"Mystify" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very fountain head of constitutional law—that branch of our national jurisprudence which can least fluctuate. Judges of a day and not of a generation, or crazy legislators with spasmodic wisdom, may alter, and overturn, and mystify by simplification, the laws and usages of every-day life; but it is scarcely to be apprehended that the current of our constitutional law will ever be diverted from original channels. There is danger rather of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... not conceive the man as he is at all", said O'Hara: "perhaps you cannot. High finance, the first day he looked into it, ceased to mystify him, for he goes always to the ground of things, touches bottom, where first principles lie, and first principles are simple as two and two. It was because he had discovered a first principle that he escaped from Colmoor. And he is as nimble as six twisting minnows: what ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... my mother's life. I have no money to pay a lawyer to stand up and mystify matters, and my best policy is to defend myself, by telling the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... say, referring to this magnificent appeal, that the Cardinal had at length spoken English. It was easy to mystify the people in regard to theological utterances. They could be no longer deceived now that the Chief of the new hierarchy had addressed them in round Saxon terms, about the meaning of which there could be no mistake. The appeal first ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... the players asserts his belief that he is gifted with second sight, and states that he is able, through a closed door, to name any article touched by any person in sympathy with him, notwithstanding the said person may attempt to mystify him by mentioning a lot of other articles. He then chooses his confederate, as being one with whom he may be in sympathy, ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... would weep then—but for their misfortune, be it understood, not for any fault of hers. People did not always understand her; her mother had understood her perfectly, and consequently had never interfered with her ways. Mina loved a mystification too, and especially to mystify uncle Duplay, who thought himself so clever—was clever indeed as men went, she acknowledged generously; but men did not go far. It would be fun to choose Merrion Lodge for her summer home, first because her uncle would wonder why in the world she took it, and secondly ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... 1869.—Lamennais, Heine—the one the victim of a mistaken vocation, the other of a tormenting craving to astonish and mystify his kind. The first was wanting in common sense; the second was wanting in seriousness. The Frenchman was violent, arbitrary, domineering; the German was a jesting Mephistopheles, with a horror of Philistinism. The Breton was ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... therefore marched rapidly forward and occupied the crest in force. It was impossible to hide the whole of our camp from view and properly hold the position, but we made use of such cover as we could find, and prepared to defend the pass against all comers, since it was vain to attempt to mystify the enemy as to our ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... of the modern Faun, for example, loses all the poetry and beauty which the Author fancied in it, and becomes nothing better than a grotesque absurdity, if we bring it into the actual light of day. He had hoped to mystify this anomalous creature between the Real and the Fantastic, in such a manner that the reader's sympathies might be excited to a certain pleasurable degree, without impelling him to ask how Cuvier would have classified poor Donatello, or to insist upon being told, in so many words, whether he had ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Pettigrew, when they were sitting side by side on the upper deck of the Puritan, the magnificent steamer on the Fall River line. "I want you to consent to a little plan that will mystify my ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... the close of his career as an author, Scott never avowed his responsibility for any of these series of novels, and even took some pains to mystify the public as to the identity between the author of Waverley and the author of Tales of my Landlord. The care with which the secret was kept is imputed by Mr. Lockhart in some degree to the habit of mystery which had grown upon Scott during his secret partnership with the Ballantynes; ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... In the fifth variation a very characteristic trick of Brahms' music is brought out in strong light. It is his way of carrying on together a cantus firmus in two's and a counterpoint in three's. All his writing is full of this expedient, one design of which is to mystify the rhythm and to impart to the music a more flowing and ideal character, and at the same time to concentrate the attention of the player upon the large meter, with which these conflicting two's and three's never ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... between her father and her mother maintained in Rosalie that early perception of the wondrousness of her father. She loved her mother, but in the atmosphere surrounding her mother there was often flurry and worry and there was nothing whatever in her mother to mystify and entrance by sudden and violent eruptions of the miraculous. She did not love her father for he was entirely too remote and awe-ful for love, but he entranced her with his marvellousness. This maintained in her also her perception ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... To mystify Jane was the great amusement of the day; Reginald, finding Maurice possessed with the same notion, did more to maintain it than the others would have thought right, and Maurice reporting his speeches to Jane, she had not the least ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... published in 1728. It is generally regarded as Pope's masterpiece, but the accuracy of such an estimate is doubtful. So heavily weighted is the poem with notes, prefaces, and introductions that the text appears to be smothered by them. It was Pope's aim to mystify his readers, and in this he has succeeded, for the mystifications of the poem even confound the commentators. The personalities of the satire excited a keen interest, and much amusement to readers who were ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... at the smiling, lustrous-eyed Aristide, whose busy brain was wondering how he could mystify this unwelcome ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... It was therefore finally determined that Ben should act as guide, and the other darkies take a different route home. Another advantage to be derived from dividing the party was that in the event of the fugitives being pursued, the double trail would mystify the hounds. Ere long Ben reached a bridle-path, which plunged into the wood, and as it offered superior advantages on account of its narrowness and privacy, and from the fact of its leading to the plantation of a well-known planter and therefore less likely to be suspected of being the road ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... post I have dispatched to London an anonymous letter for M r. Noel Vanstone. It will be forwarded to its destination by the same means which I successfully adopted to mystify Mr. Pendril; and it will reach Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth, by the afternoon of to-morrow ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... problem was harder still. It was how to mystify, tire out, check short, and then immobilize the converging Federals long enough to let him slip secretly away in time to help Johnston and Lee against McClellan. Jackson, like his enemies, moved through what has been well called the ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... rebels against evidence, may be all the more positive, and may declare that the writers of these extraordinary narratives are persons fond of a joke, who have written them to hoax me, and that there have been persons in all ages who have done the same thing to mystify thinkers who have ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... little. Frequently, teachers try to question from pupils what they could not be expected to know. Further, it is possible by too much questioning to cover up the point of the lesson rather than reveal it, and to mystify the pupils rather than clarify their ideas. These are the two main abuses of the device. After all, it should be remembered that, important as good questioning undoubtedly is, it is not the only thing in lesson technique. In teaching, as elsewhere, variety is the spice ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... which has not yet been solved. They are a parody, but a poor one, of the Epistolae, and in the second edition are attributed to Ortuinus Gratius. If they are by him, he must have been a dull dog indeed; but by some it has been thought that they are the work of a Reuchlinist, to mystify the monks of Cologne, and render them still more ridiculous; yet, as the Pope's bull against the Epistolae, and Erasmus's disapproving letter, find a prominent place, and some other well-grounded inculpations occur, it appears to me that some slender-witted advocate of the enemies of learning ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... the preparations for Madeline's mysterious party. Katherine could not be found, and Rachel and Eleanor were both engaged for the evening; but that was no matter, Madeline said. It ought to be mostly a Belden House affair, but a few outsiders would help mystify the freshmen. ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... commended themselves to the people by wisdom, virtue, and high services. Such men had no need of hired biographers and venal letter-writers to inform the people who they were. They needed no interpreters of letters to the public, cunningly devised to mystify what they pretended to elucidate. National conventions, Mr. Toombs contended, were contrivances to secure popular support to those who were ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... now fairly up; and the story of the bacon hams soon spreading over the boat, still further heightened the enthusiasm of both passengers and crew. Three loud cheers were given for the young lady, which seemed to mystify the Magnolians, who had now been for some time in the enjoyment of their triumph, and had ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... contemned. If, therefore, it loots all the treasures of bygone wit and wisdom, and struts about in this richest of rich garments, it only proves its sinister consciousness of its own vulgarity in so doing; for it does not don this garb for warmth, but merely in order to mystify its surroundings. The desire to dissemble and to conceal himself seems stronger than the need of protection from the cold in modern man. Thus scholars and philosophers of the age do not have recourse to Indian and Greek wisdom in order to become wise and peaceful: the only purpose of their work ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... it is to enable people at home to know the difference between a topi and a sun hat and between a sing-sing and a cob. The names of many of the African antelope family are strange and confusing, so that it is little wonder that they mystify people in America. There are a hundred or more kinds, and no one can hope to know them unless he makes ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... for the family, for instance (for I dine with them twice or thrice in the season), I cannot but own that the appearance of the Jenkinses in the park, in the large barouche with the grenadier-footmen, will surprise and mystify me to my dying day: for though I know the equipage is only jobbed, and all the Jenkins people are on board wages, yet those three men and the carriage must represent an expense of six hundred a year at the very least—and then there ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... new experiment of a blase man, with the object of finding out what you can bring a crazy cripple to." (You picked out on purpose, he said, the lowest creature, a cripple, for ever covered with disgrace and blows, knowing, too, that this creature was dying of comic love for you, and set to work to mystify her completely on purpose, simply to see what would come of it.) "Though, how is a man so particularly to blame for the fancies of a crazy woman, to whom he had hardly uttered two sentences the whole time. There are things, Varvara Petrovna, of which it is not only impossible to speak sensibly, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... trifler. He would round off a logical argument with a familiar example, hitting the nail squarely on the head and driving it home, and they called him a buffoon. Big wigs and little wigs were agreed that he lowered the dignity of debate; as if debates were intended to mystify, and not to clarify truth. Yet he went on and on, and never backward, until his time was come, when his genius, fully developed, rose to the great exigencies intrusted to his hands. Where did he get his style? Ask Shakespeare and Burns where they ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... his cheerful breakfast, was busied with thoughts of the coming arrival of Hugh Johnstone's secret foe. "I must have money from her at once to swing Ram Lal's Private Inquiry Bureau and to mystify these quid nuncs here. For I must entertain the clubmen a bit. It's as well to begin, also, to pot down a bit of her money for the future. She shall pay her way, as she goes." And, with a view to the further cementing of his rising social pyramid, he planned a very neat little dinner of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... far night, when he awoke to sudden and hungry aloneness, he would let his arms feel their hunger for her. The vision of her would be flowers and music and sunlight and time and all things perfect to mystify and delight, to satisfy and—greatest of all boons—to unsatisfy. The thought of her became a rest-house for all weariness; a haven where he was free to choose his nook and lie down away from all that was not her, which was ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... will kindly give me your attention for a few moments I will be happy to introduce to your favorable notice an entertainer of world-wide fame who will, I am sure, not only mystify you but, at the same time, interest you. You have witnessed the death-defying dives of the Demon Discobolus; you have laughed with the comical clowns; you have thrilled with the hurrying horses; and you have gasped at the ponderous pachyderms. Now you are to be shown a trick which has baffled the ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... substitute. This was, in nine cases out of ten, the eminently unromantic cavalier servitude of fact. The high-flown, complimentary language, the profound bowing and hand-kissing of the period, combined to mystify strangers as to its real significance. Sometimes, when there was really a lover in the question, the cavalier servente must have been a serious impediment; he was always La plante ... a contrecarrer un pauvre tiers, in the words of the witty President de Brosses, who, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... was resolved to incur no more of the maltreatment which had plunged me into darkness. Now the Deer Men traded with the Sea Men, and the Sea Men with the whites, especially the whalers. So later I discovered a deck of cards in the possession of one of the women, and I proceeded to mystify the Chow Chuen with a few commonplace tricks. Likewise, with fitting solemnity, I perpetrated upon them the little I knew of parlor legerdemain. Result: I was appreciated at once, and was better fed ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... served to mystify the world to a greater degree. The only thing that came to light was the cause of the bodies' bonelike rigidity. In some inexplicable way the bones in the seamen had dissolved, and according to appearances, while the bodies were plastic, had flattened ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... decline the invitation to visit the sealer that evening? Or was the Spaniard less hardened than the Jew, who refrained not from supping at the board of him whom the same night he meant to betray? What imported all those day-long enigmas and contradictions, except they were intended to mystify, preliminary to some stealthy blow? Atufal, the pretended rebel, but punctual shadow, that moment lurked by the threshold without. He seemed a sentry, and more. Who, by his own confession, had stationed him there? Was the negro ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... who bearest on thy breast our highest talisman, canst Thou suppose that the Phoenicians would do aught to injure thee? But only think if danger threatened thee, or if Thou hadst the wish to mystify enemies, would not such a man be of service? The Phoenician only wished to show ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... have the definiteness of meaning of logical thought; it may suggest rather than explicate; its music is compatible with vagueness. But vagueness is not obscurity; the poet should always make us feel that we understand him; he should not seek to mystify us, or keep us guessing at his meaning. Yet, since the poet operates with words and not with mere sounds, great subtlety and precision of thought are possible in poetry, although not argument and dialectic. Poetry ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... had found it, he had not reported his find when telephoning to Captain Osborne; or else the latter had gone to great lengths to mystify Lanyard. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... his breath, but had enough sense to lie down again in the straw, and feign slumber; happily the priest did not concern himself with the loft, but the absence of the bird he had expected to find, caged and waiting, seemed to mystify him. He remained for several minutes lost in thought, then setting the lantern on one box, moved others around, strewed them with a thick layer of hay he found on the floor, and lying down with his cloak pulled well over ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... to me an insult, and I felt very angry; but a spirit of revenge quickly whispered to me the best way to mystify them, and the idea made me very joyful. I answered so badly all the questions propounded in Latin by the examiner, I made so many solecisms, that he felt it his duty to send me to an inferior class of grammar, in which, to my great delight, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... happiness of mankind are at stake; and the welfare of succeeding generations will, in no small degree, be influenced by the establishment of sound principles in education at the present time. Nothing, therefore, should be allowed to mystify or cripple that science, upon which the spread and the permanence of all useful ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... signal, through our secret passageway, into my boudoir, and from there you will pass, when the way is clear, into the ladies' dressing-room, and thence into the ballroom. With this fan of mine in your hand, you will, after some instructions from me, be able to puzzle and mystify all whom you address, while no one will be in a position even to hazard a surmise as to your identity. When you tire of the sport, come to me, pretend to tease me, and then turn and run away. I will give chase, and under cover of this diversion you will slip out of the room, ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... mastered the savage mystery of shorthand, and make a respectable income by reporting the debates in Parliament for a morning newspaper. Night after night I record predictions that never come to pass, professions that are never fulfilled, explanations that are only meant to mystify. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... carry the ship out, and, as this was all we wanted, no one was disposed to be very critical. A word was said about the launch, which the mate had ordered to be dropped astern, out of the way, and the explanation seemed to mystify the captain. In the meanwhile, the pork was boiling ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... my mind to be an invention of the learned to mystify this poor world, I was not sorry to see my uncle suffering the pangs of mystification. At least, so it seemed to me, judging from his fingers, which were beginning ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... of wrapping things up in mystery? But women delight in it! The more they can mystify and mislead and perplex you, and leave their real or their possible meaning doubtful and involved, the greater the pleasure they have. They will carry on a conversation for hours by hints, suggestions, ambiguous terms, allusions, phrases that may mean anything or nothing, and then leave at the ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... with the second party, and conceive that we must cease speaking of 'the mind,' and discontinue enlisting in our investigations a spiritual essence, the existence of which cannot be proved, but which tends to mystify and perplex a question sufficiently clear if we confine ourselves to the consideration of organised matter—its forms—its changes—and its aberrations from ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... allowed him in the end to have things very much his own way. But to the surprise of everybody, the next time Jack had a party of friends with him, he rose up, and putting on that peculiarly sanctimonious expression which his countenance generally assumed when he had a mind to confuse and mystify his auditors by a string of enigmas and Jesuitical reservations, made a long, unintelligible, and inconsistent harangue, the drift of which no one could well understand, except that it bore that "both the Justices and the Quarter-sessions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... himself and life! Would he think himself an abstract intelligence, out of space and time? What a riddle his physical sensations would be to him! Or, suppose him to meet with another being brought up in the same way; how they would mystify each other! Would they learn to feel shame, love, hate? or do the passions only grow in sunshine? Would they ever laugh? Would they hatch plots against each other, lie, deceive? Would they have ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... startle her, but she asked, rather quietly, "What do you mean?" and she added, as if to punish him for trying to mystify her: "I've heard that it requires gifts for that. Isn't there ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... is done. He says that it is my duty to tell him, and that he will compel me under some of his beloved Defence of the Realm Regulations. But the rack could not force me to give away my precious secret. Cherish it and use it. You will not tell, for you love to mystify the ruffian as ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... mystify you," he assured me. "But the truth is so hard to believe sometimes that in the present case I hesitate to divulge it. Did you ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... but word perfect and hopelessly forgot or confused their business, which, more especially in a play of such a type as this romantic comedy so full of busy and complicated detail demanding close and continuous attention, was enough to mystify the audience completely and foredoom the piece to failure. The worst sinner was Haunce himself, who hardly spoke one of his lines but gagged from start to finish. Not unnaturally, Mrs. Behn resented this and avows that ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... Gladstone upon the Irish church in 1868. Instead of this, all was equivocation. The Derbyite, as was well said, was protectionist in a county, neutral in a small town, free trader in a large one. He was for Maynooth in Ireland, and against it in Scotland. Mr. Disraeli did his best to mystify the agricultural elector by phrases about set-offs and compensations and relief of burdens, 'seeming to loom in the future.' He rang the changes on mysterious new principles of taxation, but what they were to be, he did not disclose. The great change since ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... raised his hind-quarters, and in a brace of seconds buried himself in the earth. The vultures pecked him behind as he disappeared, but the odd manner of his exit, like that of his entree, seemed to mystify them, and several of them stood for ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... to be true: do you suppose the love to dazzle and mystify is not as strong with some natures as that of gold and power with others? Zicci has a moral ostentation; and the same character that makes him rival kings in expenditure makes him not disdain to be wondered at even ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... this friend of old Van's would never really understand him; though that was a thing he at times liked people as much for as he liked them little for it at others. It was in fact when he most liked that he was on the whole most tempted to mystify. ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... do me a favour," said Daireh. "A lady—a friend of mine—wants to send a valentine to a man in Ireland, and is anxious to mystify him. She has got me to direct it, and would like it to have the London post-mark. Will you drop ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... first person I should have encountered was himself, and that, too, in his own Palace. The reason of this was, that big men in this country, to keep up their dignity, have several names, and thus mystify the traveller. ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... is a third class of these men, who, to arrive at distinction in a turbulent profession, sharpen their mercenary mouths to mystify the truth, and by prostituting their countenances and their vile barking, work their way with the public. These men, whenever the judge is embarrassed and perplexed, entangle the matter before him with further difficulties, and take pains to prevent any arrangement, carefully involving ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... patriarchal costumes, slow to disappear, delight you. But as time passes, the impression is spoiled. The reverse side of things begins to show. This which you thought was as true antique as family heirlooms, is naught but trickery to mystify the credulous. Everything is labeled, all is for sale, from the earth to the inhabitants. These primitives have become the most consummate of sharpers. Given your money, they have resolved the problem of getting it with the least expense to themselves. On all sides are ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... McClellan does not know if the whole army has crossed or only part of it has crossed. He does not know whether we are going to move against Washington, or move against Baltimore, or invade Pennsylvania. Always mystify, mislead, and deceive the enemy ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... everyone has noticed, is fond of quibbles and word-play, and of 'conceits' and turns of thought such as are common in the poets whom Johnson called Metaphysical. Sometimes, no doubt, he plays with words and ideas chiefly in order to mystify, thwart and annoy. To some extent, again, as we may see from the conversation where Rosencrantz and Guildenstern first present themselves (II. ii. 227), he is merely following the fashion of the young courtiers about him, just as in his love-letter to Ophelia[70] he uses for the most part the fantastic ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... to mystify, but in Lavengro he had overreached himself. "Are you really in existence?" wrote one correspondent who was unknown to Borrow, "for I also have occasionally doubted whether things exist, as you describe your own feelings in ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... nodded Scott, "is as good a shot as I am. He brought down the first antelope. We get along with the Sioux all right, too, don't we, Bucks?" he demanded, appealing to his fellow-hunter. "We ate supper with them last night," he added to mystify his listeners, "and camped with ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... much as possible with people, and sitting almost all day in the bar-room to study character. Sometimes he would endeavor to contribute his share to the general amusement,—as by growling comically, to provoke and mystify a dog; and by some bashful and ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... very interesting experiment, and will mystify onlookers who do not understand the reason for the apparent paradox, which is this. The air blown through the reel strikes a very limited part of the nearer side of the halfpenny. In order to escape, it has to make a right-angle turn and pass between coin and reel, and, while ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... little escapade," she said to herself; "that young man certainly thought I was a little black-eyed beauty, and when he does see Elise, of course he'll think she's the one. I believe I'll call him up and mystify him a little more. It's all right, because I've really been introduced to him, and if he doesn't remember me, I can't help it! Probably he'll be out anyway; but I'll ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... pet him yourself for once. I hate the sight of him; it has made mischief between Edouard and me, my being so attentive to him. Edouard is jealous, and I cannot wonder. After all, what right have I to mystify him who honors me ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... were not tolerant of the people who made time pass heavily with them, and they revenged their own ennui on all around them. How he would snub the old man for the son's pretensions, and sneer at the young man for his disproportioned ambition; and last of all, how he would mystify poor Kate, till she never knew whether he cared to fatten calves and turkeys, or was simply drawing her on to little details, which he was to dramatise one day ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Gard grew wary. This knowing and recent familiarity was not becoming entirely agreeable. It would be prudent to mystify the son. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... abduction been, after all, concerted not by him but by Mr. Thomasson and his confederates? The setting down near Pomeroy's gate, the reception at his house, the rough, hasty suit paid to her—were these all parts of a drama cunningly arranged to mystify her? And was he innocent? Was he still her lover, true, faithful, almost ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... most German officers and did not understand French, or thought it a good joke to mystify a poor devil of a soldier. He smiled and raised his hand, indicating by his motion that the other was to keep following the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... too, Mr. Richard Avenel came out; and as the whisper had circulated round the table that he was X. Y., he was listened to with a profound respect, which greatly elevated his spirits. Nay, when the wit tried once to show him up or mystify him, Dick answered with a bluff spirit, that, though very coarse, was found so humorous by Lord Spendquick and other gentlemen similarly situated in the money-market, that they turned the laugh against the wit, and silenced him for the rest of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... mysteries to each other," she suggested. "I mystify you because I wonder, and you mystify me because you don't guess why I wonder. We'll let it go ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... mystify them a little, sir," observed Paul. "We should do that if we hoisted the French flag ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... In the various prefaces, and especially in the general preface to Lothair (of October 1870), Disraeli has fully explained the origin and aim of these and his other works. It is written, as usual, with his tongue in his cheek, in that vein of semi-bombastic paradox which was designed to mystify the simple and to amuse the acuter reader. But there is an inner seriousness in it all; and, as it has a certain correspondence with his public career and achievements, it must be taken as substantially true. Coningsby ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Not to mystify you, when there is no need for it, I will say that the scheme Dick had hit upon was simple enough. If you recall Kipling's famous story you know that two drummer boys, of a British regiment in India, when the main body was being defeated by a horde of natives, ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... things that may never be explained, but one thing Miller did always mystify us. How did he succeed in ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... be for Dr ——, and Professor ——, if they might be allowed to mystify their readers in Greek! though, to do them justice, they have turned the Queen's English to good account for that purpose, and have produced passages which first-class men, at an Athenian University, might possibly construe, but which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... Divine Speaker already quoted foretells the partial, (if not the entire,) obscuration even of true Doctrine, in that pathetic exclamation of His,—"When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find the faith upon the Earth[137]?" ... In the face of all this, it is to confuse and mystify the ordinary reader to draw such a picture of the last century as Mr. Pattison has drawn here. As dismal a view might be easily taken of the first, of the second, of the third, of the fourth, of the fifth century. What Mr. Newman once designated as "ancient, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... tricks, Prime," cried Tom, suspecting the negro of an intention to mystify them with a jargon like that he had palmed ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... "that I want your word you'll get that photograph into my hands by to-morrow afternoon, no matter what transpires in the meantime. And look here, Carruthers, don't think I'm playing the silly thickhead, and trying to mystify you. I'm no detective or anything like that. I've just got an idea that apparently hasn't occurred to any one else—and, of course, I may be all wrong. If I am, I'm not going to say a word even to you, because it wouldn't be playing fair with some one else; if I'm right the MORNING ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... expressive as in her adorable gaiety. Like a clear fresh spring, it is ever brimming up from the heart into her mischief-loving eyes. By her side merely technically young people seem heavy and serious. And nothing amuses her more than gravely to mystify, or even bewilderingly shock, some proper acquaintance, or some respectable strangers, with her carefully designed mock improprieties of speech or action. To look at the loveliest of grand-mothers, it is naturally somewhat perplexing to the uninitiated visitor to hear ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... for gospel. However, literary history must be built on the evidence before it, and the actual text of The Feast at Solhoug, and of Olaf Liljekrans must be taken in spite of anything their author chose to say nearly thirty years afterwards. Great poets, without the least wish to mystify, often, in the cant phrase, "cover their tracks." Tennyson, in advanced years, denied that he had ever been influenced by Shelley or Keats. So Ibsen disclaimed any effect upon his style of the lyrical dramas of Hertz. But we must appeal from the arrogance of old age to the ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... called, and I was asked who was my spokesman. Having pointed to Kolimbota, who knew their dialect best, the palaver began in due form. I explained the real objects I had in view, without any attempt to mystify or appear in any other character than my own, for I have always been satisfied that, even though there were no other considerations, the truthful way of dealing with the uncivilized is unquestionably the best. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... steadily working upon the mystery of certain amazing occurrences at De Gex's house in Stretton Street. By slow degrees, and after travelling up and down Europe, I have at last succeeded in finding just a streak of daylight through the impenetrable barrier so cleverly contrived in order to mystify and mislead me. If you desire to ascertain the great ramifications of the desperate plots conceived by De Gex and his friends, and take steps to combat them, it will be best to allow his accomplice Sanz further liberty. Keep vigilant watch, but do not allow him ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... investigated the matter, and discovered how his escape was made. It was by means of this key. Here is a memorandum and a plan describing how they are to be applied. I have taken them from the Count's escritoire. And now, once more I must leave to your ingenuity how to mystify the people at the Dragon Volant. Be sure you try the keys first, to see that the locks turn freely. I will have my jewels ready. You, whatever we divide, had better bring your money, because it may be many months before you can revisit Paris, or disclose our place of residence to ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... contrivance we managed to puzzle and mystify the uninitiated, English and French alike. The intelligent reader, who sees it all in print, will not be so ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... inconsistent with what everybody assured him was the manner of life—with what the necessities of the case led him to believe would be the condition of spirit—of the other? If the tale were to be published, the fun would lie, not in attempting to mystify the reader, but in watching with him the mystification of the hero,—in showing how he played at hoodman-blind with his destiny, and how surprised he was, when, the bandage stripped from his eyes, he saw whom ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... intention of making Mr. angry, but he did get angry. He left off speaking to me by my Christian name; he called me by my surname. He said: "Let me tell you, Miss Gracedieu, it is not becoming in a young lady to mystify ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... This is the kind of dialectic that goes on at every Church Congress—men who know in their hearts that the "inspired" anthropology of the Bible is contradicted, fully, flatly, irreconcilably, by the undeniable facts discovered by science, continue to mystify themselves and their hearers alike by all the pleadings, glosses, evasions and refinements at their command, with a view to what they call a "reconciliation between science ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... Mademoiselle de Chateaudun has gone away to avoid you, she will naturally suppose that you will endeavor to follow her. Of course, she has taken every precaution to preserve her incognita—changing her name, for instance—which would be sufficient to mystify the police, who, until applied to by you, have had no object in watching her movements. The proof that the police are mistaken is the exactitude of the information that they have given you. It is too much like the ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... appreciation. It must be a curious reckoning which, in face of such a catena as this, stretching its links over the whole period, maintains that England wanted Germans to teach her how to admire the writer whom Germans have done more to mystify and distort than even ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... drifted a few rosy clouds, part of that changeless nature which alone did not repel or mystify these two beleaguered waifs, these chance survivors, this man, this woman, left alone together by ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... "They mystify most people, you will find. Only a person who has been there can understand the situation. And he who has been there does not know the frontier line either, for there is, in fact, no exact boundary. The Pamir ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... make me comprehend that this was only a necessary consequence of the undercurrent of the water, but with my usual stupidity upon such matters I got but a vague idea from his scientific explanation, and certainly shall not mystify you with my ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... have fancied that some of their orders were just thrown in to mystify us, to undermine our morale. Possibly they stipulated we must leave this point at eight-thirty so they would know exactly when to ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... not appear to awaken the distrust he had secretly apprehended it might. On the contrary, he was asked to repeat his account, and all who heard it, though a good deal embellished this time, appeared disposed to believe what he said. Encouraged by this success, the poor fellow undertook to mystify a little concerning the Reef; but here he soon found himself met with plump denials. In order to convince him that deception would be of no use, he was now taken a short distance and confronted ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... resume their wonted courses, and the self-conscious Tinker-Quixote takes the road once more and passes on to other achievements: a mad preacher to succour, a priest to baffle, some tramp to pound into a jelly of humility, an applewoman to mystify, a horse-chaunter to swindle, a pugilist to study and help and portray. But whatever it be, Lavengro emerges from the ordeal modestly, unobtrusively, quietly, most consciously magnificent. Circumstantial as Defoe, rich in combinations ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... and—the graveyard. He had discredited the story the girls had told as he would discredit anything which pertained to the supernatural. But now he had learned something which put an entirely different meaning to the adventures the two girls had related. It is easy enough to mystify the simple human mind, but dogs' instincts are purely practical, and, as Hervey argued, ghosts do not leave a hot scent. Neche had lit upon a hot scent. At first the man had been doubtful as to what ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... no such thing as mystery. That depends on your point of view. It is only people who are easily startled or confused by unusual things who are easily mystified. I don't mean to say that it would be impossible to mystify me under any circumstances. For instance, if the man in the moon should suddenly jump down on the earth and give me a brick of green cheese, and then jump back again before I could say 'thank you' I presume ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... prejudice, but as due to a gleam of insight? What clew to the case does Adriana's meekness afford? Or else of the relationship of the Abbess to the twins? Why does she so peremptorily keep the man from his wife? Is not this conduct devised to mystify the audience rather ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... secretly denounced and afterwards found innocent, then it would only mystify the French police; the policy pursued towards the Surete, as well as towards Sir Hugh, was a clever move on ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... apologize to you. I mean on behalf of the company. I think it was wrong to offer you money. I think it was more wrong to mystify you with medical language and call the thing delirium. I have more respect for conjurer's patter than for doctor's patter. They are both meant to stupify; but yours only to stupify for a moment. Now I put it to you in plain words and on plain human Christian grounds. Here is ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... random shot might not have hit the mark. I began to question whether my share in the proceedings was quite as harmless a one as I had thought it. It might be all in the way of the Sergeant's business to mystify an honest woman by wrapping her round in a network of lies but it was my duty to have remembered, as a good Protestant, that the father of lies is the Devil—and that mischief and the Devil are never far apart. Beginning ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... began to talk, one's respect for him began to grow. He talked well and to the point, and with a tone of voice that could command where command was possible, persuade where persuasion was required, mystify when mystification was needed, and express with accuracy the tone of an obedient humble servant when servility was thought to be expedient. We will now accompany him on his ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... get fodder, in such impassable weather, for such a herd of horses; but he said that they lived upon straw and sawdust; and he knew that I did not believe him, any more than about his star-shavings. And this was just the thing he loved—to mystify honest people, and be a great deal too knowing. However, I may judge him harshly, because I ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... and family relations. Both grew up without the society of brothers or sisters or playfellows; but whilst Hoffmann was a son of the town, Hippel's early days had been spent in the country. In another respect, too, they presented a striking contrast in behaviour; Hoffmann's chief delight was to mystify and tease his uncle Otto, but Hippel was most scrupulous in paying to all the proper meed of respect which he conceived he owed them. Once when Hippel reproached his friend about his behaviour towards his uncle, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... She loved him for his extraordinary callow youth—which had carried the chaste chivalry of sixteen to the age of twice sixteen; she loved his little occasional tender gleams of womanliness. . . . And he was so easy to mystify and tease. She felt the warmth and the taut muscles of his arm round her body as he led her home across St. James' Park, her head on his shoulder, sleeping, ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... particularly vulnerable and is subject to continuous attack. One says it should be held low throughout the compass. Another says it should rise as the pitch rises, and still another, that it should drop as the pitch rises. Instructions of this kind do not enlighten, they mystify. ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... intention; we consider that the interest of this our narration of bygone events is quite sufficient, without condescending to what is called claptrap; and there are so many people in our narrative continually labouring under deception of one kind or another, that we need not add to it by attempting to mystify our readers; who, on the contrary, we shall take with us familiarly by the hand, and, like a faithful historian, lead them through the events in the order in which they occurred, and point out to them how they all lead to one common ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to mystify you. No, it's not the least use asking questions, Clary; but mind, you must not tease me any more about running ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... to be a mother of sons in Homeburg. I worked in the post-office for a year once—handed out mail—and I got to know just exactly what most of the mothers in town wanted. I could please them with a new magazine and mystify them with a circular or a business letter. But if I wanted to light them up until they took the shadows out of the corners as they went out, I would give them a letter from a son, way off somewhere, making ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... with a sly quirk of the mouth, and meaning to mystify his wooden-headed questioner still more, he answered: "Dead-struck? Dead- drunk, you mean. I'm a Nature's dipsomaniac—as you can see," he added with a sly ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... He might mystify the public, but there was one whose initials were S.S. whom it would need a cleverer cheat than Cruden Reginald, ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... Another a wild night in wanton joy would spend. Poor fools the muses' fair regards Why court for such a paltry end? I tell you, give them more, still more, 'tis all I ask, Thus you will ne'er stray widely from the goal; Your audience seek to mystify, cajole;— To satisfy them—that's a harder task. What ails ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... histories together form but one—that of NUTRITION, or the act of nourishing; in other words, of supporting life. This is what I called eating at first, that I might not mystify you at the beginning with hard words. But now that we are growing learned ourselves, we must accustom ourselves to the terms in use among learned people, especially when they are not more formidable than those I ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... pardon. "With the heart man believeth unto righteousness." It is however of the highest importance that the thought of its simplicity be made prominent. Let us not undervalue religious knowledge; for to some extent it is absolutely necessary. But do not mystify the plan of mercy, and perplex the anxious seeker by requirements which the gospel has not made prominent. Many a poor sinner exercises faith in Christ who cannot give a philosophical disquisition as to its nature. It is not necessary to be thoroughly acquainted with the science ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... clearer? And yet how men have contrived to mystify the whole question by vague declamation about the rights of States! As if those rights of States that were meant to be protected, were not carefully guarded by the article itself, and especially by the proviso ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... forgiven and delivered from levity and folly—to be kept humble and mindful of death. "It is ill tearing up weeds by the roots," she said to herself plainly, when she had risen from her knees, "and I am vain and volatile, and I like to mystify and tease ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... reasoning that can be used only where real grievances exist. But there are no real grievances in the case of the tenants. They may mystify weak heads in the instance of the Manor leases, with their quarter sales, fat hens, loads of wood and days' works; but my leases are all on three lives, with rent payable in money, and with none of the conditions that are called feudal, though ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper |
