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More "Unravel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hitherto with horror, didn't scare him if he went into it hand in hand with Joan. With Alice trying, in her persistently gentle way, to cure him, life was unthinkable. Life with Joan—there was that to achieve. Let the law unravel the knots while he and she wandered in France and Italy, she triumphantly young, and he a youth again, his dream come true.... Would she have come with him to-night if she hadn't grown weary of playing flapper? She ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... down the anger that inflames me, and hear all you have to say about your mission. I must unravel this confusion before I see my wife. Collect your senses, think well over what you say, and answer each question ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... faced their darkest moment. Feeling, as they did, that they were encircled by hidden enemies, the very air they breathed became a menace. Every attempt to find the thread that might unravel the dark mystery proved futile. It was not to be wondered at that they despaired. Even the weird laughter of Eva's stricken father, echoing hollowly through the house, seemed to be ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... would read her letter over, burning every word of it upon his brain, until the piteous minor appeal would torture him once more and he would begin again to try to get hold of some thread of thought that would unravel this ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... place himself by the side of Newton, in virtue of his discovery of this new law of attraction. If any comparison can be made, we think—inasmuch as to unravel the problem of humanity is a greater task than to elucidate the movements of the planets—that Fourier was warranted in placing himself infinitely above Newton. Unfortunately, there is this difference between the two, that Newton's law explains existing phenomena, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... perceived," observes an author by no means friendly to the Huguenots, "that the accident (of Conde's death) had happened only in order to reveal in all its splendor the merits of the Admiral de Chatillon. The admiral had had during his entire life very difficult and complicated matters to unravel, and, nevertheless, he had never had any that were not far below his abilities, and in which, consequently, he had no need of exerting his full capacity. Thus those qualities that were rarest, and that exalted him most ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... eat the turkey on Christmas Day. A few days before Christmas, the doctor and wife, on their daily visit, found the turkey had vanished. Inquiries were made for it, and the invited friends were assiduous in helping to unravel the mystery, and concluded in the end that it had been stolen. They condoled and sympathized with the bereaved, and tried to assuage the grief by telling Trimble and wife that they would give him a dinner on Christmas Day instead! The grief-stricken ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... uncouth, that it will be seen at the post-office, that the names are disguised on purpose."—"Do you think then, that they amuse themselves at the post-office by opening and reading all the letters of business which pass through? They could not get through them. I have attempted to unravel the correspondence carried on under the disguise of banking transactions, but I could never succeed. The post-office is like the police, only fools are caught; yet think of any other method: I shall have ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... tells us that these Diurnals differ from a Mercurius Aulicus (the paper of his party),—"as the Devil and his Exorcist, or as a black witch doth from a white one, whose office is to unravel her enchantments." ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... responded Cleek, with an enigmatic smile. "And I can't help having a sneaking admiration for the person who's engineering the whole thing. How he must laugh at the state of the old Yard, with never a clue to settle down upon, never a thread to pick up and unravel! All of which is unbusinesslike of me, I've no doubt. But, cheer up, man, I've a piece of news which ought to help matters on a bit. Just came from ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... delightful thread to unravel!" he exclaimed. "I should like to aid in it; but unless you have a clue, it is not likely that ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... doubt, this might have happened under a Parliamentary government. But, then, many members of Parliament, the entire Opposition in Parliament, would have been active to unravel the matter. All the principles of finance would have been worked and propounded. The light would have come from above, not from below—it would have come from Parliament to the nation instead of from the nation to Parliament But exactly the reverse happened in America. Mr. Wells ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... far by this time," said the mate. "I think that I can unravel the mystery. This whale was attacked by the boats of a ship, some of which were probably destroyed by the monster. It was then towed alongside, when she was either capsized in a storm, or, receiving damage from some other cause, she went ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... card playing and theatre-going rank side by side with lying, stealing and idolatry. As I sat there I tried to reconcile my opinion of these worldly pleasures with the conduct of my new friends. The tangle is too complicated to unravel at once. I could feel blushes of shame staining my cheeks as the game progressed. What would Aunt Maria say, what would daddy say, what would even tolerant Mother Bab say, if they knew I sat passively by and ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... aloud. "Well, I think my most worthy cousin, Ernest Augustus, of Saxe-Weimar, will understand this allusion, and in gratitude for my giving his name to posterity in my 'Anti-Machiavel,' will unravel the mystery, and inform the world how it is possible, with the annual income of four hundred dollars, to keep a retinue of seven hundred men, a squadron of one hundred and eighty, and a company of cavalry; if he is capable of accomplishing this, without plunging into debt, ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... post-horses, and as my master has gone in the direction of Bordeaux with Monsieur the Baron's passport, and as Monsieur the Baron goes toward Geneva with my master's passport, the skein will probably be so tangled that the police, clever as their fingers are, can't easily unravel it." ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... of Marly-le-Roi appears from the chronicles the most complicated to unravel of that of any of the kingly suburbs of old Paris, though in the days of the old locomotion a townlet twenty-six kilometres from the capital was hardly to be ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... friendly in spite of her apparent bitterness toward him, which perhaps he understood better than I. Possibly Mrs. Hunter may have broken their relations, for there is no doubt about her feelings. Well, time must unravel the snarl. It would now seem that he is devoted to this girl here, and she to him as far as she can be to any one. What he will think when he learns that she ran shrieking away and left him, while Mara, reckless of life itself, stood ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... "Mais, monsieur, we are only human! Arrested him? No, not quite. But tracked out how he did it. That is already much—to unravel Colonel Clay, gentlemen!" ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... from the outside, attributing them arbitrarily to motives which are pretty sure to be the lowest possible, because it is easier to conceive a low motive than a lofty one, and to call a man a villain than to unravel patiently the tangled web of good and evil of which his thoughts are composed. He has attempted to conceive of his characters as he would if they had been his own contemporaries and equals, acting, speaking in his company; and ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... with these 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
... turning over in his mind the secret that had been partly revealed to him, through the words of Grannie Thornton, could not make up his mind just what to do about it. He had almost decided to entrust what he knew to Lawyer Estes, for him to unravel, when the lawyer was called out of town for several weeks, on an important case. Again, another event intervened to cause delay. Miss Matilda Burns made a visit to her home in Massachusetts, and took Henry Burns with her; and it was well into November, ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... If we would unravel the mysteries involved in present religious faiths, we should begin not by attempting to analyze or explain any existing system or systems of belief and worship. Such a course is likely to end not only in confusion and in a subsequent ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... overlooked, store my surplus clothes with the postmaster at the general store, and repack my kit for pony travel. Then, after watching Big Pete skilfully throw the diamond hitch, we were off for the hills and our first camp. I hoped that I was on my way to find my real father and unravel the mystery that surrounded my strange babyhood. But I little guessed what adventures I was to have or the strange things I was to see ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... every step, and retreats before the unexpected and the irreconcilable. Would you have before you the nobly humiliating spectacle of human genius battling with infinite power, you have but to follow Darwin's endeavours to unravel the strange, incoherent, inconceivably mysterious laws of the sterility and fecundity of hybrids, or of the variations of specific and generic characters. Scarcely has he formulated a principle when numberless exceptions assail him; and this very principle, soon completely overwhelmed, ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the magnificent diction and poetic imagination of the one, and the homely picturesque genius of the other, the grand themes treated of are degraded if not vulgarized, without our being in any way helped to unravel their essential mysteries. In point of individual personal interest, "The Holy War" contrasts badly with "The Pilgrim's Progress." The narrative moves in a more shadowy region. We may admire the workmanship; but the same undefined sense of unreality pursues us through Milton's noble ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... word passed her lips. She began again to try and unravel the meaning of his letter. Why had he gone in search of them to the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... told me he never travelled without them, and we caught a lot of fish with them up in the mountains just after we started before. I don't know about line, but one might unravel one of the ropes." ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... Santa Fe, with the firm determination to revisit Pecos at a future day, and then do what I was compelled reluctantly to leave undone this time. Should, in the mean time, some archaeologist explore the same locality, correct my errors, and unravel the mysteries hovering about the place, I heartily wish him as much pleasure and quiet enjoyment as I have had during my ten days' work, in which the dream of a life has at last begun its realization. Before, however, turning to the close of my report, which will embody scraps of history ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... curious and fantastic for belief he loved to trace to their hidden sources. To unravel a tangle in the very soul of things—and to release a suffering human soul in the process—was with him a veritable passion. And the knots he untied ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the sixteenth of a hint to rush armed with full fervour into the mysteries of his system. Mrs. Gunilla took up a packet of old gold thread, which she set herself to unravel, whilst the Candidate coughed ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... is removed, but as far as she is concerned, the truth must still be concealed for Clemency's sake. It must not be known that that dead man was her father, and the very instant we let go one thread of the mystery the whole fabric will unravel. Poor Clara can never be acknowledged openly as my wife, the best and most patient wife a man ever had, and under a heavier sentence of death this moment than the utmost ingenuity of man could contrive." Gordon groaned, and let his head ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... not know what it meant. She could not keep it nor use it. She could not unravel its message nor rest upon its strength. It was gone almost while it came, but it did something for the lady of the feathers. It gave to her the little seed of expectation that, quite alone in a weary desert, yet makes ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... from this list how difficult it is to unravel the tale of the false Bellinis. The master's own works speak for themselves with no uncertain voice, but away from these it is very difficult to pronounce as to whether he had given a design, or a few touches, or advice, and still more difficult ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... to astonish Nicol Hendry, but he was considerably astonished now. Yet it was impossible to have the remotest doubt of Franklin Marmion's absolute earnestness. But why should he of all men on earth want to unravel the Zastrow mystery? What interest save the merest curiosity could he have in the matter? And yet he was by no means the sort of man to be merely curious. The very strangeness of his proposition half-convinced him that there ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... to consider a duty. Worse, you would destroy a man's happiness for a morbid phantasm. What can you do towards avenging Leslie's death? You hold no clue. What the police have failed to fathom, how can you hope to unravel? If I were a man, do you know what I'd do to you? I'd take you by the shoulders and shake you until that foolish head of yours threatened to part company with your equally foolish body. You should have thought of these things before, and not now, when you realize how fond you ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... mean to preach upon every page. I have begun by trying to tell you how a great influencing thought was given into Leslie Goldthwaite's life, and began to unravel for her perplexing questions that had troubled her,—questions that come, I think, to many a young girl just entering upon the world, as they came to her; how, in the simple history of her summer among the mountains, a great deal ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... impression upon his mind than they ought, considering the circumstances; and the small victory which his reason had thence gained over this weak imposture, remarkably increased his reliance upon his own powers. The facility with which he had been able to unravel this deception appeared to have surprised him. Truth and error were not yet so accurately distinguished from each other in his mind but that he often mistook the arguments which were in favor of the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... vision of the working of God in the world, the most buoyant faith in the divine origin and destiny of man. Half his poetry is an effort to express, in endless variety of iteration, the nearness of God, to unravel the tangled circumstance of human life, and disclose everywhere infinity enmeshed amid the ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... final leave of this subject of Ireland. The only difficulty in discussing it is a want of resistance—a want of something difficult to unravel and something dark to illumine. To agitate such a question is to beat the air with a club, and cut down gnats with a scimitar: it is a prostitution of industry, and a waste of strength. If a man says, 'I have ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... other discoveries in dynamics may seem very obvious now; but it is often the most every-day matters which have been found to elude the inquiries of ordinary minds, and it required a high order of intellect to unravel the truth and discard the stupid maxims scattered through the works of Aristotle and accepted on his authority. A blind worship of scientific authorities has often delayed the progress of human knowledge, just as too much "instruction" of a youth often ruins his "education." Grant, ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... it up in the middle, and folded it in two, and laid it down gently at the bottom of the boat. Harris had lifted it up scientifically, and had put it into George's hand. George had taken it firmly, and held it away from him, and had begun to unravel it as if he were taking the swaddling clothes off a new-born infant; and, before he had unwound a dozen yards, the thing was more like a badly-made ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... note once more. "If I were a storybook hero, I'd stick this thing in my pocket and set out by myself to unravel the mystery behind it. But I've chucked the hero job for good and all. I'm going to hand this over to Dangloss. It's the sensible thing to do, even if it isn't what a would-be hero in search of a princess aught to do. What's more, I'll hunt the Baron up this very hour. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Divisions that languished at Suvla and Helles. What chance had the Haughty Islanders now of escaping? The wintry storms were already cutting their frail line of communications by sea, and smashing up their miserable jetties on the beaches. The plot should unravel simply. The German-Turk combine would attack in force, and the British, unable to escape, would either surrender or, in good ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... belittling the study of the cut of a coat, or the tie of a cravat, or the wrinkle in a shoe, or the color of a ribbon! How they are worried if something gets untied, or hangs awry, or is not nicely adjusted! With a mind capable of measuring the height and depth of great subjects; able to unravel mysteries; to walk through the universe; to soar up into the infinity of God's attributes,—hovering perpetually over a new style of mantilla! I have known men, reckless as to their character, and regardless of interests momentous and eternal, exasperated by the shape ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... it's not as simple an affair to unravel as that; for I can tell you one of the things, at least, which was apparently occupying her thoughts at the time, yet I can't quite see why or how it could have much to do with you. You remember, perhaps, that you came while ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... geologist pretends that it stands on the same level with any authentic history, much less with the Bible record; inasmuch as the discovery of a single new fact may overturn the whole theory. "It furnishes us with no clew by which to unravel the unapproachable mysteries of creation. These mysteries belong to the wondrous Creator, and to him only. We attempt to theorize upon them, and to reduce them to law, and all nature rises up against us in our presumptuous rebellion. A stray splinter of cone bearing wood—a fish's ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... not incur the confusion of Babel; this should men study to be perfect in, and becoming again as little children condescend to take the alphabet of it into their hands, and spare no pains to search and unravel the interpretation thereof, but pursue it strenuously and persevere even unto death."—Preface to Historia Naturalis: translated, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... influence of the body on the soul and of the soul on the body. It came upon me with a shock of surprise that while these things are the most serious realities in the world, and undoubtedly more important than any other thing, little attempt is made by humanity to unravel or classify them. I cannot here enter into the details of these instructions, which indeed would be unintelligible, but they showed me at first what I had not at all apprehended, namely the proportionate importance and unimportance of all ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... transposition required by the law. At this stage, however, Mr. Orr, who entered the council some time after the rupture, produced his appointment, which, unlike certain others, was expressed in the legal form. Thus again all the previous proceedings were quashed; and the governor, unable to unravel the difficulty, dismissed the council, to await instructions from Downing-street, or a warrant for the nominees under the sign-manual of the Queen (July, 1847). Thus during 1847 there was no legislature sitting, but at length the Gazette announced ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... an interesting fact about Diana's Grove—there is, I have long understood, some strange mystery about that house. It may be of some interest, or it may be trivial, in such a tangled skein as we are trying to unravel." ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... anxious hope that the present volumes may be thought worthy of attention. They are the result at least of severe and conscientious labour at the original sources of history, but the subject is so complicated and difficult that it may well be feared that the ability to depict and unravel is unequal to the earnestness with which the attempt ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... find the ideal modern life, even when one is anxious to conform to it, began tugging at all the strands of difficulty at once, not seeing them very clearly, but still with no notion but that if he set his strength to it, he could unravel them all in the half-hour's walk that lay between him ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... to fail, in the case of the King of Bohemia and the Irene Adler photograph, but when I looked back to the weird business of the "Sign of the Four," and the extraordinary circumstances connected with the "Study in Scarlet," I felt that it would be a strange tangle indeed which he could not unravel. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... comprehended the cause of the Prince's fury as all the rest they had seen, were at a loss to unravel this new circumstance. The young peasant himself was still more astonished, not conceiving how he had offended the Prince. Yet recollecting himself, with a mixture of grace and humility, he disengaged himself from Manfred's grip, and then with an obeisance, which discovered ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... Who shall unravel the mystery of a woman's weeping? Who shall declare whether it is a pain or a relief to the overcharged heart? The dignity of a crowned queen is capable of utterly dissolving and disappearing in a shower of tears, when Love's burning finger touches the pulse and ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... eyes glittering with excitement. "That is an inspiration. I imagine that if anyone can unravel the mystery, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... knife, Tom," cried Uncle Richard; "cut a piece three feet long off one of those ropes, and unravel it ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... Friendship to him, advised him from her Company; and spoke several Things to him, that might (if Love had not made him blind) have reclaimed him from the Pursuit of his Ruin. But whatever they trusted him with, she had the Art to wind herself about his Heart, and make him unravel all his Secrets; and then knew as well, by feign'd Sighs and Tears, to make him disbelieve all; so that he had no Faith but for her; and was wholly inchanted and bewitch'd by her. At last, in spite of all that would have opposed it, he marry'd this famous Woman, possess'd by so many great ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... your first line to lower down to me, unravel your hose or under-jerkin, or any garment you can spare without it being noticed. This will give you a long, thin line, to the end of which you must secure a light weight to prevent it from blowing about. Now, until to-night, farewell! I shall be there at midnight exactly, and ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... little time, however, she hoped would unravel this mystery; in two days, the entertainment which Mr Harrel had planned, to deceive the world by an appearance of affluence to which he had lost all title, was to take place; young Delvile, in common with every other person who had ever been seen ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... developed. In particular, that potent instrument called the infinitesimal calculus, which Newton had invented for the investigation of nature, had become so far perfected that Laplace, when he attempted to unravel the movements of the heavenly bodies, found himself provided with a calculus far more efficient than that which had been available to Newton. The purely geometrical methods which Newton employed, though they are admirably adapted for demonstrating in a general way the tendencies of forces ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... as the same or different, the best test to take is the plot. Identity exists where the Complication and Unravelling are the same. Many poets tie the knot well, but unravel it ill. Both arts, however, should ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... from a professional fisherman who fishes for fish—and you get into a rowboat that you undertake to pull yourself and that starts out by weighing half a ton and gets half a ton heavier at each stroke. You pull and pull until your spine begins to unravel at both ends, and your palms get so full of water blisters you feel as though you were carrying a bunch of hothouse grapes in each hand. And after going about nine miles you unwittingly anchor off the mouth of a popular garbage dump and everything you catch is second-hand. The sun beats down ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... they are all on top of him before one can say 'Knife!' Then one has to rush in with the whip—and every one of the team of eleven jumps over the harness of the dog next to him and the harnesses become a muddle that takes much patience to unravel, not to mention care lest the whole team should get away with the sledge and its load and leave one behind to follow on foot at leisure. I never did get left the whole of this depot journey, but I was often very near it and several times had only time to seize ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... book among books. It is a phenomenon among phenomena. Its origin and growth in this world can be studied as those of any other natural object can be studied. The old apple-tree growing in my garden is the witness to me of some transcendent truths, the shrine of mysteries that I cannot unravel. What the life is that was hidden in the seed from which it sprang, and that has shaped all its growth, coordinating the forces of nature, and producing this individual form and this particular variety of fruit,— this I do not know. There are questions here that ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... in their own places. Would Noah, who was so much disgusted at his son Ham as to curse him, permit the children of his other sons, whom he blessed, to have any communication with his children? Bishop Cumberland, in the last century, took some pains to unravel this, and concluded that the marginal translation in our bibles is the right one—that in the text being, "Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh", &c.; that in the margin, "And he [Nimrod] went out of that land into Assyria"—for Asshur generally in scripture signifies the ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... since his return, it has not so much as appeared that he remembers anything of what he has done; and I acknowledge I have a curiosity to know what it is has changed him so: it would not be very difficult for me to unravel this affair," added she; "the Viscount de Chartres, his intimate friend, is in love with a lady with whom I have some power, and I'll know by that means the occasion of this alteration." The Queen-Dauphin spoke with an air of sincerity which convinced ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette
... let him make confession and restitution before he left to-day, and although he could not be suffered to return to the school, he might at least be spared the shame of confronting his schoolmates after discovery. For he would leave no stone unturned, he said, emphatically, to unravel the mystery; and if nothing came to light before to-night, he should at once place the matter in competent hands for ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... attacks. It had not been in his power to look upon the young lady without being dazzled; and the uneasiness he felt at following the muleteer at a distance, and the fear lest any accident might happen by the way that should deprive him of his conquest, taught him to unravel his thoughts. He was more than usually delighted, when, being arrived safe at home, he saw the chest unloaded. He dismissed the muleteer, and having caused a slave to shut the door of his house, opened the chest, helped the lady out, gave her his hand, and conducted her to his apartment, lamenting ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... an air of cheerfulness which was not entirely assumed, "I hope we're nearing the end of our trouble at last. This is Mr. Patten—Terry Patten of New York, who has come to help me unravel the mystery." ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... paths the tangled clue He taught the nations to unravel; And mapped the track where safely through The ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... mankind in bloody battle-fields; dark of counsel, and terrible of execution; him to whom in after years the Empress Sophia sent word that he was more fit to spin among maids than to command armies, and he answered, that he would spin her such a thread as she could not unravel; and kept his word (as legends say) by inviting the Lombards ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... my heart up with a bound. "On board the 'Queen.'" I had crossed the Channel in the "Queen," and this beginning alone was enough to make me hope that the bit of paper might do more than any detective to unravel the mystery. ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate I rose, and on the throne of Saturn sate, And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road; But not ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... south-west to the plains of India. Between the summit and the plains, a distance of 60 to 70 miles, there are higher, middle, and lower ranges, so cut up by deep and winding valleys and river-courses, that no labyrinth could be found more confusing or difficult to unravel. There is nowhere any tableland, as at the Cape or in Colorado, with horizontal strata of rock cut down by water into valleys or canyons. The strata seem, on the contrary, to have been shoved up and crumpled ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... should resort to dream analysis instead of taking the history of the case in the usual way. In all cases the patient should be permitted to tell her story in her own way. This method of procedure, with cross questioning, may and should indeed be sufficient to unravel the case for us in most cases. But if we find that we have not gained the confidence of the patient and have not that condition of being en rapport with the patient which is essential for progress and success in ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... out to reap but stayed to unravel the corn-stalks. Ha! Ha! Ha! Is there any sense in ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... silent for awhile; then he said, "Look here, Peter. Let us cut a piece off the sail about five feet long, and say three feet wide, double it longways, and sew up the ends so as to make a bag; we can unravel some string, and make holes with our knives. Then we can sink it down two or three feet, and watch it; and when we see that some little fish have got in it, we can draw it up very gently, and, by raising it gradually from ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... of this story lay in a tangle—in Paris, in Boulogne, and in Kent! I never laboured hard to unravel them; but time took up the work, and I was patient. Also, I was far away from its scenes, and only passed through them at intervals—generally at express speed. It so happened, however, that I was at hand when the crisis and the ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... you. We must put our heads together, and unravel the mysteries of this plot. The matter is serious; all my enemies seem to be in league. Come now, do you fancy ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... head or tail of them," I said when I had looked carefully at each, and endeavoured to unravel its secret, for obviously it must possess some secret meaning. "What do ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... that followed the death of the Taiko are extremely difficult to unravel, and the result is not commensurate with the trouble. Several annalists have sought to prove that Ieyasu strenuously endeavoured to observe faithfully the oath of loyalty made by him to Hideyoshi on the latter's death-bed. They claim for him ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... to convulse the heavens and to subvert the earth. But at an unforeseen moment resounded in the air the gentle rapping of a 'wooden fish' bell. A voice recited the sentence: "Ave! Buddha able to unravel retribution and dispel grievances! Should any human being lie in sickness, and his family be solicitous on his account; or should any one have met with evil spirits and come across any baleful evils, we have the means ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... himself body and mind to unravel the remainder of the mystery. The story repeated to him was always the same: 'She ran away with the curate.' A strangely circumstantial piece of intelligence was added to this when he had pushed his inquiries ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... simultaneously upon the brain of man, which modify him so diversely in the different periods of his existence, are the true causes of that obscurity in morals, of that difficulty which is found, when it is desired to unravel the concealed springs of his enigmatical conduct. The heart of man is a labyrinth, only because it very rarely happens that we possess the necessary gift of judging it; from whence it will appear, that his circumstances, his indecision, his conduct, whether ridiculous, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... way as that which I have detailed to you. A person observing the occurrence of certain facts and phenomena asks, naturally enough, what process, what kind of operation known to occur in nature applied to the particular case, will unravel and explain the mystery? Hence you have the scientific hypothesis; and its value will be proportionate to the care and completeness with which its basis had been tested and verified. It is in these matters as in the commonest affairs ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... reward. You live happy in the esteem and love of all who know you, and I drag on the life of a miserable impostor, indebted for the marks of regard I receive to a tissue of deceit and lies, which the slightest accident may unravel. He has produced me to his friends, since the estate opened to him, as a daughter of a Scotchman of rank, banished on account of the Viscount of Dundee's wars—that is, our Fr's old friend Clavers, you know—and he says I was educated in a Scotch ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... each side, when he came to charge the jury, did it in the words following: "Gentlemen of the jury, you must get along with this cause as well as you can; for my part, I am swamp'd." Now Reubon is exactly in the case of this judge, and I am at a loss what to advise him. You could unravel this thing in five minutes. Would to God you were here; but to ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... yet to lie undiscovered; but behold, the voice cries out, ADAM! and now he begins to tremble. 'Adam, where art thou?' says God; and now Adam is made to answer (Gen 3:7-11). But the voice of the Lord God doth not leave him here: no, it now begins to search, and to inquire after his doings, and to unravel what he had wrapt together and covered, until it made him bare and naked in his own sight before the face of God. Thus, therefore, doth the Word, when managed by the arm of God. It findeth out, it singleth out the sinner; the sinner finds it so; it finds out ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that the Nemesis which had dogged his footsteps all his life was again close behind him. In the Japanese attack on Kiaochow he foresaw a web of complications which even his unrivalled diplomacy might be unable to unravel; for he knew well from bitter experience that wherever the Japanese sets his foot there he remains. It is consequently round this single factor of Japan that the history of the two succeeding years revolves. From being indisputably the central figure on the Chinese canvas, Yuan Shih-kai suddenly ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... rolled it from skeins to balls. They rolled it from shuck broches to the balls. Put shucks around the spindle to slip it off easy. I have seen big balls this big (2 ft. in diameter) down on the floor and mama, knitting off of it right on. When the feet wore out on socks and stockings, they would unravel them, save the good thread, and reknit the foot or ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... be studied apart: that (to resume our former metaphor) the regularity which exists in nature is a web composed of distinct threads, and only to be understood by tracing each of the threads separately; for which purpose it is often necessary to unravel some portion of the web, and exhibit the fibres apart. The rules of experimental inquiry are the contrivances for unraveling ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... might be no divided counsels. Dowdeswill said: "On the repeal of the Stamp Act, all America was quiet; but in the following year you would go in pursuit of your peppercorn—you would collect from peppercorn to peppercorn—you would establish taxes as tests of obedience. Unravel the whole conduct of America; you will find out the fault is at home." Pownall, former Governor of Massachusetts and earnest advocate of American rights, said: "The dependence of the colonies is a part of the British Constitution. I hope, for the sake of this ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... to unravel the possible motives for her confidence. They were so many and so mixed. It was possible that she honestly suspected him of a dawning passion for Frida and that she meant to warn him of the hopelessness of such an attachment; apparently she understood her friend. Or the conversation may have ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... somewhere between these two extremes; the fact being that the personal and social causes of poverty act and react upon each other, changing places as cause and as effect, until they form a tangle that no hasty, impatient jerking can unravel. The charity worker and the settlement worker have need of each other: neither one can afford to ignore the experience of the other. Friendly visitors and all who are trying to improve conditions in poor homes should welcome the experience of those who are studying trade conditions and other ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... was only at the beginning of his work. The father and grandfather and uncle and great-uncles, the great-grandfather and great-great-uncles, with all their progenies, lay before him in a maze of entanglement which it would be his business to unravel. And as he was obliged to keep his limited legal connection together while he devoted himself to this task, the work promised to extend over months, or indeed years; and in the meanwhile there was always the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... life), "curiously attentive, gracefully subdued." With the second sight of genius, which pierces through the mask, she saw the sweetness, the passion, the delicate emotional sensibility of Chopin; and her insatiate nature must unravel and assimilate this new study in human enjoyment and suffering. She had then just finished "Lelia," that strange and powerful creation, in which she embodied all her hatred of the forms and tyrannies of society, her craving for an impossible social ideal, her tempestuous hopes and ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... had she gone in the story of the world's first civilization; but she had gone further in her friendship with Michael Amory and in her knowledge of things Mohammedan. He had helped her to unravel the skein of difficulties which Egypt's three distinct and widely-different civilizations had presented to her—the period of ancient Egypt, the period which we now call Coptic or Early Christian and the period of the Arab invasion, with its importation of a Mohammedan civilization. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... unendurable with its fondest ties broken, its closest links dissevered? There is a double influence often felt by gifted temperaments when upon the eve of some event which is to decide their fate. The eager heart, urged on by a desire to unravel the mystic secrets of the unknown Future, contradicts the colder, the more timid intellect, which fears to plunge into the uncertain abyss of the coming fate! This want of harmony between the simultaneous previsions of the mind and heart, often ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... that when thou didst go by chance to her, she was ready for thee. But if this is all she knows, it goes not far. Still it may help—it may help. In a tangled web, no one may say which will be the thread which patiently followed may unravel the skein." ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... this arduous undertaking has been to unfold all the abstruse and sublime dogmas of Plato, as they are found dispersed in his works. Minutely to unravel the art which he employs in the composition of all his dialogues, and to do full justice to his meaning in every particular, must be the task of some one who has more leisure, and who is able to give the works of Plato to the public on a more extensive plan. In accomplishing ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... recalled that Jane Strong over the dictograph had heard old Hoff speak of something that he called the "wonder-worker." As soon as Carter returned with the other advertisements that had been appearing he felt positive that he would be able to unravel the cipher. Two words he was sure of—"passports" and "wonder-working." One footprint does not lead anywhere, but two do, and given three footprints, a pathway ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... classify them and bring them into a kind of harmony: many they rejected and others they recast in order to better reconcile their statements: they arranged them in systems, from which they undertook to unravel, under inspiration from on high, the true history of the universe. That which I have tried to set forth above is very ancient, if, as is said to be the case, it was in existence two or even three thousand years before our era; but the versions of it which we possess were drawn up much later, perhaps ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... help them, and hoped that his zealous devotion might yet find some way of rescue. As yet he saw none. Looking up at the great building before him, so firm and secure, in the moonlight, a thought flashed into his mind. If any man could help them, it was his principal. His keen eye would be able to unravel all the dark secrets in which the baron was entangled, and his iron strength of will would crush the villains who held the unfortunate nobleman in their power. And then he had a noble nature; he always decided on the right, without an effort or a struggle. ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... style in honor of the discovery, but now that I looked down upon the great inland sea lying nestled in the very heart of Africa, and thought how vainly mankind had sought these sources throughout so many ages, and reflected that I had been the humble instrument permitted to unravel this portion of the great mystery when so many greater than I had failed, I felt too serious to vent my feelings in vain cheers for victory, and I sincerely thanked God for having guided and supported us through all dangers to the good end. I was about 1,500 feet above the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... preamble, Sinkum began the following remarkable tale, all told in such strange Chinkee patter, and with so much self-praise interspersed, that it took the listeners' whole attention to unravel it. ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... down and asked him, "Why so sad?" Thereupon the dreamer explained to him his sad and mournful fate, and why he had come there forsooth, under the impulse of a dream, he had set out thither, and was expecting God as if by a wonder, to unravel this more than Gordian knot. The mendicant answered "Good Heaven! are you so mad and foolish as to rely on a dream, which is emptier than nothing, and journey hither? I should betake myself to Dort, to dig up a treasure buried under such a tree in such a man's ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of the working of God in the world, the most buoyant faith in the divine origin and destiny of man. Half his poetry is an effort to express, in endless variety of iteration, the nearness of God, to unravel the tangled circumstance of human life, and disclose everywhere infinity enmeshed amid the intricacies ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... will turn to" (Soddy, 1912). May not man be the radium of the Universe? At any rate let us not worry about his size. For us he is a very potent creature, full of interest, whose mundane story we are only beginning to unravel. ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... pillow and seemed trying to unravel the tangled thoughts which perplexed him. Once more the dame came and brought him a cooling drink. He drank it, thanked her, and fell back with ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... shyly up to the old African and stood at his knee. The sorrows and perplexities of nearly a hundred years lay between them; and now, as always, the baffled eyes of age gazed into the Sphinx-like face of youth, as if by this means to unravel the mysteries of the past and solve the problems of ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... and saintly because, forsooth, he had concealed the arena of these primal passions beneath the surface of this outward life, chaining them there like leashed tigers in the dark.... Two faces of women appeared to be looking on, while he strove to unravel the snarl of his self-knowledge. Lydia's unworldly face, wearing a faint nimbus of unimagined self-immolation, and Fanny's—full of love and solicitude, the face which he ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... time Louis XI. made strenuous efforts to unravel the mystery of his brother's death. (Letter to the chancellor of Brittany, Lettres ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... over matters upon which in any progressive community the people must decide for themselves. However near to the appearances such an impression might be, nothing could be further from the facts. If I have helped the reader to unravel the tangled skein of our national life, if I have sufficiently revealed the mind of the new movement to show that there is in it 'a scheme of things entire,' it should be quite clear that the deliberate intentions both of Mr. Gerald Balfour and of those Irishmen whom he took into ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... other theory," says Alexander Humboldt, who, in his Examen Critique, made an exhaustive research into the Vespucci letters. Humboldt completely vindicated the character of Vespucci, leaving no shade of doubt upon his integrity, but he did not unravel ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... circumstances it seems essential that the St. Petersburg Cabinet, whose desire to unravel this crisis peacefully is manifest, should immediately give their adherence to the British proposal. This proposal must be strongly supported at Berlin in order to decide [Secretary of State] Von Jagow to take real action at Vienna capable of stopping Austria ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... really desirous to do what was right, as far as he knew it; and all the more desirous, because he saw, in the present state of society, what was right would pay him. God shall judge him, not I. Who can unravel the confusion of mingled selfishness and devotion that exists even in his own heart, much less ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... would be in my cap if I should succeed in making these automata reflect! if I could make them understand that their work is a Penelope's web, which they are condemned to unravel at one end as fast as they ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... goes, though Godwin denied that it had any story, "The Antiquary" may be placed among the most careful. The underplot of the Glenallans, gloomy almost beyond endurance, is very ingeniously made to unravel the mystery of Lovel. The other side-narrative, that of Dousterswivel, is the weak point of the whole; but this Scott justifies by "very late instances of the force of superstitious credulity, to a much greater extent." Some occurrence of the hour may have ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... or tail of them," I said when I had looked carefully at each, and endeavoured to unravel its secret, for obviously it must possess some secret meaning. "What do you make of ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... of this people is just as strange as they are themselves. It is based on euphony, from which cause it is very complex, the more especially so as it requires one to be possessed of a negro's turn of mind to appreciate the system, and unravel the secret of its euphonic concord. A Kisuahili grammar, written by Dr. Krapf, will exemplify what I mean. There is one peculiarity, however, to which I would direct the attention of the reader most particularly, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... There is here a discussion as to the relations between 'justice' and 'utility' upon which Fitzjames agreed with Mill. I dissent from both, and think that Fitzjames would have been more consistent had he agreed with me. I cannot, however, here try to unravel a ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... fact about Diana's Grove—there is, I have long understood, some strange mystery about that house. It may be of some interest, or it may be trivial, in such a tangled skein as we are trying to unravel." ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... an ordinary man is distracted and confounded, and rendered incapable of coming to any regular conclusion. None but a judge, a man that has from his infancy been accustomed to decide intricate cases, is equal to such a difficult task. If we even suppose the jury sufficiently enlightened to unravel those knotty points, yet there remains an insuperable objection. In State libels, their passions are frequently so much engaged, that they may be justly considered as parties concerned ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... religion. What the Founder said cost him enormous labour to discover and to possess. We shall gain so much and no more of the same spiritual substance as we put the same kind of energy in motion. In order that we may unravel the complexities of our day, a spirit similar to his spirit must become ours. When such a spirit ceases to exist, Christianity will become merely a [p.179] name; its power will have disappeared, and men can delude themselves into believing that they possess it when in fact they are the possessors ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... of those shots that turned the scale. It was unlikely he would again become entangled with a man bearing a tongue and the other things—he had given up in despair the attempt to unravel the mystery of the tongue; it completely baffled him—but it was by no means unlikely that if he spent another night in the gallery looking on the hall he might not again become a target for Lord Emsworth's irresponsible firearm. Nothing, in ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... million things lie outside in the darkness beyond this lit inn of ours, unthought-of possibilities, overlooked considerations, surprises, riddles, incommensurables, a whole monstrous intricate universe of consequences that I have to do my best to unravel. I attempt impossible recapitulations and mingle the weird quality of dream stuff with ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... it is true, a woman with a wounded heart to nurse, an aching misery to bear; but she left her with a sanity of purpose which can take up the tangled threads and, however blinded be the eyes with weeping, with fingers feeling their way, can unravel the knotted mass that lies ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... heard old Hoff speak of something that he called the "wonder-worker." As soon as Carter returned with the other advertisements that had been appearing he felt positive that he would be able to unravel the cipher. Two words he was sure of—"passports" and "wonder-working." One footprint does not lead anywhere, but two do, and given three footprints, ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... traitor," replied Beecot, darkly, "and, knowing he has lost your confidence, he will certainly try and give Maud Krill possession of the money. No, I'll speak to Hurd, who is my friend and yours. He is clever and will be able to unravel this tangle." ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... I was a merchant on my own account and could afford to go to India on a voyage of discovery—yes, as much a voyage of discovery as that of Vasco de Gama or of Drake—that I got from the Madras agent the clue which enabled me, at the cost of infinite patience and infinite labour, to unravel the mystery of my birth. There is no need to enter now upon the details of that story. I have overwhelming documentary evidence—a cloud of witnesses—to convince the most sceptical as to who and what I am. The documents are ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... but perhaps that would not have been the case in a supposedly rigidly parabolical trajectory— a new problem which tormented Barbicane's brain, imprisoned as he was in a circle of unknowns which he could not unravel. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... with pride. "Nothing much escapes me," she boasted. "And I think it was a good thing we didn't tell her just who we were. But let's not let a soul know about our finding this place until we unravel ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... required by the law. At this stage, however, Mr. Orr, who entered the council some time after the rupture, produced his appointment, which, unlike certain others, was expressed in the legal form. Thus again all the previous proceedings were quashed; and the governor, unable to unravel the difficulty, dismissed the council, to await instructions from Downing-street, or a warrant for the nominees under the sign-manual of the Queen (July, 1847). Thus during 1847 there was no legislature sitting, but at length the Gazette announced that ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... One was to cut the cable, and support one end in the water by a buoy until the rest could be unraveled. The other was to unravel the cable ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... possession of his lodging, there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have gone with us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the full novelty of his new position and was making most energetic attempts to unravel the mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently we went without him, and my darling was delighted to praise ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... found leisure to revisit the place where he had seen the mysterious figure of the cliffs. He had thought often of her, and had so longed to return to that part of the coast that only a strict sense of duty had prevented him. Now that he was free to unravel the mystery if he could, he was as excited as a boy off ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... delivered her from the men in black, who wished to carry her off, and that she had promised him nothing. He considered himself an outraged, betrayed, and ridiculed lover. Blood and anger mounted to his face; he was resolved to unravel the mystery. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... seclusions the Vin de Bourgogne had its allotted hour, and there were appropriate moments for the Cotes du Rhone. With him Sauterne was to Medoc what Catullus was to Homer. He would sport with a syllogism in sipping St. Peray, but unravel an argument over Clos de Vougeot, and upset a theory in a torrent of Chambertin. Well had it been if the same quick sense of propriety had attended him in the peddling propensity to which I have formerly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... you beyond my power Ever to quite unravel. But for me All things are clear; and to my blinded sight Morning has come—in this thing, as in all The ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... situations succeed one another naturally, and in great number; if their being well linked together conducts them with rapidity, from the first situation to the last, which must clearly and strikingly unravel the whole; the choice is complete, and the theatrical ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... man bold enough to wish to go out and unravel the mystery of the west now walked in chains from a Spanish ship to a Spanish prison! It was monstrous ingratitude, all declared; and they did not hesitate to show their sympathy. The story of his disgrace ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... Surgeons Museum; and the other was in a Hindoo described by Pestonji. Both occurred in young women, and in both it came on after washing the hair in warm water, one in a few minutes, and the other in a few hours. The hair was drawn up into a hard tangled lump, impossible to unravel, limited to the right side in Le Page's patient, who had very long hair, and in Pestonji's case to the back of the head, where on each side was an elongated mass, very hard and firm, like a rope and about the size of the fist. There ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... their number and lamentable inexperience, of taking the sole lead in military affairs. Is there not some one either amongst them or in the background, who knows how to think, direct, and act? Is it Bergeret? Is it Cluseret? The future perhaps will unravel the mystery. In the meantime, and in spite of the reverses to which the Federals have had to submit during these last days, the whole of Paris unites in unanimous surprise at the extreme regularity with which the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... Owl's dark retreats Showed sages the sweets Of brooding, to spin, or unravel Fine webs in one's brain, Philosophical—vain; The Swallows,—the pleasures of ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... enough to expect, of course, that Duncan might nurse some slight curiosity as to his family and its welfare. This will be his third day back, and he has neither put in an appearance nor sent a word. He's busy, of course, with that tangle to unravel—but where there's a will there's usually a way. And hope dies hard. Yet day by day I find less bitterness in my heart. Those earlier hot tides of resentment have been succeeded, not by tranquillity or even indifference, but by a colder ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the next-door building, that the distracted Jew was no longer visible. It seemed plain that the person or the event he had awaited with such obvious nervousness had arrived and passed; one more of the problems, anxieties or crises that join and unravel moment by moment in the human ant-hill of London, had perhaps closed for good or ill within the past half-hour; perhaps it had ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... hope to unravel the lines of his ancestry. In all the wonderfully mixed and varied dog-tribe I never saw any creature very much like him, though in some of his sly, soft, gliding motions and gestures he brought the fox ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... not say the same of our Caucasian empire. To our race the present belongs,—to England, France, Germany, America,—to us. Will you see what we have done, and, perhaps, bring home, after long wanderings, a message for your country which may help to unravel the tangled ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... unfriended, With sophistry blended, Deep science in Chaos had slept; Its limits were fettered, Its voters unlettered, Its students in movements but crept. Till, despite of great foes, Great WALSH first arose, And with logical might did unravel Those mazes of knowledge, Ne'er known in a college, Though sought for with unceasing travail. With cheers we now hail him, May success never fail him, In Polar Geometrical mining; Till his foes be as tamed As his works are ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... seethes, hisses, in raging rout, As when water wrestles with fire, Till to heaven the yeasty tongues they spout; And flood upon flood keeps mounting higher: It will never its endless coil unravel, As the sea with another ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... unravel itself, and the knot in his head began to loosen, but he did not quite like to reflect that he owed his relief to Tom, and that Tom had seen his agitation. Accordingly, when a proof of the poster was brought, he was the master, most particularly the master, and ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... could say that Maximilian had so much as listened. Such tangles had long since become irksome, though he never ceased plunging into the mesh. To unravel details, and incidentally confuse them more, was a notorious mania with the poet-prince. But his thoughts now were all for a girl who had fainted. Murguia he would leave to a court martial. If guilty, the medal should be torn from his ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Hadden, and once or twice he was shaken by so sharp a pang of remorse at the thought of his share in this tragedy, that he cast about in his mind seeking a means to unravel the web of death which he himself had woven. But ever that evil voice was whispering at his ear. It reminded him that he, the white Inkoos, had been refused by this dusky beauty, and that if he found a way to save him, within some ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... can bring it back? Zeus struck dead the Healer who found how to restore life. I would give my misgiving relief in pouring out words of warning: but I know that fate is certain and can never be escaped; so I am plunged in gloom, with little hope ever to unravel my soul that burns ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... impossible, without many words,—far more than Mr. Jowett's sentences commonly deserve.—Sometimes he strings together several heads of thought; of which enumeration the kindest thing which can be said is that it betrays an utter want of intellectual perspective. To unravel even a part of this tangled web so as to expose its argumentative worthlessness, soon fills a page.... But there is another kind of fallacy which the same gentleman wields with immense effect, and in the use of which he ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... in giving such relations of Japheth and Shem in their own places. Would Noah, who was so much disgusted at his son Ham as to curse him, permit the children of his other sons, whom he blessed, to have any communication with his children? Bishop Cumberland, in the last century, took some pains to unravel this, and concluded that the marginal translation in our bibles is the right one—that in the text being, "Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh", &c.; that in the margin, "And he [Nimrod] went ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... a thumb with a bone felon. Take yore time, son. Don't go off half-cocked." The little Captain rose and put his hand on the shoulder of the boy. "I reckon things have got in a sort of kink for you. Give 'em time to unravel, Tex." ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... a word passed her lips. She began again to try and unravel the meaning of his letter. Why had he gone in search of them to the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... eloquent. He knew, he said, that the story he had to relate would appear almost incredible, but a soldier, a diplomat, a master of strategy, such as the personage to whom he now addressed himself, would understand—none better—how to unravel the tangled web, and follow up the clue to its ending in a den of secret, black, and midnight conspiracy. A blob of foam appeared upon his under-lip. He waved his hands, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... new-born litter of thirty head: white she couches on the ground, and the brood about her teats is white. By this token in thirty revolving years shall Ascanius found a city, Alba of bright name. My prophecy is sure. Now hearken, and I will briefly instruct thee how thou mayest unravel and overcome thy present task. An Arcadian people sprung of Pallas, following in their king Evander's company beneath his banners, have chosen a place in these coasts, and set a city on the hills, called Pallanteum after Pallas their forefather. These wage perpetual ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... Having politely assisted his egress, he passed onward with a graceful gesture of acknowledgment. He had taken but a few steps, when the thought occurred to me that he must have come from within the perplexing structure by some secret door, and that he could unravel its mystery. I was impelled to follow him, and proceeded hastily to do so, when the indelicacy of my intrusion on one evidently connected with the grief which the monument was designed to commemorate, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... very active-minded girl. It was not her way to sit wondering and puzzling over anything she could not understand. She had a knack of setting herself to unravel problems which required explanation in the most common-sense way. After giving her uncle time to leave the house—intuition told her that he would do so—she rose and rang the bell. Then she moved to the window while she waited for an answer to her ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... enigmatic smile. "And I can't help having a sneaking admiration for the person who's engineering the whole thing. How he must laugh at the state of the old Yard, with never a clue to settle down upon, never a thread to pick up and unravel! All of which is unbusinesslike of me, I've no doubt. But, cheer up, man, I've a piece of news which ought to help matters on a bit. Just came from ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... "then it is of no use troubling you further. I have got my book back; but I confess that this affords me but small gratification in comparison to that which I should feel if I could unravel ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... woods. The trail was not a good one; but the snow among the trees was far from being the hindrance it was in the open; and though their progress was slow, on the whole it was steady. Except for forced halts to unravel the harness when it caught in the bushes, they did not stop for two hours, but pressed on until they reached an open space in the woods, which they crossed in a smother of blinding snow. On the other side of this break they came to a fresh ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... safe, and then he is appeased by one of the ordinary divine interpositions. This device has been so used and abused by Euripides, that in nine out of his eighteen tragedies, a divinity descends to unravel the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... and I looked forward to the fresh enterprise of new rivers and lower latitudes, that should unravel the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... made out very distinctly, as it runs across them longitudinally. Now cut oesophagus just in front of stomach, and cut the rectum, cut through the mesentery supporting the intestine, and remove and unravel alimentary canal; cut open, wash out, and examine caecum and stomach. Bleeding to a considerable extent is inevitable, chiefly from the portal vein. The liver had better remain if the same rabbit is to serve ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... process of deciphering the papyri, which is very ingenious. The manuscript (which is like a piece of charcoal) is suspended by light strings in a sort of frame; gum and goldbeater's skin are applied to it as it is unrolled, and, by extreme delicacy of touch, they contrive to unravel without destroying a great deal of it, but probably they have been discouraged by the small reward which has attended their exertions; for there are several black-looking rolls which have never yet been ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... title Mr. Hastings had to seize upon the property of the Begums, except upon his hypothesis of the rebellion. He was asked if he knew any other. He answered, No. It consequently appears that Mr. Hastings, though he had before him his doctors of all laws, who could unravel for him all the enigmas of all the laws in the world, and who had himself shone upon questions of Mahometan law, in the case of the Nuddea Begum, did not dare to put this case to Sir Elijah Impey, and ask what was his opinion concerning the rights of these people. He was tender, I suppose, of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... dare not take upon me, to commend the Fabric of it; because it is altogether so full of Art, that I must unravel every Scene in it, to commend it as I ought. And this excellent contrivance is still the more to be admired; because 'tis [a] Comedy where the persons are only of common rank; and their business, private; not elevated ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... one of Blanche's silks over the back of a chair, and so often looking up to revel in the contemplation of Harry's face, that her skein was in a wild tangle, which she studiously concealed lest the sight should compel Richard to come and unravel it with ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of a respectable boarding-house, No. 5 had been used as the headquarters of the gang, and the operations had been so widespread, so all-embracing in the field of crime, that after the raid many mysteries which the police had failed to unravel were credited to Randall. Many of these he could have had nothing to do with, but he had quite enough to answer for. He seems to have exercised a kind of terrorism over his subordinates, or he would ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... to the naked eye through the ports of the supply-ship the enemy rockets had become visible. They were a thin skein of threads of white vapor which seemed to unravel in nothingness. The vapor curled and expanded preposterously. It could just be seen to be jetting into existence from four separate points, two a little ahead of the others. They came out from Earth at a rate which ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... surrender to the German, but it annoyed him exceedingly that the German should have any similar feelings about surrendering to him. Once more he bent his persuasive powers and indifferent German to the task of over-persuading the sergeant, and in return had to wait and slowly unravel some meaning from the odd words he could catch here and there in the ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... cry either, my little Delphine. Look up and let me kiss away the tears. There! I shall find my wits and unravel this ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... was good and never at night, for he maintained that the coloring required the best of light. Before this odd, homely, wooden machine, a combination of unpainted rods and cords, he would sit, cross-legged or on a bench at times, and pound and pick and tie and unravel—a most wearisome-looking ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... water-course, and shaded by some lime trees, in which the birds paid her homage morning and evening.... Such a place and such solitude refreshed the more than human Rosemund, and in such peace she was able to unravel ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... and painfully unravel their tattered socks for wool. They tie the bits together, often two or three inches in length, and knit new feet in old socks, or—when they secure enough—new socks. For the Germans hold the wool ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... burning, yet No rest, no pause of conflict. Swede and German, Papist and Lutheran! neither will give way To the other, every hand's against the other. Each one is party and no one a judge. Where shall this end? Where's he that will unravel This tangle, ever tangling more and more; It must be cut asunder; I feel that I am the man of destiny, And trust, with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... few people who have a right not to believe in Christianity. If the great mass of people only knew how strong is the net woven by the theologians, how difficult it is to break the threads of it, how much erudition has been spent upon it, and what a power of criticism is required to unravel it all.... I have noticed that some men of talent who have set themselves too late in life the task have been taken in the toils and have not been able to ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... no hint. She was still absorbing, sifting and digesting the welter of impressions. She had been overpowered, smothered by the innovation; and she now found her thoughts a tangled jumble, which she strove incessantly to unravel and classify according to their content of reality, as judged ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... invaders were very far from doing so. The complicated state of foreign politics made it imperative that there should be no friction between the Powers. Yet here a great number of them were in perhaps as embarrassing a position as ever diplomatists were called upon to unravel. When nine dogs are assembled round one bone, it is rarely on the bone alone that teeth-marks are found at the ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... all may see, Were by a skilful artist wrought; But, Time! the secret rests with thee, Which to unravel ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... removed, but as far as she is concerned, the truth must still be concealed for Clemency's sake. It must not be known that that dead man was her father, and the very instant we let go one thread of the mystery the whole fabric will unravel. Poor Clara can never be acknowledged openly as my wife, the best and most patient wife a man ever had, and under a heavier sentence of death this moment than the utmost ingenuity of man could contrive." Gordon groaned, and let his ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... and were now universally abolished. The ridiculous quibble was also used that, in the preachings other religious exercises were not included, whereas it was notorious that they had never been separated. It is, however, a gratuitous task, to unravel the deceptions of tyranny when it hardly deigns to disguise itself. The dissimulations which have resisted the influence of centuries are more worthy of serious investigation, and of these the epoch offers ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was for this," I said to myself—"it was to hear such propositions as this that I came to Sicily! That Polizzi is simply a scoundrel, and his son another; and they made a plan together to ruin me." But what was their scheme? I could not unravel it. Meanwhile, it may be imagined how discouraged and ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... told me he thought his men could unravel that message and that I should wait a while," panted Roy, breathless from running up the stairs. "And they did get it. It's what they call a transposition cipher. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... In particular, that potent instrument called the infinitesimal calculus, which Newton had invented for the investigation of nature, had become so far perfected that Laplace, when he attempted to unravel the movements of the heavenly bodies, found himself provided with a calculus far more efficient than that which had been available to Newton. The purely geometrical methods which Newton employed, though they are admirably adapted for ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... I could not yet unravel and did not care to learn, had become absolutely livid with rage now, and the others, who were all Catholics, shared his fury. They said that here converts had been tortured to death—killed by being slit into small pieces and then burned. Everybody knew it. With spasmodic gestures ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... a key which would unravel this tragic tangle? He leant out of his taxi-cab and redirected the driver. It happened that the cab drove up to the door of the Great Midland Hotel as ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... this might have happened under a Parliamentary government. But, then, many members of Parliament, the entire Opposition in Parliament, would have been active to unravel the matter. All the principles of finance would have been worked and propounded. The light would have come from above, not from below—it would have come from Parliament to the nation instead of from the nation to Parliament But exactly ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... a coil to unravel! Julius's father—the Spanish marquis that was—supposed to be dead, but yet wandering in singular fashion about the London streets, clearly not desiring, much less courting, opportunities of being recognised; Julius not caring to speak of his father, apparently ignoring his continued ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... truthful man, and he told himself the case interested him. When, later, he was accosted by an old college-chum, George Clifton, who proceeded to give him the newest confidential slander at the lake, it was but natural he should try to unravel this mystery. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... to place himself by the side of Newton, in virtue of his discovery of this new law of attraction. If any comparison can be made, we think—inasmuch as to unravel the problem of humanity is a greater task than to elucidate the movements of the planets—that Fourier was warranted in placing himself infinitely above Newton. Unfortunately, there is this difference between the two, that Newton's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... strengthening balm to her irresolute will; her soul inhaled the profound peace of these leafy retreats. By the time she had reached the inmost shade of the forest her mind had become calmer, and better able to unravel the confusion of thoughts that surged like troubled waters through her brain. The dominant idea was, that her self-respect had been wounded; the shock to her maidenly modesty, and the shame attendant upon the fact, affected her physically, as if ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... were so easily soaked through in the snow. But I remembered the way in which the Lapps who tended our reindeer carried grass with them, to use in their boots in place of dry socks. As soon as I could sit down I began to unravel the ropes from the dogs' harnesses, and although by this time my fingers were more or less frozen, I managed to stuff ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... of affairs was duly reported to the captain, who had become very impatient at the long delay. The masters were then sent aloft to help the midshipmen unravel the snarl, but they succeeded no better. It was evident enough to all the officers that this confusion could not have been created without an intention to do it. An accident might have happened on the main or the mizzen-mast, but not on every yard ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... of heart, the melancholy that their music brings us is a mystery which none on this earth may ever unravel. ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... on my part. This is the first spring in years we have resided here. It is really our summer home. I am not more than normally timorous. Some one we do not know enters the house at will. How or why I can't unravel. Nothing has ever disappeared, either money, jewels, or silver, though I have laid many traps. There is the huge fireplace in the library, and my room is above. I have heard a tapping, like some one hammering ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... his "Manuel d'Architecture Musulmane," after attempting to unravel the influences which went to the making of the mosque of Kairouan, the walls of Marrakech, the Medersas of Fez—influences that lead him back to Chaldaean branch-huts, to the walls of Babylon and the embroideries ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... would unravel the mysteries involved in present religious faiths, we should begin not by attempting to analyze or explain any existing system or systems of belief and worship. Such a course is likely to end not only in confusion and in a subsequent denial of the ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... important commercial city as early as the fourth century, and had a regular intercourse with Asia. The name of Valaam does not come from Balaam, as one might suppose, but seems to be derived from the Finnish varamo, which signifies "herring-ground." The more I attempted to unravel the history of the island, the more it became involved in obscurity, and this fact, I must confess, only heightened my interest in it. I found myself ready to accept the tradition of Andrew's visit, and I accepted without a doubt the grave of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... disproportionately greater, when we extend our view over vast periods of time and undertake to determine the mutual relationships of classes and types. If the evidence were complete and available, we should hardly be able to unravel its infinite complexity, or to find a clue through the mazes of the labyrinth. "Our ideas of the course of descent must of necessity be diagrammatic." (D.H. Scott, "Studies in Fossil Botany", page 524. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... task to attempt to unravel all the fine-spun intrigues, by which the marquis of Villena contrived to defeat every attempt at an ultimate accommodation between the parties, until he was very generally execrated as the real source of the disturbances in the kingdom. In the mean while, the singular ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... similarity of name or error in number (as may occur in large cities), permit a perplexed guest, perhaps a stranger, to drift across the wrong threshold, let it be a hospitable one. The hostess, though she may not be able to unravel the mystery, should be ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... opportunity for them to display their attainments, to show their clients what brilliant lawyers they have retained; to let the judge know how well they have understood the case; to move and sway the jury to their side; to unravel the mysteries and by the power of oratory to bring justice where she belongs. When his lawyer is talking, the client watches him with admiration, but while the opposing lawyer speaks the client can hardly conceal his contempt. He feels that his case is secure and he does not understand how ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... patriotic one. Take care, Gentlemen Members of Congress! look to your words and your Acts honestly and wisely in future! don't palter with Liberty again! it is not well that soldiers should get into the habit of thinking they are always to unravel the snarls and cut the knots twisted and tied by clumsy or crafty fingers. The traitor States already need the main de fer,—yes, and without the gant de velours. Let us beware, and keep ourselves worthy of the boon of self-government, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... that a woman of her ordinary gentleness could be here to-night, faced even by so great exposure, yet be so solicitous for him as she had been and then at the same time be plotting against him. I gave it up, determining to let Kennedy unravel it in ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... various distinguished scientists who undertook to unravel the mystery, either much study had made them blind, or the lights were unpropitious; for not one of them ever attained to a vision of the violet gleam. They went away ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... possession and the other in Barker's, brought about the discharge of the prisoner from custody; and the "Frewenton Atrocity" became one of many horrible murders, the mystery of which time alone, if anything, could unravel. ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... as simple an affair to unravel as that; for I can tell you one of the things, at least, which was apparently occupying her thoughts at the time, yet I can't quite see why or how it could have much to do with you. You remember, perhaps, that you came while we were at luncheon ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... be able to prove; but what this will amount to, he knows not. And next, that he hath taken money for several bargains that have been made with the Crown; and did instance one that is already complained of: but there are so many more involved in it, that, should they unravel things of this sort, every body almost will be more or less concerned. But these are the two great points which he thinks they will insist on, and prove against him. Thence I to the Chapel, and there heard the sermon and a pretty good ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... satisfactory as those which the other man had given. When the two were placed face to face, Arnold du Tilh vehemently denounced the last arrival as an impostor in the pay of Peter Guerre, and expressed himself content to be hanged if he did not yet unravel the whole mystery. Nor did he confine himself to vituperation, but cross-questioned Martin as to private family circumstances, and only received hesitating and imperfect answers to his questions. The commissioners having directed Arnold to withdraw, put several questions to Martin that were ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... at these challenges, we must never give in to the belief that America is in decline, or that our culture is doomed to unravel. The American people know better than that. We have proven the pessimists wrong before — and we will do ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... follows Goethe's tragedy very closely, and is confined to the first part. It may be briefly told. Faust, an aged German student, satiated with human knowledge and despairing of his ability to unravel the secrets of nature, summons the evil spirit Mephistopheles to his assistance, and contracts to give him his soul in exchange for a restoration to youth. Mephistopheles effects the transformation, and reveals to him the vision of Marguerite, a beautiful village maiden, with whom ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... view of the case has been proved to be all wrong, I admit—but, as things are now, my advice may be worth having for all that. I tell you plainly, we shall be wasting our time, and cudgelling our brains to no purpose, if we attempt to try back, and unravel this frightful complication from the beginning. Let us close our minds resolutely to all that happened last year at Lady Verinder's country house; and let us look to what we CAN discover in the future, instead of to what we can NOT ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... mean, Hereward, the last of the Saxon defenders of his land against William the Norman.[42] The analysis of the Hereward legend affords a good example of the process by which tradition is preserved by historical fact, and in its turn helps to unravel the real history which lies at the source. Instead, therefore, of attempting to travel over the voluminous literature which is the outcome of the King Arthur story, I will use for the same purpose the shorter story of ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... of which it ever reaps the harvest, building its own fate with tireless fingers, and finding nowhere in the measureless time and space around it any that can lift for it one weight it has created, one burden it has gathered, unravel for it one tangle it has twisted, close for it ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Oliver, to think, or rather to unravel my own entangled thoughts. Do not suffer me to continue in a state of delusion, if thou perceivest it to be such. Be explicit; tell me if thou dost but so much as forebode: for at moments I myself despond; though ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... within himself,—she had enticed him on in a thousand ways,—most especially by the amazing "grip" she had of scientific problems in which he was interested and which puzzled him, but which she seemed to unravel as easily as she might unravel a skein of wool. Her clear brightness of brain and logical precision of argument first surprised him into unqualified admiration, calling to his mind the assertion of a renowned physiologist that "From the beginning woman ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... attentively noted when the heart begins to flag, to move more slowly, and, as it were, to die: the movements then become slower and rarer, the pauses longer, by which it is made much more easy to perceive and unravel what the motions really are, and how they are performed. In the pause, as in death, the heart is soft, flaccid, exhausted, lying, as it were, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... convulse the heavens and to subvert the earth. But at an unforeseen moment resounded in the air the gentle rapping of a 'wooden fish' bell. A voice recited the sentence: "Ave! Buddha able to unravel retribution and dispel grievances! Should any human being lie in sickness, and his family be solicitous on his account; or should any one have met with evil spirits and come across any baleful evils, we have the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... much distressed; he could not exactly comprehend the meaning of this dumb show; and yet felt that some dire mystery was connected with these phantoms, which he was called upon to unravel. After breakfast he wandered out, and lost in the maze of thought, sauntered, ere he was aware of it, into the churchyard. Shortly afterwards the church-door was opened by the sexton, who kept his pickaxe and mattock in a corner of the belfry, and Frantz remembering that as yet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... in the glittering spring sunshine, this big silent man and I, there came upon me a swift, poignant impulse, the keener perhaps because of the loneliness of my days, to implore him to unravel all the things which lay between us. I wanted the story of that night, of my concern in it, stripped bare. Already my lips were opened, when round the corner of the rough lane by which Braster Grange was approached on this side came a doctor's gig. Ray shaded his ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... "life might have brought her a heavier cross than marrying a handsome millionaire, even though considerably her senior. I'm probably a conceited fool for thinking it any very great burden at all. But how, then, can I account—? Well, well, time alone can unravel this snarl. One thing is certain: she will do nothing that she does not believe right; and after what Mrs. Yocomb said I would not dare to wish her ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... useful purpose can be gained by discussing my brother's death," Austin interposed, turning to him. "It is a very painful subject, and does no good. The police are endeavouring to unravel the mystery—let us ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the suggestion that eight bullets could have hit the bell in succession without anybody hearing a sound was treated with ridicule. I believe the bell was subsequently exorcised with holy water. I was afraid to remain with the regiment with my air-gun after this, lest some one should discover it and unravel the mystery; besides, I felt a sort of traitor to the brave friends who had so generously offered me their hospitality; so I invented urgent private affairs which demanded my immediate return to Naples, and on the morning of my departure found myself embraced by all the officers of the regiment ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... They will write up and down and across lots and on the bias until the whole thing is so hopelessly mixed and tangled up that if the mystery of a woman's ways, or the fate of Charlie Ross were solved upon one of these cards all the "experts" in the world could not unravel it. A penny saved may be as good as a penny earned, and I have no objections to your saving it in a legitimate way, but when it comes to saving it at the expense of my time, patience, and eye-sight, I object most decidedly. ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... through the book is so disjointedly arranged, mixed up with doctrinal parts, and repeated, that it is not easy to unravel it. The following summary of it is contained in a letter to Colonel John Wentworth of Chicago, signed by Joseph Smith, Jr., which was printed in Wentworth's Chicago newspaper and also in the Mormon Times and Seasons of March ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... introduced, with its varying attraction, first on one and then on the other, complications are introduced that only the most masterly minds can follow. Introduce a dozen or a million bodies, and complications arise that only Omniscience can unravel. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... unjust, ruthless, almighty being is no God. But by means of the theophany—which is to be understood merely as a process in his own heart, and which clearly shows him the impotence of feeble man to unravel the world-enigmas—he attains to insight; not, indeed, of a positive kind such as a knowledge of the ways of God would confer, but negative insight by means of that resignation which flows from excess of pain. It is thus that his own heroic saying is fulfilled ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... dissipation.... Cruelty in the penal code and the tendency to exaggerate punishment are sure signs of a low civilization and of an imperfect educational system.... It seems to me that we can no more expect to unravel the mechanism of associative memory by histological or morphological methods than we can expect to unravel the dynamics of electrical phenomena by microscopic study of cross-sections through a telegraph wire or by counting and locating the ...
— Manhood of Humanity. • Alfred Korzybski
... designs in gold and azure and vermilion fill up the details; and on each side there is a confessional wherein all members, whether large or diminutive, whether dressed in corduroy or smoothest, blackest broad cloth, in silk or Surat cotton, must unravel the sins they have committed. This confession must be a hard sort of job, we know, for some people; but we are not going to enter upon a discussion of its merits or demerits. Only this may be said, that if there was full confession at every place of worship in Preston the ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... in carefully studying the works of these authors, tried to get at the real meaning,—the idea between the lines. Gorky's philosophy has often been discussed; a great many men of letters have tried to unravel what there was of pessimism, of indifference or of mystic idealism in the soul of Tchekoff. This everlasting habit, not to say this mania, of analyzing the mind or soul of an author in order to get ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... no room in his brain for an impure thought. Notwithstanding he was still a young man, being but fifty years of age, nevertheless he had attained distinct success and fame as a musician, composer, scientist, inventor, architect, and athlete. He endeavored to unravel all the mysteries of nature which attracted his attention. One of the many occult forces he experimented with was human magnetism. It was his belief that man could preserve himself indefinitely, either in a state of animation or suspended vitality, by the strength of his own will ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... honest face. A little behind was Mary, winding one of Blanche's silks over the back of a chair, and so often looking up to revel in the contemplation of Harry's face, that her skein was in a wild tangle, which she studiously concealed lest the sight should compel Richard to come and unravel it with those wonderful fingers ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... made. Would she marry him? "My family," said he, "is respectable, and as it is not wealth we seek, I have an independence, at least equal, I should hope, to our wishes; but anything else which you may think mysterious about me I cannot unravel until you are indissolubly mine." It was a point of no slight difficulty; Emily entrusted its decision entirely to her mother. Her mother saw that the stranger was inflexible in his purpose, and she saw also that her child's ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... pedestal would have been jerked out from under him without compunction or mercy. Eva cautioned him to be more than silent on the subject for the child's sake as well as for their own, and Anderson saw wisdom in her counselling. He even lagged in his avowed intention to unravel the mystery or die in the attempt. A sharp reminder in the shape of an item in the Banner restored his energies, and he again took up the case with a vigour that startled even himself. Anything in the shape ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... as science—"ignorance pour laquelle concevoir il n'y a pas moins de science qu'a concevoir la science." And a propos of the immense traditional evidence which weighed with such men as Bodin, he says—"As for the proofs and arguments founded on experience and facts, I do not pretend to unravel these. What end of a thread is there to lay hold of? I often cut them as Alexander did his knot. Apres tout, c'est mettre ses conjectures a bien haut prix, que d'en faire ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... skiff until morning, Billy Brackett, weary and disheartened, sought such accommodation as the only hotel of the little town afforded. All night he tossed sleeplessly on his uncomfortable bed, striving in vain to unravel the mystery in which the fate of his nephew and of Major Caspar's raft ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... his opportunity had arrived that night. It had always been his dream to have the chance to unravel single-handed some great crime—a murder for choice—in which he alone should have all the glory and praise and newspaper paragraphs. He determined to make the most of the lucky chance which had fallen into his hands, before anybody ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... data and apply his devices to a task in his art, a fallacy is included which is radical and mischievous beyond measure. We have, as yet, no calculus for the variable elements which enter into social problems and no analysis which can unravel their complications. The discussions always reveal the dominion of the prepossessions in the minds of the disputants which are in the mores. We know that an observer of nature always has to know his own personal equation. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... entered the council some time after the rupture, produced his appointment, which, unlike certain others, was expressed in the legal form. Thus again all the previous proceedings were quashed; and the governor, unable to unravel the difficulty, dismissed the council, to await instructions from Downing-street, or a warrant for the nominees under the sign-manual of the Queen (July, 1847). Thus during 1847 there was no legislature sitting, but at length the Gazette announced that the Queen had reinstated ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... had heard old Hoff speak of something that he called the "wonder-worker." As soon as Carter returned with the other advertisements that had been appearing he felt positive that he would be able to unravel the cipher. Two words he was sure of—"passports" and "wonder-working." One footprint does not lead anywhere, but two do, and given three footprints, ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... Dick. 'I don't quite know what to make of her. She says that she is going out to earn her bread; but when I asked her how, she either couldn't or wouldn't answer me. She is a mystery, and mysteries are always worth unravelling. I shall go to work and unravel her.' ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... him, and in the hall said: "I will continue to watch you unravel the threads of this mystery, if ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... insurrection scheme! And, what an impudent, what an incorrigible, what a hardened impostor, must this writer be, who can tell the public, that this hand-bill excited much apprehension! Apprehension, I believe, indeed, in him and his associates and encouragers; for it furnishes the clue to unravel all their falsehoods and to expose them to scorn and to detestation; but, it is calculated to excite 'apprehension' in nobody else. The public indignation is fast collecting and winding up to a high pitch; and it only waits the result of the present ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... argument from the lessons of History is that for some reason or another the international concern, whose unlucky affairs we are now trying to unravel, has always been carried on at a loss: the point of the argument from Self-government is that the loss would have been avoided if the Irish shareholders had for a certain number of the transactions been more influentially represented on the Board. That is quite apart from the sentiment of ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... potent being, who occupied so great a place; whose me (le moi), as M. Nicole says, had so wide a dominion; who was the centre of so many orbs. What affairs had he not to manage! what designs, what projects, what secrets! what interests to unravel, what wars to undertake, what intrigues, what noble games at chess to play and to direct! Ah! my God, grant me a little time; I want to give check to the Duke of Savoy—checkmate to the Prince of Orange. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... fail, in the case of the King of Bohemia and the Irene Adler photograph, but when I looked back to the weird business of the "Sign of the Four," and the extraordinary circumstances connected with the "Study in Scarlet," I felt that it would be a strange tangle indeed which he could not unravel. ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... the public will doubtless remember, they had been robbed of some valuable gems between London and Amsterdam in a singularly audacious manner. My second was the case of the celebrated Russian swindler, who called herself the Countess Demikoff. This case alone took me nearly six months to unravel, but I did not grudge the time, seeing that I was well paid for my labours, and that I managed to succeed where the police had failed. From that time forward I think I may say without boasting that I have ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... of local priesthoods endeavoured to classify them and bring them into a kind of harmony: many they rejected and others they recast in order to better reconcile their statements: they arranged them in systems, from which they undertook to unravel, under inspiration from on high, the true history of the universe. That which I have tried to set forth above is very ancient, if, as is said to be the case, it was in existence two or even three thousand years before our era; but the versions of it which we possess were drawn up much later, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... resignation, benevolence, and urbanity. Having politely assisted his egress, he passed onward with a graceful gesture of acknowledgment. He had taken but a few steps, when the thought occurred to me that he must have come from within the perplexing structure by some secret door, and that he could unravel its mystery. I was impelled to follow him, and proceeded hastily to do so, when the indelicacy of my intrusion on one evidently connected with the grief which the monument was designed to commemorate, flashed upon me, and I suddenly paused. He probably observed my rapid ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... through the Seventh Gate I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate, And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road; But not the Master-knot of ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... having put off the old man and put on the new, obtain the blessed fruit of everlasting life." Again, he tells us: "Eagles often fly so high that their wings are scorched by the sun; so those who in the Holy Scriptures strive to unravel the deep and hidden secrets of the heavenly mysteries, beyond what is allowed, fall below, as if the wings of the presumptuous imaginations on which ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... by since this horrible and mysterious event, which no one sought to unravel at the time it occurred. One June evening, 1771, four persons were sitting in one of the rooms of a modestly furnished, dwelling on the third floor of a house in the rue Saint-Victor. The party consisted of three women and an ecclesiastic, who boarded, for meals only, with the woman ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Capella is leaving London for the North. She must not be regarded in our operations. The woman is weighted with a secret. I am sorry for her. I prefer to allow events as supplied by others to unravel the skein. Secondly, Jiro and his wife, and all who visit them, or whom they visit, must be watched incessantly. Get all the force required for this operation in its fullest sense. You, with one trusted associate, must ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... remembered an interesting fact about Diana's Grove—there is, I have long understood, some strange mystery about that house. It may be of some interest, or it may be trivial, in such a tangled skein as we are trying to unravel." ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... brother Bjoern lay a-cold—Bjoern the justly slain of Brighteyes; yet how could she wed the man who slew her brother? From Ospakar she was divorced by death; from Eric she was divorced by the blood of Bjoern her brother! How might she unravel this tangled skein and float to weal upon this sea of death? All things went amiss! The doom was on her! She had lived to an ill purpose—her love had wrought evil! What availed it to have been born to be fair among women and to have desired that which might not ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... we observe phenomena under varied circumstances, and endeavour to deduce the laws of their relations. Every natural phenomenon is, to our minds, the result of an infinitely complex system of conditions. What we set ourselves to do is to unravel these conditions, and by viewing the phenomenon in a way which is in itself partial and imperfect, to piece out its features one by one, beginning with that which strikes us first, and thus gradually learning how to look at the whole ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... to get to America, where he threatens, I hear, to do much mischief to me. However, he will not probably be permitted to depart, unless he slips off very privately. Should that be the case, or should he write letters, you have now a clue to unravel him ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... just one more leaf, and are lost again. At last comes a third call in tones so imperative that it cannot be longer ignored, and we lay the book down, but open to the place where we left off, and where we hope soon to begin further to unravel the delightful mystery. Was it an effort to attend to the reading? Ah, no! it took the combined force of our will and of mother's authority to drag the attention away. This ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... party of six white men (including Leichhardt) and two black boys, with 12 horses, 13 mules, 50 bullocks, and 270 goats, have never been heard of since they left McPherson's station on the Cogoon on 3rd April, 1848; and although there have been several attempts to unravel the mystery, there is scarcely a possibility of any discovery in regard to their fate ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... yet, oddly enough, I remember as if it were yesterday, that, as we passed slowly through the village of Hampton, we saw two boys fighting behind a red barn. There was also a shaggy yellow dog, who looked as if he had commenced to unravel, barking himself all up into a knot with excitement. We had only a hurried glimpse of the battle—long enough, however, to see that the combatants were equally matched and very much in earnest. I am ashamed to say how many times since I have speculated as to which boy ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... each; quarrels with all his tenants, and lawsuits with them; lawsuits with the lawyers; lawsuits with the Mining and Dock Companies in which he was proprietor; and with every person with whom he had business. To unravel these difficulties and to set the estate clear was a task worthy of the orderly and persevering diplomatist of Pumpernickel, and he set himself to work with prodigious assiduity. His whole family, of course, was ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... some other note that chords, so as to produce the effect of a marvellous complication and variety, and yet with the most perfect time, and rarely with any discord. And what makes it all the harder to unravel a thread of melody out of this strange network is that, like birds, they seem not infrequently to strike sounds that cannot be precisely represented by the gamut, and abound in 'slides from one note to another, and turns and cadences not ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... part of the territory cannot give rise to any constitutional questions, for the reason that the constitutions, like the land tenures, are in a state of such utter confusion that only a strong hand can unravel them, and the restoration will result in the establishment of a strong military government. If I go down with the expedition I have organized I shall be in full control of the situation and in a position to carry out all ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... heavy with sleep, could not unravel the memories of the night. He knew only that he had had unpleasant dreams; perhaps he had wept. The one thing he could recall was a pale face, rising from among the black veils of unconsciousness, around which all his dreams were centered. It was not Josephina; the ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... mystery of the queer little girl, who frightened Andy MacMurry out of his race, and who had met the girls on their arrival in Bellaire, that furnished the real peak to their mountain interest and adventure. They were determined to hunt her out and unravel the mystery. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... a tragedy as the same or different, the best test to take is the plot. Identity exists where the Complication and Unravelling are the same. Many poets tie the knot well, but unravel it ill. Both arts, ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... distressed me. In Aunt Maria's category of sins dancing, card playing and theatre-going rank side by side with lying, stealing and idolatry. As I sat there I tried to reconcile my opinion of these worldly pleasures with the conduct of my new friends. The tangle is too complicated to unravel at once. I could feel blushes of shame staining my cheeks as the game progressed. What would Aunt Maria say, what would daddy say, what would even tolerant Mother Bab say, if they knew I sat passively by and watched a game of cards? After a little while I asked ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... his eyes glittering with excitement. "That is an inspiration. I imagine that if anyone can unravel the mystery, ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... to look back on the time that followed, all is confusion. I cannot unravel the threat of events clearly in my own mind, and can only describe a few scenes that detach themselves, as it were, from a back-ground of reports, true and false, of alarms, of messages to and fro, and a horrible mob surging backwards ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... meaningless, now he compared himself with others. As soon as ever he got into the cart, and the nag into its old trot, these sad thoughts would reappear, and his mind would go round and round the subject until he was worn out. He could not unravel it. Why was he called the rag and bone man, and treated as if he were unclean? He earned his living as honestly as any one else. Why should his children be jeered at like outcasts—and his home called the Crow's Nest? And why did the ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... that the distracted Jew was no longer visible. It seemed plain that the person or the event he had awaited with such obvious nervousness had arrived and passed; one more of the problems, anxieties or crises that join and unravel moment by moment in the human ant-hill of London, had perhaps closed for good or ill within the past half-hour; perhaps it had ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... as a thumb with a bone felon. Take yore time, son. Don't go off half-cocked." The little Captain rose and put his hand on the shoulder of the boy. "I reckon things have got in a sort of kink for you. Give 'em time to unravel, Tex." ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... how soon the whole conscience begins to unravel, if a single stitch drops; one little sin indulged makes a hole you could ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... But in the case of miracles, as our inquiry is a question purely philosophical (namely, whether anything can happen which contravenes, or does not follow from the laws of Nature), I was not under any such necessity: I therefore thought it wiser to unravel the difficulty through premises ascertained and thoroughly known by the natural light of reason. I say I thought it wiser, for I could also easily have solved the problem merely from the doctrines and fundamental principles ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... the thought that it is not easy to find the ideal modern life, even when one is anxious to conform to it, began tugging at all the strands of difficulty at once, not seeing them very clearly, but still with no notion but that if he set his strength to it, he could unravel them all in the half-hour's walk that lay between ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... once more. "If I were a storybook hero, I'd stick this thing in my pocket and set out by myself to unravel the mystery behind it. But I've chucked the hero job for good and all. I'm going to hand this over to Dangloss. It's the sensible thing to do, even if it isn't what a would-be hero in search of a princess aught to do. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... full control upon German expulsion in 1945. Although Communist, his new government and its successors (he died in 1980) managed to steer their own path between the Warsaw Pact nations and the West for the next four and a half decades. In the early 1990s, post-TITO Yugoslavia began to unravel along ethnic lines: Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina were recognized as independent states in 1992. The remaining republics of Serbia and Montenegro declared a new "Federal Republic ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... be possibly communicated to others. Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly clutch them, when I can escape from the throng to do so. To give way to our feelings before company, seems extravagance or affectation; and on the other hand, to have to unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to make others take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end is not answered) is a task to which few are competent. We must "give it an understanding, but no tongue." My old friend C——, however, could do both. He could go on in the most delightful ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... instead of taking the history of the case in the usual way. In all cases the patient should be permitted to tell her story in her own way. This method of procedure, with cross questioning, may and should indeed be sufficient to unravel the case for us in most cases. But if we find that we have not gained the confidence of the patient and have not that condition of being en rapport with the patient which is essential for progress and ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... despite the exertions of the soldiers and the citizens, nearly a third part of the city was consumed to ashes. A few incendiaries fell a sacrifice to the rage of the soldiers, and many individuals were arrested on suspicion, but no clue was found to unravel the mystery, though no doubt can exist that the fearful deed was committed by order of the American general. The act has been applauded as one emanating from stern patriotism and self-devotion, but ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a traitor," replied Beecot, darkly, "and, knowing he has lost your confidence, he will certainly try and give Maud Krill possession of the money. No, I'll speak to Hurd, who is my friend and yours. He is clever and will be able to unravel this tangle." ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... tom. ii. p. 255, Nicephorus Bryennius, p. 21) have confounded, in this revolution, the truth of time and place, of names and persons, of causes and events. The ignorance and errors of these Greeks (which I shall not stop to unravel) may inspire some distrust of the story of Cyaxares and Cyrus, as it is told by their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the opera follows Goethe's tragedy very closely, and is confined to the first part. It may be briefly told. Faust, an aged German student, satiated with human knowledge and despairing of his ability to unravel the secrets of nature, summons the evil spirit Mephistopheles to his assistance, and contracts to give him his soul in exchange for a restoration to youth. Mephistopheles effects the transformation, and ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... had been willing to listen, and patient enough to calm the boy's excitement and unravel the story, its value would have been apparent. But his skeptical manner only threw Stuart more off his balance. The vice-consul was, by temperament, a man of routine, an efficient official but lacking in imagination. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... across lots and on the bias until the whole thing is so hopelessly mixed and tangled up that if the mystery of a woman's ways, or the fate of Charlie Ross were solved upon one of these cards all the "experts" in the world could not unravel it. A penny saved may be as good as a penny earned, and I have no objections to your saving it in a legitimate way, but when it comes to saving it at the expense of my time, patience, and eye-sight, I object most decidedly. Hereafter I ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... more of that, Hal, an thou lovest me,"' said Pleydell. 'But we must have some news from the land of Egypt, if possible. O, if I had but hold of the slightest thread of this complicated skein, you should see how I would unravel it! I would work the truth out of your Bohemian, as the French call them, better than a monitoire or a plainte de Tournelle; I know how to manage a ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... my dear Fern, that my story will unravel the mystery. I am delighted to find that you have already become interested in Gilbert, and have discovered so many of his good qualities! I can assure you that he is worthy of your sympathy and friendship! He is a noble fellow! Richly endowed, with a ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... liberated," said my cousin, "but the keys to all the outer gates and doors of the Hall have been stolen and carried away. Can you help me unravel ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... indicates,[6] baptism—that is to say, the religion of many baptisms—the origin of the sect still existing called "Christians of St. John," or Mendaites, which the Arabs call el-Mogtasila, "the Baptists."[7] It is difficult to unravel these vague analogies. The sects floating between Judaism, Christianity, Baptism, and Sabeism, which we find in the region beyond the Jordan during the first centuries of our era,[8] present to criticism the most singular problem, in consequence of the confused accounts of them which have ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... that the money must ultimately come out of his own pocket? Because,—so Mr. Grey thought,—Augustus would not trust his own father. The creditors, if they could get hold of Mountjoy when his father was dead, and when the bonds would all become payable, might possibly so unravel the facts as to make it apparent that, after all, the property was Mountjoy's. This was not Mr. Grey's idea, but was Mr. Grey's idea of the calculation which Augustus was making for his own government. According to Mr. Grey's reading of all the facts ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... say that they take no interest in crimes as such, but only investigate a case when it possesses features of a distinctly puzzling character. They seek perplexity for its own sake—something to unravel. As often as not the circumstances are of no importance to anybody, but they just form a little puzzle in real ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... lamented their departure since now they would have no one to bring them fresh meat every day. It is pleasant indeed to spend your time eating and drinking, and sleeping all day long in the cool shade of the rocks, while clouds ravel and unravel their fleecy threads on the ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... least barely hoped,—that Mrs Arabin might be able to suggest something which would put them all on a track towards discovery of the truth. But he found that she had the clue in her hand, and that the clue was one which required no further delicacy of investigation. There would be nothing more to unravel; no journey to Jerusalem would ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... the public his nut-cracker if I do not, before the Budget is concluded, "unravel" the paradox, which is the mathematico-geometrical nut he has given me to crack. Mr. Smith is a crack man: he will crack his own nut; he will crack my shell; in the mean time he cracks himself up. Heaven send he do not crack himself ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... his life! Raise him up from this bed of illness, that he may unravel the web of mystery that entangles the fate of my ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... man. "You're beginning to use your brain a little. You're beginning to realize the value of money—and you don't like it. Well, you can unravel your own tangle. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... 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 date ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... truly—and there was no reason to think the child was lying—then Tochatti's supposed inability to write was an error; and once that fact were proved it should not, surely, be difficult to unravel the mystery which had already caused so ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... loose. disjoin, disconnect, disengage, disunite, dissociate, dispair^; divorce, part, dispart^, detach, separate, cut off, rescind, segregate; set apart, keep apart; insulate, isolate; throw out of gear; cut adrift; loose; unloose, undo, unbind, unchain, unlock &c (fix) 43, unpack, unravel; disentangle; set free &c (liberate) 750. sunder, divide, subdivide, sever, dissever, abscind^; circumcise; cut; incide^, incise; saw, snip, nib, nip, cleave, rive, rend, slit, split, splinter, chip, crack, snap, break, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... books. It is a phenomenon among phenomena. Its origin and growth in this world can be studied as those of any other natural object can be studied. The old apple-tree growing in my garden is the witness to me of some transcendent truths, the shrine of mysteries that I cannot unravel. What the life is that was hidden in the seed from which it sprang, and that has shaped all its growth, coordinating the forces of nature, and producing this individual form and this particular variety of fruit,— this I ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... I admit—but, as things are now, my advice may be worth having for all that. I tell you plainly, we shall be wasting our time, and cudgelling our brains to no purpose, if we attempt to try back, and unravel this frightful complication from the beginning. Let us close our minds resolutely to all that happened last year at Lady Verinder's country house; and let us look to what we CAN discover in the future, instead of to what we can NOT discover in ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... to dispel the drowsy mist then pervading my brain. The slow thought waves gradually ceased their surging, and after a slight pause began to collect round the offending mystery, as if seeking to unravel it in a half-hearted sort of way. They gave me to understand that the "something" recurred at intervals, and even suggested that it might be a voice, though from which side of the elastic dividing line it emanated ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... Peter, "without condescending at all. As you say, we won't begin by tearing the net; we'll unravel it. What do you think would have happened to you, Mrs. Winston, before you were married, if you'd had to travel day after day in a motor car with a man you ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... their situation. It is to this point that Jesus leads us. He makes us conscious of "the still sad music of humanity." No further incentive is needed to make us love humanity than the pathos of the human lot. A man may be a knave, a fool, a rogue; yet could we unravel all the secrecies of his disaster we should find so much to move our pity, so much in his life which resembles crises in our own, that in the end the one vision that remains with us is of a wounded brother man. When once we see that vision all our ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... "on the tired heart like rain"; and when she left him he lay still, wrapped in a tangle of thought which his weakness could not unravel. Presently ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my cousin, my sweet cousin; I have loved you deeply, but silently, long before my heart could unravel the mystery of the feelings with which it glowed. But this—all this—it were now idle to repeat. I know that I have no hope of return; that the heart whose possession would have made my whole life a dream, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he feel that life would be almost unendurable with its fondest ties broken, its closest links dissevered? There is a double influence often felt by gifted temperaments when upon the eve of some event which is to decide their fate. The eager heart, urged on by a desire to unravel the mystic secrets of the unknown Future, contradicts the colder, the more timid intellect, which fears to plunge into the uncertain abyss of the coming fate! This want of harmony between the simultaneous previsions of the mind and heart, often causes the firmest spirits to make assertions ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... Baltimore." Five writers out of six would commit the error of using as in both members of the sentence. The most prevalent misuse of as is in connection with soon; and this general misuse, having moreover the countenance of good writers, is so inwoven into our speech that it will be hard to unravel it. But principle is higher than the authority derived from custom. Judges are bound to give sentence according to the statute; and if the highest writers, whose influence is deservedly judicial, violate ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... less particular in the choice of his studies; they were generally bent towards exploded chimeras*—the perpetuum mobile, the circular shot, philosopher's stone, silent gunpowder, making chains for fleas, nets for flies, and instruments to unravel ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... is able to unravel the tangled skein of crime and hypocrisy among individuals can it be extended to communities and nations, as nations are only man in the aggregate, they are the aggregate of his crimes and deception and depravity, and so long as these constitute the ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... at the same time, that he was once blessed with a son, who, had he lived, would have been nearly of my age. This observation, delivered with a profound sigh, made my heart throb with violence: a crowd of confused ideas rushed upon my imagination, which, while I endeavoured to unravel, my uncle perceived my absence of thought, and tapping me on the shoulder, said, "Oons, are you asleep, Rory?" Before I had time to reply, Don Rodrigo, with uncommon eagerness of voice and look, pronounced, "Pray, captain, what is the young gentleman's ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... swept into the ash-pit, there are two conditions, especially one which is peremptory: FIRST, that they should not be lies;—SECOND, that they should be of some importance, some wisdom; which with known lies is not a possible condition. To unravel cobwebs, and register laboriously and date and sort in the sorrow of your soul the oaths of crowned dicers,—what use is it to gods or men? Having well dressed and sliced your cucumber, the next clear human duty is: Throw it out of window. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... given. When the two were placed face to face, Arnold du Tilh vehemently denounced the last arrival as an impostor in the pay of Peter Guerre, and expressed himself content to be hanged if he did not yet unravel the whole mystery. Nor did he confine himself to vituperation, but cross-questioned Martin as to private family circumstances, and only received hesitating and imperfect answers to his questions. The commissioners ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... mother and a box party will be waiting for us in the lobby. Do you think she would listen to a declaration from me during that six or eight minutes under those circumstances? No. And what chance would I have in the theatre or afterward? None. No, dad, this is one tangle that your money can't unravel. We can't buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer. There's no hope of getting a talk with Miss Lantry before ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... of Knox, have not taken the trouble to unravel this question of the treaty of July 24. But the behaviour of the Lords and of Knox seems characteristic, ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... the darkness beyond this lit inn of ours, unthought-of possibilities, overlooked considerations, surprises, riddles, incommensurables, a whole monstrous intricate universe of consequences that I have to do my best to unravel. I attempt impossible recapitulations and mingle the weird quality of ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... may have said, you are quite mistaken. There's a mystery somewhere. Keep his letter and show it to me. I may, perhaps, be able to unravel the tangle. I'm more than ever convinced that what I said to you last night was perfectly true. We will save him ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... almost too curious and fantastic for belief he loved to trace to their hidden sources. To unravel a tangle in the very soul of things—and to release a suffering human soul in the process—was with him a veritable passion. And the knots he untied ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... mother. This was the second time Licquet's attention had been attracted by the name of Mme. de Combray. He had already read it, incidentally, in the report of Flierle's examination, and with the instinct of a detective, for whom a single word will often unravel a whole plot, he had a sudden intuition that in it lay the key to the entire affair. Tourlour's imprudent admission, which was to bring terrible catastrophes on Mme. de Combray's head, gave Licquet a thread that was to lead him through the maze that ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... said concerning religion. What the Founder said cost him enormous labour to discover and to possess. We shall gain so much and no more of the same spiritual substance as we put the same kind of energy in motion. In order that we may unravel the complexities of our day, a spirit similar to his spirit must become ours. When such a spirit ceases to exist, Christianity will become merely a [p.179] name; its power will have disappeared, and men can delude ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... for Dryads, to haunt the woods again; More welcome were the presence of hungering, thirst- ing men, Whose doubts we could unravel, whose hopes we could fulfil, Our wisdom tracing backward, the river to the rill; Were such beloved forerunners one summer day restored, Then, then we might discover the ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... of March, 1877, and then the campaign began with a rapid advance by Chang Yao from Hami to Turfan. The Kashgarians were driven out of Pidjam, and compelled, after a battle, to evacuate Turfan. The Chinese records do not help us to unravel the events of the month of April. The campaign contained no more striking or important episodes, and yet the reports of the generals have been mislaid or consigned to oblivion. The Athalik Ghazi fought a second battle at Toksoun, where he rejoined his ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... He must unravel the mystery, and turns thus, once more, with his sole companion, his own heart, to measure everything,—even sin, folly, impiety,—and more bitter even than that bitter death that has again and again darkened all his counsel and dashed his hopes, is one awful evil ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... heart that has lost its owner, and seeks and seeks again, turning for comfort like a poor lost dog to every face which may prove friendly. Just now things seem to be in such a dreadful tangle that I can not even find a thread of it that I can unravel. ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... the Hospitalier, "unless thou wouldst slay him outright. Return to the Spital with me; and at morn, if he have recovered himself, unravel these riddles as thou and ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her saint-like eyes; Talks very much, plays idle tricks, While rising stock [Footnote: South Sea, 1720.] her conscience pricks; When being, poor thing, extremely gravel'd, The secrets op'd, and all unravel'd. But on she will, and secrets tell Of John and Joan, and Ned and Nell, Reviling every one she knows, As fancy leads, beneath the rose. Her tongue, so voluble and kind, It always runs before her mind; As times do serve, she ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... said Mr. Noah enthusiastically. 'I must make him a baronet now. His title will grow grander with each deed. There's an old prophecy that the person who finds out how to unravel the carpet must be the first to dance in the Hall ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... the staircase. Making no further effort to unravel the puzzle which only beclouded my faculties, I began my wary ascent. I had not the slightest fear, I was too full of ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... the Paint Rock, and after ten hours hard ride we arrived on this sacred and historic ground. We picketed our tired horses, piled our packs under a cottonwood tree, and were soon trying to unravel the mysteries of an extinct race. Strange to say no horses were visible on the great calendar of rocks, but men, women, children, and hieroglyphics were crowded on all available places that one could get to register some fact or fancy of ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... the pope, to the emperor, and to other Christian lords, accusing each other of breach of faith, and treachery. The ambassador carrying the letters of the prince was the clever Mikolaj of Rzeniewa, a man of great ability who could unravel the thread which was woven by the artifice of the Knights of the Cross, convincingly demonstrating the great wrongs done to the lands of Lithuania ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... not, as she has learned to night, if not before. He went to her aid because he was friendly in spite of her apparent bitterness toward him, which perhaps he understood better than I. Possibly Mrs. Hunter may have broken their relations, for there is no doubt about her feelings. Well, time must unravel the snarl. It would now seem that he is devoted to this girl here, and she to him as far as she can be to any one. What he will think when he learns that she ran shrieking away and left him, while Mara, reckless of life itself, stood by him to the last, I cannot know. If he loves her ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... see Monadnock, in simple grandeur, in the northwest, rising nearly a thousand feet higher, still the "far blue mountain," though with an altered profile. The first day the weather was so hazy that it was in vain we endeavored to unravel the obscurity. It was like looking into the sky again, and the patches of forest here and there seemed to flit like clouds over a lower heaven. As to voyagers of an aerial Polynesia, the earth seemed like ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... not hesitate to place himself by the side of Newton, in virtue of his discovery of this new law of attraction. If any comparison can be made, we think—inasmuch as to unravel the problem of humanity is a greater task than to elucidate the movements of the planets—that Fourier was warranted in placing himself infinitely above Newton. Unfortunately, there is this difference between the two, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... unreasonable," Lady Mason had said. And what could a poor wife answer? "Oh! Lady Mason, pray let it bide a time till it all comes right." But it never did come right; and the affair of those two fields created the great Orley Farm Case, which it will be our business to unravel. ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... days after the Fair were spent by the young preacher at Drawwell Farm, knitting up a friendship with its inmates that neither time nor suffering was able thereafter to unravel. ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... precipitates our actions. We see today how the Freudian psychology, just because it is not satisfied with registering the routine of consciousness but endeavours to trace its hidden mechanism and to unravel its physical causes, is driven to use the most frankly mythological language. The physiological processes concerned, though presupposed, are not on the scale of human perception and not traceable in detail; and the moral action, though familiar in ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... another, and these variations do not take place simultaneously and according to the same laws for all, but in most cases happen apparently capriciously, or at least according to laws not sufficiently simple for us to be able to unravel. Often one or more become indistinct, or even wholly invisible, whilst others in their vicinity increase to the point of becoming conspicuous even in telescopes of moderate power. The first of our maps shows all those that have been seen in a long series of ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... rough diagrams, the warp weights appear to hang from a single thread only, but this can not have been correct. The warp threads must have been bunched, because a single suspended thread with a tension weight immediately begins to unravel, and so loses the advantage of its having been spun, as any one can ascertain for oneself. As regards the same point on the Lake Dwellers looms, Cohausen was the first to surmise that the warp threads were bunched ...
— Ancient Egyptian and Greek Looms • H. Ling Roth
... sit down in any cosmopolitan cafe in Cairo or Stamboul and knock off immortal verses in the style of Byron —verses with no "philosophy" for us to expound, no technique for us to analyse, no "message" for us to interpret, no aesthetic subtleties for us to unravel, no mystical orientation for us to track out, what is there left for a poor sedentary critic to do? Our occupation is gone. We must either enjoy romance for its own sake in a frank, honest, simple manner; confessing that Byron was "some poet" and letting ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... continued Paul, "lies my second book. It contains the key to mysteries which have baffled men since the world began. I do not say it with vanity; vanity is dead within me. I say it with fear, for I did not unravel those mysteries; I did not write ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... the rest, that an explanation of a part can never be considered final, so long as any problem remains unresolved. The latest experimentator, brooding over hitherto neglected details, may always hope to light upon some clue that shall unravel the entire entanglement in a different manner, and reform upon a new basis ideas now grouped in pretended fixity. The excitement caused by this possibility is amply sufficient to stimulate research. And there is no need to discover an immediate practical application for the theory in order ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... almost every where, and were now universally abolished. The ridiculous quibble was also used that, in the preachings other religious exercises were not included, whereas it was notorious that they had never been separated. It is, however, a gratuitous task, to unravel the deceptions of tyranny when it hardly deigns to disguise itself. The dissimulations which have resisted the influence of centuries are more worthy of serious investigation, and of these the epoch offers us a ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ah! She is like unto me: both are outcasts; she in the heyday of youth and flowing over with wealth, I an old hag and poor as a barren rock, save for this bit of gold. The goddess is no respecter of persons. What can be the sin of this golden-haired beauty? Mine I know. I will unravel hers. Where does she go, I wonder? And with Chios? And he gave her the richest flowers. I will follow far behind. My sight is keen. I will know where ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... The don was studying the situation and the man together. "Almost have I grasped the thread that will unravel the whole. No, no! I do not mean your going, Senor. That would but limber the tongue of scandal; and besides, I do not mean that I withdraw my friendship from you. A man must be narrow, indeed, if he cannot carry more than one friendship in ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... a final leave of this subject of Ireland. The only difficulty in discussing it is a want of resistance—a want of something difficult to unravel and something dark to illumine. To agitate such a question is to beat the air with a club, and cut down gnats with a scimitar: it is a prostitution of industry, and a waste of strength. If a man says, 'I have a good place, and I do not choose to lose it,' this mode of arguing upon the Catholic Question ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... he explored the wondrous zone of the Milky Way, gauged its depths, measured its dimensions, and, in attempting to unravel the intricacies of its structure, penetrated its recesses far beyond the limit attained by any other observer. Acting on the assumption that the stars are uniformly distributed throughout space, Herschel, by his method of star-gauging, concluded that the sidereal system consists ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... to, he knows not. And next, that he hath taken money for several bargains that have been made with the Crown; and did instance one that is already complained of: but there are so many more involved in it, that, should they unravel things of this sort, every body almost will be more or less concerned. But these are the two great points which he thinks they will insist on, and prove against him. Thence I to the Chapel, and there heard the sermon and a pretty good anthem, and so home by water ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... lay on the grass, whiling away the time by alternately playing with Watch and trying to unravel the mysteries of a flower of golden-rod, until the hermit should have finished his prayers and be ready to attend to him, Piers came through the wood, evidently sent on a message, and made him understand that he ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... century, and had a regular intercourse with Asia. The name of Valaam does not come from Balaam, as one might suppose, but seems to be derived from the Finnish varamo, which signifies "herring-ground." The more I attempted to unravel the history of the island, the more it became involved in obscurity, and this fact, I must confess, only heightened my interest in it. I found myself ready to accept the tradition of Andrew's visit, and I accepted without a doubt the grave of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... announced severely, when the figures had all been dabbed upon the paper, "You ought to have lost. It would be a lesson to you. I haven't quite figured all your winnings, these six-to-ones and ten-to-ones and—and all that, take time to unravel. But you, yourself, stood to lose just three hundred and sixty-five dollars. Gee! but you cowboys ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... the Zancigs I came to the conclusion that although the alleged transmission of thought might possibly depend on a code or codes which I was unable to unravel, yet their performance was of such a nature that it was worthy of serious scientific examination. On the assumption that they possessed genuine telepathic powers it would be a pity that the opportunity of investigating ...
— Telepathy - Genuine and Fraudulent • W. W. Baggally
... say that—to blame because this time there's a snarl to unravel! The thing is done often enough. It should not be done, but it is. Staff service with us is far too irregular. The officer stands to receive a severe reprimand—but there is no reason to believe that he did not give the order to the courier with all the accuracy with ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... reproduced on earth, until a web of fiction and allegory was woven, partly by art and partly by the ignorance of error, which the wit of man, with his limited means of explanation, will never unravel. Even the Hebrew Theism became involved in symbolism and image-worship, borrowed probably from an older creed and remote regions of Asia,—the worship of the Great Semitic Nature-God AL or ELS and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the basis of many a double meaning. There is, in fact, no lyric song describing natural scenery that may not have beneath it some implied, often indelicate, allusion whose riddle it takes an adroit and practiced mind to unravel. ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... relaxation around the camp-fire. The men, who had all day been strung to a keen pitch of nervous energy, lounged in loose, picturesque uncouthness, while each began to unravel his own lively miscellany of information or invention. There was jest, laughter, spinning of yarns, singing of songs. As Peter lay in the fire-light, smoking his brier-wood, he noticed that the man next him spent a great deal of time poring over a letter, holding it close to the blaze, now ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... prove of vital importance to her and her future. Now, when the verdict of the coroner's jury had been suicide, and when only he, and the servant Sexton suspected otherwise, it was of the utmost importance that they endeavour to unravel the crime. For her sake he could do no less, thus serving and protecting her to the ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... come so far by this time," said the mate. "I think that I can unravel the mystery. This whale was attacked by the boats of a ship, some of which were probably destroyed by the monster. It was then towed alongside, when she was either capsized in a storm, or, receiving damage from some other cause, she went down, and the articles we now see floated up out ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... year in 1881. Mary Shelley, in a letter to Maria Gisborne, February, 1822, describes him as "A kind of half-Arab Englishman.... He is clever: for his moral qualities I am yet in the dark. He is a strange web which I am endeavoring to unravel." ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... at him with great eyes, but agreed at once, and they appointed time and place. He then bade her good night, and the moment she left him lay down on the bed to think. But he did not trouble himself yet to unravel the plot against him, or determine whether the violence he had suffered had the same origin with the poisoning. Nor was the question merely how to continue to serve his sister without danger to his life; for he had just learned what rendered it absolutely imperative that she ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... long thread triumphantly to the end—out it flew, and away the button hopped again as if glad to be released. And then the thread kinked horribly, and got all twisted up in disagreeable little snarls that took all Polly's patience to unravel. ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... on his pillow and seemed trying to unravel the tangled thoughts which perplexed him. Once more the dame came and brought him a cooling drink. He drank it, thanked her, and ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... to his farm, the state of his feelings is described in the following stanzas. We suspect that the metaphysical acumen of Boccacio himself would have been a good deal puzzled to unravel the meaning of some ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... brings it about is readily credited by Thoas, who does not attempt to make any opposition till both are safe, and then he is appeased by one of the ordinary divine interpositions. This device has been so used and abused by Euripides, that in nine out of his eighteen tragedies, a divinity descends to unravel the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... found it impossible to unravel the tangled skein of their relationship, and to assign a definite amount of blame to each. She did not shirk hers, and was willing to accept a full measure. That she had done wrong in marrying him, and again in leaving him to marry another man, she acknowledged ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the trail of the wind to travel, Search and course with the roving tide, All year long where his hands unravel Blossom and berry ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Warsaw or Breslau. A more incongruous collection I never saw, and I am sure that had it not been for the train of thought I was pursuing when the director called upon me, I should have returned the papers to him without troubling my head with any attempt to unravel ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... said De Skirlaw. "I will not be the one to try to unravel it. Let us away to the king and say what ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... seeing or hearing him was beyond her comprehension. It could only have been by passing behind her very quietly while she was bumping with the iron. But this notion did not satisfy her: it was surely impossible that she should not have seen him come in through a room so small. She could not unravel the mystery, and felt very queer and uncomfortable about it. However, she would not disturb him to question him then, and went to ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... before the mind; And, lest we err by Wit's wild dancing light, Secure us kindly in our native night. Or, if to wit a coxcomb make pretence, Guard the sure barrier between that and sense; Or quite unravel all the reas'ning thread, And hang some curious cobweb in its stead! As, forc'd from wind-guns, lead itself can fly, And pond'rous slugs cut swiftly through the sky; As clocks to weight their nimble motion owe, The wheels ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links of the connection between its several parts. I am myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity, as those critics found themselves to unravel my logic. Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to my own original design, and then leave the reader ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Eustace should have her thoughts elsewhere. As he sat signing letters at the India Board, relieving himself when he was left alone between each batch by standing up with his back to the fire-place, his mind was full of all this. He could not unravel truth quickly, but he could grasp it when it came to him. She was certainly greedy, false, and dishonest. And,—worse than all this,—she had dared to tell him to his face that he was a poor creature because he would not support her in her greed, and falsehoods, and dishonesty! Nevertheless, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... they were, they imagined them through the prism of desire or regret: they seemed, like herself, to be peering through the chinks of the old wall. But they knew much more, they knew all the things which she was longing to know, and clothed them with sweet, mysterious words, which she had to unravel with infinite care to find ... to find ... Ah! She could find nothing, but she was always sure that she was on the very ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... gazed at her as she danced joyously about the deck, with a mingled feeling of sadness and curiosity; for our reserve while on shipboard had surrounded us with a sort of mystery which none knew how to unravel. ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... the whole together in spite of all the evil; and now the old librarian had brought him close up to the good in the other side of the cleft too. He had settled down to his shoemaking again and refused to be roused by the others' impatience; but he looked as if he had an eternity in which to unravel ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... The Saviour, indeed, does not now lead us forth, amid the scene of our trial, as He did the bereft sisters, to unravel the mysteries of His providence, and to shew glory to God, redounding from the darkest of His dispensations. To us the grand sequel is reserved for eternity. The grand development of the divine plan will not be ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... confession. It was like the revolving whirl of a pinwheel, this series of events: continuous and mystifying, but without beginning or end. Surely, somewhere in the procession of horrors, there would be a loose end to cling to. Some loose end that would eventually unravel the pinwheel! ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... clear to Riviere that he must make the journey to Paris if he were to unravel the mystery of that astounding statement. The dead Clifford Matheson mentioned authoritatively as Chairman of the new company! Why should such an impossible story be set afloat, and what was the "reliable source" spoken of? He knew that ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... which invariably comes. We may ring for No. 1, but No. 2 always answers the bell. We may labour to construe a tree per se to the mind, but what we always do construe to the mind is the perception of a tree. What we want is No. 1, but what we always get is No. 2. To unravel the thing explicitly—the manner in which we impose upon ourselves is this:—As explanatory of the perceptive process, we construe to our minds two number twos, and one of these we call No. 1. For example, we have the perception of a tree (No. 2); we wish to think the tree itself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... shall never try to read it," said Sir Norman. "I am about tired of this labyrinth of mysteries, and shall save time and La Masque to unravel them at ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... "that he should leave to men the exercise of arms, and return to his proper station among the maidens of the palace, where a distaff should be again placed in the hand of the eunuch." "I will spin her such a thread as she shall not easily unravel!" is said to have been the reply which indignation and conscious virtue extorted from the hero. Instead of attending, a slave and a victim, at the gate of the Byzantine palace, he retired to Naples, from whence (if any credit is due to the belief of the times) Narses invited the Lombards ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
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