"Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the fruits of his own limited capacity among the grievances of the oppressed nationality to which he belonged. Years of want, his little dilapidated dwelling—granted him in his capacity of village teacher but shoved away into an obscure corner of Hetfalu—his meagre barley-bread, his sordid frock-coat—all these things aggravated the anguish of ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... not a great blessing that the Marchesino should be prevented from throwing himself away in that manner? The first match in Ravenna to be carried off by an obscure and plebeian Venetian artist. Truly it was all for the best ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... their engagement, Richard Barry promptly made trouble—the very worst kind of trouble. He descended on Bridgeport and completely overwhelmed poor Miss Sara in his wrath. He laughed at the idea of countenancing an engagement between a child like Marcella and an obscure country doctor. And he carried Marcella off ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... entertained by the Gipsies in England are derived from the English peasantry, were brought from India, or picked up on the way. This must be left for ethnologists more industrious and better informed than myself to decide. In any case, the possible common Aryan source will tend to obscure the truth, just as it often does the derivation of Rommany words. But nothing can detract from the inexpressibly quaint spirit of Gipsy originality in which these odd credos are expressed, or surpass the strangeness of the ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... this country, seen any churchyard comparable to this one; happy, serene dead, to sleep amid such blossoms and consecration! Good taste prevailed here; distinguished men lay beneath memorial stones that came no higher than your waist or shoulder; there was a total absence of obscure grocers reposing under gigantic obelisks; to earn a monument here you must win a battle, or do, at any rate, something more than adulterate sugar and oil. The particular monument by which young John Mayrant and I found ourselves ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... Obscure and without place or name, She gloried in another's fame. Poor, plain and humble in her dress, She thrilled when beauty and success And wealth passed by, on pleasure bent; They made earth seem so opulent. Yet none of quicker sympathy, When need or sorrow ...
— New Thought Pastels • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... cases the causes are obscure. Chronic digestive and intestinal disorders, anaemia, chlorosis, continued exposure to heat or cold, menstrual and uterine irregularities, and the too free use of spirituous liquors, tea, etc. are often ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... what they decided should be their destination, almost at the end of the road and in a dense bit of wooded section which would obscure them from enemy observers, they brought their tractor to a stop. With pick and shovel they began building an earthen oven, in which they might cook their food, and from which they might keep reasonably comfortable, without ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... populous empire, under cloud of night and distance and utter poverty, Mark that—of utter poverty. Wealth is power; but it is a jest in comparison of poverty. Splendour is power; but it is a joke to obscurity. To be poor, to be obscure, to be a baker's apprentice or a tailor's journeyman, throws a power about a man, clothes him with attributes of ubiquity, really with those privileges of concealment which in the ring of Gyges were but fabulous. Is it a king, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... cannot be called a conspicuous literary character; indeed few mortals that have left so visible a work, or footmark, behind them can be more obscure. One other of those vanished Existences, whose work has not yet vanished;—almost a pathetic phenomenon, were not the whole world full of such! The builders of Stonehenge, for example:—or, alas, what say we, Stonehenge and builders? The writers of the Universal Review and Homer's ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... riding in long sweeping semicircles, methodically searched for Purdy's trail. With set face and narrowed eyes the man studied every foot of the ground, at times throwing himself from the saddle for closer scrutiny of some obscure mark or misplaced stone. So great was his anxiety to overtake the pair that his slow pace became a veritable torture. And at times his struggle to keep from putting spurs to his horse and dashing wildly on, amounted almost to ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... argument would have been occupied with hopes rather than achievements. Not that it would be literally true to say that music was wholly a negligible quantity in the homes of higher education until the twentieth century, but the seat assigned to it in the few institutions where it was found was an obscure and lowly one, and the influence radiating therefrom reached so small a fragment of the academic community that no one who was not engaged in a careful, sympathizing search could have been aware of its existence. It ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... added a few short notes in the first Appendix. It is not, I think, desirable otherwise to modify the form or add to the matter of a book as it passes through successive editions; I have, therefore, only mended the wording of some obscure sentences; with which exception the text remains, and will remain, in its original form, which I had carefully considered. Should the public find the book useful, and call for further editions of it, such additional notes as may be necessary will be always placed in the first Appendix, where ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... the departure from usage by the Austro-Hungarian press in prominently reporting the remarks of the most obscure Serbian newspapers, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... to me, in unrolling a compact Latin sentence, as if I were writing out in words the meaning of an algebraic formula. A single word often requires three or four as its English equivalent. Yet the language is not made obscure by compression. On the contrary, there is no other language in which it is so hard to bury thought or to conceal ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... latter's lectures he became acquainted with Middendorf. At first he obtained little from either. Schleiermacher seemed to him too temporizing and obscure. "He makes veils." He thought the young Westphalian, at their first meeting, merely "a nice fellow." But in time he learned to understand the great theologian, and the "favourite teacher" noticed him and took him into ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... humourists are prone; which lie indeed deep in their nature; and from which they derive their genial sympathy with eccentric characters that enables them to find motives for what to other men is hopelessly obscure, to exalt into types of humanity what the world turns impatiently aside at, and to enshrine in a form for eternal homage and love such whimsical absurdity as Captain Toby Shandy's. But Dickens was too conscious of these excesses from time to time, not ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... us were grouped at the port anchor davit, staring with no less assiduity, but with far less hope on the obscure horizon. Islands we beheld in plenty, but they were of 'such stuff as dreams are made on,' and vanished at a wink, only to appear in other places; and by and by not only islands, but refulgent and revolving lights began to stud the darkness; lighthouses of the mind ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scurry of wings. Queer glowing balls of yellow connected with obscure, shadowy figures stared at him. The wings winnowed the air, and again he ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... the Nile. It had reference to the waters of Meribah, the waters of strife, and how they would cause his death in the desert, before he had completed his task of leading the people into the promised land. Pharaoh, misled by the obscure vision of his astrologers, thought that the future redeemer of Israel was to lose his life by drowning, and to make sure that the boy whose appearance was foretold by the astrologers might not escape his fate, he had ordered all boys, even the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... discuss whether this time of anticipation and desire, of endeavor and partial success, in which the new struggles with the old without conquering it, and the opposite tendencies in the conflicting views of the world interplay in a way at once obscure and wayward, is to be classed as the epilogue of the old era or the prologue of the new. The simple solution to take it as a transition period, no longer mediaeval but not yet modern, has met with fairly general acceptance. Nicolas of Cusa (1401-64) was the first to announce fundamental principles ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... best he could adopt about here, with large black whiskers. He is stopping about three miles off, he said, in some obscure hiding-place. And now," continued Barbara, "I want you to advise me; had I better inform mamma that Richard is here, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... translator has preserved Pedro Sancho's spelling of proper names, calling attention to the modern equivalent on the first occurrence of each name. In a few instances, where the text was unusually obscure, close translation ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... exercendas rationales mentes figurata et obscure posita."—Aug. De Unit. Eccl. c. v.—"Obscuritates Divinarum Scripturarum quas exercitationis nostr caus DEUS esse voluit."—Id. Ep. lix. ad Paulinum, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... have passed unobserved through life like millions of other men, looked upon as possessing a good-natured and affectionate disposition, but without either elevation of mind or brightness of intellect. During many years of his life the Duke of Clarence was an obscure individual, without consideration, moving in a limited circle, and altogether forgotten by the great world. He resided at Bushey with Mrs. Jordan, and brought up his numerous children with very tender affection: with them, and for them, he seemed entirely to live. The cause of his separation from ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... a rack of tempest-driven clouds hanging in the sky, momentarily awaiting the transforming violence of a fresh onset. Sometimes continents of pale light are separated by narrow straits of comparative darkness; elsewhere obscure spaces are hemmed in by luminous inlets ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... together, the Duc d'Orleans was foully assassinated by a Burgundian partisan. The Duke of Burgundy, though he at first withdrew from Paris, speedily returned, avowed the act, and was received with plaudits by the mob. For a few years the strife continued, obscure and bad; a great league of French princes and nobles was made to stem the success of the Burgundians; and it was about this time that the Armagnac name became common. Paris, however, dominated by the "Cabochians," ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... sun was in the tree-tops, and a softer or sweeter light could not have been chosen for such a ceremony. Most of the fields still lay in the soft brightness of the hour, though the forest was rapidly getting the more obscure look of night. A broad and gloomy margin was spreading from the boundary of the woods, and, here and there, a solitary tree cast its shadow on the meadows without its limits, throwing a dark ragged line, in bold relief, on the glow of the sun's ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... a Papal "Chapel" in St. Peter's that morning, with a procession of white vestments in honour of the Mass of the Resurrection, but the Pope did not attend. He sat alone in his simple chamber, with curtains drawn across the marble columns to obscure the bed, fingering the crucifix which hung from his neck, and waiting for the ringing of the ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... escutcheons, and here and there, in the spaces between them, brown pictures, which I perceived to be bad, in battered frames, were suspended. With the exception of several straw-bottomed chairs with their backs to the wall, the grand obscure vista contained nothing else to minister to effect. It was evidently never used save as a passage, and little even as that. I may add that by the time the door opened again through which the maidservant had escaped, my eyes had grown used ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... story that, when Thetis laid him in the fire, one of his lips, which he had licked, was consumed (Tzetzes on Lycophron, 178); "restrainer of the people,' (eche-laos); "healer of sorrow'' (ache-loios); "the obscure'' (connected with achlus, "mist''); "snakeborn'' (echis), the snake being one of the chief forms taken by Thetis. The most generally received view makes him a god of light, especially of the sun or of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Newton and Jeremy Taylor, Descartes and Spinoza, Leibnitz and Wesley, Spencer and Newman. And even these have authority not through any divine right of genius or acquired claim of learning, but because they illumine and interpret obscure suggestions of our own thoughts. Indeed, to the sacrament of historic communion with the past, as well as to the chief rite of the Church, the apostolic injunction is applicable: "Let a man examine himself; and so let him eat of ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... yearning to see his old home again, to hear his native language spoken, to hear the folk songs and familiar German airs sung once more and to look upon the faces of his fellow-countrymen again. Now that he knew his child was happy, he felt that he would be content simply to sit placidly in an obscure corner of the market-place in Leipsic, and watch the ebb and flow of life as it is lived over there in the beloved Fatherland. He did not ask to take part in it or to be one with his countrymen; all he asked was the privilege of watching their life for the few remaining ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... borrowed strength and courage from Bessie's vigorous counsels. She felt braced by mere contact with such a strong, healthy organization. She was always less fretful and impatient when Bessie was near; her cheery influence cleared away many a cloud that threatened to obscure Hatty's horizon. ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... that Mrs. Shiffney came into a box at the back of the stalls followed by Jonson Ramer. Without taking off her sable coat she sat down in a corner and looked quickly over the obscure space before her. Immediately she saw Charmian and the dressmaker, who sat within a few yards of her. Claude was not visible. Mrs. Shiffney sat back a little farther in the box, and whispered to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... thy wings When far away upon a barbarous strand, In fight unequal, by an obscure hand, Fell the last scion of thy brood ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... of praising Strauss the Writer. I sought and sought, but my purpose remained unfulfilled. Meanwhile, however, another duty seemed to press itself strongly on my mind—that of enumerating the solecisms, the strained metaphors, the obscure abbreviations, the instances of bad taste, and the distortions which I encountered; and these were of such a nature that I dare do no more than select a few examples of them from among a collection which is too bulky to be given in full. By ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... creative art, but we must nip in the bud our dreams of discovering it. If the critics take up a scientific attitude no good will come of it: they will waste a dozen years, write a lot of rubbish, make the subject more obscure than ever—and nothing more. It is always a good thing to think scientifically, but the trouble is that scientific thinking about creative art will be bound to degenerate in the end into searching for ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... we had no trouble in trailing them down the Arkansas river, which they had crossed at Sand Creek, and then had gone up the latter stream, in the direction of Denver, to which place they were undoubtedly bound. When nearing Denver their trail became so obscure that we at last lost it; but by inquiring of the settlers along the road which they had taken, ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... months, high interest rates have had a severe impact on the nation's housing market. Yet the current pressures and uncertainties should not obscure the achievements of the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... observe, is most needed where it is least likely to be regarded, i. e., in circumstances where the voice of conscience is not so decided as in the case of temptations to palpable vice. Our danger is often greatest, where we have to resist only an obscure sense of right and wrong, in seeking the lower gratifications of life. So much the more scrupulous ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... honest poverty, That hangs his head, and a' that? The coward slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that! For a' that, and a' that, Our toils obscure, and a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a number of illustrious obscure are going about. But I have still something else to tell you. I'm going to set my ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Of Literature are closed To me a bard obscure I Have a consolation The Copyreaders crude and rough Can't monkey with my Humble stuff and ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... gilte* tresses clear; *golden Esther, lay thou thy meekness all adown; Hide, Jonathan, all thy friendly mannere, Penelope, and Marcia Catoun, Make of your wifehood no comparisoun; Hide ye your beauties, Isoude and Helene; My lady comes, that all this may distain.* *outdo, obscure ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... this frank and unaffected expression of some obscure disgust with his own present position had no other implication, that the Colonel did not except to it. Yet the man did not go on. He stopped and seemed lost in sombre contemplation ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... self-communion, she would sometimes fall into a shallow delirium. In all her delirium she was invariably wandering to and fro, lost, in the long underground passage leading from the scullery past the coal-cellar and the cinder-cellar to the backyard. And she was afraid of the vast-obscure of those regions, as she had been in ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... within the tent, they might have beheld Colonel Witham, seated at a table upon which a light was thrown, its object being not so much to illuminate the occupant of the seat as to obscure his vision. It served to render more shadowy a vague figure that occupied a little booth across which a gauze curtain hung, and from which a voice ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... we have been considering the struggles of men who have risen from obscure positions in life, by the aid of their own genius, industry, and courage, to the front rank of their respective callings. We shall now relate the story of one who having already won fortune, periled ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... (5). The whole of the provisions as to the Exchequer Judges are extremely obscure. The jurisdiction and the powers of the Court, should it ever be formed, will need to be defined by a special Act of Parliament. There are special laws regulating the action of the Federal Judiciary both in the United States and in Switzerland. As the matter at present stands the jurisdiction ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... terminated, it stands as it were to indicate the line at which the march of human knowledge has now arrived. We see it rising on the extreme verge of the boundary which separates the clear and the palpable from the indistinct and the obscure. The explored province of past research, with all its many party-coloured fields, stretches out from it in long perspective on the one hand,—luminous, well-defined, rejoicing in the light. The terra incognita of future discovery lies enveloped in ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... struck me that she was an American of the kind that subsidizes households like that of Etchingham Manor. Perhaps my aunt had even forced her to take the family name, to save appearances. The old woman was capable of anything, even of providing an obscure nephew with a brilliant sister. And I should not be thanked if I interfered. This skeleton of swift reasoning passed between word and word ... "You are no sister of mine!" I was ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... most important qualification for an arguer to possess is the faculty of clearly presenting his case. New ideas, new truths are seldom readily accepted, and it is never safe to assume that the hearer or the reader of an argument will laboriously work his way through a mass of obscure reasoning. Absolute clearness of expression is essential. The method of arriving at a conclusion should be so plain that no one can avoid seeing what is proved and how it is proved. Lincoln's great success as a debater was due largely ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... nightly to the neighbourhood of Washington Square, regardless of weather or inconvenience. He saw her come and go, night after night, and he saw people enter the house to which he held a key,—always he saw from obscure points of vantage and with the stealth and caution ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... commands. She received them with the greatest kindness; and ordering them to withdraw, she thus addressed the astonished prince. "Do not imagine, dear prince, that I have always been a cat, or that I am of obscure birth. My father was the monarch of six kingdoms; he tenderly loved my mother, leaving her always at liberty to follow her own inclinations. Her prevailing passion was to travel; and a short time before my birth, having heard of some fairies who were in ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... not content to collect their prey only in obscure and little-known regions, for a chance was seen to commercialize the small birds of the forests and fields. Warblers, Thrushes, Wrens, in fact all those small forms of dainty bird life which come about the home to cheer the hearts of men and women ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... rest a place is noticed, which enabled the natives to defy intrusion or discovery, near the "Three Thumbs' Mountain,"—an almost impenetrable forest, of seven miles extent: the spreading branches obscure the sky, and lofty plants grow entwined, and conceal an object at the distance of a few feet. The attempt of the blacks to cross the line discovered their retreat. It was resolved to assemble forces sufficient ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... up, however, in a totally different frame of mind. He was pre-eminently a person of moods, dependent, probably, as all moods are, on certain obscure physical variations. And his mental temperature had run down in the night. The house, the people who had been fresh and interesting to him twelve hours before, were now the burden he had more than half expected them to be. He lay and thought of the unbroken solitude of his college ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... wound, he poured upon him such a flood of solemn remonstrance, in a tone of such injured feeling, that the pup was evidently cut to the heart—his self-condemned, appealing looks proving beyond a doubt that the meaning of what was said was plain to him, though the language might be obscure. ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the rise of the Empire of Majapahit, in the age immediately following our Traveller's voyage, is very obscure. But there is some evidence of the existence of a powerful dynasty in the island about this time; and in an inscription of ascertained date (A.D. 1294) the King Uttungadeva claims to have subjected five kings and to ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... a movement in the obscure corner where sat the unnamed and unintroduced lady. This lady rose and came towards the table. She was very elegant in dress and manner, and she ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... shall dare interrupt this flow of poetry to object to the palpable obscure, or to ask how feet can wander upon that ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... all round and below and above them stretches the blind mass of earth, endless and unexplored. Yes, give me the Tube and Cubismus every time; give me ideas, so snug and neat and simple and well made. And preserve me from nature, preserve me from all that's inhumanly large and complicated and obscure. I haven't the courage, and, above all, I haven't the time to ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... his reasons for being in any particular place," remarked M. Dudouis, "and, in this case, his reasons seem to me obscure. The writing-desk has not been broken open nor the pocketbook stolen. There is even gold ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... pitch dark, and ranging themselves in a line near a large tree, they each lit a small fire, and had a supply of dry leaves to give effect to the acting. On their commencing their chanting, the men came forward, emerging from the darkness into the obscure light shed by the yet uncherished fires, like spectres. After some performance, at a given signal, a handful of dry leaves was thrown on each fire, which instantly blazing up lighted the whole scene, and shewed the dusky figures of the performers painted and agitated with admirable effect, ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... (their) own slogans about patriotism, purity, and a better system of conducting government."[25] On the other hand they differed as to what these terms meant. The intent was good, the timing was wrong. Pitt, for reasons still somewhat obscure, accepted a peerage and became Lord Chatham and opened the door to cries of corruption and sell-out by the "Great Commoner." More significantly, Chatham was trying to lead a ministry from the House of Lords. He ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... the lessons to be learned from the career of William McKinley by the young men who make up the student body of our university. These lessons are not obscure or difficult. They teach the value of study and mental training, but they teach more impressively that the road to usefulness and to the only success worth having, will be missed or lost except it is sought and kept by the light of those qualities of heart, which it is sometimes supposed ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... the last years of his life; and there I came across persons who were familiar with him. I find myself in a position to throw light on just that part of his tragic career which has remained most obscure. If they who believe in Strickland's greatness are right, the personal narratives of such as knew him in the flesh can hardly be superfluous. What would we not give for the reminiscences of someone who had been as intimately acquainted ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... projected long before the idea of a transcontinental line to the Pacific coast had taken full possession of men's minds. As early as 1858 a plan was worked out for the construction of a line of about forty miles within the State of Kansas to connect what were then the obscure and unimportant townships of Atchison and Topeka. At that time not a mile of railroad had been built in Kansas or in any Territory west of that State, except on the Pacific coast, to which there had ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... are already enjoying the bliss of heaven or writhing in the flames of hell, what need of a future judgment? The teachings of God's word on these important points are neither obscure nor contradictory; they may be understood by common minds. But what candid mind can see either wisdom or justice in the current theory? Will the righteous, after the investigation of their cases at the judgment, receive the commendation, ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... conclusions are separated from their premises, the nexus is lost, and the argument with its rightful conclusions, becomes correspondingly obscure." Page 34. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... down in the bottom of the boat and gazed thoughtfully at the stone perch. Frank, to whom the nature of the problem was obscure, also gazed at the stone perch, but without much hope of finding inspiration. Priscilla looked ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... nobly," added Reilly, "and in a truly Christian spirit. Were it not for the shelter and protection which I myself received from one of them, my mangled body would probably be huddled down into some obscure grave, as a felon, and my property—which is mine only by a necessary fiction and evasion of the law—have passed into the hands of Sir Robert Whitecraft. I am wrong, however, in saying that it could. Mr. Hastings, a generous and liberal Protestant, took it in his own name for my father, but gave ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... glittering Corinthian colonnades, Webster of vaulted crypts, . . . Marlowe of masoned clouds, and Marston, in his better moments, of the fragmentary vigour of a Roman ruin,' one begins to regret that any one ever thought of the unity of the arts. Similes such as these obscure; they do not illumine. To say that Ford is like a glittering Corinthian colonnade adds nothing to our knowledge of either Ford or Greek architecture. Mr. Symonds has written some charming poetry, but his prose, unfortunately, is always poetical prose, never the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... man must have his way. You are, as you told me yesterday, your own master, free to do as you please. To Miss Darrell personally I have no objection; she is beautiful, well-bred, and, I believe, a noble girl. Her poverty and obscure birth are drawbacks in my eyes, but, since they are not so in yours, I will allude to them no more. The objections I made yesterday to your marriage I would have made had your bride been a duke's daughter. I had hoped—it was an absurd hope—that you would not think of marriage ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... came back, and they were rich and sweet, and worth while. But—he was shocked when he found courage to ask it—if they did not come back, what could he do? He was part of a great web—a little filament in one obscure corner, and he was spinning a fabric whose faintest plan he ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... although with the eschatological element preponderating. The most authentic Catholic ethic, monastic asceticism, is an ethic of eschatology, directed to the salvation of the individual soul rather than to the maintenance of society. And in the cult of virginity may there not perhaps be a certain obscure idea that to perpetuate ourselves in others hinders our own personal perpetuation? The ascetic morality is a negative morality. And, strictly, what is important for a man is not to die, whether he sins or not. ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... required all the glow of his imagination and all the strength of his judgment to believe it? Let us who are seeing the fulfilment of this vision, utter the fervent prayer that no sullen clouds of coldness or estrangement may ever obscure these fair relations, and that the madness of man may never mar ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... forward without terror!—These reflections strengthened by every cross accident!—And what but cross accidents befal me!—All my darling schemes dashed in pieces, all my hopes at an end; deny me not the liberty to refuge myself in some obscure corner, where neither the enemies you have made me, nor the few friends you have left me, may ever hear of the supposed rash-one, till those happy moments are at hand, which shall ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... based assertions of those who say that less silver will be sent to Manila from a kingdom where conditions are such [i.e., Espana] than Mexico [now] gives—I, at least, no matter how long may be the argument, do not comprehend so obscure a secret; on the contrary, I am persuaded that Espana will be no poorer thereby. For, if this mouth be stopped, Espana must be drained, by those that remain (as is done today), of all of this article that other kingdoms are offering it, as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various
... mind, to which the ennui of a court was insupportable. He loved its scandal and rumours—even the report of incest was not displeasing to him. Every evening, he assembled his roues, his mistresses, some danseuses from the Opera, often his daughter the Duchess de Berri,[3] and some persons of obscure birth, but brilliant for their talent or renowned for their vices. At these suppers the choicest viands, the finest wines, exhilarated the guests, all the disorders and scandal of court and the city were passed in review. They ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... a lust of the flesh that brings disease upon the body, destroys the vitality of human life and sows the seeds of death in the soul, which shall be harvested in the eternal fires of torment. These sins of the dark have gone far to obscure the pure light of a Christian life. "Ye are the light of the world," can never be spoken of those who yield to the temptations of this monster vice. The Moon in her clear reflection of the Sun is unspotted by such evils. Young reader, have you any admiration for a pure life? Does there not ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... float on winged words, and as they expand their plumes, catch the golden light of other years. My soul has indeed remained in its original bondage, dark, obscure, with longings infinite and unsatisfied; my heart, shut up in the prison-house of this rude clay, has never found, nor will it ever find, a heart to speak to; but that my understanding also did not remain ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... physical one. Theres something abnormal about his brain. That means, probably, some morbid condition affecting the spinal cord. And that means the circulation. In short, it's clear to me that he's suffering from an obscure form of blood-poisoning, which is almost certainly due to an accumulation of ptomaines in the nuciform sac. I'll remove ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... character is supplied by the fact that both these needy persons seemed to know him intimately, and that each called him Bill. All Lord Dawlish's friends called him Bill, and he had a catholic list of them, ranging from men whose names were in 'Debrett' to men whose names were on the notice boards of obscure clubs in connexion with the non-payment of dues. He was the sort of man one ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... pulling down the strongholds of bigotry, scepticism, and spiritual death. Sir James Mackintosh somewhere says, that the great movement which shook Christendom to its centre, and did more to change and reform society than the political revolutions and wars of a thousand years, originated with an obscure Augustinian monk preaching the doctrine of justification by faith. This acute Scotchman saw, what all must see who read Luther's writings with any attention, that it was no accident, no temporal interest, which led him to lay such stress on this doctrine. It was ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... strange period," he went on, "when the teeming Time was great with the revolution that was speedily to be born, I was on a mission in Paris with my excellent, my maligned friend, Cagliostro. Mesmer was one of our band. I seemed to occupy but an obscure rank in it: though, as you know, in secret societies the humble man may be a chief and director—the ostensible leader but a puppet moved by unseen hands. Never mind who was chief, or who was second. Never mind my age. It ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... things lasted three years, some say four, but the monks of Saint Benoist have not wormed out the date, which remains obscure, like the reasons for the quarrel between the two friends. Probably the Venetian had the high ambition to reign without any control or dispute, and forgot the services which the Frenchman had rendered ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... that the son of a king was to travel, in the dress of a private subject, on some merciful and condescending errand to a distant and obscure part of his territory. Surely it would be very ungenerous and ungrateful, if the poor villagers, whom he came to serve, were to deny to him the honors of a king's son merely because they could not believe that so great a person could stoop so low as to come among them, especially ...
— Stories for the Young - Or, Cheap Repository Tracts: Entertaining, Moral, and Religious. Vol. VI. • Hannah More
... toward intellectual greatness as to allow to Milton, Addison, and Shakspeare modest monuments behind a door. The place is called the Poets' Corner; and so famed and celebrated is this vast edifice every where, that the phrase by which even this obscure and insignificant portion of it is known is familiar to every ear and every tongue ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... his strange fancy; "but there's only one about, and it seems a deuce of a long way off—however, I'll try;" and, with that, I reached my arm up in the direction of the solitary planet, which lay in the vast obscure like a small silver candlestick, with a greenish tinge in its icy sparkling, mirrored far below in the indigo flood of the abysmal sea, while a grey scud came sweeping up, no one quite knew whence, and hung about the glossy face of the silent luminary like the shreds of a wedding veil, scattered ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... analogy with what regards the Elements of Chemistry. Just about one half of the known elements of matter occur with frequency, and enter into useful and ordinary combinations to produce the great mass of known substances. The remaining half are unfrequent, obscure, and relatively unimportant; some of them never having been seen even by many of our most eminent chemists. Even should a few new elements be discovered, it cannot be anticipated that any one of them should prove to be of leading importance, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... well as the peculiar economic and industrial conditions which have made it unlike the other newly settled countries of the world. Seeing these things and talking with the leading men in every part of the country, I began to comprehend many things that had previously been obscure to me, and saw how the political troubles of the land were connected with the life which nature imposed on the people. Immediately after my return to Europe, fresh political troubles broke out, and events occurred in the Transvaal which fixed the eyes of the whole world upon South ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Fortunately for them the Government were aware of the state of affairs in the country and did not remain indifferent to it; and, as I have heard yourself explain to the Indians, Her Gracious Majesty has at heart the welfare of even the most obscure of her subjects. In the summer of 1874, I was travelling amongst the Blackfeet. It was painful to me to see the state of poverty to which they had been reduced. Formerly they had been the most opulent Indians in the country, and now they ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... Daughters, and would willingly Whip them, did they dare do so, Grown Women as they are, for Spite. I do know Fathers, Men of Parts and Rank, forsooth, jealous of their Sons, and that have kept the Youngsters in the Background, and even striven to Obscure their Minds that they might not cross the Paternal Orbit. And has it not almost passed into a proverb, that my Lord Duke's Natural and most Inveterate Enemy is my Lord Marquis, who is his Heir? But not to the World of Gold and Purple are these Jealousies and Evil Feelings confined. You shall ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... intelligent beings for it. Far higher was the Hebrew spiritualism, and worship of One Supreme, and far higher is Isaiah than Homer, David than Sophocles; and no Hebrew prophet ever said, "Offer a cock to Esculapius." So is Christianity far beyond Buddhism; and far beyond Sakya Muni, dim and obscure as he is, are the concrete realities of the life of Jesus. Whether anything further is to come, I tremble to ask; and yet I do ask it.[351] To ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... colossal wealth and world-dominion, before the exigencies of which mere abstract ethical theories must not be permitted to stand. The same argument that justified the conquest of an inferior nation could not be denied to those who sought the suppression of an inferior race. In the South, an obscure jealousy of the negro's progress, an obscure fear of the very equality so contemptuously denied, furnished a rich soil for successful agitation. Statistics of crime, ingeniously manipulated, were made to present ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... have no details given us as to the process or the time required for purification, we have certain suggestions. In the Old Testament there is a reference to "prisoners of hope." The reference is somewhat obscure, and taken by itself it is of doubtful meaning. But in the New Testament it is intimated that Christ went and "preached to the spirits in prison." There we have a gleam of light as to what is meant by "prisoners of hope." There were imprisoned souls to whom Christ took some joyful message. We ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... losing money hand over fist," Thorny stated, gloomily, with that intimate knowledge of an employer's affairs always displayed by an obscure clerk. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... merely skulks in an obscure and contemptible impunity. Does not the public behold with indignation, persons not only generally scandalous in their lives, but the identical persons who, by their society, their instruction, their example, their encouragement, have drawn this man ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... us, both name and thing. That those evils of prelaty, which before from five or six and twenty sees were distributively charged upon the whole people, will now light wholly upon learning, is not obscure to us: whenas now the pastor of a small unlearned parish on the sudden shall be exalted archbishop over a large diocese of books, and yet not remove, but keep his other cure too, a mystical pluralist. He who but of late cried down the ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... happened afterwards, I alone am responsible. I brought it on myself. By sheer quixotic fuss and interference with what, after all, wasn't my affair. For little Jevons most decidedly was not. I might easily have let that sleeping dog lie. He certainly did sleep, in some obscure kennel of London; he had slept ever since I had left him at the door of that restaurant in Soho. He slept almost for the six months he had ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... he would rather have written the Elegy than be able to take Quebec on the morrow; for of all English poems the Elegy is the most popular and widely known; it is the flower of the "literature of melancholy." The Elegy is the glorification of the obscure; therein lies its popularity. The most of us are obscure. The Elegy flatters us by suggesting that we might have swayed the rod of empire or "waked to ecstasy the living lyre," if we had had the chance,—or, what we think is more likely the explanation, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... after another in close file. One alighted on the breast and glided down instantly with devious vivacity, like a small insect running away; it left a narrow dark track on the white skin. He looked at it, looked at the tiny and active drops, looked at what he had done, with obscure satisfaction, with anger, with regret. This wasn't much like an act of justice. He had a desire to go up nearer to the man, to hear him speak, to hear him say something atrocious and wicked that would justify the violence of the blow. He made an attempt to move, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... garrison must surrender to horrors worse than death, unless a supply of this indispensable article could be obtained. Nor was it an easy task to pass through so wily an enemy or the danger and difficulty much lessened, when even beyond the besiegers; owing to the obscure and mountainous way, it was necessary to pass, through a foe scattered in almost every direction. But Captain Logan was not a man to falter where duty called, because encompassed with danger. With two companions he left the fort in the night and ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... felt the necessity or propriety of being locally accurate to Rochester or its buildings. Dickens, of course, meant Rochester; yet, at the same time, he chose to be obscure on that point, and I took my cue from him. I always thought it was one of his most artistic pieces of work; the vague, dreamy description of the Cathedral in the opening chapter of the book. So definite in one sense, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... designate them, are very remarkable. Three Clerks he found, or had known of, somewhere in the Public Offices; and now took, under some advanced title, to be specially his own Private Clerks: three vigorous long-headed young fellows, "Eichel, Schuhmacher, Lautensack" the obscure names of them; [Rodenbeck, 15th June, 1740.] out of whom, now and all along henceforth, he got immensities of work in that kind. They lasted all his life; and, of course, grew ever more expert at their function. Close, silent; exact as machinery: ever ready, from the smallest clear hint, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... are under investigation in the laboratories and it is highly probable that this law will be unraveled at some future date. It will be interesting for our posterity to witness the confusion of the ecclesiastics and their attempted confirmation of this fact in the Bible; their finding of some obscure phrase that will be interpreted by them as a prediction of ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... about the ways of escaped nuns," said Arthur, "but I am going to study them. I'll wager you find Claire behind the rusty garments of this obscure, muddy, slimy little woman. They ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... her plac'd in a HOT-BED, have been restor'd to their pristine Strength, and flourish'd again; and like true Heroes, not envying the busy World, have been content to spend the remainder of their Days in an obscure Nook of the World. ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous
... now, fortunately, few communities in America that have not electric power-plants. Indeed, I know of many obscure little towns of a thousand inhabitants that have had the luxury of electric lights for years, and have as yet no gas or water-works! Miraculously, also, the smaller the town the cheaper is the cost of electricity. This is ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe
... thine to gild with fame Th' obscure, and raise the humble name; To make the form elude the grave, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... foreign adventurers and of which the laws were written in a foreign tongue, a country given over to that worst tyranny, the tyranny of caste over caste, should have become the seat of civil liberty, the object of the admiration and envy of surrounding states, is one of the most obscure problems in the philosophy of history. But the fact is certain. Within a century and a half after the Norman conquest, the Great Charter was conceded. Within two centuries after the Conquest, the first House of Commons met. Froissart tells us, what indeed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a kind of permanent success; and, from being a dismal laughing-stock in Norway, came to be important, and for a time all-important there. Their opposition nicknames, "Baglers (from Bagall, baculus, bishop's staff; Bishop Nicholas being chief Leader)," "Gold-legs," and the like obscure terms (for there was still a considerable course of counter-fighting ahead, and especially of counter-nicknaming), I take to have meant in Norse prefigurement seven centuries ago, "bloated Aristocracy," "tyrannous-Bourgeoisie,"—till, ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... contributed to the continuance of this? And so Joseph, who was himself going to be embalmed and put into a mummy-case, may have caught something of the tone of thought prevalent around him, and have believed that to carry his bones to the land of promise was, in some obscure manner, to carry him thither. Be that as it may, whether the wish came from a mistake about the relation of flesh and spirit, or only from the natural desire which we too possess, that our graves may not be among strangers, but beside our father's and our mother's—that is not ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... illustrious pupils, recalls Hawthorne's exceptional excellence in the composition of English, even at that date (1821-1825); and it is not impossible that Hawthorne intended, through the character of Fanshawe, to present some faint projection of what he then thought might be his own obscure history. Even while he was in college, however, and meditating perhaps the slender elements of this first romance, his fellow-student Horatio Bridge, whose "Journal of an African Cruiser" he afterwards edited, recognized in him the possibilities ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... transfixed by horror in a growing darkness that seemed to penetrate to her very soul. Which of the two had galloped free? Which lay shattered there, very far below her in an abyss that had already become obscure? She agonized to know, but the darkness hid all things. At last she tore it aside as if it had been a veil. She went down, down into that deep place. She stumbled through a valley of awful desolation till she came to that which she sought;—a ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... upon me as the poetic age of our city; poetic from its very obscurity, and open, like the early and obscure days of ancient Rome, to all the embellishments of heroic fiction. I hailed my native city as fortunate above all other American cities in having an antiquity thus extending back into the regions of doubt and fable; ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... cared to exploit it, might have carried him far. In those days the usual road to fame and fortune for an obscure young man was to attach himself to some wealthy patron and acquire a position through him. With the aid of his wealthy friends Kingo could easily enough have obtained employment as a companion to some young noble going abroad for travel and study. It ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... now in a very dense wood, and the track they had been following became more and more obscure when, just as they crossed a little stream, a stern ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... hadn't the right to take the pearls he had given her himself, who had? That Spanish filly had got'm. If Winifred had any 'jection he w'd cut—her—throat. What was the matter with that? (Probably the first use of that celebrated phrase—so obscure are the origins of even ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... unfit to face the risks of exposure to the fever-laden fog which would certainly be encountered in the river. The night was not especially favourable for an expedition intended to take ships by surprise; for although the sky was somewhat cloudy, it was by no means sufficiently so to obscure very materially the light of the moon, which was then in her first quarter. But she would set shortly after midnight, and meanwhile her light would facilitate the passage of the boats across the bar, after the accomplishment of ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... (Friday) to Burghersh's[17] opera at Braham's theatre. A vast deal of fine company, and prodigious applause; tolerable music, moderately sung, but a favourable audience. When it was over they insisted upon his appearing, and, after some delay, he thrust his head out from an obscure pit-box in which he had been sitting and bowed and smiled; but this was not enough, and they would have him on the stage; so a great clapping and shouting went on, among the most vociferous being the Duke of Wellington, who enjoyed the fun like a boy, laughing ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... in the silver sea, this isle, this realm, this England, is becoming a paltry concern, is fast being Gladstoned into drivelling imbecility. What does O'Connor mean by the 100,000 Irish arms? Does he mean 50,000 Irishmen? The point is obscure, as will be seen from the oratory of another distinguished patriot, who said, "Ten millions of Irish hearts are beating with high anticipation, ten millions of eyes are looking forward to the passing of the bill." A very large number ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Socrates adds a corollary to the argument:—'Would you punish your enemy, you should allow him to escape unpunished'—this is the true retaliation. (Compare the obscure verse of Proverbs, 'Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him,' etc., ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... the 'faire part,'" said Madame Marcot, alluding to the black-bordered mourning intimations sent out in France, inscribed with the names of every individual member of the family concerned, from the greatest down to the most insignificant and obscure. "Several pages, I assure you; and everybody came. The cortege was a mile long. M. l'Abbe Colaix officiated; there was a full choral mass; and she got her second cousin once removed, M. Aristide Gerant, who, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... correspondents who reside in localities favourable for making observations on this subject may be induced to pay attention to it; the exact appearance may be ascertained, with probably other facts calculated to throw light on the obscure question of ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett |
