"Oracle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... place with very little improvement; the fall of idolatry only made way for the rise of magic and astrology. Abydos in Upper Egypt had latterly gained great renown for the temple of Bisu, whose oracle was much consulted, not only by the Egyptians but by Greek strangers, and by others who sent their questions in writing. Some of these letters on parchment had been taken from the temple by informers, and carried to the emperor, whose ears were never deaf to a charge against the pagans. On this ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... favourite. Harriet, though beautiful, egotistical, and self-satisfied, was not quite weak enough for him. She had some genuine self-respect amidst much false pride, and if she did not talk like an oracle, neither would she babble like one crazy; she would not permit herself to be treated quite as a doll, a child, a plaything; she expected to be bent to like ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... two references to local oracles in the Odyssey, that of Dodona (XIV. 327; XIX. 296) and that of Pytho (VIII. 80). This is the old name of Delphi. Pytho occurs in Iliad, IX. 404, as a very rich temple of Apollo—the oracle is not named, but the oracle brought in the treasures. Achilles (XVI. 233) prays to Pelasgian Zeus of Dodona, whose priests were thickly tabued, but says nothing of the oracle of Dodona. Neither when in leaguer round Troy, nor when wandering in fairy lands forlorn, had the ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... nations, 't is the furthest Hour of Assyria's years. And yet how calm! An earthquake should announce so great a fall— A summer's sun discloses it. Yon disk To the star-read Chaldean, bears upon Its everlasting page the end of what Seem'd everlasting; but oh! thou TRUE sun! The burning oracle of all that live, As fountain of all life, and symbol of Him who bestows it, wherefore dost thou limit Thy lore unto calamity?[6] Why not Unfold the rise of days more worthy thine All-glorious burst from ocean? why not dart A beam of hope athwart the future years, As of wrath to its days? ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... own limit in death. Other nations are only its boundaries, which it can overpass in fighting with and conquering them. But death itself it can never escape, whether it come in the sands of the desert—which buried for Cambyses an army which he sent to the oracle of the Libyan Ammon—or in the sea, that scorns the rod of the angry despot, or by the sword of the freeman who guards his household gods. On this account, that people stands higher that in the midst of life reflects on death, or rather lives for it. The education of such ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... of their possessions, than the priests which required restitution of their owne. But (saith he) bicause the image of Christ hanging on the crosse was thought to speake these words, such credit was giuen thereto, as it had beene an oracle, that the priests had their sute dashed, and all the trouble was ceassed. So the moonks held those possessions, howsoeuer they came to them, by the helpe of God, or rather (as saith the same Polydor) by the helpe of man. For there were euen then diuers that ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... illustration of his theory, and even that is highly inconclusive. His general frame of mind appears to remain constant, but he finds himself defending and rejecting very different things. The great issue may, according to the period, be a primeval taboo, the utterances of the Delphic oracle, the Athanasian creed, the Inquisition, the geocentric theory, monarchy by the grace of God, witchcraft, slavery, war, capitalism, private property, or noble isolation. All of these tend to appear to ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... to the Woodward family somewhat in the light of a Delphic oracle. To apply to her was always the very last resource. Matters must have reached a crisis, Winona thought, if they were obliged to appeal to Aunt Harriet's judgment. She followed Percy into the garden with a ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... highest to the lowest we are all extremely happy.—Dorcas stands well in her lady's graces. Polly has asked her advice in relation to a courtship-affair of her own. No oracle ever gave better. Sally has had a quarrel with her woollen-draper; and made my charmer lady-chancellor in it. She blamed Sally for behaving tyrannically to a man who loves her. Dear creature! to stand against a glass, and to shut her eyes because she will not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... Olympian wisdom. Septimus, blushing at his temerity in having pointed out the way to the man whom he regarded as the incarnation of force and energy, curled himself up awkwardly in his chair, clasping his ankles between his locked fingers. At last the oracle spoke. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... recourse to his astrolabe, the oracle of Eastern science, and watching with grave precision until the precise time of the evening prayer had arrived, he sunk on his knees, with his face turned to Mecca, and recited the petitions which close the ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... women, by this feminine phenomenon! Why, I would have bet half my estate on Gordon's chances; for his handsome face, aided by such incomparable coadjutors as my mother here and the infallible sage and oracle of the parsonage constituted a 'triple alliance' more formidable, more invincible, than those that threatened Louis XIV. or Alberoni! I imagined the girl was clay in the experienced hands of matrimonial potters, and that Hebrew strategy would prove triumphant! Accept, my dear mother, my most ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... celebrated for his "good bedside manner," commenced to examine the prostrate man. First, he unbuttoned the insensible digger's waistcoat, and placed his hand over his heart; next, he felt his pulse. "This man," he said deliberately, like an oracle, "has been grossly manhandled; he is seriously injured, but with care we shall pull him round. My dear"—to Gentle Annie, who stood at his elbow, in her silks and jewels, the personification of Folly at a funeral—"a drop of your very best brandy—real ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... could be trusted to feel in his quiet way that the oracle must be a match for the priestess. "'Want' her, Jane? We wouldn't TAKE her." And as if knowing quite what he was about he looked at his wife only ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... is an honest oracle in his way, and when he opes his mouth we hope no cur will be ungrateful enough to bark. He says in his last lecture that dumb animals are creatures like unto himself. That accounts for Mr. BERGH being Deer to the quadrupeds, and such a Terrier ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... Maure, and continuing the traditions of the Hotel de Rambouillet. Her tastes had been formed in this circle, and she had also been under the instruction of the Chevalier de Mere, a litterateur and courtier who had great vogue, was something of an oracle, and molded the character and manners of divers women of this period, among others the future Mme. de Maintenon. His confidence in his own power of bringing talent out of mediocrity was certainly refreshing. Among his pupils was the Duchesse ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... childish awe and interest. They witnessed the arrangement of the pulleys, and the manufacture of the thunders. They saw the natural faces and heard the natural voices of the actors. Distant nations looked on the Pope as the Vicegerent of the Almighty, the oracle of the All-wise, the umpire from whose decisions, in the disputes either of theologians or of kings, no Christian ought to appeal. The Italians were acquainted with all the follies of his youth, and with all the dishonest ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... while talent cannot safely ignore what is called technique, genius almost can. Coleridge, in spite of his formlessness, remains the wisest man who ever spoke in English about literature. His place is that of an oracle among controversialists. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... solemn words with which a prophetic message is wont to be announced, thus at the outset stamping on the psalm its true character. The "oracle" or "word of Jehovah unto my Lord," which he heard, is a new revelation made to him from the heavens. He is taken up and listens to the Divine voice calling to His right hand, to the most intimate communion with Himself, ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... drawing an arrow from her quiver, which is suspended at her shoulder. Her legs are bare, and her feet are adorned with rich sandals. The goddess, with a look expressive of indignation, appears to be defending the fabulous hind from the pursuit of Hercules, who, in obedience to the oracle of Apollo, was pursuing it, in order to carry it alive to Eurystheus; a task imposed on him by the latter as one of his ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... I could do concerning the Book you wanted was to send your Enquiry to the Oracle itself:—whose Reply I ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... military oracle of the Administration in the first days of the war. His ability and great experience entitled him to regard and deference on all questions relating to military operations. No one appreciated his qualities more than the President, unless it was General ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... man, brawny and angular; with a face tanned by the sun, and graven with those considerate lines which New England so early writes on the faces of her sons. He was reputed an oracle in matters of agriculture and cattle, and, like oracles generally, was prudently sparing of his responses. Amaziah was one of those uncouth over-grown boys of eighteen whose physical bulk appears to have so suddenly developed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... Flowery Dionysus in Attica and at Patrae in Achaia. The Athenians sacrificed to him for the prosperity of the fruits of the land. Amongst the trees particularly sacred to him, in addition to the vine, was the pine-tree. The Delphic oracle commanded the Corinthians to worship a particular pine-tree "equally with the god," so they made two images of Dionysus out of it, with red faces and gilt bodies. In art a wand, tipped with a pine-cone, is ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... it signify what he says? Is it an oracle that has spoken? To hear you, anyone would think that Mr. Purgon holds in his hands the thread of your life, and that he has supreme authority to prolong it or to cut it short at his will. Remember that the springs of your life are in yourself, and that all the wrath of Mr. Purgon ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth, for a long winter afternoon, a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, and bloody encounters ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... folds, Crushing the marrow in my frame, and then For ever, like a serpent, fled to hell. Through thee, the daylight gladdens me anew. The counsel of the Goddess now shines forth In all its beauty and beneficence. Like to a sacred image, unto which An oracle immutably hath bound A city's welfare, thee Diana took, Protectress of our house, and guarded here Within this holy stillness, to become A blessing to thy brother and thy race. Now when each passage to escape seems clos'd, And safety hopeless, thou dost ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... too glad, Queen, for to-night we have sinned, both of us, who dared to summon Amen from his throne, and sin also fails not of its reward. Blood is the price of that oracle." ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... conscience that transfigured the face of the martyred Stephen or Savonarola. For all happiness comes only through peace with one's self, one's record, and one's God. All the great, from AEschylus and Sophocles to Channing and Webster, have emphasized man's conscience as the oracle divine. Let the witnesses speak. Here is the Judge, famous in English history: It became his duty to sentence a servant for murdering his master. Suddenly, before the astounded onlookers, the Judge arose and took his place in the dock beside the prisoner. He stated ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... through the land. None felt the appeal more than the old soldiers of the French war. It roused John Stark, of New Hampshire—a trapper and hunter in his youth, a veteran in Indian warfare, a campaigner under Abercrombie and Amherst, now the military oracle of a rustic neighborhood. Within ten minutes after receiving the alarm, he was spurring towards the sea-coast, and on the way stirring up the volunteers of the Massachusetts borders, to assemble forthwith at Bedford, in the vicinity ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... shoe-blacks, and those nameless hangers-on that infest inns and taverns, and run errands, and do all kinds of odd jobs, for the privilege of battening on the drippings of the kitchen and the leakage of the tap-room. These all look up to him as to an oracle; treasure up his cant phrases; echo his opinions about horses and other topics of jockey lore; and, above all, endeavour to imitate his air and carriage. Every ragamuffin that has a coat to his back thrusts his hands in ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... its more conservative members in 1791, came then under his leadership. Thenceforth the Jacobin Club was a most effective instrument for establishing social democracy (although it was not committed to republicanism until August, 1792), and Robespierre was its oracle. Robespierre was never a demagogue in the present sense of the word: he was always emphatically a gentleman and a man of culture, sincere and truthful. Although he labored strenuously for the "rights" of the proletariat, he never ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... time, I guess, I realized the awful helplessness that comes over the Psiless when a TK invokes his telekinetic power. I wanted no part of the future this corn-fed oracle had conjured up. But it might be the only future ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... would have done him no harm, I do not determine; but true it is, he had gotten the Queen's ear in a trice, and she began to be taken with his election, and loved to hear his reasons to her demands: and the truth is, she took him for a kind of oracle, which nettled them all; yea, those that he relied on began to take this his sudden favour for an alarm and to be sensible of their own supplantation, and to project his, which made him ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... future is big with cashmere shawls, glittering jewels, supper parties, and the like.' You would not believe me, incredulous one. Well, my predictions are, however, realized, and I am worth as much, I hope, as your 'Ladies' Oracle,' a little octavo sorcerer you bought for five sous at a bookstall on the Pont Neuf, and which you wearied with external questions. Again, I ask, was I not right in my prophecies; and would you believe ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... the lowest caste that is now reached, and the Christianizing of India must come, eventually, from the highest,"—words which we shall be very ready to take as opinion, but very slow to receive as oracle, since, from the time when the Founder of Christianity was upon the earth, and the common people heard him gladly, while the higher classes thrust him out of their synagogues, till the present day, the history of Christianity has been the history of an influence rising from the lower ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... It needs no oracle to assure these women that they are traveling along a road that has only one ending. Love is as old as the hills, and the older it gets, like the wise old hills, a wiser old love it becomes. It exacts its price, and its price is an equal love. There never was a love ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... ride to Mantinea, about eight miles through a level, tolerably well-cultivated country. At the narrow passage between the mountains, there stood in ancient times a grove of cork-trees, called 'Pelagus,' the sea. Epaminondas, warned by an oracle to beware of the 'Pelagus,' had carefully avoided the sea. But it was just in this spot that he drew up his troops for the great battle which cost him his life. When mortally wounded, he was carried to a high place called 'Skope'—identified with the sharp ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... a word the meanin' whereof is goin' to depend a heap on what you brands with it." This was said like an oracle. "Also, the same means more or less accordin' to who all puts the word in play. I remembers a mighty decent sort of sport, old Cape Willingham it is; an' yet Dan Boggs is forever referrin' to old Cape as 'ornery.' An' I reckon Dan thinks he is. Which the trouble with Cape, ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Unfearing prophecy and oracle launched from the windows of the hotel, the young people rowed, lost to all but each other, amazed at the loveliness of the river. They floated amid the bulrushes. Cries and regret when Frank's oar crushed the desired blossom. Never ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... offered such a toast? The fact is, he pretended to be a fierce radical, and was certainly the soul and the oracle of the small socialistic clubs in the neighborhood. People looked aghast when he began to talk of the reforms which he thought necessary; and they trembled when he proclaimed his convictions, that "the sword and the torch ought to search ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... don't be so ridiculous!" said Margaret. "You know perfectly well I am no oracle; but I have a notion in my head. It is this: why should not those splendid-looking girls, the Vivians, join the Specialities? They did look rather funny, I will admit, yesterday; but even then one could see ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... with one cow far better than her rival who had two, but the magnitude of the sacrifice he wished to make sat heavy on his soul. He consulted a patriarch renowned for his wisdom, and laid great stress upon his love for the girl with one cow. The oracle spake as follows: "Take the gyurl wid the two cows. There isn't the difference of a cow, begorra, betune any two women in the wor-r-ld." By similar reasoning a superannuated dairymaid with a grogshop is a very different person to the "pretty girl milking ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... arbitrament of counting noses and assenting without question to the result invests the ordeal with a seeming sanctity, and what was at first obeyed as the command of power comes to be revered as the oracle of wisdom. The innumerable instances—such as the famous ones of Galileo and Keeley—in which one man has been right and all the rest of the race wrong, are overlooked, or their significance missed, and "public opinion" is followed as ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... dear Sir Oracle, that you are beginning to recollect yourself and temper your severities on our sex," said my wife. "As usual, there is much truth lying about loosely in the vicinity of your assertions; but they are as far from being in themselves the truth as ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Jenny's attentive hearers, the hour of entertaining themselves being at an end, they were obliged to leave the poor little Mignon in the greatest distress and fright lest the giant should awake before he could fulfil the commands of the oracle, and to wait for the remainder of the story till ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... the tones of the oracle, "that drinking alone is a pernicious habit. No, I don't think I feel like playing this evening. If we are going to reform we may as well abandon the evil ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... in the isles of the Pacific unless his pedigree be long and in the upper regions mythical. And our king counts cousinship with most of the high families in the archipelago, and traces his descent to a shark and a heroic woman. Directed by an oracle, she swam beyond sight of land to meet her revolting paramour, and received at sea the seed of a predestined family. "I think lie," is the king's emphatic commentary; yet he is proud of the legend. From this illustrious beginning the fortunes of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... though thus greatly honoured, spake not greatly of himself; but when the oracle of God was delivered to him out of the bush, he said, Who am I, that thou dost send me? I am of a slender ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... resistance her almogavares, or garrison soldiers, would offer to the forces of the baron, still she would do her utmost to avoid a conflict. She then proceeded to another room, in which she kept her magic mirror, and having closed the door, we must leave her consulting the oracle. ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... this question. Be attentive, readers. Gasterea, the most attractive of the muses, inspires me. I will be as clear as an oracle, and my precepts ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... was now the oracle. His prophecies with regard to the great war had been signally fulfilled. Germany was at grips with England, and her triumph was ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... parties, the systematizer of popular education, and the twice-elected successor of Washington; of Randolph, through whose initiative the stain produced by the word "slavery" was effaced from the provisional draft of the American Constitution; of Marshall, the most eminent jurist in the Republic, the oracle of the Constitution and the constructor of the Federal law; of Madison, the emulator of Hamilton in the editing of The Federalist; of Monroe, the asserter of the international doctrine of the independence ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... an exile, bred in the desperate hopes and wild schemes of exile; he is a prince without a kingdom, always dreaming of his wrongs and his restoration; and driven by the old savage doctrine, which an oracle has confirmed, of the duty and manliness of revenge. He is, as was shown by his later history, a man subject to overpowering impulses and to fits of will-less brooding. Lastly, he is very young, and is swept away by ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... An' there hain't no china an' bits of glass and old cups and things in that there village about 'alf a mile down the road? Ho no! I reckon there's enough to fill twenty 'oles like that there." Once again the oracle resumed ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... into a laugh of derision. "No more of your homily, reverend oracle," said the sergeant; "I have an excellent recipe for short sermons here; utter another word and you shall have it!" The troopers laughed again, and the sergeant, as he spoke, held his pistol in the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... besides the aforementioned benefit which I meet with in the conversation of this select society, I am not the less pleased with the company, in that I find myself the greatest wit among them, and am heard as their oracle in all points of learning ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... so glad I have found you," said the Marquis; "and at this moment. This is the best group in the rooms. You must speak to the wizard. About an hour ago I lighted upon them, in another salon, and consulted the oracle by putting questions. I never was more amazed. Although his answers were a little disguised it was soon perfectly plain that he knew every detail about the business, which no one on earth had heard of but myself, and two or three other men, about the most cautious ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... character had faults, let us remember that he was stained by no crimes and vices, in an age of violence and wickedness. Until lately he has received almost unmixed praise. The Fathers of the Church revered him. To Erasmus, as well as to Jerome and Augustine, he was an oracle. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... at Gandercleugh, to the great satisfaction, as we have already said, of all its inhabitants, to whom he became, in respect of military intelligence, and able commentaries upon the newspapers, gazettes, and bulletins, a very oracle, explanatory of all martial events, past, ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... watching and forming conclusions from the flight of birds. This long continued the favorite Roman mode of settling difficult questions. It was easier than the Greek plan of going to Delphi to consult the oracle. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... generally dignified with a grocery, a justice's office, and a tavern, where entertainment for man and beast may always be had. An immense deal of judicial and political business "is put through a process" at these strange places. The squire's law-book is the oracle; all settlements must be made by it; all important sayings drawn from it. The squire himself is scarcely less an individual of mysterious importance; he draws settled facts from his copious volume, and thus saves himself the trouble of analysing them. Open it ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... condition in which a given state finds itself at a given time? It seems too easy a solution of our problems to seek dogmatic answers to our questionings by having recourse to the "natural light," that ready oracle of the ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... temple or a house of prayer, A palace, oracle, or spouse most fair; Or what you will: God's love is here displayed, And here his treasure safely up is laid; For his own darling none can find a place, Where he, as here, is wont to show ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... break your mystic spell, Land of the lotus, smiling land farewell! For ever it may be, what oracle can tell? ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... the eighteenth century. It started into life with the genius of Lord Mansfield, and, gathering in its course whatever was valuable in the earlier institutes of foreign countries, had reflected back upon them its own superior lights, so as to become the guide and oracle of the commercial ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... of the Imams Abu Hanifa, Shafei, Malik, and Hambal. In northern India the school of Abu Hanifa is followed. He was born at Kufa, the capital of Irak, in the Hijra year 80, when four of the Prophet's Companions were still alive. He is the great oracle of jurisprudence, and with his two pupils was the founder of the Hanifi code of law. In southern India the Shafei school is followed. [331] The Shiahs have separate collections of traditions and schools of law, and they say that a Mujtahid or doctor of the law can still give decisions of binding ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... long time to examine the edict—but after all, examination was unnecessary, and would only be loss of time. All remained silent again, except the Duc de Beauvilliers, who, seduced by the nephew of Colbert, whom he thought an oracle in finance, said a few words in ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... information upon the subject of his confinement, probably very highly coloured, has since his release withdrawn his patronage and support, so that the poor fellow has been without supplies for some time past, and I am at a loss to conjecture by what means he is now working the oracle for a subsistence. His uncle, however, is in the last stage of a severe illness, with little chance of recovery; and as I apprehend there is but little time to spare, I intend, if possible, to find our old acquaintance, start him for his relative's ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... our most faithful friend while we were a family. She made afterwards a not very happy marriage; and when her husband died just before I went to Europe, she was left alone and poor. I arranged a small house for her in the neighbourhood of the Hollow; and there she lives—a kind of mysterious oracle to the people about. And her greatest earthly pleasure, I suppose, is to have me come and see her. Gyda Boerresen is ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... the fleet, and though thought to be peculiarly English, was used by the Delphic oracle, when applied to by the Athenians on the Persian invasion: ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... to get some advice from the town clerk," she said. To these poor people, the town clerk was what the Delphic oracle was ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... without exception, if he could: he answered "A man must be present when he is shaved." A lady—what right have ladies to decide questions about shaving?—said this was not properly a rule; and the oracle was consulted. The editor agreed with the lady; he said that "a man must be present when he is shaved" is not a ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... her placid, all her monitory pictures.[8] Him the past instructs. Him the future invites. Is not indeed every man a student, and do not all things exist for the student's behoof? And, finally, is not the true scholar the only true master? But as the old oracle said, "All things have two handles: Beware of the wrong one."[9] In life, too often, the scholar errs with mankind and forfeits his privilege. Let us see him in his school, and consider him in reference to the main ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... son, and heir to the finest property in the county—at any rate, to the property which at present was the best circumstanced. Owen Fitzgerald could never be more than a little squire, but Herbert would be a baronet. Owen's utmost ambition would be to live at Hap House all his life, and die the oracle of the Duhallow hunt; but Herbert would be a member of Parliament, with a house in London. A daughter of the house of Desmond might marry the heir of Sir Thomas Fitzgerald, and be thought to have done well; whereas, she would disgrace herself by becoming the mistress of Hap House. Lady Desmond, ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... a great predisposition to admire and overrate everything relative to Indian history and language, as detailed by this good and sincere missionary in his retirement at Bethlehem. He was appealed to as an oracle. This I found by an acquaintance which I formed, in 1810, with the late amiable Dr. Wistar, while rusticating at Bristol, on the banks of the Delaware. The confused letters which the missionary wrote many years later, were mainly due to Dr. Wistar's philosophical interest ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... terrible, as the sun rose higher in the sky, and very little air could be obtained through the window, so that poor Julienne could not eat, and Rosette fell into a heavy sleep in the midst of her sighs. Even Estelle, who had got out her Telemaque, like a sort of oracle in the course of being verified, was asleep over it, when fresh noises and grating sounds were board, new steps on deck, and there were steps and voices. The Genoese captain was heard exclaiming, 'Open, Madame! you can do so safely. This is the Algerine captain, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are the best machinery for a modern epic." So said Charles Fox, who fed his imagination on verse of this aspiring class. Fox was no literary oracle, and his opinion is here cited only as evidence that the superearthly is an acknowledged element in the epopee. The term "machinery" implies ignorance of the import of the super-earthly in epic poetry, an ignorance attendant on materialism and a virtual unbelief. No poet ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... ancient doctrines which the Germans have abandoned long ago. English Socialists try to impose upon an uncritical public by parading the worn-out stage properties of the forties. Marx is to the vast majority of British Socialists still an oracle and the fountain head of all wisdom. "Marx is the Darwin of modern sociology."[267] "All over the world his brain is put on pretty much the same level as Aristotle's."[268] "Modern Socialism is based, nationally and internationally, theoretically and to a large extent ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... some of the farms about has been graver than you imagine. I find discontent where it was formerly unknown. The typical case is that lad of Bolton's. They wanted him sadly at home; by this time he would have been helping his unfortunate father. Instead of that he's the revolutionary oracle of Belwick pot-houses, and appears on an average once a fortnight before the magistrates for being drunk ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... pigeons homing toward the crest of Apo. "Limocons," the Bogobos call them—"leem-o-sahns": the word falls limpid from their lips, unaccented. They say the limocon never was heard to sing in the lowlands, and tell a strange legend that it is an oracle of the Hill People, its song a harbinger of good or ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... important things and the most trivial with the same tasteless absorption. He heard that the coast was death to all but careful seamen; he also heard that the ship's cat was asleep. He heard that Fanshaw couldn't find his cigar-holder anywhere; he also heard the pilot deliver the oracle "Both eyes bright, she's all right; one eye winks, down she sinks." He heard Flambeau say to Fanshaw that no doubt this meant the pilot must keep both eyes open and be spry. And he heard Fanshaw say to Flambeau that, ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... instead of a speaker, and Cadwallon, not the Prince, seemed to become the central point of the assembly, on whom all eyes were bent, and to whom each ear was turned with breathless eagerness, as if his strains were the responses of an oracle. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... have you had that up your sleeve, young woman? I don't like it a little bit! That is why you talked so like an oracle a little while ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... constrain'd with patience all to take: 160 For what defence can Greek and Hebrew make? Happy who can this talking trumpet seize; They make it speak whatever sense they please: 'Twas framed at first our oracle to inquire; But since our sects in prophecy grow higher, The text inspires not them, but they the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... some unknown animal, or the god that he worships; but we are more inclined to the latter opinion, because he assured us (if we understood him right, for he expressed himself very imperfectly), that he seldom did anything without consulting it. He called it his oracle, and said it pointed out the time for every action of his life. From the left fob he took out a net almost large enough for a fisherman, but contrived to open and shut like a purse, and served him for the same use; we found therein several massy pieces of ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... "The oracle speaks in poetry," laughed Eric. "That was Florence Percival, who led the class in mathematics, as I'm a living man. By many she is considered the beauty of her class. I can't say that such is my opinion. ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... with slow enunciation, like an oracle. Mr. Rhys looked up from his writing and smiled at her a little, though he answered ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... mount them if required. His Mogg was quite neglected in favour of Lucy; and it says much for the influence of female charms that, before they had been engaged a fortnight, he, who had been a perfect oracle in cab fares, would have been puzzled to tell the most ordinary fare on the most frequented route. He had forgotten all about them. Nevertheless, Lucy and he went out hunting as often as they could raise hounds, and when they had a good run and killed, he saluted ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... the goddess of night, of darkness, winter, and death, who, the country-folk say, sits on men at night and drinks their blood, and of Mrak (twilight), her helper, who brings little children to her by twilight. The priest, who used to be an oracle to his flock, was asked first to every festivity, and consulted in every difficulty. "The priest says so" put an end to all questioning. With their religious feeling, superstition goes hand in hand. They believe in vampires, nightmares, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... as Granny Bains. Having spent almost her whole life out of doors, in heat and cold, storm and rain, she had come to be intimately acquainted with all the signs foreboding change of weather, and was looked upon by her acquaintances as a perfect oracle. She had also a most retentive memory, and being of a joyous nature, with a bodily frame that never knew illness, had learnt every verse or melody that was sung within her hearing, until her mind became a very storehouse of songs. To John, old Granny ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... enough to beg his advice, how I might carry my self securely there, without offence of mine own conscience. Signor Arrigo mio (sayes he) I pensieri stretti, & il viso sciolto, will go safely over the whole World: Of which Delphian Oracle (for so I have found it) your judgement doth need no commentary; and therfore (Sir) I will commit you with it to the best of all securities, Gods ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... lately stated by themselves in a solemn report) 'has been the brotherhood of Cain and Abel,' and 'they have organized nothing but bankruptcy and famine.'" A very honest confession, truly,—and much in the spirit of their oracle, Rousseau. Yet, what is still more marvellous than the confession, this is the very fraternity to which our author gives us such an obliging invitation to accede. There is, indeed, a vacancy in the fraternal corps: a brother and a partner is wanted. If we please, we may ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... slanders arisen?" I will tell you what I take to be the explanation. It is due to a certain wisdom with which I seem to be endowed—not superhuman at all like that of these gentlemen. I speak not arrogantly, but on the evidence of the Oracle of Delphi, who told Chaerephon, a man known to you, that there was no wiser man than Socrates. Now, I am not conscious of possessing wisdom; but the God cannot lie. What ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... will not weary More lines with the list of them... cur fremuere? What is it they murmur, and mutter, and hum? Into what Pandemonium is Pentecost come? Oh, what is the name of the god at whose fane Every nation is mix'd in so motley a train? What weird Kabala lies on those tables outspread? To what oracle turns with attention each head? What holds these pale worshippers each so devout, And what are those ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... Hezekiah Butterfield, generally known as Cap'n 'Kiah, an octogenarian who was regarded as an oracle, down to Tready Morgan, a half-witted orphan, the inmates of the poor-house had an enjoyment of living astonishing to behold. It had been hinted at town-meeting that the keeper of the poor-farm was a "leetle mite too generous and easy-going," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... the harp of Pindar, and the impassioned song of the dark-eyed Sappho. I thought I heard the lofty epic of the blind Homer, rushing on in the red tide of battle, and the divine Plato discoursing like an oracle in ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... "Why hast thou cast me thus into the town of the ever-blind, to proclaim thine oracle by the opened sense? What profits it to lift the veil where the near darkness threatens? Only ignorance is life; this knowledge is death. Take back this sad clear-sightedness; take from mine eyes this cruel light! It is horrible to be ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... Slater had been girls together and sat in school with arms entwined and wove romances of the future, rosy-hued and golden. When they consulted the oracle of "Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief," the buttons on her gray winsey dress had declared in favour of the "rich man." Then she had dreamed dreams of silks and satins ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... are few assemblages for speech-making which do not better deserve the title of Parliamentum Indoctorum than did the sixth Parliament of Henry the Fourth, and that men still continue to have as much faith in the Oracle of Fools as ever Pantagruel had. Howell, in his letters, recounts a merry tale of a certain ambassador of Queen Elizabeth, who, having written two letters, one to her Majesty and the other to his ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... and nothing but the truth. But it was not. The whole truth leaks out in Mr. Everett's work, in a note to p. 143, where Mr. Everett says, that this famous Rabbi "having acknowledged that the prophet had the Messiah in view [in the 53d. of Isaiah,], he afterwards applied the oracle to some other person, and finally to Moses!" Now in the name of common sense I would, ask, of what value can the testimony and authority of a man be, who could be capable of such ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... LONG the oracle of the country gentlemen of the high Tory party. The ancient News-Letter was written in manuscript and copied by clerks, who addressed the copies to the subscribers. The politician by whom they were compiled picked up his intelligence at coffee-houses, and often pleaded for an additional gratuity ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... But those strange characters you meet make instant observations of which you never can have thought previously. In like manner, the imagination foretells things. We spake anon of the inflated style of some writers. What also if there is an AFFLATED style,—when a writer is like a Pythoness on her oracle tripod, and mighty words, words which he cannot help, come blowing, and bellowing, and whistling, and moaning through the speaking pipes of his bodily organ? I have told you it was a very queer shock to me the other day when, with a letter of introduction in his hand, the artist's ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... there little either in the manners of the people, in their way of life, or their works of art, that demonstrates profound science or particularly mathematical skill. Britain, where their discipline was in its highest perfection, and which was therefore resorted to by the people of Gaul as an oracle in Druidical questions, was more barbarous in all other respects than Gaul itself, or than any other country then known in Europe. Those piles of rude magnificence, Stonehenge and Abury, are in vain produced in proof of their mathematical abilities. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... tone, the conversation, the something that interests, and the something to be proud of—these are the attributes of the man made to be loved. And the Beauty-man is, nine times out of ten, little more than the oracle of his aunts, and the "Sich a love!" of ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... divine judgment. Often there is attributed to him the quality of a jealous Oriental despot. The justice he enforces is often injustice and savagery. Take the story of the Gibeonites. A three years' famine in Israel was explained by Yahveh's oracle as a retribution for the breach of faith by Saul, many years before, with the Gibeonites, whom he had persecuted in defiance of ancient compact. David thereupon invited the Gibeonites to name the requital which would appease them, and they asked for the death of seven ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... that Uncle Cassius lived strictly up to tradition, for it had been over fifteen years since any word had been received from the oracle at Delphi, as the girls dubbed him from the very first. The letter which broke the long silence was read aloud several times that day, the girls especially searching between its lines for any hidden sentiment ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... was, that M'Clutchy, who perfectly understood the half-witted character of his son—for be it known that worthy Phil was considered by those who had the honor of his acquaintance, as anything but an oracle—did not feel himself justified in admitting the said Phil to full confidence in ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... scholarship and mental discipline were piously maintained. The curriculum rested for its main support upon a basis of the classics and mathematics, which imparted a classic and mathematical rigidity to the whole structure. The professor was an oracle, backed by oracular textbooks; the student's activity was restricted by a traditional association of learning with self-restraint and outward severity of life. The revolutionary change came with the marvelous development of the natural sciences, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... to the east and some to the west to pay their vows, but the holiest shrine is where true love is, and there alone the oracle speaks in response to young hearts. Amelie, sweet, modest flower that she is, pays her vows to Our Lady of St. Foye, Pierre his to Amelie! I will be bound, dame, there is no saint in the calendar so holy in his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... confidence enough to beg his advice, how I might carry myself securely there, without offence of others, or of mine own conscience. Signor Arrigo mio (says he), I pensieri stretti, ed il viso sciolto,{21:A} will go safely over the whole world. Of which Delphian oracle (for so I have found it) your judgment doth need no commentary; and therefore, Sir, I will commit you with it to the best of all securities, God's ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... prophecy Mr. Tidditt was accustomed to make each year to the crowd at the post office, when the receipt for the draft for taxes caused him to wax reminiscent. The younger generation here in Bayport regard their town clerk as something of an oracle, and this regard has made Asaph a ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sympathy between the editor and his daily readers—the action and reaction which constantly take place and insensibly lead the journalist into the paths of popular opinion and passion—these are too apt to render him altogether unfit to be an oracle in the great work of social organization and government. The common sense of the multitude is often an invaluable corrective of speculative error; but the impulses and strong prejudices of communities, though calculated ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the land itself—these would surely fetch enough to meet the cost of coffin and funeral service, as well as a cup of coffee for anyone who would put himself out so far as to accept their hospitality on that occasion. But now, contrary to custom, his father had not proved an oracle—he was dead and everything else had gone with him—except the land on the Point. And how was that to be turned into cash when there was no cabin on it? He would probably have to starve to death ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... most of a few years, the tenant is dislodged to give place to another, and he in turn to a third. "Who," says Sir Thomas Browne, "knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whither they ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... was a sort of oracle, in such circumstances. He had passed his youth at sea, having often doubled the Horn, and was known to possess a very respectable amount of knowledge on the subject of vessels of all sorts and sizes, rig and qualities. He was now ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... leads us through its varied mazes to the dwelling-place of mystery. Here the artist will do well to tarry and learn all the oracle may ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... pathos! Hearken, love!—for all The sacred undercurrents of the heart Thrill to its cordial music: Once a chief, Philantus, king of Sparta, left the stern And bleak defiles of his unfruitful land— Girt by a band of eager colonists— To seek new homes on fair Italian plains.[10] Apollo's [11] oracle had darkly spoken: "Where'er from cloudless skies a plenteous shower Outpours, the Fates decree that ye should pause And rear your household deities!" Racked by doubt Philantus traversed—with his faithful band Full many a bounteous realm; but still defeat Darkened his banners, ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... fine thing to be an oracle to which an appeal is always made in all discussions. The men of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that slight tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of carrying a "settler" in the form of a fact or a revolver ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... turning her cup and consulting the oracle. "Here's two people, a man and a woman, from a great distance, and, yes, here's money, too. What ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... intrinsic, of the positive, that it is extrinsic. In all ages men have sought the authority of the positive in that which is immediately beyond and above man—in some "voice of the Divinity" toning down the stream of ages, or speaking through a prophet or oracle, or written in some inspired and sacred book. They have sought for the authority of the natural in that which is immediately within man—the voice of the Divinity speaking in the conscience and heart of man. A careful study of the history of religion will show a ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... with breath of rose Steals from the dawn and softly blows Beneath the lintel, where is hung My little bell with winged tongue; Steals from the dawn, that it may be An oracle of peace to me; For hark! athwart my fitful dreams There mingles with the Orient beams A wakening psalm of tinkling bell: "God brings the ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... said with the air of the oracle, "these old traditions of hidden money are not without foundation. Suppose you let me look over that paper describing the location. Perhaps together ...
— Options • O. Henry
... character-drawing was his forte, that the dialogue is too colourless, and that though the description is often charming, it is seldom masterly. As before, there are jarring rhymes—"school" and "oracle," "Faun" and "scorn." Empedocles himself is sometimes dreadfully tedious; but the part of Callicles throughout is lavishly poetical. Not merely the show passages—that ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... considered to flatter, making his concealment more insinuating than his speech. He approaches with fictitious humility to the creature of his praise, and hangs with rivetted attention upon his lips, as though he spake with the voice of an oracle. He repeats what phrase or sentence may particularly gratify him, and both hands are little enough to bless him in return. Sometimes he extols the excellencies of his friend in his absence, but it is in the presence of those who he is pretty certain will convey it to his ears. In company, he sometimes ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... from decomposition after death, and that they were found by Divine Revelations, after having been lost for a long time, the Pagans say the same of the holy of Orestes, which they pretend to have found through an oracle, etc. ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... there!" shouted old Bridoon, the lodge keeper, who was the Sir Oracle of the hour, and had seated himself in a large arm chair beside the enormous fireplace, wherein the Yule logs burnt brightly, darting out forked flames of blue, yellow, and crimson, and sending forth great showers ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... is the present participle of rimay, to speak, to prattle. The river and the valley were known by this name among all the ancient Indians. The oracle of a temple with an idol, which stood in the neighborhood of the present city of Lima, conferred the name. It is said that before the time of the Incas persons suspected of magic were banished to the valley of the Rimac, on which account it obtained the name of Rimac-malca, that is, ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... The oracle of Dodona, a city of the Molossians, in Epirus, was much celebrated; where Jupiter gave answers either by vocal oaks,(82) or doves, which had also their language, or by resounding basins of brass, or by the ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... thing to observe their dependence on each other. The Terror of the schoolroom was the oracle in her relations with her friend. All the freedom of movement which The Wonder showed in her bodily exercises The Terror manifested in the world of thought. She would fling open a book, and decide in a swift glance whether it had ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... much urging, and began at once reciting over again the stanzas which were afterwards so much admired in the "Banner and Oracle,"—the first verse being, as the readers of that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... Governor, he was popular with his Colonel, he was popular with his mess, he was popular throughout the garrison. Never was a person so popular as Ferdinand Armine. He was the best rider among them, and the deadliest shot; and he soon became an oracle at the billiard-table, and a hero in the racquet-court. His refined education, however, fortunately preserved him from the fate of many other lively youths: he did not degenerate into a mere hero of sports and brawls, the genius of male revels, the arbiter of ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... of AEthiopia, who boasted that her beauty outshone the beauty of all the sea-nymphs, so that in anger they sent a horrible sea-serpent to ravage the coast. The king prayed of an oracle to know how the monster might be appeased, and learned that he must offer up his own daughter, Andromeda. The maiden was therefore chained to a rock by the sea-side, and left to her fate. But who should come to rescue ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... to reunite. Naples was under the severe sway of Spain, and the yoke of Austria pressed on Milan and Lombardy. Rome was nought but the capital of an idea—her people had disappeared, and she had now become the modern Ephesus, at which each cabinet sought an oracle favourable to its own cause, and paid for this purpose the members of the sacred college. Although the centre of all diplomatic intrigue, and the spot where all worldly ambition humbled itself but ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... back shop before he returned to his paste and his slips. "That was Mr. Potts, the great Queen Anne collector, sir. Most notorious book-snatcher in all London, and the most barefaced. Wanted our fourth volume of the 'Athenian Oracle.' I saw his eyes reached out this way, and that way, and always resting on that volume. I saw him edging along to the shelf. Got another odd volume just like it in his wicked old hand, ready to change it ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... philosophers the world hath ever had in admiration, whose works we do so much esteem, that gave precepts of wisdom to others, inventors of Arts and Sciences, Socrates the wisest man of his time by the Oracle of Apollo, whom his two scholars, [193]Plato and [194] Xenophon, so much extol and magnify with those honourable titles, "best and wisest of all mortal men, the happiest, and most just;" and as [195] Alcibiades incomparably ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... barbarous nations and in rendering them Christian and Catholic, we may equally, with the help of God, bring others to the knowledge of the true religion, and since pretended philosophers have abandoned the faith, it must, according to the divine oracle, go to other men. If this faith is extinguished for many, who have deserved the misfortune in closing their eyes to its light, it goes to others who will render themselves worthy by allowing this divine truth to enlighten them. Thus faith is never lost, ...
— Memoir • Fr. Vincent de Paul
... Ark in the house of our Lord in the oracle of the temple, in sancta sanctorum, under the wings of cherubim. In the ark was nothing but the two tables of Moses of stone which Moses had put in. And then Solomon blessed our Lord tofore all the people, and thanked him that he had suffered him to make ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... his mind the stormy convulsions of society were seen 'silent as in a picture.' Paradoxes the most daring wore the air of deliberate wisdom as he pronounced them. He foretold the future happiness of mankind, not with the inspiration of the poet, but with the grave and passionless voice of the oracle. There was nothing better calculated at once to feed and to make steady the enthusiasm of youthful patriots than the high speculations in which he taught them to engage, on the nature of social evils and the ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... does the Court that should be the example And Oracle of the Kingdome, read to us No other doctrine! Egre. None that thrives so well As that, within my knowledge. Cow. Flatterie rubbes out, But since great men learne to admire themselves, Tis something crest-falne. Egre. To ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... junction with the gallant Hessians and render the Rhine the seat of war, or to fall back upon the reserve and hazard a decisive battle on the plains of Leipzig. That intriguing impostor, Lucchesini, the oracle of the camp, however, purposely declared that he knew Napoleon, that Napoleon would most certainly not attempt to make an attack. A few days afterward Napoleon, nevertheless, appeared, found the pass at Kosen ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks |
