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More "Oracle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... oracles was resorted to. The Greek oracles were of Egyptian origin. So profound was the respect paid to their commands that even the sovereigns were obliged to obey them. It was thus that a warning from the oracle of Amun caused Necho to stop the construction of his canal. For the determination of future events, omens were studied, entrails ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... will have influence at any price, and who will have other people busy themselves over them; when they cannot be oracles, they turn wags. M. Gillenormand was not of this nature; his domination in the Royalist salons which he frequented cost his self-respect nothing. He was an oracle everywhere. It had happened to him to hold his own against M. de Bonald, and even against ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... remarkable thing—a prophet honoured in her own community. Adopting an established custom of the town, she held in her own home two weekly meetings—one for men and women and one exclusively for women—at which she was the oracle. And all these meetings were ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... with him the prizes which he had won in the various cities of Greece. The number of these prizes, it was said, was more than eighteen hundred. On his way through Greece, when about to return to Rome, he went to Delphi, to consult the sacred oracle there, in respect to his future fortunes. The reply of the Pythoness was, "Beware of seventy-three." This answer gave Nero great satisfaction and pleasure. It meant, he had no doubt, that he had no danger to fear until he should have attained ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... aperture, on the right hand, is a hole two feet diameter, perforated quite through the rock sixteen feet, and running from north to south. In the abovementioned aperture a man might lie concealed, and predict future events to those that came to consult the oracle, and be heard distinctly on the north side of the rock, where the hole is not visible. This might make the credulous Britons think the predictions proceeded solely from the rock-deity. The voice on the outside was distinctly conveyed to the person ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... era of prosperity was to dawn for him and his when Nero lost a tooth. The next day he was shown one which had been drawn from the emperor's mouth. But that was nothing. Presently at Carmel the Syrian oracle assured him that he would be successful in whatever he undertook. From Rome word came that, while the armies of Vitellius and Otho were fighting, two eagles had fought above them, and that the victor had been despatched by a third eagle that had come from ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... enterprise. They prepared for it with the solemnity and devotion peculiar to the tribe. Blue John consulted his medicine, or talismanic charm, such as every chief keeps in his lodge as a supernatural protection. The oracle assured him that his enterprise would be completely successful, provided no rain should fall before he had passed through the defile; but should it rain, his band would be ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... conjecture is raised to a moral certainty by the contents of such a collection as Knudtzon's Gebete an den Sonnengott, found together with them; which consisted of copies of the requests and inquiries made of the Sun-god oracle regarding the troubles and difficulties of the king and royal family, domestic as well as public, in the reigns of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal. The letters too, found in the same collection, are ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... guests exceeded even his own: they listened to every tale of wonder with open eyes and mouth, and never failed to be astonished, even though repeated for the hundredth time. Thus lived the Baron Von Landshort, the oracle of his table, the absolute monarch of his little territory, and happy, above all things, in the persuasion that he was the wisest man ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... my oracle during the first six years of childhood, resolving my difficulties and answering my questions. I was happy—very happy! and still look back to those days with indescribable pleasure and satisfaction. I had no tasks. I was not pestered with A.B. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... the interior of the State of New York questioned Mr. Seward, in my presence, about Europe, and "what they will do there?" To this, with a voice of the Delphic oracle, he responded, "that after all France is not bigger than the State of New York." Is it possible to say such trash ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... best answered by the fact that Mackintosh and his followers have the "flow". This is greatly in your favour, for mankind are at present gross reasoners. They reason in a perpetual antithesis; Mackintosh is an oracle, and Godwin therefore a fool. Now it is morally impossible that Mackintosh and the sophists of his school can retain this opinion. You may well exclaim with Job, "O that my adversary would write a book!" When he publishes, it will be ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... was an old journalist, whose face was a sealed book of Confucius, and who talked to me, patronizingly, now and then, like the Delphic Oracle. His name was Watch, and he wore a prodigious pearl in his shirt-bosom. He crept up to the editorial room at nine o'clock every night, and dashed off an hour's worth of glittering generalities, at the end of which time two or ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... think we had them free from doubt! As Rome's old Fathers, reverently leaning In secret cellars o'er the Sibyl's strain, Beyond the fact that several pars Had something vague to do with Mars, Failed, as a rule, to find the smallest meaning, But told the plebs the oracle was plain. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... had said suddenly acquired a mysterious and wise significance and became oracular. She alone had the power of inspiring him to be profound. He had noticed that before, years ago, and first at their first meeting. Or was it that she saw in him an oracle, and caused him ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... attention among the rustics or at the squire's hall than the passing by of a plough or a sheep. The fixed shop has deprived him of his utility, and daily newspapers of his attractions. He is content to sell his waistcoat or handkerchief pieces; but he is no longer the oracle of the village inn or the housekeeper's room. In the days however when neither draper's nor haberdasher's wares could be purchased without taking a day's journey at the least through miry ways to some considerable market-town, the pedlar was the merchant ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... as many Northland mines have been worked; and no white man outside the Company, which is Bill-Man, Jim, and Charley, knows the whereabouts of Mandell on the rim of the polar sea. Aab-Waak still carries his head on one shoulder, is become an oracle, and preaches peace to the younger generation, for which he receives a pension from the Company. Tyee is foreman of the mine. But he has achieved a new theory ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... carried out; so that in a few years Mr. Kornicker became a very vivacious gentleman, of independent property, who frequented a small ale-house in a retired corner of the city, where he snuffed prodigally, and became a perfect oracle, and of much reputed knowledge, from the sagacious manner in which he shook his head ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... when he so savagely attacked my class and me. After that, as I saw that he had not maligned my class, and that the harsh and bitter things he said about it were justified, I had drawn closer to him again. He became my oracle. For me he tore the sham from the face of society and gave me glimpses of reality that were as unpleasant as they ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... garments. Sighs and fears Have vanished: in one long and ardent gaze Thy steps I follow down the heavenly slope. Iris, be mine thy message! Let thy rays Write out how I with destiny may cope. Ah! spanned with light would be all coming days, Could I but read thy oracle of hope. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... home, and with the hearty acquiescence of his wife, who only needed to know the right, to pursue it, she began a physical life in obedience to the laws laid down by the said oracle, Andrew Combe. ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... that disgrace rested on his family because no man had come to seek Psyche in marriage, sent messengers to ask of the oracle [Footnote: An oracle was a place where some god answered questions about future happenings. The same name was also given to the answers made by the god. The most famous oracles were that of Jupiter at Dodona ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... lived once. If God did not create him, Homer did. The Oracle told him that the first man who put foot on the Trojan shores would die. He knew this before he started on his voyage for Greece. He left a wife and home behind him, whom he dearly loved. I wonder if he used to pace the deck of the rich barge, and listen to the men chatting around him, and smile ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... around whose mane he had hung a votive wreath of water-lilies, across whose unresponsive neck the Lord Mayor had wound his arms in supplication, imploring it that it might speak, and give a sign like the Oracle in Delphi. ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... know, he answered more frankly, "Who are they waiting for? Why, Quidnunc. Mister Quidnunc. That's who it is. Him they call Quidnunc. So now you know." In fact, I did not know. He had told me nothing, would tell me no more, and while I stood pondering the oracle I was sensible of some common movement run through the company with a thrill, unite them, intensify them, draw them together to be one people with one faith, one hope, one assurance. And then the nun, who stood near me, fell to her knees, crossed herself and began to pray; ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... was flattered as he never had been flattered before. He had not hoped to be considered an oracle so soon. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... tea-table, over which the amiable hostess presided, had also its standing votaries: mostly grave parliamentary-looking gentlemen, with powdered heads, and very long-waisted black coats, among whom the Sir Oracle was a functionary of his Majesty's High Court of Chancery, though I have reason to believe, not, Lord Manners: meanwhile, in all parts of the room might be seen Blue Peter, distributing tea, coffee, and biscuit, and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... simple message to them in its pure womanly goodness. Even the natives were touched. They whispered and hesitated. Then after a time of much murmured debate, the King of Fire stood forward as a mediator. "There is an oracle, O Korong," he said, "not to prejudge the matter, which decides all these things—a great conch-shell at a sacred grove in the neighboring island of Aloa Mauna. It is the holiest oracle of all our holy religion. We gods ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... one never puts one's own desires in opposition to those of others. That's what society is for, is what it means, isn't it? Good breeding means unselfishness;" said Helena, then added, with a little flush of modesty: "Not that I am an oracle, but that's ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... long before Fortuna became of any real importance in Rome, and I shall leave her out of account here. She had two homes of renown in Latium, at Antium and Praeneste, and was in each connected with a kind of oracle, which seems to have been specially resorted to by women before and after childbirth. She was also very probably a deity of other kinds of fertility; and in course of time she took on the characteristics of ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... expense and pains bestowed upon her, must, of course, be the musical oracle of the family; the father must forego his favourite old songs, written by "honest Harry Carey," (as Ritson insists on his being called); the mother is laughed to scorn if she mentions "Auld Robin Gray," "Mary's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... hair is fashionable for the youthful," Says a Mode oracle acknowledged truthful. Strange that Society should have a rage For that anomaly—artificial Age! Dust on their heads our pretty women toss, Just to deprive it of its pristine gloss. Make ashen-white your eyebrows, there, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... behalf of so many souls! How ought we to be alarmed at the consideration of so many dreadful examples of God's inscrutable judgments, and tremble for ourselves! Let him who stands beware lest he fall. Hold fast what thou hast, says the oracle of the Holy Ghost to every one of us, lest another ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... oracle is dumb, Dread Cumae wafts no words of fate, To fright the eager souls that press Through ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... Mexican War; the other a pilgrim, and one who was out with the bear flag and under Fremont when California was taken by the States. They are both true frontiersmen, and most kind and pleasant. Captain Smith, the bear hunter, is my physician, and I obey him like an oracle.... ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... thatching grass stuck on her head, and the third had her foot stuck fast to a rice-pounder, and they asked him where he was going, and he told them, "to visit the shrine of the Bohmae bird": then they asked him to consult the oracle and find out how they could be freed from the things which were stuck fast to them, and he promised to ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... theatre the title of a wilderness, Sheridan, when requested, shortly afterwards, to produce a tragedy, written by Boaden, replied, 'The wise and discreet author calls our house a wilderness:—now, I don't mind allowing the oracle to have his opinion; but it is really too much for him to expect, that I will suffer him to prove ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... man was killing the cattle in order that the tribes should perish of starvation. The fact, too, that raiding weaker tribes for food was punished by the British further aggravated this "offence." The priests encouraged the spirit of rebellion, and the oracle-deity, the M'limo, promised through the priests that if the Matabele would make war upon the white man his bullets in their flight should be changed to water, and his cannon shells become eggs. Horrible murders followed upon this encouragement, too horrible, indeed, to repeat; but ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... appealed to his sense of pity. "Oh, yes, I believe so," he said. "They think you are trying to do your best and all that sort of thing. You don't enthuse them as my grandfather used to do; but, then, he had the grand manner, and the grand way of speaking as if he were an oracle. You have put all that aside—except when you make speeches which have been written for you by your ministers. Well, decent people respect you for it; but it has its drawbacks; the crowd prefers the other thing occasionally;—it likes still to pretend, at moments of ceremony, that it believes in ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... children.—Such teaching palliates educational situations without affording a solution. It is so steeped in tradition that it resorts to statistics as it would consult an oracle. We look to see it establishing precedents only to find it following precedents. When we would find in it a leader we find merely a follower. To such teaching statistical numbers mean far more than living children. Indeed, children are but objects that ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... full atonement has been offered, and with it the hand of friendship on which you spit. Know then that the mighty lord Athalbrand does not fear war, since for every man you can gather he numbers two, all pledged to him until the death. Also he has consulted the oracle, and its answer is that if you fight with him, but one of your ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard
... of your own. You serve what you despise, you lie in every gesture, word, and thought, you surrender, become nothing.... What does it profit us all, if we all surrender? For the sake of whom, or what? To satisfy blind instincts, or rogues? Does God rule, or do some charlatans speak for the oracle? Let us lift the veil, and look the hidden thing behind it in the face.... Our Country! A great noble word! The father, brother embracing brother.... That is not what your false country offers me, but an enclosure, a pit full of beasts, trenches, barriers, prison bars.... ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... / but yet without synne. But now this remaynith as yet to be discussed / which theis men do take as for an oracle / and most ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... Gardner and Jevons, Greek Antiquities, Index, s.v. Oracles; Bouche-Leclercq, Histoire de la divination dans l'antiquite, Index, and Stengel and Oehmichen, Die greichischen Sakralaltertuemer, Index; Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed., article "Oracle." ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... higher up. What shall we do? Unless we go down a chimney, I don't know what's to be done.' Still her voice did not falter, and my courage did not give way. She stood for a few moments, silent. I stood regarding her, as one might listen for a doubtful oracle. ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... them: "Listen yet! Long did our King Amfortas kneel before The sanctuary, praying in his pain And seeking for a word of hope from God. At length a radiance glowed around the Grail, And from its glory shone a Sacred Face That spake this oracle of mystic words: "By pity 'lightened, My guileless One,— Wait for him, Till My will ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... generous devotion. What if what he had to tell was but some simple story of hunting England, or some bald description of London life seen under the surveillance of a tutor fifteen or twenty years previous to the time of narration—he was their oracle, prophet, God, what you will, and they were his dearest, yes, his very dearest friends. When Mr. Joseph appeared as one of this happy circle, it became more boisterous of course though not necessarily any happier, for it ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... aetiological myth to account for the practice. 'Wolves came and carried off the entrails from the fire; shepherds, following them, were killed by mortal vapours from a cave; thence ensued a pestilence, because they had followed the wolves. An oracle bade them "play the wolf," i.e. live on plunder, whence they were called Hirpi, wolves,' an attempt to account for a wolf clan-name. There is also a story that, when the grave of Feronia seemed all on fire, ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... realm, until his faithful friends at last found him and induced him to return, for his country was going to rack and ruin, and even its capital had fallen into the enemy's hands. The loving fairy herself sends the prince back to his country; for the oracle has decreed that she shall lay upon her lover the severest of tasks. Only by performing this task triumphantly can he make it possible for her to leave the immortal world of fairies in order to share the fate of her earthly lover, as his wife. In a moment of deepest despair about the ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... When this doubtful speculation was proposed to the prudent merchant, he sought advice from the celebrated Whitefield, then an itinerant preacher in the country, and an object of vast antipathy to many of the settled ministers. The response of the apostle of Methodism, though dark as those of the Oracle of Delphos, intimating that the blood of the slain would be laid to Colonel Pepperell's charge, in case of failure, and that the envy of the living would persecute him, if victorious, decided him to gird on his armor. That the French might be ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mannerism; egotism; priggism[obs3], priggishness; coxcombry, gaudery[obs3], vainglory, elation; pride &c. 878; ostentation &c. 882; assurance &c. 885. vox et praeterea nihil[Lat]; cheval de bataille[Fr]. coxcomb &c. 854 Sir Oracle &c. 887. V. be vain &c. adj., be vain of; pique oneself &c. (pride) 878; lay the flattering unction to one's soul. have too high an opinion of oneself, have an overweening opinion of oneself, have too high an opinion of one's talents; blind oneself as to one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... woods—inhabitated only by its sap and cells. The trees had drawn their bark close around them, wearing an inviolate tapestry across those portals through which so many a stranger to them had passed in and passed out; and henceforth the dubious oracle of the forest—its one reply to all man's questionings—became the Voice ...
— Bride of the Mistletoe • James Lane Allen
... my dear Sir Oracle, that you are beginning to recollect yourself and temper your severities on our sex," said my wife. "As usual, there is much truth lying about loosely in the vicinity of your assertions; but they ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "Monsieur," said our diplomatic oracle, "she should have petitioned the First Consul for a permission to return, to France before she entered it; but out of regard for you, if she is prudent, she will not, I daresay, be troubled ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the best thing I could do concerning the Book you wanted was to send your Enquiry to the Oracle itself:—whose Reply ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... mother of history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, witness of the past, example and adviser of the present, and oracle ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Matty at Cranford everything had been comfortably arranged for her. Even Mrs Jamieson's approval of her selling tea had been gained. That oracle had taken a few days to consider whether by so doing Miss Matty would forfeit her right to the privileges of society in Cranford. I think she had some little idea of mortifying Lady Glenmire by the decision she gave at last; which was to this effect: that whereas ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... them himselfe, that he was reputed for a natiue member of that countrey: and by the same dexteritie he attained to manie languages. This man the Tartars hauing intelligence of by their spies, drew him perforce into their societie and being admonished by an oracle or vision, to challenge dominion ouer the whole earth, they allured him by many rewards to their faithfull seruice, by reason that they wanted interpreters. But concerning their maners and superstitions, of the disposition and stature of their bodies, of their ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... conservative members in 1791, came then under his leadership. Thenceforth the Jacobin Club was a most effective instrument for establishing social democracy (although it was not committed to republicanism until August, 1792), and Robespierre was its oracle. Robespierre was never a demagogue in the present sense of the word: he was always emphatically a gentleman and a man of culture, sincere and truthful. Although he labored strenuously for the "rights" of the proletariat, he never catered to their tastes; to the last day of his ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Persia as, if Herodotus' story is well founded, they were ignorant of their quality. Croesus took his time, sending envoys to consult oracles near and far. Herodotus tells us that he applied to Delphi not less than thrice and even to the oracle of Ammon in the Eastern Sahara. At least a year must have been spent in these inquiries alone, not to speak of an embassy to Sparta and perhaps others to Egypt and Babylon. These preliminaries at length completed, the Lydian gathered the levies of western Asia Minor and set out ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... plans and observations. He had only sometimes directed their attention by a laconic word or by a wave of his hand to some peculiarity of the landscape, and the generals had received these words and gestures like the mysterious hints of an oracle, with the most respectful attention, in order to weigh them in their minds, and to indelibly engrave them in their memory. On his arrival at the door of his headquarters, the emperor turned his pale, grave face once more to the plain ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... sails all shivering. By and by the congregation will get ahead of him, and then it must, have another new skipper. The priest holds his own pretty well; the minister is coming down every generation nearer and nearer to the common level of the useful citizen,—no oracle at all, but a man of more than average moral instincts, who, if he knows anything, knows how little he knows. The ministers are good talkers, only the struggle between nature and grace makes some of 'em a little awkward occasionally. ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Aztecs, who were thought to be natives of Northern America, arrived in Mexico (which then bore the name of Anahuac), they wandered about a long time before they settled. One day, near a lake, they found a cactus growing on a stone, and on the cactus an eagle was sitting. Guided by an oracle, a city was built, which was called Tenochtitlan, and ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... differently engaged. He has devoted his life to a mission to his fellow men, and especially to his fellow citizens. If we may so far trust Plato's Apology, the occasion of that was the answer received from the Delphic oracle by Chaerephon, whom we know from Aristophanes as one of the leading disciples of Socrates in the earlier part of his life. Chaerephon asked the god of Delphi whether there was any one wiser than ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... "For, whereas it is our usual custom to dispute everything, how plain or obscure soever, by knocking argument against argument, and tilting at one another with our heads (as rams fight) till we are out of breath, and then refer it to our wooden oracle, the Box, and seldom anything, how slight soever, hath appeared without some person or other to defend it, I must confess I never saw bowling-stones run so unluckily against any boy, when his hand has been out, as the ballots did against you when anything was put ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... (laughing gently). The oracle rails that way! Yes, yes! Now I recollect. This junction with the Swedes Did never please thee—lay thyself to sleep, Baptista! Signs like these I ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... There were few subjects on which she had not thought, and her clear perceptions went at once to the bottom of a subject, so that she solved simply many a question on which astute philosophers had found themselves at fault. I came at last to regard her opinion almost as an oracle. I have often thought, since her death, that it was her object to turn my life into that channel to which it has since been devoted, but I do not know. I had never thought of the work that has since occupied me at the time of her death, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... that you should be the first to learn also of Ayesha, Hesea and Spirit of the Mountain, the priestess of that Oracle which since the time of Alexander the Great has reigned between the flaming pillars in the Sanctuary, the last holder of the sceptre of Hes or Isis upon the earth. It is right also that to you first among men I should ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... daughter Hesione, when fastened to a rock, and his companion Telamon receives her as his wife; while his brother Peleus marries the sea Goddess, Thetis. Going to visit Ceyx, he learns how Daedalion has been changed into a hawk, and sees a wolf changed into a rock. Ceyx goes to consult the oracle of Claros, and perishes by shipwreck. On this, Morpheus appears to Halcyone, in the form of her husband, and she is changed into a kingfisher; into which bird Ceyx is also transformed. Persons who observe them, as they fly, call to mind how ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... chief and oracle he had been for so long, asked him what they ought to do; Cavalier replied that if they would follow him, their best course and his would be to take the first opportunity of gaining the frontier and leaving the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... consigned over to the Manichaeans, but had found out how much that sect was to be abhorred, and had, therefore, avoided it. But he assured her that the child of such tears as hers could not perish. Which answer she took as an oracle from heaven. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... pilgrimage. And, moreover, I had the honour to sit in the General Assembly (meaning, as an auditor, in the galleries thereof), and have heard as much goodly speaking on the law of patronage, as, with the fructification thereof in mine own understanding, hath made me be considered as an oracle upon that doctrine ever since my safe ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... son of Iphicles, king of Thessaly, and nephew of Hercules, settled Greek colonies in this part of the island. The expedition, in which he was joined by the Thespiadæ, was undertaken in obedience to the oracle of Delphi; and it declared that, on their establishing themselves in Sardinia, they would never be conquered. Iolaus is said to have been buried in this district, after founding many cities; and, the Greek colonists intermingling with the native Sardes, their descendants, deriving their name ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... though she sustained her volcanic topography for some time with all the amiable pertinacity of 'the feminie.' She soon after turned to me and asked me various questions about Sir Humphry's philosophy, and I explained as well as an oracle his skill in gasen safety lamps, and ungluing the Pompeian MSS. 'But what do you call him?' said she. 'A great chemist,' quoth I. 'What can he do?' repeated the lady. 'Almost any thing,' said I. 'Oh, then, mio caro, do pray beg him to give me something to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Possession, and shall reassume it, in its Place; but I must take leave to mention some other Parts of his retir'd Scheme, by which he has hitherto manag'd Mankind, and the first of these is by that Fraud of all Frauds call'd Oracle. ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... if it swings, this is supposed to be an answer in the affirmative; if it does not move, this is a negative reply. This seems to be a very simple trick, for the diviner can impart movement to the lime-case by means of the hand. A similar way of consulting the oracle is by the bow, which is held in the hand by the middle of the string. A simple method of divining is by means of cowries or grains of rice. The diviner plunges his hand into a bag or basket after asking the god a question. If the number of cowries or grains of rice ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... longer pieces—namely, that neither story nor character-drawing was his forte, that the dialogue is too colourless, and that though the description is often charming, it is seldom masterly. As before, there are jarring rhymes—"school" and "oracle," "Faun" and "scorn." Empedocles himself is sometimes dreadfully tedious; but the part of Callicles throughout is lavishly poetical. Not merely the show passages—that which the ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision. I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... highly aristocratic but not wealthy parents, and thus compelled to make use of his far from mean talents, he raised himself to the consulship (639) and censorship (645), was long the chief of the senate and the political oracle of his order, and immortalized his name not only as an orator and author, but also as the originator of some of the principal public buildings executed in this century. But, if we look at him more closely, his ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... right, you see, when I said to you: 'Patience, do not despair, the future is big with cashmere shawls, glittering jewels, supper parties, and the like.' You would not believe me, incredulous one. Well, my predictions are, however, realized, and I am worth as much, I hope, as your 'Ladies' Oracle,' a little octavo sorcerer you bought for five sous at a bookstall on the Pont Neuf, and which you wearied with external questions. Again, I ask, was I not right in my prophecies; and would you believe me now, if I tell you that you ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... public school (she would have resigned herself) with the army to follow. But Leolin never was afraid of his sister, and they visibly disliked, though they sometimes agreed to assist, each other. They could combine to work the oracle—to keep ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... shoulder. Her legs are bare, and her feet are adorned with rich sandals. The goddess, with a look expressive of indignation, appears to be defending the fabulous hind from the pursuit of Hercules, who, in obedience to the oracle of Apollo, was pursuing it, in order to carry it alive to Eurystheus; a task imposed on him by the latter as ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... of the power of God, priests and friars were totally defeated by those whom they had denounced as unlearned and heretical. "Unhappily," said a Catholic writer, "Luther had persuaded his followers to put no faith in any other oracle than the Holy Scriptures."(280) Crowds would gather to hear the truth advocated by men of little education, and even discussed by them with learned and eloquent theologians. The shameful ignorance of these great men ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... is that of Magna Charta. You will see that Sir Edward Coke, that great oracle of our law, and indeed all the great men who follow him, to Blackstone, are industrious to prove the pedigree of our liberties. They endeavour to prove, that the ancient charter, the Magna Charta of King John, was connected with another positive charter from Henry I., and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... said that this was the reason why she had not married; the men, however, asserted that no one dare marry her; and one club-oracle had given it as his opinion that no man in his rational senses was to be allowed to have anything to do with her, till she had been well jilted two or three times, to take the spirit out of her: but that catastrophe had not yet occurred, and Miss ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... requisitions of the Union. This language, at the present day, would appear as wild as a great part of what we now hear from the same quarter will be thought, when we shall have received further lessons from that best oracle of wisdom, experience. It at all times betrayed an ignorance of the true springs by which human conduct is actuated, and belied the original inducements to the establishment of civil power. Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates ...
— The Federalist Papers
... musical delivery in reciting apt bits of poetry and other quotations adding to the pleasure of hearing his accounts rendered. He gave us modern versions of the Greek myths and hero legends, of Cadmus and Thebes, of Jason and the Golden Fleece, of the Trojan epic, of the Delphic Oracle, etc. ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... and the cloacamaker will never be lords of our spirit. We are liege subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered at Trafalgar and of the empire of the spirit, not an imperium, that went under with the Athenian fleets at Aegospotami. Yes, yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled by an oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of Greece. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... these great practical difficulties lie in the way of applying the hybridization test, but even when this oracle can be questioned, its replies are sometimes as doubtful as those of Delphi. For example, cases are cited by Mr. Darwin, of plants which are more fertile with the pollen of another species than with their ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... where he "received and protected all, delivering none back— neither the servant to his master, the debtor to his creditor, nor the murderer into the hands of the magistrate; saying it was a privileged place, and they could so maintain it by an order of the holy oracle; insomuch that the city grew presently very populous." It was men, of course, who took advantage of this asylum, for who ever heard of women who would rush in great numbers to such a place? Rome was a colony of bachelors, and some of them pretty poor characters ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... became a precious prize. The special correspondent and reporter sought it. Truth was to be rescued from oblivion! Facts began to be hunted for like the ambergris and ivory of commerce. At first the search resembled the quest for the Oracle of the Holy Bottle,—a test as to the public's opinion of news. What kind of service did the public want? Adventure followed, as a matter of course, but love of adventure was not ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... military oracle of the Administration in the first days of the war. His ability and great experience entitled him to regard and deference on all questions relating to military operations. No one appreciated his qualities more than the President, unless it was General Scott himself, who with ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the prince, 'that commerce could develop such an oracle; it is a subtle sense of fitness you express. ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... cheaile. I was just reflecting how foolish is all this thing—the tomb—the epitaph. I think I would 'av none—no, no epitaph. We regard them first for the oracle of the dead, and find them after only the folly of the living. So I despise. Do you think your house of Knowl down there is what you call ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... ask for a scroll, parchment, oracle, prophecy, precedent; do you ask for tablets marked with thought or words cut deep on the marble surface, do you seek measured utterance or ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... illiberal devotion.[74] The reverence for the clergy had been carried to such a height that wherever a person appeared in a sacerdotal habit, though on the highway, the people flocked around him, and, showing him all marks of profound respect, received every word he uttered as the most sacred oracle. Even the military virtues, so inherent in all the Saxon tribes, began to be neglected; and the nobility, preferring the security and sloth of the cloister to the tumults and glory of war, valued themselves chiefly on endowing monasteries, of which they ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... Chaka again without his greatness, and you know the end of Dingaan, for you had a share in that war, and of Umhlangana, his brother and fellow-murderer, whom I counselled Dingaan to slay. This I did through the lips of the old Princess Menkabayi, Jama's daughter, Senzangakona's sister, the Oracle before whom all men bowed, causing her to say that 'This land of the Zulus cannot be ruled by a crimson assegai.' For, Macumazahn, it was Umhlangana who first struck Chaka with the spear. Now Panda reigns, the last of the sons of Senzangakona, my enemy, Panda ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... prudential proverbs. The sentiments of a man while he is full of ardour and hope are to be received, it is supposed, with some qualification. But when the same person has ignominiously failed and begins to eat up his words, he should be listened to like an oracle. Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. And since mediocre people constitute the bulk of humanity, this is no doubt very properly so. But it does not follow that ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... us familiar with what is deeper and richer, as well as more artistic, in language and versification. But no one has denied Scott's originality and high merits, in contrast with the pompous tameness and conventionality of the poetry which arose when Johnson was the oracle of literary circles, and which still held the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... age of sixteen, she married M. Firmiani, receiver-general in the department of Montenotte. M. Firmiani died in Greece about 1822, and she became Mme. de Camps in 1824 or 1825. At this time she dwelt on rue du Bac and had entree into the home of Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, the oracle of Faubourg Saint-Germain. An accomplished and excellent lady, loved even by her rivals, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, her cousin, Mme. de Macumer—Louise de Chaulieu—and the Marquise d'Espard. [Madame Firmiani.] She welcomed ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... was now the oracle. His prophecies with regard to the great war had been signally fulfilled. Germany was at grips with England, and her triumph was looked ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... too glad, Queen, for to-night we have sinned, both of us, who dared to summon Amen from his throne, and sin also fails not of its reward. Blood is the price of that oracle." ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... and her clear perceptions went at once to the bottom of a subject, so that she solved simply many a question on which astute philosophers had found themselves at fault. I came at last to regard her opinion almost as an oracle. I have often thought, since her death, that it was her object to turn my life into that channel to which it has since been devoted, but I do not know. I had never thought of the work that has since occupied me at the time of her death, but ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... "Damn your oracle of Delphi, you old rascal," cried the Prince, with great good-humour. "That's a crumb of the mouldy bread of learning you used to cram down my throat in the old days. It makes Master Wheatman writhe to hear it. The only advantage I ever got out of being a Prince was that ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... to another young man, "good, accommodating, pleasant but fearfully green." This young person would become the "Interrogation Point," in due time, and have his picture on page 71 (old edition), while opposite him, on page 70, would appear the "oracle," identified as one Doctor Andrews, who (the note-book says) had the habit of "smelling in guide-books for knowledge and then trying to play it for old information that has been festering in his brain." Sometimes there ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the aged philosopher replied, "My child must be guided by her own heart. The gods have there placed an oracle, which never misleads or perplexes those ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... wheresoever seiz'd and shown; Bright pictures, but obscure their meaning: A ray of truth through error gleaming, Thus you the best elixir brew, To charm mankind, and edify them too. Then youth's fair blossoms crowd to view your play, And wait as on an oracle; while they, The tender souls, who love the melting mood, Suck from your work their melancholy food; Now this one, and now that, you deeply stir, Each sees the working of his heart laid bare. Their tears, their laughter, ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... out of the funds of the said Society; and which, notwithstanding such malicious assertions, waxed stronger as it grew. There was one noticeable feature of affairs at this juncture, that the uninitiated were at a loss to account for, and that was the studied neutrality maintained by the oracle of the village, who had been wont to utter his momentous decisions, upon the current topics of the day, through the medium of that "valuable" and popular paper ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... gyasticuti of the boundless realm of Nescience and Noodledom. Mrs. Bradley-Martin has triumphed gloriously, raised herself by her own garters to the vulgar throne of Vanity, the dais of the almighty dollar. She is now Delphic oracle of doodle-bugs and hierophant of the hot stuff. Viva Regina! Likewise, rats! Like most of New York's aristocracy, she is of even nobler lineage than Lady Vere de Vere, daughter of a hundred earls, having been ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... heard that the coast was death to all but careful seamen; he also heard that the ship's cat was asleep. He heard that Fanshaw couldn't find his cigar-holder anywhere; he also heard the pilot deliver the oracle "Both eyes bright, she's all right; one eye winks, down she sinks." He heard Flambeau say to Fanshaw that no doubt this meant the pilot must keep both eyes open and be spry. And he heard Fanshaw say to Flambeau that, oddly enough, it didn't mean this: it meant that while ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... the answer was to come. Twice before had they consulted that dread oracle, whose response was certain death to one of their number. Twice before had they recognised and submitted to its decree. No preliminaries needed to be discussed. These had been long ago arranged. There was nothing more to ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... subpremi. Oppressor tirano, subpremanto. Opprobrium malnobleco, malgloro. Optics optiko. Optical optika. Optician optikisto. Optimism optimismo. Optimist optimisto. Option elekto—ajxo. Opulence ricxeco. Opulent ricxa. Opusculum libreto, brosxuro. Or aux. Oracle orakolo. Oral vocxa, parola. Orange orangxo. Orange (colour) orangxkolora. Orangery orangxerio. Oration parolado. Orator oratoro, parolisto. Oratory (chapel) pregxejeto. Oratory elokventeco. Orchard fruktarbejo. Orchestra orkestro. Ordain ordeni. Ordeal provo, ekzameno. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... be done scrupulously," Alessandro said with fervour. "We shall crown her Queen of our College of the Muses; she shall be priestess, sacred image, and oracle; and ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Anabaptists, Independents and Quakers, according as any of these were most in credit; so, since the fashion hath been taken up of exploding religion, the popish missionaries have not been wanting to mix with the freethinkers; among whom, Toland the great oracle of the Antichristians is an Irish priest, the son of an Irish priest; and the most learned and ingenious author of a book called "The Rights of the Christian Church,"[20] was in a proper juncture reconciled to the Romish faith, whose true son, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... The chief pontiff has retired to Mount Elbourz, eighteen leagues from the city of Yezd: the perpetual fire (if it continues to burn) is inaccessible to the profane; but his residence is the school, the oracle, and the pilgrimage of the Ghebers, whose hard and uniform features attest the unmingled purity of their blood. Under the jurisdiction of their elders, eighty thousand families maintain an innocent and industrious ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... a word the meanin' whereof is goin' to depend a heap on what you brands with it." This was said like an oracle. "Also, the same means more or less accordin' to who all puts the word in play. I remembers a mighty decent sort of sport, old Cape Willingham it is; an' yet Dan Boggs is forever referrin' to old Cape as 'ornery.' An' I reckon Dan thinks he is. Which the trouble with Cape, from Dan's ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... pictures.[8] Him the past instructs. Him the future invites. Is not indeed every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student's behoof? And, finally, is not the true scholar the only true master? But as the old oracle said, "All things have two handles: Beware of the wrong one."[9] In life, too often, the scholar errs with mankind and forfeits his privilege. Let us see him in his school, and consider him in reference to the ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the oracle. His prophecies with regard to the great war had been signally fulfilled. Germany was at grips with England, and her triumph was looked upon ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... philosopher, who had by manly courage and matchless eloquence braved the mob law of the North and the organized brigandage and robbery of the South in the dark days of the past, days that tried men's souls, standing in the sunlight of rejuvenated manhood, still was the oracle of the oppressed in the sentiments ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... not to thrust his finger into a needless fire. He stands like a centre unmoved, while the circumference of his estate is drawn above, beneath, about him. Finally, his wit hath cost him much, and he can both keep, and value, and employ it. He is his own lawyer, the treasury of knowledge, the oracle of counsel; blind in no man's cause, best sighted ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... characteristic. Methought, however, the good yeoman was not quite so natural as he may have been at an earlier period. The simplicity of his character has probably suffered by his detecting the impression he makes on those around him. There is a circle, I suppose, who look up to him as an oracle, and so he inevitably assumes the oracular manner, and speaks as if truth and wisdom were attiring themselves by his voice. Mr. Emerson has risked the doing him much mischief by putting him in print,—a trial ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... books to do it with, don't you? Ah!" He looked into the back shop before he returned to his paste and his slips. "That was Mr. Potts, the great Queen Anne collector, sir. Most notorious book-snatcher in all London, and the most barefaced. Wanted our fourth volume of the 'Athenian Oracle.' I saw his eyes reached out this way, and that way, and always resting on that volume. I saw him edging along to the shelf. Got another odd volume just like it in his wicked old hand, ready to change ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... the severities which they had suffered, there was amongst them a Syrian named Eunus—a man of great craft and courage; who having passed through many scenes of life, had become acquainted with a variety of arts. He pretended to have immediate communication with the gods; was the oracle and leader of his fellow-slaves; and, as is usual on such occasions confirmed his divine mission by miracles. When heated by enthusiasm and desirous of inspiring his followers with courage, he breathed flames or sparks among them from his mouth while he was addressing ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... now, as then, in cycles that may not match day by day in all instances, but, taking year by year, come surprisingly near it. There is more in the Old Farmer's Almanack's serene forecast of the weather for an entire year ahead than most of us are willing to admit. There are people who back its oracle against the Weather Bureau and claim that they travel warmer and drier by so doing. Yet if one makes a study of Farmers' Almanack weather he finds that it wins by predicting the same storms and the same cold snaps, the same drought and the same ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... given them at Oxford and Cambridge. Alfred, I thought looking pretty well. Spedding is immutably wise, good, and delightful: not so immutably well in Body, I think: though he does not complain. But I will deal in no more vaticinations of Evil. I can't think what was the oracle in my Letters you allude to, I mean about the three years' duration of our lives. I have long felt about England as you do, and even made up my mind to it, so as to sit comparatively, if ignobly, easy on that score. Sometimes I envy those who are so old that the curtain ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... the title of a wilderness, Sheridan, when requested, shortly afterwards, to produce a tragedy, written by Boaden, replied, 'The wise and discreet author calls our house a wilderness:—now, I don't mind allowing the oracle to have his opinion; but it is really too much for him to expect, that I will suffer him to prove ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... Africa was founded according to the express command of the oracle of Apollo. The inhabitants of Thera, who had received this order, did not care to go to an unknown country. They yielded only at the end of seven years since their island was afflicted with dearth; they believed that Apollo had sent misfortune on them as ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... rose, the foe invaded, In her own defence upbraided Wine for his invective base: "Now at last we've drawn the curtain! Who, what god thou art is certain From thy oracle's disgrace. ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... is sometimes said to have received its name from 'vaticinium,' an oracle or prophecy; for tradition says that Numa chose the Vatican hill as a sacred place from which to declare to the people the messages he received from the gods. It is not, however, one of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built, but forms a part of a ridge beginning ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... According to Murray, whom these men profess to follow, let, in all these examples, is an auxiliary, and the verb that follows it, is not in the infinitive mood, but in the imperative. So they severally contradict their oracle, and all are wrong, both he and they! The disciples pretend to correct their master, by supposing "Let me to go," and "Let me to ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... it doubly a Delphic oracle for vagueness to me," said Mrs. Orton Beg, "because Colonel Colquhoun's name ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... earlier than the far more agreeable part of the same doctrine which taught that, as an antidote to their influence, each individual was also accompanied by a benignant spirit. "The ministration of angels," says a writer in the Athenian Oracle, "is certain; but the manner how, is the knot to be untied." It was an opinion of the early philosophers that not only kingdoms[1] had their tutelary guardians, but that every person had his particular genius ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... service hereafter. Be the servant of all, and all are yours; serve Christ, and possess yourselves—these are the lessons from that royal life of service. May we learn them! May the King walk in his mother's steps and hearken to 'the oracle which ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... self-conscious; but is at his best when the wheel of his burning spirit, revolving as the planets do, throws off sparks or streams of fire. To the accuracy of this observation witness both Browning and Tennyson. When they were "possessed," as the Delphic oracle would say, they marched toward truth like an invincible troop. Truth seemed the missing half of their own sphere, toward which, by a subtle and lordly gravitation, they swung. When Tennyson's instincts speak, he is democrat; ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... of coffin and funeral service, as well as a cup of coffee for anyone who would put himself out so far as to accept their hospitality on that occasion. But now, contrary to custom, his father had not proved an oracle—he was dead and everything else had gone with him—except the land on the Point. And how was that to be turned into cash when there was no cabin on it? He would probably have to starve to death himself. Wouldn't it be simplest to run down to the shore and throw himself ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... charm it adds to story-telling. How its moods seem to keep pace with situations pictured by the oracle, offering shadows when dread is abroad, and light when a pleasing climax is reached; for interest undoubtedly tends the blaze, while sympathy contributes or withholds fuel, according ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... pretended omniscience, ask me about it with the most dreadful naivete, as though my eyes could penetrate any depth. What kind of notions have you, anyhow, of a young wife, and more especially of your daughter? Do you think that the whole situation is so plain? Or that I am an oracle—I can't just recall the name of the person—or that I hold the truth cut and dried in my hands, when Effi has poured out her heart to me?—at least what is so designated. For what does pouring out one's heart mean? After all, the real thing is kept back. She will take care not to initiate me into ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... song is sweeter, a thousand times sweeter than the voice of the nightingale, thrush, or linnet, for it brings not mere hope, but certainty of succor; and now, indeed, am I saved! The sacred singer has chosen itself, as the oracle intended; the prophecy is fulfilled, and my life, my house, and my people are redeemed. The ass shall be ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... descended on the maternal side, and was placed in due time under the first preceptors. From Prodicus he learned eloquence; from Socrates, ethics, and under Anaxagoras he studied philosophy. His parents having, before he was born, consulted the oracle of Apollo respecting his fate, were informed that the world should witness his fame, and that he would gain a crown. Of this answer which, like all the responses of the oracle, was constructed with purposed ambiguity, they could come to no decisive explanation: however, thinking it ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... occasion of his coming so late, and the hour of his wife's delivery, declared that the world had got a master. Afterwards, when Octavius, upon marching with his army through the deserts of Thrace, consulted the oracle in the grove of father Bacchus, with barbarous rites, concerning his son, he received from the priests an answer to the same purpose; because, when they poured wine upon the altar, there burst out so prodigious a flame, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... behold, an ancient Snake, Wine-eyed, bronze-gleaming in the brake Of deep-leaved laurel, ruled the dell, Sent by old Earth from under Strange caves to guard her oracle— A ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... morals of the monasteries. He sympathized with Luther in his religious feelings, treated him with great kindness, and recommended the reading of the Scriptures, and also the works of St. Augustine whose theological views he himself had embraced. Although St. Augustine was a great oracle in the Roman church, still, his doctrines pertaining to personal salvation differed in spirit from those which were encouraged by the Roman Catholic divines generally, who attached less importance to justification by faith than ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... 1672. He was well educated, and distinguished himself at Oxford, and was a fellow of Magdalen College. His early verses, which would now be pronounced very inferior, however attracted the notice of Dryden, then the great autocrat of letters, and the oracle of the literary clubs. At the age of twenty-seven, Addison was provided with a pension from the Whig government, and set out on his travels. He was afterwards made secretary to Lord Halifax, and elected a member of the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... rashly calling their work their own! Self- appreciation is the death-blow of genius. The poem is as much yours as your life is yours—no more and no less. In brief, you have recovered your lost inspiration; the lately dumb oracle speaks again:—and are ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Wilfrid stood eyeing the mysterious hangings, as if some dark oracle had spoken from behind them. In fear of irritating the old man, and almost as much in fear of bringing on himself a revelation of the frightful crisis that could only be averted by his apologizing personally to the man ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his Western home, and with the hearty acquiescence of his wife, who only needed to know the right, to pursue it, she began a physical life in obedience to the laws laid down by the said oracle, Andrew Combe. ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... not surprising that Alcinous at this point remembers an "ancient God-spoken oracle," which had uttered in advance the wrath of Neptune and the present penalty. In like manner, Polyphemus, in his crisis, remembered a similar oracle. It is indeed the deep suggestion of Nature which the sages have heard in all times. The poet takes his thought and works it into a mythical ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... paterfamilias, in pre-telegraph days, used to hammer out a few solid opinions of his own on matters political and otherwise. He no longer employs his brain for that purpose. He need only open his morning paper and in it pours—the oracle of the press, that manufactory of synthetic fustian, whose main object consists in accustoming humanity to attach importance to the wrong things. It furnishes him with opinions ready made, overnight, by some Fleet Street hack at so much a column, after a little talk ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years' voluntary concealment. This might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle, as for example:— ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... know,' replied the prince, 'that commerce could develop such an oracle; it is a subtle sense of fitness you express. I ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... Higgs presently, speaking with the air of an oracle, "the fact is that all these accursed sand-hills are as like each other as mummy beads on the same necklace, and therefore it is very difficult to know them apart. Give me that water-bottle, Adams; I am as dry as ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... seven days, when a great concourse of people assembled. When he died his body was embalmed and buried with great pomp, and the priests went in search of another Apis, who, when discovered by the marks, was carried to Memphis, carefully fed and exercised, and consulted as an oracle. The burial-place of the Apis bulls was, a few years ago, discovered near Memphis. It consists of an arched gallery hewn in the rock, two thousand feet long and twenty feet in height and breadth. On each side is a series of recesses, each containing a large sarcophagus of ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... wisdom? Where is that reason, at once both common and superior to all limited and imperfect reasons of mankind? Where is that oracle, which is never silent, and against which all the vain prejudices of men cannot prevail? Where is that reason which we have ever occasion to consult, and which prevents us to create in us the desire of ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... speaks, you will notice, as an Oracle. His words, anecdotes, and quotations must be accepted as truths, under pain of being thought without social education or intelligence, and of causing him to slander you with much zest in twenty salons where he is considered indispensable. The Observer is forty years of age, never dines at home, ...
— Madame Firmiani • Honore de Balzac
... silence. She went on—with the unconscious manner of one accustomed to command her world, to be the oracle and guide ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... care. So the Hebrews depended on him, and were of good hopes great things would be done by him; but the Egyptians were suspicious of what would follow such his education. Yet because, if Moses had been slain, there was no one, either akin or adopted, that had any oracle on his side for pretending to the crown of Egypt, and likely to be of greater advantage to them, they abstained from ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... water an' cold," said Joe Dumsby in the tones of an oracle. "Just fill your mouth with bilin' 'ot water, an' dip your face in a basin o' cold, ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... been cut into as many portions as there are guests, a small child is put under the table, and is interrogated by the master under the name of Phebe [Phoebus], as if he were a child who in the innocence of his age represented a kind of Apollo's oracle. To this questioning the child answers with a Latin word: Domine. Thereupon the master calls on him to say to whom he shall give the piece of cake which he has in his hand: the child names whoever comes into his head, without respect of persons, until the portion ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... such as to justify the sailors regarding the said captains as the worst types of usurers. A common phrase of the sailors in referring to this class of man was that he would not hesitate to rob "Jesus Christ of his shoe-strings." I have heard these nautical clothiers boast of how they had worked the oracle so that the wretched men who served under them would be obliged to come and on their knees beg that they might be forgiven for not taking the articles when offered, and that they might have them now ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... back, a certain Caius, who was blind, learned from an oracle that he should repair to the temple, put up his fervent prayers, cross the sanctuary from right to left, place his five fingers on the altar, then raise his hand and cover his eyes. He obeyed, and instantly his sight was restored, amid the loud acclamations ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... same laws of life and principles of conduct, as, from the outset of the work in Bristol, had with growing power controlled George Muller. His one supreme aim was the glory of God; his one sole resort, believing prayer; his one trusted oracle, the inspired Word; and his one divine Teacher, the Holy Spirit. One step taken in faith and prayer had prepared for another; one act of trust had made him bolder to venture upon another, implying a greater apparent risk and therefore demanding more implicit trust. But answered ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... the subject of the demon of Socrates, went to the cave of Trophonius, to learn of the oracle about it. There, having for a short time inhaled the mephitic vapour, he felt as if he had received a sudden blow on the head, and sank down insensible. Then his head appeared to him to open and to give issue to his soul into the other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... sing to you a brand new song, made by a modern pate, Of a fine young German Emperor, an Oracle of State, Who kept up his autocracy at the bountiful old rate, With the aid of Socialism for the poor men at his gate; This fine young German Emperor, all ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... was to Gordon a living oracle, to which he used to apply at all times. Here are extracts from two of his letters showing ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... staggered in some of the opinions she had been most fond of, received him with uncommon civility, and all the rest of the company treated him with the greatest respect. But Tommy, who had lately been the oracle and admiration of all this brilliant circle, appeared to have lost all his vivacity; he, indeed, advanced to meet Mr Barlow with a look of tenderness and gratitude, and made the most respectful answers to ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... the patron, laughing; "I have sailed about with my father, and I know what is called a sou, a crown, a pistole, a louis, and a double louis, in all the languages of Europe; my crew, therefore, listen to me as they would to an oracle, and obey me as ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... teaching palliates educational situations without affording a solution. It is so steeped in tradition that it resorts to statistics as it would consult an oracle. We look to see it establishing precedents only to find it following precedents. When we would find in it a leader we find merely a follower. To such teaching statistical numbers mean far more than living children. Indeed, children are but ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... York oracle, discoursing lately upon Canadian affairs, concludes that American ideas are pervading that region because the people speak of "baggage" and take the right hand in driving on the road. Having traveled somewhat in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... by and Pelias felt secure upon the throne he had taken from his brother. Once he sent to the oracle of the gods to ask of it whether he should be fearful of anything. What the oracle answered was this: that King Pelias had but one thing to dread—the coming of ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... "He was an oracle for all the small boys in town, and could advise us on any subject on earth—whether he knew anything about it or nothing about it made no difference. I told him once I wanted to be a California stage-robber, and he replied ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... merely unattested; it is also intrinsically impossible. Even leaving out of account that Caesar had too much intellect and too much political tact to decide important questions of state after the oligarchic fashion by a stroke of the oracle-machinery, he could never think of thus formally and legally splitting up the state which he wished to reduce to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... opera-house was crammed night after night; his footsteps were dogged in the streets by admiring enthusiasts; the wits and poets occupied themselves with composing sonnets in his praise; brilliant courtiers and fine ladies showered valuable gifts on the new musical oracle; he was hailed as the exponent of Rousseauism in music. We read that it was considered to be a priceless privilege to be admitted to the rehearsal of a new opera, to see Gluck conduct in nightcap ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... fact of the enemies' wishing to take me.' The classical languages are especially liable to this fallacy owing to the oblique construction in which the accusative becomes subject to the verb. Thus in Latin we have the oracle given to Pyrrhus (though of course, if delivered at all, it must have ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... twice in his married life had he acted counter to his wife's advice, and in both instances his judgment failed and hers was right. Many men have found their wives' intuitive judgment so correct that they dare not resist it, as though it were the utterings of an oracle. It is well known that such men as Bonaparte and Jackson have relied with great confidence upon their wives' opinions. So universal is this opinion among men, that all our best moralists and most sage philosophers advise all married men to consult their wives on all important ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... mystery about Mr. Steel. He would pass unnoticed in a crowd, and no one would take him for a bloodhound of the law. He did not even possess the indispensable eagle eye, nor did he utter opinions with the air of an oracle. In fact, when Mrs. Parry captured him and lured him into her parlor, she was exceedingly disappointed with his appearance. "No one would even take you for a detective," said she brusquely, whereat Steel ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... thick nose, with the flaring nostrils, and his coarse, half-formed lips, of the bluish color of raw corned-beef. But I looked upon these feelings as unreasonable prejudices, and strove to conquer them, seeing the admiration which he received from others. He was an oracle on the subject of 'Nature.' Having eaten nothing for two years, except Graham bread, vegetables without salt, and fruits, fresh or dried, he considered himself to have attained an antediluvian purity ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... places of the field of Barak's victory. But we have no feast of the Passover, or of the Tabernacles, or of the Commemoration. The States of Greece erected temples of the gods by a common contribution, and worshiped in them. They consulted the same oracle; they celebrated the same national festival: mingled their deliberations in the same amphictyonic and subordinate assemblies, and sat together upon the free benches to hear their glorious history read aloud, in the prose of Heroditus, the poetry of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... arrives at Delphi during the celebration of the Pythian games, having found it expedient to absent himself from Egypt for a time, for various family reasons, and more especially on account of the prediction of an oracle, that he should live to see his two sons engaged with each other in mortal conflict. A favourable response, vouchsafed to him by the Pythia from the tripod, at his entrance into the fane of Apollo, having pointed him out as a personage of consideration, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... of fate here predicted is like the vagueness of the fate of Bata's wife, by "a sharp death." It points to the Hathors predicting as seers, rather than to their having the control of the future. It bears the stamp of the oracle of Delphi, rather than that of a divine decree. In this these goddesses differ greatly from the Parcae, whose ordinances not even Zeus could withstand, as Lucian lets us know in one of the most audacious and philosophical of the dialogues. ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... moderated slightly, Lester, who now posed as a photographic oracle, and myself, went to the city one fine morning to buy ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... squander to-day the fruits of others' toil were forced to employ their leisure in useful work, our wealth would increase in proportion to the number of producers, and more. Finally, we know that contrary to the theory enunciated by Malthus—that Oracle of middle-class Economics—the productive powers of the human race increase at a much more rapid ratio than its powers of reproduction. The more thickly men are crowded on the soil, the more rapid is the growth ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... as well mention that he carried out; so that in a few years Mr. Kornicker became a very vivacious gentleman, of independent property, who frequented a small ale-house in a retired corner of the city, where he snuffed prodigally, and became a perfect oracle, and of much reputed knowledge, from the sagacious manner in which he shook his head and winked on ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... would have presaged the last two even while he announced the first, yet they came upon Sir Everard gradually, and drop by drop, as it were, distilled through the cool and procrastinating alembic of DYER'S WEEKLY LETTER. [Long the oracle of the country gentlemen of the high Tory party. The ancient NEWS-LETTER was written in manuscript and copied by clerks, who addressed the copies to the subscribers. The politician by whom they were compiled picked up his intelligence at coffee-houses, and often pleaded for an additional ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... sounds from this holy tree just as the priests of Dodona did beneath their rustling oaks, and, as many people, even of these somewhat sceptical days, still do, beneath the pulpits of their pope, priest, or other oracle."(8) ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... hill Delight thee more, | and Siloa's brook that flowed Fast by the oracle of God, | I thence Invoke thy aid | to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight | intends to soar Above the Aonian mount, | while it pursues Things unattempted yet | in prose ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... love. In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision. I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... would have been more impressed had she not seen Keith and Mrs. Brindley in the taxi, Keith talking earnestly and Mrs. Brindley listening as if to an oracle. Said she: "Perhaps I'll adopt some of ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... placeboes and jackmen in the toun, buffatted the Freir, and called him Heretick. The Freir, impatient of the injury receaved, past to Sanctandrose, and did communicat the headis of his sermone with Maister Johnne Mair,[74] whose wourd then was holden as ane oracle, in materis of religioun; and being assured of him, that such doctrin mycht weall be defendid, and that he wald defend it, for it conteaned no heresye; thair was ane day appointed to the said Frear, to maik repetitioun of the sam sermon; and advertisment was gevin to all such as war ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... ever, but the operative forces which determine it are those of the moment, and not of eternity. Miriam, moreover, just then lacked the strong instinct which mercifully for us so often takes us in hand. She was not altogether unhappy, but dull and careless as to what became of her. No oracle advised her. There is now no pillar of cloud or of fire to guide mortals; the heavenly apparition does not appear even in extremities; and consequently a week afterwards she said yes, and six months ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... all companies with noisy information; to still doubt, and overbear opposition, with certain knowledge or authentick intelligence. A liar of this kind, with a strong memory or brisk imagination, is often the oracle of an obscure club, and, till time discovers his impostures, dictates to his hearers with uncontrouled authority; for if a publick question be started, he was present at the debate; if a new fashion be ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... you believe all that? Do you believe you'll be killed by your dearest friend, and that nobody else can harm you? Because that, you know, is just superstition; it's just like the ancient Greeks when they consulted the oracle, and the Indians, and Italians and such ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... is that? Such an oracle really whets my curiosity. What am I to-day? What was I the yesterday of ten ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... thine aged grove, Prophetic fount, and oracle divine? What valley echoed the response of Jove? What trace remaineth of the Thunderer's shrine? All, all forgotten—and shall man repine That his frail bonds to fleeting life are broke? Cease, fool! ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... the lovely Samuel was seen To grow beneath the tabernacle's shadow; Become the Hebrews' hope and oracle. May'st thou like ...
— Athaliah • J. Donkersley
... looked at them from the middle of a street we were traversing. The city of Messina, milk-white, and starred and spangled all over with gaslights, was a fairy spectacle. A great party of us were on deck smoking and making a noise, and waiting to see famous Scylla and Charybdis. And presently the Oracle stepped out with his eternal spy-glass and squared himself on the deck like another Colossus of Rhodes. It was a surprise to see him abroad at such an hour. Nobody supposed he cared anything about an old fable like that of Scylla and Charybdis. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... against corruption; and even Christianity may have converted by thousands: still nothing, according to natural laws, could save the empire. It was doomed. Retributive justice must march on in its majestic course. The empire had accomplished its mission. The time came for it to die. The Sibylline oracle must needs be fulfilled: "O haughty Rome, the divine chastisement shall come upon thee; the fire shall consume thee; thy wealth shall perish; foxes and wolves shall dwell among thy ruins: and then what land that thou hast enslaved shall be thy ally, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... seems as though each philosopher were constructing a world for himself independently, and commanding him to accept it, without first convincing him of his right to assume this tone of authority and to set up for an oracle. In all this conflict of opinions where shall we seek for truth? Why should we accept one man as a teacher rather than another? Is not the lesson to be gathered from the whole procession of systems best summed up in the dictum of Protagoras: "Man is the measure of ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... time is not an extinction of essence—a reduction to nonentity; it is only a refluence into its original source. As an emanation from the supreme, eternal spirit, it is from everlasting to everlasting. Neither can it be said to be of finite dimensions; on the contrary, says the sacred oracle, 'being identified with the Supreme Brahm, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... other men of their possessions, than the priests which required restitution of their owne. But (saith he) bicause the image of Christ hanging on the crosse was thought to speake these words, such credit was giuen thereto, as it had beene an oracle, that the priests had their sute dashed, and all the trouble was ceassed. So the moonks held those possessions, howsoeuer they came to them, by the helpe of God, or rather (as saith the same Polydor) by the helpe of man. For ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... the whole mind, and all truths appear trivial which could not either be evolved out of similar principles, by the same process, or at least brought under the same forms of thought, by perceived or imagined analogies? And so it was. For more than a century men continued to invoke the oracle of their own spirits, not only concerning its own forms and modes of being, but likewise concerning the laws of external nature. All attempts at philosophical explication were commenced by a mere effort of the understanding, as the power of abstraction; or by the ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... particularize. Lloyd in his "Worthies" adds nothing to Camden's information but the epithet "comely" applied to his person, the vague statement that "his embassies in France and Germany were so well managed, that in king Edward's days he was by the council pitched upon as the oracle whereby our agents were to be guided abroad," and a hint that he soon retired from the court of Elizabeth to devote himself to ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... chimney, I don't know what's to be done.' Still her voice did not falter, and my courage did not give way. She stood for a few moments, silent. I stood regarding her, as one might listen for a doubtful oracle. ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... and oracle he had been for so long, asked him what they ought to do; Cavalier replied that if they would follow him, their best course and his would be to take the first opportunity of gaining the frontier and leaving the country. They all declared themselves ready to follow him anywhere. This caused ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Next vnto this worke is the placing of Poales, of which we will first speake of the choise thereof, wherein if I discent from the opinion of other men, yet imagine I set downe no Oracle, but referre you to the experience or the practise, and so make your owne discreation the arbiter betweene our discentions. It is the opinion of some, that Alder-poales are most proper and fit for the Hoppe-garden, both that the Hoppe taketh, ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham
... it not, that men through all the ages have sought fools and charlatans to tell their fortunes, when a little wine is clearer than the most mystic ball of crystal. Before the bottle the priests of Egypt and the Delphic oracle seem as faint, my son, as the echoes in a snail shell. Palmistry and astrology—let us fling them into the whirlpool of vanity! But give a man wine enough, and any observer can tell his possibilities. A touch of it—and where are the barriers with which he has surrounded himself? Another ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... it may be necessary to say a word, in order that so remarkable an intellectual prodigy should fill his proper place in our frail and short-lived catalogue of the worthies of that day. He was the usual oracle of his neighbourhood, when a condensation of its ideas on any great event, like the one just mentioned, became necessary. His learning was justly computed, by comparison, to be of the most profound and erudite character; ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... ostentatious display of scholarship; but the manners of that time were so tinged with superstition, that I cannot but suspect Cowley of having consulted, on this great occasion, the Virgilian lots[9], and to have given some credit to the answer of his oracle. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... reject as arbitrary the situations in the Ahnfrau or other destiny tragedies. And such an element is indeed contained in the history of king OEdipus. His fate touches us only because it might have been ours, because the oracle hung the same curse over us before our birth as over him. For us all, probably, it is ordained that we should direct our first sexual feelings towards our mothers, the first hate and wish for violence against our fathers. Our dreams convince us of that. King OEdipus, who has slain ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... observes. Blackwell, in his curious Life of Homer, after showing that the ancient oracles were the fountains of knowledge, and that the votaries of the god of Delphi had their faith confirmed by the oracle's perfect acquaintance with the country, parentage, and fortunes of the suppliant, and many predictions verified; that besides all this, the oracles that have reached us discover a wide knowledge of everything relating to Greece;—this learned writer is at a loss to account ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... considered to flatter, making his concealment more insinuating than his speech. He approaches with fictitious humility to the creature of his praise, and hangs with rivetted attention upon his lips, as though he spake with the voice of an oracle. He repeats what phrase or sentence may particularly gratify him, and both hands are little enough to bless him in return. Sometimes he extols the excellencies of his friend in his absence, but it ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... become of himself and of his family, Laius sent rich gifts to the temple at Delphi, asking what would befall him in the coming years. The messenger soon returned, but, instead of bringing cheerful news, he tremblingly repeated the oracle's words: "King Laius, you will have a son who will murder his father, marry his mother, and bring destruction upon his ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... into that port no desire and no regret for life. That he had tried every one of its pretended joys, that he had left nothing undone which could give him the least shadow of pleasure or content, but that at the end he had found everywhere the oracle of ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... and I include all urban and all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door. It "gives a very echo to the throne where Hope is seated." But its issues seldom answer to this oracle within. It is so seldom that just the person we want to see comes. But of all the clamorous visitations the welcomest in expectation is the sound that ushers in, or seems to usher in, a Valentine. As the raven himself was hoarse that announced the fatal entrance ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... love and protection would make a paradise. It did occur to him, occasionally, that the picture he was drawing might not be quite correct, and at those times he would seek Mrs. Sims, and ask a few questions of this oracle by way of adjusting his own ideas to the truth. Poor Mrs. Sims, between her extreme honesty and her desire to see the schoolmaster, whom she really loved, assured of future comfort, had much ado to be 'tactful' and say the right thing. She naturally regarded comfort as pertaining solely ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... Jessie in the tones of the oracle, "that drinking alone is a pernicious habit. No, I don't think I feel like playing this evening. If we are going to reform we may as well abandon the evil habit of ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... 'Rougemont'—a word misunderstood by the King, who became 'suddenly fallen into a great dump, and as it were a man amazed.' Shakespeare's lines give the explanation of his discomfiture. 'It seems,' comments Fuller, 'Sathan either spoke this oracle low ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... she might have been previously known, and, unconscious to herself, an object of interest to the spaewife. She endeavoured to pass herself off as a maiden lady, and regarded it as no small testimony of the wisdom of the oracle, that she declared her to be not only a married woman, but the mother of a son who was lame. After such a marvellous proof of second-sightedness, it may easily be conceived with what awe and faith she listened to the prediction, that his life should be in danger from ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... that the prudent conduct which I had adopted towards the public was gradually growing into effect. Disputative neighbours made me their referee, and I became, as it were, an oracle that was better than the law, in so much that I settled their controversies without the expense that attends the same. But what convinced me more than any other thing that the line I pursued was verging towards a satisfactory result, was, that the elderly folk that ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... of vast experience in all the facts relating to those last fateful hours, which are the only certain event in every human existence, caused her to be regarded as a sort of Delphic oracle in such matters, and therefore Mrs. Kittridge, not without a share of the latent superstition to which each human heart must confess at some hours, drew confidentially near to Miss Roxy, and asked if she had anything ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a mouth; also language, and speech. It is used by the Amonians particularly for the voice and oracle of any God; and subjoined to the name of that Deity. The chief oracle in the first ages was that of Ham, who was worshipped as the Sun, and styled El, and Or. Hence these oracles are in consequence called Amphi, Omphi, Alphi, Elphi, Urphi, Orphi. It is made to signify, ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... did Mr. Whipple pronounce these words that Mr. Carvel stirred uneasily, and in spite of himself, as though he were listening to an oracle. He ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... accompaniments have had upon sociology, mythology, religion, language; for the touch of the child is upon them all, and the debt of humanity to the little children has not yet been told. They have figured in the world's history and its folk-lore as magi and "medicine-men," as priests and oracle-keepers, as physicians and healers, as teachers and judges, as saints, heroes, discoverers, and inventors, as musicians and poets, actors and labourers in many fields of human activity, have been compared to the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... notion of justice; if justice be totally independent of utility, and be a standard per se, which the mind can recognize by simple introspection of itself; it is hard to understand why that internal oracle is so ambiguous, and why so many things appear either just or unjust, according to the light in which they are regarded. We are continually informed that Utility is an uncertain standard, which every different person interprets differently, and that ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... veneration for their priests; and the latter endeavored to procure it, by daubing themselves all over in a very frightful manner, dressing themselves in a very odd habit, and tricking up their hair after a very whimsical manner. Every thing they said was considered as an oracle, and made a strong impression on the minds of the people; they often withdrew from society, and lived in woods or in huts, far removed from any habitation. They were difficult of access, and did not give themselves any trouble about provisions, because care ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... Madam, That great oracle of God, St. John Chrysostom, deplores with infinite compassion in some part of his works the disaster and calamity of his century, in which not only was the memory of an infinity of illustrious persons cut off from among ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... head to an invisible but evidently sympathetic and intelligent listener, debated the propriety of Irene's accepting an invitation to spend the month of August at Narragansett. When Vibart, rashly trespassing on the rights of this unseen oracle, remarked that a few weeks at the seashore would make a delightful change for Miss Carstyle, the ladies looked at him ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Oracle, my Curtius, how? Methought, while on the shadow'd terraces I walked and looked towards Rome, an echo came, Of legion wails, blent into one deep cry. "O, Jove!" I thought, "the Oracles have said; And saying, touched some swiftly answering chord, Gen'ral to ev'ry soul." And then my heart ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... place with very little improvement; the fall of idolatry only made way for the rise of magic and astrology. Abydos in Upper Egypt had latterly gained great renown for the temple of Bisu, whose oracle was much consulted, not only by the Egyptians but by Greek strangers, and by others who sent their questions in writing. Some of these letters on parchment had been taken from the temple by informers, and carried to the emperor, whose ears were never deaf to a charge against the pagans. On this ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... favourite. Harriet, though beautiful, egotistical, and self-satisfied, was not quite weak enough for him. She had some genuine self-respect amidst much false pride, and if she did not talk like an oracle, neither would she babble like one crazy; she would not permit herself to be treated quite as a doll, a child, a plaything; she expected to be bent to like ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... two references to local oracles in the Odyssey, that of Dodona (XIV. 327; XIX. 296) and that of Pytho (VIII. 80). This is the old name of Delphi. Pytho occurs in Iliad, IX. 404, as a very rich temple of Apollo—the oracle is not named, but the oracle brought in the treasures. Achilles (XVI. 233) prays to Pelasgian Zeus of Dodona, whose priests were thickly tabued, but says nothing of the oracle of Dodona. Neither when in leaguer round Troy, nor when wandering in fairy lands forlorn, had the ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... nations, 't is the furthest Hour of Assyria's years. And yet how calm! An earthquake should announce so great a fall— A summer's sun discloses it. Yon disk To the star-read Chaldean, bears upon Its everlasting page the end of what Seem'd everlasting; but oh! thou TRUE sun! The burning oracle of all that live, As fountain of all life, and symbol of Him who bestows it, wherefore dost thou limit Thy lore unto calamity?[6] Why not Unfold the rise of days more worthy thine All-glorious burst from ocean? why not dart A beam of hope athwart the future years, As of wrath to its days? ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... own limit in death. Other nations are only its boundaries, which it can overpass in fighting with and conquering them. But death itself it can never escape, whether it come in the sands of the desert—which buried for Cambyses an army which he sent to the oracle of the Libyan Ammon—or in the sea, that scorns the rod of the angry despot, or by the sword of the freeman who guards his household gods. On this account, that people stands higher that in the midst of life reflects on death, or rather lives for it. The education of such ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... of their possessions, than the priests which required restitution of their owne. But (saith he) bicause the image of Christ hanging on the crosse was thought to speake these words, such credit was giuen thereto, as it had beene an oracle, that the priests had their sute dashed, and all the trouble was ceassed. So the moonks held those possessions, howsoeuer they came to them, by the helpe of God, or rather (as saith the same Polydor) by the helpe of man. For there were euen then diuers that ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... illustration of his theory, and even that is highly inconclusive. His general frame of mind appears to remain constant, but he finds himself defending and rejecting very different things. The great issue may, according to the period, be a primeval taboo, the utterances of the Delphic oracle, the Athanasian creed, the Inquisition, the geocentric theory, monarchy by the grace of God, witchcraft, slavery, war, capitalism, private property, or noble isolation. All of these tend to appear to ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... to the Woodward family somewhat in the light of a Delphic oracle. To apply to her was always the very last resource. Matters must have reached a crisis, Winona thought, if they were obliged to appeal to Aunt Harriet's judgment. She followed Percy into the garden with a ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... highest to the lowest we are all extremely happy.—Dorcas stands well in her lady's graces. Polly has asked her advice in relation to a courtship-affair of her own. No oracle ever gave better. Sally has had a quarrel with her woollen-draper; and made my charmer lady-chancellor in it. She blamed Sally for behaving tyrannically to a man who loves her. Dear creature! to stand against a glass, and to shut her eyes because she will not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Olympian wisdom. Septimus, blushing at his temerity in having pointed out the way to the man whom he regarded as the incarnation of force and energy, curled himself up awkwardly in his chair, clasping his ankles between his locked fingers. At last the oracle spoke. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... recourse to his astrolabe, the oracle of Eastern science, and watching with grave precision until the precise time of the evening prayer had arrived, he sunk on his knees, with his face turned to Mecca, and recited the petitions which close the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... women, by this feminine phenomenon! Why, I would have bet half my estate on Gordon's chances; for his handsome face, aided by such incomparable coadjutors as my mother here and the infallible sage and oracle of the parsonage constituted a 'triple alliance' more formidable, more invincible, than those that threatened Louis XIV. or Alberoni! I imagined the girl was clay in the experienced hands of matrimonial potters, and that Hebrew strategy would prove triumphant! Accept, my dear mother, my most ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... celebrated for his "good bedside manner," commenced to examine the prostrate man. First, he unbuttoned the insensible digger's waistcoat, and placed his hand over his heart; next, he felt his pulse. "This man," he said deliberately, like an oracle, "has been grossly manhandled; he is seriously injured, but with care we shall pull him round. My dear"—to Gentle Annie, who stood at his elbow, in her silks and jewels, the personification of Folly at a funeral—"a drop of your very best brandy—real ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... could be trusted to feel in his quiet way that the oracle must be a match for the priestess. "'Want' her, Jane? We wouldn't TAKE her." And as if knowing quite what he was about he looked at his wife only ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... is an honest oracle in his way, and when he opes his mouth we hope no cur will be ungrateful enough to bark. He says in his last lecture that dumb animals are creatures like unto himself. That accounts for Mr. BERGH being Deer to the quadrupeds, and such a Terrier ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... Maure, and continuing the traditions of the Hotel de Rambouillet. Her tastes had been formed in this circle, and she had also been under the instruction of the Chevalier de Mere, a litterateur and courtier who had great vogue, was something of an oracle, and molded the character and manners of divers women of this period, among others the future Mme. de Maintenon. His confidence in his own power of bringing talent out of mediocrity was certainly refreshing. Among his pupils was the Duchesse ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... childish awe and interest. They witnessed the arrangement of the pulleys, and the manufacture of the thunders. They saw the natural faces and heard the natural voices of the actors. Distant nations looked on the Pope as the Vicegerent of the Almighty, the oracle of the All-wise, the umpire from whose decisions, in the disputes either of theologians or of kings, no Christian ought to appeal. The Italians were acquainted with all the follies of his youth, and with all the dishonest ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... while talent cannot safely ignore what is called technique, genius almost can. Coleridge, in spite of his formlessness, remains the wisest man who ever spoke in English about literature. His place is that of an oracle among controversialists. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... solemn words with which a prophetic message is wont to be announced, thus at the outset stamping on the psalm its true character. The "oracle" or "word of Jehovah unto my Lord," which he heard, is a new revelation made to him from the heavens. He is taken up and listens to the Divine voice calling to His right hand, to the most intimate communion with Himself, ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... drawing an arrow from her quiver, which is suspended at her shoulder. Her legs are bare, and her feet are adorned with rich sandals. The goddess, with a look expressive of indignation, appears to be defending the fabulous hind from the pursuit of Hercules, who, in obedience to the oracle of Apollo, was pursuing it, in order to carry it alive to Eurystheus; a task imposed on him by the latter as one of his ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... I could do concerning the Book you wanted was to send your Enquiry to the Oracle itself:—whose Reply I ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... man, brawny and angular; with a face tanned by the sun, and graven with those considerate lines which New England so early writes on the faces of her sons. He was reputed an oracle in matters of agriculture and cattle, and, like oracles generally, was prudently sparing of his responses. Amaziah was one of those uncouth over-grown boys of eighteen whose physical bulk appears to have so suddenly developed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... Flowery Dionysus in Attica and at Patrae in Achaia. The Athenians sacrificed to him for the prosperity of the fruits of the land. Amongst the trees particularly sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the pine-tree. The Delphic oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship a particular pine-tree "equally with the god," so they made two images of Dionysus out of it, with red faces and gilt bodies. In art a wand, tipped with a pine-cone, is ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... it signify what he says? Is it an oracle that has spoken? To hear you, anyone would think that Mr. Purgon holds in his hands the thread of your life, and that he has supreme authority to prolong it or to cut it short at his will. Remember that the springs of your life are in yourself, and that all the wrath of Mr. Purgon ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth, for a long winter afternoon, a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, and bloody encounters ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... folds, Crushing the marrow in my frame, and then For ever, like a serpent, fled to hell. Through thee, the daylight gladdens me anew. The counsel of the Goddess now shines forth In all its beauty and beneficence. Like to a sacred image, unto which An oracle immutably hath bound A city's welfare, thee Diana took, Protectress of our house, and guarded here Within this holy stillness, to become A blessing to thy brother and thy race. Now when each passage to escape seems clos'd, And safety hopeless, thou dost ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... conscience that transfigured the face of the martyred Stephen or Savonarola. For all happiness comes only through peace with one's self, one's record, and one's God. All the great, from AEschylus and Sophocles to Channing and Webster, have emphasized man's conscience as the oracle divine. Let the witnesses speak. Here is the Judge, famous in English history: It became his duty to sentence a servant for murdering his master. Suddenly, before the astounded onlookers, the Judge arose and took his place in the dock beside the prisoner. He stated ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... through the land. None felt the appeal more than the old soldiers of the French war. It roused John Stark, of New Hampshire—a trapper and hunter in his youth, a veteran in Indian warfare, a campaigner under Abercrombie and Amherst, now the military oracle of a rustic neighborhood. Within ten minutes after receiving the alarm, he was spurring towards the sea-coast, and on the way stirring up the volunteers of the Massachusetts borders, to assemble forthwith at Bedford, in the vicinity ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... shoe-blacks, and those nameless hangers-on that infest inns and taverns, and run errands, and do all kinds of odd jobs, for the privilege of battening on the drippings of the kitchen and the leakage of the tap-room. These all look up to him as to an oracle; treasure up his cant phrases; echo his opinions about horses and other topics of jockey lore; and, above all, endeavour to imitate his air and carriage. Every ragamuffin that has a coat to his back thrusts his hands in ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... its more conservative members in 1791, came then under his leadership. Thenceforth the Jacobin Club was a most effective instrument for establishing social democracy (although it was not committed to republicanism until August, 1792), and Robespierre was its oracle. Robespierre was never a demagogue in the present sense of the word: he was always emphatically a gentleman and a man of culture, sincere and truthful. Although he labored strenuously for the "rights" of the proletariat, he never ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... time, I guess, I realized the awful helplessness that comes over the Psiless when a TK invokes his telekinetic power. I wanted no part of the future this corn-fed oracle had conjured up. But it might be the only future ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... would have done him no harm, I do not determine; but true it is, he had gotten the Queen's ear in a trice, and she began to be taken with his election, and loved to hear his reasons to her demands: and the truth is, she took him for a kind of oracle, which nettled them all; yea, those that he relied on began to take this his sudden favour for an alarm and to be sensible of their own supplantation, and to project his, which made him ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... future is big with cashmere shawls, glittering jewels, supper parties, and the like.' You would not believe me, incredulous one. Well, my predictions are, however, realized, and I am worth as much, I hope, as your 'Ladies' Oracle,' a little octavo sorcerer you bought for five sous at a bookstall on the Pont Neuf, and which you wearied with external questions. Again, I ask, was I not right in my prophecies; and would you believe ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... the lowest caste that is now reached, and the Christianizing of India must come, eventually, from the highest,"—words which we shall be very ready to take as opinion, but very slow to receive as oracle, since, from the time when the Founder of Christianity was upon the earth, and the common people heard him gladly, while the higher classes thrust him out of their synagogues, till the present day, the history of Christianity has been the history of an influence rising from the lower ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... It needs no oracle to assure these women that they are traveling along a road that has only one ending. Love is as old as the hills, and the older it gets, like the wise old hills, a wiser old love it becomes. It exacts its price, and its price is an equal love. There never was a love ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... ride to Mantinea, about eight miles through a level, tolerably well-cultivated country. At the narrow passage between the mountains, there stood in ancient times a grove of cork-trees, called 'Pelagus,' the sea. Epaminondas, warned by an oracle to beware of the 'Pelagus,' had carefully avoided the sea. But it was just in this spot that he drew up his troops for the great battle which cost him his life. When mortally wounded, he was carried to a high place called 'Skope'—identified with the sharp ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Unfearing prophecy and oracle launched from the windows of the hotel, the young people rowed, lost to all but each other, amazed at the loveliness of the river. They floated amid the bulrushes. Cries and regret when Frank's oar crushed the desired blossom. Never ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... offered such a toast? The fact is, he pretended to be a fierce radical, and was certainly the soul and the oracle of the small socialistic clubs in the neighborhood. People looked aghast when he began to talk of the reforms which he thought necessary; and they trembled when he proclaimed his convictions, that "the sword and the torch ought to search ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... don't be so ridiculous!" said Margaret. "You know perfectly well I am no oracle; but I have a notion in my head. It is this: why should not those splendid-looking girls, the Vivians, join the Specialities? They did look rather funny, I will admit, yesterday; but even then one could see ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... with one cow far better than her rival who had two, but the magnitude of the sacrifice he wished to make sat heavy on his soul. He consulted a patriarch renowned for his wisdom, and laid great stress upon his love for the girl with one cow. The oracle spake as follows: "Take the gyurl wid the two cows. There isn't the difference of a cow, begorra, betune any two women in the wor-r-ld." By similar reasoning a superannuated dairymaid with a grogshop is a very different person to the "pretty girl milking ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... arbitrament of counting noses and assenting without question to the result invests the ordeal with a seeming sanctity, and what was at first obeyed as the command of power comes to be revered as the oracle of wisdom. The innumerable instances—such as the famous ones of Galileo and Keeley—in which one man has been right and all the rest of the race wrong, are overlooked, or their significance missed, and "public opinion" is followed as ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... dear Sir Oracle, that you are beginning to recollect yourself and temper your severities on our sex," said my wife. "As usual, there is much truth lying about loosely in the vicinity of your assertions; but they are as far from being in themselves the truth as ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Jenny's attentive hearers, the hour of entertaining themselves being at an end, they were obliged to leave the poor little Mignon in the greatest distress and fright lest the giant should awake before he could fulfil the commands of the oracle, and to wait for the remainder of the story till ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... the tones of the oracle, "that drinking alone is a pernicious habit. No, I don't think I feel like playing this evening. If we are going to reform we may as well abandon the evil ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... in the isles of the Pacific unless his pedigree be long and in the upper regions mythical. And our king counts cousinship with most of the high families in the archipelago, and traces his descent to a shark and a heroic woman. Directed by an oracle, she swam beyond sight of land to meet her revolting paramour, and received at sea the seed of a predestined family. "I think lie," is the king's emphatic commentary; yet he is proud of the legend. From this illustrious beginning the fortunes of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... though thus greatly honoured, spake not greatly of himself; but when the oracle of God was delivered to him out of the bush, he said, Who am I, that thou dost send me? I am of a slender ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... resistance her almogavares, or garrison soldiers, would offer to the forces of the baron, still she would do her utmost to avoid a conflict. She then proceeded to another room, in which she kept her magic mirror, and having closed the door, we must leave her consulting the oracle. ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... this question. Be attentive, readers. Gasterea, the most attractive of the muses, inspires me. I will be as clear as an oracle, and my precepts ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... parties, the systematizer of popular education, and the twice-elected successor of Washington; of Randolph, through whose initiative the stain produced by the word "slavery" was effaced from the provisional draft of the American Constitution; of Marshall, the most eminent jurist in the Republic, the oracle of the Constitution and the constructor of the Federal law; of Madison, the emulator of Hamilton in the editing of The Federalist; of Monroe, the asserter of the international doctrine of the independence ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... an exile, bred in the desperate hopes and wild schemes of exile; he is a prince without a kingdom, always dreaming of his wrongs and his restoration; and driven by the old savage doctrine, which an oracle has confirmed, of the duty and manliness of revenge. He is, as was shown by his later history, a man subject to overpowering impulses and to fits of will-less brooding. Lastly, he is very young, and is swept away by ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... An' there hain't no china an' bits of glass and old cups and things in that there village about 'alf a mile down the road? Ho no! I reckon there's enough to fill twenty 'oles like that there." Once again the oracle resumed ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... into a laugh of derision. "No more of your homily, reverend oracle," said the sergeant; "I have an excellent recipe for short sermons here; utter another word and you shall have it!" The troopers laughed again, and the sergeant, as he spoke, held his pistol in the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... besides the aforementioned benefit which I meet with in the conversation of this select society, I am not the less pleased with the company, in that I find myself the greatest wit among them, and am heard as their oracle in all points of learning ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... so glad I have found you," said the Marquis; "and at this moment. This is the best group in the rooms. You must speak to the wizard. About an hour ago I lighted upon them, in another salon, and consulted the oracle by putting questions. I never was more amazed. Although his answers were a little disguised it was soon perfectly plain that he knew every detail about the business, which no one on earth had heard of but myself, and two or three other men, about the most cautious ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... character had faults, let us remember that he was stained by no crimes and vices, in an age of violence and wickedness. Until lately he has received almost unmixed praise. The Fathers of the Church revered him. To Erasmus, as well as to Jerome and Augustine, he was an oracle. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... at Gandercleugh, to the great satisfaction, as we have already said, of all its inhabitants, to whom he became, in respect of military intelligence, and able commentaries upon the newspapers, gazettes, and bulletins, a very oracle, explanatory of all martial events, past, ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... watching and forming conclusions from the flight of birds. This long continued the favorite Roman mode of settling difficult questions. It was easier than the Greek plan of going to Delphi to consult the oracle. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... generally dignified with a grocery, a justice's office, and a tavern, where entertainment for man and beast may always be had. An immense deal of judicial and political business "is put through a process" at these strange places. The squire's law-book is the oracle; all settlements must be made by it; all important sayings drawn from it. The squire himself is scarcely less an individual of mysterious importance; he draws settled facts from his copious volume, and thus saves himself the trouble of analysing them. Open it ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... condition in which a given state finds itself at a given time? It seems too easy a solution of our problems to seek dogmatic answers to our questionings by having recourse to the "natural light," that ready oracle of the ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... temple or a house of prayer, A palace, oracle, or spouse most fair; Or what you will: God's love is here displayed, And here his treasure safely up is laid; For his own darling none can find a place, Where he, as here, is wont to show ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... break your mystic spell, Land of the lotus, smiling land farewell! For ever it may be, what oracle can tell? ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... the eighteenth century. It started into life with the genius of Lord Mansfield, and, gathering in its course whatever was valuable in the earlier institutes of foreign countries, had reflected back upon them its own superior lights, so as to become the guide and oracle of the commercial ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... of the Imams Abu Hanifa, Shafei, Malik, and Hambal. In northern India the school of Abu Hanifa is followed. He was born at Kufa, the capital of Irak, in the Hijra year 80, when four of the Prophet's Companions were still alive. He is the great oracle of jurisprudence, and with his two pupils was the founder of the Hanifi code of law. In southern India the Shafei school is followed. [331] The Shiahs have separate collections of traditions and schools of law, and they say that a Mujtahid or doctor of the law can still give decisions of binding ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... long time to examine the edict—but after all, examination was unnecessary, and would only be loss of time. All remained silent again, except the Duc de Beauvilliers, who, seduced by the nephew of Colbert, whom he thought an oracle in finance, said a few words in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... information upon the subject of his confinement, probably very highly coloured, has since his release withdrawn his patronage and support, so that the poor fellow has been without supplies for some time past, and I am at a loss to conjecture by what means he is now working the oracle for a subsistence. His uncle, however, is in the last stage of a severe illness, with little chance of recovery; and as I apprehend there is but little time to spare, I intend, if possible, to find our old acquaintance, start him for his relative's ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... our most faithful friend while we were a family. She made afterwards a not very happy marriage; and when her husband died just before I went to Europe, she was left alone and poor. I arranged a small house for her in the neighbourhood of the Hollow; and there she lives—a kind of mysterious oracle to the people about. And her greatest earthly pleasure, I suppose, is to have me come and see her. Gyda Boerresen is ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... the fleet, and though thought to be peculiarly English, was used by the Delphic oracle, when applied to by the Athenians on the Persian invasion: ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... to get some advice from the town clerk," she said. To these poor people, the town clerk was what the Delphic oracle was ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... without exception, if he could: he answered "A man must be present when he is shaved." A lady—what right have ladies to decide questions about shaving?—said this was not properly a rule; and the oracle was consulted. The editor agreed with the lady; he said that "a man must be present when he is shaved" is not a ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... her placid, all her monitory pictures.[8] Him the past instructs. Him the future invites. Is not indeed every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student's behoof? And, finally, is not the true scholar the only true master? But as the old oracle said, "All things have two handles: Beware of the wrong one."[9] In life, too often, the scholar errs with mankind and forfeits his privilege. Let us see him in his school, and consider him in reference to the main ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... son, and heir to the finest property in the county—at any rate, to the property which at present was the best circumstanced. Owen Fitzgerald could never be more than a little squire, but Herbert would be a baronet. Owen's utmost ambition would be to live at Hap House all his life, and die the oracle of the Duhallow hunt; but Herbert would be a member of Parliament, with a house in London. A daughter of the house of Desmond might marry the heir of Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, and be thought to have done well; whereas, she would disgrace herself by becoming the mistress of Hap House. Lady Desmond, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... a great predisposition to admire and overrate everything relative to Indian history and language, as detailed by this good and sincere missionary in his retirement at Bethlehem. He was appealed to as an oracle. This I found by an acquaintance which I formed, in 1810, with the late amiable Dr. Wistar, while rusticating at Bristol, on the banks of the Delaware. The confused letters which the missionary wrote many years later, were mainly due to Dr. Wistar's philosophical interest ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... terrible, as the sun rose higher in the sky, and very little air could be obtained through the window, so that poor Julienne could not eat, and Rosette fell into a heavy sleep in the midst of her sighs. Even Estelle, who had got out her Telemaque, like a sort of oracle in the course of being verified, was asleep over it, when fresh noises and grating sounds were board, new steps on deck, and there were steps and voices. The Genoese captain was heard exclaiming, 'Open, Madame! you can do so safely. This is the Algerine captain, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are the best machinery for a modern epic." So said Charles Fox, who fed his imagination on verse of this aspiring class. Fox was no literary oracle, and his opinion is here cited only as evidence that the superearthly is an acknowledged element in the epopee. The term "machinery" implies ignorance of the import of the super-earthly in epic poetry, an ignorance attendant on materialism and a virtual unbelief. No poet ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... ancient doctrines which the Germans have abandoned long ago. English Socialists try to impose upon an uncritical public by parading the worn-out stage properties of the forties. Marx is to the vast majority of British Socialists still an oracle and the fountain head of all wisdom. "Marx is the Darwin of modern sociology."[267] "All over the world his brain is put on pretty much the same level as Aristotle's."[268] "Modern Socialism is based, nationally and internationally, theoretically and to a large extent ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... some of the farms about has been graver than you imagine. I find discontent where it was formerly unknown. The typical case is that lad of Bolton's. They wanted him sadly at home; by this time he would have been helping his unfortunate father. Instead of that he's the revolutionary oracle of Belwick pot-houses, and appears on an average once a fortnight before the magistrates for being drunk ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... pigeons homing toward the crest of Apo. "Limocons," the Bogobos call them—"leem-o-sahns": the word falls limpid from their lips, unaccented. They say the limocon never was heard to sing in the lowlands, and tell a strange legend that it is an oracle of the Hill People, its song a harbinger of good or ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... important things and the most trivial with the same tasteless absorption. He heard that the coast was death to all but careful seamen; he also heard that the ship's cat was asleep. He heard that Fanshaw couldn't find his cigar-holder anywhere; he also heard the pilot deliver the oracle "Both eyes bright, she's all right; one eye winks, down she sinks." He heard Flambeau say to Fanshaw that no doubt this meant the pilot must keep both eyes open and be spry. And he heard Fanshaw say to Flambeau that, ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... instead of a speaker, and Cadwallon, not the Prince, seemed to become the central point of the assembly, on whom all eyes were bent, and to whom each ear was turned with breathless eagerness, as if his strains were the responses of an oracle. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... have you had that up your sleeve, young woman? I don't like it a little bit! That is why you talked so like an oracle a little while ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... constrain'd with patience all to take: 160 For what defence can Greek and Hebrew make? Happy who can this talking trumpet seize; They make it speak whatever sense they please: 'Twas framed at first our oracle to inquire; But since our sects in prophecy grow higher, The text inspires not them, but they the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... some unknown animal, or the god that he worships; but we are more inclined to the latter opinion, because he assured us (if we understood him right, for he expressed himself very imperfectly), that he seldom did anything without consulting it. He called it his oracle, and said it pointed out the time for every action of his life. From the left fob he took out a net almost large enough for a fisherman, but contrived to open and shut like a purse, and served him for the same use; we found therein several massy pieces of ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... "The oracle speaks in poetry," laughed Eric. "That was Florence Percival, who led the class in mathematics, as I'm a living man. By many she is considered the beauty of her class. I can't say that such is my opinion. ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with slow enunciation, like an oracle. Mr. Rhys looked up from his writing and smiled at her a little, though he answered ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... mount them if required. His Mogg was quite neglected in favour of Lucy; and it says much for the influence of female charms that, before they had been engaged a fortnight, he, who had been a perfect oracle in cab fares, would have been puzzled to tell the most ordinary fare on the most frequented route. He had forgotten all about them. Nevertheless, Lucy and he went out hunting as often as they could raise hounds, and when they had a good run and killed, he saluted ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the goddess of night, of darkness, winter, and death, who, the country-folk say, sits on men at night and drinks their blood, and of Mrak (twilight), her helper, who brings little children to her by twilight. The priest, who used to be an oracle to his flock, was asked first to every festivity, and consulted in every difficulty. "The priest says so" put an end to all questioning. With their religious feeling, superstition goes hand in hand. They believe in vampires, nightmares, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... as Granny Bains. Having spent almost her whole life out of doors, in heat and cold, storm and rain, she had come to be intimately acquainted with all the signs foreboding change of weather, and was looked upon by her acquaintances as a perfect oracle. She had also a most retentive memory, and being of a joyous nature, with a bodily frame that never knew illness, had learnt every verse or melody that was sung within her hearing, until her mind became a very storehouse of songs. To John, old Granny ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... enough to beg his advice, how I might carry my self securely there, without offence of mine own conscience. Signor Arrigo mio (sayes he) I pensieri stretti, & il viso sciolto, will go safely over the whole World: Of which Delphian Oracle (for so I have found it) your judgement doth need no commentary; and therfore (Sir) I will commit you with it to the best of all securities, Gods ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... lately stated by themselves in a solemn report) 'has been the brotherhood of Cain and Abel,' and 'they have organized nothing but bankruptcy and famine.'" A very honest confession, truly,—and much in the spirit of their oracle, Rousseau. Yet, what is still more marvellous than the confession, this is the very fraternity to which our author gives us such an obliging invitation to accede. There is, indeed, a vacancy in the fraternal corps: a brother and a partner is wanted. If we please, we may ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... slanders arisen?" I will tell you what I take to be the explanation. It is due to a certain wisdom with which I seem to be endowed—not superhuman at all like that of these gentlemen. I speak not arrogantly, but on the evidence of the Oracle of Delphi, who told Chaerephon, a man known to you, that there was no wiser man than Socrates. Now, I am not conscious of possessing wisdom; but the God cannot lie. What ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... will not weary More lines with the list of them... cur fremuere? What is it they murmur, and mutter, and hum? Into what Pandemonium is Pentecost come? Oh, what is the name of the god at whose fane Every nation is mix'd in so motley a train? What weird Kabala lies on those tables outspread? To what oracle turns with attention each head? What holds these pale worshippers each so devout, And what are those ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Hezekiah Butterfield, generally known as Cap'n 'Kiah, an octogenarian who was regarded as an oracle, down to Tready Morgan, a half-witted orphan, the inmates of the poor-house had an enjoyment of living astonishing to behold. It had been hinted at town-meeting that the keeper of the poor-farm was a "leetle mite too generous and easy-going," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... the harp of Pindar, and the impassioned song of the dark-eyed Sappho. I thought I heard the lofty epic of the blind Homer, rushing on in the red tide of battle, and the divine Plato discoursing like an oracle in ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... "Why hast thou cast me thus into the town of the ever-blind, to proclaim thine oracle by the opened sense? What profits it to lift the veil where the near darkness threatens? Only ignorance is life; this knowledge is death. Take back this sad clear-sightedness; take from mine eyes this cruel light! It is horrible to be ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... Slater had been girls together and sat in school with arms entwined and wove romances of the future, rosy-hued and golden. When they consulted the oracle of "Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief," the buttons on her gray winsey dress had declared in favour of the "rich man." Then she had dreamed dreams of silks and satins ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... are few assemblages for speech-making which do not better deserve the title of Parliamentum Indoctorum than did the sixth Parliament of Henry the Fourth, and that men still continue to have as much faith in the Oracle of Fools as ever Pantagruel had. Howell, in his letters, recounts a merry tale of a certain ambassador of Queen Elizabeth, who, having written two letters, one to her Majesty and the other to his ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... and nothing but the truth. But it was not. The whole truth leaks out in Mr. Everett's work, in a note to p. 143, where Mr. Everett says, that this famous Rabbi "having acknowledged that the prophet had the Messiah in view [in the 53d. of Isaiah,], he afterwards applied the oracle to some other person, and finally to Moses!" Now in the name of common sense I would, ask, of what value can the testimony and authority of a man be, who could be capable of such ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... LONG the oracle of the country gentlemen of the high Tory party. The ancient News-Letter was written in manuscript and copied by clerks, who addressed the copies to the subscribers. The politician by whom they were compiled picked up his intelligence at coffee-houses, and often pleaded for an additional gratuity ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... But those strange characters you meet make instant observations of which you never can have thought previously. In like manner, the imagination foretells things. We spake anon of the inflated style of some writers. What also if there is an AFFLATED style,—when a writer is like a Pythoness on her oracle tripod, and mighty words, words which he cannot help, come blowing, and bellowing, and whistling, and moaning through the speaking pipes of his bodily organ? I have told you it was a very queer shock to me the other day when, with a letter of introduction in his hand, the artist's ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... there little either in the manners of the people, in their way of life, or their works of art, that demonstrates profound science or particularly mathematical skill. Britain, where their discipline was in its highest perfection, and which was therefore resorted to by the people of Gaul as an oracle in Druidical questions, was more barbarous in all other respects than Gaul itself, or than any other country then known in Europe. Those piles of rude magnificence, Stonehenge and Abury, are in vain produced in proof of their mathematical abilities. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tone, the conversation, the something that interests, and the something to be proud of—these are the attributes of the man made to be loved. And the Beauty-man is, nine times out of ten, little more than the oracle of his aunts, and the "Sich a love!" of ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... divine judgment. Often there is attributed to him the quality of a jealous Oriental despot. The justice he enforces is often injustice and savagery. Take the story of the Gibeonites. A three years' famine in Israel was explained by Yahveh's oracle as a retribution for the breach of faith by Saul, many years before, with the Gibeonites, whom he had persecuted in defiance of ancient compact. David thereupon invited the Gibeonites to name the requital which would appease them, and they asked for the death of seven ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... that Uncle Cassius lived strictly up to tradition, for it had been over fifteen years since any word had been received from the oracle at Delphi, as the girls dubbed him from the very first. The letter which broke the long silence was read aloud several times that day, the girls especially searching between its lines for any hidden sentiment ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... was, that M'Clutchy, who perfectly understood the half-witted character of his son—for be it known that worthy Phil was considered by those who had the honor of his acquaintance, as anything but an oracle—did not feel himself justified in admitting the said Phil to full confidence in ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... scholarship and mental discipline were piously maintained. The curriculum rested for its main support upon a basis of the classics and mathematics, which imparted a classic and mathematical rigidity to the whole structure. The professor was an oracle, backed by oracular textbooks; the student's activity was restricted by a traditional association of learning with self-restraint and outward severity of life. The revolutionary change came with the marvelous development of the natural sciences, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... to the east and some to the west to pay their vows, but the holiest shrine is where true love is, and there alone the oracle speaks in response to young hearts. Amelie, sweet, modest flower that she is, pays her vows to Our Lady of St. Foye, Pierre his to Amelie! I will be bound, dame, there is no saint in the calendar so holy in his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... confidence enough to beg his advice, how I might carry myself securely there, without offence of others, or of mine own conscience. Signor Arrigo mio (says he), I pensieri stretti, ed il viso sciolto,{21:A} will go safely over the whole world. Of which Delphian oracle (for so I have found it) your judgment doth need no commentary; and therefore, Sir, I will commit you with it to the best of all securities, God's ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... prophecy Mr. Tidditt was accustomed to make each year to the crowd at the post office, when the receipt for the draft for taxes caused him to wax reminiscent. The younger generation here in Bayport regard their town clerk as something of an oracle, and this regard has made Asaph a ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sympathy between the editor and his daily readers—the action and reaction which constantly take place and insensibly lead the journalist into the paths of popular opinion and passion—these are too apt to render him altogether unfit to be an oracle in the great work of social organization and government. The common sense of the multitude is often an invaluable corrective of speculative error; but the impulses and strong prejudices of communities, though calculated ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the land itself—these would surely fetch enough to meet the cost of coffin and funeral service, as well as a cup of coffee for anyone who would put himself out so far as to accept their hospitality on that occasion. But now, contrary to custom, his father had not proved an oracle—he was dead and everything else had gone with him—except the land on the Point. And how was that to be turned into cash when there was no cabin on it? He would probably have to starve to death ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... most of a few years, the tenant is dislodged to give place to another, and he in turn to a third. "Who," says Sir Thomas Browne, "knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whither they ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... was a sort of oracle, in such circumstances. He had passed his youth at sea, having often doubled the Horn, and was known to possess a very respectable amount of knowledge on the subject of vessels of all sorts and sizes, rig and qualities. He was now ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... leads us through its varied mazes to the dwelling-place of mystery. Here the artist will do well to tarry and learn all the oracle may ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... pathos! Hearken, love!—for all The sacred undercurrents of the heart Thrill to its cordial music: Once a chief, Philantus, king of Sparta, left the stern And bleak defiles of his unfruitful land— Girt by a band of eager colonists— To seek new homes on fair Italian plains.[10] Apollo's [11] oracle had darkly spoken: "Where'er from cloudless skies a plenteous shower Outpours, the Fates decree that ye should pause And rear your household deities!" Racked by doubt Philantus traversed—with his faithful band Full many a bounteous realm; but still defeat Darkened his banners, ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... fine thing to be an oracle to which an appeal is always made in all discussions. The men of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that slight tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of carrying a "settler" in the form of a fact or a revolver ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... turning her cup and consulting the oracle. "Here's two people, a man and a woman, from a great distance, and, yes, here's money, too. What ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... intrinsic, of the positive, that it is extrinsic. In all ages men have sought the authority of the positive in that which is immediately beyond and above man—in some "voice of the Divinity" toning down the stream of ages, or speaking through a prophet or oracle, or written in some inspired and sacred book. They have sought for the authority of the natural in that which is immediately within man—the voice of the Divinity speaking in the conscience and heart of man. A careful study of the history of religion will show a ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... with breath of rose Steals from the dawn and softly blows Beneath the lintel, where is hung My little bell with winged tongue; Steals from the dawn, that it may be An oracle of peace to me; For hark! athwart my fitful dreams There mingles with the Orient beams A wakening psalm of tinkling bell: "God brings the ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... said with the air of the oracle, "these old traditions of hidden money are not without foundation. Suppose you let me look over that paper describing the location. Perhaps together ...
— Options • O. Henry
... character-drawing was his forte, that the dialogue is too colourless, and that though the description is often charming, it is seldom masterly. As before, there are jarring rhymes—"school" and "oracle," "Faun" and "scorn." Empedocles himself is sometimes dreadfully tedious; but the part of Callicles throughout is lavishly poetical. Not merely the show passages—that ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... from decomposition after death, and that they were found by Divine Revelations, after having been lost for a long time, the Pagans say the same of the holy of Orestes, which they pretend to have found through an oracle, etc. ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... there!" shouted old Bridoon, the lodge keeper, who was the Sir Oracle of the hour, and had seated himself in a large arm chair beside the enormous fireplace, wherein the Yule logs burnt brightly, darting out forked flames of blue, yellow, and crimson, and sending forth great showers ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... is the present participle of rimay, to speak, to prattle. The river and the valley were known by this name among all the ancient Indians. The oracle of a temple with an idol, which stood in the neighborhood of the present city of Lima, conferred the name. It is said that before the time of the Incas persons suspected of magic were banished to the valley of the Rimac, on which account it obtained the name of Rimac-malca, that is, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... The oracle of Dodona, a city of the Molossians, in Epirus, was much celebrated; where Jupiter gave answers either by vocal oaks,(82) or doves, which had also their language, or by resounding basins of brass, or by the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... thing to observe their dependence on each other. The Terror of the schoolroom was the oracle in her relations with her friend. All the freedom of movement which The Wonder showed in her bodily exercises The Terror manifested in the world of thought. She would fling open a book, and decide in a swift glance whether it had ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... much urging, and began at once reciting over again the stanzas which were afterwards so much admired in the "Banner and Oracle,"—the first verse being, as the readers of that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Governor, he was popular with his Colonel, he was popular with his mess, he was popular throughout the garrison. Never was a person so popular as Ferdinand Armine. He was the best rider among them, and the deadliest shot; and he soon became an oracle at the billiard-table, and a hero in the racquet-court. His refined education, however, fortunately preserved him from the fate of many other lively youths: he did not degenerate into a mere hero of sports and brawls, the genius of male revels, the arbiter of ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... of AEthiopia, who boasted that her beauty outshone the beauty of all the sea-nymphs, so that in anger they sent a horrible sea-serpent to ravage the coast. The king prayed of an oracle to know how the monster might be appeased, and learned that he must offer up his own daughter, Andromeda. The maiden was therefore chained to a rock by the sea-side, and left to her fate. But who should come to rescue ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... to reunite. Naples was under the severe sway of Spain, and the yoke of Austria pressed on Milan and Lombardy. Rome was nought but the capital of an idea—her people had disappeared, and she had now become the modern Ephesus, at which each cabinet sought an oracle favourable to its own cause, and paid for this purpose the members of the sacred college. Although the centre of all diplomatic intrigue, and the spot where all worldly ambition humbled itself but ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... back shop before he returned to his paste and his slips. "That was Mr. Potts, the great Queen Anne collector, sir. Most notorious book-snatcher in all London, and the most barefaced. Wanted our fourth volume of the 'Athenian Oracle.' I saw his eyes reached out this way, and that way, and always resting on that volume. I saw him edging along to the shelf. Got another odd volume just like it in his wicked old hand, ready to change it ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... philosophers the world hath ever had in admiration, whose works we do so much esteem, that gave precepts of wisdom to others, inventors of Arts and Sciences, Socrates the wisest man of his time by the Oracle of Apollo, whom his two scholars, [193]Plato and [194] Xenophon, so much extol and magnify with those honourable titles, "best and wisest of all mortal men, the happiest, and most just;" and as [195] Alcibiades incomparably ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... barbarous nations and in rendering them Christian and Catholic, we may equally, with the help of God, bring others to the knowledge of the true religion, and since pretended philosophers have abandoned the faith, it must, according to the divine oracle, go to other men. If this faith is extinguished for many, who have deserved the misfortune in closing their eyes to its light, it goes to others who will render themselves worthy by allowing this divine truth to enlighten them. Thus faith is never lost, ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... Ark in the house of our Lord in the oracle of the temple, in sancta sanctorum, under the wings of cherubim. In the ark was nothing but the two tables of Moses of stone which Moses had put in. And then Solomon blessed our Lord tofore all the people, and thanked him that he had suffered him to make ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... his mind the stormy convulsions of society were seen 'silent as in a picture.' Paradoxes the most daring wore the air of deliberate wisdom as he pronounced them. He foretold the future happiness of mankind, not with the inspiration of the poet, but with the grave and passionless voice of the oracle. There was nothing better calculated at once to feed and to make steady the enthusiasm of youthful patriots than the high speculations in which he taught them to engage, on the nature of social evils and the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... does the Court that should be the example And Oracle of the Kingdome, read to us No other doctrine! Egre. None that thrives so well As that, within my knowledge. Cow. Flatterie rubbes out, But since great men learne to admire themselves, Tis something crest-falne. Egre. To ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... junction with the gallant Hessians and render the Rhine the seat of war, or to fall back upon the reserve and hazard a decisive battle on the plains of Leipzig. That intriguing impostor, Lucchesini, the oracle of the camp, however, purposely declared that he knew Napoleon, that Napoleon would most certainly not attempt to make an attack. A few days afterward Napoleon, nevertheless, appeared, found the pass at Kosen ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
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