"Enigma" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... enigma which he could not solve. Although believing they were on the wrong track, he did not feel at liberty to abandon the search until after consulting with Bill, and as yet no signs had been seen of ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... carried them into the bedroom, and, barricaded within, commenced an inventory. There were two complete suits of men's clothes in the Douglas livery. The queen was at a loss, when she saw a letter fastened to the collar of one of the two coats. Eager to know the meaning of this enigma, she immediately opened it, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... anything unusual in his wife's action he made no mention of it when I went into his study at nine o'clock. And it was so much of an enigma to me that I was not ready to venture ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... the chorus of Handel, are inarticulate cries. These men have not justified to us their confidence. It will be shared, not justified. They have divined what they cannot orderly publish, and their meaning will be by the same greatness divined again. The work of such men remains a haunting, commanding enigma to following ages. They do but repeat the promise and obscurity of Nature, for she herself has the same largeness, is such another raptus, proceeding to no end, but to a circle or complexity of ends. Men are again ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... the right or west had not had even bird's-eye exploration. Until the Major's unrivalled first descent in 1869 the river was equally unknown. Even above Gunnison Crossing, despite the spasmodic efforts at exploration referred to, the river had remained a geographical enigma, and to the Major belongs the sole credit for solving this great problem throughout its length from the Union Pacific crossing in Wyoming to the mouth of the Virgin River—the last problem of this kind within the United ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... His attention was arrested by observing a kind of opening under a little arbor, thickly covered with a mat of vines. Thinking, perhaps, that it was the retreat of some animal, he thrust in his hand, and to his surprise drew forth a glass bottle, partly full of whisky. The enigma of his master's walks and inequalities of temper stood immediately deciphered. After the reflection of a moment, he carefully replaced the bottle in its position, and returned to his place in school. In the evening he communicated his discovery ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... that the means by which such extraordinary experience was acquired are not included in the sphere of his knowledge, and that any attempt to explain them at present would only increase his incredulity. He would only see one enigma solved by another apparently more insoluble than itself. The Editor, therefore, would call especial attention to the practical value of the revelations here communicated, convinced as he is that they are so replete with instruction to terrestial mankind, that the difficulty of giving credence ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... there? By what decree has salt been sown on this dwelling? Has God been mocked here? Or was France betrayed? These are the questions we ask ourselves. Reptiles crawl over it, but give no reply. This empty and deserted house is a vast enigma of which the answer ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... "what do we know," etc., heaped together, a shapeless and unconnected system is formed, perplexing mankind, by obliterating from their minds, the most clear ideas and rendering uncertain truths most evident. By reason of this systematic confusion, nature is an enigma; the visible world has disappeared, to give place to regions invisible; reason is compelled to yield to imagination, who leads to the country of ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... thought disturbing and distasteful. It was long past midnight before she could dismiss the enigma from her thoughts ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Penrose is an enigma to those who know him only casually, especially those who view life through the rose glasses of culture. They marvel at the extent to which he has been able to dictate to men who appear to be his superiors. I have heard him called a ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... We had been taught physics and science; we had been drilled to fundamentals. If this thing could be, then the foundations upon which we stood were shattered. But one little law! Back in my mind was buzzing the enigma of the Blind Spot. They were woven together. Some law that had ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... events of formidable grandeur whose imminence neither had suspected. Still assuring himself that his position was absolutely safe, Louis nevertheless was aware of a sinking in the stomach. He could rebut any accusation. "And yet ...!" murmured his craven conscience. What could be the enigma between Mrs. Maldon and Rachel? He was now trying to convince himself that Mrs. Maldon had in fact divided the money into two parts, of which he had handled only one, and that the impressive mystery ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... heard of his existence. How often does a revolution like that of Greece, when the very organization of society is shaken, compress the progress of a century within a few years! There remained nothing for me but to visit the monastery, and seek a solution of the singular enigma from my friend's own mouth; so, joining a party of travellers who were about to visit the marble quarries of Pentelicus, and continue their excursion to the plain of Marathon, I set out on such a morning as can only be witnessed under the pure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... the same faults that he always had, young and vigorous in his seventy-fifth year, and having succeeded in his policy, is now considered the head of a clique, the man of intrigue, past his work, etc., etc.—in fact hated! and this throughout the country. I cannot explain the enigma except by supposing that people had before joined in a cry which they thought was popular without themselves believing what they said and wrote, and that they now do the same; that the Radicals used his name to destroy other statesmen ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... from personal choice; and, as they leaned over the broken paling at the bottom of the garden in front of the stars, it had pleased her that he should put his arm round her, take her face in his hand and to kiss her lips. The forest, too, the enchantment of the tall trees, and the enigma of the moonlight falling through the branches and lighting up the banks over which he helped her, had wrought upon her imagination, upon her nerves, and there had been moments when she had thought that she could love him ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... day Walker made himself amends for Corey's reticence by talking a great deal. He talked about Lapham, who seemed to have, more than ever since his apparent difficulties began, the fascination of an enigma for his book-keeper, and he ended by asking, "Did you see ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Jacques did wrong to leave behind him the weapon with which the crime was committed and, as he occupied the attic immediately above Mademoiselle Stangerson's room, the builder's job ordered by the examining magistrate will give us the key of the enigma and it will not be long before we learn by what natural trap, or by what secret door, the old fellow was able to slip in and out, and return immediately to the laboratory to Monsieur Stangerson, without his absence being noticed. That, of ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... mechanically as the car drove off. His mind was already busy with the problem suggested by Miller's appearance in these parts. For the first few minutes of his drive he was back again in the turmoil which he had left. Then with a little shrug of the shoulders he abandoned this new enigma. Its solution must be close ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... affected, simple, languishing, accordingly as she feared she was too like her natural self—the Netta of the Farm was no more, and her representative was, to Owen at least, an anomaly. How she could have acquired such an amount of small talk, and such a mincing speech in nine months, was an enigma to him. London, Paris, the opera, the fashions, even the picture galleries, were alternately in her mouth; and she poured out tea and coffee, and laughed a silly laugh, much to her own satisfaction, and Owen's disgust, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... begining of February 1666 came Comoedians to Poictiers. I went and saw them severall tymes. The first was called Odip, who resolved the Sphinx his enigma: was so unfortunat to slay his father by ignorance, marry his mother, and to conclud al to put out his oune eyes: the fellow acted his griefe exceeding lifelylie. The farce was le Marriage du rien. A fool fellow in a scoolmasters habit wt a ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... he did. It was an enigma which puzzled many wiser heads than his in the long run; but I think the part which astonished him most was to be discovering, bit by bit, that the story of my visit to the house in Monmouth Street, as related to him and his brother, the "tip-top London detective," ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... serenity, and awaking for the first time the woman within her heart. Hitherto her girlhood's fancies had been like summer zephyrs, disturbing but briefly the still, clear waters of her soul; but now she became an enigma to herself as she slowly grew conscious of her own heart and the law of her woman's nature to love and give herself to another. But she had too much of the doughty old major's fire and spirit, and was too fond of her freedom, to surrender easily. Both Graham ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... am not going to say. your newspapers perhaps have given you a long roll of opposition names, who were coming into place, and so all the world thought; but the Wind turned quite round, and left them on the strand, and just where they were, except in opposition which is declared to be at an end. Enigma as all this may sound, the key would open it all to you in the twinkling of an administration. In the mean time we have family reconciliations without end. The King and the Duke of Cumberland have been shut up together day and night; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... planets, together with an eighth representing Bacchus; and perhaps there were good mythological reasons why the god of wine, together with so large a portion of our solar system, should be done in copper by Jacob Jongeling, to honour the triumph of Alexander, although the key to the enigma has been lost. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is extraordinary," said Lady Keith, "how after living among a parcel of thick-headed, and thicker-tongued Yankees, she could come out and speak pure English in a clear voice; it is an enigma ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... upon all such hopes and prospects, to mention a singular and interesting case of sudden conquest over a difficulty that once had seemed insuperable. For a period of three centuries there had existed an enigma, dark and insoluble as that of the Sphinx, in the text of Suetonius. Isaac Casaubon had vainly besieged it; then, in a mood of revolting arrogance, Joseph Scaliger; Ernesti; Gronovius; many others; and all ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... is, we believe, a fact of paramount importance for efficiency and economy; and the loyalty of God in committing such trust to us, when He presumably knows exactly how unworthy we are of it, is the explanation of life's enigma. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... with a paternal smile, his gloomy creations marching in dismal procession across the frontiers of France. Byron replied to him by a cry of grief which made Greece tremble, and suspended "Manfred" over the abyss as if nothingness had been the answer of the hideous enigma, with ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... it is all a mystery; no one can tell what the composer intended to express by this symphony. We know that the theme is a noble one,—but what? that the soul of the writer must have been powerfully moved during its composition,—by what influences? It is an enigma: each listener may guess at the theme, and each will associate it with the subject most in harmony with ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... branched off, nor in all likelihood will ever meet again. My life has been a quiet one, and has not lain much in the way of extraordinary men, but I doubt if many such as Simon Colliver exist. He is a perfect enigma to me. That such a man, with such attainments (for besides his wonderful conversation and power of singing, he has an amazing knowledge of foreign tongues), that such a man, I say, should be a mere attorney's clerk is little short of marvellous. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... she was, Fledra was an enigma to him. There was but one way to make her his woman,—his wife,—that was to force her confidence, and, once obtained, keep it. But his longing to caress her was stronger than his desire to conquer her,—the warmth and softness of her lips he would not ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... problem has become more precise, both as to variation and as to heredity. The inner conditions of life have in both respects shown a greater independence than Darwin had supposed in his theory, though he always admitted that the cause of variation was to him a great enigma, "a most perplexing problem," and that the struggle for life could only occur where variation existed. But, at any rate, it was of the greatest importance that Darwin gave a living impression of the struggle for life which is everywhere going on, and ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... for a time he was, as Dr. Gosse has expressed it, "not all for Apollo, and not all for Christ." The same writer quotes as applicable to him an interesting phrase of Daudet's, "His brain was a disaffected cathedral," and likens him to that mysterious face of Mona Lisa, of whose fantastic enigma Pater himself has given the most brilliant and the most intricate description. From an early Christian idealism, through a period of humanistic paganism, he passed gradually and naturally back to the abandoned faith again, but in readopting it he never surrendered the humanistic gains of the ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... moon is down. The sound of dance is stilled in the city. So go we into the Rue Croissant, with its shaveless thuggeries and marauding cabs. It is dark, very. And very quiet. And the sniff of unknown things is to be had in the air. Dens of drink with their furtive thieves ... the enigma of the shadows of the church of Saint Eustache ... slinking feet to the rear of you ... at length, the Rue Pirouette and the sign of the angel Gabriel on the lantern before the house. Here is good company to be found! Well do I remember the bon-camaraderie of Henri Laverte, that most successful ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... prodigal and barbaric display of learning; and last, because it is said to have had the effect of making the most indolent man of letters of the eighteenth century get up betimes in the morning. Why Dr. Johnson needed to get up in order to read the Anatomy of Melancholy will always be an enigma to some. Perhaps he did not get up. Perhaps he merely sat up and reached for the book, which would have been placed conveniently near the bed. For the virtue of the act resided in the circumstance of his being ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... enigma is woman! From the specimen of feminine delicacy and modest diffidence which we have just presented to the reader, who would imagine that Kate Hogan was capable of entering into the deep and rooted sorrow which Kathleen Cavanagh experienced when made acquainted with the calamity which ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... travellers who had any baggage were forced to keep it between their legs, already tortured by being squeezed into a sort of little box in shape like a bellows. The original color of coach and running-gear was an insoluble enigma. Two leather curtains, very difficult to adjust in spite of their long service, were supposed to protect the occupants from cold and rain. The driver, perched on a plank seat like those of the worst Parisian "coucous," shared in the conversation by reason of ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... this letter may have been written? It may have been written at Henry Dunbar's dictation, and under coercion. Be it as it may, the mystery of the Winchester murder shall be set at rest, if patience or intelligence can solve the enigma. No mystery shall separate me from the ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... over his own. He thought he could see the hopelessness of staying longer. "A woman's love," he said, gloomily, "is a wonderful thing. It clings through trouble and tragedy—never faltering." She looked at him, startled, trying to solve the enigma of this speech. He laughed, bitterly. "That's what makes a woman superior to mere man. Love exalts her. It makes a savage of a man. I suppose it is 'good-bye.'" He held out a hand to her and she took it, holding it limply, looking at him in wonderment, her heart heavy with regret. "I wish ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... while yet so soft in manner, seemed a thing out of all nature to the vivacious Frenchmen; that unchanging stillness and serenity in one who was such a reckless, resistless croc-mitaine, swift as fire in the field, was an enigma that the Cavalry and the Demi-cavalry of Algeria never solved. His corps would have gone after him to the devil, as Claude de Chanrellon had averred; but they would sometimes wax a little impatient that he would never ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... horse could have got there to have dropped a tooth,—a foal of a week old could not have pressed itself through the opening; and how the single grinder, evidently no recent introduction into the cave, could have got mixed up in the straw with the human bones, seemed an enigma somewhat of the class to which the reel in the bottle belongs. I found in Edinburgh an unexpected commentator on the mystery, in the person of my little boy,—an experimental philosopher in his second year. I had spread out on the floor the curiosities ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... another world upon the business of this one; that I am among you, but not of you; that your motives and aims to me are utterly unintelligible; that you can give no account of them to which I can attach any sense; that I have no clue to the enigma you seem so lightly to solve by your religion, your philosophy, your science; that your hopes are not mine, your ambitions not mine, your principles not mine; that I am shipwrecked, and see around me none but are shipwrecked too; yet, that these, as they cling ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... understand, but in turning to care for her brother she ceased to puzzle over the enigma. Shortly afterwards the patient closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep. Immediately the girl led the way on tiptoe from the room. She locked the door behind her ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... crawl; I feel sure it is not a fish, though I cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not. It merely lies around, and mostly on its back, with its feet up. I have not seen any other animal do that before. I said I believed it was an enigma; but she only admired the word without understanding it. In my judgment it is either an enigma or some kind of a bug. If it dies, I will take it apart and see what its arrangements are. I never had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have been a brilliant woman, a power in affairs. Yes, and an enigma, and to none more than to yourself. You show that now. You only loved what Elisabeth loved. As woman, then, you were born for the first time, touched by that throb of her heart, not your own. 'Twas ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... result of his making the loveliest of God's gifts into his God, and worshipping and serving the creature more than the creator. Oh my child, it is a terrible thing to be! Except he knows God the saviour, man stands face to face with a torturing enigma, hopeless of solution! ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... for such a performance. One is not at all surprised to find that Mrs. Mitchell was among the last of his earthly thoughts; but were there not ample proof of the falsity of these careless assertions, then indeed would Hamilton be an enigma. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... view of the duties and rights of citizens, as those of Machiavelli. Yet so it is. And even from The Prince itself we could select many passages in support of this remark. To a reader of our age and country this inconsistency is, at first, perfectly bewildering. The whole man seems to be an enigma, a grotesque assemblage of incongruous qualities, selfishness and generosity, cruelty and benevolence, craft and simplicity, abject villainy and romantic heroism. One sentence is such as a veteran diplomatist ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it squarely—"I love Emily Brunell. Whatever her father is, or has done, she is guiltless of any complicity, and I can't stand by and see her suffer, much less be the one to precipitate her grief by bringing her father to justice. I told you the truth when I said that the cipher letter was an enigma to me. I could not solve the cryptogram, nor will I be the means of bringing it to the hands of those who might solve it. I don't want any further connection with the case; in fact, sir, I want to get out of the sleuth game altogether. ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... I saw the stigma Still of death; and life's enigma Filled her eyes: around her shimmered Folds of silence; and afar, Faint above her forehead, glimmered Lone the light of one ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... look after your own interest, say you had fair warning. For my own part, I am rather embarrassed than gratified by the prospect of such an affair, when I have on the tapis another of a different nature. This enigma ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... hostess at the tea table, and was obliged to keep up a conversation with her and her sister, who was sitting opposite him. Madame Sviazhskaya was a round-faced, fair-haired, rather short woman, all smiles and dimples. Levin tried through her to get a solution of the weighty enigma her husband presented to his mind; but he had not complete freedom of ideas, because he was in an agony of embarrassment. This agony of embarrassment was due to the fact that the sister-in-law was sitting opposite to him, in a dress, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... statesman who read Dickens and re-read in two languages Uncle Tom's Cabin and sometimes played the flute, and the Premier of a bilingual country who had a passion for the study of the war which emancipated the negro, was the kaleidoscopic enigma of ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... tell you how strange this is to me," she said slowly, "you must know that you proposed an enigma which I ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... worst was that our failure to unriddle the enigma In the "rags" of rival towns was made a byword and a scoff, Till each soul in the community felt branded with the stigma Of the unexplained suspicion ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... military energy of the Tartar government, and the abject weakness of their own; and certainly knew, from their brethren in Kathay, the significant name of the Tartar general; on which foundation, they constructed the enigma of their prophecy, which, like many others, contributed towards ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... was something of an enigma to Hector Strong. He was making more than a million pounds a year, and yet she did not want to marry him. Sometimes he wondered if the woman were quite sane. Yet, mad or sane, ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... last night, whose unrevealing eyes seemed to have looked out over the desert for centuries, until its infinite heart was as an open page to her, and she repressed in the scarlet curves of her mouth its eternal, secret enigma. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... have induced Mrs. Irwin to appeal to him was still an enigma, for his relations to the beautiful young wife had until then not been of a confidential nature. He had met her on several occasions in big society functions, at the officers' polo-parties, and at similar gatherings, and if, attracted ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... by stealth Breaks out,—of power, fame and wealth Deserted you shall be! The foam upon your lip is rife; The last enigma now of Life Shall Death resolve ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... unequivocal language of love! Yet she seemed so hideously unhappy as she stretched before him in her white robes of death. Why? What secret was this disclosed at the twelfth hour of life, on the very brink of the grave? Did death, then, hold the solution to the enigma of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... returning him the slip, "I am as much in the dark as ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda awaiting me on my solution of this enigma, I am quite sure that I should ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... of Waterloo is an enigma as obscure for those who gained it as for him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic; Bluecher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington does not understand it at all. Look at the reports; the bulletins are confused; the commentaries are entangled; ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... gesture escaped him. How well he knew the turn of her head and the sudden flash of her face as they entered a theatre, and her eyes swept the house, eager, expectant, dubious; how well he knew the excited touch on his sleeve, the breath half-drawn, the look that was a confidence and an enigma; knew, too, the despondent droop of her eyes when the play was done and it was all over; the tightening of her hand upon his arm, and the shrinking of the whole tiny figure as they made their way out through the crowd. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... wonder," returned the man with a smile, "at any question which aims at the investigation of that great enigma styled the human mind? I am fond of the study of character, and of those principles of good and evil which influence men. Under given circumstances and conditions, the commission of a certain sin is greatly more blameworthy ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... be, is simpler than some imagine. The key to the enigma may lie closer to our hands than we have any idea of. Many devices have been tried, and many have failed, no doubt; it is only stubborn, reckless perseverance that can hope to succeed; it is well that we recognise this. How many ages did men try ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... pale death of the day, lying like a flower on the water, seemed to symbolise her thought, and she felt more distinctly than she had ever done before. And there arose in her a nervous and passionate interest in herself. She seemed so strange, so wonderful. Her childhood was in itself an enigma. That sad and sorrowful childhood of hers, passed in that old London house; her mother's love for her; her cruel, stern stepfather, and the endless quarrels between her father and mother, which made her young life so unbearable, so wretched, that ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... beautiful woman and the most repulsive they had ever set eyes on. I have spoken to a man who saw her, and I assure you he positively shuddered as he tried to describe the woman, but he couldn't tell why. She seems to have been a sort of enigma; and I expect if that one dead man could have told tales, he would have told some uncommonly queer ones. And there you are again in another puzzle; what could a respectable country gentleman like Mr. Blank (we'll call him that if you don't mind) want in such a very queer ...
— The Great God Pan • Arthur Machen
... for her dislike. She was an orderly, busy, competent woman, the counterpart of endless millions of her sex, who liked to understand what she saw or felt, and who had no happiness in reading riddles. To her he was at times an enigma, and at times again a simpleton. In both aspects he displeased and embarrassed her. One has one's sense of property, and in him she could not put her finger on anything that was hers. We demand continuity, logic in ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... obscure in his other comment upon an employer who told his tired servant to serve his master first, ending with the enigma, "We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... and there had been nothing to repulse. Once during Charlie's absence he had come in a rowboat, hailed her from the beach, and gone away without disembarking when she told him Benton was not back. He was something of an enigma, she confessed to herself, after all. Perhaps that was why he came so frequently into her mind. Or perhaps, she told herself, there was so little on Roaring Lake to think about that one could not escape the personal element. As ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... because they are in fact expressions of the whole character. It is necessary to take them into account in order really to understand either the merits or the shortcomings. When they are softened or omitted, the whole story becomes an enigma, and we are often tempted to substitute some less creditable explanation of errors for the true one. We should not do justice to Johnson's intense tenderness, if we did not see how often it was masked by an irritability pardonable in itself, and not affecting ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... invisible but consummate artist who had been passing before you all manner of photographs made lurid by the glare of the stereopticon: photograph now of sunset cloud, now of lover's scene in the lane, now of a dyspeptic, long-haired, wrinkled old man. The writer Turgenef has thus been for years an enigma. Katkof, the pillar of Russian autocracy, claims him as his, and the revolutionists claim him as theirs; the realists point to him as one of the apostles of their new gospel, and the idealists point to him as the apostle of theirs. Now he defies public ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... hitherto always bowed reverently before the saint, as the enigma of self-subjugation and utter voluntary privation—why did they thus bow? They divined in him—and as it were behind the questionableness of his frail and wretched appearance—the superior force which wished to test itself ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... pronunciation, while far from identical with ours, was much closer than the tortured dialect of the Eastenders of the Isle of Wight. The longer I talked with her the more hopeful I became of finding here, among her people, some records, or traditions, which might assist in clearing up the historic enigma of the past two centuries. I asked her if we were far from the city of London, but she did not know what I meant. When I tried to explain, describing mighty buildings of stone and brick, broad avenues, parks, palaces, and countless people, she ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his own top-floor room with the rakish back wall. There he cautiously lighted the gas, drew the blinds, and locked himself in. Next, he dragged a chair over to the bedside, sat down on it, and carefully untied the parcel string. Then, with somewhat accelerated pulse, he unwrapped the paper-screened enigma. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... sat weary beyond expression, exulting like a conqueror, sleepless and entranced as if before a profound, a fateful enigma. ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... and then Albert would row a few strokes, and at almost any time when the populated shore glanced toward them, Sadie would be seen photographing Albert, or Albert would be seen photographing Sadie, but the tennis racket remained an enigma. Oarsman and passenger appeared to have no conversation whatever—not once was either seen or heard to address a remark to the other; and they looked as placid as their own upside-down reflections in one of the still pools they slowly floated ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... kept her eyes constantly cast down; intimidated, dazzled, and with impeded respiration, she withdrew herself as much as possible aside, unaffected even by the nudges Montalais gave her with her elbow. The whole scene was a perfect enigma for Raoul, the key to which he would have given anything to obtain. But no one was there who could assist him, not even Malicorne; who, a little uneasy at finding himself in the presence of so many persons of good birth, ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... themselves of the religious sentiment or to appease its craving for satisfaction. There being no God, they find it necessary, as Voltaire predicted it would be, to invent one, not for the purposes of police (they are far above such sordid Jesuitism), but as the solution of the otherwise hopeless enigma of our spiritual nature. Science takes cognizance of all phenomena, and this apparently ineradicable tendency of the human mind is a phenomenon like the rest. The thoroughgoing Materialist, of course, escapes all these philosophical exigencies, but he does it by denying Humanity as well ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... more than anger Blake; they maddened him. For years now he had been compelled to face her obliquities, to puzzle over the enigma of her ultimate character, and he was tired of it all. He made no effort to hold his feelings in check. Even into his voice crept that grossness which before had seemed something of ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... attention, Where shall we find an object for the tremendous judgment to be inflicted by the third and last woe? This question requires a solution. It demands it; and he who succeeds in the application of history to solve this apparent enigma in the Apocalypse, will be able to attain to a satisfactory, a certain, understanding of much that is yet to most readers as if the "sealed book" were to this day in the "right hand of Him that sitteth on the throne." Let us humbly attempt ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... awaited the solution of this enigma. Fabian armed himself with a pride which equalled that ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... intermixed and confused, that the clearest head gets puzzled with the entanglements of the story; and confusion gets worse confounded as the farrago proceeds. How M. Sue will manage ever to come to a close is an enigma to us; and we shall wait with some impatience to see how he will distribute his poetic justice, when he can't get his puppets to move another step. Horror seems the great ingredient in the present ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... rubbed his eyes sleepily, as if newly awakened. Then the first guard drew bolts from a stout door and pulled it open, revealing a dark chasm like the entrance to a cell. Both Wilhelm and the Emperor viewed this black enigma with deep suspicion, but their guide with his lantern plunged into it and they followed, after which the door was closed and ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... any precocious wisdom. Certainly, one can get at the substance of things. True, there is enough mystery and perplexity about the system of the world, and at times all life looms up a terrible enigma, so increasing in difficulty of solution that Death's key to knowledge seems the one thing to be desired. But it is well for a man not to lose himself in labyrinths of conjecture, but to resolutely put aside his spirit of philosophical inquiry, and do something useful for himself ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... him, of that he felt convinced. Man like, he did not understand to the full that great and wonderful enigma, which has puzzled the world since primeval times: ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... silent in her brother-in-law's presence because recent events had rather bewildered her. Her countenance was stamped with a wondering expression as though she were gazing at the upsetting of the most elemental physical laws. In reflective silence she was puzzling over the Marne enigma, unable to understand how it was that the Germans had not conquered the ground on which she was treading; and in order to explain this failure, she resorted to the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... distractedly, caressing her and soothing her. "What a world it is! Why, why cannot you and Maurice see how delightful you both are? It is an enigma. No one can solve it. Tita darling, take heart. Why—why, if Marian were so bad as you think her—which I pray God she isn't—still, think how far you can surpass her in ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... of the inhabitants of Lincoln Island were solely occupied with the intended search. Everything incited them to discover the answer to this enigma, an answer which could only be the name of a man endowed with a truly inexplicable, and in some degree superhuman power. In a few minutes, the settlers re-entered the house, where their influence soon restored to Ayrton ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... also an evil-smelling dark bottle in the Italian's inside coat-pocket, which was an enigma. It was not ginger pop or beer, or any kind of soda water; Black Bruin knew all of these drinks himself, and this drink was like ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... of all the patience and perseverance the boys could muster the magic message remained an enigma and at the end of an hour both were ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... who, from his point of view—that painting may fairly deal with a chapter of history—is perfectly right. The prevailing strain of the story is the strength of weakness—ex dulci fortitudo, to invert the old enigma. "O God, O my God, hear me also, a widow. Break down their stateliness by the hand of a woman!" It is the refrain that runs through the whole history of Israel, that reasonable complacency of a little people ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... friend Edie, is an absolute enigma, and would require a second OEdipus to solve itwho OEdipus was, I will tell you some other time if you remind meHowever, whether it be owing to the wisdom or to the maggots with which you compliment me, I ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... pretend to explain in detail the whole enigma of first love. But a general explanation is suggested by evolutional philosophy,—namely, that the attraction depends upon an inherited individual susceptibility to special qualities of feminine influence, and subjectively represents a kind of superindividual recognition,'" ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... an aid in understanding the stages of European development, affirming that colonial settlement is for economic science what the mountain is for geology, bringing to light primitive stratifications. "America," he says, "has the key to the historical enigma which Europe has sought for centuries in vain, and the land which has no history reveals luminously the course of universal history." There is much truth in this. The United States lies like a huge page ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... looked around her with an air of triumph; but whether that look communicated the triumph of success, or that of her inveterate enmity and contempt for them ever since the death of old Hamilton, was as great a secret to them as the Bononian enigma. There was a dead silence, much to her mortification, for she would have given a great deal that her husband had interrupted her just then, and taken ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgment, appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... I answered; 'but I should hesitate before saying unaccountable. Now, there is that River Hall place up the river. There must be some rational way of explaining the appearances in that house, though no one has yet found any clue to that enigma.' ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... serpent languishing in the snow, where a labourer has thrown it, and a naked child burning in the midst of the fire, with certain other details and circumstances, with the legend which says: "Idem, itidem non idem." This seems more like an enigma than anything else, and I do not feel sure that I can explain it at all; yet I do believe that it means that the same fate vexes, and the same torments both the one and the other—that is, immeasurably, without mercy and unto death, by means of various instruments ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... all very well, and yet as he turned Comet's head toward the Poison Hole ranch the blood was still hot on his brow, his thoughts were still busy with Winifred Waverly and the enigma she was to him, while his mind, still touched with the opiate of the loveliness of her, was filled with the picture she made in the moment of her ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... trackless, and oblivious whence it blows. Demand of lilies wherefore they are white, Extort her crimson secret from the rose, But ask not of the Muse that she disclose The meaning of the riddle of her might: Somewhat of all things sealed and recondite, Save the enigma of herself, she knows. The master could not tell, with all his lore, Wherefore he sang, or whence the mandate sped; Ev'n as the linnet sings, so I, he said;— Ah, rather as the imperial nightingale, That ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... His murdered sons were the last sight which he saw before he was blinded, according to the ferocious practice of the East. It was ingenuity of cruelty to let him see for so long, and then to give him that as the last thing seen, and therefore often remembered. Note how the enigma of Ezekiel's prophecy (Ezek. xii. 13) and its apparent contradiction of Jeremiah's (Jer. xxxii. 4; xxxiv. 3) are reconciled, and learn how easily the fact, when it comes, clears the riddles of prophecy, and how easily, probably, the whole facts, if we knew them, would clear the difficulties ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fitted for a new age. He suggests that the Pagan ideal will be the ultimate good of man; but if that is so, we must at least ask with more curiosity than he allows for, why it was that man actually found his ultimate good on earth under the stars, and threw it away again. It is this extraordinary enigma to which I propose to attempt ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... have undergone a complete revolution. When Marx began his work with the labor movement there was absolute ignorance among both masters and men concerning the nature of capitalism. It was a great and terrible enigma which no one understood. The working class itself was broken up into innumerable guerilla bands fighting hopelessly, aimlessly, with the most antiquated and ineffectual weapons. They were in misery; but why, they knew not. They left their work to riot for ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... scientific tests to be applied to the action of the brain alleged to be the subject of partial or incipient disease. There is nothing in the facts as they stand to supply the materials for a judgment. Precise scientific inquiry can alone solve the enigma each case presents. ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... belief at the earliest age in such a way as to result in a kind of partial paralysis of the brain; this then shows itself throughout their whole life in a silly bigotry, making even extremely intelligent and capable people among them degrade themselves so that they become quite an enigma to us. If we consider how essential to such a masterpiece is inoculation of belief in the tender age of childhood, the system of missions appears no longer merely as the height of human importunity, arrogance, and impertinence, but also of absurdity; in so far as it does not confine itself ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... contradictions, which have made of a science the most obvious and best demonstrated, an unintelligible science, mysterious and uncertain to those for whom it is designed. In the hands of the priests, morality has become an enigma; they have founded our duties on the attributes of a Deity whom the mind of man cannot comprehend, in place of founding them on the character of man himself. They have thrown in among them the foundations of an edifice which is made for this earth. They have desired to regulate ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... in all her glory and sweetness, is but a specimen of the jargon and slang of Ghibelline freemasonry. When Italians write thus, they degrade the greatest name of their country to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. It is to solve the enigma of Dante's works by imagining for him a character in which it is hard to say which predominates, the pedant, mountebank, or infidel. After that we may read Voltaire's sneers with patience, and even enter with gravity on the examination of Father Hardouin's historic doubts. The fanaticism ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... heaven, sir, say nothing to him!" she uttered, and disappeared within an inner door. The sight of Roy, entering, explained the enigma; she must have seen him from the window. Roy took off his cap ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Jack to question a word of the narrative that had reduced a dismal enigma to luminous, connected facts. With the swift processes of reason and the promptness of decision of which he was capable on occasion, he had made up his mind as to his future even as he ascended the stairs to his room. The poignancy of his father's appeal had struck ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... generous sentiment to betray itself to another, he veiled his earnest friendship under a guise of mere clerkly companionship, rarely giving way to those bursts of tender feeling, which rendered him, in Guly's young eyes, an absolute enigma. ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... it, she leaps over it, she turns and twists, and jumps and frisks, in all directions, in the vain attempt to reach the fair illusion; and, at length, turns away in weariness from that incomprehensible enigma—the image of herself. ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... "This nation is an enigma, whose import no man as yet may fully know. She is a germ of boundless things. The unfolded bud excites the hope of one-half the human race, while it stirs the remainder with both anger and alarm. Who ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... look from Sintram stopped the flow of his words. With a gentle smile, Weigand bowed towards him, and said: "You know now all the deep, unutterably deep, sorrow which preyed upon me. My fear of you, and my yearning love for you, are no longer an enigma to your kind heart. For, dear youth, though you may be like your fearful father, you have also the kind, gentle heart of your mother; and its reflection brightens your pallid, stern features, like the glow of a morning ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... by its masters to bring it into submission, is truly one of the most amazing spectacles which we have witnessed since the war broke out. General von Bissing has declared that the Belgians are an enigma to him. No wonder. They are an enigma to themselves. I am not going to explain the miracle. I will only attempt to show how inexplicable, ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... good deal on his own powers of influence. Life had been to him so far one long social success of the best kind. Very likely as he walked on to the great house over whose threshold lay the answer to the enigma of months, his mind gradually filled with some naive young dream of winning the squire, playing him with all sorts of honest arts, beguiling him back ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not understand—the relation between the spark of eternity in your soul and the Power above, and the whole of endless space—has all of a sudden become so clear that you lie here trembling with joy at seeing to the very bottom of the infinite enigma. ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... his name, or the formula of incantation that binds him, you can control the spirit, genie, afrite, or whatever the power may be. Solomon knew the names of all the spirits, and having their names, he held them subject to his will. So the universe has always appeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, of which the key must be sought in the shape of some illuminating or power-bringing word or name. That word names the universe's PRINCIPLE, and to possess it is, after a fashion, to possess the universe itself. 'God,' 'Matter,' 'Reason,' 'the Absolute,' ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... meaning, the term still leaves me reluctant; for I cannot hide from myself the weakness of a hypothesis which, in order to explain (only in part) one enigmatical fact (in this case, that of "thinking animals"), must have recourse to another unsolved enigma (in this case that of the ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... first years at school was extremely idle. Although by no means lacking in intelligence, all the efforts spent on her failed to bring about a proper advance. All at once she became most industrious; no task was too hard for her, and everyone wondered at the sudden change, until after a time the enigma was explained. The child, having conceived a great fondness for her schoolmistress, wished to please the latter by attention to her lessons. In addition, she was jealous; afraid lest the mistress ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... barefoot child will tell you belong to the palace of 'La Reino Joanno.' Walls have been altered, gates have disappeared, but down those time-worn steps once paced the liege lady of Provence, the incomparable 'fair mischief' whose guilt ... must ever remain one of the enigmas of history." This "enigma" has strange analogies to one which has puzzled and impassioned the writers of many generations, the mystery of that other "fair mischief" of a later century, Mary Queen of Scots. Like Mary, Jeanne was accused of the murder of her young husband, and being pressed by the vengeance of his brother—no ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... no wish, cardinal," the king kindly replied, "to find you guilty. Explain to me this enigma. Account for all those maneuvers with Boehmer. Where did you obtain these securities and these promissory notes, signed in the queen's name, which have been given ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... him with wondering eyes, her shrewd intellect had already deciphered the enigma, but her eyes ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... married, but the priest was ordained by my master, and the license was of his own granting, and so they are not married, and now the enigma's explained. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... Ralph had never seen before. He could not take in its full meaning all in a minute. His puzzled mind went groping for some reasonable solution of the enigma. Before he could think things out, however, there was a sound at the rear door of the car. Some one on the platform outside had turned the knob and held the door about an inch ajar, and Ralph glided towards it. Through the crack ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... So this was the explanation of the Monny puzzle! Yet it was but the first word of another enigma. Who was responsible for the wild story? There was more than met the eye—or ear—in this. I could hardly believe that Monny would have chosen, or Rachel dared, to start this rumour, though it might have amused the real heiress, and suited the false one, to watch it run. I dared not contradict ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... and complexities. The testimony of Papias remains an enigma that can only be solved—if ever it is solved—by close and detailed investigations. I am bound in candour to say that, so far as I can see myself at present, I am inclined to agree with the author of 'Supernatural Religion' against his critics [Endnote 159:1], ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... upon them; for He alone who has power to check or permit them, can know how and why they happen, whither they tend, and what will be their ultimate consequence. To the mind of man all is dark; he is an enigma to himself: let him live, therefore, in the hope of once seeing clearly; and happy indeed is he who in this manner passes ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... prison, considering one day with myself the different kinds of liberty and confinement, freedom and bondage, I took my pen, and wrote the following enigma ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... that it had taken any shape but that!) the enigma developed itself. Returning home one day, I had straightened my collar and smoothed my hair before opening the door (feeling a proper pride in my personal appearance, these preparations are usually a preliminary ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... head that minted probrosis as a verb! Vernon, you are an enigma. No! This Side will not always be patient of unheavenly gases and waters. I will make representations to our so-called Moderns. Meantime (who shall say I am not just?) I remit you your accrued pains and penalties in regard to probrosim, probrosis, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... England, which had sheltered him, to claim his seat in the National Assembly of republican France, and even when made President of the republic by the suffrages of the nation, he was regarded as an enigma. Some thought him dull though bold, and others looked upon him as astute and long-headed. His heavy look, his leaden eye, his reserved and taciturn ways, with no marked power but that of silence and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... that may be true; but it is well enough known that she can love very deeply. It says that, like most queens, and for precisely the same set of reasons, she later on makes a bad mother; but it is easy to point to queens who are the best of mothers. In short, she remains an enigma, and, like all ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... am I saying? people don't dream as he has lived. No one has ever extracted out of a destiny more than he has. The preposterous and the commonplace are equally familiar to him. He has shone, he has suffered, he has dragged along a humdrum existence: nothing has escaped him.... He is an enigma, a riddle that can ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... a token show of interest; he twice lost his temper in boast against boast, but he was more often a blunt enigma. He saw much and said little. Those times when he did speak, so extravagant were his grunt and ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... face, the man's large mouth covering the twitching lips of the girl. The shrouding red hair hid the squatter faces from the professor, and he turned his eyes away. He could not look upon them without distressing emotion. The strange maid was an enigma to him and he found himself wishing that he might guide her future. When Young glanced again, the fisherman had seated himself and had slipped Tessibel from his shoulders, gathering her closely into his great embrace—for she was the brawn ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... They never approach normal life. They scorn it. They have a horror of it. They class politics with the differential calculus. They have heard of Lloyd George, the rise in the price of commodities, and the eternal enigma, what is a sardine; but only because they must open a newspaper to look at the advertisements and announcements relating to the arts. The occasional frequenting of this circle may not be disadvantageous to the creative artist. But let him keep himself inoculated against ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... our heads, our limited intelligence, the grievous and contradictory enigma of human destiny, falsehood, hatred, corruption, suffering, death—what can we think, what do? To all these questions a sublime and mysterious voice has answered: Love your fellow-men. Love must indeed be divine, like faith and hope, since ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... pronouncedly Spanish features. One is an oldish man, greyheaded, thin-faced, and wearing spectacles. In a great city he would be taken for a savant, though difficult to tell what he may be, seen in the Llano Estacado surrounded by a desert. In the same place, the other and younger man is equally an enigma, for his bearing proclaims him both gentleman and soldier, while the coat on his back shows the undress uniform of an officer of more than ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... too intemperate to be ingenuous. It would probably occur to him, that he would be likely to find the precautions he was in search of in the primitive compact between the States. Here, at length, he would expect to meet with a solution of the enigma. No doubt, he would observe to himself, the existing Confederation must contain the most explicit provisions against military establishments in time of peace; and a departure from this model, in a favorite point, has occasioned ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... studied him for a few moments. The man had always been an enigma to her. She could not understand a nature that soared into the spiritual empyrean one moment, and in the next fell floundering into the bottomless pit of materialism. The undulating curve which marked the development of the Rincon mind was to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... provisions had been exhausted. He should now take measures to procure a supply. Leaving me, therefore, in the charge of his comrade, in whom he appeared to have implicit confidence, he departed, assuring me, that in less than two hours we should make a good dinner. Where it was to come from was an enigma to me, though it was evident these beings had their secret friends ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving |
