"Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gate, Luke Havergal, There are the crimson leaves upon the wall. Go, — for the winds are tearing them away, — Nor think to riddle the dead words they say, Nor any more to feel them as they fall; But go! and if you trust her she will call. There is the western gate, ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... and let his head sink forward on his breast, wearied by the oft-repeated endeavor to solve that which was fast becoming a riddle, a chimera to him, and he probably would have fallen asleep had he not been startled suddenly into a consciousness of his surroundings by a low whinny; soft and plaintive as a child's voice. Looking up, he saw Starlight standing before ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... is mine, and none of yours.—Hark you, Mark. You must fly—there's no two ways about that; and, between us, there will be a devil of a stir in this matter. I have it from good authority that the governor will riddle the whole nation but he'll have every man, woman, and child, concerned in this difficulty: so that'll be no place for you. You must go right on to the Massassippi, and enter lands enough for us all. Enter ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... of life is said to be the finding of a happiness that is not enjoyed at the expense of others, and surely this class have solved that Sphinx's riddle, for they float through their days in a dream of complacency disturbed neither by corroding doubt nor harassed ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... the teaching of Lucretius, yet on this road he marches with a step so firm and buoyant, an eye so awake to all beauty and grandeur, a spirit so elate, that as we read we catch the energy and elation. The reading of the riddle is this: the religion against which Lucretius made his attack was not the soaring idealism of Plato, nor the inspiring and consolatory faith of Christianity, but an outworn mythology in which this world was ruled by capricious and unworthy despots, and the next world was gloomy with terrors ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... them, one cannot help speculating, for there is a kind of fatality that concerns the disposition of matter in Nature. Oil fields and rubber trees existed, one might say, as enigmas, until the internal combustion engine and motor cars dawned on the world and explained their riddle. This was their fate. And of Mesopotamia, who shall say that it may not be concerned with a yet unborn attitude in us Europeans when we will turn wholly to the ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... stands in no need of the sanction of my poor opinion for anything it may please him to do," answered Spikeman. "But resolve me your riddle." ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... there must be a great deal of good in him, and sometimes she is sorry for him, and longs to speak again to Lyra about the wrong she is doing him. One of the dangers of having a very definite point of view is the temptation of abusing it to read the whole riddle of the painful earth. Annie has permitted herself to think of Lyra's position as one which would be impossible in a state of things where there was neither poverty nor riches, and there was neither luxury ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Turkish-looking sobriquet of "Mufti;" its vowels and its consonants are full of strict intention I never saw cause why the most charming of essayists hid himself in "Elia," but he may for all that have had pregnant reasons; even so, (but that slender wit could read my riddle,) you shall perhaps find fault with my Mussulman agnomen; still you and I equally participate in this shallow secret, and within so brief a word is concealed the key to unlock the casket that tempts your curiosity: however, the less ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... about the scent of foxes. Not long ago a man wrote to the Field saying that he had proved by experiment that on the saturation or relative humidity of the air the hunter's hopes depend: in fact, he announced that he had solved the riddle of scent. It so happened that for some years the present writer had also been amusing himself with experiments of the same nature, and at one time entertained the hope that by means of the hygrometer he would arrive at a solution of the mystery. But alas! it was not to be. On several ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... cards; and in some inexplicable manner it permitted him to concentrate upon whatever problem filled his thoughts. It was purely accidental that he saw Patti to-night or recalled her art. Coming upon the last photograph without having found a solution of the riddle of Two-Hawks he relaxed the mental pressure; and his sight reestablished its ability ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... by that?" inquired Chillingworth; "you are a complete riddle to-night, Jack; what is the matter ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... exact date of the establishment of the Kit-Cat club has never been decided, the consensus of opinion fixes the year somewhere about 1700. More debatable, however, is the question of its peculiar title. The most recent efforts to solve that riddle leave it where the ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... figures, in frocks and frills, Go roaming about at their own sweet wills, And "play with the pups," and "reprove the calves," And do nought in the world (but Work) by halves, From "Hunt the Slipper" and "Riddle-me-ree" To watching the cat ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... abode of these shadows. Where are they from, and whither going—these women without beauty, who walk the streets without handkerchiefs, but blubbering with too much or too little drink? What is the terrible riddle? Why, even as they blubber, are there women whose bodies have the quality of cream, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... air. You'd think he might amount to something, to somewhat more than a mere something, given half a chance in the right direction. Then what?... Spaulding sought from Duncan elucidation of this riddle. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... I will not be satisfied till that man is in my power. Ah, the robber-chieftain little imagines what an enemy he has raised up against him in me, when he put this terrible riddle into my heart. And it is a riddle ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... that to nearly everybody who sets himself down to think seriously about the riddle of the Universe there very soon occurs the question whether Materialism may not contain the solution of all difficulties. I think, therefore, our present investigation had better begin with an enquiry whether Materialism can possibly be true. I say 'can be true' ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... about the trip to her when she spoke of her own approaching voyage thither? The yacht changed its character in her eyes; losing the indefinite interest of the unknown, it acquired the charm of a riddle on motives, of which the alternatives were, had Lord Mountclere's journey anything to do with her own, or had it not? Common probability pointed to the latter supposition; but the time of starting, the course of the yacht, and recollections of Lord Mountclere's ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... there that thou didst not lie with me? Thou sentest thy young clerk to me: and thou knowest that, as often as thou hadst not been with me, I sent word that the priest had not been with me. Who but thou, that hast suffered jealousy to blind thee, would have been so witless as not to read such a riddle? But thou must needs mount guard at night beside the door, and think to make me believe that thou hadst gone out to sup and sleep. Consider thy ways, and court not the mockery of those that know them as I do, but turn a man again as thou wast wont to be: and let there be no more ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... he knows what we'll do with him if he should. Though he has made some clever escapes, I'll admit, that may not always be his fortune. The pitcher may go to the well once too often. He's a cunning rascal—no doubt knows this riddle—and therefore I begin to fear he has taken himself off,—at least for a long while. He may return again, but how the deuce are we to sustain this constant espionage? It would weary down the devil! ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... the good riddle Or speak of the Holiest, Save in faint figures and failing words, Who loves, yet laughs among the swords, ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... riddle, but he caught the pun instantly, and the clear merry sound of his hearty laugh surprised Charles, who instantly noted it as another proof that was some life ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... riddle! neither good nor bad! What need'st thou run so many miles about, When thou mayest tell thy tale the nearest way? ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... total human entity, and this part is the physical body. In order to throw light upon its conception of this physical body, occult science at first directs attention to a phenomenon which confronts all observers of life like a great riddle,—the phenomenon of death,—and in connection with it, points to so-called inanimate nature, the mineral kingdom. We are thus referred to facts, which it devolves on occult science to explain, and to which an important part of this work ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... Then she resumes her household work; whereupon Ormuzd whispers in the pledge's projecting ear, and that heaven-directed bimbo straightway turns his head toward the dust-hole, and, again illustrating the first clause of the Sphynx's not very complicated riddle, keeps the strictly noiseless tenor of his way, till Ahriman's priestess looks round to see the metaphors fulfilled, of the pup turning again to his ashheap, and the papoose that was washed wallowing in the dust-hole. And so the pull-devil-pull-baker strife goes ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... interpretation of the ovum, and the reduction of it to some ancient amoeboid ancestral form, supply the answer to the old problem: "Which was first, the egg or the chick?" We can now give a very plain answer to this riddle, with which our opponents have often tried to drive us into a corner. The egg came a long time before the chick. We do not mean, of course, that the egg existed from the first as a bird's egg, but as an indifferent amoeboid cell of the simplest character. The egg lived for thousands ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... those, which, if a Christian, thou wilt see Not small, but things of greatest moment be. Nor do thou go to work without my key; (In mysteries men soon do lose their way;) And also turn it right, if thou wouldst know My riddle, and wouldst with my heifer plough; It lies there in the window. Fare thee well, My next may be to ring ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... soon as its object contradicts these rights of man. But the practice is only the exception and the theory is the rule. If, however, we regard the revolutionary practice as the correct position of the relation, the riddle still remains to be solved, why the relationship was inverted in the consciousness of the political liberators, the end appearing as the means, and the means as the end. This optical illusion of their consciousness would still be the same riddle, ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... in point of honour! My frends feare me! My age suspected too! now as ye are iust men Unknit this riddle. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... and fidgeted. Twenty times he tried to solve, in his own mind, the riddle of why Dalzell should be away, and where he was. But it was ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... think you must give up guessing, and I must tell you the answer to the riddle. Those marks were made by a hand which is strong and yet gentle, tough and yet yielding, like the hand of a man; a hand which handles and uses in a grip stronger than a giant's its own carving tools, from the great boulder stone as large ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... followed him," thought Lucretia, "to solve this agreeable riddle, by making acquaintance with my steward. But pshaw! I shall soon know all about it. Nobody has made me these presents without intending to get a word of thanks for ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... she was entirely unconnected with the riddle did nothing to help me to solve it. I had, however, to solve it for the Belgian authorities, and I did so by giving a certificate that Alresca had died of "failure of the heart's action." A convenient phrase, whose convenience imposes perhaps oftener than may be imagined on persons of ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... the next line in the book—Mrs. King proved him right, and so on till she was quite tired of the proofs, and began to trust him. Alfred asked how he could possibly do such things, which seemed to him a perfect riddle. ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 'It's no riddle, sir,—it's a solution of all the riddles. I will tell you. While I was convalescing, I went to a Y.M.C.A. camp. I had never been to one of these places before; I don't know why I went then, except that the time hung a bit heavy on my hands. You ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... cat—that has led to its bitter persecution—that has made it the hero of fairy lore, the pet of old maids? I believe it is—I believe that in this psychic faculty of smell lies, in degree, the solution to the oft-asked riddle—why is the cat uncanny? Having then satisfied oneself on this point, namely, that cats are in the possession of rare psychic properties, is it likely that the Unknown Powers which have so endowed them, ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... a riddle to me," answered Captain Langless. "We are not in the business of carrying prisoners. We are bound for Sandusky for a cargo ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... sensible to take two if I could manage to procure them. It was more than an ordinary man was qualified to cope with, to make his observations, write his letters, and look after their transmission, without having to attend to his nag, and do an odd turn of cooking at a pinch. The riddle was how to get the horse—a sound hardy animal that would not call for elaborate grooming, or refuse a feed of barley. Horse-flesh was at a premium, but he thought I might be able to have what I wanted at Bayonne, on payment of an extravagant price. A requisition ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... of thirty the face of a woman is a book written in a foreign tongue, which one may still translate in spite of all the feminisms of the idiom; but on passing her fortieth year a woman becomes an insoluble riddle; and if any one can see through an old woman, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... riddle, Rodney changed hands with his reins, and faced about toward the vehicle, reaching ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... said her cousin, "they are mere soap-bubbles; but as to your own views—why, really you are somewhat of a riddle to me. I rather think, were I such a quiet, civil, well-disposed person as you, I could have married Lord Glenallan well enough. He is handsome, good-natured, and rich; and though 'he is but a Lord, and nothing but a Lord,' still there is a dash and bustle in twenty thousand a year that ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Shadows in the Fire The Belfry Old Beautiful Barbara Song of the Silken Shroud A University for Wales Griefs Untold I Will Dawn and Death Castles in the Air The Withered Rose Wrecks of Life Eleanor New Year's Bells The Vase and the Weed A Riddle To a Fly Burned by a Gaslight To a Friend Retribution The Three Graces The Last Rose of Summer The Starling and the Goose The Heroes of Alma A Kind Word, a Smile, or a Kiss Dear Mother, I'm Thinking of Thee The Heron and the Weather-Vane The Three Mirrors The Two Clocks Sacrifical: on the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... at once. It is all very mysterious and extraordinary; but then you have been a mystery, Rupert Hyde, a riddle and a puzzle, ever since I ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... beginnings of conscious life, man has found himself surrounded and besieged by un-calculable phenomena. Beaten upon by forces he could not estimate or predict or control, he has sought to solve their sphynx-like riddle, to establish some plausible relation between them, to erect a logical scheme of things. Primitive man, as Worringer demonstrates in his "Form Problems of the Gothic," strove to achieve something of certitude and fixity through the crude but definite lines and forms of neolithic art. Classical man ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... RIDDLE believed that the question of universal franchise would be tried before the grand tribunal of the world, and, if not victorious, it would appeal and appeal again. The question ought to be met squarely by the "masculines" as well as by the women. He was an earnest advocate of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... head of "Sylva." A third edition of the "Poetical Blossoms" was printed in 1637—the year of Milton's "Lycidas" and of Ben Johnson's death. Cowley had written a five-act pastoral comedy, "Love's Riddle," while yet at school, and this was published in 1638. In the same year, 1638, when Cowley's age was twenty, a Latin comedy of his, "Naufragium Joculare," was acted by men of his College, and in the same year printed, with a dedication to Dr. ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... particle never occurs. Death consequently is but the constituent of a change. When it comes, that which was living assumes a state that has in it the potentiality of another form. A tenement has crumbled and a tenant gone forth. Though just where is the riddle. ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... chaotic as they are; small sparks, elucidative, confirmatory of your dull History Books, and adding traits, here and there, to the Image you have formed from them. Yielding you a poor momentary comfort; like reading some riddle of no use; like light got incidentally, by rubbing dark upon dark (say Voltaire flint upon Dryasdust gritstone), in those labyrinthic catacombs, if you are doomed to travel there. A mere weariness, otherwise, to the outside reader, hurrying forward,—to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... there was no one to counsel him to give America more time with my sister. She attended the night school; she was fond of reading. In books, in a slowly ripening experience, she might have found a better answer to the riddle of a girl's ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Corrivarlich a noted sheep-stealer named Alastair Bane. Little is known of his boyhood. He was supposed to have been brought to the district by Highlanders who were in the habit of bringing to Crieff cartloads of split pine from Rannoch Forest, which they sold to riddle-makers to make riddle rims. During one of those visits the child is supposed to have been left. He was called Alastair, owing to his supposed Highland descent, and Bane, because of his white hair. As he grew up to manhood he showed symptoms of a wandering disposition, and went frequently ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... jibed so ill with Monsieur's character that not even his worst detractor could accept it. For he was known to all as a hotspur—a man who acted quickly and seldom counted the cost. Therefore his present conduct was a riddle, nor could any of the emissaries from King or League, who came from time to time to enlist his aid and went away without it, read the answer. The puzzle was too deep for them. Yet it was only this: to Monsieur, ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... told her the man had turned his back forever, that only the ashy road of the ruined remained for her to tread. And that was how the great news that Nature had looked upon her for a mother came to Joan Tregenza. Here was the riddle of the mysterious voice unraveled; here was the secret of her physical sorrows made clear. She looked wildly from one to the other—from the man to the woman; then she tottered a step away, clutching her money and her little picture to her breast; and then she rolled ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... furious pace. Bambi, herself, was the Lady of Mystery to whom he had offered his devotions. The thing which hurt him was that she had tricked him into declaring himself, probably laughed at his ardour. It made him rage to think of it. What had been her object? He could not decipher her riddle at all. If she wanted his love, she might have had it for the taking, without all this play-acting nonsense. These was no use in his ever expecting to understand her or her motives. He might as well give it up and be ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... mystery. It was fairly to be assumed that his committee did not want his autograph to distribute for a souvenir; they must want it for some vital purpose, to meet some new move of the bosses. The answer to this riddle was not slow in coming: having failed in their effort to find money on him, the bosses had framed up a letter, which they were exhibiting as having been written by the would-be check-weigh-man. His friends ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... my business," answered Ali Partab, with the air of a man who knew all of the secret details but would not admit it. Jaimihr began to think that he had lit at random on the answer to the riddle. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... few hickory trees. All grew, about a dozen, except three scions of one kind that I put in one tree. This is the third year that I have grafted hickories on the grounds of this school, some three thousand acres. The school was planned and built by Mrs. Theodate Pope Riddle, and I was told there that it cost seven million dollars. It is a beautiful and original group of buildings in the lovely Farmington River ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... resolve me immediately, for my albumess will be catechised on this subject; and how can I prompt her? Lake Leman, I know, and Lemon Lake (in a punch bowl) I have swum in, though those lymphs be long since dry. But Maggiore may be in the moon. Unsphinx this riddle for me, for my shelves have no gazetteer. And mayest thou never murder thy father-in-law in the Trivia of Lincoln's Inn New Square Passage, where Searl Street and the Street of Portugal embrace, nor afterwards make absurd proposals to the Widow M. But ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... looks again! Oh, I love this old kitchen so! Baby dear, only look at it wid him pitty, pitty eyes, and him tongue out of his mousy! But who put the flour-riddle up there. And look at the pestle and mortar, and rust I declare in the patty pans! And a book, positively a dirty book, where the clean skewers ought to hang! ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... zaid a penny, but I zaid five poun'. The wager was laid, but the money not down. Zinging right fol de ree, fol de riddle lee While I am ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... existence of more than two centuries, you have had a familiar intercourse with men who were esteemed the wisest of their day. Doubtless, with your capacious understanding, you have treasured up many an invaluable lesson of wisdom. You certainly have had time enough to guess the riddle of life. Tell us poor mortals, then, how we may ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a vision in my sleep last night between sleeping and waking. A figure standing beside me, thin, miserable, sad and sorrowful; the shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the tears down his cheeks. His ribs were bending like the bottom of a riddle; his nose thin that it would go through a cambric needle; his shoulders hard and sharp that they would cut tobacco; his head dark and bushy like the top of a hill; and there is nothing I can liken his fingers to. His poor bones without any kind of covering; a withered rod in his hand, and he looking ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... ardent skies of my youth Come to me over the sea, Come in a vision to me, Come with your shimmer and song; Ye have known all of the truth, Witness to both shall ye bear; Read me the riddle of wrong, Solve me the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fire; the English intent, as seldom any Nation was, to give the Spaniards an effectual beating. Which they hope they can,—though unexpected difficulties will occur. And, in the mean while, what a riddle of potentialities for his poor Majesty to read, and pick ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of Judas remain an unsolved riddle. The Gospels leave no doubt that money played a part with him. But could a man whom Jesus selected and trusted be actuated by so sordid a motive alone? Was he perhaps embittered because he had staked his ambition on the Galilean Messiah and ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... freshness of life, being the way of its renewal. Sweeter than the honey which Samson found in the lion's carcass is this everlasting sweetness of Death; and it is a mystery deeper than the strong man's riddle. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... to-day, the need for new light. I can't tell you all that—it's not in my line, that sort of talk. But he said, his face all pink under his skin, he said, 'Hapgood, I'll tell you a thing. I've got the secret. I've got the key to the riddle that's been puzzling me all my life. I've got the new revelation in terms good enough for me to understand. Light, more light. Here it is: God is—love. Not this, that, nor the other that the intelligence revolts at, and ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... before his car made the distance back to the city Dundee had shrugged off the riddle and was concentrating on all the facts he knew regarding the Maginty case. It was his first real assignment from Sanderson, and he ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... to the window beyond which the girl could see a rope dangling from above. The sight of it partially solved the riddle of the king's almost uncanny presence upon her window sill in the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the payment that landlords demand Was a source of continual woe, When the tenant preferred to adhere to his land, And the agent preferred him to go: When their claims to adjust and the balance to strike Was a riddle to baffle the Sphinx,— But they're reconciled now, by resolving alike That they never will pay ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... appreciators of the public mind, who can imagine even in dreams that this generation—self-questioned, agitated, haunted beyond any other by the elementary problems of our human condition, by the awful whence and the more awful whither, by what the Germans call the 'riddle of the universe,' and oppressed into a ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the comedy and tragedy of sex—the great master of the tragedy of the moral intelligence. Taking the step from JULIUS CAESAR to HAMLET as corresponding to this movement in his mind, we may say that where the first play exhibits the concrete perception of the fatality of things, "the riddle of the painful earth"; in the second, in its final form, the perception has emerged in philosophic consciousness as a pure reflection. The poet has in the interim been revealed to himself; what he had perceived he now conceives. And this is the secret of the whole transformation which the old ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Barbara!" Duncan exclaimed, as he bent over the map, "you've solved the riddle. What a splendid combination it is! And how we must ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... the only true and eternal realities; who, tormented alike by the awfulness of the infinite unknown, and by the petty cares and low passions of the finite mortal life which they knew but too well, had determined to renounce the latter, that they might give themselves up to solving the riddle of the former; and be at peace; and free, at least, from the tyranny of their own selves. Eight hundred years before St. Antony fled into the desert, that young Hindoo rajah, whom men call Buddha now, ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... Maiden, thou would'st wend with me, To leave both tower and town, Thou first must guess what life lead we 15 That dwell by dale and down. And if thou canst that riddle read, As read full well you may, Then to the greenwood shalt thou speed As blithe as Queen ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... strange thing," said Goethe, as they descended the hill, arm in arm, "and above all a woman's heart! It is a sacred riddle, which God has given Himself to solve, and that only a ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... he had had too much of thought. Suddenly that question which had been a riddle to him was a riddle no longer. He had the answer, and could see himself as others no doubt had seen him—a fool who had believed in the supremacy of fineness; a boy who had reached for the moon. But it left the issue clearer now. He, too, was a riverman; the degree ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... library where the colonel sat over Mary Nellen's last classic riddle, she couldn't break it ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... say, was to propose dark enigmatical questions to all passers by; and, if they did not give the explication of them,—to devour them. It made horrible ravages, as the story goes, on a mountain near Thebes. Apollo told Creon that she could not be vanquished, till some one had expounded her riddle. The riddle was—"What creature is that, which has four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three at night?" Oedipus expounded it, telling her it was a man,—who when a child, creepeth on all fours; in his middle age, walketh on two legs, and in his old age, two and a staff. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... difficult to suppose that he had read some of the works on which he passes a summary sentence. The comedy of Love's Riddle, which he says, "adds little to the wonders of Cowley's minority," deserved to be commended at least for the style, which is a specimen of pure and unaffected English. Of Congreve's novel, he tells us, that he had rather praise it than read it. Judging from ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... there, I own! See! curling smoke and flames right blue! To see the Evil One they travel; There many a riddle to unravel. ...
— Faust • Goethe
... Primitive Woman go up and how many pounds would she pull?" repeated Nyoda. "What is it, a riddle?" ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... matter itself as well. Out of its hypothetical mistiness has been reared the most tenable theory of the constitution of ponderable matter which has yet been suggested—or, at any rate, the one that will stand as the definitive nineteenth-century guess at this "riddle of the ages." I mean, of course, the vortex theory of atoms—that profound and fascinating doctrine which suggests that matter, in all its multiform phases, is neither more nor less ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... toil, &c.]—There is something true and pathetic about this curious blindness which prevents Hecuba from understanding "so plain a riddle." (Cf. below, p. 42.) She takes the watching of a Tomb to be some strange Greek custom, and does not seek to have ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... aside and strikes awry. The lady with the hatchet does not tremble. It is as though she had taken measurements; and the edge of her weapon does not swerve by a hair's breadth. Need I give you any further proofs or examine all the other details with you? Surely not. You now possess the key to the riddle; and you know as I do that only a lunatic can behave in this way, stupidly, savagely, mechanically, like a striking clock or the blade ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... challenges him to fight, unless he can win his ransom by returning on New Year's Day with an answer to the question, What does a woman most desire? Arthur relates the story to Gawaine, asks him and others for an answer to the riddle, and collects their suggestions in a book ('letters,' 24.1). On his way to keep his tryst with the baron, he meets an unspeakably ugly woman, who offers her assistance; if she will help him, Arthur says, she shall wed with Gawaine. She gives him the true answer, A woman will have her will. Arthur ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... that was uppermost in a thousand of those vigilant minds, even as it was uppermost in mine, was the riddle—how much they understood of us. Did they grasp that we in our millions were organized, disciplined, working together? Or did they interpret our spurts of fire, the sudden stinging of our shells, our steady investment of their encampment, ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... "'You said that your riddle was to take three from two and have four. My plan is very simple; just add three to two and you have not only four but five! Take a vacation from business, but stay at home; do your own garden improvements with your head and a horse and cart and a pair ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... robes of sorrow with some of that grace of patience which comes to her sex like an instinct born of centuried servitude. How her husband ever fascinated so fascinatingly elusive a creature is a mystery to all who know him and a miracle to all who know her; but who has ever guessed the riddle of a woman's heart? Surely no man yet known to the world, except possibly Balzac, and he only occasionally by some sort of electric, psychological accident. The true story of Mrs. Blaine's infelicities has been carefully ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... for the world, that a century and a quarter ago thirteen various and very jealous states worked out the problem of a Union, and became—after an enormous, exhausting wrangle—the United States of America. Now the way they solved their riddle was by delegating and giving over jealously specified sovereign powers and doing all that was possible to retain the residuum. They remained essentially sovereign states. New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, for example, remained legally independent. The practical fusion of these peoples into one ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... all, orders from men who can protect me by saying one word! I ain't going to stand all this riddle-come-ree business! Flat down, now, Mr. Fogg, ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... rather risky; I shall avoid them in future. But the riddle is more puzzling than ever. What brought Jeanne to share my solitude ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... Marc'antonio's, with no clock but the sun and no calendar but the creeping change of the season upon the macchia, what wonder if I forgot human probabilities at times in piecing and unpiecing solutions of a riddle which ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... the problem of his own life by following with all the force and courage of his genius a line of conduct which made him, next to Alexander, the most famous man in Greece. To be really without fear or desire would mean death, and to die is not to solve the riddle of living. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... had been to him the most delectable of riddles, and his expressed desire to marry and settle down was perhaps only another statement of the fact that he longed to solve one example of the riddle, one form in which it was presented to him. He felt now that he wished he had married years ago, that he had already become quiet and domesticated. There was a time for youth's fiery passions, its ecstatic uncontent, ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... thinking about?" was the way Thad took himself to task presently; "trying to find the answer to a riddle by bothering my brains, when it ought to be written here on the ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... Emperor and his council of generals—what was their state of soul at this critical moment? Perhaps this riddle will never be wholly solved. From the military point of view, which in their eyes claimed first attention, they must have rejoiced at M. Sazonoff's answer, for never again would they find such a golden opportunity for vanquishing Russia and making an end of her rivalry. In 1917 the reorganization ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... "We do not undertake to account for personality." We reply, "That is a part of your problem. You have undertaken to solve the riddle of the universe by excluding all evidence of an existing and active God, and we can not release you because a feature of the problem may be unusually difficult or embarrassing, or even fatal to your theory. It is a fight to the death in the interest of truth; and we purpose ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... But "From Papa" caught my eye on a little parcel. I seized it and unfolded. From papa, and he so far away! But I guessed the riddle before I could get to the last of the folds of paper that wrapped and enwrapped a little morocco case. Papa and mamma, leaving me alone, had made provision beforehand, that when this time came I might miss nothing except themselves. They had thought and cared and arranged for me; and now they ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... hast put forth a riddle unto the children of my people." says Sampson's Philistine wife to him, ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... said Topknot, "we are having a very lively conversation. Uncle Red Nose Mike has just asked a riddle, which none of us can guess. But you can, so ...
— The Chickens of Fowl Farm • Lena E. Barksdale
... length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... my head in my hands and thought. There must be some way of reading this riddle. What did Scudder mean by steps? I thought of dock steps, but if he had meant that I didn't think he would have mentioned the number. It must be some place where there were several staircases, and one marked out from the others by ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... and Maurice (naught could awe them!) Took a saw, when no one saw them: Ritze-ratze! riddle-diddle! Sawed a gap across the middle. When this feat was finished well, Suddenly was heard ...
— Max and Maurice - a juvenile history in seven tricks • William [Wilhelm] Busch
... MARLBOROUGH STREET.—Henry Riddle, foreman to Robert Towser, a chimney sweep, appeared before the magistrates on a summons charging him under the 4 & 5 Wil. IV., c. 35, with the following act of cruelty towards James Arnold, a boy about 12 years of age, and who, for some ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... municipal dust-carts! And he understood the prodigious vanity of these people, haunted by the glory of their ancestors, spellbound by the past of their city, declaring that she contains everything, that they themselves cannot know her thoroughly, that she is the sphinx who will some day explain the riddle of the universe, that she is so great and noble that all within her acquires increase of greatness and nobility, in such wise that they demand for her the idolatrous respect of the entire world, so vivacious in their ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the riddle," cried Scraps, dancing with glee. "Those fence-boards are made of wood, and if the Woozy stands close to the fence and lets his eyes flash fire, they might set fire to the fence and burn it up. Then he could walk away with us ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... Christmas time when this young couple were sitting together over the stove in their little apartment. "Of a truth," said the young man, "how all this is to end is a riddle. All our resources seem ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... was, then, the answer to this perplexing riddle—my clothes! Mechanically I took off my hat and examined it as I had not troubled to do hitherto and saw it for a shapeless monstrosity faded to the colour of dust and with more than one hole in crown ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... Cabot stared at him, crossed his knees, and continued to stare. Occasionally he shook his head, as if the riddle were proving too much for him. Galusha did not move. Neither man spoke. The old clock ticked ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "Yes," he said. "I've been kept away on business. Funny kind of business, too. Say, Charlie," he added, "suppose likely your sister and you would be too busy to see me for a few minutes now? I'd like to see if you've got an answer to a riddle." ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... asking! Why? Porter" (a respectable Samoan trader) "told him that he would riddle him if he came inside his fence, and the scoundrel knows me well enough not to come into my place with anything but a civil word on his foul tongue; but then you see, Porter and I are Americans. If either or both of us shot the ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... main object of the poet is to present in a clear, comprehensive and palpable form the sphinx riddle of human existence, his work abounds nevertheless in a variety of interesting data, which throw considerable light upon the philosophical and theological theories in vogue among the thoughtful spirits of the Jewish ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... ungraceful figure—what might be the charm which excited amongst his chosen circle a faith approaching to superstition, and a love rising to enthusiasm, towards a man whose demeanour was so inanimate, if not austere:—it was a riddle of which neither Gall nor Lavater ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Long Bridge, in advance of the Fifth Corps, and by 7 o'clock next morning had driven the enemy's pickets up to White Oak bridge, where he waited for our infantry. When that came up, he pushed on as far as Riddle's Shop, but late that evening the Confederate infantry forced him to withdraw to St. Mary's Church; for early in the morning General Lee had discovered the movement of our army, and promptly threw this column of infantry south of the Chickahominy to White Oak Swamp, with the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... little riddle, my dear," said the Squire to Miss Phipps, always a favourite of his. "When is a door ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... my heart was beating rapidly, and, so selfish is the nature of man, I was more glad to learn that my company was acceptable to Val Beverley than I should have been to have had the riddle of Cray's Folly laid ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... being hurtful, are well worth cultivating for the good they do. For a long time the men who devoted themselves to the study of peas, beans, clovers, and other plants of the pulse family, were confronted with a riddle they could not solve. These plants all manage to enrich themselves with compounds of nitrogen, which make them particularly valuable as food, and these compounds often exist in a degree far exceeding the rate at which their nitrogen comes ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... Notes-our wit quintuple hear; Five able-bodied editors combine Their strength prodigious in each laboured line!" O wondrous vintner! hopeless seemed the task To bung these drainings in a single cask; The riddle's read-five leathern skins contain The working juice, and scarcely feel the strain. Saviours of Rome! will wonders never cease? A ballad cackled by five tuneful geese! Upon one Rosinante five stout knights Ride fiercely into visionary fights! A cap and bells five sturdy fools adorn, Five porkers ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... cannot catch sight of them," said Mr. Edison, "we shall have to riddle the car on the chance ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... in a cradle-coffin lying; Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying; So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb For darker closets of the tomb! She did but ope an eye, and put A clear beam forth, then strait up shut For the long dark: ne'er more to see Through glasses of mortality. Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below? Shall we say, that Nature blind Check'd her hand, and changed her mind, Just when she had exactly wrought A finish'd pattern without fault? Could she flag, or could she tire, Or ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... In the first place my mother told me to ask you. I rather think she wants to pump you about that affair last night. Father wouldn't tell her all she wished to know. Then again I'm still all broken up about those lost coins; and I thought perhaps you might have guessed the answer to the riddle." ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... every subject are usually those who know nothing about it; but he could not approve of his selfishness, cold-blooded calculations, and least of all of the manner in which he forgot his "white gifts," to adopt those that were purely "red." On the other hand, Pathfinder was a riddle to Captain Sanglier. The latter could not comprehend the other's motives; he had often heard of his disinterestedness, justice, and truth; and in several instances they had led him into grave errors, ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... representing Astaroth, with the head of a woman adorned with horns and a crescent, and another of brass, containing an image of Baal—a human face on the head of an ox, with the horns surrounded by stars. However, I am very ignorant of these things, and you must refer the riddle of the ring to some one more astute and learned in such matters than your humble 'yokefellow' in ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... dreamed of a sky where the moonbeams all danced While a comet was telling a riddle, Where the stars and the planets and sun-dogs all pranced While the moon ...
— The Peter Patter Book of Nursery Rhymes • Leroy F. Jackson
... years there has been a growing tendency among scholars to seek in the Mysteries the clue which shall enable us to read aright the baffling riddle of the Grail, and there can be little doubt that, in so doing, we are on the right path. At the same time I am convinced that to seek that clue in those Mysteries which are at once the most famous, and the most familiar to the classical ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston |
