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More "Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... along, evidently obsessed by a train of thought which I was glad to have provoked. From time to time, he uttered a sentence which showed me the thread of his reflections; and I was able to see that the riddle remained as much a mystery to ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... dear fellow, it's a riddle; and, as I said before, I'm not good at guessing enigmas. There, my boy; go home and sleep upon this; and come back to me to-morrow morning, and tell me to throw this stupid letter in the fire—that's the wisest thing you can do. ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a riddle that a child might read. Unless the maidens are given up—not to harm, but to be taken to our country up there—unless they are given up the spears of my braves will drink the blood of their kinsfolk, and my horses shall trample their bodies ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... not Oedipus)—Ver. 194. Alluding to the circumstance of Oedipus alone being able to solve the riddle ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... thought the same, and you have sent some to seek it, have you not, being so good an archer. For instance, that was a long shaft you shot before Crecy fray at the filthy fool who mocked your English host. Doubtless now he knows the answer to your riddle." ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... I wish it was daylight and I could get a good aim at one of them. I say, they'll riddle ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... And the riddle did not long remain unanswered. Upon that seat, as I swept up alongside and laid a sunburnt hand upon its edge, was a girl, and another look told ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... an analysis of things conducted on the presumption that scientific knowledge is the key to unlock the mystery and resolve the riddle of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... murmured the Judge blandly. "Good news travels almost ez fast sometimes ez whut bad news does—don't it, now? Well, son, I give up the riddle. Tell me jest whut our elderly friend did do with the first installment of ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... out the riddle yet? Hath she a fitting phrase selected? But time flies and she doth forget They long at home have her expected— Whither two neighbouring dames have walked And a long time about her talked. "What can be done? She ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... all that followed down to the words [Greek: kai meketi hamartane] in ch. viii. 11: after which he found himself instructed to 'recommence' ([Greek: arxai]). Again I ask (and this time does not the riddle admit of only one solution?),—When and how does the reader suppose that the narrative of 'the woman taken in adultery' first found its way into the middle of the lesson for Pentecost? I pause for an answer: I shall perforce be told that it never 'found its way' into the ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... of a loss of Spiritual vision, and is the final effort on the part of scientists to explain the riddle of human existence in accordance with a cleverly thought out, but most amazingly deficient, ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... confused and mysterious riddle to his childish recollection,—what strange gulf he fell into that day, and how the kitchen sink and those great, grabbing arms came to be at the end ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Happiness when we left the scroll and joined Him. Happiness here, and happiness there with Him. The quest for Eternal Happiness, which was always His Own Divine Thought. Why, then, did He create ugliness and evil? Why write those upon the scroll? Ah, this perhaps is the Eternal Riddle! But, in 2930, they told me that there could be no beauty without ugliness with which to compare it; no truth without a lie; no consciousness of happiness without unhappiness to make ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... cold, with the assurance that it can't last. Our misfortune this time has been that it has lasted unusually long. How the Italians manage without fires I cannot make out. So chilly as they are, too, it's a riddle. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... little Tiny, Let's hear what you have to tell Learned of the years you've scampered Over the hill and dell— What! Only a bark for answer? Now, Tiny, that isn't the thing Will help unravel the riddle ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... he was a holy terror and an unsolvable riddle. They thought him possessed of an evil spirit. He at one time took up his residence among them and commenced to trade. Shortly after he had established himself and gathered in a stock of goods, he became involved in a dispute ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... that professed moralists and philosophers did much to help me out of the dilemma; but the riddle which history presented I found solved in the pages of Shakspeare. There the crooked appeared straight; the inaccessible, easy; the incomprehensible, plain. All I sought, I found there; his characters combine ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... times over; exactly as you said it to him. He knew that was how you got the upper hand of me, according to your memory, but not mine; and he tried to do it the very same way; but the Lord makes a lot of change in thirty years of time. Mary quite turned her nose up at any such riddle, and he pulled his spotted handkerchief out of that new hat of his, and the fagot never saw fit to heed even the color of his poor red cheeks. Stephen, you would have marched off for a week if I had behaved to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... mystery for hundreds of years. I can conceive, even, that this might be of importance in settling the heirships of estates; but which now, only the two insulated parts of the story being known, remain a riddle, although the solution of it is actually in the world, if only these two parts could be united across the sea, like the wires of an ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... This being done (number three on the fingers), matters might still be well. So much his electric French and gesticulations plainly asserted. Beppo strained all his attention for names, in despair at the riddle of the signs. Names were pillars of light in the dark unintelligible waste. The signora put a question. It was replied to with the name of the Maestro Rocco Ricci. Following that, the Signor Antonio accompanied his voluble delivery with pantomimic action which seemed to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... enigma, conundrum, intricacy, maze, crux, riddle, rebus, poser; confusion, quandary, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... those shuttered receptacles and showed him on the face of each occupant that strange ironic smile with which the dead husk of man seems often to betray the full knowledge now possessed by the spirit which has fled. That riddle of existence, of which through the ages philosophers and kings had sought the key, was now an open book to all those who lay here in the still majesty of death. Yes, they could well afford to smile—to smile at the littleness which denied to their tenements of flesh the smallest symbol of belief ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... her baby was grown too big for her slight arms, even then I was light-hearted. Without attempting to follow her, I sauntered homeward humming a snatch of song with a great deal of fal-de-lal-de-riddle-o in it, for I can never remember words. I saw her enter another shop, baby linen shop or some nonsense of that sort, so it was plain for what she had popped her watch; but what cared I? I continued to sing most beautifully. I lunged gayly with ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... nag - And the fog blows off, and the key is found - And the faulty scent is picked out by the hound - And the fact turns up like a worm from the ground - And the matter gets wind to waft it about; And a hint goes abroad, and the murder is out - And a riddle is guessed—and the puzzle is known - So the Truth was sniffed, and the Trumpet ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... books, riddle books, almanacs, craftsmen's proverbs, fabulous travels, prophecies, legends, romances and the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... known to the mayor of Morganton the cause and the purpose of my mission in North Carolina. I assured him that my chief had given me full power, and would render me every assistance, financial and otherwise, to solve the riddle and relieve the neighborhood of its anxiety ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... joke, though a little timely laughter is often the best weapon to meet trouble with, sometimes having an effect like that of a gay sunshade suddenly opened in the face of an angry bull. Unable to solve the riddle, I retired to my room to sleep my last ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... away with Pablo at her heels, Bill Conway unburdened himself of a slightly ribald little chanson entitled: "What Makes the Wild Cat Wild?" In the constant repetition of this query it appeared that the old Californian sought the answer to a riddle not even remotely connected with the ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Edinburgh; while photographs of the plot-letters were compared with Logan's authentic letters at Hatfield, by Mr. Gunton, to whose acuteness and energy I owe the greatest gratitude. The results of the comparison settle the riddle of ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... again before the Senate, Mr. Clark renewed his amendment declaring that John P. Stockton was not elected a senator from New Jersey, on which the yeas were 22 and the nays 21. As thus amended the resolution passed by 23 yeas to 20 nays. Mr. Riddle of Delaware voted with the majority for the purpose of moving a reconsideration on a succeeding day—a privilege from which he was excluded by the action of Mr. Clark of New Hampshire, who made the motion at once ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... that night in the channel, that you were going to save my life some day. Well, I don't suppose, lad, I shall ever get quits with you, but if there is a chance you can count upon me. You come to me any night and say I am going to escape, Jacques, and I will help you to do it, even if they riddle me ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... looked up at him in credulous surprise. But he was too ill and weak to ask the meaning of this riddle. Montague Nevitt! What on earth could Waring mean by that? How on earth could Montague Nevitt have influenced and directed him in assaulting and murdering ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... The riddle was perhaps more easily solvable by an inveterate novelist than by the average member of the community. It was of a kind which Langholm had ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... Hoyday, a riddle! neither good nor bad! What need'st thou run so many miles about, When thou mayest tell thy tale the nearest ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... so Chesterton tells us in the 'Riddle of the Ivy,' he happened to be leaving Battersea, and being asked where he was going, calmly replied to 'Battersea.' Which is really to say that we find our way to Brixton more eagerly by way of Singapore than by way of Kennington. In a few words, it is what we mean when we say, as ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... remain a riddle, one supposes," said the Minor Poet. "Which is the real ego—I, the author of 'The Simple Life,' fourteenth edition, three ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... "Masulipatam." John Thorndyke looked at it in bewilderment; that it was connected with the secret he felt certain, but alone it was absolutely useless. Doubtless his brother had intended to give him the key of the riddle, when he had so desperately striven to speak. After in vain thinking the matter over ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... man is your enemy: no man is your friend. All alike are your teachers. Your enemy becomes a mystery that must be solved, even though it take ages: for man must be understood. Your friend becomes a part of yourself, an extension of yourself, a riddle hard to read. Only one thing is more difficult to know—your own heart. Not until the bonds of personality are loosed, can that profound mystery of self begin to be seen. Not till you stand aside from it will it in any way reveal ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... Agathon's sweet lips, which as he spoke 105 Was as the lovely star when morn has broke The roof of darkness, in the golden dawn, Half-hidden, and yet beautiful. I'll pawn My hopes of Heaven-you know what they are worth — That the presumptuous pedagogues of Earth, 110 If they could tell the riddle offered here Would scorn to be, or being to appear What now they seem and are—but let them chide, They have few pleasures in the world beside; Perhaps we should be dull were we not chidden, 115 Paradise fruits are sweetest when forbidden. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... as you term it, and as hell will always term it, is alike the riddle and the masterword of the universe," the old ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... not occur to him that the gossip about his family's great wealth had any thing to do with it). He could not account for it by any process of reasoning, and was simply obliged to accept the fact and give up trying to solve the riddle. He found himself dragged into society and courted, wondered at and envied very much as if he were one of those foreign barbers who flit over here now and then with a self-conferred title of nobility and marry some rich fool's absurd daughter. Sometimes at a dinner party ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... she had the account-books of the school in her upper bureau-drawer at that moment, and in the lower ones her wedding things. Dresses and cloaks all made; and such lovely linen! As for Hugh Guinness, he was, after all, but a perplexing shadow, a riddle that turned from her the more she tried to make him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... make that out," the keeper muttered in his beard. That Lucas should be in one moment cured of his urgent need of seeing the Comte de Mar was too much for him, but no riddle to me. I knew he had come to stab M. Etienne in his cell. It was his last chance, and he had missed it. I feared him no longer, for I believed in Mayenne's faith. My master once released, Lucas ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... not!" Rutherford's voice was like the snap of a whip. "Try it. Try it. I'll hunt you down like a wolf and riddle yore carcass." ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Riddle were in General Porter's staff; their bravery was conspicuous, and no officers of ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... playful fictions, after the manner of riddles to be guessed out, are clearly allowable. So "in war, too, something like a game of this kind is carried on, when by way of stratagem some deceptive appearance is produced, and a riddle is thus given to the enemy. In such cases there is no falsehood; for from the conditions of the situation,—whether friendly or hostile,—the appearance that is given is confessedly nothing more than an ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... its origin in the error to which I have adverted. To the same source may be traced the strange opinion that a fatal or malignant disease makes its first and most desperate attacks upon the healthy and the robust. The fact is—and this explains the whole riddle—those who are regarded, by the superficial and short-sighted in this matter, as the most healthy and robust, are usually persons whose unhealthy habits have already sown the seeds of disease; and nothing is wanting but the usual circumstances of epidemics to rouse them into action. ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... they're here, the problem that lays so heavy on the Southern and Northern heart and conscience and the riddle gits harder and harder to solve. The lurid blaze of livin' torches makes bloody blindness in the eyes of them that look on and light them fires. The disgraceful glare flames out, shamin' you in the eyes of the world, and streams up to the ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... a crowded circus once: The fool was in the middle. Loud laughed contemptuous Common-sense At every frisk and riddle. ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... fiercer grapple joyn'd, Throttl'd at length in the Air, expir'd and fell; So after many a foil the Tempter proud, Renewing fresh assaults, amidst his pride 570 Fell whence he stood to see his Victor fall. And as that Theban Monster that propos'd Her riddle, and him, who solv'd it not, devour'd; That once found out and solv'd, for grief and spight Cast her self headlong from th' Ismenian steep, So strook with dread and anguish fell the Fiend, And to his crew, that sat consulting, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... being, rebelling against the rules of life and the general philosophy of his fellow-creatures, and shrinking with a shy, uncomprehended pride from the companionship of society. Shelley's disposition was a marked and rare one, but there is nothing of the riddle in it; for thousands, of his temperament, may always be found going strangely through the world, here and there, and the interpretation of such a character could be made extremely interesting, and even instructive, by any ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... year 1858, but I have a fancy that if I should take it up now, I should think it a wiser and truer conception of the world than I thought it then. It is no solution of the problem; men are not going to answer the riddle of the painful earth by building themselves shanties and living upon beans and watching ant-fights; but I do not believe Tolstoy himself has more clearly shown the hollowness, the hopelessness, the unworthiness ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mind, as women do, about Narasinha, without being willing to admit it, even to herself; and come, only the other day, suddenly on me. Aye! beyond a doubt, this would be the true conclusion, and the answer to the riddle, but for one consideration that makes it utterly impossible, that I ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... my anecdotes about our being lost through inability to riddle out our name on the part of the police, I must relate an instance where the post-office displayed remarkable powers of divination. One day I received an official notification from the post-office that there was a misdirected ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... mistress out of stone, Had not so hard a-hearted one. 330 She had a thousand jadish tricks, Worse than a mule that flings and kicks; 'Mong which one cross-grain'd freak she had, As insolent as strange and mad; She could love none, but only such 335 As scorn'd and hated her as much. 'Twas a strange riddle of a lady: Not love, if any lov'd her! Hey dey! So cowards never use their might, But against such as will not fight; 340 So some diseases have been found Only to seize upon the sound. He that gets her by heart, must ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... his pistol, "Mr. Black will please note that while I am standing by the bulwarks I shall be watching indeed. Should he make an attempt to escape from the vessel I shall riddle him ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... full, the prisoners wondered what was going to be done with their cargo of dirt? The riddle was solved when the overseer ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... return. Philosopher that I was I could not explain the sinking and the fear that took possession of me. The philosopher did not know himself. All his thought and all his reasoning could not solve the simple riddle the quick intuition of a girl ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... but found, to his no small surprise and regret, that he had not even strength sufficient to lift his body from the bed; and, therefore, that nothing was left him, but to surmise whatever he chose, until some one should appear to solve the riddle; which, he doubted not, ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... that—she seems to get rid of her troubles just by telling them. Now she had passed her riddle on to me, and I could not keep Peggy and her affairs from my mind. I tried to tell myself that it would be better for every one to find out now than later if Henry Goward was not worthy to be Peggy's husband. But, oh, for all their sakes, how I hoped this cloud, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... be, your majesty," said Caroline gayly, "but the explanation of the riddle that has been puzzling all the brains in the palace ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... its development; its unfoldment, etc. What is known as "Bhakti Yoga" deals with the Love of the Absolute—God. What is known as "Gnani Yoga" deals with the scientific and intellectual knowing of the great questions regarding Life and what lies back of Life—the Riddle of ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... out by France, but as regarded the very structure and relations of other European nations—would be justifiable. But to be justifiable they must be adequate; and to be adequate they must be unexpected and thorough. What should they be? The OEdipus who solves this riddle for France is the man of the hour. He was found in Bonaparte. What mean these ringing words from the headquarters at Nice, which, on March twenty-seventh, 1796, fell on the ears of a hungry, eager soldiery ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Cicerone, "but I 'ave something 'ere which was found on the top of his portmanteau. I wot ye know not the use of this." To the Barbarian's intense indignation, the Cicerone produced, from under his, his (the Barbarian's) own opera hat. "Marry, what should be this? Read me this riddle! ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... he found the Major a riddle that he could not read; but the Governor's first smile had melted his reserve, and he declared Mrs. Ambler to be "a ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... must be puzzled!" I said to myself confidently, and I do think justly. "For supposing I were on his job in Germany and an entire stranger suddenly sprang up out of nowhere, hailed me in excellent English, and then (even if he didn't know the particular riddle I used as pass-word) conducted himself like a confederate, made no attempt to arrest me or interfere with me, and spoke German with a distinct English accent, what would ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... the king's messenger rode up and down the kingdom with a message from the king's daughter. The king's daughter, the beautiful princess of the land, had promised to wed the man who could tell her a riddle she could not guess. All the princes who had sung of love beneath the palace window had been very stupid. The princess wished to marry a man who knew more ...
— Tales of Giants from Brazil • Elsie Spicer Eells
... three or four first years comparatively. They will grow both in moist and barren gravel, and poor ground, so it be not over-sandy and light, and want a loamy ligature; but before sowing (I mean here for large designs) turn it up a foot deep, sowing, or setting your seeds an hand distance, and riddle earth upon them: In five or six weeks they will peep. When you transplant, water them well before, and cut the clod out about the root, as you do melons out of the hot-bed, which knead close to them like an egg: Thus they may be sent safely many miles, but the top must neither be bruised, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... may understand such a girl's soul! Usually Wawerl does just the opposite of what one expects; but if she does accept you, she will—as an honest man I ought not to conceal it from you—she will give you many a riddle to guess. Whims and freaks are as plenty with her as buttercups in spring turf; but you can't find a more pious girl in all Ratisbon. From ancient times the motto of the Blombergs has been 'Faith, Courage, and Honour,' and for that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... glowing with her quick ride, and as Odo lifted her from the saddle her loosened hair brushed his face like a kiss. For a moment she seemed like life's answer to the dreary riddle of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... and he had simply settled this service to his daughter well before him as the proper direction of his young friend's leisure, the cool darkness had again closed round him, but his moral lucidity was constituted. It wasn't only moreover that the word, with a click, so fitted the riddle, but that the riddle, in such perfection, fitted the word. He might have been equally in want and yet not have had his remedy. Oh, if Charlotte didn't accept him, of course the remedy would fail; but, as everything had fallen together, it was at least there to be tried. And success would ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... both shall slay. And if perchance My saying, dark as Themis or as Sphinx, Fail to persuade thee, (since like them it foils The intellect with blindness) yet ere long Events shall be the Naiads, that will solve This knotty riddle, and no damage light On flock or field. Take heed; and as these words By me are utter'd, teach them even so To those who live that life, which is a race To death: and when thou writ'st them, keep in mind Not to conceal how thou hast seen the plant, That twice hath ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the consistency of your conduct, or the morality of your principles. Sir, if you can but use the tomahawk skilfully, your fortune is certain. 'Sic itur ad astra.' Read Blackwood's Noctea Ambrosiance. Take the town by surprise, folly by the ears; 'the glory, jest, and riddle of the world' is man; use your knowledge of this ancient volume rightly, and you may soon mount the car of fortune, and drive at random wherever your fancy dictates. Bear in mind the Greek proverb, 'Mega biblion, mega kakon.' ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... groaned, "when at school, how conquerors put their feet on the necks of their captives. He has put his spurning foot on my heart. Oh, hateful riddle! Why should I love the man ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... shook my head, for the riddle seemed quite unreadable, and as we had already sat up until long past midnight I begged for my candle, and proposed to defer our conversation until the morning. Jack, declaring that none of the beds in the damp old house was fit to sleep in ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... yet formed one. It is a bit of a riddle there, for the crow and the eagle do not ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... well that to stay here is to get into our hands some time or other, and he knows what we'll do with him if he should. Though he has made some clever escapes, I'll admit, that may not always be his fortune. The pitcher may go to the well once too often. He's a cunning rascal—no doubt knows this riddle—and therefore I begin to fear he has taken himself off,—at least for a long while. He may return again, but how the deuce are we to sustain this constant espionage? It would weary down the devil! It will become as tiresome as the siege of Granada was to ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... one of them set to work to exert the energies of his mind, and, when they arrived at a guess, they noted it down on paper; after which every individual member of the family made a choice of some object, and composed a riddle, which was transcribed in a large round hand, and affixed on the lantern. This done, the eunuch took his departure, and when evening drew near, he came out and delivered the commands of the imperial consort. "The conundrum," he said, "written by Her Highness, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... fortunes were made was not a riddle. Labor was cheap and unorganized, and the profits of trade were enormous. According to Weeden the customary profits at the close of the eighteenth century on muslins and calicoes were one hundred per cent. Cargoes of coffee sometimes yielded three ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... morning I was back on time. 'Well, Mr. Riddle,' says I, when he opened the bedroom door, 'and how is uncle ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... was a riddle which I could not solve. Was it good? Was it bad? I could not say. Some roast monkey took away all desire to make a steady diet of this animal, and the great monkey who roamed about among us at large and playfully pushed his head into my glass when I wished to drink cured me of any desire I ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... roaring against him, and he caught it and rent it in two, as if it had been a kid. When he passed the same way afterward he saw that the bees had built a nest in the body of the lion, and it was full of honey. At his marriage feast—for he married a Philistine woman—he made a riddle for the young men ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... very like a riddle, and I had to say the words over many times to myself before I could ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... and hitherto unsolved riddle of Tibet, Petrie," he replied—"a mystery concealed from the world behind the veil of Lamaism." He stood up abruptly, glancing at a scrap of paper which he took from his pocket—"Suite Number 14a," he said. "Come along! We have not a moment ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... You would know the cause: well, here it is," said she, flinging the book on the table. Her mother took the book and opened it; it was The Adventures of Telemachus. At first she could make nothing of this riddle; by dint of questions and vague replies, she discovered to her great surprise that her daughter was the ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the faith that for his "I wish" there were no limits. At present his vanity, too, was wounded painfully. There was, besides, in Lygia's opposition and resistance, and in her flight itself, which was to him incomprehensible, a kind of riddle. In trying to solve this riddle he racked his head terribly. He felt that Acte had told the truth, and that Lygia was not indifferent. But if this were true, why had she preferred wandering and misery to his love, his tenderness, and a residence in his splendid mansion? To this question he ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... that memoir so just and tender which, he prefixes to his son's literary remains, remarks that all his son's talk about this old desperate riddle of the origin and significance of evil, like the talk of Leibnitz about it, resolved itself into an unproved assumption of the necessity of evil. In truth there is little sign that either Arthur Hallam or Gladstone had in him the making of the patient ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... reasoning for some minutes. His companion fitted a wooden chimney on the doll house, found it a trifle out of plumb, and proceeded to whittle a shaving off the lower edge. Then Asaph sighed, as one who gives up a perplexing riddle, put his hand in his pocket, and ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to the riddle, which puzzled all the magicians and wise men, was given by an old woman, who came up to the palace and told the chamberlain that, for two handfuls of gold, ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... however, in which they also recall Derbyshire, but in which they are far preeminent. This is the vast agglomeration of caves and vertical potholes—like those in Craven, but here called etonnoirs—that riddle the rolling wolds in all directions. Chief among these is the mammoth cave of Han, the mere perambulation of which is said to occupy more than two hours. I have never penetrated myself into its sombre and dank recesses, but something may be realized of its character ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... Greek influence have thus been exhibited in the case of Hercules and of Castor, and it remains to inquire what Etruria did. There is no race about which we know so much and yet so little as about the Etruscans. They have always been and still are a riddle, and as our knowledge of them increases we seem further than ever from a solution, and what we gain in positive knowledge is more than counterbalanced by the increased sense of our ignorance. Altogether aside from the problem of the origin ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... how shall this riddle find its reading; It will solve itself full soon without thine aid. Say not love hath turned his back, and left thee bleeding— Whom hath love deserted, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the establishment of the Kit-Cat club has never been decided, the consensus of opinion fixes the year somewhere about 1700. More debatable, however, is the question of its peculiar title. The most recent efforts to solve that riddle leave it where the contemporary epigram ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... those words? Lord Rainsforth had turned hastily down another walk, and left me alone, to ponder over an answer which concealed a riddle. Slowly I took my way towards the house and sought Lady Ellinor, half hoping, half dreading to find her alone. There was a little room communicating with a conservatory, where she usually sat in the morning. Thither I took my course. That room,—I see ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and depth to depth. Lagging in low canoes along the black waters of silent swamps—life-left—seeing the far-off blue of sky and hope between the warning points of cypress spires. Across the stretch of yellow sands, seeking her riddle of the Sphinx, and asking from the Runic records of one dead faith, and the sand-buried temples of another, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... faith, that spoils all the former, for these farthingales take up all the room now-a-days; 'tis not a woman, questionless. Shall I be put down with a riddle? Sirrah Heuresis, search the corners of your conceit, and find it ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... all human company but Marc'antonio's, with no clock but the sun and no calendar but the creeping change of the season upon the macchia, what wonder if I forgot human probabilities at times in piecing and unpiecing solutions of a riddle which itself ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... part of Amine and myself. I dare ask no questions.—Strange, too, that the man should feel such malice towards me. I never injured him. What I have just overheard confirms all; but there needed no confirmation. Oh, Amine! Amine! but for thee, and I would rejoice to solve this riddle at the expense of life. God in mercy check the current of my brain," muttered Philip, "or my reason cannot hold ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... cold eerie wind whined and sighed over us. We spoke little, having no breath to spare, for the ground was growing more steep and broken towards the second rise, up which we clambered, sliding and falling, grasping frozen heather till we reached the top. The hill was now a riddle of peat hags and binks, like a bee's skep, a place of treachery and slimy death, although the frost would have most of the sinking pools in its iron hand; but we never stopped the long stride that seemed so slow to me at first. Dan bent and ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... strong favorite wid him, that I know, for we wor talkin' about you. In the meantime I wish to goodness we had a good scud o' cash among us, an' we safe an' snug in America! Now shake hands an' good bye—an' mark me—if you dhrame of America an' a long purse any o' these nights, come to me an' I'll riddle your dhrame ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... without financial concessions, he had to take the nasty alternative which the smirks of his audience betrayed... It would not have been so bad if he could have explained the situation to himself, but any attempt to solve the riddle moved in a vicious circle. He used to long for a simplicity that would make him accept Hilmer's favors on their face value. Why couldn't one believe in friendship and disinterestedness? Perhaps ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the payment that landlords demand Was a source of continual woe, When the tenant preferred to adhere to his land, And the agent preferred him to go: When their claims to adjust and the balance to strike Was a riddle to baffle the Sphinx,— But they're reconciled now, by resolving alike That they never will ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... the island slowly, stopping near Zora's oak. Here lay the reading of the riddle: with infinite work and pain, some one had dug a canal from the lagoon to the creek, into which the former had drained by a long and crooked way, thus allowing it to empty directly. The canal went straight, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... that to nearly everybody who sets himself down to think seriously about the riddle of the Universe there very soon occurs the question whether Materialism may not contain the solution of all difficulties. I think, therefore, our present investigation had better begin with an ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... that gate is open let no one bar the one you guard. While the flag flies over the public school, keep it aloft over Ellis Island and have no misgivings. The school has the answer to your riddle. ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... suggest that we move the stove in here in winter! I'm perfectly willing to freeze out there, for the sake of having a dining-room. Did I ever tell you what Carol said about that kitchen-dining-room-living-room combination at Exminster? Well, she asked us a riddle, 'When is a dining-room not a dining-room?' And she answered it herself, 'When it's a little pig-pen.' And I felt so badly about it, but it did look like a pig-pen, with stove here, and cupboard there, and table yonder, and—oh, no, ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... youth, I became an eager listener to their folk lore and fireside stories. When later, during a residence of nearly four years among the people, my eyes were opened to behold the wondrous fertility of invention, the wealth of literary, historic and classic allusion, of pun, myth and riddle, of heroic, wonder, and legendary lore in Japanese art, I at once set myself to find the source of the ideas expressed in bronze and porcelain, on lacquered cabinets, fans, and even crape paper napkins ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... claws of a lioness, and the head of a woman, or of a ram, or of a goat, all types or representations of the king, effigies of which are frequently placed before temples on each side of the approach; the most famous of the sphinxes was the one which waylaid travellers and tormented them with a riddle, which if they could not answer she devoured them, but which Oedipus answered, whereupon she threw herself into the sea. "Such a sphinx," as we are told in "Past and Present," "is this life of ours, to all men and nations. Nature, like the Sphinx, is of womanly celestial loveliness and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... "Is it a riddle?" he returned, lazily. "I give it up." Then he contemplated his small daughter with much satisfaction. "I wonder none of you advanced women have ever turned your attention to baby-language," he observed presently; "we are studying the ape-vocabulary, you know. Dot has got quite a little ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... first time after darkness fell I saw him—just a vague, gray shadow with edges touched softly with silver light, which whirled once over my canoe and looked down into it. Then he vanished; and from far over on the edge of the waiting woods, where the mystery was deepest, came a cry, a challenge, a riddle, the night's wild question which no man has ever yet ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... when the green sun of this other universe rose, is a curious point upon which Plattner insists. During the Other-World night it is difficult to move about, on account of the vividness with which the things of this world are visible. It becomes a riddle to explain why, if this is the case, we in this world catch no glimpse of the Other-World. It is due, perhaps, to the comparatively vivid illumination of this world of ours. Plattner describes the midday of the Other-World, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... think; she worried me. Her odds and ends of conversation pecked at me like a small bird. She told me a riddle which filled me with nausea, and finally a limerick which I had heard three times in ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... taken off his hat before the might of death, and made a perfunctory sign of the cross. He looked up and down the lofty wall, as if it could give him the word of that riddle. Twice his spurs clashed softly, and, with one hand grasping the rope, he stooped low in the twilight ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... set thy father there. Let not that dreadful seat be empty long, But place me there a greater monster still. There will I sit and of my fate propose A riddle dark that no man shall resolve. * * * * * What riddle like to this could she propose, That curse of Thebes, who wove destructive words In puzzling measures? What so dark as this? He was his grandsire's son-in-law, and yet His father's ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... of the way, you damned Yankee," shrieked the crackers, "or we'll riddle you with bullets." Then they gave the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... Venus' Oracle in turn I leaned the Secret of my Love to learn. The Answering Riddle came: "She loves you, yes, In just Proportion to ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... buzzed and his body became exhausted from the exciting brain-work, he would cry out to himself, "Her last hope shall not be disappointed!" Then he stretched his limbs, and a new impulse of energy flashed into his brain, and on and on he went, working restlessly till the iron riddle solved itself harmoniously, till each lever was transformed into a muscle, each tube into an artery, contrived on the wisest plans, like a human body by the spirit ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... who solve her mystery! Good and evil is the challenging riddle which life places sphinxlike before every intelligence. Attempting no solution, most men pay forfeit with their lives, penalty now even as in the days of Thebes. Here and there, a towering lonely figure never cries defeat. From the MAYA {FN5-2} of duality he plucks ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... and Chia Huan, Chia Lan and the others were at the same time sent for, and every one of them set to work to exert the energies of his mind, and, when they arrived at a guess, they noted it down on paper; after which every individual member of the family made a choice of some object, and composed a riddle, which was transcribed in a large round hand, and affixed on the lantern. This done, the eunuch took his departure, and when evening drew near, he came out and delivered the commands of the imperial consort. "The conundrum," he said, "written by Her Highness, the other day, has been solved ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... nothing, understand nothing, but the great peace of perfect security. She let him hold her still, with her head against his shoulder and his dear face near, so near she seemed to lose sense of her own identity. All the answer to her life's riddle lay there, behind the love that emptied her soul of need. Out of the blissful unspeakable light some words ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... tremendous polemical missiles which battered so fiercely, some few years ago, against the walls of the English Church, it is now attracting attention to the shape and proportion of that unsolved riddle of the future, the Native Question. In those former days of rude and hand-to-mouth legislation, when the certain evil of the day had to be met and dealt with before the possible evil of the morrow, the seeds of great political trouble were planted in the young colony, ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... moral, from these comparisons. Life is deeper and wider than any particular lesson to be learned from it; and just when we think that we have at last guessed its best meanings, it laughs in our face with some paradox which turns our solution into a new riddle. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... Lucretius, yet on this road he marches with a step so firm and buoyant, an eye so awake to all beauty and grandeur, a spirit so elate, that as we read we catch the energy and elation. The reading of the riddle is this: the religion against which Lucretius made his attack was not the soaring idealism of Plato, nor the inspiring and consolatory faith of Christianity, but an outworn mythology in which this ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... all came Greek corruption, Greek worship, Greek vice. For years the mysteries of Dionysus and the orgies of the Maenads were celebrated on the slopes of the Aventine and in those deep caves that riddle its sides, less than a mile from the Forum, from the Capitol, from the house of the rigid Cato, who found fault with Scipio of Africa for shaving every day and liking Greek verses. The evil had first come to Rome from Etruria, and had then turned ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... at his weird pilgrimage,—you who in the swift whirl of living, amid its cold paradox and marvellous vision, have fronted life and asked its riddle face to face. And if you find that riddle hard to read, remember that yonder black boy finds it just a little harder; if it is difficult for you to find and face your duty, it is a shade more difficult for ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Mother Earth. I don't kiss her. I don't cleave to her bosom. Am I to become a peasant or a shepherd? I go on and I don't know whether I'm going to shame or to light and joy. That's the trouble, for everything in the world is a riddle! And whenever I've happened to sink into the vilest degradation (and it's always been happening) I always read that poem about Ceres and man. Has it reformed me? Never! For I'm a Karamazov. For when I do leap into the pit, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... ways of knowing this queer world. Nothing new, no time-saving devices,—simply old time-glorified methods of delving for Truth, and searching out the hidden beauties of life, and learning the good of living. The riddle of existence is the college curriculum that was laid before the Pharaohs, that was taught in the groves by Plato, that formed the trivium and quadrivium, and is to-day laid before the freedmen's sons by Atlanta University. And this course of study will not change; ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... fifteen years a world-wide movement depended on a single life, that the infinitudes of 1789 lived on only in the form, and by the pleasure, of the First Consul? Here surely is a political incarnation unparalleled in the whole course of human history. The riddle cannot be solved by history alone. It belongs in part to the domain of psychology, when that science shall undertake the study, not merely of man as a unit, but of the aspirations, moods, and whims of communities and nations. Meanwhile it will be our far humbler ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... certainly be a simple and convenient solution of the riddle if the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type, to the realization of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... well I can thy riddle guess; By treason as we slew, we shall be slain. Fetch me the axe, which well this hand can wield, And we will strike for death or victory, For to this ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... Kincaide, I'm leaving you in command. We are going into the Aranian city to pick up Inverness and Brady. I anticipate no trouble, and if there is no trouble, we shall return within an hour. If we are not back within three hours, blast this entire area with atomic grenades, and riddle it with the rays. Is ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... of quality ... especially malice, ill-will, spite, malevolence, artfulness, cunning, craft."—Riddle and Arnold, Lat. Dict. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... breed no more, She brooded often on this riddle— Alas! 'twas darker than before! At last about the summer's middle, What Johnson, Mrs. Bond, or none did, To clear the matter up ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... than a mule that flings and kicks; 'Mong which one cross-grain'd freak she had, As insolent as strange and mad; She could love none, but only such 335 As scorn'd and hated her as much. 'Twas a strange riddle of a lady: Not love, if any lov'd her! Hey dey! So cowards never use their might, But against such as will not fight; 340 So some diseases have been found Only to seize upon the sound. He that gets her by heart, must say her The back way, like a witch's prayer. Mean while the Knight ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... are utterly foiled in the attempt, you cannot flatter yourself that you have been successful to the measure of your desire. A person interests, or piques, or tantalises you, you do your best to make him out; yet strive as you will, you cannot read the riddle of his personality. From the invulnerable fortress of his own nature he smiles contemptuously on the beleaguering armies of your curiosity and analysis. And it is not only the stranger that thus defeats you; it may be the brother brought up by the same fireside with you, the best ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... family, as if he would enjoy their society as long as possible, and the children's play was never hushed on his account. Nor did he forget the young visitor. When the elder daughter, to whom my visit was made, was at school, he would care for my entertainment by telling a story, or propounding a riddle, or providing an entertaining book to beguile the time ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... balsam of magic blossoms that intoxicates thee—flowers of a strange and distant world where I am at home and not a stranger as in this book[12] where a ravenous tiger devours the delicate image of spiritual love. I do not understand this cruel riddle; I cannot comprehend why they all make themselves unhappy and why they all serve a malicious demon with a thorny sceptre, why Charlotte, who strews incense before him daily, yes, hourly, should prepare misfortune for them all with mathematical precision! Is not love ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... yet perversely, in my mind, now at the end, I know not whether I mean the Thought for the Fancy—or the Fancy for the Thought, or why the book trails off to playing, rather than standing strong on unanswering fact. But this is alway—is it not?—the Riddle of Life. ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... would return. Philosopher that I was I could not explain the sinking and the fear that took possession of me. The philosopher did not know himself. All his thought and all his reasoning could not solve the simple riddle the quick intuition of ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... what we ask, or whether he can and will grant it: by deeds, when, by what we do, we probe another's prudence, will or power. Either of these may happen in two ways. First, openly, as when one declares oneself a tempter: thus Samson (Judges 14:12) proposed a riddle to the Philistines in order to tempt them. In the second place it may be done with cunning and by stealth, as the Pharisees tempted Christ, as we read in Matt. 22:15, sqq. Again this is sometimes done explicitly, as when anyone intends, by word or deed, to put some person to the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... untutored man who has divined truths of which no glimpse was given him from without. It may be, too, that many others before myself have been perplexed by the workings of their hearts and brains and have died without ever finding an answer to the riddle." "Ah, we poor folk," added Patience, "we are never forbidden excess in labour, or in wine, or in any of the debauches which may destroy our minds. There are some people who pay dearly for the work of our arms, so that the poor, in their eagerness to satisfy ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... said to have visited Solomon, "to prove him with hard questions," by which have generally been understood enigmatical puzzles. Some of these are to be found in sacred writ, of which the riddle which Samson proposed to the young men of Timnath, is a very ancient and curious specimen. It appears from the writings of the ancients, that the Greeks and all the Eastern nations, were singularly attached to enigmas. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... conscious of being seated on the cold stone under the shock of a new misery. All her early gladness, all her bright hopes and illusions, all her gifts of beauty and affection, served only to darken the riddle of her life; they were the betraying promises of a cruel destiny which had brought out those sweet blossoms only that the winds and storms might have a greater work of desolation, which had nursed her like a pet fawn into tenderness and fond expectation, only ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... come, the Seasons go, With store of good and ill; Do all men find you cold as snow, And unresponsive still? O beautiful enigma, say, Will love's sublime persistence Solve for you, in the usual way, The riddle of existence? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... gave the sum total of their cost, but with no difference in the result. It was plain that there was some mysterious quality in the arithmetic, or some nice distinctions in the cookery, which I had not taken into account, which disturbed my calculations. I became but the more anxious to have the riddle explained. In my perplexity I applied to the waiter, who referred me to his master. The day was hot; and boiling, stewing, and roasting, is hot work; and this may account for the passion into which my simple interrogatory put "mine host." "It was a just bill, and must be paid." ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... He read the first riddle, the second, the third, all in one corner of the card—then turned it round impatiently to look at another. Before he could begin reading the riddles printed here, the sound of the church-clock stopped him. Eleven. He had got through an hour of the time, ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... what you're driving at," said Newall. "It's a bit of a riddle; but if you want a thrashing as well as your friend, I dare say you can be obliged, but he comes first. Let him speak for himself. You can speak for yourself after. Now, Moncrief, ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... yet no clear message. She felt, struggling with that diffused kindness and young vanity, something like discomfort and fear. So her mood was complex enough, unharmonized, parted between opposing currents. She was a riddle to herself. ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... adventure of some new Childe Roland heroically challenging a heedless universe. Never have silence and black night been reproduced more creepily, nor has the symbolism of man's courage facing the cryptic riddle of life been ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... petrified. What understanding was this between Doctor Danton and their pale little seamstress? They knew each other, and there were reasons why that acquaintance should be a secret. "It would involve disagreeable explanations!" What could Doctor Frank mean? The solution of the riddle that had puzzled Eeny came to her. Had they been lovers at some past time?—was Doctor Frank a ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... probably helps to account for homosexuality. In this way the idea may be said to have passed into current thought. We cannot assert that it constitutes an adequate explanation of homosexuality, but it enables us in some degree to understand what for many is a mysterious riddle, and it furnishes a useful basis for the classification not only of homosexuality, but of the other mixed or intermediate sexual anomalies in the same group. The chief of these intermediate sexual anomalies are: (1) physical hermaphroditism in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a friend—a friend whom I have again found—and who has disappeared. Just so,—abruptly—No matter, perhaps, after all! What happens, must happen. In short—and to continue my riddle, behold me feeding these ducks. God knows why! I detest the creatures. The state feeds them badly, Monsieur le Ministre, I tell you: they are famished. Well? well?" she said to a species of Indian duck, bolder than the others, who snapped at the hem of her skirt ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... that has yet appeared can be said to be even approximately correct. Its mysterious quality evades us; and we have to be content with outward characteristics and accompaniments, leaving the thing itself an unsolved riddle. At the same time Mr. Herbert Spencer's masterly elucidation of the chief phenomena of Life has placed philosophy and science under many obligations, and in the paragraphs which follow we shall have to incur a further ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... echoed. "Why, one may safely term it that. Is not the Future always a riddle? Nature knows the Future as the Past, but Nature holds it secret, lest man go mad with too much knowledge. Only to the few, the favoured, does she grant rare glimpses through media which she has provided for the use of the initiate—such as this crystal here, in which I was ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... riddles. She was delighted with that somewhat old conundrum about "What is more wonderful than JONAH in the whale?" to which the answer is, "Two men in a fly," and determined to puzzle her nephew with it the very next time she met him. "Such a capital riddle I've got for you, JOHN!" she exclaimed, "Let me see. Oh, yes—I remember—yes, that's it;" and then, having settled the form of the question, she put it thus—"What is more wonderful than two men in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... chaotic as they are; small sparks, elucidative, confirmatory of your dull History Books, and adding traits, here and there, to the Image you have formed from them. Yielding you a poor momentary comfort; like reading some riddle of no use; like light got incidentally, by rubbing dark upon dark (say Voltaire flint upon Dryasdust gritstone), in those labyrinthic catacombs, if you are doomed to travel there. A mere weariness, otherwise, to the outside ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... appears to me prodigiously strange," said De Marsay, considering her. "But you seem to me a good girl, a strange nature; you are, upon my word of honor, a living riddle, the answer to which ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... another object to work for than getting the better of Ferdinand Holm. Louise's dresses hung still untouched in his room, her shoes stood under the bed; it still seemed to him that some day she must open the door and walk in. And when he lay there alone at night, the riddle was always with him: Where is she now?—why should she have died?—would he never meet her again? He saw her always as she had stood that day playing to the sick folks in the hospital ward. But now she was dressed in white. And it seemed quite natural now that ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... lived at Corrivarlich a noted sheep-stealer named Alastair Bane. Little is known of his boyhood. He was supposed to have been brought to the district by Highlanders who were in the habit of bringing to Crieff cartloads of split pine from Rannoch Forest, which they sold to riddle-makers to make riddle rims. During one of those visits the child is supposed to have been left. He was called Alastair, owing to his supposed Highland descent, and Bane, because of his white hair. As he grew up to manhood he showed symptoms of ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... read the riddle of the sphinx, and your words are as enigmatical. I have not begun to find their clew," replied Madeleine, pausing in the garland she was forming, and letting the ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... comprehension came back to her. For the first time it struck her painfully that the son whom she idolized so much—whose life and character had been her one study and her one delight ever since the day of his birth—was nevertheless a riddle to her. That the secret of his inner self was as much hidden from her—his mother—as though she had been the merest stranger; that the life she had striven so closely to entwine with her own was nothing after all but a separate existence, in the story of ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... food in the kitchen and hurried back to his guests. There was the riddle of the Quantocks to solve: there were the tableaux vivants imminent: there was the little red-haired boy coming in ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... our measures as to the Indians, as to slavery, as to religious freedom, were all in consonance with their professions. Yet I never expected we should get a vote from them, and in this I was neither deceived nor disappointed. There is no riddle in this, to those who do not suffer themselves to be duped by the professions of religious sectaries. The theory of American Quakerism is a very obvious one. The mother society is in England. Its members are English by birth and residence, devoted to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... With such partisanship and advocacy the world has been liberally, and more than liberally, supplied. Such a number of Eurekas have been shouted! So often it has been discovered that the world is no such riddle, after all,—that half of it is really the whole! No doubt all this was good boy's-play once; afterwards it did to laugh at for a while; then it ceased to be even a joke, and grew a weariness and an affliction; and at length we all rejoiced when the mighty world-pedagogue ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to the invasion was that some week-end guest of the East Cliff Hotel left a copy of "The Riddle of the Sands" in the coffee-room, where von Gottlieb found it; and the fact that Ford attended the Shakespeare Ball. Had neither of these events taken place, the German flag might now be flying over Buckingham Palace. And, then again, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... utmost importance, and was at that time actually compiling materials for the history of one Thomas Trip. "The friend of all mankind," Dr. Primrose calls him. "The honestest man in the nation," as Goldsmith said of him in a doggerel riddle which he wrote. Newbery's nephew printed the "Vicar of Wakefield" for Goldsmith, and the elder Newbery published the "Traveller," the corner-stone of Goldsmith's fame. It was the elder Newbery who unearthed the poet at his miserable lodgings ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... The food was a riddle which I could not solve. Was it good? Was it bad? I could not say. Some roast monkey took away all desire to make a steady diet of this animal, and the great monkey who roamed about among us at large and playfully pushed his head into my glass when I wished to drink cured me of any desire I ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... very consciousness of his misery is evidence of his greatness; "Nature confounds the Pyrrhonist, and reason the dogmatist;" "Man is but a reed, the feeblest of created things, but a reed which thinks." How is this riddle of human nature to be explained? Only in one way—by a recognition of the truth taught by religion, that human nature is fallen from its true estate, that man is a dethroned king. And how is the dissonance in man's nature to be overcome? ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... after his mother's death it became his duty to read letters exchanged between his parents during this period, did Dominic Iglesias touch the key to the riddle, and fully measure the public danger, the private strain and stress which had surrounded his childhood and early youth. For his father, a man of far from ignoble nature, but of narrow outlook and undying hatreds, was deeply involved in ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... of Love and the Graces, one Grace bore a rose, a second a branch of myrtle, a third dice;—who can read that riddle? ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... been epochs of my life when I too might have asked of this prophet the master word that should solve me the riddle of the universe; but now, being happy, I felt as if there were no question to be put, and therefore admired Emerson as a poet of deep beauty and austere tenderness, but sought nothing from him as a philosopher. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... also mention three pots with three rows of perforations; they have the usual handle on one side and three feet on the other; also three large vases with perforations right round, on all sides, from the bottom to the top; their use is a riddle to me; can they have served as bee-hives? Also a vessel in the form of a pig, with four feet, which are, however, shorter than the belly, so that the vessel can not stand upon them; the neck of the vessel, which is attached to the back of the pig, is connected with the hinder part by a handle. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... face, my figure, my voice, for how could it be otherwise? Yet she SAID she knew me not, and that is proof perfect, for she cannot lie. But stop—I think I begin to see. Peradventure he hath influenced her, commanded her, compelled her to lie. That is the solution. The riddle is unriddled. She seemed dead with fear—yes, she was under his compulsion. I will seek her; I will find her; now that he is away, she will speak her true mind. She will remember the old times when we were little playfellows together, and this will soften her heart, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had finished their feasting, and were beginning to be gay, the old King set a riddle to the real servant-girl: What such an one were worthy of who had, in such and such a manner, deceived her masters; and he related all that had happened to the true bride. The servant-girl replied, "Such an one deserves ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... first and fifteenth of the month. Life is indeed dramatic,—at least it has seemed so to me. Some men say that life has no meaning; that men are the playthings of blind forces that crush them, and there is no answer to the riddle. This is nonsense. I admit that we are in the grip of blind forces. But we are not blind. We can not change those forces. If we fight against them they will crush us. But by going with them, guiding our careers along their courses, they will bear us to ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... and with many a cautious look over his shoulder, pass out of sight. For a long while he sat alone, only the evening birds singing out of the greenness and silence of the churchyard. What a haunting inescapable riddle life was. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... uplifted eyes. What a riddle is woman! Had he not just seen this one in sabots? Did she not certainly know, through Mrs. Riley, that he must have seen her so? Were not her skirts but just now hitched up with an under-tuck, and fastened with a string? ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... in his eighteenth year, offered to the stage a comedy, borrowed from a Spanish plot, which was refused by the players, and was, therefore, given by him to Mr. Bullock, who, having more interest, made some slight alterations, and brought it upon the stage, under the title of Woman's a Riddle[57], but allowed the unhappy author ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... two ways? There was a third, more probable than either—fear. At the first presentation of this key to the riddle the whole case mapped itself out before me. The murderer had sealed her lips by some threat. He was still living, and she was in daily expectation of meeting him. She had never seen his face, but had reason to believe him of her own class. ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... thee thus in fancy, as in books A man may see the naiads of the brooks;— As one entranced by potions aptly given May see the angels where they walk in Heaven, And may not greet them in their high estate. For who shall guess the riddle wrought of Fate Till he be dead? And who that lives a span Shall thwart the Future ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... the ribbon-tied shoes. Her voice had that full soft volume of melody which gives to common speech the fascination of music. Mr. Chainmail could not reconcile the dress of the damsel with her conversation and manners. He threw out a remote question or two, with the hope of solving the riddle, but, receiving no reply, he became satisfied that she was not disposed to be communicative respecting herself, and, fearing to offend her, fell upon other topics. They talked of the scenes of the ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... for hundreds of years. I can conceive, even, that this might be of importance in settling the heirships of estates; but which now, only the two insulated parts of the story being known, remain a riddle, although the solution of it is actually in the world, if only these two parts could be united across the sea, like the ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... she marry him? Not the sea, nor the sky, nor the great mysterious midnight, when he opens his casement and gazes into starry space will give him answer; no Œdipus will ever come to unravel this riddle; this sphinx will never throw herself from the rock into the clangour of the sea-gulls and waves; she will never divulge her secret; and if she is the woman and not a woman of thirty, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... the riddle that I could not read. Among my last actions of this day was one that had been almost my earliest, and bedtime found me staring at his letter, as I stood, half undressed, by my table. The calm moon brought back Udolpho ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... circumscribe our lawful prince, Is wilful treason in the largest sense: And they who once rebel, must certainly Their God, and king, and former oaths defy; If ye allow no mal-administration Could cancel the allegiance of the nation, Let all our learned sons of Levi try, This ecclesiastic riddle to untie; How they could make a step to call the prince, And yet pretend the oath ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... the less imperfect years, When human frailty shall have died, When the vexed riddle of the spheres, Interpreted and glorified, Shall be as nothing to the tide Of light in which Thy hidden ways Will be revealed: I may abide Thy meanest instrument of praise, And from the broad calm ocean of Thy truth And wisdom drinking, find ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... ain't neither," objected Jimmy. "You all time got to ask the first riddle. I'm going to ask ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... grow as you draw the bow O'er the yielding strings with a practised hand! And the music's flow never loud but low Is the concert note of a fairy band. Oh, your dainty songs are a misty riddle To the simple sweets ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the artist in him," I decided, "and therefore cannot understand." And I went on arguing, if Gattie were right, why two boys? It seemed evident to me that my reading of the riddle was the only plausible one. Besides it left my affection unaffected and free. Still, the giggle, the plastered oily hair and the venal leering eyes came back to me again and again ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... alms from the same lady Corsack before her window, which she generously gave him; but at the same time reminded him of his former wicked life, particularly, his persecuting the people of God. He went off, but with small amendment; and some time after ended his wretched life.—Samson's riddle, A—d—k—n, &c. ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... which is offered to us by Mr. Herbert Spencer. And, finally, that the solution of that origin proposed recently by Sir John Lubbock is a mere version of simple utilitarianism, appealing to the pleasure or safety of the individual, and therefore utterly incapable of solving the riddle it attacks. ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... "Oh! if it's a riddle," says he, "you might remember I am only a little one, and unequal to the great things ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... ago and found the figure of the unending wheel to symbolize all processes and procedures: a world, a universe, without termini. Sometimes I think them right, but then again my western mind will not have it that the riddle of the Sphinx may not be solved. Our assurance meets every challenge; mystery may make us humble; we may be baffled; but we do not despair because we know we are Gods to whom all doors must open eventually. That seems to be the real underlying strength of our position. Why men go on ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... Judge blandly. "Good news travels almost ez fast sometimes ez whut bad news does—don't it, now? Well, son, I give up the riddle. Tell me jest whut our elderly friend did do with the first ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... subject of one of its fatal experiments. The element by which only the heart lives is sucked out of her crystalline prison. Watch her through its transparent walls;—her bosom is heaving; but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle, compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the "Book of Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that frightened her most. How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a son, and his name was Sym; And his eyes were wide as the eyes of Truth; And there came to the wondering mind of him Long thoughts of the riddle that vexes youth. And, "Father," he said, "in the mart's loud din Is there aught of pleasure? Do some find joy?" But his father tilted the beardless chin, And looked in the eyes ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... that lives lonely in the wilderness. He is also called Nidana Buddha, as having mastered the twelve nidanas (the twelve links in the everlasting chain of cause and effect in the whole range of existence, the understanding of which solves the riddle of life, revealing the inanity of all forms of existence, and preparing the mind for nirvana). He is also compared to a horse, which, crossing a river, almost buries its body under the water, without, however, touching the bottom of the river. Thus in crossing samsara he 'suppresses the ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... grant it only to that which has attained it in the course of history, even if it is only truth represented allegorically. This kind of truth, supported by authority, appeals directly to the essentially metaphysical temperament of man—that is, to his need of a theory concerning the riddle of existence, which thrusts itself upon him, and arises from the consciousness that behind the physical in the world there must be a metaphysical, an unchangeable something, which serves as the foundation of constant ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... a most pig-headed sot! (aloud) Young man, you cannot know the risk you run. Th' alternative's in earnest—not in fun. Dame Turandot will spin you a tough riddle, That's not to be "got thro' like any fiddle." Not such as this, which any child might guess— (Though the Emperor could not, I must confess;) "What gives a cold, cures a cold, and pays the doctor's bill?" ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... this, he of course could have no idea how near he was hewing to the truth. That walk was fated to have a very considerable influence on the course of events, and also upon the solving of the riddle; ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... nothing to prevent you from covering me, calling for help, and solving the riddle as you please. After all, what does it matter, whether the end comes to-day or to-morrow, for it would be impossible to elude the police. You don't understand, I know—but I am not flying from justice: it was a case of shoot or be shot. You will notice that only one cartridge ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... Rutherford's voice was like the snap of a whip. "Try it. Try it. I'll hunt you down like a wolf and riddle yore carcass." ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Bible has become a meaningless riddle and uninteresting to most people because it is not rightly divided. It is assumed that all parts of the Bible are addressed to everybody. This is far from the truth. While we must recognize the unity and interdependence of the entire Bible and that each part teaches great spiritual ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... but a brace,' said bold Jim, 'and they 're spent, And I won't load again for a make-believe rent.' 'Then,' said Ephraim—producing his pistols—'just give My five hundred pounds back—or, as sure as you live, I'll make of your body a riddle or sieve.' Heigho! ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... She kept back enough to establish herself and Mark in rooms, should she be successful in finding some unfurnished rooms sufficiently cheap to allow her to take them, although how she was going to live for more than two years on what she had was a riddle of which after a month of sleepless nights she had not found ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... my Lady Wisdom. But truly I begin to think you a riddle worth the reading. It may be, that with somewhat of teaching, you might prove a pupil apt enough for ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... made the distance back to the city Dundee had shrugged off the riddle and was concentrating on all the facts he knew regarding the Maginty case. It was his first real assignment from Sanderson, and he was determined ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... the prisoners wondered what was going to be done with their cargo of dirt? The riddle was solved when the overseer steered ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... herself was pacified—trouble was a false note. Later he was on the point of asking her how she knew the objects she had mentioned were not in the house; but he let it pass. The subject was a profitless riddle—a puzzle that grew grotesquely bigger, like some monstrosity seen in the darkness, as one opened one's eyes to it. He closed his eyes—he wanted another vision. Besides, she had shown him that she had extraordinary senses—her explanation ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... are right, Jacques. However, let us not trouble our heads with the riddle; it will solve itself one of these days. I have other news; can ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx
... I affirm also that it would not have been the more striking if, instead of two, it had extended to two hundred similar cases. Supposing that a thousand persons were required severally to propose a riddle, no conditions or limitations being expressed as to the terms of the riddle, it would be surprising if any two in the whole thousand should agree: suppose again that the same thousand persons were required to solve a riddle, it ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... manufactured into a skeleton by the famous surgeon, Cruickshank, assisted by Mr. White and other pupils. All interest in the case had subsided in Knutsford, that could now have cleared up the case satisfactorily; and thus it happened that to this day the riddle, which was read pretty decisively in a northern county, still remains a riddle in the south. When I saw the College Green house in 1809-10, it was apparently empty, and, as I was told, had always been empty since the murder: forty years had not cicatrized the bloody ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... until I found, and by the early spring of 1889 I had grown desperately determined to find at all hazards what I sought. At last, sitting alone in deep thought as I had become accustomed to do after the sun had set, filled with an intense but nearly hopeless longing to solve the riddle of life and mind, I heard a Voice that was later to become to me the holiest sound on earth, bidding me take courage for the light was near. A fortnight passed, and then Mr. Stead gave into my hands two large volumes. "Can you review these? My young men all ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... it over; puzzling again over the mystery of their suspicion of him. He tried to recall some careless act, some imprudent question, an ill-considered remark. He was giving up the riddle again when that trained memory of his flashed before him a picture that, trivial as it was in itself, yet was as enlightening as the white paper of the cigarette on ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... loose and led horses were all mixed together in unsortable confusion, the two oldest hags in the world trusting themselves on sorry, lame nags between Fred and me as if proximity to us would solve the very riddle of the gipsy race. And last of all came a pack of great scrawny dogs that bayed behind us hungrily, following for an hour until hope ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... should fret us this constant riddle, To know if Nature be kind or harsh To the pensive frog on his green-ribbed raft, The scarlet queen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... transformed death. To the eye of flesh it was the final direction of our fate,—the consummate riddle in this mystery of being,—the wreck ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... and addresses, and that you all, half generosity and half prudence, resolved to stand by him rather than break up the Government, which his resignation would have done. That's my solution of the greatest political riddle ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... pangs not to be borne or supported; he was often ready to recall him, and was angry the boy did not urge him for an answer. He read the letter again, and wonders at nothing now after her last night's action, though all was riddle to him: he found it was writ to some happier man than himself, however he chanced to have it by mistake; and turning to the outside, viewed the superscription, where there happened to be none at all, for Sylvia writ in haste, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving for ever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time. (It is certainly not the solution of any problems of natural ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... instead of 1 Men; 26 more to 1 Cauac, a day not found in either column as given in the original. Taking the second column and counting 26 days from 1 Ymix, we reach 1 Manik, instead of 1 Been. This gives us the key to the series and solves the riddle. We must commence with 1 Ymix, then take 1 Manik, then 1 Been, and so on, going alternately from ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... thrones, the carvers of continents, the arbiters of empires, the fashioners of the new heaven and the new earth—or were they only the flies on the wheel of circumstance, to whom the world was unaccountably becoming a riddle? ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... things; and, after some reflective pipes and ineffectual rubbings of his head, he "gave it up". How was it possible, indeed, for him to solve the mental enigma when the woman herself was to him a physical riddle? It was extraordinary that the child he had seen growing up by his side day by day should be a young woman with little secrets, now to be revealed to him for the first time. He found that she had a mole on her neck, and remembered ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... nature persistently demands a moral, and, as, to say truth, Thackeray was constantly meeting the demand, what is the lesson of his life and his writings? So people may ask, and yet how futile is the answer! Life has a different meaning, a different riddle, a different reply for each of us. There is not one sphinx, but many sphinxes—as many as there are women and men. We must all answer for ourselves. Pascal has one answer, "Believe!" Moliere has another, "Observe!" Thackeray's answer is, "Be good and enjoy!" but a melancholy enjoyment was ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... I was by that obscure jingle of German, something seemed to tell me that it was a message from my brother. It was dated from Berlin, and I felt that the solution of the riddle, if riddle it were, must ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... Christ Church, which, of course, is the same as a Fellowship anywhere else. He went into residence at his new home in January, 1871, and remained there for thirteen years, a "don," indeed, by office, but so undonnish in character, ways, and words, that he became the subject of a eulogistic riddle: "When is a don not a don? When ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... them set to work to exert the energies of his mind, and, when they arrived at a guess, they noted it down on paper; after which every individual member of the family made a choice of some object, and composed a riddle, which was transcribed in a large round hand, and affixed on the lantern. This done, the eunuch took his departure, and when evening drew near, he came out and delivered the commands of the imperial consort. "The conundrum," he said, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... periods of doubt and anxiety, a species of religion? I trust so. We are, you and I, somewhat like those poor dreaming sphinxes who have been asking in vain for so many centuries, from the solitudes of the desert, the solution of the eternal riddle. Would it be a greater and more guilty folly than the happy carelessness of the Little Countess? We shall see. In the meantime, retain, for my sake, that ground-work of melancholy upon which you weave your own gentle mirth; for, thank God! ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... mind, comes back and gets into the cab, after telling the cabby to drive down to St. Kilda. Then he polishes the drunk one off with chloroform, gets out of the cab, jumps into another, and after getting out at Powlett Street, vanishes—that's the riddle I've got to find out, and I don't think the Sphinx ever had a harder one. There are three things to be discovered—First, who is the dead man? Second, what was he killed for? ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... embarrassed way. "Ah! Monsieur, you tink to be varry conning; mais you not so conning as Kookoo, no;" and the inquisitive little man would shake his head and smile, and shake his head again, as a man has a perfect right to do under the conviction that he has been for twenty years baffled by a riddle and is learning to read it at last; he had guessed what was in 'Sieur George's head, he would by and by guess ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... to speak it, And silly doves are better mates than we? And yet our love is Jesus' due,—and all things Which share with Him divided empery Are snares and idols—'To love, to cherish, and to obey!' . . . . . O deadly riddle! Rent and twofold life! O cruel troth! To keep thee or to break thee Alike seems ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... brightening up his placid countenance, like one that had found out a riddle, and looked to have the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... perishable glory and the imperishable hope of man. He looked up into the vast countenance of the crouching Sphinx and vainly tried to read the meaning of her calm eyes and smiling mouth. Was it, indeed, the mockery of all effort and all aspiration, as Tigranes had said—the cruel jest of a riddle that has no answer, a search that never can succeed? Or was there a touch of pity and encouragement in that inscrutable smile—a promise that even the defeated should attain a victory, and the disappointed should discover a prize, and the ignorant should be made wise, and ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... absurd that Mallow proceeded to riddle it. It was, upon its face, a contradiction, for none but smart men could be crooked, and the laws of logic proved the converse to ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... ran the risk of becoming the dullest of monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier he had resented her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment he found himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and to be agreed ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... order a horse at once. It is all very mysterious and extraordinary; but then you have been a mystery, Rupert Hyde, a riddle and a puzzle, ever since ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... the Book of Judges, xiv. 19, you will find that the taking of spoil even by violence and bloodshed, is not necessarily a crime—is not necessarily robbery and murder. It is the case of Samson when he had to give thirty changes of raiment to those who had expounded his riddle. It is said: "And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he went down to Askelon and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil, and gave change of garments unto them which expounded the riddle." Now, notice this particularly, that Samson did all this under the ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... which you have in mind, Vespasian, whether it is to build a house or to enlarge your estate, or to increase the number of your slaves, there is granted to you a great habitation, vast acres, and a multitude of men.' Rumour had immediately seized on this riddle and now began to solve it. Nothing was more talked of, especially in Vespasian's presence: such conversation is the food ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... yet come. But I beg you to return at once to Paris, because I am in a secret affair, which concerns me personally, and which I shall intrust to you alone, and in which I need your assistance. The Countess Lamotte-Valois will give you the key to this riddle." ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... representation of truth. Truth in this form, supported by authority, appeals first of all to those elements in the human constitution which are strictly metaphysical, that is to say, to the need man feels of a theory in regard to the riddle of existence which forces itself upon his notice, a need arising from the consciousness that behind the physical in the world there is a metaphysical, something permanent as the foundation of constant change. Then it ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the place where mine once was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, .. yet two to the soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, there to a hair, do I. Is't a riddle? I should humbly call it a poser, sir. Hist, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking thing may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where thou now standest; aye, and standing there in thy spite? In thy most solitary hours, then, dost ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... spectators had the good will to hope that they did. How he would have lived if Daniel and St. John had dreamed no dreams, one cannot conjecture. As it was, they provided the doctor with endless openings for his fancy. Since no one could solve the riddle of their prophecies, it was certain that no one could disprove his solutions. Yet these came so often to their own disproof by lapse of time, that I can only think that the good doctor hoped to die before his critical ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... panacea for the ills and delusions of life. For, call it what he would—Biblical criticism, scientific inquiry—this was his aim first and last. He was trying to pierce the secret of existence—to rede the riddle that has never been solved.—What am I? Whence have I come? Whither am I going? What meaning has the pain I suffer, the evil that men do? Can evil be included in God's scheme?—And it was well, he told himself, as he pressed forward, that the flame in him burnt unwaveringly, which ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... soft cadences are breathed through strains of music,—all is a rapid succession of hope, fear, terror, and gladness; exciting our sympathies now for the result of the merchant's danger; now for the solution of a riddle on which hangs the fate of the wealthy heiress; and now for the fugitive Jessica, who resigns her creed at the shrine ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... questioned him about the hints she had gathered on the way. He did not know the two ladies next to her, he did not even, as it chanced, know Mrs. Lorin Boulger; but he knew New York, and New York was the sphinx whose riddle ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... him that under existing entanglements, the girl's speedy death would prove the most felicitous solution of this devouring riddle, which so unexpectedly crossed his smooth path; then what meant the vehement protest of his throbbing heart, the passionate longing to snatch her from disease, and disgrace, and keep her safe forever in the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... afraid of venturing my life? No, it cannot be that. But what else, then, can be keeping me back? Perhaps a secret doubt of the practicability of the plan. My mind is confused; the whole thing has got into a tangle; I am a riddle to myself. I am worn out, and yet I do not feel any special tiredness. Is it perhaps because I sat up reading last night? Everything around is emptiness, and my brain is a blank. I look at the home pictures and am moved by them in a curious, ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... heart into a woman's when it has need to be of flint. Sit you here on the ledge the while that I take one more turn. You will not? Then come with me, and we will make the round together, and apply our wits once more to the riddle. Until swords have put an end to me, I shall not cease to believe that it has ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... was dead, the Nazarene came and seized his seat beneath the sun, The votary of the Riddle-god, whose one is ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... other chamber; and you do not understand the cranks and the wheels here unless you know that they go through the partition and are doing something there beyond. If you shut out Eternity from our life in time, then it is an inexplicable riddle; and I, for my part, would venture to say that in that case, the men who answer the question, 'Is life worth living?' with a distinct negative, are wise. It is a tale told by an idiot, 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,' unless ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... steady eyes seemed fixed upon some point where the clouds and sea meet. She took no heed of, she did not even see, my gesture of farewell. I left her there inscrutable, a child with the face of a Sphinx. She had set me a riddle which ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... interpretation of the hermetic mystery, and of the red powder, "glistening and glorious in the sun." And the solution shone out at last, bright and amazing, as he lay quiet in the court of Avallaunius. He knew that he himself had solved the riddle, that he held in his hand the powder of projection, the philosopher's stone transmuting all it touched to fine gold; the gold of exquisite impressions. He understood now something of the alchemical symbolism; ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... on Lichtenberg's prophecy. But whether the end be seventy years hence, or seven hundred,—be the close of the mortal history of humanity as far distant in the future as its shadowy beginnings seem now to lie behind us,—this only we may foretell with confidence,—that the riddle of man's nature will remain unsolved. There will be that in him yet which physical laws will fail to explain,—that something, whatever it be, in himself and in the world, which science can not fathom, and which suggests the unknown possibilities of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... This gives occasion for a scene of some merit between Callidora, Bellula, and Florellus, in which, after vainly disputing of their loves, they form a sort of triple alliance under the name of Love's Riddle. A similar scene could obviously be worked with Callidora, Hylace, and Palaemon, and it is perhaps to Cowley's credit that he has avoided the obvious parallelism. Meanwhile Clariana has met the mad ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... commanded the queen sharply. "Thy wits are addled. Who is there who will read the riddle clearly? Thou, ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.... Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled; The glory, jest and riddle of the world. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... student of Nature quits the narrow workshop of his own particular inquiry, and sets out upon an excursion into the vast kingdom of philosophical investigation, he does so, doubtless, in the hope of finding the answer to that great riddle, to the solution of a small part of which he devotes his life. Those, however, whom he leaves behind him still working at their own special branch of inquiry, regard his departure with secret misgivings on his behalf, while the born citizens of the kingdom of speculation among whom he would ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... say that professed moralists and philosophers did much to help me out of the dilemma; but the riddle which history presented I found solved in the pages of Shakspeare. There the crooked appeared straight; the inaccessible, easy; the incomprehensible, plain. All I sought, I found there; his characters combine history and real life; they are complete individuals, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... boy?" asked Sir Wulfric haughtily. "Thy speech is dark, and eke scarce courteous. Unravel me this riddle!" ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... him, and lay awake a long time, musing on the past and the present. "Ah, I see," he said to himself, "why I am an object of wonder and something of awe to the people of the valley. I have lived apart from human ties, while they have grown old and ripe together. I must be a riddle to them all—a something which they have invested with an air of veneration, because I was not daily in their midst. Had it been otherwise, I should have been neither new nor fresh to them. How know I but this is God's reserve force wherewith ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... she managed to surround herself. There was something about her as cold and as pure as blue ice, and she gave the same impression of crystal clarity. All in all, hers was a baffling personality and Phillips fell asleep with the riddle of it unanswered. He awoke in the morning with it still upon ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the circumstances connected ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... lip, which she said were sure marks of high blood, and never found in the lower ranks! With a scornful expression on her face, old Hagar would listen to these remarks, and then, when sure that no one heard her, she would mutter: "Marks of blood! What nonsense! I'm almost glad I've solved the riddle, and know 'taint blood that makes the difference. Just tell her the truth once, and she'd quickly change her mind. Hester's blue, pinched nose, which makes one think of fits, would be the very essence of aristocracy, while Maggie's lip would come of the little Paddy ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... to him in my hearing this plain word: 'Man, do the dead no wrong; but, if thou dost, Be sure thou shalt have sorrow.' Thus he warned The infatuate one: ay, one whom I behold, For all may read my riddle—thou art he. ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... must have put the students to sleep, for every thing became quite still; and at last the riddle was silent. The evening breeze stirred gently, and the stars climbed silently up into the sky one after the other, until they were ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... died on Undine's lips. She found herself grappling with a new social riddle, and such surprises were always stimulating. The name of the untidy-looking young woman she had been about to repel was one of the most eminent in the impregnable quarter beyond the Seine. No one figured more largely in the Parisian chronicle ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... silhouette of the man at the window for an answer to the riddle. But Matheson's face was set, and the answer to the riddle was such as Lars Larssen could never have guessed. It lay outside the shipowner's pale of thought—beyond ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... we shall have sharp work. Our difficulty will be to prevent them from making a rush at all the windows together. If they were to get there, they could riddle us with balls." ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... or dreamed, this bird could say. Then down he shot, bounced airily along The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain: How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... be a simple and convenient solution of the riddle if the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type, to the realization of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But there is no warrant for such an expectation. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... Dying Alexander', at Florence. This well-known, beautiful, and deeply affecting head, which bears a strong resemblance to the Alexander Helios of the Capitol —especially in the treatment of the hair—has been called by Ottfried Mueller a riddle of archaeology. It is no doubt a Greek original, and one of the most interesting remains of ancient art, but we cannot take it for granted that it is intended for Alexander, and still less that it is the work of Lysippus. It is difficult to imagine that the favored and ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... "Here's a riddle," she said. "The brownie you locked into the stable that night always makes the butter. He isn't never thanked nor yet paid, but you've looked him in the face ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... headed by the industrious and indomitable Horace Greeley. His claim to the feelings of humanity should never be disputed; but as a practical man who sought to solve the riddle of every-day life he placed his practical views in the foreground. As a political economist he reasoned that slave labor was degrading to free labor; that free labor was better than slave labor, and, therefore, he most earnestly desired its abolition. Wherever you turn in his writings ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... interrupted that nap. He spoke out as strongly as the others concerning the great excellence of the likeness. He had some sheets of MS. in his hand, and said, "I've been reading what you wrote this morning, General, and it is of the utmost value; it solves a riddle that has puzzled men's brains all these years and makes the thing clear and rational." I asked what the puzzle was, and he said, "It was why Grant did not immediately lay siege to Vicksburg after capturing Port Hudson" (at least that is my recollection, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... again that feeling of unsatisfied comprehension came back to her. For the first time it struck her painfully that the son whom she idolized so much—whose life and character had been her one study and her one delight ever since the day of his birth—was nevertheless a riddle to her. That the secret of his inner self was as much hidden from her—his mother—as though she had been the merest stranger; that the life she had striven so closely to entwine with her own was nothing after ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... read. This fact raised a new problem far me to work upon, and I could but ask when these lines were written—before or after Mr. Pfeiffer's death and whether he had ever succeeded in solving the riddle he had suggested, or whether it was still a baffling mystery to him. I was so moved by the suggestion conveyed in his final and half-finished sentence, that I soon lost sight of these lesser inquiries in the more important one ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... trigger they saw—they were made to mount—in momentary apprehension that the backwoodsman, whose determined character was sufficiently seen in his face, might yet change his resolve, and with wanton hand, riddle their bodies with his bullets. It was only when they were mounted, that they drew a ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... mask is a riddle to which everyone wishes to guess the answer. Some say that he was the Duc de Beaufort: but the Duc de Beaufort was killed by the Turks at the defence of Candia, in 1669; and the man in the iron mask was at Pignerol, in 1662. Besides, how would one have arrested the Duc de Beaufort surrounded ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... how fine this has been. To have—the girls here, I know is due to your—special generosity, and some day I hope I'll have a chance to tell you what it has meant to me. Just now," he smiled broadly, "those freshies have me bound in their riddle game and I can't ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... which have remained perhaps a mystery for hundreds of years. I can conceive, even, that this might be of importance in settling the heirships of estates; but which now, only the two insulated parts of the story being known, remain a riddle, although the solution of it is actually in the world, if only these two parts could be united across the sea, like the ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Bible is not a riddle, neither inconsistent with itself; but if you take off one leg of a pair of compasses, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... charm would be broken, and the evil spirit would no longer have control over me. When the fortune-teller's answer was brought to my father, he gave up hope, and so did I, for no one understood the meaning of such a senseless riddle. ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... I would have studied them under the X-ray as they are being studied to-day; I would have tried the Reichert blood crystal test which is being perfected now so that it will tell heredity itself. There is no scientific stone I would have left unturned until I had delved at the truth of this riddle. Fortunately it was not necessary. Simple finger prints have told me enough. And best of all, it has been in time to frustrate that devilish scheme you and Veronica ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... taken measurements; and the edge of her weapon does not swerve by a hair's breadth. Need I give you any further proofs or examine all the other details with you? Surely not. You now possess the key to the riddle; and you know as I do that only a lunatic can behave in this way, stupidly, savagely, mechanically, like a striking clock or the blade of ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... point of entering Viterbo when a detachment from the French garrison in Rome suddenly occupied the town: one of Napoleon's facing-both-ways evolutions by which he thought to save the goat and cabbages of the Italian riddle, but the final result was to lose both one and the other. Lamoriciere went home, declaring that he took his defeat less to heart than the cruel disillusions he had undergone in Rome. Some one proposed that he should go to the ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... and stopped in front of Philippe. Philippe, he half thought, had perhaps not done his utmost. Philippe perhaps had still one stage to travel. But how was Le Corbier to find out? How was he to fathom that mysterious soul and read its insoluble riddle? Le Corbier knew those men endowed with the missionary spirit and capable, in furtherance of their cause, of admirable devotion, of almost superhuman sacrifice, but also of hypocrisy, of craft, sometimes of crime. What was this Philippe Morestal's evidence worth? ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... been so may seem very strange to us who now have been told the answer to the riddle; for the upper waters of this great river were known of before Christ and spoken of by Herodotus, Pliny and Ptolemy, and its mouths navigated continuously along by the seaboard by trading vessels since the fifteenth century, but they were ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the same. It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it. The book is therefore arranged upon the positive principle of a riddle and its answer. It deals first with all the writer's own solitary and sincere speculations and then with all the startling style in which they were all suddenly satisfied by the Christian Theology. The writer regards it as amounting to a convincing ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... will do. Yes, there are precedents for that. A riddle would be quite in accordance with Court etiquette. Ask him ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... seen through the riddle that knocked me silly, Frank. That's just what it must mean—the pay-car would offer fat pickings, all in cash; and they've held up their flight to Canada just to try and gobble it. Oh! what a slick game, with Todd giving ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... grimness of the tragedy faced him. Throughout the day he knew that he had, to a large extent, prejudged Paul's case. His own inherent dislike of the man had caused him to feel sure he was guilty. Of course there were difficulties, and of course a clever counsel would mercilessly riddle the evidence which had been adduced. Nevertheless, he had felt convinced that the jury would find him guilty. There was a perfect chain of circumstantial evidence, and he, with his long experience, knew what juries were. They ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... having discovered and demonstrated this truth.[37] One asks oneself with astonishment how this same Bakounine could declare that private property was only a consequence of the principle of authority. The solution of the riddle lies in the fact that he did not understand the materialist conception of history; he was only "adulterated" ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... he knows of no leading biologist who is of a different opinion. The prince of biologists, the late Professor Haeckel, occupied this position and impregnably fortified it in several great books, especially in his "Riddle of the Universe." ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... palest gold in the grays of dawn on the mountains. As he walked leisurely up the slight natural terrace to the plaza, he halted a moment and laughed aloud boyishly at a discovery of his, for he had solved the century-old riddle of the view of El Alisal seen from the "portal" of Soledad. The portal was not anyone of the visible doors or gateways of the old mission, it was the hidden portal of the picture,—once leading to a little balcony under which the neophytes had gathered for the morning blessing ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... into two," explained Thrush, "and go on so dividing them until you come down to the indivisible unit which is the answer to the riddle. Animal or Vegetable? Vegetable or Mineral? Northern or Southern Hemisphere? Ah! I thought your childhood was not so very much ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... For as neither king nor people are at much expence to make or mend the high ways, except just about the capital cities, they are dry or wet, rough or smooth, steep or rugged, just as the weather or the soil happens to favour or befoul them.—Now, here is a riddle for your son; I know he is an adept, and will ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... a rational explanation of the universe is covered, although it does not offer an explanation of the "ultimate," or "the riddle of the universe," does insist that any view held be one that shall be based on truth and conformity to reality. It further maintains that if a view be propagated it should be held in the same position that any scientific proposition ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... while each man was a master of his own especial art, had done most of their work in cities, and when it came to matters of the fields and woods they were not to be trusted. But when David found Roger a little inclined to vaunt his superior woodcraft he set him a riddle to answer: ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... ready shelled. To have them in perfection, they must be gathered the same day that they are dressed, and be put on to boil within half an hour after they are shelled. As large and small peas cannot be boiled together, the small ones should be separated from the rest, by being passed through a riddle or coarse sieve. For a peck of young peas, which will not be more than sufficient for two or three persons, after they are shelled, set on a saucepan with a gallon of water. When it boils, put in the peas with a table-spoonful of salt. Skim it well, keep them quickly boiling from twenty to thirty ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... baggage was the pair of snowshoes. It was the season of light travel. A single Englishman touring the world as the crow flies occupied the car. He looked at me so askance that I made an opportunity of talking to him. I should like to read his "Travels" to see what he made out of the riddle. In similar circumstances, and without explanation, I had fun talking French and swapping boulevard reminiscences with a member of a Parisian theatrical troupe making a long jump through northern Wisconsin. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... is not conclusion; A sequel stands beyond, Invisible, as music, But positive, as sound. It beckons and it baffles; Philosophies don't know, And through a riddle, at the last, Sagacity must go. To guess it puzzles scholars; To gain it, men have shown Contempt ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... read this riddle to his satisfaction—in as far, that is, as it was satisfactory to feel still more certain that Roddy's ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... that something inevitable had happened which would admit of no interference. Gorgo, as she freed herself from Constantine's embrace, stood strangely solemn and unapproachable. To the simple matron she was an inscrutable riddle to which she could find no clue; but she was pleased, nevertheless, when Gorgo came up to her and kissed her hand. She could not utter a word, for she felt that whatever she might say, it would not be the right thing; and it was a real relief to her to busy herself over the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which was refused by the players, and was, therefore, given by him to Mr. Bullock, who, having more interest, made some slight alterations, and brought it upon the stage, under the title of Woman's a Riddle[57], but allowed the unhappy author no ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... made known to the mayor of Morganton the cause and the purpose of my mission in North Carolina. I assured him that my chief had given me full power, and would render me every assistance, financial and otherwise, to solve the riddle and relieve the neighborhood of its anxiety ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... not answer, and he got stiffly to his feet. He was hot and more tired than he had been since he had left the hospital. Because he was just as sure as Ricky that the key to their riddle must be directly before them at that moment, he ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... to go. And we went to sleep at night, because we felt tired. All our existence seemed to be only for the sake of discipline; and that discipline, again, seemed a thing in itself. But the moment they told us of mobilization and war, our riddle was solved. It suddenly became clear to us why we had been caught and brought to where we were, and why we had been suffering all the time. It looked as if year in, year out, we had been walking in the darkness of some cave, and all of a sudden our path became ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... assembled to the number of upwards of two hundred, including Gellie Duncan, Agnes Sampson, Euphemia Macalzean, one Barbara Napier, and several warlocks; and each embarking in a riddle or sieve, they sailed "over the ocean very substantially." After cruising about for some time, they met with the fiend, bearing in his claws a cat, which had been previously drawn nine times through the fire. This he delivered to one of the warlocks, telling ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... it, even if poor Lochaber King had competed. But,—oh, I wish I could make head or tail of any of the things that have happened, today! How do you suppose it all started, anyhow, dear?" she asked, turning to her husband for help in the riddle. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... woman and half lion, she crouched always by a precipice near the highway, and put the same mysterious question to every passer-by. None had ever been able to answer, and none had ever lived to warn men of the riddle; for the Sphinx fell upon every one as he failed, and hurled him down the abyss, to be ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... short, we may not throw the gospels into the waste-paper basket, or put them away on the fiction shelf of our libraries. I venture to reply that we shall be, on the contrary, in the position of the man in Bunyan's riddle who found that "the more he threw away, the more he had. "We get rid, to begin with, of the idolatrous or iconographic worship of Christ. By this I mean literally that worship which is given to pictures and statues of him, and to finished and unalterable ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... great choice of very delicious fruits. We wondered whence this inexhaustible abundance, particularly of wild fruits, came; for in the forest clearings which we had passed through pasturage and agriculture were evidently only subordinate industries. At the end of the second day's march, however, the riddle was solved; for when we had reached the considerable river called the Guaso Amboni, which falls into the Indian Ocean, we found spreading out before us farther than the eye could reach a high plateau which, so far as we could see, had the character ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... giving me a riddle to guess, and I never guess riddles. I won't even try at it. But they ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet will go on talking pertly about God in nature, and of their ability to find themselves in him by studying him in his works? God in nature, without Christ, is a riddle, a ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... had gone differently these past months,—no, from his birth and from hers, too,—if every circumstance of society had not conspired to put them apart, who knows! They might have solved a riddle or two together and been happy. But it was all foolish speculation now, and it was well that their differences should be emphasized at this last chance meeting; that she should be hostile to him. He summed the matter up thus, and, as if answering her ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of the causes and results of Pessimism. It can touch the practical side of the riddle of life by asking certain questions, the answers to which lie within the province of human experience. Among these are ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... the religion of Christ do not, however, disturb the faith of Browning in the Christian revelation of Divine love. In Cleon he exhibits the failure of Paganism, even in its forms of highest culture, to solve the riddle of life and to answer the requirements of the human spirit. All that regal power liberally and wisely used can confer belongs to Protus in his Tyranny; all that genius, and learning and art can confer ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... troubled him, Michael tried to solve the riddle of how Millicent had gained her knowledge of his movements. Freddy's words had come back to him—that the fair Millicent had not come to their camp to learn of his engagement to Margaret! She had come to find out something which was more ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... silent land, removed from all human company but Marc'antonio's, with no clock but the sun and no calendar but the creeping change of the season upon the macchia, what wonder if I forgot human probabilities at times in piecing and unpiecing solutions of a riddle which itself ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... trouble. Dear, dear,' the doctor shook his head sadly, 'I shall never understand human nature; there is always an abyss below an abyss, and the firmest seeming ground is usually quagmire when you come to step on it. George Pendle is a riddle which would puzzle the Sphinx. Hum! hum! another fabulous beast. Well, well, I can only wait and watch until I discover the truth, and then—well, what then?—why, nothing!' And Graham, having talked himself into a cul-de-sac of thought, shook his head furiously and strove to ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... We shall guess it all too soon; Failure brings no kind of stigma - Dance we to another tune! String the lyre and fill the cup, Lest on sorrow we should sup; Hop and skip to Fancy's fiddle, Hands across and down the middle - Life's perhaps the only riddle That we shrink from ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... levelled dead at their heads. 'See that you stow that main-topsail in a brace of shakes! And you lubbers below, wake up there!' he exclaimed over the fore-hatch, firing a shot down below as he spoke. 'Wake up there and on deck; or, I'll riddle every mother's son of you before I count ten. You, Black Harry, I know you've set this pretty little scheme going! Up with you, or by the Lord Harry, your namesake, I'll put a bullet ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... explanation of this last riddle, except, "Dat mean, if you go on de leff, go to 'struction, and if you go on de right, go to ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... that his curiosity about them could never be quite satisfied. Other mysteries come and go, but the gipsy mystery stays with us, and was to Borrow a source of endless content. For after sharpening his wits on the ethnological riddle, he could refresh himself with the psychical aspect of the matter, discovering in them the incarnation of one essential human quality, incompletely present in all men. They are the perfect vagabonds; but the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... sake, and in the name of One Whom mayhap ye will know one day. He died that ye should live! Bear that in mind and ponder on it. Mayhap ye will find the solution to that riddle. That such as you should live in eternity, therefore did He die.... When ye have understood this and can explain the value of your lives as compared with His, come and tell it to the praefect of Rome and he will shower on ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of mystification—religious, political, scientific and artistic," suggested Gouache. "The people of that day will guess the Sphynx's riddle." ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... Middlemount before anything of the kind should happen. She gave Milray these impressions of Clementina in the letter she wrote to thank him for her, and to scold him for sending the girl to her. She accused him of wishing to get off on her a riddle which he could not read himself; but she owned that the charm of Clementina's mystery was worth a thousand times the fatigue of trying to guess her out and that she was more and more ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... her, and they were civil to her for his sake. Curiosity was very much excited, but entirely baffled; no one, of course, dared speak to P. on the subject, and no other means could be found of solving the riddle. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of thirty the face of a woman is a book written in a foreign tongue, which one may still translate in spite of all the feminisms of the idiom; but on passing her fortieth year a woman becomes an insoluble riddle; and if any one can see through an old woman, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Life and Being, Thou wouldst see through Birth and Death. Thou wouldst solve the eternal Riddle, Thou, a speck, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... half-forgotten dream. The blank space in her memory remained as a patch of darkness through which her thread of life had run indeed but of which no record remained. She had ceased to attempt to read the riddle, half in dread and half in sheer helplessness. It did not seem to matter. Surely, as Max had once said to her, ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Christian baron of France had pointed out with ill-disguised contempt, but whose plans and purposes had now acquired such world-wide importance that grave diplomats and shrewd churchmen esteemed the difficult riddle of her sphinx-like countenance and character a worthy subject of prolonged study. Not far from their royal brother, were two children: the elder, a boy of ten years, Edward Alexander, a few years later to appear on the pages of history under the altered ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... parasites of field and meadow so far from being hurtful, are well worth cultivating for the good they do. For a long time the men who devoted themselves to the study of peas, beans, clovers, and other plants of the pulse family, were confronted with a riddle they could not solve. These plants all manage to enrich themselves with compounds of nitrogen, which make them particularly valuable as food, and these compounds often exist in a degree far exceeding ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... had gone, Dom Manuel went again to the farthest window, opened it, and looked out once more. He shook his head, as one who gives up a riddle. He armed himself, and rode over to Perdigon, whither sainted King Ferdinand had come to consult with Manuel about contriving the assassination of the Moorish general, Al-Mota-wakkil. This matter Dom Manuel deputed to Guivric the Sage; and ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... crumbled to pieces at my feet. That transient vision of the beautiful half reclaimed me from my doubts; the darkness of the succeeding night taught me juster views of the miseries of man and the incomprehensible riddle of his existence; and I half blushed at my glimpse of ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... sees only efficient causes at work in it. Dualism, on the contrary, holds that nature and spirit, matter and force, the world and God, inorganic and organic nature, are separate and independent existences. Cf. The Riddle of the Universe chapter 12.) At this point the science of human evolution has a direct and profound bearing on the foundations of philosophy. Modern anthropology has, by its astounding discoveries during the second half of the nineteenth century, ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... the as yet virgin domain of entomology he unravelled the riddle of the marvellous republic of the bees, and was able to expound and interpret a large number of those tiny lives which every one had hitherto despised, and which indeed they continued to despise until the ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... catch sight of them," said Mr. Edison, "we shall have to riddle the car on the chance of ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... Legislature has no constitutional right to exclude slavery. And I have argued and said that for men who did intend that the people of the Territory should have the right to exclude slavery absolutely and unconditionally, the voting down of Chase's amendment is wholly inexplicable. It is a puzzle—a riddle. But I have said that with men who did look forward to such a decision, or who had it in contemplation, that such a decision of the Supreme Court would or might be made, the voting down of that amendment would be perfectly rational and intelligible. It would keep Congress from coming ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... Leviticus. But it was about the wave-offering, and the sin-offering, and the burnt-offering. That was not it, and so he went from book to book until he had reached the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the fourteenth chapter of the book of Judges. He was just reading in that place about Samson's riddle, when his mamma called him ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... since our Maker Himself cannot undo the work of yesterday, or obliterate events embalmed in vanished time, yet there is always the future; and if we could but read the past aright, which we never can, then the future would prove less of a painful riddle than mankind generally ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... "That is a riddle, but I think I see an answer at any rate to half of it. Then the marriage would still take ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... I thinking about?" was the way Thad took himself to task presently; "trying to find the answer to a riddle by bothering my brains, when it ought to be written here on the sand as plain ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... outside a tenement door, awaiting the return of the doctor from a visit to a poor sick soul inside the tenement, he became deeply moved by the ragged children playing in the gutters and reaching into garbage barrels for crusts of bread. He said: "Ah! here's the riddle of civilization. I wish I could help to ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... you: To the rich men that eat up a realm there cometh a time when they whom they eat up, that is the poor, seem poorer than of wont, and their complaint goeth up louder to the heavens; yet it is no riddle to say that oft at such times the fellowship of the poor is waxing stronger, else would no man have heard his cry. Also at such times is the rich man become fearful, and so waxeth in cruelty, and of that cruelty do people misdeem that it is power and might ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... past. From this flight path he could determine where they would have hit the earth—if they were meteorites. They would search this area, and if they found parts of a meteorite they would have the answer to the green fireball riddle. ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... destroyer signaled she was almost abreast of them, but about two miles away to the north. Her message then could be read by all the boys. The words it spelled out, however, were a complete riddle: ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... Why? Porter" (a respectable Samoan trader) "told him that he would riddle him if he came inside his fence, and the scoundrel knows me well enough not to come into my place with anything but a civil word on his foul tongue; but then you see, Porter and I are Americans. If either or both of us shot the man no commander of ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... was the continued inactivity of Moira's force in the Solent and the Channel Islands. The reports of an intended French invasion form a wholly inadequate excuse for his inaction. His troops could have rendered valuable service either in Brittany, Flanders, or at Toulon. The riddle of their inaction has never been solved. Ultimately the blame must rest with Pitt, Dundas, and ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... ambition of France and the cautious reactionary despotism of Spain, remained suspended. Students are left, face to face with the sixteenth century, to decipher an inscription that lacks its leading verb, to puzzle over a riddle whereof the solution is hidden from us by the ruin of a people. It must ever be an undecided question whether the Italians, undisturbed by foreign interference, could have passed beyond the artificial and exceptional stage of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... kind Gessina," he answered, taking her hand. "But this is a riddle that I cannot explain. Art thou in the habit of entering the palace ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... are rather stupid to have given up the riddle?" she asked, as she and her escort turned away and stepped out again ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... look beyond them we might read the Riddle of the Universe. I think we could—I think so!" Here was the undercurrent of sadness again, sounding through an odd intensity of tone. "Surely, there is something beyond them. There must be! What ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... memoir so just and tender which, he prefixes to his son's literary remains, remarks that all his son's talk about this old desperate riddle of the origin and significance of evil, like the talk of Leibnitz about it, resolved itself into an unproved assumption of the necessity of evil. In truth there is little sign that either Arthur Hallam ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... it goes far toward explaining both the physiological and the structural gradations and relations between the two kingdoms, and the arrangement of all their forms in groups subordinate to groups, all within a few great types; that it reads the riddle of abortive organs and of morphological conformity, of which no other theory has ever offered a scientific explanation, and supplies a ground for harmonizing the two fundamental ideas which naturalists and philosophers conceive to have ruled the organic world, though they could not reconcile ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... previous millennium. With the city before me I could well believe that, but I am very curious to know what some of the changes have been. To make a beginning somewhere, for the subject is doubtless a large one, what solution, if any, have you found for the labor question? It was the Sphinx's riddle of the nineteenth century, and when I dropped out the Sphinx was threatening to devour society, because the answer was not forthcoming. It is well worth sleeping a hundred years to learn what the right answer was, if, indeed, you have found ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... to Beryl he was in some ways more of a riddle than ever. He talked curiously little about the war—at least to her. He had a way of finding out, both at Chicksands and Mannering, men who had lost sons in France, and when he and Beryl took a walk, it seemed to Beryl as though ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you is, that his mind (when I happen to meet him) seems to be as completely absorbed as ever in brains and nerves. But, what they can have to do with chemical experiments, secretly pursued in a lonely field, is a riddle to which I have thus ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... down, good Spirit! for the changes are great and the speech of Florentines would sound as a riddle in your ears. Or, if you go, mingle with no politicians on the marmi, or elsewhere; ask no questions about trade in the Calimara; confuse yourself with no inquiries into scholarship, official or monastic. Only look at the sunlight and shadows on the grand walls ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... if poor Lochaber King had competed. But,—oh, I wish I could make head or tail of any of the things that have happened, today! How do you suppose it all started, anyhow, dear?" she asked, turning to her husband for help in the riddle. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... speak or doff thy dress." At this, he rose and said, "O Commander of the Faithful, bear witness against me that this damsel is more learned than I in medicine and what else, and that I cannot cope with her." And he put off his clothes and fled forth. Quoth the Caliph to Tawaddud, "Ree us thy riddle," and she replied, "O Commander of the Faithful, it is the button and the button-loop.[FN414]"—Then she undertook the astronomers and said, "Let him of you who is an astronomer rise and come forward." So the astronomer advanced and sat down before ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... her wits to his. Between them they polished the riddle; but by the time it was done the Home Secretary had begun to find Meadows's little wife, whose existence he had not noticed hitherto, more agreeable than Lady Dunstable's table with its racked countenances, and its too ample supply of pencils and paper. A deadly ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... journeying hopefully back to the Kresneys' bungalow, on the shoulders of four long-suffering jhampanis, who murmured a little among themselves, without rancour or vexation, concerning the perplexing ways of Memsahibs in general. For the native of India the supreme riddle of ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... melancholy; there is something calm, severe, manly, and mysterious about him which interests me profoundly. His unvarying solemnity and the silence which envelops him act like an irritant on the mind. His mute dignity is worthy of a fallen king. Griffith and I spend our time over him as though he were a riddle. ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... grand flourish of the entire band, consisting of trombone, riddle and drum, two small Manilla ponies made their entree, accompanied by attendants enough to have borne them on bodily. Senor y Seniorita followed hand in hand, and introduced themselves, in character, with a graceful bow, a modest curtsy, and the disengaged hand on his heart, on the part ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... of the true condition of affairs as any of the public. What to think of the wholesale destruction of the leading magnates, is a riddle to him. ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... "Riddle me, riddlemaree," quoth I, "Is a game that's ill to win, And the day is o'er fair such tasks to try"— Said he, "Ye shall know at the inn." With that he suited his path to mine And we travelled merrily, Till I was ware of the promised sign And the door of an hostelry. And the Romany ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 24, 1917 • Various
... reconcile sinners to a holy and infinite Majesty; to be a just God, and YET a Saviour; to be just to his law, just to his threatening, just to himself, and yet save sinners, can no way be understood till thou understandest why Jesus Christ did hang on the tree; for here only is the riddle unfolded, 'Christ died for our sins,' and therefore can God in justice save us (Isa 45:21). And hence is Christ called the Wisdom of God, not only because he is so essentially, but because by him is the greatest revelation of his wisdom towards man. In ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... so is a question for philosophy in the highest sense of that word. The fact of his having done so is matter of history. Shall I solve my own riddle? ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... sight of them," said Mr. Edison, "we shall have to riddle the car on the chance of ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... slowly shook his head. Something was forming itself in his mind, this was evident. He walked around the ledge and back again. Finally, he said: "I wish it were night, it might help to solve the riddle." ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... France and the cautious reactionary despotism of Spain, remained suspended. Students are left, face to face with the sixteenth century, to decipher an inscription that lacks its leading verb, to puzzle over a riddle whereof the solution is hidden from us by the ruin of a people. It must ever be an undecided question whether the Italians, undisturbed by foreign interference, could have passed beyond the artificial and exceptional stage of the Renaissance to a sounder and more substantial phase ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... most pig-headed sot! (aloud) Young man, you cannot know the risk you run. Th' alternative's in earnest—not in fun. Dame Turandot will spin you a tough riddle, That's not to be "got thro' like any fiddle." Not such as this, which any child might guess— (Though the Emperor could not, I must confess;) "What gives a cold, cures a cold, and pays the doctor's bill?" Not short enigmas lightly disentangled; ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... for some time to solve this riddle, I concluded that I must be the victim of my own imagination; and I turned my attention to making the best possible use of my sudden fortune. On the same day, I took a little room in the Faubourg St. Denis; and I bought myself a sewing-machine. Before the week was ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... damn the clubs! A blaze of light and raucous voices, ships' masters, ships' chandlers, merchants, discussing the riddle of local politics, and the simony of office; or the price of hides, and freight charges; how a ship's master could turn a pretty penny in bringing out shoddy clothes, or pianos—Jesus! they were crazy for pianos here! Rattle of glasses ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... sharing their duties and their hardships, participating in wild, daring night rides, facing appalling storms, battling with swollen torrents, bravely facing many perils, and tow eventually Tad Butler and his companions solved the Veiled Riddle of the Plains, thus bringing great happiness to others as well as keen ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... her. "Point is, where are you going? All dressed up and somewhere to go! I'll bet you have! I've seen you jazzing about the place when you haven't seen me, Dods. And heard about you! There was a chap with me watching you at the Riddle Club the other night told ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... should so long have announced my lord Egremont to you for a master, without his announcing himself to you.—it was no fault of mine; every thing here is a riddle or an absurdity. Instead of coming forth secretary of state, he went out of town, declaring he knew nothing of the matter. On that, it was affirmed that he had refused the seals. The truth is, they have never been offered to him in form. He had been sounded, and I believe ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... down the canal, ever and anon we see some empty returning boat (called "light boat" in the technical canal phrase) rounding a curve before us, It comes nearer: the horses walk the same tow-path: how are the boats to pass without confusion? Ah, the riddle is solved. Our captain (who holds the helm while the boy, his assistant, is down in the cabin preparing supper) calls out suddenly, at the last moment, "Whoa!" The well-trained horses instantly stop; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... than any man we know of in history? Is it a great figure? Does our emphasis fall on the great features of that nature—are they within our vision, and in our drawing? Does our explanation of him really explain him, or leave him more a riddle? What do we make of his originality? Is it in our picture? What was it in him that changed Peter and James and John and the rest from companions into worshippers, that in every age has captured and controlled the best, the deepest, and tenderest of men? Are we afraid that our picture ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... head, for the riddle seemed quite unreadable, and as we had already sat up until long past midnight I begged for my candle, and proposed to defer our conversation until the morning. Jack, declaring that none of the beds in the damp old house was fit to sleep in without a week of previous airing, insisted ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... about a bridge at night, especially for unhappy souls who have grappled with fate and think themselves worsted. Perhaps they find a melancholy pleasure in the company of ghosts who have escaped from similar defeats; perhaps they seek to read the riddle of the universe, as they stand, elbows on rail, studying ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... summer's evening," whose soft cadences are breathed through strains of music,—all is a rapid succession of hope, fear, terror, and gladness; exciting our sympathies now for the result of the merchant's danger; now for the solution of a riddle on which hangs the fate of the wealthy heiress; and now for the fugitive Jessica, who resigns her creed at the shrine ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... reveal the destination of the fugitives; but we have learned, through your clever little daughter, that they have gone to a country where there is order, but where there are no police. That, methinks, is not a very difficult riddle to solve. You need only journey from place to place until you find such a country. The fugitives will be certain to betray themselves by their secrecy, and I have not the least doubt but your search will be rewarded before ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... in all its applications, she also had that artistic spirit of reconstruction which enabled her to apply to life what she held in theory. Along with the calm philosophic spirit which thinks out "the painful riddle of the earth," she had the creative spirit of the artist which delights in portraying life in all its endeavors, complexities and consequences. She not only accepted the theory of hereditary transmission as science has recently developed ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... would it be? Could she control this game? Could she elect which man should live and which should die—this woman, scorned, abased, mastered? Neither of these sought to read the riddle of her set face and blazing eyes. Each as he might offered ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... great Selim marked her fire, and read her riddle well, And watched her from the flushing to the fading of the spell, He sprang forgetful, from his seat, and caught her as ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... again, with the poets; and most of all I found no interest (fancy!) in Plato and Aristotle. They were presented to me as merely school books; not as the great effort of the cultivated heathen mind to solve the riddle of man's being; and I, in those days, never thought of comparing the heathen and Christian ethics, and the great writers ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a pilot had full need of every faculty. To the right of them came flashes of flame accompanied by the spiteful crackle of gunfire. Rival marksmen were trying to riddle one another, sometimes flying ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... had taken measurements; and the edge of her weapon does not swerve by a hair's breadth. Need I give you any further proofs or examine all the other details with you? Surely not. You now possess the key to the riddle; and you know as I do that only a lunatic can behave in this way, stupidly, savagely, mechanically, like a striking clock or the blade ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... that spoils all the former, for these farthingales take up all the room now-a-days; 'tis not a woman, questionless. Shall I be put down with a riddle? Sirrah Heuresis, search the corners of your conceit, and find it ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... wish to goodness we had a good scud o' cash among us, an' we safe an' snug in America! Now shake hands an' good bye—an' mark me—if you dhrame of America an' a long purse any o' these nights, come to me an' I'll riddle your dhrame for you." ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... time is momentous for all nations, the future is a tangled riddle; for the Slavs this seems true in a double measure. To involved social problems is added race opposition in the breasts of neighbors, a deep, sullen historic hostility. Hence when a writer of power appears among the Slavs, whether he takes up the past or the present, he ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... from the spindle into skeins in another way,—by using a hand-reel, an implement which really did exist in every farmhouse, though the dictionaries are ignorant of it, as they are of its universal folk-name, niddy-noddy. This is fortunately preserved in an every-day domestic riddle:— ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... the air. Every great literature has always been allegorical—allegorical of some view of the whole universe. The 'Iliad' is only great because all life is a battle, the 'Odyssey' because all life is a journey, the Book of Job because all life is a riddle. There is one attitude in which we think that all existence is summed up in the word 'ghosts'; another, and somewhat better one, in which we think it is summed up in the words 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' Even the vulgarest melodrama or detective story can be ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... there was no wind. So unearthly was the quiet of the night, so solemn the light, so high and still and calm the universe around him, that awe fell upon his soul. It was well to lie upon the hilltop and guess at the riddle of the world; now dimly to see the meaning, now to lose it quite, to wonder, to think of death. The easy consciousness that for him death was scores of years away, that he should not meet the spectre until the wine was all drunken, the garlands ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... eventually decay through failure of any memory to support it, and tell it what to do. This corresponds absolutely with what we observe in organisms generally, and explains, on the one hand, why the age of puberty marks the beginning of completed development—a riddle hitherto not only unexplained but, so far as I have seen, unasked; it explains, on the other hand, the phenomena of old age—hitherto without even ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... Chia Lan and the others were at the same time sent for, and every one of them set to work to exert the energies of his mind, and, when they arrived at a guess, they noted it down on paper; after which every individual member of the family made a choice of some object, and composed a riddle, which was transcribed in a large round hand, and affixed on the lantern. This done, the eunuch took his departure, and when evening drew near, he came out and delivered the commands of the imperial consort. "The conundrum," he ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... abhorred people, how came He to tower above all teachers, and to sway the world? 'With whom took He counsel? and who instructed Him, and taught Him?' The character and work of Christ, compared with the circumstances of His origin and environment, are an insoluble riddle, except on one supposition—that He was the word ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the closing chapter. This was one of the birds that had escaped me in my first visit to Colorado, save as I had caught tantalizing glimpses of him from the car-window on the plain beyond Denver, and when I went south to Colorado Springs, I utterly failed to find him. It has been a sort of riddle to me that not one could be discovered in that vicinity, while two years later these birds were abundant on the plains both east and west of Denver. If Colorado Springs is a little too far south for them in the summer, Denver is obviously just to their ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... mind! He had flattered himself that he had reached the end of her superficial attractions; and in a minute, by some startling metamorphosis, she was changed from a being of transparent shallows into the immemorial riddle of sex. She might be anything, or everything, except the ingenuous girl ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... not to say a growing, number of beardless, ambitious boys, who advance, head erect, and the heart that Princess Tourandocte of the Mille et un Jours—each one of them fain to be her Prince Calaf. But never a one of them reads the riddle. One by one they drop, some into the trench where failures lie, some into the mire of journalism, some again into ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... a subtle and profound remark of Hegel's that the riddle which the Sphinx, the Egyptian symbol of the mysteriousness of Nature, propounds to Oedipus is only another way of expressing the command of the Delphic oracle, "Know thyself." And when the answer is given the Sphinx casts herself down from her rock. When man knows himself, ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... recently that, for Rosina's riddle in his episode of the masks in Samson, he had dipped in the stream of children's games current to-day in Palermo; he did not appear to know that Plato had dipped in his own Athenian stream for the riddle quoted by Glaucon towards the end of the ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... he should mix with the losing side. But this theory jibed so ill with Monsieur's character that not even his worst detractor could accept it. For he was known to all as a hotspur—a man who acted quickly and seldom counted the cost. Therefore his present conduct was a riddle, nor could any of the emissaries from King or League, who came from time to time to enlist his aid and went away without it, read the answer. The puzzle was too deep for them. Yet it was only this: ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... anecdotes about our being lost through inability to riddle out our name on the part of the police, I must relate an instance where the post-office displayed remarkable powers of divination. One day I received an official notification from the post-office that there was a misdirected parcel for me from Moscow, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... you tink to be varry conning; mais you not so conning as Kookoo, no;" and the inquisitive little man would shake his head and smile, and shake his head again, as a man has a perfect right to do under the conviction that he has been for twenty years baffled by a riddle and is learning to read it at last; he had guessed what was in 'Sieur George's head, he would by and by guess what was ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... ingenious conjectures touching these mysterious letters have been communicated to me, but I am convinced that the true solution has not yet been suggested. (1850.) I still greatly doubt whether the riddle has been solved. But the most plausible interpretation is one which, with some variations, occurred, almost at the same time, to myself and to several other persons; I am inclined to read "Pere Mansuete A Cordelier Friar." Mansuete, a Cordelier, was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the Ego Consciousness may not understand the Riddle of the Universe or be able to give an answer to the great Questions of Life—but he has ceased to worry about them—they now disturb him not. He may use his intellect upon them as before, but never with the feeling that in their intellectual ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... up in the elevator he pondered over the conundrum; and all the evening he turned it over in his mind. At last, tired with the day's activities, he went to bed, hoping that dreams might furnish him with a solution of the riddle. But although he slept hard no dreams came and morning found him no nearer the answer than he ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... Bending down and picking it up, his face was lighted with a smile. He quietly took his foot from the stirrup, and turning to Ammalat, "Mount!" said he, "you shall presently find with your own eyes an answer to this riddle. The Russian bullets are of lead; but this is copper[42]—an Avaretz, my dear countryman. Besides, it comes from the south, where the Russians ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... the influence of Socrates notions which have found their way into the drama, and may be learned at the theatre. Socrates undertakes to show that Meletus (rather unjustifiably) has been compounding a riddle in this part of the indictment: 'There are no gods, but Socrates believes in the existence of the sons of gods, ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... prey, and the young lion lurking in secret places,' but, in that kingdom, the wolf shall lie down with the lamb, and the fatling with the lion, and 'a little child shall lead them.' There is death in the thoughts of men: the world is one wide riddle to them, darker and darker as it draws to a close; but the secret of it is known to the child, and the Lord of heaven and earth is most to be thanked in that 'He has hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes.' Yes, and there is death—infinitude ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the captain. "It's hardly possible that these people know why we're here, and hardly likely that they have any interest in the Raposa. Lord knows I've nothing else up my sleeve. It's a riddle to me." ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... ablution, lavation[obs3], colature|; disinfection &c. v.; drainage, sewerage. lavatory, laundry, washhouse[obs3]; washerwoman, laundress, dhobi[obs3], laundryman, washerman[obs3]; scavenger, dustman[obs3], sweep; white wings brush[Local U. S.]; broom, besom[obs3], mop, rake, shovel, sieve, riddle, screen, filter; blotter. napkin, cloth, maukin|, malkin|, handkerchief, towel, sudary[obs3]; doyley[obs3], doily, duster, sponge, mop, swab. cover, drugget[obs3]. wash, lotion, detergent, cathartic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... work, but the theoretic problem is not solved' (p. 23). The question is, 'How the diversity can exist in harmony with the oneness' (p. 118). To go back to pure experience is unavailing. 'Mere feeling gives no answer to our riddle' (p. 104). Even if your intuition is a fact, it is not an understanding. 'It is a mere experience, and furnishes no consistent view' (pp. 108-109). The experiences offered as facts or truths 'I find that my intellect rejects because they contradict themselves. ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... answered Ali Partab, with the air of a man who knew all of the secret details but would not admit it. Jaimihr began to think that he had lit at random on the answer to the riddle. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... I ha been occupied this day wi business o' graat importance. His Majesty King Charles has been wi me since seven o'clock this mornin. And for th' fust time I ha been gettin reet to th' bottom o' things wi him. I ha been probin him, Davy—probin him. He couldno riddle through wi lees; I kept him to 't, as yo mun keep a horse to a jump—straight an tight. I had it aw out about Strafford, an t'Five Members, an thoose dirty dealins wi th' Irish devils! Yo should ha yerd it, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ones I have written about a month ago, that though I know you are answering them, I don't understand what you are talking about the least in the world. I don't want to discourage you, you know. Your letters are rather enhanced in value by their riddle-like quotations. They make me wonder what on earth I can have been writing about. I do not even remember, unless you tell me, whether they were long or short; and, except for my consciousness of never having written in a strain of trifling or levity, or otherwise than in a manner ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... in the kitchen and hurried back to his guests. There was the riddle of the Quantocks to solve: there were the tableaux vivants imminent: there was the little red-haired boy coming in ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... man as he had already deduced it with the evident passion for the beautiful. That such a connoisseur of art objects could harbor in so broad and cultured a mind the machinations of such infamy seemed almost incredible. The riddle was not new with Reginald Warren's case: for morals and "culture" have shown their sociological, economic and even diplomatic independence of each other from the time when the memory of ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... speak of the causes and results of Pessimism. It can touch the practical side of the riddle of life by asking certain questions, the answers to which lie within the province of human experience. Among these ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... the Princess, the Caliph appeared deep in thought. "If everything does not deceive me," he said, "there is a secret connection between our fates; but where can I find the key to this riddle?" ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... thing. But he made no plans for release. Kedzie had given no hint of an inclination to misconduct. She was certainly not going to follow Gilfoyle into the beyond. Jim was left helpless with an unanswerable riddle on his mind. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... something against which the fiercer devil within me would rise in vain. I have read that the tiger can be awed by the human eye, and you compel me into submission by a spell equally unaccountable. You are a singular man, and it seems to me a riddle, how we could ever have been thus connected; or how—but we will not rip up the past, it is an ugly sight, and the fire is just out. Those stories do not do for the dark. But to return;—were it only for the sake of my child, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she came from nobody could ever tell, for she was a black stranger in this part of the country. At all events, she lived in the town below, but how she lived nobody could tell either. Everything about her was a riddle; no wondher, considherin' she hardly was ever known to spake to any one, from the lark to the lamb. At length she began to be subjected by many sensible people to be something not right; which you know, sir, was only natural. Peter ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... princess is said to have visited Solomon, "to prove him with hard questions," by which have generally been understood enigmatical puzzles. Some of these are to be found in sacred writ, of which the riddle which Samson proposed to the young men of Timnath, is a very ancient and curious specimen. It appears from the writings of the ancients, that the Greeks and all the Eastern nations, were singularly attached to enigmas. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... you my riddle, then. You are a widow, rich; as women go, you are not so unpleasant to look at as most of 'em. If it became a clergyman to dwell upon such matters, I would say that your fleshly habitation is too fine ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... returning from Crosthwaite Church in the afternoon. For "oncers" were unknown in those times, neither by poets and historians like Southey, nor by travellers such as we were. We had attended morning service. A stranger officiated. His name was Bush, and this is important. A family "riddle" impressed the name upon me. "Why were we all like Moses to-day?" "We had heard the word out of a Bush," was the reply. But at the afternoon service I was deeply impressed. The Rev. M. Bush having read the lessons, came out of the prayer-desk, and to my amazement and great interest ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... content to dismiss no riddle with a mere "I do not know." Jurgen was no more able to give up questioning the meaning of life than could a trout relinquish swimming: indeed, he lived submerged in a flood of curiosity and doubt, as his native element. That ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... horse at once. It is all very mysterious and extraordinary; but then you have been a mystery, Rupert Hyde, a riddle and a puzzle, ever since I ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... these two uses of a clipped-up and half-empty Bible, you may make gains that shall yet set you above those whose Bibles of promises are still as fresh as when they came from God's own hand. And Samson said, I will now put forth a riddle unto you: Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... innumerable other Instances, the Metaphors are very bold but just; I must however observe that the Metaphors are not [so] thick sown in Milton which always savours too much of Wit; that they never clash with one another, which, as Aristotle observes, turns a Sentence into a kind of an Enigma or Riddle; [6] and that he seldom has recourse to them where the proper and natural Words will do ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... through life been the patron of the colonel; but why he had so done, and what communications he could possibly have made with regard to me, that Colonel Carden should speak of "my plans" and proffer assistance in them was a perfect riddle; and the only solution, one so ridiculously flattering that I dared not think of it. I read and re-read the note; misplaced the stops; canvassed every expression; did all to detect a meaning different from the obvious one, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... boat-steerers and harpooners, had a lay of only one seventy-fifth, or perhaps a little more than two hundred dollars cash as the reward of a voyage which netted the owner at least fifty per cent on his investment. Occasionally they fared better than this and sometimes worse. The answer to the riddle is that they liked the life and had always the gambling spirit which hopes for a lucky turn ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... understood her. She was the first woman he had known. For if poor Sabine was a woman he had known, he had known nothing of her: she had always remained for him a phantom of his heart. Ada took upon herself to make him make up for lost time. In his turn he tried to solve the riddle of woman; an enigma which perhaps is no enigma except for those who seek some meaning ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... there it spread over all Ireland, then to Scotland, thence to England, and Jacob's Stone in Westminster Abbey marks the journey of David's throne, and has always kept with the seed, and they have been always crowned on it. Ezekiel's riddle is at once solved. The tender twigs were Zedekiah's daughters. One of these twigs was planted by the great waters in a land of traffic. Our Episcopalian friends intended by their beautiful service to aid the members of their communion to read in order, ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... and peer out into the thick air with an earnestness born of terror. "Surely," says the master to his mate, "I am past the Magdalens, and still far from Anticosti, yet we have breakers; which way can we turn?" The riddle solves itself; for out of the gloom come whitened walls, ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... I went through the garden gap, Who should I meet but Dick Red-cap! A stick in his hand, a stone in his throat, If you'll tell me this riddle, ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... wish to save herself at the same time, and in the very teeth as it were of the Koshare, grew stronger and stronger. It waxed to an intense longing for life and revenge. But what was to be done? There was the riddle, and to solve it she thought and thought. Shotaye became oblivious of all around her, completely absorbed in ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... interesting and I wish 1 could print it even with its imperfections. There are references to White, Dyer, Coleridge ("Pity that such human frailties should perch upon the margin of Ulswater Lake") and the Lloyds. Also to politics and the riddle of life. "What we came here for I know no ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... perfectly erect upon his horse, with the pike-shaft resting upon his toe, as he told himself that he hoped if the men fired they would miss; that before he would run away, with Scar Markham to laugh at his flight, they might riddle him with bullets through ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... Spanish infantry. But neither the abilities nor the auspicious fortunes of Charles were inherited with this vast dominion by Philip. It is almost a mystery the crumbling away during his reign of such wealth and such strength. To read the riddle, we must know Philip. The biography which we shall now hurriedly sketch, of one of his most eminent favourites and ministers, who was, also, one of the most remarkable men that ever lived, enables us to see further into the breast of the gloomy, jealous, and ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... connection, and might even piece out the broken relics of family history, which have remained perhaps a mystery for hundreds of years. I can conceive, even, that this might be of importance in settling the heirships of estates; but which now, only the two insulated parts of the story being known, remain a riddle, although the solution of it is actually in the world, if only these two parts could he united across the sea, like the wires of ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... senses in terms of consciousness. The explanation may be all wrong in the eyes of omniscience. All one can say is that it is a practical working basis, and is good enough for mundane purposes. But if I am asked if I can solve the riddle of the Universe I can only answer, No. Brunetiere then retorts that science is bankrupt. But this is equivocal. It only means that it cannot meet demands beyond its power ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... than she had yet known from him might spring up, if they were not forced to separate. Once, on rising from kneeling, she saw him stealthily brushing off his tears, and his eyes were heavy and swollen, but, softened as she felt, his tone of feelings was a riddle beyond her power, between their keenness and their petulance, their manly depth and boyish levity, their remorse and their recklessness; and when he tried to throw them off, she could not ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dew At morn in brake or bosky avenue. Whate'er birds did or dreamed, this bird could say. Then down he shot, bounced airily along The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain: How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... shrewdly as firmly, and have taken no hurt. It remains only to pluck it. For heaven's sake no over-confidence or premature elation; but there is really good hope that Sir Redvers Buller has solved the Riddle of the Tugela—at last. At last! I expect there will be some who will inquire—'Why not "at first"?' All I can answer is this: There is certainly no more capable soldier of high rank in all the army in Natal than Sir Redvers Buller. For three months he has been ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... said so. Explain this riddle to me, you who're wise. Whenever I appeared in public arm in arm with a woman, my wife, who was beautiful and whom I adored, I felt ashamed of my own weakness. Explain ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... Which I think is a little more than the truth,—and only a little, as perhaps may appear by and by. Beyond dispute, these Polish events did at last grow interesting enough to Prussia and its King;—and it will be our task, sufficient in this place, to extricate and riddle out what few of these had any cardinal or notable quality, and put them down (dated, if possible, and in intelligible form), as pertinent to throwing light on this distressing matter, with careful exclusion of the immense mass which can ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... gate, Luke Havergal, There are the crimson leaves upon the wall. Go, — for the winds are tearing them away, — Nor think to riddle the dead words they say, Nor any more to feel them as they fall; But go! and if you trust her she will call. There is the western gate, Luke ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... this other universe rose, is a curious point upon which Plattner insists. During the Other-World night it is difficult to move about, on account of the vividness with which the things of this world are visible. It becomes a riddle to explain why, if this is the case, we in this world catch no glimpse of the Other-World. It is due, perhaps, to the comparatively vivid illumination of this world of ours. Plattner describes the midday of the Other-World, at its brightest, as not being nearly so bright as this ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... burglary, committed in the house of a gentleman of the name of Hursley, during the temporary absence of the family, which had completely nonplussed the unpractised Dogberrys of the place, albeit it was not a riddle at all difficult to read. The premises, it was quickly plain to me, had been broken, not into, but out of; and a watch being set upon the motions of the very specious and clever person left in charge of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... did not cross, although it is hard for any one who has read The Riddle of the Sands to refrain. Had we been there in the nesting season I might have wandered in search of the sea birds' and the plovers' eggs, just for old sake's sake, as I have in the island of Coll, but we were too late, ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... electioneering, of popular agitation, parliamentary eloquence, and all political effort whatsoever, is that you may get the ten Ablest Men in England put to preside over your ten principal departments of affairs. To sift and riddle the Nation, so that you might extricate and sift out the true ten gold grains, or ablest men, and of these make your Governors or Public Officers; leaving the dross and common sandy or silty material safely aside, as the thing ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... unpleasant thoughts, Grayson sat at his desk in the office of the ranch trying to unravel the riddle of a balance sheet which would not balance. Mixed with the blue of the smoke from his briar was the deeper azure of a spirited monologue in which Grayson ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... stood; by accident, or by design, his appetite conformed to potent and permanent forces; and, wherein it did not, he was, in spite of Wolsey's remark, content to forgo its gratification. It was not he, but the Reformation, which put the kingdoms of Europe to the hazard. The Sphinx propounded her riddle to all nations alike, and all were required to answer. Should they cleave to the old, or should they embrace the new? Some pressed forward, others held back, and some, to their own confusion, replied in dubious tones. Surrounded by faint hearts and fearful ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... to base his conviction that "even the atom is not without rudimentary form of sensation and will,—or, as it is better expressed, of feeling (aesthesis), and of inclination (tropesis),—that is to [221] say, a universal soul of the simplest kind." I may quote also from Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe the following paragraph expressing the monistic notion of substance as ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... in rivers.—To riddle. To fire through and through a vessel, and reduce her to a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... succeeds to the throne of Thebes. The country around is vexed with a terrible monster, with the face of a woman, the wings of a bird, and the tail of a lion, called the Sphinx, who has learned from the Muses a riddle, which she proposed to the Thebans, and on every failure to resolve it one of them was devoured. But no person can solve the riddle. The king offers his crown and his sister Jocasta, wife of Laius, in marriage ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... sorely miss Frieda's wages. The greater the pity, therefore, that there was no one to counsel him to give America more time with my sister. She attended the night school; she was fond of reading. In books, in a slowly ripening experience, she might have found a better answer to the riddle of a girl's ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... your friend. All alike are your teachers. Your enemy becomes a mystery that must be solved, even though it take ages: for man must be understood. Your friend becomes a part of yourself, an extension of yourself, a riddle hard to read. Only one thing is more difficult to know—your own heart. Not until the bonds of personality are loosed, can that profound mystery of self begin to be seen. Not till you stand aside from it will it in any way reveal itself ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... taken him, as it takes all of us, in an entirely different and unexpected way.... He had been ready for noble deeds and villainies, for achievements and failures, and here as the dominant fact of his personal life was a perplexing riddle. He could not hate and condemn her for ten minutes at a time without a flow of exoneration; he could not think of her tolerantly or lovingly without immediate shame and resentment, and with the utmost will in the world he could not banish ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... of fifteen years a world-wide movement depended on a single life, that the infinitudes of 1789 lived on only in the form, and by the pleasure, of the First Consul? Here surely is a political incarnation unparalleled in the whole course of human history. The riddle cannot be solved by history alone. It belongs in part to the domain of psychology, when that science shall undertake the study, not merely of man as a unit, but of the aspirations, moods, and whims of communities and nations. Meanwhile it will be our far ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... 14th DECEMBER, 1740 [day after his Majesty left]. Everybody here is on tiptoe for the Event; of which both origin and end are a riddle to the most. I am charmed to see a part of your Majesty's Dominions in a state of Pyrrhonism; the disease is epidemical here at present. Those who, in the style of theologians, consider themselves entitled to be certain, maintain That your Majesty is expected with religious impatience ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... you write me possible, Marquis, what, the Countess continues obdurate? The flippant manner in which she receives your attentions reveals an indifference which grieves you? I think I have guessed the secret of the riddle. I know you. You are gay, playful, conceited even, with women as long as they do not impress you. But with those who have made an impression upon your heart, I have noticed that you are timid. This quality ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... continuous, creeps into the very pulses and becomes part of the pervading sound or silence of a man's environment; and the face, although it never regards him, holds him with its changes and occupies his mind with its everlasting riddle. Its profound inattention to man is part of its power over his imagination; for although it is so absorbed and busy, and has regard for sun and stars and a melancholy frowning concentration upon the foot of cliffs, it is never face to face with man: he can never come within ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... he had become involved. What did it all mean? What brought these people to Baldpate Christmas week? His eyes sought the great safe back of the desk, and stayed there a long time. In that safe, he was sure, lay the answer to this preposterous riddle. When his thoughts came back to the table he found Mr. Bland eying him narrowly. There was a troubled look on the haberdasher's lean face that could never be ascribed ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... feelings. Was he, too, conscious of the same delights? A reciprocal feeling was alone necessary to complete the measure of her joy. But he was as non-communicative as ever, totally absorbed in this terrible business that obsessed him. Her riddle, she feared, would remain unanswered. Patriotism, it seemed, ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... picture of the colour-polarity is shown further if we observe how natural phenomena based on the same kind of polarity in other realms of nature fit in with it. We remember that one of Goethe's starting-points in his investigation of the riddle of colour was the observation that of the totality of colours one part is experienced as 'warm' and the other as 'cold'. Now we can go further and say that the colours of the spherical pole are experienced as cold, those of the radial pole as warm. This corresponds precisely to the polarity ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... thought; and I determined not to have any more reveries. "Mr. Harry Lothrop is a pleasant riddle; I shall see him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... her dislike piques me; and besides, she has the insolence openly to defy and contemn me before her brother, and in the eyes of all the world. I have a kind of loving hatred—a sort of hating love for her; in short, thinking upon her is like trying to read a riddle, and makes one make quite as many blunders, and talk just as much nonsense. If ever I have the opportunity, I will make her pay ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... keeps," he announced, with the grin of a man who has solved a humorous riddle. "By refusing to thwart the lady you throw away your last slender chance of freedom, and you will find her waiting at the gate of the State Penitentiary when you come out. By Jove, you've been pretty rapid, though. No wonder people say the East is waking up. Are there many more like ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... he knew that he had, to a large extent, prejudged Paul's case. His own inherent dislike of the man had caused him to feel sure he was guilty. Of course there were difficulties, and of course a clever counsel would mercilessly riddle the evidence which had been adduced. Nevertheless, he had felt convinced that the jury would find him guilty. There was a perfect chain of circumstantial evidence, and he, with his long experience, knew what juries were. They could only judge according to evidence. He went over the ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... facts, it leaves me whirling in space, with nothing to help me to interpret realities. It is magnificent in theory, but it is a mere gas-bubble in the face of existing conditions. It is majestic, but sterile. Then where is the answer to the riddle of the world? Who knows? Who ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... It is the vital riddle of our time. I look out upon the windy Channel and think of all those millions just over there, who seem to get busier and keener every hour. I could imagine the day of reckoning coming like ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... as you look for in vain anywhere else; and though there is still a considerable interval between the Devas of the Veda, even in their highest form, and such concepts as Zeus, Apollon, and Athene, yet the chief riddle is solved, and we know now at last what stuff the gods of the ancient world ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... a simple and convenient solution of the riddle if the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type, to the realization of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But there is ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... consistency of your conduct, or the morality of your principles. Sir, if you can but use the tomahawk skilfully, your fortune is certain. 'Sic itur ad astra.' Read Blackwood's Noctea Ambrosiance. Take the town by surprise, folly by the ears; 'the glory, jest, and riddle of the world' is man; use your knowledge of this ancient volume rightly, and you may soon mount the car of fortune, and drive at random wherever your fancy dictates. Bear in mind the Greek proverb, 'Mega biblion, mega kakon.' In your remarks, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... man, and should therefore be surrendered as soon as its object contradicts these rights of man. But the practice is only the exception and the theory is the rule. If, however, we regard the revolutionary practice as the correct position of the relation, the riddle still remains to be solved, why the relationship was inverted in the consciousness of the political liberators, the end appearing as the means, and the means as the end. This optical illusion of their consciousness would still be the same riddle, although a psychological, ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... makes it rival noonday at midnight. And don't tell me I've got to get on the other side of the door by strategy, either. It is strategy-proof. The system of lookouts is perfect. No, force is necessary, but it must not be destructive of life or property—or, by heaven, I'd drive up there and riddle the place with a fourteen-inch gun," ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... thrilling adieux to the world, I must confess that I have not gone; you have a perfect right to drive me out of Europe; I promised to go to America, and you can compel me to fulfil my promise; be clement, do not overpower me with ridicule; do not riddle me with the fire of your mocking artillery; my sorrow, even though I remain in the old world, is none ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... power, she was humble and yielding. In the midst of her humility she was proud, and sure of success and victory; one moment she was the glowing, ardent, and yielding woman; the next the proud, genial, imposing artiste. Such was Barbarina; an incomprehensible riddle, unsearchable, unfathomable as the sea—ever changing, but ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... I pondered the riddle until I saw light. "I know what you mean," I said. "He does favors only to those who vote ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... hypothetical mistiness has been reared the most tenable theory of the constitution of ponderable matter which has yet been suggested—or, at any rate, the one that will stand as the definitive nineteenth-century guess at this "riddle of the ages." I mean, of course, the vortex theory of atoms—that profound and fascinating doctrine which suggests that matter, in all its multiform phases, is neither more nor less than ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... it! Pretty Madame was one of the party. That explains the riddle; now I understand everything. But you were quite right in saying that discretion was needful; she has a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to give up the riddle. Lovers' quarrels were by no means unusual, he knew that, and many young love affairs came to nothing. Mary had never told him that she cared for Crawford. But she had never said she did not care for him. And now she would say nothing except that it was "done ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Inn. It is only materials for a case, and consists of statements by possible witnesses. The man who would have been the defendant or prisoner seems never to have appeared. The dossier is not complete, but, such as it is, it furnishes a riddle in which the supernatural appears to play a part. You must see what you ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James
... that we've been a-drinking together; and when we've been a-drinking together, I say that a man is my friend. Doctor Wood is my friend, madam—the Reverend Doctor Wood. We've passed the evening in company, talking about politics, madam—politics and riddle-iddle-igion. We've not been flaunting in ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... distinguishes too many of our more recent versifiers; the one conveying the most fantastic thoughts in the most correct and natural language; the other in the most fantastic language conveying the most trivial thoughts. The latter is a riddle of words; the former an enigma of thoughts. The one reminds me of an odd ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... joined Him. Happiness here, and happiness there with Him. The quest for Eternal Happiness, which was always His Own Divine Thought. Why, then, did He create ugliness and evil? Why write those upon the scroll? Ah, this perhaps is the Eternal Riddle! But, in 2930, they told me that there could be no beauty without ugliness with which to compare it; no truth without a lie; no consciousness of happiness without unhappiness to make ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... then read the application of the other candidate, Andrew J. Williams. Mr. Williams set out in detail his qualifications for the position: his degree from Riddle University; his familiarity with the dead and living languages and the higher mathematics; his views of discipline; and a peroration in which he expressed the desire to devote himself to the elevation of his ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... The Afridis continued to riddle the upper wall and the door with bullets. Several times they attempted a rush, but were unable to withstand the heavy magazine fire which met them, when within twenty yards of the house. Twice they attempted to pile faggots at the ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... the 2nd of December in Paris seemed to me absolutely incredible, and I thought the world was surely coming to an end. When the news was confirmed, and events which no one believed could ever happen had apparently occurred and seemed likely to be permanent, I gave the whole thing up like a riddle which it was beneath me to unravel, and turned away in disgust from the contemplation of this puzzling world. As a playful reminiscence of our hopes of the year 1852, I suggested to Uhlig that in our correspondence during that year we should ignore its existence and should ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... her for some seconds as if trying to read some riddle in her countenance. "You are a very remarkable young woman," he said at last. "I wouldn't part with you for a king's ransom. So you think I might turn that very unreasonable hatred of hers into love, ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... queer ... There's a riddle here to which I should like to know the answer. That sheet of paper, the marks of those teeth: ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... the truth,' added Prince Houssain, 'and it is a riddle which I shall not explain till our brother Ahmed comes; then I will let you know what curiosity I have brought home from my travels. I know not what you have got, but believe it to be some trifle, because I do not see that your baggage ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... of the Chesapeake reached under his pillow and produced a pistol. "Out of my cabin or I'll riddle you," he barked feebly. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... have worked out a geometrical proposition or unravelled a metaphysical crux. The sense of victory ends very soon after the sense of the difficulty overcome; the sense of illumination ends with the acquisition of a piece of information; and we pass on to some new obstacle and some new riddle. But it is different in the case of what we call Beautiful. Beautiful means satisfactory for contemplation, i.e. for reiterated perception; and the very essence of contemplative satisfaction is its desire for such ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... Tailed Panther. "This is the worst riddle I ever run up ag'inst an' the more I think about it ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Thebes, son of Laius and Jocasta, and fated to kill his father and marry his mother; unwittingly slew his father in a quarrel; for answering the riddle of the SPHINX (q. v.) was made king in his stead, and wedded his widow, by whom he became the father of four children; on discovery of the incest Jocasta hanged herself, and Oedipus went mad ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... total stillness, and poor Tulliver's dimly lighted soul had ceased to be vexed with the painful riddle of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... that your riddle was to take three from two and have four. My plan is very simple; just add three to two and you have not only four but five! Take a vacation from business, but stay at home; do your own garden improvements with your head and a horse and cart and a pair of strong hands with a ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the white doth keep, For now those crowns are both in one combined, Those former borders, that each one confine, Appears to me (as I do understand) To be almost the centre of the land, This was a blessed heaven expounded riddle, To thrust great kingdoms skirts into the middle. Long may the instrumental cause survive. From him and his, succession still derive True heirs unto his virtues, and his throne, That these two kingdoms ever may be one; This county of all Scotland is most poor, By reason of the outrages before, ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... and let his head sink forward on his breast, wearied by the oft-repeated endeavor to solve that which was fast becoming a riddle, a chimera to him, and he probably would have fallen asleep had he not been startled suddenly into a consciousness of his surroundings by a low whinny; soft and plaintive as a child's voice. Looking up, he saw Starlight standing before ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... is mine, and none of yours.—Hark you, Mark. You must fly—there's no two ways about that; and, between us, there will be a devil of a stir in this matter. I have it from good authority that the governor will riddle the whole nation but he'll have every man, woman, and child, concerned in this difficulty: so that'll be no place for you. You must go right on to the Massassippi, and enter lands enough for us all. Enter ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... of life is said to be the finding of a happiness that is not enjoyed at the expense of others, and surely this class have solved that Sphinx's riddle, for they float through their days in a dream of complacency disturbed neither by corroding doubt nor harassed ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... the teaching of Lucretius, yet on this road he marches with a step so firm and buoyant, an eye so awake to all beauty and grandeur, a spirit so elate, that as we read we catch the energy and elation. The reading of the riddle is this: the religion against which Lucretius made his attack was not the soaring idealism of Plato, nor the inspiring and consolatory faith of Christianity, but an outworn mythology in which this world was ruled by capricious and unworthy despots, and the next world was gloomy with terrors ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... them, one cannot help speculating, for there is a kind of fatality that concerns the disposition of matter in Nature. Oil fields and rubber trees existed, one might say, as enigmas, until the internal combustion engine and motor cars dawned on the world and explained their riddle. This was their fate. And of Mesopotamia, who shall say that it may not be concerned with a yet unborn attitude in us Europeans when we will turn wholly to the ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... stands in no need of the sanction of my poor opinion for anything it may please him to do," answered Spikeman. "But resolve me your riddle." ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... there must be a great deal of good in him, and sometimes she is sorry for him, and longs to speak again to Lyra about the wrong she is doing him. One of the dangers of having a very definite point of view is the temptation of abusing it to read the whole riddle of the painful earth. Annie has permitted herself to think of Lyra's position as one which would be impossible in a state of things where there was neither poverty nor riches, and there was neither luxury ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Turkish-looking sobriquet of "Mufti;" its vowels and its consonants are full of strict intention I never saw cause why the most charming of essayists hid himself in "Elia," but he may for all that have had pregnant reasons; even so, (but that slender wit could read my riddle,) you shall perhaps find fault with my Mussulman agnomen; still you and I equally participate in this shallow secret, and within so brief a word is concealed the key to unlock the casket that tempts your curiosity: however, the less ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... about the scent of foxes. Not long ago a man wrote to the Field saying that he had proved by experiment that on the saturation or relative humidity of the air the hunter's hopes depend: in fact, he announced that he had solved the riddle of scent. It so happened that for some years the present writer had also been amusing himself with experiments of the same nature, and at one time entertained the hope that by means of the hygrometer he would arrive at a solution of the mystery. But alas! it was not to be. On several ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... cards; and in some inexplicable manner it permitted him to concentrate upon whatever problem filled his thoughts. It was purely accidental that he saw Patti to-night or recalled her art. Coming upon the last photograph without having found a solution of the riddle of Two-Hawks he relaxed the mental pressure; and his sight reestablished its ability ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... by that?" inquired Chillingworth; "you are a complete riddle to-night, Jack; what is the matter ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... exact date of the establishment of the Kit-Cat club has never been decided, the consensus of opinion fixes the year somewhere about 1700. More debatable, however, is the question of its peculiar title. The most recent efforts to solve that riddle leave it where the ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... figures, in frocks and frills, Go roaming about at their own sweet wills, And "play with the pups," and "reprove the calves," And do nought in the world (but Work) by halves, From "Hunt the Slipper" and "Riddle-me-ree" To watching the cat ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... abode of these shadows. Where are they from, and whither going—these women without beauty, who walk the streets without handkerchiefs, but blubbering with too much or too little drink? What is the terrible riddle? Why, even as they blubber, are there women whose bodies have the quality of cream, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... air. You'd think he might amount to something, to somewhat more than a mere something, given half a chance in the right direction. Then what?... Spaulding sought from Duncan elucidation of this riddle. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... I will not be satisfied till that man is in my power. Ah, the robber-chieftain little imagines what an enemy he has raised up against him in me, when he put this terrible riddle into my heart. And it is a riddle ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... about the trip to her when she spoke of her own approaching voyage thither? The yacht changed its character in her eyes; losing the indefinite interest of the unknown, it acquired the charm of a riddle on motives, of which the alternatives were, had Lord Mountclere's journey anything to do with her own, or had it not? Common probability pointed to the latter supposition; but the time of starting, the course of the yacht, and recollections of Lord Mountclere's ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... there that thou didst not lie with me? Thou sentest thy young clerk to me: and thou knowest that, as often as thou hadst not been with me, I sent word that the priest had not been with me. Who but thou, that hast suffered jealousy to blind thee, would have been so witless as not to read such a riddle? But thou must needs mount guard at night beside the door, and think to make me believe that thou hadst gone out to sup and sleep. Consider thy ways, and court not the mockery of those that know them as I do, but turn a man again as thou wast wont to be: and let there be no more ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... he knows what we'll do with him if he should. Though he has made some clever escapes, I'll admit, that may not always be his fortune. The pitcher may go to the well once too often. He's a cunning rascal—no doubt knows this riddle—and therefore I begin to fear he has taken himself off,—at least for a long while. He may return again, but how the deuce are we to sustain this constant espionage? It would weary down the devil! ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... the good riddle Or speak of the Holiest, Save in faint figures and failing words, Who loves, yet laughs among the swords, ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... total human entity, and this part is the physical body. In order to throw light upon its conception of this physical body, occult science at first directs attention to a phenomenon which confronts all observers of life like a great riddle,—the phenomenon of death,—and in connection with it, points to so-called inanimate nature, the mineral kingdom. We are thus referred to facts, which it devolves on occult science to explain, and to which an important part of this work ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... Then she resumes her household work; whereupon Ormuzd whispers in the pledge's projecting ear, and that heaven-directed bimbo straightway turns his head toward the dust-hole, and, again illustrating the first clause of the Sphynx's not very complicated riddle, keeps the strictly noiseless tenor of his way, till Ahriman's priestess looks round to see the metaphors fulfilled, of the pup turning again to his ashheap, and the papoose that was washed wallowing in the dust-hole. And so the pull-devil-pull-baker strife goes ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... interpretation of the ovum, and the reduction of it to some ancient amoeboid ancestral form, supply the answer to the old problem: "Which was first, the egg or the chick?" We can now give a very plain answer to this riddle, with which our opponents have often tried to drive us into a corner. The egg came a long time before the chick. We do not mean, of course, that the egg existed from the first as a bird's egg, but as an indifferent amoeboid cell of the simplest character. The egg lived for thousands ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... those, which, if a Christian, thou wilt see Not small, but things of greatest moment be. Nor do thou go to work without my key; (In mysteries men soon do lose their way;) And also turn it right, if thou wouldst know My riddle, and wouldst with my heifer plough; It lies there in the window. Fare thee well, My next may be to ring ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... soon as its object contradicts these rights of man. But the practice is only the exception and the theory is the rule. If, however, we regard the revolutionary practice as the correct position of the relation, the riddle still remains to be solved, why the relationship was inverted in the consciousness of the political liberators, the end appearing as the means, and the means as the end. This optical illusion of their consciousness would still be the same riddle, ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... in point of honour! My frends feare me! My age suspected too! now as ye are iust men Unknit this riddle. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... and fidgeted. Twenty times he tried to solve, in his own mind, the riddle of why Dalzell should be away, and where he was. But it was ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... think you must give up guessing, and I must tell you the answer to the riddle. Those marks were made by a hand which is strong and yet gentle, tough and yet yielding, like the hand of a man; a hand which handles and uses in a grip stronger than a giant's its own carving tools, from the great boulder stone as large ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... followed him," thought Lucretia, "to solve this agreeable riddle, by making acquaintance with my steward. But pshaw! I shall soon know all about it. Nobody has made me these presents without intending to get a word of thanks for ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... she was entirely unconnected with the riddle did nothing to help me to solve it. I had, however, to solve it for the Belgian authorities, and I did so by giving a certificate that Alresca had died of "failure of the heart's action." A convenient phrase, whose convenience imposes perhaps oftener than may be imagined on persons of ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... the next line in the book—Mrs. King proved him right, and so on till she was quite tired of the proofs, and began to trust him. Alfred asked how he could possibly do such things, which seemed to him a perfect riddle. ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'It's no riddle, sir,—it's a solution of all the riddles. I will tell you. While I was convalescing, I went to a Y.M.C.A. camp. I had never been to one of these places before; I don't know why I went then, except that the time hung a bit heavy on my hands. You ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... cat—that has led to its bitter persecution—that has made it the hero of fairy lore, the pet of old maids? I believe it is—I believe that in this psychic faculty of smell lies, in degree, the solution to the oft-asked riddle—why is the cat uncanny? Having then satisfied oneself on this point, namely, that cats are in the possession of rare psychic properties, is it likely that the Unknown Powers which have so endowed them, ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... sensible to take two if I could manage to procure them. It was more than an ordinary man was qualified to cope with, to make his observations, write his letters, and look after their transmission, without having to attend to his nag, and do an odd turn of cooking at a pinch. The riddle was how to get the horse—a sound hardy animal that would not call for elaborate grooming, or refuse a feed of barley. Horse-flesh was at a premium, but he thought I might be able to have what I wanted at Bayonne, on payment of an extravagant price. A requisition ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... said her cousin, "they are mere soap-bubbles; but as to your own views—why, really you are somewhat of a riddle to me. I rather think, were I such a quiet, civil, well-disposed person as you, I could have married Lord Glenallan well enough. He is handsome, good-natured, and rich; and though 'he is but a Lord, and nothing but a Lord,' still there is a dash and bustle in twenty thousand a year that ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Shadows in the Fire The Belfry Old Beautiful Barbara Song of the Silken Shroud A University for Wales Griefs Untold I Will Dawn and Death Castles in the Air The Withered Rose Wrecks of Life Eleanor New Year's Bells The Vase and the Weed A Riddle To a Fly Burned by a Gaslight To a Friend Retribution The Three Graces The Last Rose of Summer The Starling and the Goose The Heroes of Alma A Kind Word, a Smile, or a Kiss Dear Mother, I'm Thinking of Thee The Heron and the Weather-Vane The Three Mirrors The Two Clocks Sacrifical: on the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... at once. It is all very mysterious and extraordinary; but then you have been a mystery, Rupert Hyde, a riddle and a puzzle, ever since I ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... beginnings of conscious life, man has found himself surrounded and besieged by un-calculable phenomena. Beaten upon by forces he could not estimate or predict or control, he has sought to solve their sphynx-like riddle, to establish some plausible relation between them, to erect a logical scheme of things. Primitive man, as Worringer demonstrates in his "Form Problems of the Gothic," strove to achieve something of certitude and fixity through the crude but definite lines and forms of neolithic art. Classical man ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... RIDDLE believed that the question of universal franchise would be tried before the grand tribunal of the world, and, if not victorious, it would appeal and appeal again. The question ought to be met squarely by the "masculines" as well as by the women. He was an earnest advocate of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... head of "Sylva." A third edition of the "Poetical Blossoms" was printed in 1637—the year of Milton's "Lycidas" and of Ben Johnson's death. Cowley had written a five-act pastoral comedy, "Love's Riddle," while yet at school, and this was published in 1638. In the same year, 1638, when Cowley's age was twenty, a Latin comedy of his, "Naufragium Joculare," was acted by men of his College, and in the same year printed, with a dedication to Dr. ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... particle never occurs. Death consequently is but the constituent of a change. When it comes, that which was living assumes a state that has in it the potentiality of another form. A tenement has crumbled and a tenant gone forth. Though just where is the riddle. ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... there was no one to counsel him to give America more time with my sister. She attended the night school; she was fond of reading. In books, in a slowly ripening experience, she might have found a better answer to the riddle of a girl's ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Corrivarlich a noted sheep-stealer named Alastair Bane. Little is known of his boyhood. He was supposed to have been brought to the district by Highlanders who were in the habit of bringing to Crieff cartloads of split pine from Rannoch Forest, which they sold to riddle-makers to make riddle rims. During one of those visits the child is supposed to have been left. He was called Alastair, owing to his supposed Highland descent, and Bane, because of his white hair. As he grew up to manhood he showed symptoms of a wandering disposition, and went frequently ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... jibed so ill with Monsieur's character that not even his worst detractor could accept it. For he was known to all as a hotspur—a man who acted quickly and seldom counted the cost. Therefore his present conduct was a riddle, nor could any of the emissaries from King or League, who came from time to time to enlist his aid and went away without it, read the answer. The puzzle was too deep for them. Yet it was only this: to Monsieur, ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... told her the man had turned his back forever, that only the ashy road of the ruined remained for her to tread. And that was how the great news that Nature had looked upon her for a mother came to Joan Tregenza. Here was the riddle of the mysterious voice unraveled; here was the secret of her physical sorrows made clear. She looked wildly from one to the other—from the man to the woman; then she tottered a step away, clutching her money and her little picture to her breast; and then she rolled ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... furious pace. Bambi, herself, was the Lady of Mystery to whom he had offered his devotions. The thing which hurt him was that she had tricked him into declaring himself, probably laughed at his ardour. It made him rage to think of it. What had been her object? He could not decipher her riddle at all. If she wanted his love, she might have had it for the taking, without all this play-acting nonsense. These was no use in his ever expecting to understand her or her motives. He might as well give it up and be ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... mystery. It was fairly to be assumed that his committee did not want his autograph to distribute for a souvenir; they must want it for some vital purpose, to meet some new move of the bosses. The answer to this riddle was not slow in coming: having failed in their effort to find money on him, the bosses had framed up a letter, which they were exhibiting as having been written by the would-be check-weigh-man. His friends ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... my business," answered Ali Partab, with the air of a man who knew all of the secret details but would not admit it. Jaimihr began to think that he had lit at random on the answer to the riddle. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... few hickory trees. All grew, about a dozen, except three scions of one kind that I put in one tree. This is the third year that I have grafted hickories on the grounds of this school, some three thousand acres. The school was planned and built by Mrs. Theodate Pope Riddle, and I was told there that it cost seven million dollars. It is a beautiful and original group of buildings in the lovely Farmington River ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... resolve me immediately, for my albumess will be catechised on this subject; and how can I prompt her? Lake Leman, I know, and Lemon Lake (in a punch bowl) I have swum in, though those lymphs be long since dry. But Maggiore may be in the moon. Unsphinx this riddle for me, for my shelves have no gazetteer. And mayest thou never murder thy father-in-law in the Trivia of Lincoln's Inn New Square Passage, where Searl Street and the Street of Portugal embrace, nor afterwards make absurd proposals to the Widow M. But ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... looks again! Oh, I love this old kitchen so! Baby dear, only look at it wid him pitty, pitty eyes, and him tongue out of his mousy! But who put the flour-riddle up there. And look at the pestle and mortar, and rust I declare in the patty pans! And a book, positively a dirty book, where the clean skewers ought to hang! ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... zaid a penny, but I zaid five poun'. The wager was laid, but the money not down. Zinging right fol de ree, fol de riddle lee While I am ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... existence of more than two centuries, you have had a familiar intercourse with men who were esteemed the wisest of their day. Doubtless, with your capacious understanding, you have treasured up many an invaluable lesson of wisdom. You certainly have had time enough to guess the riddle of life. Tell us poor mortals, then, how we may ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a vision in my sleep last night between sleeping and waking. A figure standing beside me, thin, miserable, sad and sorrowful; the shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the tears down his cheeks. His ribs were bending like the bottom of a riddle; his nose thin that it would go through a cambric needle; his shoulders hard and sharp that they would cut tobacco; his head dark and bushy like the top of a hill; and there is nothing I can liken his fingers to. His poor bones without any kind of covering; a withered rod in his hand, and he looking ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... ardent skies of my youth Come to me over the sea, Come in a vision to me, Come with your shimmer and song; Ye have known all of the truth, Witness to both shall ye bear; Read me the riddle of wrong, Solve me the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fire; the English intent, as seldom any Nation was, to give the Spaniards an effectual beating. Which they hope they can,—though unexpected difficulties will occur. And, in the mean while, what a riddle of potentialities for his poor Majesty to read, and pick ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of Judas remain an unsolved riddle. The Gospels leave no doubt that money played a part with him. But could a man whom Jesus selected and trusted be actuated by so sordid a motive alone? Was he perhaps embittered because he had staked his ambition on the Galilean Messiah and ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... freshness of life, being the way of its renewal. Sweeter than the honey which Samson found in the lion's carcass is this everlasting sweetness of Death; and it is a mystery deeper than the strong man's riddle. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to-day, the need for new light. I can't tell you all that—it's not in my line, that sort of talk. But he said, his face all pink under his skin, he said, 'Hapgood, I'll tell you a thing. I've got the secret. I've got the key to the riddle that's been puzzling me all my life. I've got the new revelation in terms good enough for me to understand. Light, more light. Here it is: God is—love. Not this, that, nor the other that the intelligence revolts at, and ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... before his car made the distance back to the city Dundee had shrugged off the riddle and was concentrating on all the facts he knew regarding the Maginty case. It was his first real assignment from Sanderson, and he ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... to the window beyond which the girl could see a rope dangling from above. The sight of it partially solved the riddle of the king's almost uncanny presence upon her window sill in the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... appreciators of the public mind, who can imagine even in dreams that this generation—self-questioned, agitated, haunted beyond any other by the elementary problems of our human condition, by the awful whence and the more awful whither, by what the Germans call the 'riddle of the universe,' and oppressed into a ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the comedy and tragedy of sex—the great master of the tragedy of the moral intelligence. Taking the step from JULIUS CAESAR to HAMLET as corresponding to this movement in his mind, we may say that where the first play exhibits the concrete perception of the fatality of things, "the riddle of the painful earth"; in the second, in its final form, the perception has emerged in philosophic consciousness as a pure reflection. The poet has in the interim been revealed to himself; what he had perceived he now conceives. And this is the secret of the whole transformation which the old ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Barbara!" Duncan exclaimed, as he bent over the map, "you've solved the riddle. What a splendid combination it is! And how we must ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... the only true and eternal realities; who, tormented alike by the awfulness of the infinite unknown, and by the petty cares and low passions of the finite mortal life which they knew but too well, had determined to renounce the latter, that they might give themselves up to solving the riddle of the former; and be at peace; and free, at least, from the tyranny of their own selves. Eight hundred years before St. Antony fled into the desert, that young Hindoo rajah, whom men call Buddha now, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... Maiden, thou would'st wend with me, To leave both tower and town, Thou first must guess what life lead we 15 That dwell by dale and down. And if thou canst that riddle read, As read full well you may, Then to the greenwood shalt thou speed As blithe as Queen ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... strange thing," said Goethe, as they descended the hill, arm in arm, "and above all a woman's heart! It is a sacred riddle, which God has given Himself to solve, and that only a ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... he had had too much of thought. Suddenly that question which had been a riddle to him was a riddle no longer. He had the answer, and could see himself as others no doubt had seen him—a fool who had believed in the supremacy of fineness; a boy who had reached for the moon. But it left the issue clearer now. He, too, was a riverman; the degree ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... library where the colonel sat over Mary Nellen's last classic riddle, she couldn't break it ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... say, was to propose dark enigmatical questions to all passers by; and, if they did not give the explication of them,—to devour them. It made horrible ravages, as the story goes, on a mountain near Thebes. Apollo told Creon that she could not be vanquished, till some one had expounded her riddle. The riddle was—"What creature is that, which has four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three at night?" Oedipus expounded it, telling her it was a man,—who when a child, creepeth on all fours; in his middle age, walketh on two legs, and in his old age, two and a staff. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... difficult to suppose that he had read some of the works on which he passes a summary sentence. The comedy of Love's Riddle, which he says, "adds little to the wonders of Cowley's minority," deserved to be commended at least for the style, which is a specimen of pure and unaffected English. Of Congreve's novel, he tells us, that he had rather praise it than read it. Judging from ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... there, I own! See! curling smoke and flames right blue! To see the Evil One they travel; There many a riddle to unravel. ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Primitive Woman go up and how many pounds would she pull?" repeated Nyoda. "What is it, a riddle?" ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... matter itself as well. Out of its hypothetical mistiness has been reared the most tenable theory of the constitution of ponderable matter which has yet been suggested—or, at any rate, the one that will stand as the definitive nineteenth-century guess at this "riddle of the ages." I mean, of course, the vortex theory of atoms—that profound and fascinating doctrine which suggests that matter, in all its multiform phases, is neither more nor less ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... toil, &c.]—There is something true and pathetic about this curious blindness which prevents Hecuba from understanding "so plain a riddle." (Cf. below, p. 42.) She takes the watching of a Tomb to be some strange Greek custom, and does not seek to have ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... aside and strikes awry. The lady with the hatchet does not tremble. It is as though she had taken measurements; and the edge of her weapon does not swerve by a hair's breadth. Need I give you any further proofs or examine all the other details with you? Surely not. You now possess the key to the riddle; and you know as I do that only a lunatic can behave in this way, stupidly, savagely, mechanically, like a striking clock or the blade ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... challenges him to fight, unless he can win his ransom by returning on New Year's Day with an answer to the question, What does a woman most desire? Arthur relates the story to Gawaine, asks him and others for an answer to the riddle, and collects their suggestions in a book ('letters,' 24.1). On his way to keep his tryst with the baron, he meets an unspeakably ugly woman, who offers her assistance; if she will help him, Arthur says, she shall wed with Gawaine. She gives him the true answer, A woman will have her will. Arthur ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... that was uppermost in a thousand of those vigilant minds, even as it was uppermost in mine, was the riddle—how much they understood of us. Did they grasp that we in our millions were organized, disciplined, working together? Or did they interpret our spurts of fire, the sudden stinging of our shells, our steady investment of their encampment, ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... "'You said that your riddle was to take three from two and have four. My plan is very simple; just add three to two and you have not only four but five! Take a vacation from business, but stay at home; do your own garden improvements with your head and a horse and cart and a pair ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... robes of sorrow with some of that grace of patience which comes to her sex like an instinct born of centuried servitude. How her husband ever fascinated so fascinatingly elusive a creature is a mystery to all who know him and a miracle to all who know her; but who has ever guessed the riddle of a woman's heart? Surely no man yet known to the world, except possibly Balzac, and he only occasionally by some sort of electric, psychological accident. The true story of Mrs. Blaine's infelicities has been carefully ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... for the world, that a century and a quarter ago thirteen various and very jealous states worked out the problem of a Union, and became—after an enormous, exhausting wrangle—the United States of America. Now the way they solved their riddle was by delegating and giving over jealously specified sovereign powers and doing all that was possible to retain the residuum. They remained essentially sovereign states. New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, for example, remained legally independent. The practical fusion of these peoples into one ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... all, orders from men who can protect me by saying one word! I ain't going to stand all this riddle-come-ree business! Flat down, now, Mr. Fogg, ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... rather risky; I shall avoid them in future. But the riddle is more puzzling than ever. What brought Jeanne to share my solitude ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... Marc'antonio's, with no clock but the sun and no calendar but the creeping change of the season upon the macchia, what wonder if I forgot human probabilities at times in piecing and unpiecing solutions of a riddle which ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... the problem of his own life by following with all the force and courage of his genius a line of conduct which made him, next to Alexander, the most famous man in Greece. To be really without fear or desire would mean death, and to die is not to solve the riddle of living. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... had been to him the most delectable of riddles, and his expressed desire to marry and settle down was perhaps only another statement of the fact that he longed to solve one example of the riddle, one form in which it was presented to him. He felt now that he wished he had married years ago, that he had already become quiet and domesticated. There was a time for youth's fiery passions, its ecstatic uncontent, ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... thinking about?" was the way Thad took himself to task presently; "trying to find the answer to a riddle by bothering my brains, when it ought to be written here on the ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... Emperor and his council of generals—what was their state of soul at this critical moment? Perhaps this riddle will never be wholly solved. From the military point of view, which in their eyes claimed first attention, they must have rejoiced at M. Sazonoff's answer, for never again would they find such a golden opportunity for vanquishing Russia and making an end of her rivalry. In 1917 the reorganization ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... "We do not undertake to account for personality." We reply, "That is a part of your problem. You have undertaken to solve the riddle of the universe by excluding all evidence of an existing and active God, and we can not release you because a feature of the problem may be unusually difficult or embarrassing, or even fatal to your theory. It is a fight to the death in the interest of truth; and we purpose ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... But "From Papa" caught my eye on a little parcel. I seized it and unfolded. From papa, and he so far away! But I guessed the riddle before I could get to the last of the folds of paper that wrapped and enwrapped a little morocco case. Papa and mamma, leaving me alone, had made provision beforehand, that when this time came I might miss nothing except themselves. They had thought and cared and arranged for me; and now they ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people." says Sampson's Philistine wife to him, ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... said Topknot, "we are having a very lively conversation. Uncle Red Nose Mike has just asked a riddle, which none of us can guess. But you can, so ...
— The Chickens of Fowl Farm • Lena E. Barksdale
... my head in my hands and thought. There must be some way of reading this riddle. What did Scudder mean by steps? I thought of dock steps, but if he had meant that I didn't think he would have mentioned the number. It must be some place where there were several staircases, and one marked out from the others by ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... and Maurice (naught could awe them!) Took a saw, when no one saw them: Ritze-ratze! riddle-diddle! Sawed a gap across the middle. When this feat was finished well, Suddenly was heard ...
— Max and Maurice - a juvenile history in seven tricks • William [Wilhelm] Busch
... MARLBOROUGH STREET.—Henry Riddle, foreman to Robert Towser, a chimney sweep, appeared before the magistrates on a summons charging him under the 4 & 5 Wil. IV., c. 35, with the following act of cruelty towards James Arnold, a boy about 12 years of age, and who, for some ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... municipal dust-carts! And he understood the prodigious vanity of these people, haunted by the glory of their ancestors, spellbound by the past of their city, declaring that she contains everything, that they themselves cannot know her thoroughly, that she is the sphinx who will some day explain the riddle of the universe, that she is so great and noble that all within her acquires increase of greatness and nobility, in such wise that they demand for her the idolatrous respect of the entire world, so vivacious in their ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Christmas time when this young couple were sitting together over the stove in their little apartment. "Of a truth," said the young man, "how all this is to end is a riddle. All our resources seem ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... was, then, the answer to this perplexing riddle—my clothes! Mechanically I took off my hat and examined it as I had not troubled to do hitherto and saw it for a shapeless monstrosity faded to the colour of dust and with more than one hole in crown ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Cabot stared at him, crossed his knees, and continued to stare. Occasionally he shook his head, as if the riddle were proving too much for him. Galusha did not move. Neither man spoke. The old clock ticked ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "Yes," he said. "I've been kept away on business. Funny kind of business, too. Say, Charlie," he added, "suppose likely your sister and you would be too busy to see me for a few minutes now? I'd like to see if you've got an answer to a riddle." ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... asking! Why? Porter" (a respectable Samoan trader) "told him that he would riddle him if he came inside his fence, and the scoundrel knows me well enough not to come into my place with anything but a civil word on his foul tongue; but then you see, Porter and I are Americans. If either or both of us shot the ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... main object of the poet is to present in a clear, comprehensive and palpable form the sphinx riddle of human existence, his work abounds nevertheless in a variety of interesting data, which throw considerable light upon the philosophical and theological theories in vogue among the thoughtful spirits of the Jewish ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... ungraceful figure—what might be the charm which excited amongst his chosen circle a faith approaching to superstition, and a love rising to enthusiasm, towards a man whose demeanour was so inanimate, if not austere:—it was a riddle of which neither Gall nor Lavater ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Long Bridge, in advance of the Fifth Corps, and by 7 o'clock next morning had driven the enemy's pickets up to White Oak bridge, where he waited for our infantry. When that came up, he pushed on as far as Riddle's Shop, but late that evening the Confederate infantry forced him to withdraw to St. Mary's Church; for early in the morning General Lee had discovered the movement of our army, and promptly threw this column of infantry south of the Chickahominy to White Oak Swamp, with the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... little riddle, my dear," said the Squire to Miss Phipps, always a favourite of his. "When is a door ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... my heart was beating rapidly, and, so selfish is the nature of man, I was more glad to learn that my company was acceptable to Val Beverley than I should have been to have had the riddle of Cray's Folly laid ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... being hurtful, are well worth cultivating for the good they do. For a long time the men who devoted themselves to the study of peas, beans, clovers, and other plants of the pulse family, were confronted with a riddle they could not solve. These plants all manage to enrich themselves with compounds of nitrogen, which make them particularly valuable as food, and these compounds often exist in a degree far exceeding the rate at which their nitrogen comes ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... Notes-our wit quintuple hear; Five able-bodied editors combine Their strength prodigious in each laboured line!" O wondrous vintner! hopeless seemed the task To bung these drainings in a single cask; The riddle's read-five leathern skins contain The working juice, and scarcely feel the strain. Saviours of Rome! will wonders never cease? A ballad cackled by five tuneful geese! Upon one Rosinante five stout knights Ride fiercely into visionary fights! A cap and bells five sturdy fools adorn, Five porkers ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... cannot catch sight of them," said Mr. Edison, "we shall have to riddle the car on the chance ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... in a cradle-coffin lying; Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying; So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb For darker closets of the tomb! She did but ope an eye, and put A clear beam forth, then strait up shut For the long dark: ne'er more to see Through glasses of mortality. Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below? Shall we say, that Nature blind Check'd her hand, and changed her mind, Just when she had exactly wrought A finish'd pattern without fault? Could she flag, or could she tire, Or ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... In the first place my mother told me to ask you. I rather think she wants to pump you about that affair last night. Father wouldn't tell her all she wished to know. Then again I'm still all broken up about those lost coins; and I thought perhaps you might have guessed the answer to the riddle." ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... every subject are usually those who know nothing about it; but he could not approve of his selfishness, cold-blooded calculations, and least of all of the manner in which he forgot his "white gifts," to adopt those that were purely "red." On the other hand, Pathfinder was a riddle to Captain Sanglier. The latter could not comprehend the other's motives; he had often heard of his disinterestedness, justice, and truth; and in several instances they had led him into grave errors, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... representing Astaroth, with the head of a woman adorned with horns and a crescent, and another of brass, containing an image of Baal—a human face on the head of an ox, with the horns surrounded by stars. However, I am very ignorant of these things, and you must refer the riddle of the ring to some one more astute and learned in such matters than your humble 'yokefellow' in ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... dreamed of a sky where the moonbeams all danced While a comet was telling a riddle, Where the stars and the planets and sun-dogs all pranced While the moon ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... years there has been a growing tendency among scholars to seek in the Mysteries the clue which shall enable us to read aright the baffling riddle of the Grail, and there can be little doubt that, in so doing, we are on the right path. At the same time I am convinced that to seek that clue in those Mysteries which are at once the most famous, and the most familiar to the classical ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... are not what they seem, and that the outward shows Of grade and rank are only masks that hide our joys and woes; That with the soul, the soul alone, resides the awful power, To light with sunshine or o'ergloom the solitary hour; And that the human heart is but a riddle to be read, When all the darkness round it now in other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... to be facetious," returned O'Sullivan sourly. "But I would ask you to remember that you are not yet out of the woods, Mr. Montagu. My Lord seems satisfied, but here are some more of us waiting a plain answer to this riddle." ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Buddha is compared with the rhinoceros khadga that lives lonely in the wilderness. He is also called Nidana Buddha, as having mastered the twelve nidanas (the twelve links in the everlasting chain of cause and effect in the whole range of existence, the understanding of which solves the riddle of life, revealing the inanity of all forms of existence, and preparing the mind for nirvana). He is also compared to a horse, which, crossing a river, almost buries its body under the water, without, however, touching the bottom of the river. Thus in crossing ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... all," Nigel replied. "He must have come to the conclusion that the key to the riddle he was trying to solve was in China, and gone on there. Look here, Maggie," he continued, after a moment's hesitation, "do you think anything could be done ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... cargoes, she came quietly to sit at our table and looking at me very hard with her black, sparkling eyes asked Dominic familiarly what had happened to his Signorino. It was her name for me. I was Dominic's Signorino. She knew me by no other; and our connection has always been somewhat of a riddle to her. She said that I was somehow changed since she saw me last. In her rich voice she urged Dominic only to look at my eyes. I must have had some piece of luck come to me either in love or at cards, she bantered. But Dominic answered half ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... her girlhood dream of love, she could not see. And Kenny was passionately glad that his words were a riddle. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... Renan, De l'Origine du Langage, pp. 146-149; and an admirable article on 'Slang' in the Times, Oct. 18, 1864.] And thus, when a word entirely refuses to tell us anything about itself, it must be regarded as a riddle which no one has succeeded in solving, a lock of which no man has found the key—but still a riddle which has a solution, a lock for which there is a key, though now, it may be, irrecoverably lost. And this difficulty— it is oftentimes an impossibility—of tracing ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... the royal riddle of England's governance. We are swayed by the brain of a man behind the mask of woman's face. To the woman that we behold we pay that chivalrous deference and loving devotion that her sex and her station ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... I still can harp, and carp, and fiddle. What further hath befallen or may befall The hero of this grand poetic riddle, I by and by may tell you, if at all: But now I choose to break off in the middle, Worn out with battering Ismail's stubborn wall, While Juan is sent off with the despatch, For which all Petersburgh ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... problem that lays so heavy on the Southern and Northern heart and conscience and the riddle gits harder and harder to solve. The lurid blaze of livin' torches makes bloody blindness in the eyes of them that look on and light them fires. The disgraceful glare flames out, shamin' you in the eyes of the world, and streams up to the pityin' ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... hast sounded to the deeps that circumfluent ocean called "practical human life," and hast taught the acutest of its navigators to consider how far its courses are guided by orbs in heaven,—canst thou solve this riddle which, if it perplexes me, must perplex so many? What is the real distinction between the rare genius and the commonalty of human souls that feel to the quick all the grandest and divinest things which the rare ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ...! I almost said somethin' I oughtn't to!—[He steps back among the people.] I'll give you a riddle to guess. Shall I? Still waters run deep! 'Tis bad. You mustn't taste blood—no, no! The thirst only gets ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Silver said was a riddle to him, but you would never have guessed it from his tone. As for me, I began to have an inkling. Ben Gunn's last words came back to my mind. I began to suppose that he had paid the buccaneers a visit while they all lay drunk together round their fire, ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with a wooden sound, And fill the hearing with childish glee Of rhyming riddle, or story found In the Robinson Crusoe, leather-bound Old book of ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... it is supposed, increase the dose of respect (though some people, in some cases, find it hard) when considering a further quality or property—the Riddle-attraction of Rabelais. This riddle-attraction—or attractions, for it might be better spoken of in a very large plural—is of course quite undeniable in itself. There are as many second intentions in the ordinary sense, apparently ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... repeated Bazarov. 'Perhaps you are right; perhaps, really, every one is a riddle. You, for instance; you avoid society, you are oppressed by it, and you have invited two students to stay with you. What makes you, with your intellect, with your beauty, live in ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... messenger that took the word across the boundary. He could not fathom the mystery, he could not picture to himself the missing link in the chain. As was always the case with him, his mind began at once to grapple with its problem—in this instance the riddle of the missing link. He actually forgot ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... letters. Among other extremely curious terra-cottas I must also mention three pots with three rows of perforations; they have the usual handle on one side and three feet on the other; also three large vases with perforations right round, on all sides, from the bottom to the top; their use is a riddle to me; can they have served as bee-hives? Also a vessel in the form of a pig, with four feet, which are, however, shorter than the belly, so that the vessel can not stand upon them; the neck of the vessel, which is attached to the back of the pig, is connected with the hinder part by a handle. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... was one of the birds that had escaped me in my first visit to Colorado, save as I had caught tantalizing glimpses of him from the car-window on the plain beyond Denver, and when I went south to Colorado Springs, I utterly failed to find him. It has been a sort of riddle to me that not one could be discovered in that vicinity, while two years later these birds were abundant on the plains both east and west of Denver. If Colorado Springs is a little too far south for them in the summer, Denver is obviously just to their liking. No less abundant were the western ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... in the following battles: Fort Sumter, First Manassas, Yorktown, New Stone Point, West Point, Seven Pines, Mechanicsville, Chancellorsville, Riddle's Shop, Darby's Farm, Fossil's Mill, Petersburg, Jerusalem, Plank Road, Reams' Station, Winchester, Port Republic, and Cedar Run. Severely wounded in leg at Mechanicsville and again at Cedar Run, October 12th, 1864. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... I've solved the riddle," cried Scraps, dancing with glee. "Those fence-boards are made of wood, and if the Woozy stands close to the fence and lets his eyes flash fire, they might set fire to the fence and burn it up. Then he could walk away with us ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... influence have thus been exhibited in the case of Hercules and of Castor, and it remains to inquire what Etruria did. There is no race about which we know so much and yet so little as about the Etruscans. They have always been and still are a riddle, and as our knowledge of them increases we seem further than ever from a solution, and what we gain in positive knowledge is more than counterbalanced by the increased sense of our ignorance. Altogether ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... her riddle I read) Was a woman of genius: whose genius, indeed, With her life was at war. Once, but once, in that life The chance had been hers to escape from this strife In herself; finding peace in the life of another From the passionate wants she, in hers, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... trying to make him understand my real motives (one's own relations are never sympathetic), and I was somewhat nonplussed for an answer, until the reflection occurred to me: What was he doing there? This riddle I, in my turn, propounded to him, with the result that we entered into treaty, by the terms of which it was agreed that no future reference should be made to the meeting by either of us—especially ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... down. Cabot stared at him, crossed his knees, and continued to stare. Occasionally he shook his head, as if the riddle were proving too much for him. Galusha did not move. Neither man spoke. The old ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... then, is it on account of his parents' sinning? Why, then, do the guilty go comparatively free, and the guiltless suffer? Sin, surely, is the only cause of the infliction. So the disciples of old, brought face to face with exactly this same riddle, the same mystery, ask, "Master, who did sin—this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" "Neither." Another—higher, happier, more glorious reason, Jesus gives: "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... same, not to say a growing, number of beardless, ambitious boys, who advance, head erect, and the heart that Princess Tourandocte of the Mille et un Jours—each one of them fain to be her Prince Calaf. But never a one of them reads the riddle. One by one they drop, some into the trench where failures lie, some into the mire of journalism, some again into the quagmires ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... give more details, something more tangible to go by. But what is there to give?... I have nothing.... The whole thing is a riddle to me. (Turning to Julian) In the afternoon she went out for a short walk as usual.... (To Felix) Was there anything about her that attracted attention?... It seems quite impossible to me that she could have had anything in mind when she left the house—that she could know ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... the extraordinary thrill of the moment, were recently revived for me by the reading of the essay "Ultimate Questions," in the last and not least precious volume bequeathed us by the world's greatest thinker. The essay contains his final utterance about the riddle of life and death, as that riddle presented itself to his vast mind in the dusk of a lifetime of intellectual toil. Certainly the substance of what he had to tell us might have been inferred from the Synthetic Philosophy; but the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... sweetness? Perhaps therein lay the secret of his hallucinating visions. Perhaps a drug had perverted his brain. But within the week the dangerous perfume had become dissipated, and with it vanished all hope of solving the riddle. Oh, to sense once more the enchantments of its fragrance, once more revel in the sublimated intoxication of mighty forces weaving at the loom of life! By the cadences of what infernal art had he been vouchsafed a ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... persists the fool, "that the king can't make such another as you are, any more than all the king's horses and all the king's men can put Humty-dumty together again, which is an ancient riddle, and full of marrow. And soe he'll find, if ever he lifts thy head off from thy ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... graduation, organization; grouping; tabulation. analysis, classification, clustering, division, digestion. [Result of arrangement] digest; synopsis &c. (compendium) 596; syntagma[Gram], table, atlas; file, database; register. &c. (record) 551; organism, architecture. [Instrument for sorting] sieve, riddle, screen, sorter. V. reduce to order, bring into order; introduce order into; rally. arrange, dispose, place, form; put in order, set in order, place in order; set out, collocate, pack, marshal, range, size, rank, group, parcel out, allot, distribute, deal; cast the parts, assign the parts; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... dear Ibrahim, read me this riddle: if the devil gets into water and kills, why don't he kill when he ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... guess it all too soon; Failure brings no kind of stigma - Dance we to another tune! String the lyre and fill the cup, Lest on sorrow we should sup; Hop and skip to Fancy's fiddle, Hands across and down the middle - Life's perhaps the only riddle That we ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... not, good sir; the world to me A riddle is at best—my heart has had No tutor. From my childhood until now My thoughts have been ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... which once employed so many hands, should have so completely collapsed is, as I have hinted, a bit of a mystery. I can only guess, and as tracking conundrums is not my purpose in these chapters, I will leave others to unravel the riddle if they can. It is, however, a matter of local business history that some thirty years or more ago the Cambridge Street concern shewed signs of tottering to its fall, and when Mr. Atkins went into the business as a proprietor, he had to make some sweeping reforms that naturally created some resentment ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... or so and then woke up to the contemplation of Miriam's hunched back and the riddle of life, and this bright attractive idea of ending for ever and ever and ever all the things that were locking him in, this bright idea that shone like a baleful star above all the reek and darkness ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... enough. She kept back enough to establish herself and Mark in rooms, should she be successful in finding some unfurnished rooms sufficiently cheap to allow her to take them, although how she was going to live for more than two years on what she had was a riddle of which after a month of sleepless nights she ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... overcome. Rachel was nodding her head. She must make an answer to this. It was a riddle asking an answer. ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... origin, probably coined in burlesque imitation of scholastic Latin, as "hocus-pocus" or "panjandrum"), originally a term meaning whim, fancy or ridiculous idea; later applied to a pun or play upon words, and thus, in its usual sense, to a particular form of riddle in which the answer depends on a pun. In a transferred sense the word is also used of any ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... [H.]eres of Gideon. Still the probability is that a mount sacred to the sun is meant here as well as in the reference to the Danites; though [h.]eres as meaning the sun itself occurs in the story of Samson's riddle, for the men of the city gave him the answer to it which they had extorted from his wife, "before the sun ([h.]eres) went down." Shemesh, the Samas of the Babylonians, is the usual word for the sun; and we find it in Beth-shemesh, the "house of the sun," a Levitical city ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... his mysterious smile, proud at being an unsolvable riddle: "It is like speaking of birds who do not fly, to talk of thieves ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... asked Sir Wulfric haughtily. 'Thy speech is dark, and eke scarce courteous. Unravel me this riddle!' ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... Metaphors are very bold but just; I must however observe that the Metaphors are not [so] thick sown in Milton which always savours too much of Wit; that they never clash with one another, which, as Aristotle observes, turns a Sentence into a kind of an Enigma or Riddle; [6] and that he seldom has recourse to them where the proper and natural ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Davis, Dixon, Doolittle, Guthrie, Hendricks, Johnson, McDougall, Morgan, Nesmith, Norton, Riddle, Saulsbury, Stewart, Stockton, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... doubtful whether good comes from the use of the Bible as a riddle-book, nor do the "Bible games" tend to develop a natural appreciation of the book. There is no new light but rather a confusing shadow thrown on the character of Joseph by the foolish conundrum concerning Pharaoh making a ruler out of him. Sending a child to the Bible to discover the ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... characteristically disregardful of the public applause which the success of his witty endeavours might have so easily elicited. That the school, indeed, did not feel his design, perceive its accomplishment, and participate in his sneer, was, for many anxious months, a riddle I could not resolve. Perhaps the gradation of his copy rendered it not so readily perceptible; or, more possibly, I owed my security to the master air of the copyist, who, disdaining the letter, (which ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... reconciliation of these two principles, since it regards the whole of nature as one, and sees only efficient causes at work in it. Dualism, on the contrary, holds that nature and spirit, matter and force, the world and God, inorganic and organic nature, are separate and independent existences. Cf. The Riddle of the Universe chapter 12.) At this point the science of human evolution has a direct and profound bearing on the foundations of philosophy. Modern anthropology has, by its astounding discoveries during the second half of the nineteenth century, compelled us to ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... at school, Begging I'll let him learn the fiddle; Another from that precious fool, Miss Pyefinch, with a stupid riddle. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... course, is the same as a Fellowship anywhere else. He went into residence at his new home in January, 1871, and remained there for thirteen years, a "don," indeed, by office, but so undonnish in character, ways, and words, that he became the subject of a eulogistic riddle: "When is a don not a don? When he ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... consider this loft as their Land of Goshen. When I took up my quarters among them they were annoyed, and also puzzled. They could not understand why I remained there so long and so quiet; but at length they lost patience and gave up the riddle. Then their impudence became unbounded; they helped themselves to the maize whenever they felt disposed to do so, and stared at me with the utmost effrontery as they sat upon their haunches nibbling; they ran races under the tiles and held pitched battles ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... make himself understood; but Tifto endeavoured to read the riddle. He must in some way make money out of his friend Lord Silverbridge. Hitherto he had contented himself with the brilliancy of the connection; but now his brilliant friend had taken to snubbing him, and had on more than one occasion made himself disagreeable. It ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... and motives of Judas remain an unsolved riddle. The Gospels leave no doubt that money played a part with him. But could a man whom Jesus selected and trusted be actuated by so sordid a motive alone? Was he perhaps embittered because he had staked his ambition on the ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... Just to hold, to clasp her once against his breast, Hers to flee him, to elude him in the game. Ah, she fears him overmuch! Is it jest,— Is it earnest? a strange riddle lurks half-guessed In her horror ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... met—indeed he knew scarcely as much. He told the brief story to Doctor Mary in the parlor. She heard him listlessly; all that was not much to the point on which her thoughts were set, and did not answer the riddle which the scene in the Tower put to her. She was calm now—and ashamed that she had ever ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... this service to his daughter well before him as the proper direction of his young friend's leisure, the cool darkness had again closed round him, but his moral lucidity was constituted. It wasn't only moreover that the word, with a click, so fitted the riddle, but that the riddle, in such perfection, fitted the word. He might have been equally in want and yet not have had his remedy. Oh, if Charlotte didn't accept him, of course the remedy would fail; but, as everything had fallen together, it was at least there to be tried. And success would ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... he was in some ways more of a riddle than ever. He talked curiously little about the war—at least to her. He had a way of finding out, both at Chicksands and Mannering, men who had lost sons in France, and when he and Beryl took a walk, it seemed to Beryl as though ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ascertain if any of the houses were known to me, and found three, out of the whole number, to be the residences of persons whom I knew. One was a German gentleman, and the other two were Americans who had visited Germany. The riddle was read! During a former residence in New York, I had for a time been quite overrun by destitute Germans,—men, apparently, of some culture, who represented themselves as theological students, political refugees, or unfortunate clerks and secretaries,—soliciting ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... the broken ship's lantern. He traces the angle with his finger. The gesture ends with an accusing finger pointing at Red Joe. He whistles softly. For a moment his eye rests upon the gun, which leans against the clock. He has guessed the riddle. He advances casually, but with dirk in hand. He comes in front of Joe. Suddenly he presses the blade of ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... enough bombardment of this sort was certain to reduce the panels to splinters and leave the way clear—if they didn't riddle Gray with bullets ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... the balsam of magic blossoms that intoxicates thee—flowers of a strange and distant world where I am at home and not a stranger as in this book[12] where a ravenous tiger devours the delicate image of spiritual love. I do not understand this cruel riddle; I cannot comprehend why they all make themselves unhappy and why they all serve a malicious demon with a thorny sceptre, why Charlotte, who strews incense before him daily, yes, hourly, should prepare misfortune for them ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... with light, seems almost resembled be an ethereal existence. The dark-blue eyes had an expression of soul and feeling which attracted even the simple domestics at the hall. The physician assured them that her chest was sound, and that her malady was to him a riddle. A beautiful summer, he thought, would work beneficially ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... it all looks again! Oh, I love this old kitchen so! Baby dear, only look at it wid him pitty, pitty eyes, and him tongue out of his mousy! But who put the flour-riddle up there. And look at the pestle and mortar, and rust I declare in the patty pans! And a book, positively a dirty book, where the clean skewers ought to ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of "Codex Exoniensis," some of which continue to puzzle the readers of our day, are also considered by some as his: one of the riddles is said to contain a charade on his name, but there are doubts; ample discussions have taken place, and authorities disagree: "The eighty-sixth riddle, which concerns a wolf and a sheep, was related," said Dietrich, "to Cynewulf;" but Professor Morley considers that this same riddle "means the overcoming of the Devil by the hand of God." Stopford Brooke, "Early English Literature," chap. xxii. Many of those riddles were adapted from the Latin ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... mother, the son forsook Corinth, and made his abode at Thebes. Meeting Laius in a narrow pass, and provoked by his attendants, he slew them and him. At Thebes there was a female monster, the Sphinx, who propounded a riddle, and each day devoured a man until it should be solved. Oedipus won the prize which the Queen Jocaste had offered; namely, the crown and her own hand to whomsoever should free the city. When his two sons and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... confusion, and he gave vent to his merriment, which by no means relieved me. "Shall I give you some good advice?" continued Gulab-Sing, changing his tone for a more serious one. "Don't trouble your head with such vain speculations. The day when this riddle yields its solution, the Rajput Sphinx will not seek destruction in the waves of the sea; but, believe me, it won't bring any profit to the Russian Oedipus either. You already know every detail you ever will learn. So leave the rest ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... the queen sharply. "Thy wits are addled. Who is there who will read the riddle clearly? Thou, ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... searchings and our probings, who knows more of the human heart to-day than the old Psalmist? And what is the problem of government but one of human nature? What Burbank has as yet made grapes to grow on thorns or figs on thistles? The riddle of the universe is no nearer solution than it was when the Sphinx first looked upon the Nile. The one constant and inconstant quantity with which man must deal is man. Human nature responds so far as we can see to the same magnetic pull and push that moved it in the days of Abraham and of Socrates. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... sheep-stealer named Alastair Bane. Little is known of his boyhood. He was supposed to have been brought to the district by Highlanders who were in the habit of bringing to Crieff cartloads of split pine from Rannoch Forest, which they sold to riddle-makers to make riddle rims. During one of those visits the child is supposed to have been left. He was called Alastair, owing to his supposed Highland descent, and Bane, because of his white hair. As he grew up to manhood he showed symptoms of a wandering disposition, and went ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... perversely, in my mind, now at the end, I know not whether I mean the Thought for the Fancy—or the Fancy for the Thought, or why the book trails off to playing, rather than standing strong on unanswering fact. But this is alway—is it not?—the Riddle of Life. ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... gate is open let no one bar the one you guard. While the flag flies over the public school, keep it aloft over Ellis Island and have no misgivings. The school has the answer to your riddle. ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... is said to have visited Solomon, "to prove him with hard questions," by which have generally been understood enigmatical puzzles. Some of these are to be found in sacred writ, of which the riddle which Samson proposed to the young men of Timnath, is a very ancient and curious specimen. It appears from the writings of the ancients, that the Greeks and all the Eastern nations, were singularly attached to enigmas. Plutarch, in his Feast of the Seven Sages, introduces the following ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... came home, his wife said to him, "Cassim, I know you think yourself rich, but you are much mistaken; Ali Baba is infinitely richer than you; he does not count his money but measures it." Cassim desired her to explain the riddle, which she did, by telling him the stratagem she had used to make the discovery, and shewed him the piece of money, which was so old that they could not tell in what prince's reign ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... days of my youth, a newspaper, "The Pall Mall Gazette," then conducted by W. T. Stead, made a conscientious effort to solve the riddle by inviting a number of eminent men to compile lists of the Hundred Best Books. Now this invitation rested on a fallacy. Considering for a moment how personal a thing is Literature, you will promptly assure yourselves ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... direction I turned, I felt that, if I listened to the reasoning of liberal Oxford, I was confronted with an absurdity of one kind or another. Of the only liberal answers attempted to the riddle of life, not one, it seemed to me, would bear a moment's serious criticism; and yet, unless the orthodox doctrines could be defended in such a way that in all their traditional strictness they could once more compel assent, life, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... of Chases, Lowes, and Baileys, All claiming some priority in Starkness. My mother was a Lane, yet might have married Anyone upon earth and still her children Would have been Starks, and doubtless here to-day." "You riddle with your genealogy Like a Viola. I don't follow you." "I only mean my mother was a Stark Several times over, and by marrying father No more than brought us back into the name." "One ought not to be ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... and the last named had sighted Victoria Nyanza. Returning to East Africa with J. A. Grant, Speke reached, in 1862, the river which flowed from Victoria Nyanza, and following it (in the main) down to Egypt, had the distinction of being the first man to read the riddle of the Nile. In 1864 another Nile explorer, Samuel Baker, discovered the Albert Nyanza, the chief western reservoir of the river. In 1866 Livingstone began his last great journey, in which he made known Lakes ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... taken twenty-thousand francs from Richard's pocket in spite of the safety-pin. He replied that he had not gone into this little detail, but that, if I myself cared to make an investigation on the spot, I should certainly find the solution to the riddle in the managers' office by remembering that Erik had not been nicknamed the trap-door lover for nothing. I promised the Persian to do so as soon as I had time, and I may as well tell the reader at once that the results of my investigation were perfectly satisfactory; and I hardly believed ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... lost secrets of the world," replies the baronet. But I can hardly understand a learned Orientalist speaking in that way about what appears to me a very patent circumstance: it is clear that he never earnestly applied himself to the solution of the riddle, or else—what is more likely, in spite of his rather high-flown estimate of his own "Reason"—that his mind, and the mind of his ancestors, never was able to go farther back in time than the Edmundsbury Monks. ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... definition of teacher. I find that I'm one who teaches or instructs. Think of it—I! That definition should be revised to read, 'Teacher: one who, conveying certain information to others, reads in fifty faces unanswerable questions as to the riddle of existence.' 'School: a place where the presumably wise are convinced of their own folly.' Note well, my friend: I am a gray sister, in a gray serge suit that fits, with white cuffs and collar, and with chalk on my fingers. Oh, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... visible was a water-lily, swaying on the water amid its broad leaves. But a swaying flower could not sing, and there must be something mysterious about it. He tied his horse to a stump on the bank, and sat down on the bridge to listen, hoping that his eyes or ears would give him some solution of the riddle. All was still for a while, but presently the invisible ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... is the western gate, Luke Havergal, There are the crimson leaves upon the wall. Go, — for the winds are tearing them away, — Nor think to riddle the dead words they say, Nor any more to feel them as they fall; But go! and if you trust her she will call. There is the western gate, Luke Havergal ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... me. My interviewing days are over. I believe if I keep on getting better at the rate I've been going the last week, I shall be able to write a play this summer, besides doing my work for the Abstract. If I could do that, and it succeeded, the riddle would be ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... guard, defense, traverse, fender; mask, disguise; sieve, riddle; jube, parclose, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... man," said William, greatly interested, but still suspicious. "One riddle only I ask thee to solve, before I give thee all my trust, and place my very heart in thy hands. Why, if thou desirest not rewards, shouldst thou thus care to serve me—thou, a foreigner?" A light, brilliant and calm, shone in ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... has become a meaningless riddle and uninteresting to most people because it is not rightly divided. It is assumed that all parts of the Bible are addressed to everybody. This is far from the truth. While we must recognize the unity and interdependence of the entire Bible and that each part ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... willing, in an earlier youth, to read this riddle in somewhat crude solutions. I think we have each of us arrived, and in a final manner, at the sounder conclusion that historical accident is principally to blame. The chance concurrence of this defeat with that dynastic influence, the slip by which the common sense of political simplicity missed ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... cried the lady, petulantly, "I'll have no nerves left me." She turned to the letter again, holding it very near to her eyes, and made a wry face of impatience. Then she held the sheet out to Mr. Riddle. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... she had left her watch, and I had peace of mind to note how thin and worn she had become, as if her baby was grown too big for her slight arms, even then I was light-hearted. Without attempting to follow her, I sauntered homeward humming a snatch of song with a great deal of fal-de-lal-de-riddle-o in it, for I can never remember words. I saw her enter another shop, baby linen shop or some nonsense of that sort, so it was plain for what she had popped her watch; but what cared I? I continued to sing most beautifully. I lunged gayly with ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... said the driver, and Bob had solved the riddle. He then told Mr. Waterman how he had tried to think what "Gi-may" meant, thinking at first that it meant something like "Allons" but that he had found out it was ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... of the man at the window for an answer to the riddle. But Matheson's face was set, and the answer to the riddle was such as Lars Larssen could never have guessed. It lay outside the shipowner's pale of thought—beyond the ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... weakness—never attain to the proper mountain spirit. There is a further point, however, in which they also recall Derbyshire, but in which they are far preeminent. This is the vast agglomeration of caves and vertical potholes—like those in Craven, but here called etonnoirs—that riddle the rolling wolds in all directions. Chief among these is the mammoth cave of Han, the mere perambulation of which is said to occupy more than two hours. I have never penetrated myself into its sombre and dank recesses, but something may ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... use), it was found that we had greatly undervalued the treasure. When, at length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense excitement of the time had, in some measure, subsided, Legrand, who saw that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... speculating, for there is a kind of fatality that concerns the disposition of matter in Nature. Oil fields and rubber trees existed, one might say, as enigmas, until the internal combustion engine and motor cars dawned on the world and explained their riddle. This was their fate. And of Mesopotamia, who shall say that it may not be concerned with a yet unborn attitude in us Europeans when we will turn wholly to the ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... him, and he sat perfectly erect upon his horse, with the pike-shaft resting upon his toe, as he told himself that he hoped if the men fired they would miss; that before he would run away, with Scar Markham to laugh at his flight, they might riddle him with bullets through ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... that the solution of that origin proposed recently by Sir John Lubbock is a mere version of simple utilitarianism, appealing to the pleasure or safety of the individual, and therefore utterly incapable of solving the riddle it attacks. ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... meaning of the curious structure of the leaves of Trifolium resupinatum remains a riddle. The stomata and (speaking from memory) the trichomes differ on the two ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... touched them with his refining art and has spoiled them. The playwright has striven to transfer from the field to the stage a cotton-picking scene and has made a travesty of it. To transfer the passions of man and to music-riddle them is an art with stiff-jointed rules, but the charm of a cotton-picking scene is an essence, and is breathed but cannot be caught. Here seems to lie a sentiment that no other labor invites, and though ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... Dermot found the riddle too difficult to solve. He ceased to puzzle over it. The noises in the forest gradually died down, and the intense silence that followed was broken only by the harsh call of the barking-deer or the wailing cry of the ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... something 'ere which was found on the top of his portmanteau. I wot ye know not the use of this." To the Barbarian's intense indignation, the Cicerone produced, from under his, his (the Barbarian's) own opera hat. "Marry, what should be this? Read me this riddle! To it—and unyoke!" ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... thirty the face of a woman is a book written in a foreign tongue, which one may still translate in spite of all the feminisms of the idiom; but on passing her fortieth year a woman becomes an insoluble riddle; and if any one can see through an old woman, it is another ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... not conceive what possible object the Japanese could have in drawing across the land, with so much trouble, boats of no inconsiderable size. We concluded, at last, that they must have seen our vessel, and feared lest they should lose their prize. But the solution of the riddle was soon apparent, for when they had got the boats up to the top of the hill, they allowed them to slide down the other side by the force of their own gravity, and then launched them on a small stream, which, after having navigated for two days, we left in order to continue ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... for both, but they intended to solve them that day, to see which way the riddle ran, and the Wilderness itself was as dark, as calm and as somber as ever. It had been torn by cannon balls, pierced by rifle bullets and scorched by fire; but the two armies were yet buried in it and it gave no ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... with Pablo at her heels, Bill Conway unburdened himself of a slightly ribald little chanson entitled: "What Makes the Wild Cat Wild?" In the constant repetition of this query it appeared that the old Californian sought the answer to a riddle not even remotely connected with the ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... her laughter. "Here's a riddle," she said. "The brownie you locked into the stable that night always makes the butter. He isn't never thanked nor yet paid, but you've looked him in the face scores ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... penny, but I zaid five poun'. The wager was laid, but the money not down. Zinging right fol de ree, fol de riddle lee While I am a-zinging ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... without the other. I believe that I have clearly shown in my Science of Thought that thought without word and word without thought are impossible and inconceivable, and why it is so. Here is the first key to a historical solution of the riddle at the beginning of the Fourth Gospel. We know that Greek philosophy after making every possible effort to explain the world mechanically, had already in the school of Anaxagoras reached the view that the hylozoic as well as the atomic theory leaves the human mind unsatisfied; and that it ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... when what thou sayest would have been as a riddle to me, and I would have said: Here are we merry, though we be few; and if ye lack more company, let me ride to the Tofts and come back with a half score of lads and lasses, and thus let us eke our mirth; and maybe they will tell us whitherward to ride. But now there is a ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... no more, She brooded often on this riddle— Alas! 'twas darker than before! At last about the summer's middle, What Johnson, Mrs. Bond, or none did, To clear the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Princess's answer to the riddle of the nineteenth day in A Digit of the Moon. I am this middle thing, and it is only the very bad and very good that achieve peace and ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... commercial necessity. For those who have opium, cocaine, veronal, or heroin to sell can always find a ready market in London and elsewhere. But one sufficiently curious and clever enough to have solved the riddle of the vacant wharf would have discovered that the mysterious owner who showed himself so loath to accept reasonable offers for the property could well afford to be thus independent. Those who control "the traffic" control El Dorado—a city of gold which, unlike the fabled ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... proper mountain spirit. There is a further point, however, in which they also recall Derbyshire, but in which they are far preeminent. This is the vast agglomeration of caves and vertical potholes—like those in Craven, but here called etonnoirs—that riddle the rolling wolds in all directions. Chief among these is the mammoth cave of Han, the mere perambulation of which is said to occupy more than two hours. I have never penetrated myself into its sombre and dank recesses, but ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... to account for homosexuality. In this way the idea may be said to have passed into current thought. We cannot assert that it constitutes an adequate explanation of homosexuality, but it enables us in some degree to understand what for many is a mysterious riddle, and it furnishes a useful basis for the classification not only of homosexuality, but of the other mixed or intermediate sexual anomalies in the same group. The chief of these intermediate sexual anomalies are: (1) physical ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... priest's conduct without a moment's hesitation. Lord Loring's check, in Father Benwell's pocket, representing such a liberal subscription that my lord was reluctant to mention it to my lady—there was the reading of the riddle, as plain as the sun at noonday! Would it be desirable to enlighten Lady Loring as she had already enlightened Stella? Mrs. Eyrecourt decided in the negative. As Roman Catholics, and as old friends of Romayne, the Lorings naturally rejoiced in his conversion. ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... which culminated in the destruction of the temple of Dagon, when "the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life." So his yielding to the pleadings of his wife when she betrayed the answer to his riddle and his succumbing to the wheedling arts of Delilah when he betrayed the secret of his strength (acts incompatible with the character of an ordinary strong and wise man) were of the type essential to the machinery ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... slavery. And I have argued and said that for men who did, intend that the people of the Territory should have the right to exclude slavery absolutely and unconditionally, the voting down of Chase's amendment is wholly inexplicable. It is a puzzle, a riddle. But I have said, that with men who did look forward to such a decision, or who had it in contemplation that such a decision of the Supreme Court would or might be made, the voting down of that amendment would be perfectly rational and intelligible. It would keep Congress from coming in collision ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... who shall guess the good riddle Or speak of the Holiest, Save in faint figures and failing words, Who loves, yet laughs among the swords, Labours, and ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... four millions of men, to be kept in subjection by a conspiracy to that effect, on the part of the whole free population—the lack of fidelity to which conspiracy is the only treason known in those regions—the existence of a people like the inhabitants of the Southern States would be a riddle incapable of solution. Slavery itself, is a remnant of barbarism overlapping the period of civilization; but, unlike the slaveries of the barbaric ages, American slavery has been stimulated into all the enterprising and audacious energy ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... he spied his father turning his next corner homeward. Nevertheless, with this trifling exception, he was a pattern of filial duty; and now the time was come that his father must die—his mother was dead long before; and he was left alone in the world with his riddle. The whole house, board, trade—what there was of it—all was his. When he came to take stock, and make an inventory—in his head—of what he was worth, it was by no means such as to endanger his entrance into heaven at the proper time. Naturally enough, he ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Marquis's meaning is as great a riddle as his manuscript. He is really in much need of Wit's Interpreter, or the Complete Letter-Writer, and were I you, I would send him a copy by the bearer. He writes you very kindly to remain wasting your time and your money in this vile, stupid, oppressed country, without so much as offering ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the sphinx, by posing her. Reference to the story of Oedipus, who answered the riddle of the Sphinx, whereupon she destroyed herself. "Pose" her, i.e., with ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... I can solve the riddle now. Your years are different, of course, like everything else in this latitude. A month is called a year with you, and that would make you, let me see—how much is twelve times thirty-one? Oh, hang ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... view is that of the philosopher and religionist, who ponder the tie that binds "soul" and body in an effort to solve the riddle of "creation" and pierce the ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... of a face, but found no clue to the riddle. "What you mean, Tsang?" he asked. "What do you know? For the Lord's sake don't fool with ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... "Well, cousin, I don't want to see much of him. He's a good-looking chap, too, though rather too finicking for my taste. I like a man who looks as if he could knock another man down. Besides, he looks at me as if I was a riddle, and he wanted to ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... commonly officious: —something hung upon his lips to say to me, or ask me, which he could not get off: I could not conceive what it was, and indeed gave myself little trouble to find it out, as I had another riddle so much more interesting upon my mind, which was that of the man's asking charity before the door of the hotel.—I would have given anything to have got to the bottom of it; and that, not out of curiosity,—'tis so low a principle of enquiry, in general, I would not purchase the gratification ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... no longer any money, he borrowed the five francs from Courfeyrac. It was the first time in his life that he had ever borrowed money. These periodical five francs were a double riddle to Courfeyrac who lent and to Thenardier who received them. "To whom can they go?" thought Courfeyrac. "Whence can this come to me?" ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... accepted. Any Negro like him is safe, if he behaves himself." I answer that I have no fancy for mob murder or torture of any human being, ignorant or wise, good or bad. There are, moreover, other answers to the riddle of that great constructive educator's career. One is creditable to the white southerners. They are not all eager for Negro blood. There is yet another solution. Booker Washington surrendered many of the Negro's rights to southern prejudices. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... to nearly everybody who sets himself down to think seriously about the riddle of the Universe there very soon occurs the question whether Materialism may not contain the solution of all difficulties. I think, therefore, our present investigation had better begin with an enquiry whether Materialism can possibly be true. I say 'can be true' rather ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... inhabitants, the goodness of his early protectress, not forgetting the denizens of its stables, kennels, and hawk-mews. In a brief space, all these subjects of meditation gave way to the resemblance of that riddle of womankind, Catherine Seyton, who appeared before the eye of his mind—now in her female form, now in her male attire—now in both at once—like some strange dream, which presents to us the same individual under two different characters ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... sure enough, the ticement began to wark i' my head stronger and stronger. At lang length I crept downstairs agean i' my stocking feet into the kitchen. All was whisht as the grave, and the fire was by now nearly out, so that there were no flame-deevils to freeten me. So I took the riddle that I'd gotten ready afore and began to riddle the ash all ower the hearthstone. The stone were hot, but I were cowd as an ice-shackle, and I felt the goose-flesh creeping all ower my body. When I'd riddled all the ash I made it snod wi' the peat-rake, and ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... you mean by that?" inquired Chillingworth; "you are a complete riddle to-night, Jack; what is the ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... in many parts of the world, and in all kinds of disguises. Now he is the most beautiful and noble of the Greek gods, Apollo; now he is Odin, with a single eye; now he is Hercules, the hero, with his twelve great labours for the good of men; now he is Oedipus, who met the Sphinx and solved her riddle. In the early times men saw how everything in the world about them drew its strength and beauty from the sun; how the sun warmed the earth and made the crops grow; how it brought gladness and hope and inspiration to men; and they made it the centre of the great world story, the ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... meantime their opponents had taken advantage of the aeroplane's plight to riddle her ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... man's shoes may be temperate, and yet he is not doing his own business; and temperance defined thus would be opposed to the division of labour which exists in every temperate or well-ordered state. How is this riddle to be explained? ...
— Charmides • Plato
... this clew to the riddle, he dropped the book again at his side and skilfully kicked it far out into the room. Captain Wattles had seen nothing. He was a man who took in only one thing at ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... throbbing in the ship. He decided presently that it was her engines. From the steady rhythmic pulsations he realized the vessel was being driven full speed ahead; and since he could not recall having given any orders to that effect, he was not long in arriving at the correct answer to the riddle—whereupon Michael J. Murphy did what every shipmaster does when he loses the ship he loves and finds himself ravished of his reputation as a sane ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... Church, which, of course, is the same as a Fellowship anywhere else. He went into residence at his new home in January, 1871, and remained there for thirteen years, a "don," indeed, by office, but so undonnish in character, ways, and words, that he became the subject of a eulogistic riddle: "When is a don not a don? When ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... face seemed like a piece of delicate oval statuary, her steady eyes seemed fixed upon some point where the clouds and sea meet. She took no heed of, she did not even see, my gesture of farewell. I left her there inscrutable, a child with the face of a Sphinx. She had set me a riddle which ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... often entangle the ground unnecessarily, and keep the mind upon the stretch to remember, when it should only feel. We think this a fault with Mr Fuseli; it often renders him obscure, and involves his style of aphorisms in the mystery of a riddle. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... random through the streets; at last, overdone with fatigue, we sit down at a table in a cafe. We mechanically take up a copy of L'Illustration and our eyes fall at once upon the solution of its last riddle: Against death, there is ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... this of Ziethen, and much more. Sees the vanguard of Daun himself approaching Dippoldiswalde, cannonading his meal-carts as they issue there; on all sides his enemies encompassing him like bees;—and has a sphinx-riddle on his mind, such as soldier seldom had. Shall he manoeuvre himself out, and march away, bread-carts, baggages and all entire? There is still time, and perfect possibility, by Dippoldiswalde there, or by other routes and methods. But again, did ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... fluctuations. But of late there has been a growing hope that an answer may be found to this economic riddle of the Sphinx. A number of different measures are being experimentally tested and applied. Many years of effort will be required for the perfecting of these plans separately and collectively. Some of these plans may be here indicated, however briefly. To remedy ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... time, have not relinquished the inquiry, and try, as they become more closely acquainted with your mode of life and thought, to guess many a riddle, to solve many a problem; indeed, with the assistance of an old liking, and a connection of many years' standing, they find a charm even in the difficulties which present themselves. Yet a little assistance here and there would not be unacceptable, and you cannot ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... We could not conceive what possible object the Japanese could have in drawing across the land, with so much trouble, boats of no inconsiderable size. We concluded, at last, that they must have seen our vessel, and feared lest they should lose their prize. But the solution of the riddle was soon apparent, for when they had got the boats up to the top of the hill, they allowed them to slide down the other side by the force of their own gravity, and then launched them on a small stream, which, after having navigated ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... as to slavery, as to religious freedom, were all in consonance with their professions. Yet I never expected we should get a vote from them, and in this I was neither deceived nor disappointed. There is no riddle in this, to those who do not suffer themselves to be duped by the professions of religious sectaries. The theory of American Quakerism is a very obvious one. The mother society is in England. Its members are English ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... baffled in even guessing at this riddle, as they were a third time, when one Prosper B. Shaw came with the story that while rowing down in the drainage canal, he had come upon, floating gently along, dissevered at the knee joint, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... was continually thinking of Clara, of what Kupfer had told him the evening before. It is true that his meditations, too, were of a fairly tranquil character. He fancied that this strange girl interested him from the psychological point of view, as something of the nature of a riddle, the solution of which was worth racking his brains over. 'Ran away with an actress living as a kept mistress,' he pondered, 'put herself under the protection of that princess, with whom she seems to have lived—and no love affairs'? It's incredible!... Kupfer talked of pride! But in the ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... It'll be of the same quality, devil a doubt, and it doesn't help us to solve the riddle that's ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... thus in fancy, as in books A man may see the naiads of the brooks;— As one entranced by potions aptly given May see the angels where they walk in Heaven, And may not greet them in their high estate. For who shall guess the riddle wrought of Fate Till he be dead? And who that lives a span Shall thwart the Future where it lies ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... though ungraceful figure—what might be the charm which excited amongst his chosen circle a faith approaching to superstition, and a love rising to enthusiasm, towards a man whose demeanour was so inanimate, if not austere:—it was a riddle of which neither Gall nor Lavater ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... the Senate, Mr. Clark renewed his amendment declaring that John P. Stockton was not elected a senator from New Jersey, on which the yeas were 22 and the nays 21. As thus amended the resolution passed by 23 yeas to 20 nays. Mr. Riddle of Delaware voted with the majority for the purpose of moving a reconsideration on a succeeding day—a privilege from which he was excluded by the action of Mr. Clark of New Hampshire, who made the motion at once with the object of securing its defeat and thereby exhausting all power ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... At night the opposing hosts rest on their arms, searching the heavens for the riddle of life and death, and wondering what their tomorrow will bring forth. Around a thousand camp fires the steady conviction is being driven home that this sacrifice of life might all be avoided. It seems ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... whole riddle," he replied; "the secret of the Leavenworth murder hangs upon it." Then, with a lingering look towards the mass of burned paper, "Who knows but what that was ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... is over. We have grasped the nettle firmly, and as shrewdly as firmly, and have taken no hurt. It remains only to pluck it. For heaven's sake no over-confidence or premature elation; but there is really good hope that Sir Redvers Buller has solved the Riddle of the Tugela—at last. At last! I expect there will be some who will inquire—'Why not "at first"?' All I can answer is this: There is certainly no more capable soldier of high rank in all the army in Natal than Sir Redvers Buller. For three months he has been trying his best to pierce the Boer ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... understand!" And to myself I thought of the assignation at St. Sulpice des Reaux, and the reason for this, as also St. Auban's resolution to so suddenly quit Blois, grew of a sudden clear to me. Also did I recall the riddle touching Vilmorin's conduct which a few moments ago I had puzzled over, and of which methought that ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... they passed through the door beneath. What a surprise it would be to Tony and Franz to have the stones come clattering down upon them; and what sport it would be to watch them as they tried to solve the riddle as to ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... the way up in the elevator he pondered over the conundrum; and all the evening he turned it over in his mind. At last, tired with the day's activities, he went to bed, hoping that dreams might furnish him with a solution of the riddle. But although he slept hard no dreams came and morning found him no nearer the answer than ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... expectant troop around her, and the clanking of metal as the Contras rode, she had no token of a fellow creature. The first of the plantations was deserted, and likewise the next. But the house doors were open. Nothing showed preparation for departure. The riddle was uncanny. At the third Jacqueline stated that she would go no farther. She hated to tramp down a man's field when the man himself was not about to express an opinion, and the ruthless swath made by her escort through the cane gave her shame. Besides, it was too much like wading, the way ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... which has attained it in the course of history, even if it is only truth represented allegorically. This kind of truth, supported by authority, appeals directly to the essentially metaphysical temperament of man—that is, to his need of a theory concerning the riddle of existence, which thrusts itself upon him, and arises from the consciousness that behind the physical in the world there must be a metaphysical, an unchangeable something, which serves as the foundation of constant change. It also appeals to the will, fears, and hopes of mortals living in constant ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... fault to find with these tactics. On the contrary. But I rather think that in the first Act an incident was introduced (no doubt in the spirit of the little girl's explanation a propos of her riddle, "That was just put in to make it more difficult"), which was not quite cricket as it is played by the best people in these ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... offices, and had warned her to beware of arousing Von Holzen's anger. Indeed, her use of Percy Roden was at an end, and yet she would not let him go. Cornish was puzzled, and so was Dorothy. Percy Roden was gratified, and read the riddle by the light of his own vanity. Mrs. Vansittart was not, perhaps, the first woman to puzzle her neighbours by refusing to relinquish that which she did not want. She was not the first, perhaps, to nurse a subtle desire to play some part in the world rather than be left ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... with you in a moment," he said. "Try to amuse yourself somehow till I am at leisure. Ask yourself a riddle. Tell yourself an anecdote. Think of life. No, it's no good. I don't see myself as a Fan Importer, a Glass Beveller, a Hotel Broker, an Insect Exterminator, a Junk Dealer, a Kalsomine Manufacturer, a Laundryman, a Mausoleum Architect, a Nurse, an ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... caused suffering and disgrace even in the most respectable families, but has baffled all later attempts at explanation. The witchcraft madness, as manifested there and elsewhere in the world, has remained alike the puzzle of history and the riddle of psychology. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... hinted at a possible rift in the entente cordiale of the conspirators. Why else should he mistrust Liane's sincerity in asserting that she had seen Popinot? Aside from the question of what he imagined she could possibly gain by making a scene out of nothing—a riddle unreadable—one wondered consumedly what had happened to render Monk suspicious ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... Babyhood, Was in a cradle-coffin lying; Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying; So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb For darker closets of the tomb! She did but ope an eye, and put A clear beam forth, then strait up shut For the long dark: ne'er more to see Through glasses of mortality. Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below? Shall we say, that Nature blind Check'd her hand, and changed her mind, Just when she had exactly wrought A finish'd pattern without ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... extraordinary thrill of the moment, were recently revived for me by the reading of the essay "Ultimate Questions," in the last and not least precious volume bequeathed us by the world's greatest thinker. The essay contains his final utterance about the riddle of life and death, as that riddle presented itself to his vast mind in the dusk of a lifetime of intellectual toil. Certainly the substance of what he had to tell us might have been inferred from the Synthetic Philosophy; but the particular interest of this last ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... heads, world-renowned feature writers expounded in reverent terms the story of the leviathan struggle of Dr. Chauncey Patrick Coffin (et al.) in solving this riddle of the ages: how, after years of failure, they ultimately succeeded in culturing the causative agent of the common cold, identifying it not as a single virus or group of viruses, but as a multicentric virus complex invading the soft mucous linings of the nose, throat ...
— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse
... with and knowing the good and bad, he solved the riddle of human passions, and with mind, tongue and pen unpurchased, he flashed his matchless philosophy on an admiring world, lifting the curtain of deceit and obscurity from the stage of falsehood, giving to the beholder a sight of ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... in a savage voice. "You can't play that game on me. Get out of that at once, or I'll riddle you with buckshot. ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... we may not throw the gospels into the waste-paper basket, or put them away on the fiction shelf of our libraries. I venture to reply that we shall be, on the contrary, in the position of the man in Bunyan's riddle who found that "the more he threw away, the more he had. "We get rid, to begin with, of the idolatrous or iconographic worship of Christ. By this I mean literally that worship which is given to pictures and statues of him, and to finished and unalterable stories about him. The test ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... chairman of the committee on the judiciary (one of the effects of the resolution was entirely to change the coloring of all testimony throughout the vast Republic of Leaplow) made his report on the subject-matter of the resolution. This person was a Tangent, who had a besetting wish to become a Riddle, although the leaning of our house was decidedly Horizontal; and, as a matter of course, he took the Riddle side of this question. The report, itself, required seven hours in the reading, commencing with the subject at the epocha of ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... royal riddle of England's governance. We are swayed by the brain of a man behind the mask of woman's face. To the woman that we behold we pay that chivalrous deference and loving devotion that her sex and her ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... boys, we pass out of the savage stage into hobbledehoyhood. The bigger boys at public schools are often terribly "advanced," and when they are not at work or play, they are vexing themselves with the riddle of the earth, evolution, agnosticism, and all that kind of thing. Latin verses may not be what conservatives fondly deem them, and even cricket may, it is said, become too absorbing a pursuit, but either or both are better than precocious freethinking ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... without oneness. 'Such an arrangement may work, but the theoretic problem is not solved' (p. 23). The question is, 'How the diversity can exist in harmony with the oneness' (p. 118). To go back to pure experience is unavailing. 'Mere feeling gives no answer to our riddle' (p. 104). Even if your intuition is a fact, it is not an understanding. 'It is a mere experience, and furnishes no consistent view' (pp. 108-109). The experiences offered as facts or truths 'I find that my intellect rejects because they contradict themselves. They ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... not know, but as often as she gave the riddle up she recommenced it, idly sometimes, sometimes piqued that the solution seemed no nearer. Once, the evening she had met him after their first encounter in the forest carrefour—that evening on the terrace when she stood looking out ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... very clever, monsieur. You never tell your thoughts. I asked if you remembered me and you answered in a riddle. I knew you did not, for you never ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... please 'im is my riddle, So I'll fall back on my fiddle; For I'd stan' myself on en' To accommodate a frien' Nex' do', nex' do'— To accommodate a frien' ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... are a riddle; you are not one, you are two men; and they fight the whole time. But I know the wiser one is winning and I think the best friend you ever had was that big fellow that threatened you with the 'bone-rot' if ever you broke ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... grope our way to the end of the passage, which was as long as he had described. Unbolting a door, Barney led me out into a narrow court. I could hear even there the strains of the riddle, and the shouts and screams of the dancers. Barney told me that if I turned to the left I should come to a narrow archway, which led into the lane, and that by turning again to the left, I should come to the ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... ends, dictated perhaps by selfish motives and ignoble passions, so far coincide with the interests and prejudices of the politically effective portion of his people, that they were willing to condone a violence and tyranny, the brunt of which fell after all on the few? Such is the riddle which propounds itself to every student of Tudor history. It cannot be answered by paeans in honour of Henry's intensity of will and force of character, nor by invectives against his vices and lamentations ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... D.C.L. (1823).—Essayist and writer on politics, etc. Three English Statesmen, Lectures on the Study of History, Rational Religion and Rationalistic Objections, The Political Destiny of Canada, Guesses at the Riddle of Existence, Revolution or Progress, etc.; books on Cowper, Miss ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... came there upon the floor was a riddle which I was too much bewildered to explain by any natural means. Joseph, who burst in upon me, in my extremity of pain and difficulty, solved it at once. It had fallen out of the glove, where it had lain folded, silent, unnoticed, during all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... told him of her meeting with Micah Dow. It silenced him; not, however, on account of its pathos, as she thought, but because it interpreted the riddle ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... tragedy of sex—the great master of the tragedy of the moral intelligence. Taking the step from JULIUS CAESAR to HAMLET as corresponding to this movement in his mind, we may say that where the first play exhibits the concrete perception of the fatality of things, "the riddle of the painful earth"; in the second, in its final form, the perception has emerged in philosophic consciousness as a pure reflection. The poet has in the interim been revealed to himself; what he had ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... in a panful of assorted abstractions, and runs the charge into a mould and turns you out a compact principle which will explain an American girl, or an American woman, or why new people yearn for old things, or any other impossible riddle which a person ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... goes with the manse," said Robert. "His case is a paradox. He is always marrying, and yet never is married. Quite a riddle isn't it?" ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... very structure and relations of other European nations—would be justifiable. But to be justifiable they must be adequate; and to be adequate they must be unexpected and thorough. What should they be? The OEdipus who solves this riddle for France is the man of the hour. He was found in Bonaparte. What mean these ringing words from the headquarters at Nice, which, on March twenty-seventh, 1796, fell on the ears of a hungry, eager soldiery ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... adventure of the Solway-nets is not reserved for your worship. Come back, and I will be your faithful Sancho Panza upon a more hopeful quest. We will beat about together, in search of this Urganda, the Unknown She of the Green Mantle, who can read this, the riddle of thy fate, better than wise Eppie of Buckhaven, [Well known in the Chap-Book, called the History ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... with Chapman's brigade, crossed the Chickahominy at Long Bridge, in advance of the Fifth Corps, and by 7 o'clock next morning had driven the enemy's pickets up to White Oak bridge, where he waited for our infantry. When that came up, he pushed on as far as Riddle's Shop, but late that evening the Confederate infantry forced him to withdraw to St. Mary's Church; for early in the morning General Lee had discovered the movement of our army, and promptly threw this column of infantry south of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Personality, with an unusually sympathetic and sensitive nervous system. Such a temperament gives one the capacity not only for moods of the highest transport, but for an unspeakable sorrow tenfold more profound. This is the unsolvable riddle. An artist so ideally endowed [ein so ideal angelegter Kuenstler] as MacDowell must ask himself: Why have I received from nature this delicately strung lyre, if I were better off without it? So unmerciful ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... She threw her hallowed picture of them on the screen of the dripping dusk so that they seemed to live. Robert saw them too. That was his mother walking at Christine's side, and then his father—— In a sort of shattering vision Robert saw him, a man of promise, black-browed with the riddle of his failure, a man of many hungers, seduced by rootless passions, lured to miserable shipwreck because he could not keep to any course, because he could not give up ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... G. RIDDLE believed that the question of universal franchise would be tried before the grand tribunal of the world, and, if not victorious, it would appeal and appeal again. The question ought to be met squarely by the "masculines" as well as by the women. He was an earnest advocate of woman's rights, because ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... one condition," decided Pike. "Disclose the whole of this from first to last, and then we may part friends. But try to palm off one lie upon me, and I'll riddle you through. To begin with: what brought you ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... strongholds with buildings of stone. When peace came to be securely established throughout the land and such fortresses were no longer needed, these places of refuge were abandoned and soon became a riddle to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... probably be better," agreed Bob. "Then there won't be any chance of my forgetting the answers. Think of how tough it would be on the kids if I gave them a riddle and then forgot the answer. That would be a terrible trick ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... nodded. "Yes," he said. "I've been kept away on business. Funny kind of business, too. Say, Charlie," he added, "suppose likely your sister and you would be too busy to see me for a few minutes now? I'd like to see if you've got an answer to a riddle." ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... prepared her morning meal. "Who am I?" had become the obsessing riddle of her life. She was no longer a young woman, being in her fifty-third year. In the eyes of the white man's law, it was required of her to give proof of her membership in the Sioux tribe. The unwritten law of heart prompted her naturally to say, "I am a being. I am Blue-Star Woman. ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... understanding was this between Doctor Danton and their pale little seamstress? They knew each other, and there were reasons why that acquaintance should be a secret. "It would involve disagreeable explanations!" What could Doctor Frank mean? The solution of the riddle that had puzzled Eeny came to her. Had they been lovers at some past time?—was Doctor ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... Known chiefly to the outside world as the sudden birthplace of those tremendous polemical missiles which battered so fiercely, some few years ago, against the walls of the English Church, it is now attracting attention to the shape and proportion of that unsolved riddle of the future, the Native Question. In those former days of rude and hand-to-mouth legislation, when the certain evil of the day had to be met and dealt with before the possible evil of the morrow, the seeds of great political ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... us in the 'Riddle of the Ivy,' he happened to be leaving Battersea, and being asked where he was going, calmly replied to 'Battersea.' Which is really to say that we find our way to Brixton more eagerly by way of Singapore ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... pink and blue blossom took his fancy, as contrast to the beds of scarlet and crimson geranium naming in the sun. But below any superficial sense of pleasure in outward things, thought of that likeness—and likeness, dash it all, to whom?—still vexed him as a riddle he failed to guess. Obligation to guess it, to find the right answer, obsessed him as of vital interest and importance, though, for the life of him, he could not tell why. His sense of proportion, his social sense, his self-complacency, grew restive under the pressure of it. He told himself it ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... so may seem very strange to us who now have been told the answer to the riddle; for the upper waters of this great river were known of before Christ and spoken of by Herodotus, Pliny and Ptolemy, and its mouths navigated continuously along by the seaboard by trading vessels since the fifteenth ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... "I've been sorry for myself; I did not believe any child's death could affect me so deeply. Life is an unanswerable riddle from beginning to end." ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... where I see My own glad face peep out at me; These windows beam like June's own skies: Guess me the riddle,—baby's eyes! ...
— The Nursery, May 1873, Vol. XIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest People • Various
... And so thinking, the certainty of her aim and work and love yonder comes with a new, vital reality, beside which the story of the yet living men and women of whom I have told you grows vague and incomplete, like an unguessed riddle. I have no key to solve it with,—no right to solve it. Let me ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... dispersion in and from the grave, when these bodies that have been the children of royal parents, and the parents of royal children, must say with Job, Corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister. Miserable riddle, when the same worm must be my mother, and my sister and myself! Miserable incest, when I must be married to my mother and my sister, and be both father and mother to my own mother and sister, beget and bear that worm which is all that miserable penury; when my mouth shall be ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... that if my object was to prevent her from looking at me, the most efficient way certainly was to apply a bandage to her eyes. Oh! woman, woman!" groaned Wacousta, in fierce anguish of spirit, "who shall expound the complex riddle of thy versatile nature? ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... Barnstable, drawing his pistol, "Mr. Black will please note that while I am standing by the bulwarks I shall be watching indeed. Should he make an attempt to escape from the vessel I shall riddle him with bullets." ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... and "secrecy" upon any man's house, and you at once make him a riddle for the cunning, envious, and crafty to try to solve; and this has been the case with the Gipsies for generations, and the consequence has been, they have trotted out kings, queens, princes, bishops, nobles, ladies and gentlemen of all grades, wise men, fools, and fanatics, to fill their coffers, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... alluded to as the Terrorists, not one of whom has ever been seen save in his crimes. How the assassin managed to enter and leave the car unperceived while the train was going at full speed is an apparently insoluble riddle. Saving the victim and the attendants, the only passengers in the car who had not retired to rest were another officer in the Russian service and Lord Alanmere, who was travelling to St. Petersburg ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... not understand this riddle of Destiny,' continued the young Queen. 'If you, Parcae, have predestined that a man should commit a crime, it appears to me very unjust that you should afterwards call upon the Furies to punish him ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... good Spirit: for the changes are great and the speech of the Florentines would sound as a riddle in your ears. Or, if you go, mingle with no politicians on the marmi, or elsewhere; ask no questions about trade in Calimara; confuse yourself with no inquiries into scholarship, official or monastic. Only look at the sunlight and shadows on the grand walls that were ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... can never become Truths valid to all minds. And these last are the truths we want if we would make some orderly progress towards a given issue. And so we resort after all, to science, to see if it can solve the intellectual riddle of our being. What can it do for us? If we would really know ourselves, we want a depth of self-analysis; not a pitiful search for motives, not the superficial probings of a moralist, not the boundless, limitless, self-absorbed ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... to run, and it was madness to stay and confront the thing. What, then, could he do? The sun had slid down the sky and the red of another swift dusk was heralding the short night before he shook his head somberly and gave the fatal riddle up. ...
— The Planetoid of Peril • Paul Ernst
... and wax-moths and ants, and even mice. These things eat the honey and riddle and ruin the comb. Then birds eat the bees, and spiders catch them. Honey-bees do nothing but good that I can see, yet Nature 's pleased to fill the world with their enemies. Queen and drone and the poor unsexed workers—all have their troubles; and so has the little world of the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... He paused, considering the riddle: and his fingers fretted with the robe of violet-colored wool beneath which lay Queen Helen. "Yours is that beauty of which men know by fabulous report alone, and which they may not ever find, nor ever win to, quite. And for that beauty I have ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... virtuous youth, Did ever, in so true a flame of liking, Wish chastely, and love dearly, that your Dian Was both herself and love; O, then, give pity To her whose state is such that cannot choose But lend and give where she is sure to lose; That seeks not to find that her search implies, But, riddle-like, ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... sphinx. The monster which continued to oppress Thebes until such time as one of her victims should be able to answer the riddle she put to him. Oedipus answered her, ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... but I zaid five poun'. The wager was laid, but the money not down. Zinging right fol de ree, fol de riddle lee While I am a-zinging ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... attendant? of the passers-by? I don't know. Anyhow, it can't have been for me, for never, in all the years of her life, never on any possible occasion, or in any other place did she so smile to me, mockingly, invitingly. Ah, she was a riddle; but then, all other women are riddles. And it occurs to me that some way back I began a sentence that I have never finished... It was about the feeling that I had when I stood on the steps of my hotel every morning before starting out to fetch Florence back from the bath. Natty, precise, ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... solution. I saw two children, attired like little princes, taken from their mother and consigned to other care; and a fortnight afterwards, one of them barefooted and like a beggar. Who will read this riddle of The ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the past and the present. "Ah, I see," he said to himself, "why I am an object of wonder and something of awe to the people of the valley. I have lived apart from human ties, while they have grown old and ripe together. I must be a riddle to them all—a something which they have invested with an air of veneration, because I was not daily in their midst. Had it been otherwise, I should have been neither new nor fresh to them. How know I but this is God's reserve force wherewith each ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... The profits which we had derived from commerce with the Americans, and which were the ostensible object proposed in planting the colonies, were not sufficient: if we could obtain it, we must share in their profits likewise. But this was a question which time only could solve; a riddle, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... dreamed, this bird could say. Then down he shot, bounced airily along The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain: How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon trim Shakespeare, on ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... any sort of writing, to find out what they desire. But above all, that which gives them the greatest room to play in, is the obscure, ambiguous, and fantastic gibberish of the prophetic canting, where their authors deliver nothing of clear sense, but shroud all in riddle, to the end that posterity may interpret and apply it according to its ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... perchance My saying, dark as Themis or as Sphinx, Fail to persuade thee, (since like them it foils The intellect with blindness) yet ere long Events shall be the Naiads, that will solve This knotty riddle, and no damage light On flock or field. Take heed; and as these words By me are utter'd, teach them even so To those who live that life, which is a race To death: and when thou writ'st them, keep in mind Not to conceal ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... needles, looked so akin to the room that one suspected it of having produced him, Athena-wise, from, say, the great black shrine. When he paused before the shrine he seemed like a child come to beseech some last word concerning the Riddle, rather than a man who believed himself to have mastered all wisdom and to have nailed the world-sphinx ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... as in the morning, I was but little moved by Fustov's tears. I could not conceive how it was he did not ask me if Susanna had not left something for him. Altogether their love for one another was a riddle to me; and a riddle ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... genius or what you will—that runs its erratic course through humanity's woof, marring yet illuminating the staid design, never straightened with its fellow-threads, never tied, and never to be followed to its source? With the feeling of having for an instant held in her hand the key to the riddle of his nature, Mary went to Stefan and ran her ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... answer your question," she replied. "I am no priest. But this I know: I have done no evil, and my conscience nevertheless is sore. Solve me the riddle, Malcolm, ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... significant historical fact of this Fourth Book is the connection which it makes between Egypt and Greece. In another Greek legend, that of OEdipus, the same connection is made through the Sphinx, whose riddle the Greek hero solves, whereat the Egyptian monster ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... a lot about 'em. I was one myself once, though not long—not so long as my clothes. They were very long, I recollect, and always in my way when I wanted to kick. Why do babies have such yards of unnecessary clothing? It is not a riddle. I really want to know. I never could understand it. Is it that the parents are ashamed of the size of the child and wish to make believe that it is longer than it actually is? I asked a nurse once why it was. ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... to the great applause of the assembly.[2313] Sensibility becomes an institution. The same Madame de Genlis founds an order of Perseverance which soon includes "as many as ninety chevaliers in the very best society." To become a member it is necessary to solve some riddle, to answer a moral question and pronounce a discourse on virtue. Every lady or chevalier who discovers and publishes "three well-verified virtuous actions" obtains a gold medal. Each chevalier has his "brother in arms," each lady has her bosom friend and each member has a device, and each device, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... once seriously undertake to solve the riddle of man's origin, and go back along the line of his descent, I doubt if we can find the point, or the form, where the natural is supplanted by the supernatural as it is called, where causation ends and miracle begins. Even the first dawn of protozoic ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... some time afterwards one of the captives was asked this insulting question by one of the Athenian allies: "Your brave comrades were buried on the field, I suppose?" The Spartan's answer was couched in a riddle: "It would be a mighty clever spindle, [Footnote: Arrow.] which singled out the brave." His meaning was that the stones and arrows had dealt out death ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... had taken twenty-thousand francs from Richard's pocket in spite of the safety-pin. He replied that he had not gone into this little detail, but that, if I myself cared to make an investigation on the spot, I should certainly find the solution to the riddle in the managers' office by remembering that Erik had not been nicknamed the trap-door lover for nothing. I promised the Persian to do so as soon as I had time, and I may as well tell the reader at once ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... communicated by your correspondent BALLIOLENSIS, and requested me to ascertain if they were Mrs. Piozzi's, as my friend had been told that they were written by that lady. Soon afterwards I asked Mrs. Piozzi if she ever wrote a riddle on a gaming-table. She replied, "Yes, a very long time ago." She immediately repeated a line or two, and, after some consideration, recited the following, which, she assured me, were her original composition. These lines, it will be observed, differ somewhat ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... If the riddle be not already guessed, a few words will explain the simple machinery by which this "coming event" was made to cast its "shadow before." Three men had plotted the robbery and murder of Mr. Higginbotham; two ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... intellect represents to it an object as indifferent."(731) That is to say: Liberty remains as long as its root, i.e. an indifferent judgment, is present. But this new rejoinder, far from solving the riddle, simply begs the question. Liberty of choice resides formaliter in the will, not in the intellect, and consequently the will, as will, cannot be truly free unless it possesses within itself the unimpeded power to act or not to act. This indifferentia activa ad utrumlibet, as it is technically ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... joke, was it? And suppose the neighbors fire their pistols at me and riddle me with ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... long, that a lesser riddle would have been to stand in the manufactory of the Faubourg St. Marcel, and abolishing the pattern of the designers, the directing touch of Lebrun, the restraint of the heddle, demand that the blind, insensate ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... history and English learning, in the North of England. Venerable he truly was. We need not go back to the legend which supposed that he received the title from the Roman Senate for having solved a strange riddle which they could not answer; nor to the other legend, which tells us that, on his grave-stone at Durham, you can still read the inscription in which it is said that an angel in the night filled up the blank space with Venerabilis. He is venerable for the much more solid reason, that he ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... Not the sea, nor the sky, nor the great mysterious midnight, when he opens his casement and gazes into starry space will give him answer; riddle that no Oedipus will ever come to unravel; this sphinx will never throw herself from the rock into the clangour of the seagulls and waves; she will never divulge her secret; and if she is the woman and not a woman ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... up Greg Holmes, "I'm not going to bother my head, to-night, as to why we came here. I'm going to get a ten hour nap, and in the morning I'll try to solve the riddle for you, Dick, of why ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... tell you a joke," said the Calico Clown. "It is a sort of riddle. Listen, and see if any of ...
— The Story of a White Rocking Horse • Laura Lee Hope
... son, and his name was Sym; And his eyes were wide as the eyes of Truth; And there came to the wondering mind of him Long thoughts of the riddle that vexes youth. And, "Father," he said, "in the mart's loud din Is there aught of pleasure? Do some find joy?" But his father tilted the beardless chin, And looked in the eyes of ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... sense of his own nature, in the radical explanation of all phenomena whatever.' Writing in the same key, Schopenhauer calls man 'a metaphysical animal.' He is speaking of the need man feels of a theory, in regard to the riddle of existence, which forces itself upon his notice; 'a need arising from the consciousness that behind the physical in the world, there is a metaphysical something permanent as the foundation of constant change.' Though not here alluding to the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... calf's-tail, "Extremes meet!" or (when the dish was calf's-head), "What egotism!" and yet again, "There's brotherly love for you!" Not at my Lord Carlisle's, as in Bouverie Street, would you hear Shirley Brooks ask the famous two-edged riddle which Dean Hole reminds us of—"Why is Lady Palmerston's house like Swan and Edgar's? Because it's the best house for muzzling Delane (mousseline de laine)"—Delane being then unjustly suspected of having been "nobbled" ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... up his placid countenance, like one that had found out a riddle, and looked to have the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... let his head sink forward on his breast, wearied by the oft-repeated endeavor to solve that which was fast becoming a riddle, a chimera to him, and he probably would have fallen asleep had he not been startled suddenly into a consciousness of his surroundings by a low whinny; soft and plaintive as a child's voice. Looking up, he saw Starlight standing before him with ears ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... vibrate in pulsations of sublime unity. At present we are only a people in the making, and very few there are calling themselves Americans who have any idea of what America is and means in relation to history. By and by we shall all apprehend the riddle more wisely, and be more worthy of the great name ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Islands. The reports of an intended French invasion form a wholly inadequate excuse for his inaction. His troops could have rendered valuable service either in Brittany, Flanders, or at Toulon. The riddle of their inaction has never been solved. Ultimately the blame must rest with Pitt, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... Independent thinking, fortified by the authority of Locke and Sidney, Bacon and Tillotson, and the author of Cato's Letters, enabled him to announce, in the very spirit and all but the very words of Diderot and Rousseau, of whom he had never heard, that "the design of Christianity was not to make good riddle-solvers or good mystery-mongers, but good men, good magistrates, and good subjects." And so he renounced the ministry in favor of "that science by which mankind raise themselves from the forlorn, helpless state, in which nature leaves them, to the full enjoyment of all the inestimable blessings ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... make of the assumed 'honour' of men and women; and I enjoyed the liberty and license of my position. Since then, for three years I have been the prisoner of my Parliament,—but now—now, and for the rest of the time granted to me on earth, I will live my life in the belief that its riddle must surely meet with God's own explanation. To me it has become evident that the laws of Nature make for Truth and Justice; while the laws of man are framed on deception and injustice. The two sets of laws contend one against the other, and the finite, after foolish ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... through the garden gap, Who should I meet but Dick Red-cap! A stick in his hand, a stone in his throat, If you'll tell me this riddle, I'll give you ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... uncle's riddle,' said Stanley;'the cautious old soldier did not care to hint to me that I might hand over to you this passport, which I have no occasion for; but if it should afterwards come out as the rattle-pated trick of a young Cantab, cela ne tire a rien. You are therefore ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the result of a loss of Spiritual vision, and is the final effort on the part of scientists to explain the riddle of human existence in accordance with a cleverly thought out, but most amazingly deficient, ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... and slowly shook his head. Something was forming itself in his mind, this was evident. He walked around the ledge and back again. Finally, he said: "I wish it were night, it might help to solve the riddle." ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Liddell Or Scott; and Smith, and White, And Lewis, Short, and Riddle Are 'emptied of delight.' Todhunter and Colenso (Alas, that friendships end so!) He curses in extenso ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... to us to destroy man's dearest faith and hope. This is the teaching of Lucretius, yet on this road he marches with a step so firm and buoyant, an eye so awake to all beauty and grandeur, a spirit so elate, that as we read we catch the energy and elation. The reading of the riddle is this: the religion against which Lucretius made his attack was not the soaring idealism of Plato, nor the inspiring and consolatory faith of Christianity, but an outworn mythology in which this world was ruled by capricious and unworthy despots, and the next world was gloomy ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... to riddle the upper wall and the door with bullets. Several times they attempted a rush, but were unable to withstand the heavy magazine fire which met them, when within twenty yards of the house. Twice they attempted to pile faggots at the side of the ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... on becoming reconciled to him, she bestows on him a dog and a dart, which Diana had once given her. The dog is turned into stone, while hunting a wild beast, which Themis has sent to ravage the territories of Thebes, after the interpretation of the riddle ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
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