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Obscurely   Listen
adverb
Obscurely  adv.  In an obscure manner.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Obscurely" Quotes from Famous Books



... illusions, brought with him to Prague, the capital of Wenceslaus, a whole waggon-load of morrice-dancers and jugglers, who made their appearance among the royal retinue. Meanwhile Ziito, the favourite magician of the king, took his place obscurely among the ordinary spectators. He however immediately arrested the attention of the strangers, being remarked for his extraordinary deformity, and a mouth that stretched completely from ear to ear. Ziito was for some time engaged in quietly ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... be evil. Any century is bad if we assume all the good men to be exceptions. But the great man is really also the product of his time. He is the mouthpiece of its prevailing sentiments, and only the first to see clearly what many are beginning to perceive obscurely. The emergence of the prophet is a proof of the growing demand of his hearers for sound teaching. Because he is in advance of men generally, he sees existing abuses more clearly, and we take his evidence against his contemporaries as conclusive. But ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... often but obscurely present, it would indeed be a superficial glance that did not read in much of modern thought, however unsatisfactory, in much of modern art, however imperfect —we can hardly trace, or, if at all, only as lightest ripples on ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... is to be said to young skalds who are desirous of acquiring the diction of poetry, or of increasing their store of words with old names, or, on the other hand, are eager to understand what is obscurely sung, that they must master this book for their instruction and pastime. These sagas are not to be so forgotten or disproved as to take away from poetry old periphrases which great skalds have been ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre

... could command the whole sunlit surface of the bay, here blue, here silver, here deepening to violet, paling to green, here dimly, obscurely rose. A fleet of fishing-boats, their coloured sails decorated with stripes and geometric patterns, or even now and then with a representation of the owner's patron-saint, was putting out to sea in single file, between the Capo del Turco and the Capo del Papa. But Susanna concentrated her attention ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... up to that, later," said Maxwell, willing to take the humorous view of the matter, if it would please the manager and smooth the way for the consideration of his work; but, more obscurely, he was impatient, and sorry to have found him ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... like so much to pass a whole day with you," Bertin continued. He felt himself tormented obscurely by an inexpressible necessity for close intimacy. He had believed, only a short time ago, that the departure of those who had been present would suffice to realize the desire that had possessed him since morning; and now that he was alone with his ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant

... mesa. For ten years Mrs. MacDougall had done all of her own housework, including the washing; the two children had gone to school in clothes that seemed always too small for them; and MacDougall had laboured obscurely day and night in a small dark office. During these ten years the MacDougalls had been completely overlooked by local society, and if they felt any resentment they ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson

... others as had never incommoded her by the egotism of THEIR passions; but if once that danger were duly guarded against the fulness of one's measure amounted to no more than the equal use of one's faculties or the proper playing of one's part. It had come to the Princess, obscurely at first, but little by little more conceivably, that her faculties had not for a good while been concomitantly used; the case resembled in a manner that of her once-loved dancing, a matter of remembered ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James

... mist of windless marshes, masked the Kentish coast. The Medway at flood-tide from Sheerness to Gillingham Reach was one maze of creeks and bends and inlets and tiny bays. Nothing was visible an oar's length overside but shifting cloudy shapes that bulked obscurely in the fog. But although this was Francis Drake's first voyage as master of his own ship, he knew these waters as he knew the palm of his hand. His old captain, dying a bachelor, had left him the weather-beaten cargo-ship as reward for his "diligence and fidelity", and at sixteen ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... was like a glow-worm, casting his light upon those secret correspondences, deciphering and classifying despatches. Ranking higher than a mere bourgeois, his position at the ministry was superior to that of the other subalterns. He lived obscurely, glad to feel that such obscurity sheltered him from reverses and disappointments, and was satisfied to humbly pay in the lowest coin his debt to the country. Thanks to Jules, his position had been much ameliorated ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to-day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various

... such a creature with monstrosity during the period of its power is simply to expose one's self to popular jeers. Having immense respect for majorities in this country, we only venture obscurely to hint, that, of all arts, none before has ever been so threatening, curious, and fascinating a monster as that of printing. We merely suggest the hypothesis, novel since some centuries, that old Faustus and Gutenberg were as much inspired by the Evil One as they have been fabled to be, when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... time the first functionary in the commonwealth, and together with these duties was transferred the undefined supremacy over law and legislation which always attached to ancient sovereigns and which is not obscurely related to the patriarchal and heroic authority they had once enjoyed. The circumstances of Rome gave great importance to the more indefinite portion of the functions thus as transferred, as with the establishment ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... flushed and paled and brightened as some flower-face was tossed upwards, or some crest, flame-coloured or golden, flung back the light. A stream that was one in its rhythm and in the sex that was its soul, obscurely or luminously feminine; it might have been a single living thing that throbbed and undulated, as girl after girl gave out the radiance and pulsation of her youth. The effect was overpowering; your senses judged St. Sidwell's by these brilliant types that gave life and ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair

... apostolic color, for he took no pleasure in "new departures." Sound in doctrine, fervent in spirit, wise in council, stable in action, he was truly a strong "pillar in the house of the Lord." If he wrought obscurely, as the world moves, my impression is that he did some excellent work for eternity in the most quiet sort of way. I do not think Heaven could be a surprise to one of his habits and trend of life. ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles

... had been antipathetic from the start, and no advance on the author's part could bring the manager nearer. It was indeed true that the young playwright was becoming a marked figure on the street, and the paragrapher of The Saucy Swells spoke of him not too obscurely as the lucky winner of "our modern Helen," which was considered a smart allusion. This paragraph was copied by the leading paper of his native city, and his father wrote to know if it were really true that he was about to marry ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... Obscurely surmised by Beccaria, E.P., 3, 18, and even by Galiani, Della Moneta, II, 2. Senior's admirable work, Three Lectures on the Cost of Obtaining Money, 1830, follows up the thought that every country obtains indigenous ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... various reasons for this non-resistance to the cancelling of their Charter; but he omits or obscurely ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... immortality; for before his fall, it is thought man also was immortal; yet must we needs affirm that he had a different essence from the angels; having, therefore, no certain knowledge of their natures, it is no bad method of the schools, whatsoever perfection we find obscurely in ourselves, in a more complete and absolute way to ascribe unto them. I believe they have an extemporary knowledge, and upon the first motion of their reason do what we cannot without study or deliberation; that they know things by their forms, and define by specifical difference what we describe ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte

... Rationalist Press Association. He points out that, until recent times, the religion of Japan was Buddhism, to the practical exclusion of every other. There had been, in very ancient times, a native religion called Shinto, and it had lingered on obscurely. But it is only during the last forty years or so that Shinto has been erected into a State religion, and has been reconstructed so as to suit modern requirements.[48] It is, of course, preferable to Buddhism ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell

... saw some things clearly without seeing them deeply; they interpreted through a beautiful mythology all the external phenomena of Nature. The people of the farther East, on the other hand, saw more obscurely, but far more deeply; they looked less at the visible things which Nature held out to them, and more into the mysteries of her hidden processes, her silent but universal mutations; the subtle vanishings and reappearings of her presence; they seemed to hear the mighty ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... time to explain what was before obscurely said: there was an error in imagining that all the four elements might be generated by and into one another; this, I say, was an erroneous supposition, for there are generated from the triangles which we have selected ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... was likely that they might be induced to forsake their religion; and they accordingly refused, positively, to submit any longer to the teaching of the priests. Arguments were spent upon them in vain and, after resorting to these, threats were not obscurely uttered. They were told, and with truth that, only two or three months before, six persons had been burned alive, at Lima, for defying the authority of the church; and that, if they persisted in their heretical opinions, a similar fate might ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... 1813 a new and potent influence came into his life. Mrs Leigh, whose home was at Newmarket, came up to London on a visit. After a long interval the brother and sister met, and whether there is or is not any foundation for the dark story obscurely hinted at in Byron's lifetime, and afterwards made public property by Mrs Beecher Stowe (Macmillan's Magazine, 1869, pp. 377-396), there is no question as to the depth and sincerity of his love for his "one relative,"—that her well-being was more to him than his own. Byron ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... men through the gloom and brilliance of the West and North, and sometimes her heart is so full that it cannot find utterance at all. In the "dream state," that which is mere nature for the scientist reveals itself, obscurely indeed and yet insistently, as very God. God is dwelling in Fiona. He is smiling in all sunsets. He is filling the universe with His breath and holding us all in His ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... which cannot be perceived, but only imagined, not in things, whereof the understanding can give a clear idea, and which are conceivable through themselves:, [Endnote 8], matters which by their nature are easily perceived cannot be expressed so obscurely as to be unintelligible; as the proverb says, "a word is enough to the wise." (137) Euclid, who only wrote of matters very simple and easily understood, can easily be comprehended by anyone in any language; we can follow his intention perfectly, and be certain of his true meaning, without ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza

... Astonish'd long they stood! and Pyrrha first The silence broke; the oracle's behest Refusing to obey; and earnest pray'd, With trembling tongue for pardon for her sin: Her mother's shade to violate she dreads, Her bones thus rudely flinging. But meantime Deep in their minds, in dark mysterious veil Obscurely hid, the sentence they revolve. At length Deucalion sooths his wife with words Of cheering import: "Right, if I divine, "No impious deed the deity desires: "Earth is our mighty mother, and her bones "The stony rocks within her;—these behind "Our backs to cast, the oracle commands." With ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... stooped to drink at a still fountain, lest, in its peaceful bosom, he should be affrighted by himself. This was what gave plausibility to the whispers, that Mr. Hooper's conscience tortured him for some great crime too horrible to be entirely concealed, or otherwise than so obscurely intimated. Thus, from beneath the black veil, there rolled a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him. It was said that ghost and fiend consorted with him there. With self-shudderings and outward terrors, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... obscurely; he never carried weapons, he could not bear to have so much as a human ear cut off in his presence. But see how he figures in ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... could not be very great, and comforted himself with the prospect of travelling on a more frequented road after reaching that town, where he designed to pass the night. Mingled woods, and rocks, and heathy mountains were now seen obscurely through the dusk; but soon even these imperfect images faded in darkness. Michael proceeded with caution, for he could scarcely distinguish the road; his mules, however, seemed to have more sagacity, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... carriage, everywhere the ensign of man's ineffectual goodness:—ah! if I could show you this! if I could show you these men and women, all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honour, the poor jewel of their souls! They may seek to escape, and yet they cannot; it is not ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... their opinions, but ascending the nearest bastion to take a wider survey, in a few minutes he discerned, though obscurely, through the gleams of morning, what appeared to be the whole host of Russia advancing in profound silence towards the Polish lines. The instant he made this discovery, he came down, and lost no time in giving orders ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... grows upon what it consumes, Prescott was soon stricken with a second thought, and the next day at twilight he bought as obscurely as he could a Virginia-cured ham and carried it away, wrapped in brown paper, ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... of the last chapter. When Clovis returned in triumph from the Visigothic war (508) he found messengers awaiting him from Anastasius, who brought to him some documents from the Imperial chancery which are somewhat obscurely described as "Codicils of the Consulship". Then, in the church of St. Martin at Tours he was robed in a purple tunic and chlamys, and placed apparently on his own head some semblance of the Imperial diadem. At the porch of the ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... I hesitate, when I find these conclusions of mine not obscurely foreshadowed as impending in 1872 by Ernest Renan, and re-affirmed as imminent in ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... take you off the case," Burris went on, "because Sir Lewis and the others felt you were getting too close to the truth. Which you were, Malone, which you were." He lit his cigar and looked obscurely pleased. "But they didn't know how you'd take it," he said. "They ... we ... felt that a man who hadn't been trained since childhood to accept the extrasensory abilities of the human mind couldn't ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett

... spectacles more afflicting than that of a young man with a free spirit, with impetuous though honourable feelings, condemned to waste the flower of his life in such a calling; to fade in it by slow and sure corrosion of discontent; and at last obscurely and unprofitably to leave, with an indignant joy, the miseries of a world which his talents might have illustrated and his virtues adorned. Such things have been and will be. But surely in that better life which good men dream of, the spirit of a Kepler or a Milton will find a more propitious destiny.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... time to conclude. Leading a retired life, in the solitude of a village, having quite enough to do with patiently and obscurely ploughing my humble furrow, I know little about modern scientific views. In my young days I had a passionate longing for books and found it difficult to procure them; to-day, when I could almost have them if I wanted, I am ceasing to wish for them. It is what usually ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... interest in the matter, and that the doctrine of the Royal Supremacy was meant to extinguish, and has extinguished, any pretence to such a claim. The animus which pervades the work, and which is not obscurely disclosed in such things as footnotes and abridgments of legal arguments, is thus given—more freely, of course, than it would be proper to introduce in a book like this—in some remarks of Mr. Brodrick, one ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... woman like Rosamund be driven by an instinct blindly? She was such a perfect type of womanhood. It would be almost a tragedy if she—such a woman—died childless. Perhaps instinct had obscurely warned her of that, had taught her where to look for a mate. He, Dion, had always lived purely. That day she had acknowledged that she had divined it. Was that, perhaps, her real, her instinctive reason for marrying ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... the big seas hurling themselves upon the Condor. The swirl and crash of the waves seemed to fill her small soul with a breathless delight. "A good boy spoiled," he used to say of her in joke. He had named her Ivy because of the sound of the word, and obscurely fascinated by a vague association of ideas. She had twined herself tightly round his heart, and he intended her to cling close to her father as to a tower of strength; forgetting, while she was little, that in the nature of things ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... those of our Antiquaries and of Arts and Sciences, and have not attended the meetings of the Royal Society. I have withdrawn myself in a great measure from the world, and live in a very narrow circle idly and obscurely. Still, Sir, I could not decline the honour your Society has been pleased to offer me, lest it should be thought a want of respect and gratitude, instead of a mark of humility and conscious unworthiness. I am so sensible of this last, that I cannot presume to offer my services in this part of' our ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... Caesar's Tower, or in the Tower of that Conqueror, 'commonly so called,' that the 'readers of the wiser sort' found, 'thrown in at their study windows,' writings, as if they came 'from several citizens, wherein Caesar's ambition was obscurely glanced at' and thus the whisper of the Roman Brutus 'pieced ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... the sandy country; making a very intricate watery network of a site for Breslau: and indeed the Ohlau River here, for centuries back, has been compelled into wide meanderings, mere filling of rampart-ditches, so that it issues quite obscurely, and in an artificial ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... was much more shallow. These names also show that, in crossing, the road from Dover had in Saxon times certain landmarks to follow, while the use of the word Toot, our word "tout," shows that guides existed, who could be called upon to help travellers across. All these items are more or less obscurely mentioned by Dion Cassius, and show that wheresoever Celtic London stood, whether on the left or the right bank, Aulus Plautius chose the easternmost of the double hills for his bridge head; and when the wall was built, a couple of centuries ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... Minor by Pope Leo X. and Pius V., but it is probable that the privilege was withdrawn by Pope Gregory XV. in 1622, in his letter Romanus Pontifex; and Urban VIII., 1635, withdrew all privileges granted vivae vocis oraculo. The text of the document granting the privilege is obscurely worded. Still, several theologians of repute maintain that the privilege still exists and extends to the whole office. This is taught by the Salaraenticenses, De hor. can. cap. 3, n. 55; Tamburini, Rodriguez, ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... dressed in rich clothes and jewels; for Hermione had made it very fine when she sent it to Leontes, and Antigonus had pinned a paper to its mantle, and the name of "Perdita" written thereon, and words obscurely intimating its ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... the landscape needed it. It was too pale—greys flowing into lavenders, and one star or a white gull suspended just so—too pale as usual. The critics would say it was too pale, for he was an unknown man exhibiting obscurely, a favourite with his landladies' children, wearing a cross on his watch chain, and much gratified if his landladies liked ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... to be. The last Marchese di San Giacinto fought under Napoleon. He lost all he possessed—lands, money, everything—by confiscation, when Ferdinand was restored in 1815. He was a rough man; he dropped his title, married a peasant's only daughter, became a peasant himself, and died obscurely in a village near Salerno. He left a son who worked on the farm and inherited it from his mother, married a woman of the village of some education, and died of the cholera, leaving his son, the present Giovanni Saracinesca. This Giovanni received a ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford

... in the foregoing manner until the acid of nitre had separated from the residual red precipitate. In this case also I obtained our fire-air.... Whence comes the boiling of nitre, fused in a crucible and obscurely red-hot? Neither smoke nor vapours are seen to rise from it, and yet coal dust flying above the open crucible takes fire, burning brilliantly. Whence comes it that such nitre maintained in red-hot fusion in a glass retort for half an hour, becomes moist in open air and deliquesces after cooling, ...
— Discovery of Oxygen, Part 2 • Carl Wilhelm Scheele

... learned. If there exists a native spark of love in all of us, it must be fanned while we are young. Hers, if she ever had it, had been drenched in as ugly a lot of corrosive liquid as could be imagined. But I was surprised at Fyne obscurely feeling this. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... spendthrift jewellery of evening. Or, if it rained, to sit blithely on the roof of a bus, revelling in the gust and whipping of the shower. Why had no one told him of the glory of the city? She was pride, she was exultation, she was madness. She was what he had obscurely craved. In every line of her gallant profile he saw conquest, triumph, victory! Empty conquest, futile triumph, doomed victory—but that was the essence of the drama. In thunderclaps of dumb ecstasy he saw her whole gigantic fabric, leaning and clamouring ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley

... 4-pointed lobes bent backward; corolla of 4 spreading petals; 8 stamens; 1 pistil; the stigma 4-cleft. Stem: Erect, wand-like, or branched, to 1 to 5 ft. tall, rarely higher, leafy. Leaves: Alternate, lance-shaped, mostly seated on stem, entire, or obscurely toothed. Preferred Habitat - Roadsides, dry fields, thickets, fence-corners. Flowering Season - June-October. Distribution - Labrador to the Gulf of Mexico, west ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... or strata, at least three deep. I follow a slow person's talk, and keep a perfectly clear under-current of my own beneath it. Under both runs obscurely a consciousness belonging to a third train of reflections, independent of the two others. I will try to write out a Mental movement in ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... treasures and the most precious effects of the Alhambra were hastily packed upon mules; the beautiful apartments were despoiled, with tears and wailings, by their own inhabitants. Before the dawn of day a mournful cavalcade moved obscurely out of a postern gate of the Alhambra and departed through one of the most retired quarters of the city. It was composed of the family of the unfortunate Boabdil, which he sent off thus privately that they might not be exposed to the eyes of scoffers or the exultation of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... illustration. On other subjects of which they treat in common, such as the nature and kinds of pleasure, true and false opinion, the nature of the good, the order and relation of the sciences, the Republic is less advanced than the Philebus, which contains, perhaps, more metaphysical truth more obscurely expressed than any other Platonic dialogue. Here, as Plato expressly tells us, he is 'forging weapons of another make,' i.e. new categories and modes of conception, though 'some of the old ones ...
— Philebus • Plato

... making you stand still and think. I know I'm putting it badly, but I can't talk—I never could. Words, don't mean much to me, and yet I know—I know—" He hesitated, and she watched his thought struggle obscurely for expression. "I know you can't slip away from things and be a quitter, no matter how hard you try. Life pulls you back again and again till you've learned to play the ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... sometimes found persons of higher birth and more important station than among the peers—(a term somewhat synonymous with that of Equal.) But the higher class enjoyed certain privileges which we can but obscurely trace [146]. Forming an assembly among themselves, it may be that they alone elected to the senate; and perhaps they were also distinguished by some peculiarities of education—an assertion made by Mr. Mueller, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... loveliness greater than he had imagined was permitted by the Almighty to His creatures. The little face was more square than oval, with a low broad brow and proud exquisite eyebrows. The eyes were of a colour which he could never decide on; afterwards he used to allege obscurely that they were the colour of everything in Spring. There was a delicate pallor in the cheeks, and the face bore signs of suffering and care, possibly even of hunger; but for all that there was youth there, eternal and triumphant! Not youth such as he had known it, but youth with all ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan

... from the floating mists and winding waters. Perhaps, in his anxiety to be truthful, and in the absence of any record, he put the date of this conscious rapture too late rather than too early. Certainly my own impregnation with the obscurely-defined but keenly-felt loveliness of the open sea dates from the first week ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... fought no longer stir me; they have exchanged their dreams of glory for the reality of sacrifice—they know to what they may look forward. But untried troops have yet to be disillusioned; dreams of the pomp of war are still in their eyes. They have not yet owned that they are merely going out to die obscurely. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... adopted it instanter, as he did my own Maru. T'yonni said that Uritaata was the bane of his existence at Tautira. After building his fare he had been called to America, and had danced in Chinatown the night before his steamship departed for his return to Papeete. He remembered obscurely drinking grappo with a deep-sea sailor, and had awakened in his berth, the vessel already at sea, and Uritaata asleep at his feet. Many Tahitians, he said, had never seen such a fabulous brute, and T'yonni had stirred in them a mood of dissatisfaction ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... very generally cut. But with a firmness and ability scarcely ever seen in any man so young, he brought his proofs forward, and, after an inquiry of some weeks, fully made out his case. —— was dismissed in disgrace, and is now living obscurely in England. The Government here and the Directors at home applauded Trevelyan in the highest terms; and from that tithe he has been considered as a man likely to rise to the very top of the service. Lord William told him to ask for anything ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... to listen to his servants who love his precepts, even in impossibilities, as has happened to me in the present instance, who have accomplished what human strength has hitherto never attained. For, if any one has written or told anything about these islands, all have done so either obscurely or by guesswork, so that it has almost seemed to ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various

... method, that his delicately feathered barbs made no dent on the hard head of Pepys. Like his neighbor of the Avon, the author of "Hudibras" was a merciless scourge to the vainglorious follies of the time in which he poorly and obscurely lived; and like the truths which he told in his inimitable satires, the virtue and decency of his life was obscured by the disorder of the Commonwealth and the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... alba) one must not overlook what is attached to it. "We do not believe," they said, "that the robber will let the traveler keep his money, although first he only asks for his coat or similar things, at the same time, however, not obscurely hinting that, after having taken these, he will also demand the rest. We certainly do not doubt that you yourselves, as well as all men endowed with a sound mind, believe that, since the beginning is always hardest, these small ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... bodies which belong to man's timeless existence, curiously named and obscurely defined. There is apparently a causal body which is possibly the vehicle of will and, more involved still, a super-spiritual body which is the reality of God deep within us, and the carrier and vehicle of our supreme and enduring personal values. All this is a curious ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... a half-human, half-personal shape, and must brood, obscurely and sombrely, over the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... stood there the grim, stone faces of the lions above me were somehow seen obscurely, Nelson's monument was equally unregarded, for my thoughts were far away with my mind's eye, following an ocean mail-steamer as she threaded her tortuous way between the Heads and along the placid ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby

... beauty or even expressive ugliness, when we say that a face possesses expression, we mean expression that may be stable, but which we conjecture to be mobile. It maintains, in the midst of its fixity, a certain indecision in which are obscurely portrayed all possible shades of the state of mind it expresses, just as the sunny promise of a warm day manifests itself in the haze of a spring morning. But a comic expression of the face is one that promises nothing ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson

... must lock in his heart, not any suspicion of his uncle that moves obscurely there, but that horror and loathing; and if his heart ever found relief, it was when those feelings, mingled with the love that never died out in him, poured themselves forth in a flood as he stood in his mother's chamber ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... here on Earth! The "Mosaic Cosmogony," as Mr. Goodwin phrases it, (fond, like all other smatterers in Science, of long words,) is a Revelation: and the same HOLY GHOST who gave it, speaking by the mouth of St. John, not obscurely intimates that it is mystical, like the rest of Holy Scripture,—that is, that it was fashioned not without a reference to the Gospel[127]. But we are touching on a high subject now, of which Mr. Goodwin does not understand ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... received secretly a most vicious poke in the ribs from the old woman's elbow or perhaps her fist. I restrained a cry. And all the time the girl didn't even condescend to raise her head to look at any of us. All this may sound childish—and yet that stony, petulant sullenness had an obscurely tragic flavour. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... promise in the phrase. It delights us, first, because it seems to recognise the organic, as distinct from the merely constructive, character of finely civilised architecture; and next, it persuades us that Vitruvius had in truth discovered the key to size—the unit that is sometimes so obscurely, yet always so absolutely, the measure of what is great and small among things animate and inanimate. And in spite of themselves the architects of St. Peter's were constrained to take something from man; they refused his height for their scale, but they ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell

... speciously, in the two first questions of the rival catechisms, the English tritely inquiring, "What is your name?" the Scottish striking at the very roots of life with, "What is the chief end of man?" and answering nobly, if obscurely, "To glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever." I do not wish to make an idol of the Shorter Catechism; but the fact of such a question being asked opens to us Scots a great field of speculation; and the fact that it is asked of all of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... darkness, where the growth of trees, heavy with honeysuckle and wild rose, is thickest. Fireflies begin to flit above the growing corn. At last the plain is reached, and all the skies are tremulous with starlight. Alas, that we should vibrate so obscurely to these harmonies of earth and heaven! The inner finer sense of them seems somehow unattainable—that spiritual touch of soul evoking soul from nature, which should transfigure our dull mood of self into impersonal delight. Man needs to be a mytho-poet at some ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... Obscurely, however, he felt that he was about to take part in a struggle for Patsy. It was to be a fight, not so much against danger from unscrupulous dandies like the Duke of Lyonesse and his acolyte, my Lord of Wargrove, as between Stair and himself. Louis de Raincy himself was ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... Obscurely, no doubt, she felt that if charm were once admitted as the criterion, smartness and capability must go to the wall; and she hated—with a hatred the deeper that at times this so-called charm seemed to disturb all calculations—the subtle seductiveness which she could ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... knew her brother thoroughly and liked him as he was. Moreover, the scorn and loathing of mankind were the lot of the Jacobin Fouche, who, exploiting for his own advantage every weakness, every virtue, every generous illusion of mankind, made dupes of his whole generation and died obscurely as Duke ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... elicit sparkles from the flint. What follows next? that it, like a current, flies each bound it chafes. This may mean, that it expands itself notwithstanding all obstructions: but the images in the comparison are so ill-sorted, and the effect so obscurely expressed, that I cannot but think something omitted that connected the last sentence with the former. It is well knovn that the players often shorten speeches to quicken the representation; and it may be suspected, that they sometimes performed their amputations with ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson

... more or less chinky or becoming obscurely small-areolate, ash- to green-gray, or becoming olivaceous, spreading over the substratum as a continuous, moderately thick crust; apothecia small to large, 0.5 to 1.5 mm. in diameter, adnate or more or less immersed, usually flat, ...
— Ohio Biological Survey, Bull. 10, Vol. 11, No. 6 - The Ascomycetes of Ohio IV and V • Bruce Fink and Leafy J. Corrington

... lovely e'er his race be run, Along Morea's hills, the setting sun Not, as in northern climes, obscurely bright, But one unclouded blaze of living light. O'er the hush'd deep the yellow beam he throws, Gilds the green wave that trembles as it flows. On old Egina's rock, and Idra's isle, The god of gladness sheds his parting smile; O'er his own ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... on his hands, and not far from the sale-room at which I have obscurely hinted, Mr. Denton thought that he would spend an hour there upon the chance of finding, among that portion of the famous Thomas collection of MSS., which he knew to be then on view, something bearing upon the history or topography ...
— A Thin Ghost and Others • M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James

... them Homer and Virgil, who nevertheless continue to play an appreciable part in training the English mind; and we can hardly give them Milton, whose subtlest beauties depend on the niceties of the Latin speech. The trial for Latin literature came when obscurely, in the purlieus and kennels of Rome, like a hidden fermentation, Christianity arose. The earliest Christians were for the most part illiterate; but when at last Christianity reached the high places of the government, and controlled the Empire, a problem of enormous difficulty presented ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... point, the deputy, or some member of the Court interposed, if I interpret rightly Parris's report, which is here obscurely expressed, inasmuch as he does not say who spoke; but the import of the words indicates that they proceeded from some member of the Court, who was ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... London Gazette, well on in February, 1756, we learn that Lord Loudon, a military gentleman of small faculty, but of good connections, has been nominated to command the Forces in America; and then, more obscurely, some days after, that another has been nominated:—one of them ought certainly to make haste out, if he could; the French, by account, have 25,000 men in those countries, with real officers to lead them! Haste out, however, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... risk which in other wars might make a magazine article or a book chapter, once you sat down to write it, melted away as your ego was reduced to its proper place in cosmos. Individuals had never been so obscurely atomic. With hundreds of thousands fighting, personal experience was valuable only as it expressed that of the whole. Each story brought back to the mess was much like others, thrilling for the narrator and repetition for the polite ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... celerity, the simultaneity of his impressions, his reflections. It occurred to him that his abnormal alertness must be something like that of a drowning person, or a person in mortal peril, and being perfectly safe and well, he was obscurely flattered by the fact. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... what is the positive nature of the Christian hope and what the final character of the life of heaven, the answer is that we cannot fully say, that we know only in part, "we see obscurely, as in a mirror." In hymn and ecstasy and vision men have sought to find expression for the substance of things hoped for, and they have failed. "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson

... lovely ere his race be run,[224] Along Morea's hills the setting Sun; 1170 Not, as in Northern climes, obscurely bright, But one unclouded blaze of living light! O'er the hushed deep the yellow beam he throws, Gilds the green wave, that trembles as it glows. On old AEgina's rock, and Idra's isle,[225] The God of gladness sheds his parting ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... fresh stimulus and prevented his zeal from flagging.[344] The timidity or treachery of one of the prisoners facilitated the inquest. Terrified by the prospect of torture and death, or induced by hope of reward, a person, obscurely designated as le Guainier, or Gueynier,[345] made an ample disclosure of the names and residences of his former fellow-believers. The pursuit was no longer confined to those who had been concerned in the distribution of the placards. All reputed ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... ever beheld—the Chapelle Expiatore. It was originally a burial-ground in connection with the Madeleine church, but was afterward set apart to commemorate the sad fate of the elder Bourbons. When Louis XVI. and his queen were executed, in 1793, they were obscurely buried on this spot. A friend, M. Descloseaux, at once cared for their remains, else they would have been lost amid other victims of the bloody revolution. It is a singular fact, that Danton, Herbert, and Robespierre were also buried in this same place, ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... Hawkins, Beauclerk, Bennet Langton, and Dr. Nugent. It is almost certain that it was at Johnson's instigation that he had been admitted into this choice fellowship. Long before either the Traveller or the Vicar had been heard of, Johnson had perceived the literary genius that obscurely burned in the uncouth figure of this Irishman; and was anxious to impress on others Goldsmith's claims to respect and consideration. In the minute record kept by Boswell of his first evening with Johnson at ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black

... up the more important modifications which domestic rabbits have undergone, together with their causes as far as we can obscurely see them. By the supply of abundant and nutritious food, together with little exercise, and by the continued selection of the heaviest individuals, the weight of the larger breeds has been more than ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... (Figs. 838-840).—Plants oblong about 3-4 mm., stipitate or substipitate at the base, growing densely caespitose, in patches, black, smooth, the apices usually obscurely mammillate. Stipes usually short, but sometimes 6-8 mm. long, and when growing in clusters, the bases consolidated by a carbonous stroma. Interior of the receptacle in two compartments (Fig. 841 x6), the lower filled with soft tissue, black around the edges, but white in ...
— Synopsis of Some Genera of the Large Pyrenomycetes - Camilla, Thamnomyces, Engleromyces • C. G. Lloyd

... period, the diary was still going on; and no one with such a gift for writing will stop short at a diary. In fact, Raymond tried his hand at a few short stories—still another muse was fluttering about his temples. Most of these stories came back; but a few of them got printed obscurely in mangled form, and the failure of the venturesome periodicals sometimes deprived him of the honorarium (as pay was then pompously called) which would have given the last convincing touch to his claims on authorship. ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... fought to build Britain above the tide Of wars and windy fate; And passed content, leaving to us the pride Of lives obscurely great. ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... to 3 inches broad, convex or nearly plane, viscid or glutinous when moist, often obscurely streaked (virgate). Flesh whitish or dull yellowish. Tubes plane or convex, adnate, small, nearly round, yellow, becoming ochraceous. Stem 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 inches long, 2 to 4 lines thick, equal, slender, pale or yellowish, dotted above and below the ring with ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin

... duty ever been performed. The spot became undistinguishable as time went by, and we believe that there is not a man in the world who can point out the place where the body of John Fitch was buried. The grave of the inventor of the steamboat, hidden away, more obscurely than that of Jean Valjean in the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, will keep the heroic bones to the last day, when all sepulchres of earth shall set free their occupants and the great sea's wash ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... contain of the points I desire most to insist upon with respect both to education and employment, a portion of the series of notes published some time ago in the "Art Journal," on the opposition of Modesty and Liberty, and the unescapable law of wise restraint. I am sorry that they are written obscurely—and it may be thought affectedly; but the fact is, I have always had three different ways of writing: one, with the single view of making myself understood, in which I necessarily omit a great deal of what comes into my head; another, in which I ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... flow in layers or strata, at least three deep. I follow a slow person's talk, and keep a perfectly clear under-current of my own beneath it. My friend the Autocrat has already made a similar remark. Under both runs obscurely a consciousness belonging to a third train of reflections, independent of the two others. I will try to write out a ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... argillaceous, and passes up gradually into the base of the great formation known as the true Chalk, divided into the three subdivisions of the chalk-marl, white chalk without flints, and white chalk with flints. The first of these is simply argillaceous chalk, and passes up into a great mass of obscurely-stratified white chalk in which there are no flints (Turonien of D'Orbigny; Mittelquader of Germany). This, in turn, passes up into a great mass of white chalk, in which the stratification is marked by nodules of black flint ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... second—that this heat possesses a peculiar chemical quality which is not possessed by the purely calorific rays outside of the visible spectrum, though far more intense; and third—that the heat radiated from obscurely hot iron abounds especially in rays analogous to those of the region of the ...
— Photographic Reproduction Processes • P.C. Duchochois

... broken by the Persian power, but her municipal institutions remained. Hungary lost her national crown, but her home institutions remain. South Carolina may preserve her constituted domestic authority, but she must be content to glimmer obscurely remote rather than shine and revolve in a constellated band. She even goes out by the ordinance of a so-called sovereign convention, content to lose by her isolation that youthful, vehement, exultant, progressive life, which is our NATIONALITY! She foregoes ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... many others when they approach this subject, speaks timidly, and in consequence somewhat vaguely and obscurely; but his meaning is, that we must expect the Bible, on scientific subjects, to speak, not according to science, but according to the prevailing ideas of their times on scientific subjects; and that we are to regard the Bible as our teacher, not on every subject to which ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... extending far beyond the Mekrit, and which in fact are appropriate to the Tunguses. Rashiduddin seems to describe the latter under the name of Uriangkut of the Woods, a people dwelling beyond the frontier of Barguchin, and in connection with whom he speaks of their Reindeer obscurely, as well as of their tents of birch bark, and their ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... topping the hill beneath the house, was that silent married couple, the heavy, sober man and the serene, large-eyed woman, who did not mingle with the others. He had pointed out to her the amiable Senator and President Beals, both well-known figures in the railroad world where he worked, far down, obscurely, as a rate clerk. His wife looked at these two great ones, who indirectly controlled the petty destiny of the Johnstons, and squeezed her husband's hand more tightly, expressing thus many mixed feelings,—content with him, pride and confidence in him, in spite of his humble position ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... proclaimed himself King of France, and quartered the lilies of France on the royal shield. The Flemish proved a very reed; and though the French army came up to meet the English in the Vermando country, no fighting took place, and the campaign of 1339 ended obscurely. Norman and Genoese ships threatened the southern shores of England, landing at Southampton and in the Isle of Wight unopposed. In 1340 Edward returned to Flanders; on his way he attacked the French fleet which lay at Sluys, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... manly beauty;' and thus the Cavalier warden, in denying this aspirant the means of cultivating literature on a little university oatmeal, was turning back on the world one who was fated to become a republican power of the age. This shining light, instead of comfortably and obscurely merging in a petty constellation of Alma Mater, was to become a bright particular star, and dwell apart. The avowed liberalism of Robert may, however, have done more in reality to shock Sir Henry, than his inability to add a cubit to his stature. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various

... would be gone five or six months, perhaps, and there were many reasons why it would be better to keep the young people apart for a time. Any one would understand that, he was sure. While Angela was living obscurely with a former governess, a brilliant young officer of some distinction, like Giovanni, could not see her regularly without seriously compromising her. It was the way of the world and could not be helped, yet if Giovanni ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford

... with some rude apparatus of his own contrivance. The curious results of his first experiments led to others, which in his hands shortly became the science of pneumatic chemistry. About the same time, Scheele was obscurely working in the same direction in a remote Swedish village; and he discovered several new gases, with no more effective apparatus at his command than a few apothecaries' phials and ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... things were to be done, that the question did not affect the Dobrzynskis alone, but the whole district, the entire gentry; Robak mumbled the same thing, though he never finished his talk and always stammered and expressed himself obscurely. Well, finally we have gathered, and have called in our neighbours by messengers. You Dobrzynskis are not the only men here; from various other hamlets there are about two hundred of us here; so let us all consult together. ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz

... invincible strangers"; the thought of resistance, far less the hope of success, had not yet dawned on the Samoan mind. He returned (November 1889) to a changed world. The Tupua party was reduced to sue for peace, Brandeis was withdrawn, Tamasese was dying obscurely of a broken heart; the German flag no longer waved over the capital; and over all the islands one figure stood supreme. During Laupepa's absence this man had succeeded him in all his honours and titles, in tenfold ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... and entreated Malarichus to explain in intelligible language what he wanted, and not to use such obscure terms. For he declared that he, being but a plain and somewhat rude man, had not in the least understood what was intimated so obscurely. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... Sinclair Lewis in "Main Street," are men who have succeeded in projecting definitely what great numbers of other people were obscurely trying to say inside their heads. "You have said it for me." They establish a new form which is then endlessly copied until it, too, becomes a stereotype of perception. The next pioneer finds it difficult ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... relished of the Countess of Romfrey. The glittering of Cecilia's eyes frightened him. Taking her for the moment to know almost as much as he, the colonel doubted the weight his communication would have on her; he talked obscurely of a scandalous affair at Lord Romfrey's house in town, and Beauchamp and that Frenchwoman. 'But,' said he, 'Mrs. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... been dashed to pieces. The dell was so narrow that the trees met in some places from the opposite sides. They were now loaded with snow instead of leaves, and thus formed a sort of frozen canopy over the rivulet beneath, which was marked by its darker colour, as it soaked its way obscurely through wreaths of snow. In one place, where the glen was a little wider, leaving a small piece of flat ground between the rivulet and the bank, were situated the ruins of the hamlet in which Brown had been involved on the preceding evening. The ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott



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