"Mystification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... children give little credit to the stork fable and similar stories invented for their mystification, has made an interesting psychological investigation into the real theories which children themselves, as the result of observation and thought, reach concerning the sexual facts of life (S. Freud, "Ueber Infantile Sexualtheorien," Sexual-Probleme, Dec., 1908). Such ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... doing so, they found Uncle Balla standing by the hen-house with a comical look of mystification and chagrin; the roof had been lifted off at one end and not only the prisoner, but every ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... a monstrous mystification for the lady of honor, who told Boehmer to instantly go and see his official superior, the chief of the king's household. She herself being very soon afterwards summoned to the Queen's presence, the affair came up, and she told the Queen all she knew about it. Marie Antoinette was ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... much amused at her mystification. "Who am I indeed? Perhaps a personage in disguise. Pity I don't ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the contact of religious ideas. He floated like wreckage between Licentiousness and the Church, they each threw him back in turn, obliging him as he approached one to return at once to that which he had left, and he was inclined to ask if he were not a victim to some mystification of his lower instincts, seeking to revive themselves, without his consciousness, by the cordial ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... his quickness as to forget that the routed point is not, after all, the one in question, you suppose all is over with it. Moreover, he contrives to mingle up so many stinging allusions, so many piquant personalities, that by the time he has done his mystification, a dozen others are ready and burning to spring on their feet to repel some direct or indirect attack all equally ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... for Le Gardeur was the only key which ever unlocked her real feelings. When the fox praised the raven's voice and prevailed on her to sing, he did not more surely make her drop the envied morsel out of her mouth than did Angelique drop the mystification she had worn ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... answered, demurely. She knew there was some manner of mystification forward and yearned for the key to it. "He ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... and Dick Dawson the night before, both were too much excited by the arrival of Furlong to permit their being laggards in the morning; they were up and in consultation at an early hour, for the purpose of carrying on prosperously the mystification so well begun on ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... Agnes Walters and Edna Hayden were discussing the matter in great mystification in ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the courtyard, and in the distance was heard the baying of two hounds, entertaining each other with their melancholy music. The master of ceremonies began to be impatient; he thought that, the impertinent private secretary had been indulging in some practical joke or mystification at his expense; but as he drew near to the Spree, he heard the light stroke of oars in the water. Pollnitz hastened forward, and his eyes, accustomed to the darkness, discovered a skiff drawn ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... him. At this moment, perhaps because the events immediately impending have cast their shadows across the sensitive consciousness of an at times prophet, he is in no uneasiness whatever with regard to the fate of the Ring. To Alberich's mystification, he actually rouses Fafner. "Who disturbs my sleep?" comes a hollow roar from the cave. The Fafner-motif is the old motif of the giants, slightly altered so that instead of the ponderous tread of the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... the Life of Nelson, and his character as involved in this matter, the fact is beyond dispute that he believed himself the father, and Lady Hamilton the mother, of the girl, whose origin he sought to conceal by an elaborate though clumsy system of mystification. This might possibly have left the subject covered with clouds, though not greatly in doubt, had not Lady Hamilton, after wildly unnecessary lying on her own part, recklessly preserved her holdings of a correspondence which Nelson scrupulously ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... from the Chickahominy, when senators and clergymen gathered with the slaves to raise the breastworks, and men turned blankly to ask one another "Where is the army?" With the girl the question meant only mystification; she felt none of the white terror that showed in the faces round her. There was in her heart an unquestioning, childlike trust in the God of battles—sooner or later he would declare for the Confederacy and until ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... powerful for blessing or bane, announced by homely signs, to be placated by quaint ceremonies. A dog crossing the hunter's path spoiled his day, unless he instantly hooked his little fingers together, and pulled till the animal disappeared. They were familiar with the ever- recurring mystification of the witch-hazel, or divining-rod; and the "cure by faith" was as well known to them as it has since become in a more sophisticated state of society. The commonest occurrences were heralds of death and doom. A bird lighting in a window, a dog baying at certain hours, the cough of a horse in the ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... but upon what pretext could he refuse so generous a trust? Upon none, he saw, that was not unpardonably wounding; and the bright eyes and the high spirits of his companion had already made a breach in the rampart of Challoner's caution. The whole thing, he reasoned, might be a mere mystification, which it were the height of solemn folly to resent. On the other hand, the explosion, the interview at the public-house, and the very money in his hands, seemed to prove beyond denial the existence of some serious danger; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you are walking with him and ask humbly for his verdict thereon, in the expectation of an explosion of clipped technical jargon, he will stop and study its outline with great attention, and will eventually inform you, to your respectful mystification, that it is a "P.-P.-D." Thereafter he will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... he was amiable enough to assume the pose expected of him. The lion-hunters hoped that Beardsley would be like his drawings. Strange, decadent, morbid, bizarre, weird, were adjectives bestowed upon them, and he played up to the adjectives for the edification or mystification of the people who invented them and for his own infinite amusement. But with us he did not have to play up to anything and could be just the simple, natural youth he was—as simple and natural as I have always found the really great, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... later, to my extreme mystification (and joy), I came across a bear and its cub lying dead at the foot of a hummock. I could not believe my eyes. There she lay on her right side, a spot of dirty-white in a disordered patch of snow, with one little eye open, and her fierce-looking mouth also; and the cub lay across her ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... who can fathom the follies of a young man who has got too hot blood in his head and heart? The bitter pique which the Baron had stirred up within me I transferred to the Baroness. The entire business seemed to me like a foul mystification; and I would now show that I was possessed of alarmingly good common-sense and also of extraordinary sagacity. Like a petulant child, I shunned the Baroness and escaped Adelheid when she pursued me, and found ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Ballads), Verlaine (Parallelement), and Pierre Louys (Chansons de Bilitis). The last-named book, a collection of homosexual prose-poems, attracted considerable attention on publication, as it was an attempt at mystification, being put forward as a translation of the poems of a newly discovered Oriental Greek poetess; Bilitis (more usually Beltis) is the Syrian name for Aphrodite. Les Chansons de Bilitis are not without charm, but have been severely dealt with by Wilamowitz-Moellendorff ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Quincey approvingly quotes in regard to his opium-induced "architectural dreams," and, aptly enough, immediately after a page devoted to Piranesi, the etcher, architect, and visionary. You may find this page in The Confessions of an English Opium Eater, that book of terror, beauty, mystification, and fudge (De Quincey deluded himself quite as much as his readers in this autobiography, which, like the confessions of most distinguished men, must not be taken too literally): "Many years ago," he wrote, "when I was looking over Piranesi's ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... be mastered very easily by a little painstaking practice, and much amusement may be had through the mystification of those who do not understand it. A "wigwag" flag may be easily made by sewing a white square of muslin in the centre of a ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... voice, had taken their place in the same category. She WAS interesting, she was distinguished; at any rate he had accepted her: it came to the same thing. But he left the theatre that night without speaking to her— moved (a little even to his own mystification) by an odd procrastinating impulse. On the morrow he was to read his three acts to the company, and then he should have a good deal to say; what he felt for the moment was a vague indisposition to commit ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... it all, I say, is the sort of thing that, were it the least bit to fall to pieces, could never, ah never more be put together again. I have, dear Miss Wenham," Granger went on, happy himself in his extravagance, which was yet all sincere, and happier still in her deep but altogether pleased mystification—"I've found, do you know, just the thing one has ever heard of that you most resemble. You're the Sleeping ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... carved-oak chair, and laid on its lid the painted card; then for a moment they stood side by side, gazing round the room, seeing in imagination the scene which would follow the return of the family from church . . . the incredulity, the amaze, the blind mystification, the joy. . . . Peg beamed in anticipation of the delight of the youngsters; Margaret had the strangest, eeriest feeling of looking straight into a sweet, worn face; of feeling the clasp of work-worn hands. It was imagination, ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... H. G. Volrees sat in his office room looking moodily out of the window. Since the desertion of his young bride his life had been one long day of misery to him. His mystification and anger increased with the years, and he had kept a standing offer of a large reward for information leading to the discovery of his wife. He had vowed vengeance upon the author ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... actions and effects as well as agents, or if actions can symbolize agents and effects—then all is an inextricable maze of confusion, and well may we repeat the words uttered by a certain minister to the writer, "The book should have been called Mystification, not Revelation." ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... that they serve to confirm my suspicions, and those of my mate, that the felucca is not honest, and that there is a good deal of mystification ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... do, you see. And now let us make music," he added, his good humour restored by the Tenor's mystification. "If you will be so good as to accompany me with your piano, I will give you a treat. I brought my music the last time I was here;" and there it was, piled up, on a chair ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... are embodied in the hoary literature of antiquity appear to be historical data, and, if mystic in tone, these statements are to him an old revelation of profoundest truth. But the Occidental, who recognizes no hidden wisdom in palpable mystification, should hesitate also to accept at their face value such historical notes as have been drafted by ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... the conversation to the Duke and Capraja, not wishing to be the victims of mystification. Only Vendramin and the French doctor listened to them for a few minutes. The opium-smoker understood these poetic flights; he had the key of the palace where those two sensuous imaginations were wandering. The ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... I remember telling you the last time we met"—he turned to Trent—"that Manderson had rather a fondness for doing things in a story-book style. Other things being equal, he delighted in a bit of mystification and melodrama, and I told myself that this was Manderson all over. I hurried downstairs with my bag and rejoined him in the library. He handed me a stout leather letter-case, about eight inches by six, fastened with a strap with a lock on it. I could just squeeze it into my side-pocket. Then I ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... moment his air had the jollity of youth. I would have accepted the entertainment had I not again caught Madame's eye. It said, unmistakably and with serious pleading, "Decline." I therefore made my excuses, urged fatigue, drowsiness, and a delicate stomach, bade my host good-night, and in deep mystification left the room. ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... last, she made an excellent breakfast, alone in the sun-bright dining-room. And if at times, as she sat and munched, her look was pensive and remote, this was due less to misgivings than to mystification. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... for my fallen country, who are the proudest citizen of the proudest of lands? Why should you feel for its debasing thraldom—you who, in the religious mystification of man, have, at least, the noble privilege of being ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... be superior to all human infirmities, except the infirmity of a pose which is impressive only by its correctness; he may be cynical, if the cynicism is wholly free from emphasis; he may be ironical, if the irony is sufficiently disguised; he may mystify his fellows, if he keeps the pleasure of mystification for his private amusement. Should he happen to be an artist, he must appear to be only a dilettante. He must never incur ridicule, and yet his whole attitude ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... countrymen, who enthusiastically supported him and who believed that he was elected Chief Magistrate of the United States. He was an idealist; he lost the White House because he was so, though represented while he lived by his enemies as a scheming spider weaving his web amid the coil of mystification in which he hid himself. For he was personally known to few in the city where he had made his abode; a great lawyer and jurist who rarely appeared in court; a great political leader to whom the hustings were mainly a stranger; a thinker, and yet a dreamer, who lived his own life a little ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... pretended mystification. But he understood perfectly, and he bitterly envied the younger man's knowledge and ability that enabled him to delve into the mysteries of nature which had always been so attractive to his own mind. And somehow, he acquired a sudden deep hatred of the coolly confident ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... pieces were, in manuscript, in this volume, and as there were circumstances of mystification attendant upon their prior publication, what does the captain do but claim them all, Songs of Zion and sentimental ballad alike, as Marvell's. This of course brought the critics, ever anxious to air their erudition, down upon his head, raised his anger, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the Starling and Harrowby, who had been simply gazing about them in fevered mystification, because the new development was a thing which must invoke some more or less interesting explanation. At her outbreak, all they could do was to gaze at her with impartial eyes, which suggested question, and ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... say how much the party with whom the two neophytes in fashion had come, enjoyed all this, though they concealed their amusement under the calm exterior of people of the world. From Mr. Effingham the mystification was carefully concealed by his cousin, as the former would have felt it due to Mrs. Houston, a well-meaning, but silly woman, to put an end to it. Eve and Grace laughed, as merry girls would be apt to laugh, at such an occurrence, and they danced the remainder ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Kearney will do—Kearney's good enough for me," commented the soi-disant Kearney half-aloud, to my own horror and Sylvester's evident mystification, and then he blandly excused himself for a moment that he might personally supervise the care of his own beast. When he was out of ear-shot I drew ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... habitually extravagant humourists, that meaning not being always expected of them, it is not always sought by their readers with sufficient care. Anyhow, it may be suspected that this retort of Tristram's is too often passed over as a mere random absurdity designed for his interlocutor's mystification, and that its extremely felicitous pertinence to the question in dispute is thus overlooked. The point of it, of course, is that the business in which the commissary was then engaged was precisely analogous to that of exacting ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... related to Gewar the mystification that had followed on his straying, and straightway asked him for his daughter. Gewar answered that he would most gladly favour him, but that he feared if he rejected Balder he would incur his wrath; ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... revelation that comes by the way, made manifest in the effort to conceal it, overlaid by all sorts of cryptic sentences and self-deprecatory phrases, half hidden by the protective coloring taken on by a sensitive mind commonly employing paradox and delighting in perverse and teasing mystification. One can never be sure what the book means; but taken at its face value the Education seems to be the story of a man who regarded life from the outside, as a spectator at the play, a play in which his own part as spectator was taken by a minor ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... bepillowed davenport and The Hopper sank down on it, still with his hands up. To his deepening mystification she backed to the windows and lowered the shades, and this done she sat down with the table ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... folk of English blood and speech to understand Shakespeare is the most absurd and arrogant that could be set up. Shakespeare owes them nothing; and we have received from them little more than some maundering mystification and much ponderous platitude. Like the western diver, they go down deeper and stay down longer than other critics, but like him too they come up muddier. Above all of them, avoid Ulrici and Gervinus. The first is a mad mystic, the second a very literary Dogberry, ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... appointed Margaret of Parma to be Regent, with the Bishop for her prime minister—had as little reason to be satisfied with the combinations of royal and ecclesiastical intrigue as the Prince of Orange himself. Soon after this unsatisfactory mystification, William turned his attentions to Germany. Anna of Saxony, daughter of the celebrated Elector Maurice, lived at the court of her uncle, the Elector Augustus. A musket-ball, perhaps a traitorous one, in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... constable of this place, and other men from the market-town, are doing their utmost; but as yet the result has been only new mystification—new conjecture." ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... fits almost any kind of a book. It is a nice, non-committal sort of title, and might mean the guilt that bound two sinners, or the tie of affection that binds lovers, or a blood relationship, or it might be a mystification title with nothing in ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... real beauty or expressiveness. They represent the human figure with the structure of a jellyfish and the movement of a Dutch doll; the human face with an expression I prefer not to characterize. If they be not the symptoms of mental decay, they can be nothing but the means of a gigantic mystification. ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... her, so as to look into the face she instinctively averted, while she could not help glancing at him from the corner of her eye. "You have the color and the light of the South," he said. "When you get to Italy, you will live in a perpetual mystification. You will go about in a dream of some self of yours that was native there in other days. You will find yourself retrospectively related to the olive faces and the dark eyes you meet; you will recognize sisters and cousins in the patrician ladies when you see their portraits in ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... or like footprints, which, if like those of horses or cows, are the reverse of, or the negatives of, cups—of symbols that are regularly received somewhere upon this earth—steep, conical hill, somewhere, I think—but that have often alighted in wrong places—considerably to the mystification of persons waking up some morning to find them ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... they expect us to sit up forever as sedately as that old party over there," mused Hugh, after the savages had withdrawn, greatly to the mystification of their guests. "We're evidently left here to make the best of it. I fancy we are now supposed to be in business as real gods with a ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... have got up a little mystification," she said after a pause, "and I am sure I can trust you; besides, you don't know the parties. There is a gentleman here who is supposed to be with his regiment at Moscow; but there is a sweetheart in the case, ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... the Squire were dumfounded. Their mystification culminated in one grand chorus of amazement when, on Friday, the Squire came to the hotel hugging under ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... found his way around easily enough in daylight, and had his labor for his pains. For when he went back to the hotel at the luncheon-hour he brought little with him save a stench in his nostrils and a slightly increased fund of mystification. Gryson had disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed him. And Blount knew the disappearance was real, because the ward-heeler's own henchmen were searching ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... say paanengro-gujo means sailor, or water gentile, another Gipsy would say it means an Irishman, or potato gentile; another would say poovengri-gujo meant a sailor; another would say it means an Irishman. They glory in contradictions and mystification. I was at an encampment a few days ago, and out of the twenty-five men and women and forty children there were not three that could talk Romany, and there was not one who could spell a single word of it. Their language, like themselves, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the most justly determined. Whatever appeals to human sympathies, will be answered by human sympathies. Popularity too often gains its ascendency behind the hypocrite's mask in religion; it is usually a magnificent mystification in politics; it frequently becomes the patriot's stalking-horse, on which he rides to power; in social life, it is the reward of empty smiles, unmeaning bows, and hollow squeezes of the hand; but with the player, the poet, and all whose pursuits bring ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Christian doctrines and festivals, besides a great mass of affiliated legend and ceremonial, are really quite directly derived from, and related to, preceding Nature worships; and it has only been by a good deal of deliberate mystification and falsification that this derivation has ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... this lady (aware of her being an authoress), that he never accepted an invitation to dine with her, unless when his friend Count Gamba did: truly, we may then conclude that these conversations were materially impossible, and must have been a clever mystification,—a composition got up on the biographies of Lord Byron that had already appeared, on Moore's works, Medwin's, Lord Byron's correspondence, and, above all, on "Don Juan." She must have made her choice, without any regard to ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... italics; for it is difficult to suppose that Boswell underlined them himself. The originals are again lost; should the passages in question really be underlined, it would follow that Boswell was not unintentionally or unconsciously ridiculous; that all his life he practised an elaborate mystification; that he succeeded in hoodwinking the world; that he enlightened Temple alone, who nevertheless appears to have treated him as though he were what the world took him for; and that Francis, who saw these underlined manuscripts, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... a voice that sounded so close, so audibly that he looked round in mystification. Then he saw a deep gulch yawning below him, and caught the flutter of a handkerchief on the far side. But how could he reach there? Down he plunged with reckless haste, having little or no regard for his own safety—and, indeed, he who hesitated here was lost, for at every step the rock crumbled ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... perhaps, in the Irish by a confusion of speech and in the English by a confusion of thought. For the Irish bull is a license with the symbol of language. But Bull's own bull, the English bull, is "a dumb ox of thought"; a standing mystification in the mind. There is something double in the thoughts as of the soul mirrored in many waters. Of all peoples they are least attached to the purely classical; the imperial plainness which the French do finely ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... myth and mystification had died with the dead ages, as it should have done, what a fitter place to live in this world would be today! Consider the needless misery and the agony of those who died of the various plagues; and think of the advanced stage of medicine of Alexandria, three hundred ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... minor character. A good account of Holbach, though short and incidental, is to be found in M. Avezac-Lavigne's Diderot et la Societe du Baron d'Holbach (Paris, 1875, 8vo), and M. Armand Gaste has a little book entitled Diderot et le cure de Montchauvet, une Mystification litteraire chez le Baron d'Holbach (Paris, 1895, 16vo). There are several works which devote a chapter or section to Holbach. [3:4] The French critics and the histories of philosophy contain slight notices; Rosenkranz's "Diderot's ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... mingled with a very deep and heartfelt affection for us, and with a vehement, feverish devotion when either of us was ill. And this woman possessed an energetic character, a force of will, a skill in mystification, to which nothing can be compared. Yes, yes, all those frightful secrets kept under lock and key, hidden, buried deep in her own heart, so that neither our eyes, nor our ears, nor our powers of observation ever detected aught amiss, even in her hysterical attacks, when nothing ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... who is expected?" said Tyrrel, unable with the utmost exertion to suppress some signs of curiosity, though he suspected the whole to be merely some mystification of ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... one below, it was pretty clear where he was. I thought he had not the nerve to lie quiet before an alarm of fire. We could, of course, have gone in and taken him, but it amused me to make him reveal himself. Besides, I owed you a little mystification, Lestrade, for your ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her long, white fingers on his shoulder—it was a cruel hand, spite of its symmetry and aristocratic whiteness—"what does this mean? Speak, speak! I hate mystification. I order you to speak!" she added, imperiously. "Have you seen ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... is ended; it seems that, with the cessation of the worship and mystification of humanity by itself, the theological problem is for ever put aside. The gods have gone: there is nothing left for man but to grow weary and die in his egoism. What frightful solitude extends around me, and forces its way to the bottom of my soul! My exaltation resembles annihilation; and, since ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... charlatanism of necromancy effected a thousand years ago, was now effected by the charlatanism of genius. If I had seen the Prussian troops only at Potsdam, I should probably have mistaken the truncheon for a talisman, like the rest of the world. But the field suffers no mystification. I had seen that the true secret of this great tactician, for such unquestionably he was, consisted in his rejecting the superfluities and retaining the substance; in reducing tactics to the ready application of force, and in simplifying ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... end of June," responded Ferris mechanically, staring with helpless mystification ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... circumstance, some mobile secret, through the unveiling of which they would be more admired, or less esteemed, and which they well know how to hide under the subtle smile of an almost imperceptible mockery. Delighting in the pleasure of mystification, from the most spiritual or comic to the most bitter and melancholy, they may perhaps find in this deceptive raillery an external formula of disdain for the veiled expression of the superiority which they internally claim, but which claim they veil with the caution and ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... husbands will find a preliminary difficulty in executing this plan of campaign. If your wife is a woman of profound dissimulation, the question is, what signs will indicate to her the motives of your long mystification? ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... less ingenious. A venial wickedness, a self-complacent malice, is an enjoyment for those who have neither resources in themselves nor a wholesome external activity. No age is quite exempt from such pruriences. We had often tricked each other in our childish years: many sports turn upon mystification and trick. The present jest did not seem to me to go farther: I gave my consent. They imparted to me many particulars which the letter ought to contain, and we ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... much unnecessary mystification touching this supposed reality behind experiences. In the next chapter we shall see in what senses the word "reality" may properly be used, and in what sense it may not. There is a danger in ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... really better—!" But he checked himself, wanting only to be easy about it and above all not to appear engaged to the point of mystification. "We shall miss her the ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... be the very essence of the conveyance of matter from mind to mind, as in words; from mind to eye, as by pencil, brush, or chisel; palpable or otherwise, the impression intended should be beyond doubt, and that this end may be secured, mystification by high flown figures of rhetoric, or false drawing, or sculpture out of line or proportion, must at the outset of all work, art work above all, be sternly trodden under foot, and the solid and truthful experience of ripe years offered with the same eagerness to impart ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... 'White Violet' may as well be the nom de plume of a man as of a woman, especially if adopted for the purpose of mystification. The handwriting, I remember, ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... furthermore, distasteful, so Melicent would not burden herself with the suspicion. It was far more agreeable to believe that affairs were shaping themselves according to her wishes regarding her brother and her friend. Yet her mystification was in no wise made clearer, when David left them to go to ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... general mystification. Kate, who could have thrown a light, did not come down to breakfast. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... cloudy gloom of natural rain, natural twilight before night, or natural twilight—Corot's—before day, than by the artificial dimness of our unlovely towns. Those, too, who praise the "mystery" of smoke are praising rather a mystification than a mystery; and must be unaware of the profounder mysteries of light. Light is all mystery when you face the sun, and every particle of the innumerable atmosphere carries its ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... on behind their enemy's screen of scouts which is so vital to tactical, and sometimes to strategical, dispositions. To try to obtain that information an army pours out much blood and treasure; to guard that information an army will consume a full third of its energies in an elaborate system of mystification. A modern army must either banish the war correspondent altogether or subject him to such restrictions of Censorship as to veto honest, accurate, and prompt ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... smoked, and Furneaux had contributed some personal reminiscences the whole aim and object of which was the perplexing and mystification of that discreet person, Tomlinson, the two retired to their room at an early hour. The butler pressed them hospitably to try the house's special blend of Scotch whisky, but they had declined resolutely. Both acknowledged ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... Hamilton, a man of the world with vast experience of human deceptions and intrigues, could have been put off the scent, in view of all the circumstances, is too great a tax on credulity, but it is wholly characteristic of Nelson's ideas of mystification. But even if there were any further proof needed, Lady Hamilton has settled the matter by preserving the correspondence Nelson urged her to destroy. This will be ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... credit. He knew that she received five- and ten- and even fifty-dollar drafts from Eastern periodicals, and he had touched these with reverent hands: but two thousand dollars in a lump from one of the best-known publishers in the country staggered Amzi. To add to his mystification, half the amount plus one cent, to-wit, $1057.58, was immediately transferred to Thomas Kirkwood's account, and this left Amzi away up in the air. Just what right Tom Kirkwood had to participate in Nan's earnings Amzi did not know, nor did he see immediately ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... hooks that were placed on the outer ribs of the board and the sides of the vehicle. To this he added a roll of rag carpet, the end of which hung from the tailboard, and a roll of pink calico temptingly displayed on the seat. The mystification and curiosity of the young girl grew more intense at these proceedings. It looked like the ordinary exhibition of a traveling peddler, but the gloomy and embattled appearance of the man himself scouted so peaceful and commonplace a suggestion. Under the pretense ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... is asked of one thing after another, the answer always being "No." "Is it that?" "Yes." The secret is that the article touched is always signified by "Is it that?" But in this case, and in that of the others already described, the effect of mystification can be increased by arranging beforehand that the article in question shall not follow the key phrase immediately, ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... answer. But the answer her heart alone possessed. That heart had been his. It was his no longer. The heart that she had given him, she had taken away. Nothing could be simpler and nothing more mysterious. The mystification was complete, but not the suffering. Suffering is never complete. However deep the hell, there is always a ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the other might be baffled; but neither De Grammont nor De Montrond would ever have consented to soil his hands with such vile commercial speculations as the Houilleres d'Anzin or the Vieille Montagne, or condescend to such disgraceful financial mystification as ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... vibrations of the music were conveyed from instruments, played in the next room, to the lyre through a steel rod. The young man spent much time experimenting with the transmission of sound. Having conveyed music through the steel rod to his enchanted lyre, much to the mystification of the Londoners, he proposed to transmit sounds over a considerable distance by this method. He estimated that sound could be sent through steel rods at the rate of two hundred miles a second and suggested the use of such a rod as a telegraph between London and ...
— Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty • Walter Kellogg Towers
... Of course, I may be wrong in the motives which I ascribe to this Whitehall agent, but misunderstanding is certain to arise out of a system of such deliberate mystification, which can only be compared to that employed by the Russian police under ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... dictatorship. Now Mr. Owen himself says, that he only interfered when he observed they were going wrong; implying that he did not interfere in the commencement, but did so subsequently. These are contradictions which would require a good deal of mystification to reconcile in appearance. All the communicants whom I met in America, although they differed on almost every other point, yet agreed on this,—that Mr. Owen interfered from first to last during his stay at Harmony, ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... A mystification not entirely unconnected with the one thus produced was manifested at his own family dinner-table the following evening. Aunt Clara had been out rather late, and came to the table after the rest were seated. She wore ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... it. In considering any matter in connexion with Borrow it is always necessary to take into account the secretiveness of his disposition, and also his passion for posing. He had a child’s fondness for the wonderful. It is through his own love of mystification that students like Dr. Knapp must needs pry into these matters—must needs ask why Borrow drew the veil over seven years—must needs ask whether during the “veiled period” he led a life of squalid misery, compared with which his sojourn with Isopel Berners ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... perfectly civil reception despite the liberty. I did not know the boy by sight, nor did Raffles introduce us; but their conversation proclaimed at once a slightness of acquaintanceship and a license on the lad's part which combined to puzzle me. Mystification reached its height when Raffles was informed that the other's father was anxious to meet him, and he instantly consented to gratify ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... Furious at this mystification, the Suliots retired to their mountains, and Kursheed profited by the discontent Ali's conduct had caused, to win over the Toxide Skipetars, with their commanders Tahir Abbas and Hagi Bessiaris, who only made two conditions: one, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... chain of association. She knew so herself what she thought of Susie that she would have expected the lady of Lancaster Gate to think something quite different; the failure of which endlessly mystified her. But her mystification was the cause for her of another fine impression, inasmuch as when she went so far as to observe to Kate that Susan Shepherd—and especially Susan Shepherd emerging so uninvited from an irrelevant past—ought, by all the proprieties, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... by Cratander (C), and a French MS. (Z), generally termed Tornaesianus from its owner, Jean de Tournes, a printer of Lyons, probably identical with No. 492 in the old Cluny catalogue, used by Turnebus, Lambinus and Bosius. A strange mystification was practised by the last named, a scholar of singular brilliancy, who claimed to have a mutilated MS. which he called his Decurtatus, bought from a common soldier who had obtained it from a sacked monastery; also to have been furnished by a friend, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... suspense, half expecting the waiter to come back for the number again; but to his immense surprise and mystification, the fellow didn't. Instead of that, he returned some minutes later, all respectful attention, bringing the bill on a salver, duly headed and lettered, "Mr. Billington, number 40." In unspeakable trepidation, Guy paid it and walked away. Never before ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... with an independent force and depth of their own." "They are exquisitely graceful re- statements of the theology of the Broad Churchman of the school of F. D. Maurice and Jowett—a combination of Maurice's somewhat illogical piety with Jowett's philosophy of mystification." The piety of Maurice may be as illogical as that of Positivism is logical, and the philosophy of the Master of Balliol may be whatever Mr Harrison pleases to call it. But as Jowett's earliest work (except an essay on Etruscan religion) is of 1855, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... compromise of our time. You are free in our time to say that God does not exist; you are free to say that He exists and is evil; you are free to say (like poor old Renan) that He would like to exist if He could. You may talk of God as a metaphor or a mystification; you may water Him down with gallons of long words, or boil Him to the rags of metaphysics; and it is not merely that nobody punishes, but nobody protests. But if you speak of God as a fact, as a thing like a ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Crater Truth-Teller; but they treat their readers with a little more outward respect, however much they may mislead them with falsehoods. Your London and Paris publics are not to be dealt with as if composed of credulous old women, but require something like a plausible mystification to throw dust in their eyes. They have a remarkable proneness to believe that which they wish, it is true; but, beyond that weakness, some limits are placed to their faith and appearances must be ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... thus, in the full flood of mystification and resentment, Charles Verity found her when presently he returned. Sensible of something very much amiss, since she stayed within the shadow of the closed shutters, silent and motionless, he crossed the room and stood before her looking down searchingly into her upturned ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... often looking at the reflecting surface of one or the other of the glasses, when he seemed to be looking through them. It put a singular power into his possession, which might possibly hereafter lead to something more significant than the mystification of the Widow Hopkins. ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... American army—its strength and weaknesses—with an intimate knowledge that greatly surprised and interested the young officer; and when they separated presently it was with a curious mixture of liking and mystification that Claiborne ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... and his aid inspecting the affairs of Major Burleigh, who, confined to his bed by nervous prostration, and forbidden by his doctor to see anybody, had nevertheless sent his keys and books and bank account, and to the mystification of the chief, more money was found in the big office safe at the depot quartermaster's than was necessary to cover his accountability. The General and his inspector were fairly puzzled. They personally questioned the bank cashier and the quartermaster's ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... struck its subjective with fearful impact, Sir," replied the bad boy imperturbably, misquoting from his latest fiction (and calling it a "parry-bowler," to "Grandfather's" considerable and very natural mystification). ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... We may add that the principle of the whistle was a favorite one of Hero. By the aid of a similar mechanism he brought about the blowing of trumpets when the temple doors were opened, a phenomenon which must greatly have enhanced the mystification. It is possible that this principle was utilized also in connection with statues to produce seemingly supernatural effects. This may be the explanation of the tradition of the speaking statue in the temple ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... One of his ways of finding amusement, in his leisure hours, was in the use of a photographic apparatus. He took little pictures of the rooms in the cottage, which were followed by views in the garden. Those having come to an end, he completed the mystification of the nurse by producing a portrait of the Dane, while he lay asleep one day after he had been improving in health for some little time past. Fanny asked leave to look at the likeness when it had been "printed" from the negative, in the garden. He first examined it himself—and then deliberately ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... not restrain his smiles as he listened to the explanations of Uncle Will, Professor Tartlet did not laugh in the least! He was excessively mortified at what he heard! To have been the object of such a mystification, he, a professor of dancing and deportment! And so advancing with much dignity ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... fiddler woke like a battery newly charged, every face lighted with freshened interest, and only the colonel and Marjorie showed surprise and mystification. The double-shuffle was hardly included in the curriculum of the colonel's training school for a gentleman, and where, when, and how the boy had learned such Ethiopian skill, neither he nor Marjorie knew. But he had it and they enjoyed it to the full. Gray's face wore a merry smile, and Jason, ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... preceded by Burns in the practice. But whereas Burns made no secret of what he did and greatly enhanced the poetical value of the songs and ballads he altered, Scott and his friends, Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Leyden, and others, indulged in what they described as the "mystification" of their acquaintances by these semi-forgeries. Like theirs, Villemarque's work had usually an historical or legendary basis, but it is impossible to say how much of it is original matter of folk-song and how much his own invention, unless we compare his versions ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... the Diamond to Miss Rachel was said, as usual, by way of a mystification or joke. He gravely entreated her (in the interests of science) to let him take it home and burn it. "We will first heat it, Miss Rachel," says the doctor, "to such and such a degree; then we will expose it to a current of air; and, little by little—puff!—we evaporate the Diamond, and spare ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... symptom that the State Church seems more and more anxious to repudiate all complicity with the principles of the Protestant Reformation and to call itself "Anglo-Catholic." Inspiration, deprived of its old intelligible sense, is watered down into a mystification. The Scriptures are, indeed, inspired; but they contain a wholly undefined and indefinable "human element"; and this unfortunate intruder is converted into a sort of biblical whipping-boy. Whatsoever scientific investigation, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... laughed again, their imaginations happening to picture to each, at the same instant, the mystification about the boat; Biddy having told Josh in confidence, the manner in which the party had returned to the brig, while he and Simon were asleep; which fact the steward had already communicated to the cook. To these two beings, of an order in nature different from all around them, and of a simplicity ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... sincere language, of panegyric, without intruding on the modesty of the great individual to whom he referred. But it was no longer possible, consistently with the respect to one's auditors, to use upon this subject terms either of mystification or of obscure or indirect allusion. The clouds have been dispelled; the DARKNESS VISIBLE has been cleared away; and the Great Unknown—the minstrel of our native land—the mighty magician who has rolled back the current of time, and conjured up before our living senses the men ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... gathered about the glowing stove. Under the influence of cold gray skies, biting air, leafless trees, and bare land, the claim seemed somehow to have receded into the distance. The sanguine confidence of the community had not subsided into doubt so much as into helpless mystification. Months had passed and ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... of a happy and affectionate family, in fact. The sort of thing I don't want is the Athanasian Creed. I can't regard it simply as a picturesque monument of ancient and ferocious piety. It seems to me an overhanging cloud of menace and mystification! It doesn't hurt the unintelligent Christian, of course—he simply doesn't understand it; but to the moderately intelligent it is like a dog barking furiously which may possibly get loose; a little more intelligence, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ought not to be numerous," said Fritz; "I will, therefore, take Willis, in case this mystification has anything to ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... of luminous paint, and in a heap of rubbish I discerned the very lid of a small tin of that effective spiritualistic medium. No further proof was needed. By lucky chance I discovered what appeared to be a clue to the reason of all this mystification. Loosened stones in the chimney and by the hearth suggested that a search had been made for something supposed to be hidden in the hut. The spiritual visitor had evidently been bent upon seizing the material ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... From a sense of duty they prepared a meal on the shore, and made a pretence of eating it, each for the other's benefit. Stonor did his best to keep up Clare's spirits, while at the same time his own mystification was growing. For in circling the shack he could find no fresh track anywhere into the bush. Tracks there were in plenty, where the man had gone for wood, or to hunt perhaps, but all more than twenty-four hours old. To be ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... statements are justified, Mr. Merrick." Yet Hedrik Von Taer's face, usually unexpressive, denoted blank mystification. What connection could these girls have with the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... feigned ignorance of the other's engagement; and it was equally desirable that all the marriages should take place on the same day, to prevent the discovery of one clandestine alliance, operating prejudicially on the others. Hence, the mystification of Mr. Calton and Mr. Septimus Hicks, and the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... brief—Panofka's [A well-known teacher of singing and writer on music (1807-88); collaborator of the Neue Zeitschrift.] letter, in your last number, must be regarded as a mystification. In the first few lines a glaring falsehood, founded on facts, is conspicuous, for the Societe de Ste. Cecile has been in existence for years, and was formerly [1848-54] conducted by Seghers [Pupil of Baillot (1801-81)]—not to mention that Berlioz conducted the Societe ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated |
