"Obscurity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over the map of Lombardy. The "Representatives," however, had certainly taken up a general prejudice against him; for he did not reassume his functions at Nice; and seems to have spent some time in obscurity with his own family, who were then in very distressed circumstances, at Marseilles. It was here that he fell in love with Mademoiselle Clery, whom, but for some accident, it appears he would have married. Her sister was shortly afterwards united to his brother Joseph, and she herself became in the ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... the air and shrouded all the surrounding buildings in dull obscurity; while the fountains, rising and falling with an odd and ghostly movement as of gigantic living creatures, were seen dimly white in the midst of the gray gloom. The ceaseless stream of hurrying passers-by lost itself in darkness only a few paces from them. ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... been an illusion, he once more opened his eyes, but in the obscurity he could see nothing. Again he shut them closely and listened as before. This time he listened with more success. A sound regularly cadenced was heard. It was such as would be made by a pair of oars cautiously dipped, and was accompanied ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... stumbled forward through the thick obscurity he continued his personal revelations, the present enterprise having roused whatever there was of sentiment slumbering in his soul. At last they came out on a wide bayou; a white mist hung above it, and on the low shore leaf and branch ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... however, slow, burdened with the care of the lame girl, and heavily laden with the fish. The purple shades of twilight soon clouded the scene, deepened by the heavy masses of foliage, which cast a greater degree of obscurity upon their narrow path; for they had now left the oak-flat and entered the gorge of the valley. The utter loneliness of the path, the grotesque shadows of the trees, that stretched in long array across the steep banks on either side, taking, now this, ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... concealing the lower part of his face, and a silk hat pushed down almost over his eyes. I saw his little nervous glance up and down the street, I saw him push past the commissionnaire as though in a hurry to gain the semi-obscurity of the car. I stopped short upon the pavement, motionless for one brief and fatal moment. Then I turned back and hastened to the side of the car. I knocked ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... you so ill and unhappy!" and she made a gesture of protest and distress whose strong effect was only intensified by the obscurity. "I had hoped—you led ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... of death and silence there was no invasion—there had been no retreat. A few of the wounded had been brought out, under fire, but the others had been left with the dead for the morning light and succor. For it was known that in that horrible obscurity, riderless horses, frantic with the smell of blood, galloped wildly here and there, or, maddened by wounds, plunged furiously at the intruder; that the wounded soldier, still armed, could not always distinguish friend from foe or from ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... leaves as green as those of our grasses. According to the experiments of Bouguer, light is weakened after a passage of 180 feet in the ratio of 1 to 1477.8. The seaweed of Alegranza consequently presents a new example of plants which vegetate in great obscurity without becoming white. Several germs, enveloped in the bulbs of the lily tribes, the embryo of the malvaceae, of the rhamnoides, of the pistacea, the viscum, and the citrus, the branches of some subterraneous plants; in short, vegetables transported into mines, where the ambient air contains ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... you despise everything that can make you worthy to reign after me. What you call inability, I call rebellion, for you cannot excuse yourself on the ground of the weakness of your mind and the state of your health. We have struggled from obscurity through the toil of war, which has taught other nations to know and respect us, and yet you will not even hear of military exercises. If you do not alter your conduct, know that I shall deprive you of my succession. ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... patience is required to clear up their numerous and obscure allusions. The best extant specimen is the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius; the most characteristic is the Alexandra or Cassandra of Lycophron, the obscurity of which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... is like the veiled sun, which tires the eyes far more than its most brilliant rays. In the semi-obscurity which still enveloped her misfortune, the poor woman's sight was keener than she could have wished. Now she understood and accounted for certain peculiar circumstances in her husband's life, his frequent absences, his restlessness, ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... attained that union of miraculously balanced form, sweetness of melody, and depth of feeling with a degree of sheer strength that keeps the expression of the main thought lucid, and the surface of the music, so to speak, calm, when obscurity might have been anticipated, and some roughness and storm and stress excused. "Faith displays her rosy wing" is an absolutely perfect instance of a Handel song. Were not the thing done, one might believe it impossible to express with such simplicity—four ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Majesty's Government." The advice of the Minister Sung, who was suspected of sympathy with the foreigners, was much discredited, and from a position of power and influence he gradually sank into one of obscurity and impotence. This was especially unfortunate at a moment when several foreign powers were endeavoring to obtain a footing at Pekin. The Russian emperor, wishing no doubt to emulate the English, sent, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... hear this announcement of a girlish mastery of his life's work. She tried to think in what dry words he would have rebuked the levity, but before she could arrange a phrase quite in character, they were in the front of the box, and in the obscurity some one took her hand, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... executed with consummate skill, and the leading ranks of the enemy were broken, thrown into confusion, and forced back on the succeeding squadrons by the impetuous charge. The cry spread that the garrison had made a sally; the obscurity of evening was commencing, the Goths commenced their retreat; and Belisarius and his wearied troops were at last allowed to enter Rome. In this desperate encounter, their respective enemies allowed that Belisarius was the bravest of the Romans, and Wisand of the Goths. The Roman general ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... bottom of the dingle. It was nearly involved in obscurity. To dissipate the feeling of melancholy which came over my mind, I resolved to kindle a fire; and having heaped dry sticks upon my hearth, and added a billet or two, I struck a light and soon produced a blaze. Sitting down, I fixed my eyes upon the blaze, ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... traverse, as it is called (that is, a temporary screen of boards), to be drawn along the under part of the anteroom, a few feet from the door, so as to separate the place stained with the blood from the rest of the apartment, and involve it in considerable obscurity. Now this temporary partition still exists, and, by running across and interrupting the plan of the roof and cornices, plainly intimates that it has been intended to serve some temporary purpose, since it disfigures the proportions of the room, interferes ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... portion of our country is veiled in the deepest obscurity. Here we shall have the free-thinking German, the bigoted Roman Catholic, the atheistic Frenchman, and the latitudinarian Yankee, in one grand heterogeneous conglomeration of nations and ideas such as the world has never seen. Whether these ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... studied some of the wild theories propounded in the name of science concerning the history of life on the South American continent. There is, however, one serious criticism to be made on Haseman: the extreme obscurity of his style—an obscurity mixed with occasional bits of scientific pedantry, which makes it difficult to tell whether or not on some points his thought is obscure also. Modern scientists, like modern ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... of the nave is a brass rule, inlaid diagonally from the north to the south wall. Its original use appears to be clothed in some obscurity, one informative person stating that it is the line of departmental division, and another that it marks the meridian of Paris, which is shown on all French navigation charts. Its real purpose is evidently topographical rather than ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... Great Isabella, and adopted in all the churches, the faithful of Toledo still wished to preserve that form of ritual which they had practised for many centuries. Although this portion of Spain's ecclesiastical history is wrapt in great obscurity, and has given rise to many disputes among learned men, yet it is certain that in order to decide between that authority which wished to extinguish those remains of antiquity, and the people who desired to preserve them, recourse was had ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... on the positions which Beautrelet had won for him. He did not move a step forward. Around the individual whom Mlle. de Saint-Veran had taken for Beautrelet, on the eve of the crime, the same mystery reigned as heretofore. The same obscurity also surrounded everything connected with the removal of the four Rubens pictures. What had become of them? And what road had been taken by the motor car in which they were carried ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... Gospel they anticipate "an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away." Are they now clothed in wretched attire?—they may expect to be adorned with "white robes" and "a crown of glory." Are they now in a state of obscurity—their names unknown—their condition mean and despised?—hereafter they shall have a "name better than of sons and daughters;" they shall "shine as the brightness of the firmament," and "as the stars, for ever and ever." Is their condition on earth eminently "the house ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... rolled away, causing the hearer to shudder through his whole being, she seemed to sink into the tomb from which for a brief moment she had risen. As the echoes slowly ceased to vibrate along the vaulted roofs, the church, made luminous by the music, fell suddenly into profound obscurity. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Broune was in the world,—blessed with power, with a large income, with influence throughout all the world around him, courted, feted, feared and almost worshipped,—that he should desire to share her fortunes, her misfortunes, her struggles, her poverty and her obscurity, was not within the scope of her imagination. There was a homage in it, of which she did not believe any man to be capable,—and which to her would be the more wonderful as being paid to herself. She thought so badly of men and women generally, and of Mr Broune and herself as a man and a woman ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... disappointment, he believed that the world had now no charms for him, and that in future his existence would be little better than a long sad bore. He looked back upon his career of gaudy magnificence without regret, and felt like a blase butterfly, who would gladly return to the sober obscurity of the chrysalis. He found that wealth and station, though they might command the admiration of the world, could not insure him happiness; and he thought how readily he would resign all the gifts and glories which Fortune had showered on him for the joyous hope, could he dare to indulge it, of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... At first I did not dare to appear too frequently in the street which was the centre of my interest, but a dangerous fascination led me to become bolder and more adventurous as I became familiar with the surroundings. From under the obscurity of arches and from behind pillars I noted daily who entered the doors of the new firm, and endeavored to get an idea of the amount of business that it transacted. In this respect I was somewhat disappointed, for although customers were by no means lacking, there ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... distinction, or to sanctify ignorance and vice with the name of hereditary authority. He who has most zeal and ability to promote public felicity, let him be the servant of the public. This is the only line of distinction drawn by nature. Leave the bird of night to the obscurity for which nature intended him, and expect only from the eagle to brush the clouds with his wings and look boldly in ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... dear man. What a mess I am in, writing papers which cannot pay their own way! Pauper papers, in fact, which must go to the workhouse for support. Ugh! Has the Caffre War paper shared the same fate? and the Language paper too? Here I have two by me, which I will keep in their native obscurity. One is on the South African Boers and slavery, in which I show that their church is, and always has been, the great bulwark of slavery, cattle-lifting, and Caffre-marauding; and I correct the mistaken views of some writers who describe the Boers as all that is good, and of others ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... into the shoes and boots took to flight at the interruption; and as we were conscious that in the depth of our meditations we might have been rudely staring at the old lady for half an hour without knowing it, we took to flight too, and were soon immersed in the deepest obscurity of the adjacent 'Dials.' ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... chastened, taught wisdom by adversity. The Puritan spirit would reign once more in the land, and an age of penitence and Lenten self-abasement would succeed the orgies of the Restoration; while the light loves of Whitehall, the noble ladies, the impudent actresses, would vanish into obscurity. Angela's loyal young heart was full of faith in the King. She was ready to believe that his sins were the sins of a man whose head had been turned by the sudden change from exile to a throne, from poverty to wealth, from dependence upon his Bourbon cousin and his friends in ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... as I can recollect, the first clergyman of our church who has suffered publick execution for immorality; and I know not whether it would not be more for the interest of religion to bury such an offender in the obscurity of perpetual exile, than to expose him in a cart, and on the gallows, to all who for any reason are enemies ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... every other people has been, and is still esteemed of so vast magnitude, and deep interest, as to have induced, and still to induce them to pour forth funds from their treasuries unsparingly, to aid the historians in removing, if possible, the veil that conceals in dark obscurity ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... under the Revolution. On the scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the fortunes of party. Political life might be denied her, but that seems a trifle when you consider how generously she was permitted political death. She was to spin and cook for her citizen in the obscurity of her living hours; but to the hour of her death was granted a part in the largest interests, social, national, international. The blood wherewith she should, according to Robespierre, have blushed to be seen or heard in the tribune, was exposed ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... strength, address and valour; the truth being that he was not at all resigned and would infinitely liefer have been left out of the limelight. The more he was represented as a person of consequence, the less fair his chance to study these others at his leisure, in the comfortable obscurity of their indifference. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... pleaded as an excuse for withholding them altogether. Because men can do so little, they do nothing. It was the servant who had received only one talent that wrapped his lord's money in a napkin, and buried it in useless, unprofitable obscurity. When the multitudes hungered in the wilderness, the disciples hesitated to bring the five barley loaves and two small fishes, asking, "What are they among so many?" They were taught, however, to produce their little all, utterly inadequate as it was to the exigencies of the case, ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... either hand, and Sir Guy deemed it wiser to move at a reasonable pace, for fear of attracting suspicion in a neighborhood already aroused by rumors of the man-hunt which had begun. They could count upon the obscurity ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... the soul can be, distinct from the body. As if, forsooth, they could comprehend what it is, when it is in the body,—its conformation, its magnitude, or its position there.... To me, when I consider the nature of the soul, there is far more difficulty and obscurity in forming a conception of what the soul is while in the body,—in a dwelling where it seems so little at home,—than of what it will be when it has escaped into the free atmosphere of heaven, which seems its natural abode".[1] And as the poet seems to us inspired, as the gifts of memory and ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... extinguished, the castle stood there in the semi-obscurity of night like a black, old-world ruin. It stood right in front of the moon which was now climbing up behind its bastions and where its light fell upon two opposite windows which met together in a corner room it shone through them both and lighted up the whole apartment. This room ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... friend, in a tone of deprecation. "The lightest sense of wrong gains undue magnitude the moment we begin to complain. We see almost anything to be of greater importance when from the obscurity of thought we bring it out ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... evident that Burke's mind was at this period turned to authorship, and that his chief quarrel arose from the petty and pragmatical demand of Hamilton, that he should abandon it altogether. Burke soon had ample revenge, if it was to be found in the obscurity into which Hamilton rapidly fell, and the burlesque which alone revived his name from its obscurity. The contrast between the two must have been a lesson to the vanity of the one, as pungent as was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... seaman's dress. I did not much like the look of the forepeak, into which Peter introduced me, telling me that it was to be my house and home for the next few years of my life. I had been accustomed to the dingy obscurity of an Irish cabin, but never had I been, I thought, in a more dark and gloomy ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... a succeeding age, though his first writings attracted considerable attention during the life of Addison, who first raised him from obscurity. He is the greatest, after Dryden, of all the second class poets of his country. His Rape of the Lock, the most original of his poems, established his fame. But his greatest works were the translations of the Iliad and Odyssey, the Dunciad, and his Essay ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... of Cheops, though commenced in 3733 B.C., is not the oldest monument in Egypt; the step pyramid of Sakkara is of earlier date, while the origin of the sphinx is lost in obscurity. The pyramid, however, is of immense size, and leaves an abiding impression upon the minds of everyone who has seen it, or climbed its rugged sides. Figures convey little, I am afraid, but when I tell you that each of its sides was originally 755 feet in ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... members of Parliament, to the cause of the cardinal, and to prejudice them against the queen. All the enemies of Marie Antoinette, the legitimists even, who saw their old rights of nobility encroached upon by the preference given to the Polignacs and other families which had sprung from obscurity; the party of the royal princes and princesses, whom Marie Antoinette had always offended, first because she was an Austrian, and later because she had allowed herself to win the love of the king; the men of the agitation and freedom party, who thundered ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... engine-room, groping among floating and sunken objects, into a remote state-room, the Acheron of the cavernous hold. He was to find by touch a seaman's chest; handle it in that thickening gloom; carry it, push it, move it through that labyrinthine obscurity to a point from which it could be raised. To add immeasurably to the intricacy of this undertaking, there was the need of carrying his life-line and air-hose through all that entanglement and obscurity. Three times in that horror of thick ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... growing warmer. After a mile she saw that he was studying a dark cloud in the north. He urged the horses to the run. But she forgot his unusual haste in wonder at the tragic landscape. The pale snow, the prickles of old stubble, and the clumps of ragged brush faded into a gray obscurity. Under the hillocks were cold shadows. The willows about a farmhouse were agitated by the rising wind, and the patches of bare wood where the bark had peeled away were white as the flesh of a leper. The snowy slews were of a harsh flatness. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... fields enjoys a degree of peace and happiness that those favoured by birth or fortune would envy. Disease visits poor and rich alike; moral suffering is more especially the appanage of the so-called higher classes, and if obscurity and poverty render certain troubles specially severe, wealth and rank play the same role in afflictions of another kind; there is a dark side to every picture. More than this, inequality of condition is one of the fundamental factors of social equilibrium; ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... been quite correct in her surmise that Kenwick was shamming, though this was merely based on general theories. Not only did he see her as she emerged with Geoffry Daymond from the comparative obscurity of the stone lion's neighbourhood, but he had been for some moments furtively watching them both, himself lost to view in the crowd about the band-stand. She would have been surprised indeed if she could have guessed ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... their defence and for the extirpation of heresy, the planting of the Catholic religion, the delivery of our country of infinite murders, wicked and detestable policies by which this kingdom was hitherto governed, nourished in obscurity and ignorance, maintained in barbarity and incivility, and consequently of infinite evils which were too lamentable to be rehearsed. And seeing these are motives most laudable before any men of consideration, and before the Almighty most meritorious, which ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... in thought. During the life of the rector, I had often been told that the law was the road to honour; and when at the university, being eager to secure this said honour to myself, I had laboriously read some of the civilians. I say laboriously, for the task was far from inviting. The obscurity of their terms, the contradictions I thought I discovered, and the voluminous perplexity in which the whole was ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... each other. Indeed, they lived together in Ninth Street, in a boarding-house, there, which had the honor of lodging and partially feeding several other young fellows of like kidney, who have since gone their several ways into fame or into obscurity. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... forward towards her with a stifled, incipient appeal above this bed, which is changing into a tomb. The border of the tragic dress has fallen again, but I cannot remove my eyes from that profound obscurity. I look at Marie, and look at her again; and though I knew her, it seems to me that I ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... rescue for a moment the account of Mr. Cecil's invention from the obscurity into which it has fallen—obscurity which the ingenuity of the ideas embodied in this machine does not merit. It is probable that in addition to the imperfections of his machinery, Mr. Cecil suffered from the difficulty of obtaining ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... acknowledgement seems to have reached its author from the Pope. If we may credit a more recent story, his writings only gained him a prison from his order. "Unheard, forgotten, buried," the old man died as he had lived, and it has been reserved for later ages to roll away the obscurity that had gathered round his memory, and to place first in the great roll of modern science ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... notions of ambition being overturned, he was more than once on the point of killing himself, and for a long time was always kept in sight by his friends. He sold out at the end of the campaign. As he had been gentle and polite to his friends, they did not desert him. But he ever afterwards remained in obscurity. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... three that when this faint note, almost like the sigh of the wind among the wet trees, reached their ears, they said nothing, but merely stopped and in the obscurity glanced at one another with eyes of understanding. They listened patiently, and the low, plaintive howl came again and then once more, all from different points of the compass. There had been a time when Henry Ware was deceived for a moment ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... intervals he now had neuritis and a limp to distract his mind; also his former brother-in-law with professions of esteem and respect and a tendency to borrow. And drunk or sober he had the Ariani. But the house that Youth had built in the tinted obscurity of an old New York parlour—no, he didn't have that; and even memory of it were wellnigh gone had not Constance Palliser spoken from the shadows of ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the troubles that existed between Henry IV. and his eldest son and successor, Shakspeare's Prince Hal, is involved in much obscurity. It used to be taken for granted that the poet's Prince was an historical character, but that is no longer the case,—Falstaff's royal associate being now regarded in the same light in which Falstaff himself is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... rapid travelling a great darkness had begun to envelope them, and obscurity so pall-like that even near objects were seen as it were through ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... crowded theaters which had been her earlier experiences. But the dark storm cloud was soon to pass over, and henceforth almost unbroken sunshine was to attend Mary Anderson's career. For her there was to be no heart-breaking period of mean obscurity, no years of dull unrequited toil. She burst as a star upon the theatrical world, and a star she has remained to this day, because, through all her successes, she never for a moment lost sight of the fact that she could only maintain her ground by patient study, ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... the ground-work of these volumes have long been kept in the obscurity of manuscript: my studies of South America, of Syria and Palestine, of Iceland, and of Istria, left me scant time for the labour of preparation. Leisure and opportunity have now offered themselves, and I avail myself of them in the hope that the publication will be found useful to more ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Ammon as related in the Old Testament is not free from obscurity, due to the uncertain date of the various references and to the doubt whether the individual details belong to the particular period to which each is ascribed. (See further MOAB.) From the Assyrian inscriptions we learn that the Ammonite king Ba'sa (Baasha) (son) of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... meditated on the subject, so as to contribute as much as I can to the explanation of this department of Natural Science, which, not without reason, is reputed to be one of its most difficult parts. I recognize myself to be much indebted to those who were the first to begin to dissipate the strange obscurity in which these things were enveloped, and to give us hope that they might be explained by intelligible reasoning. But, on the other hand I am astonished also that even here these have often been willing to offer, as assured and demonstrative, reasonings which were far ...
— Treatise on Light • Christiaan Huygens
... Spenser is wrapt in a similar obscurity to that which hides from us his great predecessor Chaucer, and his still greater contemporary Shakspere. As in the case of Chaucer, our principal external authorities are a few meagre entries in certain official documents, and such facts as may be gathered from ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... glossily ringletted and monumentally breastpinned, but mostly frequent and familiar, after the manner of George Curtis and Parke Godwin and George Ripley and Charles Dana and N. P. Willis and, for brighter lights or those that in our then comparative obscurity almost deceived the morn, Mr. Bryant, Washington Irving and E. A. Poe—the last-named of whom I cite not so much because he was personally present (the extremity of personal absence had just overtaken him) as by reason of that predominant lustre ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... were enshrined in the heart of poor Mrs Leather, and not a few of these—painted by the hand of May—hung on the walls of their little sitting-room, but the word to which she turned her eyes in seasons of profoundest obscurity, and which served her as a sheet-anchor in the midst of the wildest storms, was, "Hope thou in God, for thou shalt yet praise Him." And alongside of that text, whenever she thought of it or chanced to look at it, there invariably flashed another: ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth."—Zech., vi, 5. Now if this were rendered "which go forth to stand," &c., it is plain that these prepositions would express quite opposite relations. Yet, probably from some obscurity in the original, the Greek version has been made to mean, "going forth to stand;" and the Latin, "which go forth, that they may stand;" while the French text conveys nearly the same sense as ours,—"which go forth from ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the familiar proverb about fools and dead men, and observed that there was great obscurity surrounding the real sources of evil in our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... from the obscurity in which for years he has been wrapped and has become a topic of conversation, a link with the past, a popular alien enemy and ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... man's failures and successes, history is an inspiring thing. Perhaps of the history of no country is this so true as of that of ours. By far the larger part of our great men have started at the very bottom of the ladder, in poverty and obscurity, and have fought their way up round by round against all the forces of society. Nowhere else have inherited wealth and inherited position counted for so little as in America. Again, we have had no wars of greed or ambition, unless the war with Mexico could be so called. We have, at least, had no ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... the circumstances of the two nations, Spain was decadent, bankrupt, defeated; England was rising to the supreme heights of its greatness under Elizabeth and Cromwell. At the end of the sixteenth century, Spain had passed its splendid meridian and was falling into the grey obscurity of a clouded evening. It had quickly lost the great place which for a few years it had held in the world, every day brought a new failure, every year a new disaster; the great Armada had perished miserably on the dunes of Flanders ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... and yet, stronger than before, was the certainty that someone was near at hand, that a pair of eyes were regarding him through the obscurity of the night. So strong was the emotion, and so strongly did it recall the emotion of a few nights ago when he had felt the influence of a strange woman's eyes, that he leaped to his feet. On the instant he half expected to see Zoraida ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... carelessly in conversation, but deliberately in print, professed their inability to apprehend the meaning of the whole, or to follow the links of the connexion between its several parts. I am myself as little able to understand where the difficulty lies, or to detect any lurking obscurity, as these critics found themselves to unravel my logic. Possibly I may not be an indifferent and neutral judge in such a case. I will therefore sketch a brief abstract of the little paper according to my original design, and then leave the reader to judge ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... black, because they were out of the shadow of the ship. The landing boat turned—but there was no sensation of centrifugal force—and they were in a vast obscurity with merely a dim phantom of the planetary surface to be seen. But behind them a blue-white sun shone terribly. Its light was warm—hot—even though it came through ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... upon her sister. Her character was a complex one which I had failed always to analyse, and it seemed just then as though her endeavour was to free her sister of all the responsibilities of her married life. She had made that effort once before, prior to the tragedy, but its motive was hidden in obscurity. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... the life of the Church, the law of continuous organic development. It shared the vicissitudes of the Church, and had its part in everything which influences the course and mode of her existence. In early times it grew in silence and obscurity, its features were rarely and imperfectly distinguishable; but even then the Popes exerted their authority in all directions, and while the wisdom with which it was exercised was often questioned, the right itself was undisputed. ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... observe." And with a courage which did him credit, he, after some time, suppressed his fear, and felt in the pocket of his game-bag for two balls, which, with trembling hands, he slipped into his gun. After this he again looked out, and reconnoitred the movements of the enemy; but so great was the obscurity, that he could discover nothing—unless, indeed, it was a dark mass which walked and jumped hither and thither, rolled, frolicked, and rejoiced in his refreshing bath. The heart of the Parisian was greatly agitated, and beat as if it would split his flannel ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... more interesting and clearer than his theories about it. I once heard him give a combination reading-lecture, and after he had read some of his poems, all of which are free from obscurity, he began to explain his ideas on how poetry should be written. He did this with charming modesty, but his "explanations" were opaque. After he had continued in this vein for some time, he asked the audience which they would prefer to him do ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... again under such conditions made him forget, for the moment, the role she was to play—a part he particularly detested. Truly he was the most fortunate and distinguished of men—to be thus taken by the hand and lifted from nameless obscurity to the most desired position beside a ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... truths by dramatic fictions represented in public. The great and good PILPAY the fabulist, is said to have used that kind of exhibition as a medium for conveying political instruction to a despotic prince, his master, to whom he dared not to utter the dictates of truth, in any other garb. In the obscurity of those remote ages, the evidences of particular facts are too faintly discernible to be relied upon: All that can be assumed as certain, therefore, is that the elementary parts of the dramatic art had then ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... ours; and the citizens of greater states, Athens, even Rome itself, indulged in the same pleasing thought. Our only means of judging of the future is the past. We see that nations have sprung from obscurity, risen to glory, and decayed. Their rise has in general been marked by virtue; their decadence by vice, vanity, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... time, the last hopes of the House of Stuart were now destroyed; the Pretender himself was languishing in Italy, where he shortly after died: and his son, a slave to the vices which seemed hereditary in that family, was consuming his life in an unpitied and ignominious obscurity. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... morning or white, a gloom rested always on the singers' gallery, cast by the tower upon the south side, that stood apart from the main building, connected only by the porch roof, as by an isthmus. And upon eyes used to this comparative obscurity the nave produced the effect of a bright parterre of flowers, especially in those days when all the women wore scarlet cloaks, to scare the French if they should invade. Zeb's gaze, amid the turmoil of sound, hovered around one such cloak, rested on a slim back resolutely turned ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this gross earthly body, the spirituous body which accompanieth it (as its vehicle) must needs go away fouled and incrassated with the vapours and steams thereof, till the soul afterwards by degrees purging itself, this becometh at length a dry splendour, which hath no misty obscurity nor casteth any shadow." Here it will be seen, we lose sight of the specific difference of the two future vehicles—the ethereal is regarded as a sublimation of the aerial. This, however, is opposed to the general consensus of Plato's commentators. Sometimes the ethereal ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... agrarian laws, will be found sufficient for all practical purposes. After all the researches that have been made, the true origin of the Latin people, and even of the Roman city, is involved in impenetrable obscurity; the legendary traditions collected by the historians are, however, the best guides that we can now follow; but it would be absurd to bestow implicit credit on all the accounts they have given, and the editor has, therefore, pointed out the ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... hugely, the candidate must be able to keep up with him; and to have a sponge stomach equal to the absorption of quarts, and even of gallons, is a piece of excellent good fortune for the man who is fool enough to want to go to Congress, instead of enjoying the delights of obscurity. Verily, he has his reward. He who suffers in the gin-mills of New York may recover himself in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... memorable night in question, there was a good deal of fog driving over the ocean to increase the obscurity. This rendered Daggett doubly cautious, and he actually hauled up close to the wind, heading off well to the westward, in order to avoid running in among the bergs, in greater uncertainty than the circumstances would seem to require. Of course Roswell followed the movement; and when the moon ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... up the narrow stairs from the door, and came into the tubes of galleries all closed from the congregation, and there, sitting down in the obscurity, the preacher passed his ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... fifteen years later when the brethren of the little Community of San Ambrogio gathered in their chapel to sing the requiem over their founder and first General, Father Denfili, who died, old and blind, after twenty years of retirement into obscurity. But there were more than his brethren there. For all those years he had occupied, day after day, the solitude of a little confessional in the chapel. He had had his penitents there, and, in a general way, the brethren ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... alone "Faust" may rank as a great drama; but it is the result of Goethe's broodings on the mystery of human life, shadowed forth in the symbolic parts and elaborated with still greater complexity and still more far-reaching suggestiveness—and, it must be added, with deepening obscurity—in the Second Part, that have given the work its place with "Job," with the "Prometheus Bound," with "The Divine Comedy," and ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... night toward the end of the month, no rain falling now, but the sky sagging low with a weight of cloud. An eye trained to such obscurity could have made out the landscape in looming degrees of darkness, masses rising against levels, the fields a shade lighter than the trees. These were discernible as huddlings and blots and caverned blacknesses ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... in the city, and the streets wind about so much, that it is no easy matter to find the way, especially dark as it then was. Here and there only a light gleamed forth from some artisan's workshop, making the obscurity in other places still more dense. At last I recognised a building I had seen in the morning, and knew that Master Overton's house was not far on one side of it. I hastened on and knocked. A voice told me to come in, and I saw ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the feelings with which we ought to read the Iliad, if we mean to read it as it deserves; and it explains and sets in the true point of view numberless passages, which the ignorance or frivolity of after-times has charged with obscurity, meanness or error. The Old Testament and the Iliad reflect light mutually on each other; and both in respect of poetry and morals (for the whole of Homer's poetry is a praise of virtue, and every thing in him tends to this point, except that which is merely superfluous and for ornament) ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... this able analytical chemist, an analysis of the food of the young drones and workers. A comparison of its elements with those of the royal jelly, may throw some light on subjects as yet involved in obscurity. ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... first time, she was conscious of an ardent desire to know who her parents had been. Over this question she pondered often and long. She could do nothing more—except pray. And pray she did. She asked that, if it were right and best, the cloud of obscurity might be lifted from her earlier years. And yet, as day by day she persisted in this prayer, she had a feeling that the prayer itself, and the desire from which it proceeded, might, perhaps, constitute a species of disloyalty to the only parents she seemed ever to have known. To this feeling ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... occupied, they lived in the obscurity of an eternal twilight, and could travel only by guess-work. They had no guide save the sun, which in these shadows is never visible. Through the thick foliage overhead its disc could not be seen; nor aught that would enable them to determine its position in the sky, and along ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... himself lying in the dark where somebody was bathing his brows with a damp cloth. His head ached a great deal and he lay for a moment without opening his eyes, aware of soft fingers, the touch of which seemed to soothe the pain immeasurably. He opened his eyes to the semi-obscurity of a small room furnished with the cot on which he lay, a table and two chairs. It was all very comfortable and cozy, but the most agreeable object was the face of Marishka Strahni, not a foot from his own. Through eyes dimmed by pain he thought he ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... inexpressibly delightful yet solemn in my feelings as I gazed into that profound obscurity where the great tree-stems and the wild gigantic foliage nearest to me appeared ghost-like and indistinct, and the deep solitudes of which were peopled, not only with the strange fantastic forms ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... the public. The princes and nobles who had enriched themselves by all kinds of juggles and extortions, escaped unpunished, and retained the greater part of their spoils. Many of the "suddenly rich," who had risen from obscurity to a giddy height of imaginary prosperity, and had indulged in all kinds of vulgar and ridiculous excesses, awoke as out of a dream, in their original poverty, now made more galling and ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... until we have lost or known the dread of losing a love so vast and glorious, do we prize it at its just worth. And if a man who has once possessed this love shuts himself out from it by his own act and deed, and sinks to some loveless marriage; if by some incident, hidden in the obscurity of married life, the woman with whom he hoped to know the same felicity makes it clear that it will never be revived for him; if, with the sweetness of divine love still on his lips, he has dealt a deadly wound to her, his wife in truth, whom he forsook for a social chimera,—then he must ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... who spouts forth books as the dolphin at my side does water, may do so. I shall not envy him. But first look at Didymus's ally and panegyrist. There he stands opposite to me. It would have been better for him had the dolphin at his feet taught him silence. Then he might have remained in the obscurity which befits him. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... are complex and fascinating because their study leads into many channels and far into the obscurity of the childhood of the human race. A glimpse of them is important in a survey of the influence of artificial light upon the progress of civilization because in these usages the innate and acquired impressiveness of light is encountered. Although many ceremonial ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... completion and confirmation without any great obstacle. The Carlovingian, Charles of Lorraine, vainly attempted to assert his rights; but after some gleams of success, he died in 992, and his descendants fell, if not into obscurity, at least into political insignificance. In vain, again, did certain feudal lords, especially in Southern France, refuse for some time their adhesion to Hugh Capet. One of them, Adalbert, count of Perigord, has remained almost famous for having made to Hugh Capet's ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of our situation, looking back on to the irrevocable and forward to the unknown? If a poet has said, or done, or been any of these things to an appreciable extent, to charge him with obscurity is both ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... tribute which they had engaged to pay the Africans, for the territory which had been ceded to them.(575) This conduct does them no honour, as the settlement was granted them upon condition of their paying a tribute. One would be apt to imagine, that they were desirous of covering the obscurity of their original, by abolishing this proof of it. But they were not successful on this occasion. The Africans had justice on their side, and they prospered accordingly; the war being terminated by the payment ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... cry; although we were in comparative obscurity, the ridges of the Cordilleras seemed ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... He dreamed of becoming a popular barrister, of winning fame and renown, of gaining a name throughout the country as a brilliant lawyer and a pleader of eloquence and power. Like every other young law student he had read of famous lawyers who had risen from obscurity to renown, from poverty to wealth. His career at the University had assured him that he had more than average abilities, while his speeches at the Oxford Union had been received with so much applause that he knew he had the gift of public speech ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... where the metaphysical equivalents to a word or a look answer to, and are answered by, the half-realised conception. Hence it often happens that even where our touch seems to ourselves delicate and precise, a mind not initiated in our self-chosen method of abbreviation finds only impenetrable obscurity. It is then in the tentative condition of mind just indicated that the spirit of art comes in, and enables a man so to clothe his thought in lucid words and fitting imagery that strangers may know, when they see it, all that it is, and how he came by it. Although, therefore, the praise of friends ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... obscurity: (alt. 'security by obscurity') A term applied by hackers to most OS vendors' favorite way of coping with security holes — namely, ignoring them, documenting neither any known holes nor the underlying security algorithms, trusting that nobody will find out about ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... thence called the hall of Ambassadors. It still bears the traces of past magnificence. The walls are richly stuccoed and decorated with arabesques, the vaulted ceilings of cedar wood, almost lost in obscurity from its height, still gleam with rich gilding and the brilliant tints of the Arabian pencil. On three sides of the saloon are deep windows, cut through the immense thickness of the walls, the balconies of which look down upon ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... honours of royalty? Other kings had been eager to crown their consorts: but Elizabeth had now been married a year and a half; she had borne the king a son to succeed to the throne; and yet she was kept in obscurity, as if ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... there's this difference now,—I've seen in my own home, and I see daily more and more in my own heart, abundance to convince me that the Bible is God's truth. So now, when I meet with a difficulty, I see that the obscurity is not in the Bible but in myself; in ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... prohibiting entry to Courance. Then passed into oblivion Raoul Boismonard du Guesclin, count de Courance. The last descendant of the warlike constable, the only representative of a long line of soldiers and statesmen, closed his life in impenetrable obscurity, and with him one of the great historic families of the realm disappears ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... is certain, in respect of the lot of the decent poor, that a great deal of superfluous pity is often thrown away upon it. Good-natured fine folks, who sometimes stepped out of the sunshine of their riches into a narrow obscurity, were blinded as it were, whilst we could see quite cheerfully and clearly: they stumbled over obstacles which were none to us: they were surprised at the resignation with which we drank small beer, and that we could heartily say grace over ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was sitting as motionless as a statue in the trail behind them, the form of himself and animal clearly outlined in the obscurity. He had not spoken nor stirred since the coming of the girl. The head of the steed was high, but beyond and above it loomed the head and shoulders of the man sitting upright, like an officer of dragoons. The gloom prevented a fair view of his countenance, but Nellie fancied he was of pleasing ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... edifying product of medieval art with which I have been dealing. When I look back upon my own work, and formulate the impression left upon my mind by familiarity with the songs I have translated, the doubt occurs whether some apology be not required for having dragged these forth from antiquarian obscurity. ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... brain approached slowly and unwillingly the conclusion that now emerged, monstrous and abominable, from the obscurity. If that be so, he said, she is ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... incredible, which cannot be verified, and are supposed by the Duc de Broglie to be 'interpolations.' Captain Buchan Telfer is less sceptical. The doubtfulness, to put it mildly, of some papers, and the pretty obvious interpolations in others, deepen the obscurity.] ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... if thinking to hide itself from Fate; and the dim green of the surrounding water grew clouded till the calf could hardly see, and had to crowd close to his mother's side. A twist or two of her mighty flukes, like the screw of an ocean liner, drove her clear of this obscurity, and carried her, a moment later, into a packed shoal of ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... that meaningless words have always been the favorite components of verbal charms, whose power, in the opinion of medieval conjurers, was in direct ratio to their obscurity;[38:3] and this fact is well shown in the ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... the eye got attempered; and then, like an autumnal haze clearing away from the face of the landscape, and revealing the glories of green meadow, golden field, and wooded mountain, the obscurity that wrapped pillar and aisle gradually brightened up, and the temple around me began to develope into the noblest proportions and the most impressive grandeur. Some hundred and fifty feet over head was suspended the stone roof; and one could ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... better known as the author of "A Treatise of Melancholy," which was first published in 1586. Bales was born in 1547, and many of the incidents of his life have come down to us; for while the lives of poets and philosophers are left in obscurity, the important achievements of a writing-master are detailed by contemporaries with laborious accuracy. Mr D'Israeli, in his "Curiosities of Literature," has not scrupled to devote many pages to Bales's contests ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... pass through my mind as I keep watch while the men are sleeping around me. Still the night continues dark; but as I peep through the obscurity, I fancy that I see against the sky some objects flitting here and there over the rocks. I step cautiously back into the boat, rouse up the men, who seize their arms, and with the oars ready to shove off, if necessary, we wait prepared. The figures approach ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... on and wrapped the country in obscurity, and in the distance, in a meadow, he saw a dark spot on the grass; it was a cow, and so he got over the ditch by the roadside and went up to her without exactly knowing what he was doing. When he got close to her she raised her great head to him, and he thought: "If I only had a jug I could ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Mr. Browning explains the eccentricities of his style; and his friends know that beyond the point of explaining, he does not defend them. He has never blamed his public for accusing him of obscurity or ugliness He has only thought those wrong who taxed him with being wilfully ugly or obscure. He began early to defy public opinion because his best endeavours had failed to conciliate it; and he would never conciliate it at the expense of what he believed ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... exercised a marked influence on the style of later poets, not only in this period, but in the Victorian age as well. The rebellious spirit of Shelley had already shown itself at an early age in his poetry, and especially in Queen Mab, printed in 1812. His ethereal fancy, his dreamy obscurity, and his witchery of language, designated him from the first as a master of lyrical poetry; though he wrote longer pieces, his fame rests on the numerous short poems which continued to appear ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Brodie says: "It has often happened to me to have accumulated a store of facts, but to have been able to proceed no further. Then after an interval of time, I have found the obscurity and confusion to have cleared away: the facts to have settled in their right places, though I have not been sensible of having made ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... to emerge from obscurity, was entrusted with the task of repression. With such a leader action was swift and energetic. Vigorously pounded with ball near the church at St. Roch, the insurgents fled, leaving some hundreds of ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... the sombre Romanesque arcades, and rises, shadowy and pensive, like complete vaulting. The "De Profundis," for instance, curves in on itself like those great groins which form the smoky skeleton of the bays; it is like them slow and dark, extends itself only in obscurity and moves only in the shadow of ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... hand on the stair-rail and ascended to the next floor, passing his daughter's room on tiptoe. Above this, a flight of steps that was little more than a ladder led up into the obscurity of the attics. He climbed these steps, and, entering a lumber-room, where he had to duck his head to avoid striking the sloping roof, felt his way to a shuttered window, with the bolt of which he fumbled for a moment. When at length he drew the shutter ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... extreme variability of the sheep under culture, it is generally supposed that the innumerable domestic breeds have all been derived from the few wild species; but the whole question is involved in obscurity. According to Darwin, sheep have been domesticated from a very ancient period, the remains of a small breed, differing from any now known, having been found in the ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... jocularity saw fit at the time to comment upon what was to me a serious and most painful memory. However, I mention this circumstance only in passing, preferring by my dignified silence to relegate the authors of these screeds to the obscurity which their attitude so richly merits. Suffice it to state that having left Saint Barnabas', within the short scope of one week thereafter I assumed the duties which I have since continued to discharge to the best of my talents, finding in the refined, the cultured and the peaceful ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... minutes the cloud drove down over us with a loud whistling of wind, and the water close to the boat's side ran in short, small seas, every head of it hissing; but to within the range of a biscuit toss all was flying, glistening obscurity, with occasional bursts of denser thicknesses which almost hid one end of the boat from the other. It was about six o'clock in the afternoon, and there might be ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... its way slowly towards the right shore. The young girl watched the unknown man with secret terror. He had carefully turned off the light of his dark lantern. A glimpse could be caught of him in the obscurity, in the bow of the boat, like a spectre. His cowl, which was still lowered, formed a sort of mask; and every time that he spread his arms, upon which hung large black sleeves, as he rowed, one would have said they were two ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... you see, friend, the place in my heart and home has waited empty for you. Win but yonder shy dove to consent, and we shall be of one family and of one mind, and I as happy as any broken-down campaigner in England can be—content to creep to the grave in obscurity, forgotten by the Prince whose father it is my ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... of several of the most distinguished astronomers of America, particularly the celebrated Mr. Rittenhouse,) but from similar motives to those which induced the editors to give this calculation the preference,—the ardent desire of drawing modest merit from obscurity, and controverting the long-established illiberal prejudice ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... young; you have no friends or protectors, save Sir Robert Gordon, who is a peaceable man, and goes with the times; while the Kerrs are a powerful family, able to put a strong body in the field, and having many powerful friends and connections throughout the country. It is our obscurity which has so far saved you, for Sir John Kerr would crush you without mercy did he dream that you could ever become formidable; and he is surrounded by ruthless retainers, who would at a word from him take your life; therefore think not for ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... however, slow, burdened with the care of the lame girl, and laden with the fish. The purple shades of twilight soon clouded the scene, deepened by the heavy masses of foliage, which cast greater obscurity upon their narrow path; for they had now left the oak-flat and entered the gorge of the valley. The utter loneliness of the path, the grotesque shadows of the trees that stretched in long array across the steep banks on either side, taking now this, now that wild and fanciful ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... England?—Did subtilty and genius, and exertions of a numerous sect, save Fenwicke, or Whitbread, or any other of the accused priests?—Were Groves, Pickering, or the other humble wretches who have suffered, safe in their obscurity? There is no condition in life, no degree of talent, no form of principle, which affords protection against an accusation, which levels conditions, confounds characters, renders men's virtues their sins, and rates them as dangerous in proportion as they have influence, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... with occasion was eminently the attribute of the Countess de Saldar. After that dreadful dinner she (since the weaknesses of great generals should not be altogether ignored), did pray for flight and total obscurity, but Caroline could not be left in her hysteric state, and now that she really perceived that Evan was progressing and on the point of sealing his chance, the devoted lady resolved to hold her ground. Besides, there was the pic-nic. The Countess had one dress she had not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... laughter, long, loud, and irrepressible, struck the whole court-room, and before the Judge could lift his half-composed face and take his handkerchief from his mouth, a faint "Keeree" from some unrecognized obscurity of the court-room was followed by a loud "Keerow" from some opposite locality. "The Sheriff will clear the court," said the Judge sternly; but, alas! as the embarrassed and choking officials rushed hither and thither, a soft "Keeree" from the spectators at the window, OUTSIDE ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... iodine and mercury must yield the palm of excellence to the more sober vermilion, being a chameleon colour, subject to the most sudden and opposite changes. And the blues of cobalt, as always tending to greenness and obscurity, cannot rank ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... somewhat neat remark of the Countess's, all those gentlemen would have remained in poverty and obscurity within the walls or in the suburbs ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... which is formed by a plane passing through the vertex perpendicularly to the base, but this could not be expected to make things clearer to a person who was inquiring for the first time into the meaning of the word triangle. But a real violation of the fourth rule may arise, not only from obscurity, but from the employment of ambiguous language or metaphor. To say that 'temperance is a harmony of the soul' or that 'bread is the staff of life,' throws no real light upon the ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... more wearisome than the dull slavery of a governess?—I recognized a separate wrong done me by George Talboys. His father was rich, his sister was living in luxury and respectability, and I, his wife, and the mother of his son, was a slave allied to beggary and obscurity. People pitied me, and I hated them for their pity. I did not love the child, for he had been left a burden upon my hands. The hereditary taint that was in my blood had never until this time showed itself by any one sign or token; ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... caprices are as variable as the hours of their existence, and who are, consequently, not always in agreement with one another. The writings which are the sources whence the Christians have drawn their morality, are not only an abyss of obscurity, but demand continual explications from their masters, the priests, who, in explaining, make them still more obscure, still more contradictory. If these oracles of heaven prescribe to us in one place the virtues truly useful, in another part ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... the road itself, the lamps, and seats, and broken fringe of grass edging the raised footpath of it, was formless and vague, peopled by shapes, dark against darkness, such as the eye itself fearfully produces in straining to penetrate unyielding obscurity. The effect was one of intense isolation, of divorce from humanity and the works and ways of it, so present and overpowering it might well seem that, reaching the far end of that pale bridge, the wayfarer would part company with the things of ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... pleased, live as they pleased, without thought of the opinion of others. Here she could forget the bestial horrors of marriage; here she would fear no scornful pointing at her birth-brand of shame. She and Rod could be poor without shame; they could make their fight in the grateful darkness of obscurity. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... men became more complicated and more numerous, as society gradually became more stable and more civilized. Thence the want of civil laws was felt; and the order of legal functionaries soon rose from the obscurity of the tribunals and their dusty chambers, to appear at the court of the monarch, by the side of the feudal barons in their ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... of every language; but as these accessions necessitate in most cases further division of the honors, many names conspicuously identified with modern science fail of their just relative rank, and fade into unmerited obscurity. Thus the earlier workers in science, like Scheele, Liebig, Humboldt, and others of that and later periods, have won imperishable fame, to which we all delight to pay homage, while others of more recent times, whose contributions have perhaps been ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... with the energy of the globe, Jack never saw, nor, for that matter, did nine-tenths of the occupants of the chairs. To them its spoken word was the dictum of fate. Success meant debts paid, a balance in the bank, houses, horses, even yachts and estates—failure meant obscurity and suffering. The turn of the roulette wheel or the roll of a cube of ivory they well knew brought the same results, but these turnings they also knew were attended with a certain loss of prestige. Taking a flier in the Street was altogether ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the truth," said he, "it's this last one that gives me my only trouble. I'd marry the widow, settle up some way with Miss Phillips, smother my shame, and pass the remainder of my life in peaceful obscurity, if ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... dreary and unprosperous condition of the race for some time back would argue to exist—may be now and henceforth removed." The two first American Hathornes had been people of importance and responsibility; but with the third generation the family lapsed into an obscurity from which it emerged in the very person of the writer who begs so gracefully for a turn in its affairs. It is very true, Hawthorne proceeds, in the Introduction to The Scarlet Letter, that from the original point of view such lustre as he might have contrived to confer upon the name would have ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... was vexed and annoyed. Dennis had seemed, in his obscurity, a nice little bit of personal property, that she could use and order about as she pleased. He had been so subservient and eager to do her will, that she had never thought of him otherwise than as ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... vagina, and in this way correspond to the lips of the mouth after which they are called. They fulfill, however, one very definite though not obviously important function which is indicated by the mythologic name they have received. There is, indeed, some obscurity in the origin of this term, nymphae, which has not, I believe, been satisfactorily cleared up. It has been stated that the Greek name nymphe has been transferred from the clitoris to the labia minora. Any such transfer could only ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... this phrase is involved in some obscurity. Jacob, in his Law Dictionary, speaks of it as "from the French," and his definition is verbatim that given in The Termes of the Law (ed. 1598), with a very slight addition. Blackstone (book II cap. ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... list. It is a Mr. Tickle's set that has come to me, for his name is on the fly-leaf. But for me and this set of Bell, Mr. Tickle would seem to have sunk into obscurity. I proclaim him here, and if there be anywhere at this day younger Tickles, even down to the merest titillation, may they see these lines and thus take a ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... to save ourselves through the woods, was a miserable comfort. In the mean time the Iroquoits worked lustily, think att every step we weare to give them an assault, but farr deceived, ffor if ever blind wished the Light, we wished them the obscurity of the night, which no sooner approached but we embarqued ourselves without any noise, and went along. It's strang to me that the ennemy did not encounter us. Without question he had store of prisoners and booty. We left the ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... guess work. The defenders of the work had only to lie still and fire with artillery and musketry directly to their front, but the assailants would have had a line to preserve, and would have had to exercise great care lest they should fall foul of each other in the obscurity. If this is a difficult business at all times, how much is the danger and trouble increased when it is attempted with broken-down and partially ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Had she indeed proceeded one step farther, and asserted that parodies might be classed among the most malicious inventions in literature, when they are such as Colman and Lloyd made on Gray, in their odes to "Oblivion and Obscurity," her reading possibly might have supplied the materials ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli |
