most decidedly was not. I might easily have let that sleeping dog lie. He certainly did sleep, in some obscure kennel of London; he had slept ever since I had left him at the door of that restaurant in Soho. He slept almost for the six months he had ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... he would rather have written the Elegy than be able to take Quebec on the morrow; for of all English poems the Elegy is the most popular and widely known; it is the flower of the "literature of melancholy." The Elegy is the glorification of the obscure; therein lies its popularity. The most of us are obscure. The Elegy flatters us by suggesting that we might have swayed the rod of empire or "waked to ecstasy the living lyre," if we had had the chance,—or, what we think is more likely the explanation, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... after another in close file. One alighted on the breast and glided down instantly with devious vivacity, like a small insect running away; it left a narrow dark track on the white skin. He looked at it, looked at the tiny and active drops, looked at what he had done, with obscure satisfaction, with anger, with regret. This wasn't much like an act of justice. He had a desire to go up nearer to the man, to hear him speak, to hear him say something atrocious and wicked that would justify the violence of the blow. He made an attempt to move, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... garrison must surrender to horrors worse than death, unless a supply of this indispensable article could be obtained. Nor was it an easy task to pass through so wily an enemy or the danger and difficulty much lessened, when even beyond the besiegers; owing to the obscure and mountainous way, it was necessary to pass, through a foe scattered in almost every direction. But Captain Logan was not a man to falter where duty called, because encompassed with danger. With two companions he left the fort in the night and ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... felt the necessity or propriety of being locally accurate to Rochester or its buildings. Dickens, of course, meant Rochester; yet, at the same time, he chose to be obscure on that point, and I took my cue from him. I always thought it was one of his most artistic pieces of work; the vague, dreamy description of the Cathedral in the opening chapter of the book. So definite in one sense, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... designate them, are very remarkable. Three Clerks he found, or had known of, somewhere in the Public Offices; and now took, under some advanced title, to be specially his own Private Clerks: three vigorous long-headed young fellows, "Eichel, Schuhmacher, Lautensack" the obscure names of them; [Rodenbeck, 15th June, 1740.] out of whom, now and all along henceforth, he got immensities of work in that kind. They lasted all his life; and, of course, grew ever more expert at their function. Close, silent; exact as machinery: ever ready, from the smallest clear hint, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... are under investigation in the laboratories and it is highly probable that this law will be unraveled at some future date. It will be interesting for our posterity to witness the confusion of the ecclesiastics and their attempted confirmation of this fact in the Bible; their finding of some obscure phrase that will be interpreted by them as a prediction of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... about the ways of escaped nuns," said Arthur, "but I am going to study them. I'll wager you find Claire behind the rusty garments of this obscure, muddy, slimy little woman. They ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... her plac'd in a HOT-BED, have been restor'd to their pristine Strength, and flourish'd again; and like true Heroes, not envying the busy World, have been content to spend the remainder of their Days in an obscure Nook of the World. ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous
... now, fortunately, few communities in America that have not electric power-plants. Indeed, I know of many obscure little towns of a thousand inhabitants that have had the luxury of electric lights for years, and have as yet no gas or water-works! Miraculously, also, the smaller the town the cheaper is the cost of electricity. This is ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... thine to gild with fame Th' obscure, and raise the humble name; To make the form elude the grave, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... foreign adventurers and of which the laws were written in a foreign tongue, a country given over to that worst tyranny, the tyranny of caste over caste, should have become the seat of civil liberty, the object of the admiration and envy of surrounding states, is one of the most obscure problems in the philosophy of history. But the fact is certain. Within a century and a half after the Norman conquest, the Great Charter was conceded. Within two centuries after the Conquest, the first House of Commons met. Froissart tells us, what indeed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a kind of permanent success; and, from being a dismal laughing-stock in Norway, came to be important, and for a time all-important there. Their opposition nicknames, "Baglers (from Bagall, baculus, bishop's staff; Bishop Nicholas being chief Leader)," "Gold-legs," and the like obscure terms (for there was still a considerable course of counter-fighting ahead, and especially of counter-nicknaming), I take to have meant in Norse prefigurement seven centuries ago, "bloated Aristocracy," "tyrannous-Bourgeoisie,"—till, ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... contributed to the continuance of this? And so Joseph, who was himself going to be embalmed and put into a mummy-case, may have caught something of the tone of thought prevalent around him, and have believed that to carry his bones to the land of promise was, in some obscure manner, to carry him thither. Be that as it may, whether the wish came from a mistake about the relation of flesh and spirit, or only from the natural desire which we too possess, that our graves may not be among strangers, but beside our father's and our mother's—that is not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... illustrious pupils, recalls Hawthorne's exceptional excellence in the composition of English, even at that date (1821-1825); and it is not impossible that Hawthorne intended, through the character of Fanshawe, to present some faint projection of what he then thought might be his own obscure history. Even while he was in college, however, and meditating perhaps the slender elements of this first romance, his fellow-student Horatio Bridge, whose "Journal of an African Cruiser" he afterwards edited, recognized in him the possibilities ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... transfixed by horror in a growing darkness that seemed to penetrate to her very soul. Which of the two had galloped free? Which lay shattered there, very far below her in an abyss that had already become obscure? She agonized to know, but the darkness hid all things. At last she tore it aside as if it had been a veil. She went down, down into that deep place. She stumbled through a valley of awful desolation till she came to that which she sought;—a ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... upon me as the poetic age of our city; poetic from its very obscurity, and open, like the early and obscure days of ancient Rome, to all the embellishments of heroic fiction. I hailed my native city as fortunate above all other American cities in having an antiquity thus extending back into the regions of doubt and fable; ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... cared to exploit it, might have carried him far. In those days the usual road to fame and fortune for an obscure young man was to attach himself to some wealthy patron and acquire a position through him. With the aid of his wealthy friends Kingo could easily enough have obtained employment as a companion to some young noble going abroad for travel and study. It ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... now in a very dense wood, and the track they had been following became more and more obscure when, just as they crossed a little stream, a stern ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... hadn't the right to take the pearls he had given her himself, who had? That Spanish filly had got'm. If Winifred had any 'jection he w'd cut—her—throat. What was the matter with that? (Probably the first use of that celebrated phrase—so obscure are the origins of even ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... unfit to face the risks of exposure to the fever-laden fog which would certainly be encountered in the river. The night was not especially favourable for an expedition intended to take ships by surprise; for although the sky was somewhat cloudy, it was by no means sufficiently so to obscure very materially the light of the moon, which was then in her first quarter. But she would set shortly after midnight, and meanwhile her light would facilitate the passage of the boats across the bar, after the accomplishment of ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... (Friday) to Burghersh's[17] opera at Braham's theatre. A vast deal of fine company, and prodigious applause; tolerable music, moderately sung, but a favourable audience. When it was over they insisted upon his appearing, and, after some delay, he thrust his head out from an obscure pit-box in which he had been sitting and bowed and smiled; but this was not enough, and they would have him on the stage; so a great clapping and shouting went on, among the most vociferous being the Duke of Wellington, who enjoyed the fun like a boy, laughing ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... in the silver sea, this isle, this realm, this England, is becoming a paltry concern, is fast being Gladstoned into drivelling imbecility. What does O'Connor mean by the 100,000 Irish arms? Does he mean 50,000 Irishmen? The point is obscure, as will be seen from the oratory of another distinguished patriot, who said, "Ten millions of Irish hearts are beating with high anticipation, ten millions of eyes are looking forward to the passing of the bill." A very large number ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Socrates adds a corollary to the argument:—'Would you punish your enemy, you should allow him to escape unpunished'—this is the true retaliation. (Compare the obscure verse of Proverbs, 'Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him,' etc., ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... the 'faire part,'" said Madame Marcot, alluding to the black-bordered mourning intimations sent out in France, inscribed with the names of every individual member of the family concerned, from the greatest down to the most insignificant and obscure. "Several pages, I assure you; and everybody came. The cortege was a mile long. M. l'Abbe Colaix officiated; there was a full choral mass; and she got her second cousin once removed, M. Aristide Gerant, who, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... correspondents who reside in localities favourable for making observations on this subject may be induced to pay attention to it; the exact appearance may be ascertained, with probably other facts calculated to throw light on the obscure question of ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... greate indignation) then he putt himselfe into the first troopes which were raysed in the West, for the Kinge, and bore the uneasinesse and fatigue of winter marches, with an exemplar courage and alacrity, untill by to brave a pursuite of the enimy, into an obscure village in Devonshyre, he was shutt with a musquett, with which (without sayinge any worde more, the[n] oh god I am hurte) he fell deade from his horse, to the excessive griefe of his frends, who were all that knew him, and the irreparable damage of ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... grotesque; and what the sage designed but for symbols of a truth were cultivated to the prejudice of the truth itself. The influence of Pythagoras became corrupt and pernicious in proportion as the original tenets became more and more adulterated or obscure, and served, in succeeding ages, to invest with the sanctity of a great name the most visionary chimeras and the most mischievous wanderings of perverted speculation. But, looking to the man himself—his discoveries—his designs—his genius—his marvellous accomplishments—we cannot but consider ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... having many tastes and convictions in common, became fast friends. In 1653, the former returned to England, and for some time acted as tutor to Mistress Fairfax; he being an excellent scholar, and a great master of the Latin tongue. He now led a peaceful and obscure life until 1657. In that year, Milton, "laying aside," as he wrote, "those jealousies, and that emulation which mine own condition might suggest to me," introduced him to Bradshaw; soon after which he was made assistant-secretary ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... counter-marched, recrossed the swamp, and hurried forward to overtake Stuart, marching for Fort Hindman. The first line of the rebels was about four miles below Fort Hindman, and the intervening space was densely, wooded and obscure, with the exception of some old fields back of and close to the fort. During the night, which was a bright moonlight one, we reconnoitred close up, and found a large number of huts which had been abandoned, and the whole rebel force had fallen back ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... degree, of course. But keep your body in perfect health, and you ought to be immune from extreme depression. And I believe you are immune. Frankly, Doctor Meyer Isaacson, I don't think you are right. I am sure something is out of order in my body. There must be some pressure somewhere, some obscure derangement of ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... have erected against the Christian dogma a dogma no less obscure,—that of the depravity of society. MAN IS BORN GOOD, cries Rousseau, in his peremptory style; BUT SOCIETY—that is, the forms and institutions of society—DEPRAVES HIM. In such terms was formulated the paradox, or, better, the protest, of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... of the result of this battle, he sent presents and honorary dresses to his officers, saying, "We must not be contented with this triumph; you have yet to obscure the martial glory of Rustem and Khosrau." Piran replied, "No doubt that object will be accomplished with ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... where the fine folk of Europe now bathe, and flirt, and prattle politics or scandal so cheerfully during the summer solstice—cool and comfortable Ostend—was throughout the sixteenth century as obscure a fishing village as could be found in Christendom. Nothing, had ever happened there, nobody had ever lived there, and it was not until a much later period that the famous oyster, now identified with its name, had been brought to its bay to be educated. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... less than nothing. My mind, I think, is equal to my fortune; I am still young, and I would now avail myself of my power and establish myself in the land, a recognised member of society. But this cannot be. Society shrinks from an obscure foundling, a prizefighter, a leg, a hell-keeper, and an usurer. Debarred therefore from a fair theatre for my energy and capital, I am forced to occupy, perhaps exhaust, myself in multiplied speculations. ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Wednesday is Woden's-day, as Thursday is the day of Thunder, the god of air and storm and rain. Friday is Frea's-day, the deity of peace and joy and fruitfulness, whose emblems, borne aloft by dancing maidens, brought increase to every field and stall they visited. Saturday may commemorate an obscure god Saetere; Tuesday the dark god, Tiw, to meet whom was death. Eostre, the goddess of the dawn or of the spring, lends her name to the Christian festival of the Resurrection. Behind these floated the ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... herself such liberties in conversation, it was shocking! Darya Mihailovna certainly did not care to stand on ceremony in the country, and in the unconstrained frankness of her manners there was perceptible a slight shade of the contempt of the lioness of the capital for the petty and obscure creatures who surrounded her. She had a careless, and even a sarcastic manner with her own set; but the shade of ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... father—alas, I have none!—had you left me at the asylum, without any clue, or hopes of a clue, to my hereafter being reclaimed, it would have been a kindness; I should then have been happy and contented in some obscure situation; but you raised hopes only to prostrate them—and imaginings which have led to my destruction. Sacred is the duty of a parent, and heavy must be the account of those who desert their children, and are required by ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... presented a glazed or smelted appearance. Mr. Darwin, in his work upon volcanic islands, page 143, alludes to this formation, under the head of "Superficial ferruginous beds," and thus concludes his observations: "The origin of these superficial beds, though sufficiently obscure, seems to be due to alluvial action on ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... between hope and fear, between life and death. At last towards the middle of the night, Heaven, which had seen our resignation, commanded the floods to be still. Instantly the sea became less rough, the veil which covered the sky became less obscure, the stars again shone out, and the tempest seemed to withdraw. A general exclamation of joy and thankfulness issued at one instant from every mouth. The winds calmed, and each of us sought a little sleep, whilst our good and generous pilot steered our boat ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... looking at his watch. "He was only to be gone a moment," and while he went on to talk with Dryfoos, he wondered why the old man should have come first to speak with him, and whether it was from some obscure wish to make him reparation for displeasures in the past, or from a distrust or dislike of Fulkerson. Whichever light he looked at it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... as she said this, looking full in Euphra's eyes. It was a smile of meaning unfathomable, and it quite overcame Euphra. She had never liked Margaret before; for, from not very obscure psychological causes, she had never felt comfortable in her presence, especially after she had encountered the nun in the Ghost's Walk, though she had had no suspicion that the nun was Margaret. A great many of our dislikes, both to persons and things, arise from a feeling of discomfort associated ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... squirting out town houses, country houses, butlers, chefs, under-chefs, diamonds, lady's-maids, horses, carriages, seaside gardens, thousand-acre poultry-yards, private sidewalks, and clouds of money which obscure the sun, daze my eyes and amaze my soul! John Gayther, I wish you would send me one of your turnip-hoers; I want him to take my second-best shoes to ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... attention, gave a salute in which mock deference could not entirely obscure the respect beneath, and set about on his commissions, while Grant devoted the afternoon to a session with Murdoch and Jones, to neither of whom would he reveal his plans further than to say he was going west "to engage in some development work." During ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... motions. A statuary who would have wished to represent Voluptuousness, would have taken her for his model; and she would equally have served for him who might have had a figure of Modesty to display. Even the gloomy and clouded sky of England had not been able to obscure the brightness of that aerial kind of soul, unknown in our climates. In every thing that Eliza did, an irresistible charm was diffused around her. Desire, but of a timid and bashful cast, followed her steps in silence. Any man of courteousness alone must have loved her, but would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... must always possess a high value by reason of their large scientific insight into character and life." This value consists, as he indicates, in the fact that she interprets the inner personality as it is understood by the scientific student of human nature. She describes those obscure moral tendencies, nascent forces, and undertones of feeling and thought, which enter so much into life. She lays much stress on the subconscious mental life, the domain of vague emotion ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... without perceiving that sensible representation of the Deity. Such is the fascination of worldly trifles that obscure their eyes. Nay, oftentimes they will not so much as open them, but rather affect to keep them shut, lest they should find Him they do not look for. In short, what ought to help most to open their eyes serves ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... fitful flashes of red light flickering on the walls, as the flame of the wood fire on the hearth rose or fell beneath the efforts of a half distinguishable figure, extended at full length on the floor, and puffing the enormous log with a pair of gigantic bellows. In the palpable obscure, Jane could scarcely make out the persons of the occupants of the apartment; but when the flame burnt up a little more powerfully than usual, she observed the figure of a tall man dressed in black, who shook hands with Reginald, and bowed very coldly and formally ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... of the earth as well as in all living beings. Nevertheless, all the time the science should be taught as the backbone of the entire course. The allusions to history and the manifold applications to daily life are indeed very important, but they must never obscure the science itself, for only thus can a thorough comprehension of chemistry be imparted and the benefits of the mental drill and culture be vouchsafed to ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Chinik for the Portage, going east. It was storming, but it was not dark, and they knew each foot of the way. At first, on the level, the woman rode in one of the sleds, but when it grew hilly, she trudged behind. Her sharp eyes now keenly searched every dark or obscure spot along the hillside trail. The wind lessened somewhat, and the moon came ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... preparation of his own invention, "Greek fire," which he offered the Emperor for use against the Saracen. This, according to one historian, "was a semi-liquid substance, composed of sulphur, pitch, dissolved niter, and petroleum boiled together and mixed with certain less important and more obscure substances.... When ejected it caught the woodwork which it fell and set it so thoroughly on fire that there was no possibility of extinguishing the conflagration. It could only be put out, it is said, by pouring vinegar, wine, or sand ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... of rescuing this story from a far-back number of the English Review, in which it first appeared, and putting it in a book. It may be a shock to the reader to be brought down from a story of a great king and queen of England in the tenth century to the obscure annals of a yokel and his wife who lived in a Wiltshire village only a century ago; or even less, since my poor yokel was hanged for sheep-stealing in 1821. But it is, I think, worth preserving, since it is the only narrative I know of ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... periodic droughts; seasonal August winds blow from the west, carrying sand and dust across the country, which can obscure visibility ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... within our breast Is inactivity at best: But never shall the Muse endure To let your virtues lie obscure; Or suffer Envy to conceal Your labours for the public weal. Within your breast all wisdom lies, Either to govern or advise; Your steady soul preserves her frame, In good and evil times, the same. Pale Avarice and lurking Fraud, Stand ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... captain, received him with great honour, and wrote a letter on his behalf to our King James the Second, who on his return to England gave him a ship. This was his introduction to the British Navy, in which he served with distinction in the reigns of William the Third and Queen Anne. But his obscure origin is the point here under notice, and the following traditional anecdote is preserved in Shropshire:—When a boy he was left in charge of the house by his mother, who went out marketing. The desire to go to sea, long cherished, was irresistible. He stole forth, locking the cottage ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... whose exploits and career the author is about to narrate. This is a truer commencement of the history than that which appears at first sight more strictly historical—namely, an investigation into the obscure tribes which inhabited the same country prior to that people who are known to us as Greeks—an investigation that is to be carried on by strained interpretations of these very legends. We congratulate both author and reader ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... evidently must be given to Mr. Mathews: for, as Mr. B.'s part is simply to relate a matter of fact, of which he was an eye- witness, he is by no means to answer for Mr. Mathews's private convictions. As this insinuation bears an obscure allusion to a past transaction of Mr. M.'s, I doubt not but he will be surprised at my indifference in not taking the trouble even to explain it. However, I cannot forbear to observe here, that had I, at ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... school-room was as a dead thing, though I sat on the old benches and mounted the rostrum whereon I was wont to "speak my piece" with much trepidation of spirit and an inexplicable weakness of the knees. I wrote my name on the wall in an obscure corner, simply because I didn't want it to be stricken off from the roll entirely, and then turned back into the street with less regret than I had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... you are not the only preacher who has been talked about by his church, and branded by his official board with the mark of the devil in the name of the Lord. It's easy enough! Go farther, get a little obscure congregation somewhere, stay long enough to get a letter, not long enough to make another name; try another in the same fashion. Lay low, keep quiet, stay away from conventions, watch your chance, and—when the time is ripe—make a hit with the state workers ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... the best bleaching agent for cotton goods. It is not suitable for animal materials, such as silk and wool, as it attacks their fiber. It does not discharge either mineral or carbon colors. The chemistry of bleaching is obscure. ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... shepherds, near their flocks, Were watchful for the morn; But better news from heaven was brought, Your Saviour Christ is born. In Bethlem-town the infant lies, Within a place obscure, O little Bethlem, poor in ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... Persephone, who must be always either in heaven or hell; and Hecate, who was one thing by night and another by day. The Sibyls were females, and so were the Gorgons, the Harpies, the Furies, the Fates, and the Teutonic Valkyrs, Nornies, and Hela herself; in short, all representations of ideas obscure, inscrutable, and portentous, are ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that there was a stranger in his deep-withdrawn cell. Diligently as a lace-maker shifts her bobbins, he shifted and arranged his balls. Flashes of meaning would now pass from them to Tangle, and now again all would be not merely obscure, but utterly dark. She stood looking for a long time, for there was fascination in the sight; and the longer she looked the more an indescribable vague intelligence went on rousing itself in her mind. For seven years she had stood there watching the ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... altogether, Rujub; I can understand your power of sending messages, and of your daughter seeing at a distance. I have heard of such things at home; they are called mesmerism and clairvoyance. It is an obscure art; but that some men do possess the power of influencing others at a distance seems to be undoubted, still it is certainly never carried to such perfection as I ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... the dark heavens around the cities of the sky, and held it off secure from every other life-containing place. The roads that pierced the wall of the forest led in deeper and deeper, cutting their way around shaggy foothills down to swift streams and on and up again to heights, in and out of obscure notches. They must finally have sprung out again through another wall of forest to other towns. But as far as Five Points was concerned, they led simply to lumber mills sitting like chained ravening creatures at safe distances from one another eating slowly away at the thick woods as if trying ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Manetho's list) is at their head. From Menes to Seti I., this formidable list passes through nearly all the dynasties. The first six are represented therein. We are next introduced to sovereigns still unknown to us, belonging to the obscure period which extends from the end of the sixth to the beginning of the eleventh. From the eleventh to the eighteenth the new table follows the beaten track, which it does not quit again during the reign ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Jewish money lenders of ancient London were permitted to deposit the bonds of their Christian debtors in a chamber of the abbey. The Hebrew word for 'bond' being 'star,' the chamber was so named. The reason for the name in time became obscure. A subsequent custodian, having his own conception, had stars painted on the dome and walls ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... what seemed another world, equally blind, snowy and obscure, but divided from this one by fathoms of frozen water, a car was coming out from Pont-a-Moussons on to the main Nancy road. Its two head-lamps glowed confusedly under the snow that clung to them, and the driver, his thick, blue coat buttoned about his chin, leant forward peering through ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... disappearance—he was astounded but dreamy. His stupefaction was complicated by a sense of the dark reality of existence. It seemed as if there were experience in this dawning being. Did he, perchance, already exercise judgment? Experience coming too early constructs, sometimes, in the obscure depths of a child's mind, some dangerous balance—we know not what—in which the poor ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... He had thought at first that his capture was due to the fact that the boys' enemies knew that he had overheard their conversation in the stateroom of the Princeton, but it was now evident that they had some other motive in luring him to their obscure meeting place, and had no idea that he had played eavesdropper on their plan to forestall the boys in their ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... There was an obscure indication of Alice's hands raised in the rearrangement of her hair. George Willard half turned, facing the rear of the car. "I can't see much," he said, "but it is evident that you two have been fighting. Why don't you live in peace and happiness? The trouble's all with Lee, too, you don't ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... allusions are far-fetched and obscure as in Scandinavian poetry. Mr. Payne (ii. 314) translates "Naml" by "net." I understand the ant (swarm) creeping up the cheeks, a common simile for a young beard. The lovers are in the Laza (hell) ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... tortoises and mussels, very hard-coated bombadier beetles, stinging insects and nauseous-tasted caterpillars, can afford to be brilliant by the various means of active defence or passive protection they possess, other than obscure colouration. He says "the {27} attitudes of some insects may also protect them, as the habit of turning up the tail by the harmless rove-beetles (Staphylinidae) no doubt leads other animals, besides children, to the belief that they can sting. The curious ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... of some charitable sailors. And there he was, with two francs left in his pocket, and an unlimited supply of courage, cheerfulness, and ambition, fully determined to make the whole world familiar with the obscure name of Alphonse Daudet. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... individual desires to be loved and not hated; and he also feels and sees his obligation to exercise the same disposition toward others. The carrying out of this obligation is loving another as himself. But evil lust and sinful love obscure the light of natural law, and blind man, until he fails to perceive the guide-book in his heart and to follow the clear command of reason. Hence he must be restrained and repelled by external laws and material books, with the sword ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... of white light fell on the unpapered wall, and then two dusky shadows slid over it, vague, obscure, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... passes. And this is what has been going on in this valley while I have been dining and gambling; she was probably born here, and will be buried in a corner of the cemetery, by the side of her father. Thus will that obscure woman die, a woman of whom no one speaks and of whom the children say: "Don't ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had, by fair means or foul, induced an enormous number of witnesses to come forward and prove the truth of his statement, and day after day there were the most wearisome references to old diaries, to reports of meetings held in obscure places, perhaps more than a dozen years ago, or to some hashed and mangled report of a debate which, incredible though such meanness seems, had been specially constructed by some unscrupulous opponent in such a way as to alter the entire meaning of Raeburn's words—a process ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... institution as a home, no such thing as a fireside, no such object as a beautiful woman. His dear Miss Marguerite would excuse him, if he accounted for her attractions on the theory that English blood must have mixed at some former time with their obscure and unknown ancestry. Survey this English nation, and behold a tall, clean, plump, and solid people! Look at their cities! What magnificence in their public buildings! What admirable order and propriety in their streets! Admire their ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... a logical fallacy, but I am not fond of the attempt to obscure by logic-chopping what is a writer's real meaning. I will therefore say that, as far as I can make out, what this particular writer really believes is that the German people, through some innate and incurable frowardness of disposition, have turned the inestimable blessings ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... statesmanship of Bulgaria's political evolution is specially noteworthy because that evolution was both complicated and obscure. In fact, its roots reach down to the fundamental aspirations of the Bulgarian people. Bulgaria's present volte-face is no chance product of panic, but a logical step in her national policy. Its consequences thus promise to be not ephemeral, but lasting. An understanding of the factors that brought ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... hazard a guess at the origin of the dancer, but merely remarks (5 p. 86) that the exact physiological basis of the dancing character is uncertain and the origin of this curious variation in behavior still more obscure. "Mouse fanciers have assured me," he continues, "that something like it may appear in strains inbred from the normal type, though I cannot find an indubitable case. Such an occurrence may be nothing but the appearance of a rare recessive ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... induced me to write a book on Donna Lucretia. I had treated the political history of Alexander VI and Caesar at length, and had elucidated some of its obscure phases, but to Lucretia Borgia I had devoted no special attention. Her personality appeared to me to be something full of mystery, made up of contradictions which remained to be deciphered, and I ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... possibly an hour and a half, when he heard someone singing, and that very sweetly. She sang with the joyous freedom of one who suspected no listener. The song came nearer and nearer. Plonville standing amazed, dropped his implements, and stole to the somewhat obscure little window. He saw a vision of fresh loveliness dressed in a costume he never before beheld on a vision. She came down the bank with a light, springy step to the next cottage, took a key that hung at her belt, and ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... of Nice at latest, the only exceptions being that doubtful one of the corrupt Romish Church implied, though not avowed, in its equalisation of the Apocryphal Books with those of the Hebrew Canon, and the irrelevant one of the few and obscure sects who acknowledge no historical Christianity. This somewhat more, in which Jerome, Augustine, Luther, and Hooker were of one and the same judgment, and less than which not one of them would have tolerated—would it fall within ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... exercised? Women are all alike—except Alice." He smiled as he thought of his girl, and instantly the hardness in his face lifted, as a cloud shadow lifts and leaves sunshine behind it. Then some obscure sense of fitness made him pull himself together, and put his mind on affairs that had nothing in common with Helena; affairs in which he could include his girl without ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... the great master the French deem him. Assuredly he might justifiably apply to himself the "Et-Ego-in-Arcadia" inscription in one of his most famous paintings. And the specific service he performed for French painting and the relative rank he occupies in it ought not to obscure his purely personal qualities, which, if not transcendent, ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... the chances on his dying, as thousands of other wives do every day, and for his good she put on the best face possible, and kept her tears back. But how many obscure women have done the same thing, as they sat by the side of their dying husbands, and made the patient believe that he was getting better, and smiled while their hearts were breaking? Was Mrs. Garfield braver than the sister of charity, God bless her, who goes from the North to ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... Drusus having been abetted by the patricians in proposing a law for exempting the Latin soldiers from being flogged, about thirty years earlier; and it seems to have been passed, but, from this passage of Sallust, appears not to have remained in force. Lipsius touches on this obscure point in his Militia Romana, v. 18, but settles nothing. Plutarch, in his Life of Marius, c. 8, says that Turpilius was an old retainer of the family of Metellus, whom he attended, in this war, as prafectus fabrum, or master ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... consent to their engagement, Richard Barry promptly made trouble—the very worst kind of trouble. He descended on Bridgeport and completely overwhelmed poor Miss Sara in his wrath. He laughed at the idea of countenancing an engagement between a child like Marcella and an obscure country doctor. And he carried ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... threatened by a formidable parly, in the different states hostile to all authority. In Sweden this j'ear witnessed the death of Bernadotte, the king of that country, the most permanently successful of all the generals who took part in the French revolution. Although of obscure birth and a foreigner, he was called upon to wear the crown of Sweden by the unanimous voice of the nation; and he so identified himself with their interests, that he reigned in peace and died universally beloved by his subjects. In Switzerland disturbances took ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... his voice with an effort, for it shook a little—"in the last few minutes some things have been made plain to me which were hitherto obscure. I have wondered sometimes, here in these forsaken barracks, at actions of yours which seemed deliberately calculated to annoy one who—Heaven knows—started with every wish to be friendly. Saving my own small personal dignity, of which from indolence ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... were all a farce, and he had never seen one in his life, much less struggled with them. They added that Manin had never been anything more than a country clown, until Don Pedro took it into his head to raise him from his obscure position. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... That this brilliant affair did not come off is owing to my own lack of enterprise; for I did not want to go across the continent, and I do not hanker after Zanzibar, but only to go puddling about obscure districts in West Africa after raw fetish and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... that so quickly after the death of her who loved me so dearly and who was so dear to me,—is such an affront as I cannot bear and hold up my head afterwards. I have come to be known as her whom your uncle trusted and loved, as her whom your wife trusted and loved,—obscure as I was before;—and as her whom, may I not say, you yourself trusted? As there was much of honour and very much of pleasure in this, so also was there something of misfortune. Friendships are safest when the friends ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... upright in the coal- beds and those not upright, and which might have been drifted. Is it not possible that the same circumstances which have preserved the vegetation in situ, should have preserved drifted plants? I know Calamites is found upright; but I fancied its affinities were very obscure, like Sigillaria. As for Lepidodendron, I forgot its existence, as happens when one goes riot, and now know neither what it is, or whether upright. If these plants, i.e. Calamites and Lepidodendron, have VERY CLEAR RELATIONS ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... of this obscure chapel, amid the floating dust, the surly priest placed his withered hands on the bared heads of Gervaise and Coupeau, blessing their union amid a hubbub like that of moving day. The wedding party signed another registry, this time in the sacristy, and then ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... entombed in the bone-caves and other deposits of the same age; though of course the changes effected by domestication in almost all the tame animals renders the question of their identity with the indigenous breeds somewhat obscure. Cuvier was, however, unable to detect any difference between the skeleton of a fossil horse, contemporary with the elephant, and that of our domestic breed: a fossil goat of the same age cannot be distinguished from the domesticated animal; and one of our ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... is so obscure as to be invisible, but at the back of the obscurity are French windows, through which is seen Lob's garden bathed in moon-shine. The Darkness and Light, which this room and garden represent, are very still, but we should feel that it is only the pause in which old enemies regard ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... from the former doctrine, that that God whose words they are, is able to make a reconciliation and most sweet and harmonious agreement with all the sayings therein, how obscure, cross, dark, and contradictory soever they seem to thee. To understand all mysteries, to have all knowledge, to be able to comprehend with all saints, is a great work; enough to crush the spirit, and to stretch the ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... up into fragmentary collections, in which the words of many different and obscure prophets are grouped under the name of some great prophet, as was quite natural in an uncritical age; the whole mass being ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... world, and one which the princes of art have made it their loftiest ambition to picture worthily on their canvas; a spot whose history is familiar to the very children of every house, and city, and obscure hamlet of the furthest lands of Christendom; a spot which myriads of men would toil across the breadth of a world to see, would consider it a priceless privilege to look upon. It was easy to think these thoughts. But it was not easy to bring myself up ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... took refuge was faintly lighted by pointed stained windows, with black diamond-shaped divisions set with minute panes darkened by the accumulated dust of years, rendered still more obscure by the woodwork of the chapels, which cut ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Commons, though no particulars were given her—and told to go alone to 14, Dexter Street, Westminster, and not to ask any policeman to direct her. 14, Dexter Street, Westminster, she found was not a house but a yard in an obscure street, with big gates and the name of Podgers & Carlo, Carriers and Furniture Removers, thereon. She was perplexed by this, and stood for some seconds in the empty street hesitating, until the appearance of another circumspect woman under the street lamp at the corner ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Chippewa to Queenstown (ten miles), and started from Niagara to Toronto about noon of the first Friday in July. When a little more than half way across the lake, I encountered a heavy north-east storm of rain and wind, and a fog so thick as to completely obscure the Toronto light-house, which was within a mile of me. When it became so dark that I could not see my compass, I laid my course, with the sail reefed, by the wind and waves, reaching (a mile west of my due course) the east side of the Humber Bay, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... by his horse on the Jumpoff trail, so there could be no mistake—when he knew perfectly well that she must ride that way, when he could not have failed to see her horse saddled and waiting at the door. It seemed to Mary Hope an obscure form of mockery to tell her not to be lonely—to tell her in a caressing tone that left with her all the effect of kisses—and then to ride away without one backward glance, one word of excuse. Until she had mounted and had seen him on the trail ahead, ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... such wayside objects as might serve to feed contemplation. On one occasion, having turned aside to visit the duke of Hamilton's picture-gallery, they were told by the porter, after he had scanned them over, that they ought not to have come to the front door, and were directed to an obscure entrance at the corner of the house, where they seated themselves humbly on a bench while waiting for admittance, which was finally refused. They were mortified, but had a deeper pang in the grounds around Bothwell Castle, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... of an obscure dramatic presentation, an early and rudimentary draft of Book I. was published in 1910. It has since been entirely re-written. Book II., written 1919-22, has not been printed hitherto. Though the work was not conceived with a view to stage-production, the author reserves ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... old man. Atkinson and Meyers and even the volatile Mexican lawyer, Martinez, remained unstirring, for in the situation they suddenly sensed something beyond their ken, some current of deep unknown forces, some play of fierce, obscure and ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds —than their opposite (Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered more intense by numbers, and by sympathy. She too hath her deeps, that call unto deeps. Negation itself hath a positive more and less; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the great ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... the lunar cycle, and of the movable feasts of the Church. In his book De temporum ratione he had treated of the seventh and eighth ages of the world, which were to follow the age in which he lived. He had prophesied. During the siege of Orleans, churchmen were circulating these obscure lines attributed to him, and foretelling the coming of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... files of newspapers for the true records of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, I have caught occasional glimpses of a plot perhaps more wide in its outlines than that of either, which has lain obscure in the darkness of half a century, traceable only in the political events which dated from it, and the utter incorrectness of the scanty traditions which assumed to preserve it. And though researches in public libraries ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... and carrying the war into the enemies' quarters. In July 1658, on learning from some prisoners that the galleons were in Porto Bello awaiting the plate from Panama, Doyley embarked 300 men on a fleet of five vessels and sent it to lie in an obscure bay between that port and Cartagena to intercept the Spanish ships. On 20th October the galleons were espied, twenty-nine vessels in all, fifteen galleons and fourteen stout merchantmen. Unfortunately, all the English vessels except the "Hector" and the "Marston ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... she had for many days been moving with her mother in darkness, deeply stricken by Nick's culpable—oh he was culpable!—loss of his prize, but feeling an obscure element in the matter they didn't grasp, an undiscovered explanation that would perhaps make it still worse, though it might make them, poor things, a little better. He had explained nothing, he had simply ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... restraint. It had arrested, also, the attention of the nation, and it had produced a kind of holy flame, or enthusiasm, and this to a degree and to an extent never before witnessed. Of the purity of this flame no better proof can be offered, than that even Bishops deigned to address an obscure committee, consisting principally of Quakers; and that Churchmen and Dissenters forgot their difference of religious opinions, and joined their hands, all over ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... suggested with a considerable degree of probability, that in Auvergne volcanic eruptions persisted even into historic times. The subject is obscure, depending on the interpretation of difficult passages in two Latin chronicles of the fifth century. The most obvious meaning of both passages would certainly appear to be the occurrence of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, but attempts have been made to explain them as referring to some artificial ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... of Ilion, it had not been his more blessed lot to crystallize in deathless song the rising glories of Duluth. (Great and continued laughter.) Yet, sir, had it not been for this map, kindly furnished me by the Legislature of Minnesota, I might have gone down to my obscure and humble grave in an agony of despair, because I could nowhere find Duluth. (Renewed laughter.) Had such been my melancholy fate, I have no doubt that, with the last feeble pulsation of my breaking heart, with the last faint exhalation of my fleeting breath, I should ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... ago, the property of two families, who then found happiness in this solitude. Their history is affecting; but what European, pursuing his way to the Indies, will pause one moment to interest himself in the fate of a few obscure individuals? What European can picture happiness to his imagination amidst poverty and neglect? The curiosity of mankind is only attracted by the history of the great; and yet from that knowledge little use can be derived." ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... was a stranger from nobody knew where; he went by the name of "Jones," which was not believed to be his; he had a magnificent voice, and he remained in Morningquest in an obscure position, making nothing of it. True, he must have means; but what after all were the means which he appeared to possess compared with the means which he might be enjoying? And further—and this was considered the most extraordinary circumstance of all—there was his attitude ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... his accents lingered, they were gone By an obscure and solitary path, Until they came upon some rough-hewn steps, Which wandered round and down, interminable.— A stairway leading to the upper world For the ascent of gnomes, who dwelt beneath In those huge tidal caves which underlaid Old Thug, upheaved from earth in ancient ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... scanty dollars. There were bulletins, rules, counter-rules. As she talked, Sommers caught the atmosphere of the great engine to which she had given herself. A mere isolated atom, she was set in some obscure corner of this intricate machine, and she was compelled to revolve with the rest, as the rest, in the fear of disgrace and of hunger. The terms "special teachers," "grades of pay," "constructive work," "discipline," etc., had no special significance to him, typifying merely the exactions of the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... entirely by Mr. NICHOLAS TRÜBNER. I am not aware that he had any assistance in writing it. I mention this because I have never met with any person who was so equally familiar with obscure and obsolete old German facetious literature (as the text indicates), and at the same time with Americanisms. I should say that in all of the later ballads, or at least in fully one half of all in the book, the author was indebted to him for ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... will from henceforth happen, that they shall be freed from the Trouble, and the World from useless Volumes. This Project will be a Registry, to which Posterity may have recourse, for the clearing such obscure Passages as tend that way in Authors; and therefore we shall not for the future submit our selves to the Learning of Etymology, which might persuade the Age to come, that the Farthingal was worn for Cheapness, or ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the action of the sun in equatorial regions. According to Balfour Stewart, auroras and earth currents.(q. v.) may be regarded as secondary currents due to small but rapid changes in the earth's magnetism. The subject is very obscure. Stewart treats the earth as representing the magnetic core of an induction coil, the lower air is the dielectric, and the upper rarefied and therefore conducting atmosphere is the secondary coil. This makes the aurora a phenomenon of induced currents. Then the sun may be regarded as the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... End I made the acquaintance of the authors whose letters you have just had the opportunity of reading—men who have since attained to the topmost pinnacle of Fame. At that time they were comparatively obscure; they 'eard my conversation, they realised that I 'ad ideers, of which they knew the value better, perhaps, than I did myself. I used to see them taking down notes on their shirt-cuffs, and that, but I took no notice of it at the time. Probably ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... door, he would take a bag of gold coin, or a gold cup as big as a washbowl, or a heavy golden bar, or a peck measure of gold dust, and bring them from the obscure corners of the room into the one bright and narrow sunbeam that fell from the dungeonlike window. He valued the sunbeam for no other reason but that his treasure would not shine ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... now possessed of absolute power, and called upon to nominate his master of the horse, he chose a poor man named Tarqui'tius, one who, like himself, despised riches when they led to dishonour. Thus the saving a great nation was devolved upon a husbandman taken from the plough, and an obscure sentinel found among the dregs of the army. 15. Upon entering the city, the dictator put on a serene look, and entreated all those who were able to bear arms, to repair, before sunset, to the Cam'pus Mar'tius (the place where the levies were made) with necessary arms, and provisions for five days. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... of whole biographies, epics, systems of philosophy, and epochs of history, in bulk. That which is understood excels that which is spoken in quantity and quality alike; ideas thus figured and personified, change hands, as we may say, like coin; and the speakers imply without effort the most obscure and intricate thoughts. Strangers who have a large common ground of reading will, for this reason, come the sooner to the grapple of genuine converse. If they know Othello and Napoleon, Consuelo and Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin and Steenie Steenson, they ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... source of his solicitude was lest he should be detected by means of his ears! Some years before, when he was in a comparatively obscure position, he had in some way or other offended his sovereign, and was punished by having his ears cut off. It was necessary, therefore, to keep the marks of this mutilation carefully concealed by means of his ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... then it is better to be poor, and to enjoy; that if one has no other way of being humble except being imbecile, then it is better to be imbecile, and to enjoy. That is the deep unconscious truth in the character of Toots—that all his externals are flashy and false; all his internals unconscious, obscure, and true. He wears loud clothes, and he is silent inside them. His shirts and waistcoats are covered with bright spots of pink and purple, while his soul is always covered with the sacred shame. He always gets all the outside things of life wrong, and all the ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... is time for me to leave the summer cirrus and turn to the tempest-born rain-cloud. It is represented in ancient Indian mythology by the Vritra or Rkshasas. At first the form of these dmons was uncertain and obscure. Vritra is often used as an appellative for a cloud, and kabhanda, an old name for a rain-cloud, in later times became the name of a devil. Of Vritra, who envelopes the mountains with vapour, it is said, "The darkness stood retaining the water, the mountains lay ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... had been a poor lay brother," cried out the dying Philip II. of Spain, "washing the plates in some obscure monastery, rather than have borne the crown ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... thousands of blots as black as that on earth, and I think you will find nobler game than an obscure Russian provincial prison. Russia has cities and palaces and fortresses that will make far grander ruins than that—ruins that will be worthy monuments of fallen despotism," replied the girl, who had been introduced by the President as Radna Michaelis. "But here is some one else waiting to ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... HERACLIUS. The Exarch of Africa, Heraclius, one of the chief officers of the state, also received the shocking tidings with indignation. He was determined that the imperial purple should not be usurped by an obscure centurion of disgusting aspect. "The person of this Phocas was diminutive and deformed; the closeness of his shaggy eyebrows, his red hair, his beardless chin, were in keeping with his cheek, disfigured and discolored by a formidable scar. Ignorant ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... thought, and he had an abrupt manner of withdrawing attention that was to us rather disconcerting until we got used to it. His pockets were bulging with newspapers and memoranda, scrawled in the curiously obscure handwriting which I subsequently found much difficulty in learning to read, though it was plain enough when the meaning of the strange hieroglyphics intended for letters was once fully understood. He was pressed with business ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... had taken to lecturing. The professorship was obscure; he said it was Athenian, and Bobus had no immediate means of finding out whether it were so or not, nor of analysing the alphabet of letters that followed his name upon the ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... langour in studying curves to be described only with a pencil; but not in tracing those which are to be described with a rocket. Your knowledge of a wholesome herb may involve the feeding of an army; and acquaintance with an obscure point of geography, the success of a campaign. Never waste an instant's time, therefore; the sin of idleness is a thousandfold greater in you than in other youths; for the fates of those who will one day be under your command hang upon your knowledge; lost ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the going of the five hundred and odd souls that made up the population. In the town itself the excitement grew rather than waned. Men talked themselves into a fever, others took fire, and the epidemic spread like some obscure nervous disease. Nobody slept, everybody drank and hurrahed, and said it was the greatest night in the history of Minook. In the Gold Nugget saloon, crowded to suffocation, Pitcairn organized the new mining district, and named it ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... of justice, and should I hold my peace, the very stones would cry out against me. Yonder young lady has no right to the prize, for the piece which she has palmed off as her own appeared in the Woodland Gazette, a paper published in an obscure New Hampshire village. How she came by it, she can, perhaps, explain, but ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... gravely, "that they are unreadable. What menace may they not contain? I am afraid of them, as I am of all obscure and mystifying things." ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... quite impossible to trace back any circumstance which could, to speak advisedly, have led to such a course of deception as was practised by this boy; born of obscure parents, his father, a man of dissolute habits, was sub-chanter of the Cathedral, and also master of the free school in Pyle-street; this clever, but harsh, and dissolute man died in August, 1752, and the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... they are cheap and clear and do not obscure the grain as oil stains are likely to do, and they penetrate deeply into the wood, especially when applied hot. They may be made of any coloring matter that is soluble in water, and are particularly good for hard woods and for use in ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... Major's invariable courtesy to the poor or unfortunate was no longer in evidence when he found that John Merrick was a multi-millionaire with a strongly defined habit of doing good to others and striving in obscure and unconventional ways to make everybody around him happy. His affection for the little man increased mightily, but his respectful attitude promptly changed, and a chance to reprove or discomfit his absurdly rich brother-in-law was one of his most satisfactory diversions. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... across technical terms in the secular papers which, unless understood, obscure the sense of the reading. There is a dictionary of medical terms as a separate department which adds much to the usefulness of the work; the spelling, pronunciation and definition being concisely ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the rich and shut off from the poor. This proposition was, however, too direct, too undisguised to pass through Parliament, and was dropped. I have no room to enumerate the many concealed attacks of even one single session upon the proletariat. One from the session of 1844 must suffice. An obscure member of Parliament, a Mr. Miles, proposed a bill regulating the relation of master and servant which seemed comparatively unobjectionable. The Government became interested in the bill, and it was referred to a committee. Meanwhile the strike among the miners in the North broke ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... the mount, where clouds obscure the day; Where scarce the mule can trace his misty way; Where lurks the dragon and her scaly brood; And broken rocks oppose the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... see what had upset her. The last idea had sound salesappeal, but it was a low income market.... Oh well—her queer notions and obscure reactions undoubtedly went with her scientific gift. You have to lead individuals of this type for their own good, otherwise they spend their lives wandering around in a dreamy fog, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... "Call to mind the sentiments which nature has engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly recognised by all:—For a nation to love liberty, it is sufficient that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that she wills it." How dry, barren, and obscure is the source from which Mr. Burke labors! and how ineffectual, though gay with flowers, are all his declamation and his arguments compared with these clear, concise, and soul-animating sentiments! Few and short as they are, they lead on to a vast field of generous ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... learning that my mother was a poor woman, he consented to undertake the case and make his charges only sufficient to cover his expenses. It would be well here to give a brief sketch of Judge Bates, as many people wondered that such a distinguished statesman would take up the case of an obscure negro girl. ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... remains obscure with respect to Inheritance, we may look at the following laws as fairly well established. Firstly, a tendency in every character, new and old, to be transmitted by seminal and bud generation, though often counteracted by various known and unknown ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... there will be a through railway connection between Constantinople and Bombay and between Baku and Bombay in the next half-century. From such grades of certainty as this, one may come down the scale until the most obscure mystery of all is reached: the mystery of the individual. Will England presently produce a military genius? or what will Mr. Belloc say the day after to-morrow? The most accessible field for the prophet is the heavens; the least is the secret of the jumping cat within the ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... it worse, and finally impossible, was the character of the king. The pathetic circumstances of his old age have combined somewhat to obscure the viciousness of his maturity. He was excessively ignorant and as obstinate as arbitrary. He trusted no one but himself, and he totally misunderstood the true nature of his office. There is no question which arose in the first forty years of his reign in which he ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... There were many in London, moldy and musty, in obscure corners, some of them in cellars and in narrow passageways, ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... besides those of the mediaeval hierarchy. Neither of these elements is strong enough to expel the other; and either of them would, if it prevailed alone, be again a form of disease. Yet, in the history of the last few years I recognise symptoms of convalescence, however feeble, obscure, and equivocal its traces may appear. What we behold is not death or hopeless decay, it is a purifying process, painful, consuming, penetrating bone and marrow,—such as God inflicts on His chosen persons and institutions. There is abundance of dross, and time is ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... face of a god—Hermes. The third coin is a king's, not a city's. I will not tell you, at this moment, what king's; but only that it is a late coin of the third period, and that it is as distinct in purpose as the coin of Tarentum is obscure. We know of this coin, that it represents no god nor demi-god, but a mere mortal; and we know precisely, from the portrait, what ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... widow-woman, and was a great humorist in all parts of his life. This is all we can affirm with any certainty of his person and character. As for his speculations, notwithstanding the several obsolete words and obscure phrases of the age in which he lived, we still understand enough of them to see the diversions and characters of the English nation in his time: not but that we are to make allowance for the mirth and humour of the ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... mysteries, that the same miscreant had committed all three crimes; and before that extraordinary fact had had time to soak well into the public mind there took place yet another murder, and again the murderer had been to special pains to make it clear that some obscure and terrible ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of these captured caboclos are soon found by the "police warriors" of the tribe and carried to the maloca. On such occasions a day of feasting always follows and an obscure religious ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... in that young affection's early dream, There was the presence and the soul of joy, Which, like the stars, though clouds obscure them, beam With hues of Heav'n, that earth cannot destroy: Dark desolation may be o'er our path, And the fierce lightnings rive it in their wrath, And scalding tears may weep their sources dry, Yet, will that love live on, ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... IV. (847-855) to the Abbot Honoratus, Ex registro Leonis IIII. "There is something quite incredible, the sound of which has reached our ears: a thing which, if true, tends rather to diminish our consideration than to give it honour, to obscure it rather than to give it lustre. It appears in short that you feel nothing but aversion for the beautiful chant of St. Gregory, and for the manner of singing and reading laid down and taught by him in the Church, so that you are ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... trifling, however hidden in some obscure corner of our consciousness,—a sin which we do not intend to renounce,—is enough to render real prayer impracticable. A course of action not wholly upright and honorable, feelings not entirely kind and loving, habits not spotlessly ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... Kenelm Digby's philosophic reputation his name has not become obscure. It stands, vaguely perhaps, but permanently, for something versatile and brilliant and romantic. He remains a perpetual type of the hero of romance, the double hero, in the field of action and the realm of the spirit. Had he lived in an earlier age he would now ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... individual; the writer's own life is chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of all things. It is at once the mirror to all time of the sins and perfections of men, of the judgments and grace of God, and the record, often the only one, of the transient names, and local factions, and obscure ambitions, and forgotten crimes of the poet's own day; and in that awful company to which he leads us, in the most unearthly of his scenes, we never lose sight of himself. And when this peculiarity sends us to history, it seems as if the poem ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... my Headquarters made salaams, viz., Captain Bertier de Sauvigny, Lieutenant Pelliot and Lieutenant de la Borde. The first is a man of the world, with manners suave and distinguished; the second is a savant and knows the habits of obscure and out of the way people. What de la Borde's points may be, I do not know: he is a frank, good looking young fellow ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... total defeat which has ever befallen an English army. Twenty-seven nobles were killed, twenty-two more and sixty knights made prisoners, and the number of obscure soldiers slain, drowned in the Forth, or killed by the peasantry, exceeds calculation. The camp was taken, with an enormous booty in treasure, jewels, rich robes, fine horses, herds of cattle, machines for the siege of towns, and, in short, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the sun despite her duskiness. Eagerly he awaited the deep, lustrous eyes that would presently sweep round upon him, big and dark and sparkling. When she turned her head, they were full of that new womanly dignity that yet did not obscure the shy innocence. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... upon this Head I will further add: A wise and a just Magistrate, may so far give way to a common Stream of Dissatisfaction, as to forbear acting up to the heighth of his own Perswasion, about what may be judged convictive of a Crime, whose Nature shall be so abstruse and obscure, as to raise much Disputation. Tho' he may not do what he should leave undone, yet he may leave undone something that else he could do, when the Publick Safety ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... curiously blurred face of the doctor seemed for a moment to take on sharper lines. Spence had observed it do this before under stress of feeling. But as the exact feeling which caused the change was usually obscure, it seemed safest to ignore it altogether. He was growing quite expert at ignoring things. For, quite contrary to the usual trend of his character, he was reacting to the urge of a growing desire to stay where he wasn't wanted. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... delicate, gentle child. Twelve summers and winters had passed over her little head without a cloud to obscure the sunshine of her life save one—but that one was a terribly dark one, and its shadow lingered over her for many years. When Alice lost her mother, she lost the joy and delight of her existence; and although six years had passed since ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the penitent, and the wisdom of the Director. It is quite possible for the priest to over-direct, and it is fatally possible for the penitent to think more of direction than of Absolution. It is quite possible to obscure the Sacramental side of Penance with a human craving for "ghostly counsel and advice". Satan would not be Satan if it were not so. But this "ghostly," or spiritual, "counsel and advice" has saved many a lad, and many a man, from many a fall; and when rightly ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... and preached twice. My views of Scripture of late have been obscure; I can recall the truths to my mind, but they don't make that impression they have hitherto done. Is this change of feeling inherent, or the effect of neglect of duty, and want of watchfulness? I will examine ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... determined to offer to you and Mr. Fox the honor of Citizenship. Had this honor never been conferred before, had it been conferred only on worthy members of society, or were you and Mr. Fox only to be named at this moment, I should not have interfered. But as they have given the title to obscure and vulgar men and scoundrels, of which they are now very much ashamed themselves, I have presumed to suppose that you would think yourself much more honored in the breach than the observance, and have therefore caused your nomination to be suspended. But I was influenced ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... clothes, hanging the coat and waistcoat, folding the trousers in a drawer, with exact care; changing his light boots for fiber slippers he set the former in the row of footgear drawn up like a military review against the wall. Though it was quite obscure now, and no one would see him, he paused to brush his slightly disarranged hair, before—tying the cord of his chamber ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... are obscure and not very trustworthy. It seems that the Outagamies began the fray by an attack on the Illinois at La Salle's old station of Le Rocher, on the river Illinois. On hearing of this, the French commanders mustered their Indian allies, hastened to the spot, and found the Outagamies ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... way out he stopped to telephone his friend of his detention, took a Westchester Avenue car at the nearest point, and in twenty minutes was at the library. He found an obscure corner and opened ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... Ammon Ra, the supreme and primeval being, at once male and female; who is his own father and his own mother, whose husband he is also; from whom come all the other gods which unite heaven to earth and which are but forms of those two obscure principles. The wise know it, and the priests, who have long studied mysteries in the colleges and in the temples consecrated to his diverse representations. Do not, therefore, allege another god of your own invention ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Puff. These I have heard spoken of as the joint productions of Verplanck and Rudolph Bunner, a scholar and a man of wit. The State Triumvirate is in octo-syllabic verse, and in the manner of Swift, but the allusions are obscure, and it is a task to read it. The notes, in which the hand of Verplanck is very apparent, are intelligible enough and are clever, caustic and learned. The Epistles, which are in heroic verse, have striking passages, ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... by degrees down to this. It was on Alfred he had counted to keep him informed of David's state; but, on his putting a smooth inquiry, the young man's face flushed with shame, or anger, or something, and he gave a very short, sharp, and obscure reply. In reality, he did not know much, nor did Sarah, his informant; for of late the servants had never been allowed to enter ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... descendants. There is the already glanced at group of Arthur's sisters or half-sisters, left mere sketches and hints, but most interesting. Not to be tedious, we need not dwell on Palomides, a very promising Lancelot unloved; on Lamoracke, left provokingly obscure, but shadowing a most important possibility in the unwritten romance of one of those very sisters; Bors, of whom Tennyson has made something, but not enough, in the later Idylls; and others. But it ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... was strong in him had been awakened; and though he made no emotional advances, he found himself strangely drawn to the boy, with a feeling for which he could not wholly account. He did not care for Jack's athletic interests; his tastes and mental processes were obscure to him. Howard's own nature was at once intellectual and imaginative, but he felt an extreme delight in the fearless and direct confidence which the boy showed in him. He criticised his work unsparingly, he rallied him on his tastes, he snubbed him, but all with a sense of real ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... God. And justifiable to men; Unless there be who think not God at all; If any be, they walk obscure, For of such doctrine never was there school, But the heart of the fool, And no man therein doctor but himself. But men there be, who doubt His ways not just, As to His own edicts found contradicting, Then give the reins to wandering thought, Regardless of His glory's diminution; Till, by their own ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... gossip-monger, Byron took refuge, on June 10, at the Villa Diodati; but still the pursuers strove to win some wretched consolation by waylaying him in his evening drives, or directing the telescope upon his balcony, which overlooked the lake, or upon the hillside, with its vineyards, where he lurked obscure" (Dowden's Life of Shelley, 1896, p. 309). It is possible, too, that now and again even Shelley's companionship was felt to be a strain upon nerves and temper. The escape from memory and remorse, which could not be always attained in the society of a chosen few, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... volubly of the illustrious origin of their leader Selivanoff, "the second Christ," and of their "divine mother," Akoulina Ivanovna, their doctrines were in fact obscure and nebulous, and they avoided—with good reason—all religious argument. They insisted, however, upon the sacredness of their initiation ceremony—which invariably ended in deportation for life, or the delights of ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... close by showed the head and horns of a cow; the mule was mercifully sheltered too, and stood near, munching his fodder; a cluster of sheep pressed after the steps of half a dozen men, that somehow in the clare-obscure reminded him of the shepherds of old summoned by good tidings ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... great astronomer now, for the first time, rendered something like a rational account of the changes of the seasons. Nor did certain of the more obscure astronomical ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
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