"Mysterious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... knife-blades and iron spikes,—an ingenious form of torture, commonly supposed to have been invented by the Carthaginians two thousand years ago for the particular benefit of a Roman Consul. The dark and mysterious legend of Sir Robert Redgauntlet, with which Wandering Willie beguiled the way to Brokenburn-foot, was a popular tradition of Sir Robert Grierson, or Lag (as, in the familiar style of the day he was more commonly called) in Scott's own lifetime: the fatal horseshoe, the ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... There is nothing mysterious about an automobile boat any more than there is about the land automobile. It has its moods and vagaries, its good points and some bad ones. It is not as speedy as an automobile on shore, but it is more comfortable, a great deal more fun to steer, ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... and with languid fingers unbuttoned his overcoat and coat. Then, from some mysterious place in the neighbourhood of his breast pocket, he produced an envelope containing a ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... added the flageolet, and the three began to play. But while they executed the four figures of a square dance, the Venetian was scenting my thoughts; he guessed the great interest I felt in him. The dreary, dispirited look died out of his face, some mysterious hope brightened his features and slid like a blue flame over his wrinkles. He smiled and wiped his brow, that fearless, terrible brow of his, and at length grew gay like a man ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... doorway, Hilda passed the most thrillingly agreeable moments that destiny had ever vouchsafed to her. She dwelt on the mysterious, attractive quality of Mr. Cannon's voice,—she was sure that, though in speaking to her mother he was softly persuasive, he had used to herself a tone even more intimate and ingratiating. He and she had a secret; they were conspirators together: which fact was both disconcerting ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Jews long preserved this name in Samaritan letters to keep it from being known to strangers. The modern Jews affirm that by this mysterious name, engraven on his rod, Moses performed the wonders recorded of him; that Jesus stole the name from the temple and put it into his thigh between the flesh and skin, and by its power accomplished the miracles attributed to him. They ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... Saxon iron-master and bought from him a great quantity of the stuff, after which the chemist shut himself up in his laboratory to try out the new material. Think how excited he must have been! And think how much more excited he was when he found that this mysterious white clay was the substance for which he had so long ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... sad, ay, and something mysterious, to me in the thought that such a lovely land had been, until so recently, the home of the savage and the scene of his wicked and ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... on being suddenly placed on rising ground with a vast plain of waving spinifex spreading before him—a plain relieved occasionally by the stately desert oak, solemn, white, and mysterious—saying, "Ah! what a charming view—how beautiful that rolling plain of grass! its level surface broken by that bold sandhill, fiery-red in the blaze of sun!" But when day after day, week after week, and month after month must be passed always surrounded by the hateful ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... justification to a great extent in the endless disputes in which in every department of thought the three chief schools were involved. Physics (as the term was understood in his day) seemed to him the most mysterious and doubtful portion of the whole. A knowledge of the body and its properties is difficult enough; how much more unattainable is a knowledge of such entities as the Deity and the soul! Those who pronounce absolutely on points like these involve themselves in the most inextricable ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... wretch would groan Beneath the galling load of power, or walk Upon the slippery pavements of the great, Who thus could reign, unenvied and secure? 510 Ye guardian powers who make mankind your care, Give me to know wise Nature's hidden depths, Trace each mysterious cause, with judgment read The expanded volume, and submiss adore That great creative Will, who at a word Spoke forth the wondrous scene. But if my soul To this gross clay confined, flutters on earth With less ambitious wing; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... sun had reappeared and they had decided to take things a little easier, Pee-wee announced his intentions of going on a pilgrimage to Woodcliff to hunt up the mysterious Helen Shirley Bates, and to ascertain from her the address of her soldier friend whom she had entertained at dinner during the war. For it was on Pee-wee's conscience that the soldier who had lost his wallet ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... think this is well. Life would lose much of its value if the time should come when there would be nothing to learn. We know much of God's character, but are not acquainted with its full depths, and whenever we see or experience anything mysterious in his providences we are content to wait for a fuller revelation ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... saluting her, opened it and disappeared, leaving Angelique convinced that she had seen the devil in person. Not until the next day did the sight of the displaced partition explain the apparition, but even then so great was her fright, so deep was the terror which the recollection of the mysterious man inspired, that despite the permission to tell what had happened she mentioned her adventure to no one, and did not even complain to her neighbour, Madame Rapally, of the inquisitiveness which had led the widow to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... memory of humanity reverts as to its dim golden age, and which ever expresses the bright dream of our youth, ere the rigor of misfortune or the dulness of experience has spoilt it. The dramatis personae are three individuals, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. There are the mysterious tree, with its wonderful fruit,—the beautiful, but inquisitive woman,—the thoughtful, but too compliant man,—and the insinuating reptile. One speaks, the other rejoins, and the third fills up the chasm of interest. The plot thickens, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... with a short laugh, "it seems very dreadful and mysterious, doesn't it?—especially as Caw recovered the diamonds so speedily. I've thought it out, Lancaster, and I've struck only one reasonable conclusion. There was no fourth person present that night. Caw was fooling us all the time. The ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... that the sun was still shining behind the cloud, for this was a darkness that might be felt. There seemed a pall over the earth and sky. Oh, how unsatisfactory seemed all on earth! how dark and strange! how mysterious and unreal! We could not weep, we were stunned, and it seemed at the time that we could never come back to earth without her. But when the touching relation of her last hours was made to us, the fountains of grief were unsealed, and we wept, as it were, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... of courage. She had persisted, in spite of all that could be said, in residing in her castle of Libokovo. The population, whom she had cruelly oppressed, demanded her death, but no one dared attack her. Superstition declared that the spirit of her mother, with whom she kept up a mysterious communication even beyond the portals of the grave, watched over her safety. The menacing form of Kamco had, it was said, appeared to several inhabitants of Tepelen, brandishing bones of the wretched Kardikiotes, and demanding ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... there's nothing mysterious about it—nor interesting. Just ordinary. I'm living the way I do because I'm not smart enough to think of a better way. But one advantage of it is that I have a good deal of time to think about things. Maybe I'll think of ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... a drink and went to the window. She looked down. He was out there somewhere, going about his mysterious business. The smile she thought of as soft and tender was really brittle and quite hard. She downed her drink thirstily as though it helped quench the ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... greatest ease when he tries to argue about it. Confront him with a theory that the earth is cylindrical, or annular, or hour-glass shaped, and he is lost. The thing he believes may be true, but that is not why he believes it: he believes it because in some mysterious way it appeals to his imagination. If you ask him why he believes that the sun is ninety-odd million miles off, either he will have to confess that he doesn't know, or he will say that Newton proved it. But he has not read the treatise in which Newton proved it, ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... to Rip was, that though these folks were evidently amusing themselves, yet they maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... there was an epitaph within the church, which, without containing in itself any thing remarkable, strange, or mysterious, had a legend connected: with it, that supplied the verger with an inexhaustible fund of entertainment for the curious and the credulous. The epitaph simply commemorated John Patye, canon of the prebend of Cambremer, who died ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... of the 7th century B.C., of whom it is fabled that he fell asleep in a cave when a boy, and that he did not awake for 57 years, but it was to find himself endowed with all knowledge and wisdom. He was invited to Athens during a plague to purify the city, on which occasion he performed certain mysterious rites with the effect that the plague ceased. The story afforded Goethe a subject for a drama entitled "Das Epimenides Erwachen," "in which he symbolises his own aloofness from the great cause of the Fatherland, the result ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... sleep-walker, though he never dared to confess it even to himself. There was something mysterious ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... dimly the conviction is entertained. And then remember that the Bible, whatever be the state of current opinion about it, is as a fact the Oracle of God, and its immortal and life-conveying words have a mysterious fitness all their own to be the vehicle of the Spirit's voice to the human heart. Offer it, as often as you can, ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... intention, Stanton concluded to come North in July. He had of course learned from Nellie that her mysterious guardian had proved to be Judge Fulton, his sister's husband. And more recently she had written to him of Judge Fulton's removal to New York City. Mr. Miller was apprised of Stanton's return by a letter, in which he was also ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... whirling eddies bore it, while around Low thunders rattled thro' the heavens profound. Awhile in dumb suspense the hero stood; Then sought the falchion thro' the dusky wood, Resolved the seeming wonder to explore, And search the depths of fate's mysterious lore. ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... very small one called the Friary," returned Phillis, feeling herself color in the darkness, as she mentioned their humble abode. There was no answer for a moment, and then her mysterious neighbor continued: ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... side the mysterious and gigantic shadows of rocks and hills, seeming to glimmer with a ghastly hue as it fell and struggled into the black depths of the untrodden rift; but habit made the Devil's Way seem nothing to the mountain shepherd, and he protected Walter (who twined round ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... phase of the flying machine which has the greatest interest to the boy. He instinctively sees the direction in which the machine has its life,—its moving principle. Planes have their fascination, and propellers their mysterious elements, but power is the great ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... succeed in seeing her. In the ten years that I've been postman in Paris, I have seen plenty of different kinds of doors! But I can tell you, and no fear of being called a liar by any of my comrades, there never was a door so mysterious as M. de San-Real's. No one can get into the house without the Lord knows what counter-word; and, notice, it has been selected on purpose between a courtyard and a garden to avoid any communication with other houses. The ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... expressive than has been known on this planet since the great days of Atheman poetry, eloquence and mirth." There were "wits, dramatists, scholars, orators, singers, philosophers." For every one of them was the faith of something undefined, yet infinitely precious, to be born of all the mysterious influences in that new land to which all eyes turned, and old Michael Drayton's ringing ode on their departure held ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... through a mysterious tube, and Edgar appeared, with his usual easy grace, and with a sharp glance at Felix as if to inquire whether there were to be any attack ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Missouri and had visited many tribes on its borders. [Footnote: Beaurain, Journal historique.] A few months later, two Canadians told Bienville a similar story. In 1708 Nicolas de la Salle proposed an expedition of a hundred men to explore the same mysterious river; and in 1717 one Hubert laid before the Council of Marine a scheme for following the Missouri to its source, since, he says, "not only may we find the mines worked by the Spaniards, but also ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... this cook. She was Costanza, the sister of that one of his cousins who kept a restaurant down on the piazza. She helped her brother in his cooking when she had no other job, and knew every sort of fat, mysterious Italian dish such as the workmen of Castagneto, who crowded the restaurant at midday, and the inhabitants of Mezzago when they came over on Sundays, loved to eat. She was a fleshless spinster of fifty, grey-haired, nimble, rich of speech, and thought Lady Caroline more beautiful than anyone she ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... began, firing in the questions with the speed of a Maxim. "Something worth while, judging from that mysterious letter of yours. What is the scheme? Why this secret meeting in the forest instead of in town? Why"—but the man he called captain interrupted him with ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... went through life leaning his inert weight on other men's shoulders, did remember in some mysterious fashion to return the books he borrowed, enriched often, as Lamb proudly records, with marginal notes which tripled their value. His conduct in this regard was all the more praiseworthy inasmuch as the cobweb statutes which define books as personal ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... Mingle this approval with scoffing at the travelers who hail the appearance of a bird or a flying-fish as a great event, who dilate upon fishing, and make transcripts from the log. Where, you ask, is that perfectly unintelligible scientific information, fascinating, like all that is profound, mysterious, and incomprehensible. The reader laughs, that is all that he wants. As for novels, Florine is the greatest novel reader alive; she gives me a synopsis, and I take her opinion and put a review together. When a novelist bores her with 'author's ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... upon your governessing as a farce, you know, Bluebell, though any one would gladly snap you up for your music alone. But when this war is over, the mysterious husband will return, and you will pay me a ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... "tankage," the mass of brown stringy stuff that was left after the waste portions of the carcasses had had the lard and tallow dried out of them. This dried material they would then grind to a fine powder, and after they had mixed it up well with a mysterious but inoffensive brown rock which they brought in and ground up by the hundreds of carloads for that purpose, the substance was ready to be put into bags and sent out to the world as any one of a hundred different brands ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... indulging in speculations like those fathers, who in every nail, pin, stone, stair, knife, pot, and in almost every feather of a sacrificed bird could discern strange, distinct, and peculiar mysteries.[3] The same remark applies to the Jewish rabbis, who in their Talmud are full of mysterious shadows. From these rabbinical flints some have thought to extract choice mystical oil to supple the wheels of their fancy—to use a homely expression. Such Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers limped and danced upon one learned ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... caught up the magazine like a person who had been famished in that kind; and soon she and it and her tallow candle formed a trio apart from all the world again. Fleda and Hugh were safe to pass most mysterious-looking little papers from hand to hand right before her, though they had the care to read them behind newspapers, and exchanges of thought and feeling went on more swiftly still, and softly, across the ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... passed while exploring the mysterious tombs in the daylight and watching for a chance to place a torpedo at night, when it was discovered that the cruiser they were after had hauled off; so the necessity of their staying there being removed, the sloop was headed for Chorrilos. From the latter city they made short runs among ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... did not know the post-house; for he spurred past it, and had to inquire for it. The master of the post, Drouet, of revolutionary politics, was in a very bad humour, and had been so all day, having been angry about the mysterious hussars in the morning, and no less angry at seeing the village now full of dragoons, from another quarter, whose business here he could not understand. These dragoons, strolling through the streets, touched their helmets to the party in the carriage, which the waiting-maid of the baroness acknowledged ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... other institutions. So he had besides an odd volume a good heart—and what is more surprising, a watch in every pocket! Watch-collecting was his hobby, and, like a conjuror, he produced them from the most unexpected and mysterious places. One belonged to the Emperor Maximilian, and had in its case moving figures to strike the time. I confess I wished he had exchanged watches with me in place of names. His name, by the way, was Holborn; he was ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... noise, and the great cobra swayed its inflated neck to and fro as though to some mysterious rhythm, the native with naked hand and arm seeming to ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Official disappears. Lights, ho! a link on Lincoln! I determine to find him. The Bishops sit round three tables, on a raised platform. The Archbishop of CANTERBURY sits in the centre; on his right is the mysterious Judge, in full wig, and red robes; this is the Vicar-General, Sir JAMES PARKER DEANE, Q.C.; next to him sits Assessor Dr. ATLAY, Bishop of HEREFORD, who looks anything but happy; his hair has the appearance of being impelled by a strong draught, and ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... had with difficulty contrived to fetch them from thence the day preceding, and twice that number would hardly have sufficed to transport them thither. It was not to be gainsayed that a power superior to their own was the agent in removals so mysterious. Nothing now remained but to acquaint their lord with this second interruption; and their diligence in performing this duty, they hoped, might exculpate them from the heavy doom they had incurred. Some of the wiser and more stout-hearted were chosen to carry these tidings to the Thane, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... we examine the development of original predispositions, the more clearly we shall see that this development is not inevitable, is not a process which works itself out independently according to mysterious, ruthless laws which we cannot understand. For instance, the effect of an original predisposition may be destroyed by an accidental shock. A young man with an inherited tendency to alcohol may develop into ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... arises concerning works of the imagination is, What is their source? Superficial thinkers have loosely answered, "Inspiration," implying, (according to the literal meaning of the word, "to breathe in"), that some mysterious external force (called by the ancients, "A Muse") enters into the mind of the author ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... was down, darkness was already shrouding the depths of space beneath them. The Turks seemed to have left. At any rate, Ken and Roy could hear no more of them. The evening silence was broken only by the mysterious whisper of the evening breeze as it stole down the canon, and by a faint and distant popping ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... and smiled. "It is no use, Dr. Cumberledge," she answered. "Hilda will never marry. Never, that is to say, till she has attained some mysterious object she seems to have in view, about which she never speaks to anyone—not even to me. But I ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... deny the evidence of their own senses; forbid, so to speak, their sound judgment to act; to be befogged by thorough imbeciles; to consider incapacity as strategy, and to take imbecility for deep, mysterious, great combinations and plans. Even the Turks could not long be humbugged in such ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... not defend himself: and my sister was in such grief for the man's wife, that she knew not whether to wish to recover a farthing. How the matter stood she either did not know or did not like to tell me-to the last; but the mysterious disease which ate away her strength, I in my private mind ascribe to anxiety from this affair and her sudden and strange responsibility ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... Brahmanee Watt, at the distance of about a mile, are the extensive grounds and buildings of Watt Sah Kate, the great national burning-place of the dead. Within these mysterious precincts the Buddhist rite of cremation is performed, with circumstances more or less horrible, according to the condition or the superstition of the deceased. A broad canal surrounds the temple and yards, and here, night and day, priests watch and pray for ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... errand is on which I have come to you this morning. I feel as if my name and my misfortune must be in every man's mouth." He turned it over to expose the central page. "Here it is, and with your permission I will read it to you. Listen to this, Mr. Holmes. The head-lines are: 'Mysterious Affair at Lower Norwood. Disappearance of a Well-known Builder. Suspicion of Murder and Arson. A Clue to the Criminal.' That is the clue which they are already following, Mr. Holmes, and I know that it leads infallibly to me. I have been followed from London Bridge ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... greatly fear, Nancy is very deeply involved in this mysterious tragedy," murmured Mrs. Bennett, so that she would not be overheard by ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... for her kind Offer, I do not at present find in my self any Inclination, to venture my Person with her and her romping Companions. I should regard my self as a second Clodius intruding on the Mysterious Rites of the Bona Dea, and should apprehend being Demolished as much as ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... feeling, sense of justice, the principles of a life, were all on the side of the enslaved, and their attempt to escape. She worked for them, helped them to evade the demands of their former masters, and often sent them on their way toward the goal of their hopes and efforts, the mysterious North. ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... harm. As they advance the scene becomes darker and darker. Orange street seems that centre from which radiates the avenues of every vice known to a great city. One might fancy the world's outcasts hurled by some mysterious hand into this pool of crime and misery, and left to feast their wanton appetites and die. "And you have no home, my man?" says Mrs. Swiggs, mechanically. "As to that, Madam," returns the man, with a bow, "I can't exactly say I have no home. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... the grueling day of questions and answers, the cadets turned their thoughts to the mysterious midnight activity that had been taking place around the spaceship concession during the ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... where I hail from, with its extraordinary people. Let us suppose ourselves wandering down the Front at nightfall, past the Kanaka billiard saloons and the Chinese stores, into, say, the Hotel of All Nations. Who is that handsome, dark, mysterious fellow, smoking a cigarette and idly flirting with the pretty bar girl? You don't know him, but I do! There's indeed a history for you. You didn't notice, perhaps, that rakish schooner that came to anchor in the bay early in the forenoon. What lines she had! Well, that ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... unanswerable argument for giving women wage earners the protection of the ballot. "In the Children's Bureau," Miss Lathrop said, "we have come to see the close connection between the welfare of mother and child. Because we are so concerned for the children we asked a physician to take those vast, mysterious volumes of the census and look up the facts about the mortality of mothers. Last year in the United States more than 15,000 women lost their lives carrying on the life of the race. The death rate from other things, such ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... in the latter moiety of this mysterious paragraph, a reproof of that use of "the extremest weapons of controversy" which is attributed to me. Upon which I have to observe that I guide myself, in such matters, very much by the maxim of a great statesman, "Do ut des." If Mr. Gladstone ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... shoulder of the mountain. They came from far away, from Amador or Placer, laden with silver in "old cigar boxes." They discharged their load at Silverado, in the hour of sleep; and before the morning they were gone again with their mysterious drivers to their unknown source. In this way, twenty thousand pounds' worth of silver was smuggled in under cover of night, in these old cigar boxes; mixed with Silverado mineral; carted down to the mill; crushed, amalgated, and refined, and despatched to the city ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as I stepped right into the middle of the group. To my astonishment it was glowing with anger. Did he not think I could take care of myself? Really Jack was becoming mysterious, but I supposed that as I was Kate's brother he was feeling unusually interested in my welfare. For my own part I was quite comfortable, and I replied easily, "As a matter of fact, my lord, I have ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... room overhead was opened, and a loud halloo uttered by the mysterious stranger. Several hailings passed from one party to the other, but in a language which none of the company in the barroom could understand, and presently they heard the window closed, and a great noise overhead, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... was clad in garments that gave out light, and in its hair were jewelled flowers. It glided to her side and looked at her with loving, mysterious eyes. Then it held the cup to her lips, and said, or rather thought, for the speech of that land declared itself ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... two, though one is sufficient for a master-key to them all. In the picture of "The Adoration of the Magi and Kings," in the Queen's Collection, the solemnity is carried to the utmost extent, like the mysterious leaf of a sybil's book; the only light shed over the scene seems to descend from the lurid rays of the star that stood over the place of the nativity, and guided them to the spot. To acquire the greatest breadth, he has placed the Virgin and child in the corner of the ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... was taken at the mysterious secrecy in which the negotiation had been involved. That the instrument itself was not immediately communicated to the public, and that the senate deliberated upon it with closed doors, were considered as additional evidences of the contempt ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... "you need have no such fears about me. I am a little of an adventurer, a little of a Bohemian. There is no one else who has a claim upon my life, and I do as I please. Can't you tell me a little more about this mysterious cafe?" ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and with a tone of youthful joyousness in it, as if the bird had just had some unexpected good fortune. For nearly two years this strain of the pretty walker was little more than a disembodied voice to me, and I was puzzled by it as Thoreau by his mysterious night-warbler, which, by the way, I suspect was no new bird at all, but one he was otherwise familiar with. The little bird himself seems disposed to keep the matter a secret, and improves every opportunity to repeat before you his ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... "And it means the dawn of a new life for me. I'm WELLS'S hero. Every time I've appeared in his half-yearly masterpiece, ever since Tono Bungay. And look at the mess he's made of my life. Often I've had to start it under the cloud of mysterious parentage. Invariably I have been endowed with a Mind (capital M). Think of those uphill fights of mine against adverse conditions. And my unhappy marriages. He has led me into every variation of infidelity. When I did hit it off with my wife for once, he sent us ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... with unearthly howlings, leaped towards the frightened natives. As it did so flashes of lightning, that seemed to dart from it, gleamed with a dazzling radiance on their distorted faces. In another moment they were in full flight up the rugged pathway leading from the basin, hotly pursued by their mysterious enemy. ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... much success, and would have achieved her dinner with composure, if white-aproned gentlemen had not effectually taken away her appetite by whisking bills-of-fare into her hands, and awaiting her orders with a fatherly interest, which induced them to congregate mysterious dishes before her, and blandly rectify her frequent mistakes. She survived the ordeal, however, and at four P.M. went to drive with "that Leavenworth boy" in the finest turnout —— could produce. Aunt Pen then came off guard, and with a sigh of satisfaction subsided ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... thing to be bawling "Estella" to a scornful young lady in a mysterious passage in an unknown house, but I had to do it. And Estella came, and I heard her say, in answer to Miss Havisham, "Play with this boy! Why, he is a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... various letters which he had found waiting for him at his lodgings on the previous evening. To Miss Demolines he had already written from his club, a single line, which he considered to be appropriate to the mysterious necessities of the occasion. "I will be with you at a quarter to six to-morrow.—J. E. Just returned." There was not another word; and as he scrawled it at one of the club tables while two or three men were talking to him, he felt rather proud of his correspondence. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... unfair assumption of the point at issue. The word [Greek: atestai], in Aristotle's name for it points to the Greek method of dialectic by means of question and answer. This fact is rather disguised by the mysterious phrase 'begging the question.' The fallacy would be committed when you asked your opponent to grant, overtly or covertly, the very ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... worlds, who controlled the infinite universe, Who was behind all things, before all things, in all things, through all things—that God must have ways beyond his poor little comprehension. But was there such a Being? Or was everything the result of a blind fate, a great mysterious something which was unknown and unknowable, a force that had no feeling, no thought, no care for the creatures who crawled upon the ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... down on the edge of a chair. "Other matters?" he demanded. "That sounds mysterious. What ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... Barfoot, is one of the sacred spots of the earth. Strange to think that the house has been waiting for me there through all the years of my hopelessness. I feel that a mysterious light ought to shine about it. It oughtn't to ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... this, that there is an ocean of open water round the pole, and a milder climate there than exists nearer to the arctic circle. Had the short barrier of ice that intervened between the brig and that mysterious sea been removed, as, perchance, it is sometimes removed by a hot summer, Dr Kane might have been the first to reach the North Pole. This, however, is reserved for some other navigator. The gallant ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the safe and took out the ruby and clasped the chain about her neck. The chain was long and the great jewel took a deeper and more mysterious color from the ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Tragedy (1822), which had considerable success, and won for him the friendship of "Barry Cornwall." Thereafter he went to Goettingen and studied medicine. He then wandered about practising his profession, and expounding democratic theories which got him into trouble. He d. at Bale in mysterious circumstances. For some time before his death he had been engaged upon a drama, Death's Jest Book, which was published in 1850 with a memoir by his friend, T.F. Kelsall. B. had not the true dramatic instinct, but his poetry is full of thought ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... choice is on her face. The white light on it is cast up hard and cheerless from below, as when snow lies upon the ground, and the children look up with surprise at the strange whiteness of the ceiling. Her trouble is in the very caress of the mysterious child, whose gaze is always far from her, and who has already that sweet look of devotion which men have never been able altogether to love, and which still makes the born saint an object almost of suspicion to his earthly brethren. Once, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... characteristic of their class, they stumbled from blunder to blunder. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson, who adroitly coined the mistakes of his opponents into political currency for himself, was elected President. He had received no more electoral votes than Aaron Burr, that mysterious character in our early politics, but the election was decided by the House of Representatives, where, after seven days' balloting, several Federalists, choosing what to them was the lesser of two evils, ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... to feel with more intensity my burst into the conspicuousness of public life when I was made to stand up on the seat during the psalms or the singing. And the singing was no mechanical affair of official routine; it had a drama. As the moment of psalmody approached, by some process to me as mysterious and untraceable as the opening of the flowers or the breaking-out of the stars, a slate appeared in front of the gallery, advertising in bold characters the psalm about to be sung, lest the sonorous announcement of the clerk should still leave the bucolic mind in doubt on ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... when Hanny stood on the mysterious borderland. She used to steal up and look at the wraith of a ball-dress hanging in the third-floor closet, put away with the "choice" garments. The skirt looked so long, almost uncanny. She could see the ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... from old stories that were spread in Greece; the belief in which, Balbus, you well know, ought to be stopped, lest religion should suffer. But you Stoics, so far from refuting them, even give them authority by the mysterious sense which you pretend to find in them. Can you, then, think, after this plain refutation, that there is need to employ more subtle reasonings? But to ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... She made a very gracious and lovely picture, did Rose Mary, in her light-blue homespun gown against the cool gray depths of the milk-house, which was fern-lined along the cracks of the old stones and mysterious with the trickling gurgle of the spring that flowed into the long stone troughs, around the milk crocks and out under the stone door-sill. From his post by the door Everett watched her as she drove her paddle deep into the hard ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Youth (with a mysterious smile): Wait—I have something else for you (he feels in his ticket pocket); no less a thing (he feels again in his watch pocket) than (he looks a trifle anxious and feels in his waistcoat pockets) a promise from my Master, signed and sealed, to give you back all I take and more in Immortality! ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... not, and he answers 'Yes.' And Socrates? 'Yes.' Then every man's name, as I tell him, is that which he is called. To this he replies—'If all the world were to call you Hermogenes, that would not be your name.' And when I am anxious to have a further explanation he is ironical and mysterious, and seems to imply that he has a notion of his own about the matter, if he would only tell, and could entirely convince me, if he chose to be intelligible. Tell me, Socrates, what this oracle means; ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... did not know whether to regard the watch as a mechanical contrivance or a living creature. In the study of this mysterious thing they were somewhat distracted by the presence of their first love the umbrella, which the lecturer had erected over his head in order to shield his timepiece from the rain. Fred and Grant went about everywhere, ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... speculation by a kind of cerebral shorthand. What would be the result upon humanity if all doctors took this liberty of decision? Where could you draw the distinction between murder and medicine? Was science advanced enough as yet to say any certain thing about the human body and mind? There were always mysterious exceptions which might well make any doctor doubtful of drastic measures. And the value of human life, so cheap here in this thirsty million of souls, cheap in the hospitals; but really, essentially, at the bottom of things, who ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... inclined to believe that there is a misunderstanding, and that what money Cameron took was for the Prince's service. Yet we find no proof of this, and Torcastle's letter is difficult to explain on the hypothesis of Cameron's innocence. Glengarry tried to secure himself by a mysterious interview with the King. On May 23, at Rome, he wrote to Edgar. 'As His Majesty comes into town next week, and that I can't, in your absence, have an audience with such safety, not choising to confide myself on that particular ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... length in the Eucharist the 'signum' united itself with the 'significatum', and became consubstantial. The ceremonial sign, namely, the eating the bread and drinking the wine, became a symbol, that is, a solemn instance and exemplification of the class of mysterious acts, which we are, or as Christians should be, performing daily and hourly in every social duty and recreation. This is indeed to re-create the man in and by Christ. Sublimely did the Fathers call the Eucharist the extension of the Incarnation: ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... afterthought). The expedition was decided upon with great enthusiasm, and Alcibiades, Nicias and Lamachus were appointed joint commanders. But, on the day before the expedition sailed, there occurred the mysterious mutilation of the Hermae, and Alcibiades was accused not only of being the originator of the crime, but also of having profaned the Eleusinian mysteries. His request for an immediate investigation being refused, he was ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a boy brought up in the careful Christian manner that he has been can show such unnatural depravity. It is a dark, mysterious providence, to which ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... for the purpose of burying the dead. During the time, Burnett and the major examined the fort, but made no discovery which enabled them to fathom the mysterious circumstance. Not a living being remained within it. Should any unfortunate persons have been left behind, they must have been blown to pieces. Burnett then rode forward to explain what had happened to Reginald; but as a long delay was unadvisable, he deferred the examination ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... taken his text from the first chapter of Genesis, and he is describing the wonders of the creation. His sermon might properly be entitled a 'Disquisition upon the Universe.' It is evident that his colored hearers fail to see the 'beauty and mysterious order of the stellar world' which he is portraying, for most of them are already dozing, and the rest are nodding their heads as if in sleepy assent to the undoubted truth of the good man's words. He has overreached his mark, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... eyes across the water, look like poetical beings. We are continually reproached by British writers for the obtuse carelessness with which we are allowing these people, with so much of the heroic element in their lives, and so much of the mysterious in their origin, to go into the annihilation which seems their inevitable fate as civilization advances, without an effort to secure and record all that they are ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... number; so there is not a reason found out, I think, by any, why the should breed in some Ponds, and not in others of the same nature, for soil and all other circumstances; and as their breeding, so are their decayes also very mysterious; I have both read it, and been told by a Gentleman of tryed honestie, that he has knowne sixtie or more large Carps put into several Ponds neer to a house, where by reason of the stakes in the Ponds, and the Owners constant being neer to them, it was impossible they ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... beautiful: an affecting union of chivalrous magnanimity on the one part, and on the other of the virgin openness of a heart which, brought up far from the world on an uninhabited island, has never learned to disguise its innocent movements. The wisdom of the princely hermit Prospero has a magical and mysterious air; the disagreeable impression left by the black falsehood of the two usurpers is softened by the honest gossipping of the old and faithful Gonzalo; Trinculo and Stephano, two good-for-nothing drunkards, find a worthy associate in Caliban; and Ariel hovers sweetly over the whole ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... had this new-comer arrived on board without my noticing him, although I had been looking out all the time, but he managed to get up on the poop in the most mysterious way. I was certain he had not been anywhere near the moment before, and yet, ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... hold you responsible!' Mr. Fishwick cried passionately. 'I consider this a most mysterious illness. ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Euskara is the great court where the Basques play their national game of "pelota." Euskara is the term used by the Basques themselves for their mysterious language, a language with no affinity to any European tongue, and so difficult that it is popularly supposed that the Devil, after spending seven fruitless years in endeavouring to master it, gave up the attempt in despair. "Pelota" is the father of racquets and fives, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... amid thunderous applause. The local police force had had timely notification that the meeting was arranged for, but the paper complains that only seven of them were to be seen about the building, and these seven apparently were seized with a blindness of a mysterious kind, for they saw nothing of the disturbance that occurred during the meeting, except when it was thought necessary to arrest ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... itself out, leaving behind only a long and very heavy swell to denote the deep-reaching disturbance that the ocean had endured. And now we were within the range of the Sargasso Weed, that mysterious FUCUS that makes the ocean look. like some vast hayfield, and keeps the sea from rising, no matter how high the wind. It fell a dead calm, and the harpooners amused themselves by dredging up great masses of the weed, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... Still the mysterious, unearthly noises came through the cabin door. No soughing of the wind could make such sounds had a tempest been blowing, but a deathly stillness prevailed, and no breath ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... Entente, regarded with amazement and disgust the sudden disclosure of the true character of the German militaristic government. Yet for the average American the war wore the complexion of other European conflicts, was one involving a Balance of Power, mysterious and inexplicable. To him the underlying issue was not democratic, but imperialistic; and this was partly because he was unable to make a mental connection between a European war and the brand of democracy he recognized. Preaching and propaganda fail unless it can be brought ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... efforts chiefly of Gerhard Tychsen, professor at Rostock, Frederick Muenter, a Danish scholar, and the distinguished Silvestre de Sacy of Paris, the beginnings were made which finally led to the discovery of the key to the mysterious writings, in 1802, by Georg Friedrich Grotefend, a teacher at a public school in Goettingen. The observation was made previous to the days of Grotefend that the inscriptions at Persepolis invariably showed three styles of writing. While in all three the characters were composed of wedges, ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... into a stuffing bread crumbs, chopped broiled oysters, onions, and many other mysterious ingredients, and was becoming irritated at such ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... him to Carthage and would, later on, follow him to Milan; Nebridius, a not less dear companion, fated to die early; Honoratus, whom he drew into his errors and later did his best to enlighten; and, finally, that mysterious young man, whose name he does not tell us, and whose loss he mourned as never any one has mourned the death of ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... The Mysterious Mother (1768), he states he had no knowledge of Bandello or the Heptameron, but he gives the following account of the origin of his theme. 'I had heard when very young, that a gentlewoman, under uncommon agonies of mind, had waited on Archbishop Tillotson and besought ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Mr. Teddy wants to ask you to forgive him, if he seems to be "butting in" and spoiling the game between you and your godchild. Honor bright, he didn't mean to do it. It was fate. Just blind, mysterious, and merciless fate that decreed that things should happen as they did. Mr. Teddy may be a blessing in disguise, anyway he couldn't be helped, and he has no excuse to offer, except, perhaps, that he is alone in the world and homesick in a foreign land. He is sorry you and ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... yet this couple glided with the terrifying dexterity of somnambulists who, forgetting their own weight and the dangers of the slightest deviation, hurry along a ridge-pole and keep their equilibrium by the power of some mysterious force. ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... in the street, but, to his great surprise, no one seemed to notice the extraordinary equipage and its numerous train. From this he concluded that they were invisible. The house at which they stopped appeared to be a shop, but the interior was like a vast half-ruined palace. He went with his mysterious guide through several large and dimly-lighted rooms. In one of them, surrounded by huge pillars of marble, a senate of ghosts was assembled, debating on the progress of the plague. Other parts of the building were ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... that is Ahab; the courageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Ahab; all are Ahab; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe, which, like a magician's glass, to each and every man in turn but mirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains for those who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve itself. Methinks now this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the sign of storms, the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out of a ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the fact that our epoch is extremely complex, agitated and disturbed. In the midst of this labyrinth in which we are feeling our way with such difficulty, who does not look back regretfully to the days when life was more simple, when it was possible to walk towards a goal, mysterious and unknown though it might be, by straight paths and ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... day the ignorant mob of the Anabaptists is as much filled with immoderate craving for allegory as are the monks. They love to delve in the more mysterious books, such as the Revelation of John, and that worthless fabrication passing under the title of the second and third books of Esdras. For, there you are at liberty to follow your fancy as you please. We recall that Muntzer, the seditious spirit, turned everything into allegory. ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... ghost? No; but you have heard—I understand—be dumb! And don't regret the time you may have lost, For you have got that pleasure still to come: And do not think I mean to sneer at most Of these things, or by ridicule benumb That source of the sublime and the mysterious:— For certain ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... would be a deed of charity and true chivalry, yet one by no means without its peril and its risk. Old Sanghurst is a wily and a cruel foe, and failure would but mean more tyranny and suffering for the miserable victim he holds in his relentless hands. It might lead also to some mysterious vengeance upon you yourselves. There are ugly whispers breathed abroad about the old man and his evil practices. Travellers through these forest tracks, richly laden, have been known to disappear, and no man has ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the past simply because their bump of caution was well developed, these would soon realize that they were safe within the bounds of a certain tract—that there the sound of the rifle was never heard, that there far less frequently they ran across the hateful scent of their enemies, and for some mysterious reason were left to their own devices. When once this idea has found firm lodgment in the head of an astute deer, the very first thing that he will do will be to get into an asylum of this sort, and ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... not expressly mentioned in Genesis. That there was any such we can with certainty infer, only if this event be viewed in close connection with what Satan did against our first parents,—if, behind the serpent, Satan be concealed. Whensoever Jesus has to deal with Jews, He does not teach any mysterious doctrines, but makes an open appeal to the events narrated in Scripture. 3. The words, "Ye are of your father the devil," point to the seed of the serpent spoken of in Gen. iii. 15. 4. The words, "From the beginning," direct to an event ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... brightly through the bare boughs overhead. "Are you sure you are going all right?" Nelly asked Harold. "It is so dark here that it seems impossible to know which way we are going." "You can trust the Indians," Harold said. "Even if there was not a star to be seen they could find their way by some mysterious instinct. How you are grown, Nelly! Your voice does not seem much changed, and I am ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... names directly; here they are, in my pocketbook. Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. Those ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... us. What does the other death say? Moses had none but God with him when he died. There is a drearier desolation than that, and Jesus Christ proved it when He cried, 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' That was solitude indeed, and in that hour of mysterious, and to us unfathomable, desertion and misery, the lonely Christ sounded a depth, of which the lawgiver in His death but skimmed the surface. Christ was parted from God in His death, because He bore on Him the sins that separate us from our Father, and in order that none of us may ever need ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... general, the blindness seemed to be so likewise; a feverish impulse carried people away into all newfangled ways, serious or frivolous. Mesmer brought from Germany his mysterious revelations in respect of problems as yet unsolved by science, and pretended to cure all diseases around the magnetic battery; the adventurer Cagliostro, embellished with the title of count, and lavishing gold by handfuls, bewitched court ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... ray, Far the glimmering tapers shed Faint light on the cowled head; And the censer burning swung, Where, before the altar, hung The blood-red banner, that with prayer Had been consecrated there. And the nuns' sweet hymn was heard the while, Sung low in the dim, mysterious aisle. ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... wharf in what seemed a sort of eddy, was able, without creating further alarm, to make some additional observations on points which it is not best now to particularize. Then, turning my back upon the mysterious shore which had thus far lured me, I sank softly below the surface and swam as far as I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... divine love, truth, and simplicity sank like soft sunbeams, gently and surely, into Zelinda's, heart, driving away the mysterious magic power which dwelt there, and wrestling for the dominion of the noble territory of her soul. When morning began to dawn she said, "Thou wouldst not be called an angel last evening, but thou art truly one. For what else are angels than messengers of the Most ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... glen, the forest path which leads, one knows not whither, are romantic: the public highway is not." "The winding secret brook . . . is romantic, as compared with the broad river." "Moonlight is romantic, as contrasted with daylight." Dr. Hedge attributes this fondness for the mysterious to "the influence of the Christian religion, which deepened immensely the mystery of life, suggesting something beyond and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... to the affrightened and astonished mind some sensible, exterior observances, which might occupy it during its religious exercises, and abate the violence of its disappointed efforts. The thought, no longer bent on that divine and mysterious essence, so superior to the narrow capacities of mankind, was able, by means of the new model of devotion, to relax itself in the contemplation of pictures, postures, vestments, buildings; and all the fine arts ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... as are the flowing locks of love, In the bright blue sky I watch'd thee towering, giant-like, above. Now thy summit, white and hoary, glitters all with silver snow, Which the stormy night hath shaken from its robes upon thy brow; And I know that youth and age are bound with such mysterious meaning, As the days are link'd together, one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... brought back the note. It was of four lines, and—surprisingly enough—from old Mrs. Purdon, who asked me abruptly if I would have my husband take me to see her. She specified, and underlined the specification, that I was to come "right off, and in the automobile." Wondering extremely at this mysterious bidding, I sought out Paul, who obediently cranked up our small car and carried me off. There was no sign of Horace about the house, but some distance on the other side of the village we saw his tall, stooping ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... be numerous to-day, for hardly had Quimby been served, when a knock at the door was followed by the appearance of Jo, who tip-toed into the room, and in a mysterious ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... of herself by the dread of losing him to that fearful country which was almost like the grave to her, so all but impassable was the gulf. But Philip knew that it was possible that the separation impending might be that of the dark, mysterious grave—that the gulf between the father and child might indeed be that which no living, breathing, warm human creature ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the Atlantic, and yet not in this world at all. Now this will tell you what you ought to know about Ireland, and why it is we end our lectures with her. We saw Wales near the border of things; looking out from that cliff's edge on to the unknown and unseen, and aware of mysterious things beyond. Now we shall see Ireland, westward again, down where the little waves run in and tumble; sunlit waves along shining sands; and with boats putting out at any time; and indeed, so lively an intercourse going ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Gridley "Blade" were carefully disposed of, but Dave still shivered. Through a clipping agency, or in some other mysterious way, upper class men frequently get hold of ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... story by Mr. Isaacs, who is not in all respects an imaginary personage, might remind one of Disraeli's Sidonia. He is an enigmatic character, versed in the philosophy of the East and the West, who excels on horseback and in tiger shooting, yet can discourse mystically and can bring the mysterious influences at his command to bear upon critical situations. The novel has thus two sides: we have the usual sketch of Anglo-Indian society—the soldiers, the civilians, the charming young English girl whom Mr. Isaacs fascinates. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... smile only gave you a new thrill; it was vacant and had no joy in it, rather an uncommunicable grief. As she sat there with her battered doll, she was to the superficial eye repulsive, but to the eye that pierces externals she was almost majestic in her mysterious loneliness and separation. ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... letter with mingled feelings. Pity for the writer; a vague curiosity in regard to the mysterious circumstances which had compelled her to resort to such a step; a half feeling of jealousy, that there should be one who had a claim to her dear adopted daughter superior to her own; and a strong feeling of relief at the assurance that Ida was not ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... sighed the widow, "that some light is beginning to shine through this dark and mysterious providence, for it has been so utterly dark and full of mystery that my faith was beginning ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... garret of a country home can ever forget its mysterious charm. But I must remember that I am writing of flowers, and leave the captivating subject of garrets. Multitudes of potent herbs may now be found in the woods, by the road-side, everywhere: tansy, camomile, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... but Molly evidently still held to her original opinion; there was some mysterious reason for their modesty, else why did they not stand out plain and high, as did the village choir at home? And it was many weeks before she could be moved from her stand in ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... expecting him at home, but from that moment he is never more heard of. He has been destroyed in the jungle by a tiger, and his remains so completely devoured by other animals, that there is scarcely a relic of his body left to give assurance of a man, far less as a proof of his identity. These mysterious disappearances, however, are connected with their real cause; and men are believed to be frequently metamorphosed—sometimes voluntarily, sometimes involuntarily—into tigers. The voluntary transformation is effected merely by eating a certain root, whereupon the man ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... early morning, when the sun, behind the rampart of locust and other trees, threw the yard into deep shade, painting a thousand shadow pictures on the grass; but at still noon, when every perfect tree stood on its own shadow, openings looked dark and mysterious, and a bird was lost in the depths, then I was sure it was never so lovely; again at night, when wrapped in darkness, and all silent except the subdued whisper of the ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... these were other than the Bothwell soldiers. He took the box, and laying it on the altar, pressed the cross to his lips. "The Earl of Mar shall find that fidelity here which his faith in the church merits. That mysterious chest, to which you tell me so terrible a denunciation is annexed, shall be preserved sacred as the relics ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... merely by being too short, but damaged and defaced." And finally he says that it was not until the spring of 1850 that he "observed some marks in the margin of this folio." Now did Mr. Collier, by some mysterious instinct, light directly, first upon one of the leaves, and then upon the other, which he wished to find, in a folio of nine hundred pages? It is almost incredible that he did so once; that he did so twice is quite beyond belief. It is equally incredible, that if the textual changes were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... what I told myself at first. But after we had met in the hall of the hotel, and Ivor had seemed confused, and wouldn't give up his mysterious engagement, or say what it was, though Lisa chaffed him and he must have known what I thought, I suddenly forgot the slight he had put upon me. Instead of being angry with him, I was afraid for him, I couldn't have explained why, unless it was the look on his face ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... poems. It was in that neighbourhood I first became acquainted with the ocean and its appearances and movements. My infancy and early childhood were passed at Cockermouth, about eight miles from the coast, and I well remember that mysterious awe with which I used to listen to anything said about storms and shipwrecks. Sea-shells of many descriptions were common in the town, and I was not a little surprised when I heard Mr. Landor had denounced me as a Plagiarist from himself for having described a boy applying a sea-shell to ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... after dawn, they went on donkeys to the Temple of Edfu. The morning was mysterious and foreboding. Over the whole country a weird silence reigned and wrapped the towering walls of the ancient temple in eeriness; there were no clouds, but the sun was like a great red moon, and all the landscape enveloped in an orange gloom. They rode in silence, awed strangely by Nature's ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... of an hour the man's demeanor and glance were of despotic authority, all-powerful, irresistible, drawn from the same mysterious source from which great generals on fields of battle who inflame an army, great orators inspiring vast audiences, and (it must be said) great criminals perpetrating bold crimes derive their inspiration. At such times invincible ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... hot coffee, and Tom was shown how and why the mysterious bottle kept the drink hot. They only made that single halt (and only for a few minutes for the horses to drink) before reaching Pine Camp. They traveled through the snow-covered woods most of the ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... where such extravagances are unknown. It belonged rather to the realm of imagination, being essentially a poet's honour, a winged and lyric creature, a creature altogether too radiant and delicate to do battle with the gross material world, a thing as mysterious and indomitable as his genius; a very embarrassing companion for a young journalist in his first start in life. And now he had grown so used to it that it seemed to him no longer mysterious and fantastic; obedience to it was as simple ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... forward and stared at the facade of the empty house next door as we passed. It was black, staring, mysterious, as empty buildings are apt ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "Oh—yes—you don't mean to tell me you kept following the track of that two-legged bear this far, Pete?" I exclaimed, suddenly recalling that we had started out following a mysterious moccasin trail that had ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... cursing, and she believed most implicitly in the fiendish abilities of a certain person, (whether male or female, she did not explain) whose address she gave vaguely as, "out on the hills," and who, if requested, and paid for the trouble, would put a stick into the ground, muttering a mysterious malison on any man or woman you chose to name as an enemy, with the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... was a clever woman. It is a good German custom at Homburg to spend the hour preceding dinner in listening to the orchestra in the Kurgarten; Mozart and Beethoven, for organisms in which the interfusion of soul and sense is peculiarly mysterious, are a vigorous stimulus to the appetite. Pickering and I conformed, as we had done the day before, to the fashion, and when we were seated under the trees, he began to ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... if I were out of jail and able to do it, I'd write him a letter, and warn him that he would better revise his estimates of certain famous soldiers no longer living if he desires to find rest in that mysterious other world whither he must eventually betake himself. They've got their swords sharpened for him, and he'll discover an instance when he gets over there in which the sword ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... from downstairs," he answered. "Do come and have a look. You can see the Scorpion quite distinctly. All the officers seem to be gathered around that mysterious structure on the upper deck. I thought at first it was a stand for a gun ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of seaweeds that shone with an oily lustre. And so I drove down into the sea, and the stars went out one by one, and the moon grew greener and darker, and the seaweed became a luminous purple-red. It was all very faint and mysterious, and everything seemed to quiver. And all the while I could hear the wheels of the bath-chair creaking, and the footsteps of people going by, and a man in the distance selling ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the glow above, and the lacey hemlocks and meadowsweets made a soft blurred border below the hedgerows. With an open road in front of her she was tempted sometimes to put on speed, and felt as if she were flying onwards into a dream country where all was vague and mysterious and shadowy and unknown. She was always loth to return, but Aunt Harriet was extremely particular that they must be home before lighting-up time, and would point remorselessly to the small clock that hung ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... at the shrine of success. It regards it as man's greatest attribute. And whether we find it in secular affairs, substantiated by material grandeur, or in the mysterious realms of the inner life characterized by the serene consciousness of truth, it must ever be the goal of ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given |
