"Unravel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... classify them and bring them into a kind of harmony: many they rejected and others they recast in order to better reconcile their statements: they arranged them in systems, from which they undertook to unravel, under inspiration from on high, the true history of the universe. That which I have tried to set forth above is very ancient, if, as is said to be the case, it was in existence two or even three thousand years before our era; but the versions of it which we possess were drawn up much later, perhaps ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... help them, and hoped that his zealous devotion might yet find some way of rescue. As yet he saw none. Looking up at the great building before him, so firm and secure, in the moonlight, a thought flashed into his mind. If any man could help them, it was his principal. His keen eye would be able to unravel all the dark secrets in which the baron was entangled, and his iron strength of will would crush the villains who held the unfortunate nobleman in their power. And then he had a noble nature; he always decided on the right, without an effort or a struggle. ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... style in honor of the discovery, but now that I looked down upon the great inland sea lying nestled in the very heart of Africa, and thought how vainly mankind had sought these sources throughout so many ages, and reflected that I had been the humble instrument permitted to unravel this portion of the great mystery when so many greater than I had failed, I felt too serious to vent my feelings in vain cheers for victory, and I sincerely thanked God for having guided and supported us through all dangers to the good end. I was about 1,500 feet above the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... preamble, Sinkum began the following remarkable tale, all told in such strange Chinkee patter, and with so much self-praise interspersed, that it took the listeners' whole attention to unravel it. ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... down and asked him, "Why so sad?" Thereupon the dreamer explained to him his sad and mournful fate, and why he had come there forsooth, under the impulse of a dream, he had set out thither, and was expecting God as if by a wonder, to unravel this more than Gordian knot. The mendicant answered "Good Heaven! are you so mad and foolish as to rely on a dream, which is emptier than nothing, and journey hither? I should betake myself to Dort, to dig up a treasure buried under such a tree in such a man's ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... of the working of God in the world, the most buoyant faith in the divine origin and destiny of man. Half his poetry is an effort to express, in endless variety of iteration, the nearness of God, to unravel the tangled circumstance of human life, and disclose everywhere infinity enmeshed amid the intricacies ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... will turn to" (Soddy, 1912). May not man be the radium of the Universe? At any rate let us not worry about his size. For us he is a very potent creature, full of interest, whose mundane story we are only beginning to unravel. ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... pillow and seemed trying to unravel the tangled thoughts which perplexed him. Once more the dame came and brought him a cooling drink. He drank it, thanked her, and fell back with ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... shyly up to the old African and stood at his knee. The sorrows and perplexities of nearly a hundred years lay between them; and now, as always, the baffled eyes of age gazed into the Sphinx-like face of youth, as if by this means to unravel the mysteries of the past and solve the problems of ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... and saintly because, forsooth, he had concealed the arena of these primal passions beneath the surface of this outward life, chaining them there like leashed tigers in the dark.... Two faces of women appeared to be looking on, while he strove to unravel the snarl of his self-knowledge. Lydia's unworldly face, wearing a faint nimbus of unimagined self-immolation, and Fanny's—full of love and solicitude, the face which he ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... every step, and retreats before the unexpected and the irreconcilable. Would you have before you the nobly humiliating spectacle of human genius battling with infinite power, you have but to follow Darwin's endeavours to unravel the strange, incoherent, inconceivably mysterious laws of the sterility and fecundity of hybrids, or of the variations of specific and generic characters. Scarcely has he formulated a principle ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... time Louis XI. made strenuous efforts to unravel the mystery of his brother's death. (Letter to the chancellor of Brittany, Lettres ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... over matters upon which in any progressive community the people must decide for themselves. However near to the appearances such an impression might be, nothing could be further from the facts. If I have helped the reader to unravel the tangled skein of our national life, if I have sufficiently revealed the mind of the new movement to show that there is in it 'a scheme of things entire,' it should be quite clear that the deliberate intentions both of Mr. Gerald Balfour and of those Irishmen whom he took into ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... other theory," says Alexander Humboldt, who, in his Examen Critique, made an exhaustive research into the Vespucci letters. Humboldt completely vindicated the character of Vespucci, leaving no shade of doubt upon his integrity, but he did not unravel ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... circumstances it seems essential that the St. Petersburg Cabinet, whose desire to unravel this crisis peacefully is manifest, should immediately give their adherence to the British proposal. This proposal must be strongly supported at Berlin in order to decide [Secretary of State] Von Jagow to take real action at Vienna capable of stopping Austria ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... really desirous to do what was right, as far as he knew it; and all the more desirous, because he saw, in the present state of society, what was right would pay him. God shall judge him, not I. Who can unravel the confusion of mingled selfishness and devotion that exists even in his own heart, much less ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... would be in my cap if I should succeed in making these automata reflect! if I could make them understand that their work is a Penelope's web, which they are condemned to unravel at one end as fast as they ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... goes, though Godwin denied that it had any story, "The Antiquary" may be placed among the most careful. The underplot of the Glenallans, gloomy almost beyond endurance, is very ingeniously made to unravel the mystery of Lovel. The other side-narrative, that of Dousterswivel, is the weak point of the whole; but this Scott justifies by "very late instances of the force of superstitious credulity, to a much greater extent." Some occurrence of the hour may have ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... or tail of them," I said when I had looked carefully at each, and endeavoured to unravel its secret, for obviously it must possess some secret meaning. "What do you make of ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... of this people is just as strange as they are themselves. It is based on euphony, from which cause it is very complex, the more especially so as it requires one to be possessed of a negro's turn of mind to appreciate the system, and unravel the secret of its euphonic concord. A Kisuahili grammar, written by Dr. Krapf, will exemplify what I mean. There is one peculiarity, however, to which I would direct the attention of the reader most particularly, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... There is here a discussion as to the relations between 'justice' and 'utility' upon which Fitzjames agreed with Mill. I dissent from both, and think that Fitzjames would have been more consistent had he agreed with me. I cannot, however, here try to unravel a ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... fact about Diana's Grove—there is, I have long understood, some strange mystery about that house. It may be of some interest, or it may be trivial, in such a tangled skein as we are trying to unravel." ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... an ordinary man is distracted and confounded, and rendered incapable of coming to any regular conclusion. None but a judge, a man that has from his infancy been accustomed to decide intricate cases, is equal to such a difficult task. If we even suppose the jury sufficiently enlightened to unravel those knotty points, yet there remains an insuperable objection. In State libels, their passions are frequently so much engaged, that they may be justly considered as parties concerned ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... religion. What the Founder said cost him enormous labour to discover and to possess. We shall gain so much and no more of the same spiritual substance as we put the same kind of energy in motion. In order that we may unravel the complexities of our day, a spirit similar to his spirit must become ours. When such a spirit ceases to exist, Christianity will become merely a [p.179] name; its power will have disappeared, and men can delude themselves into believing that they possess it when in fact they are the possessors ...
— An Interpretation of Rudolf Eucken's Philosophy • W. Tudor Jones
... of those shots that turned the scale. It was unlikely he would again become entangled with a man bearing a tongue and the other things—he had given up in despair the attempt to unravel the mystery of the tongue; it completely baffled him—but it was by no means unlikely that if he spent another night in the gallery looking on the hall he might not again become a target for Lord Emsworth's irresponsible firearm. Nothing, in ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... million things lie outside in the darkness beyond this lit inn of ours, unthought-of possibilities, overlooked considerations, surprises, riddles, incommensurables, a whole monstrous intricate universe of consequences that I have to do my best to unravel. I attempt impossible recapitulations and mingle the weird quality of dream stuff with ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... it is true, a woman with a wounded heart to nurse, an aching misery to bear; but she left her with a sanity of purpose which can take up the tangled threads and, however blinded be the eyes with weeping, with fingers feeling their way, can unravel the knotted mass that lies ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... heard old Hoff speak of something that he called the "wonder-worker." As soon as Carter returned with the other advertisements that had been appearing he felt positive that he would be able to unravel the cipher. Two words he was sure of—"passports" and "wonder-working." One footprint does not lead anywhere, but two do, and given three footprints, ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... traitor," replied Beecot, darkly, "and, knowing he has lost your confidence, he will certainly try and give Maud Krill possession of the money. No, I'll speak to Hurd, who is my friend and yours. He is clever and will be able to unravel this tangle." ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... I was a merchant on my own account and could afford to go to India on a voyage of discovery—yes, as much a voyage of discovery as that of Vasco de Gama or of Drake—that I got from the Madras agent the clue which enabled me, at the cost of infinite patience and infinite labour, to unravel the mystery of my birth. There is no need to enter now upon the details of that story. I have overwhelming documentary evidence—a cloud of witnesses—to convince the most sceptical as to who and what I am. The documents are ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... but perhaps that would not have been the case in a supposedly rigidly parabolical trajectory— a new problem which tormented Barbicane's brain, imprisoned as he was in a circle of unknowns which he could not unravel. ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... with pride. "Nothing much escapes me," she boasted. "And I think it was a good thing we didn't tell her just who we were. But let's not let a soul know about our finding this place until we unravel ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... required by the law. At this stage, however, Mr. Orr, who entered the council some time after the rupture, produced his appointment, which, unlike certain others, was expressed in the legal form. Thus again all the previous proceedings were quashed; and the governor, unable to unravel the difficulty, dismissed the council, to await instructions from Downing-street, or a warrant for the nominees under the sign-manual of the Queen (July, 1847). Thus during 1847 there was no legislature sitting, but at length the Gazette announced that ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... One was to cut the cable, and support one end in the water by a buoy until the rest could be unraveled. The other was to unravel the cable ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... possession of his lodging, there was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have gone with us at that time of the year very well, but he was in the full novelty of his new position and was making most energetic attempts to unravel the mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently we went without him, and my darling was delighted to praise ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... found leisure to revisit the place where he had seen the mysterious figure of the cliffs. He had thought often of her, and had so longed to return to that part of the coast that only a strict sense of duty had prevented him. Now that he was free to unravel the mystery if he could, he was as excited as a boy off ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... delivered her from the men in black, who wished to carry her off, and that she had promised him nothing. He considered himself an outraged, betrayed, and ridiculed lover. Blood and anger mounted to his face; he was resolved to unravel the mystery. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... seclusions the Vin de Bourgogne had its allotted hour, and there were appropriate moments for the Cotes du Rhone. With him Sauterne was to Medoc what Catullus was to Homer. He would sport with a syllogism in sipping St. Peray, but unravel an argument over Clos de Vougeot, and upset a theory in a torrent of Chambertin. Well had it been if the same quick sense of propriety had attended him in the peddling propensity to which I have formerly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... you beyond my power Ever to quite unravel. But for me All things are clear; and to my blinded sight Morning has come—in this thing, as in all The ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... situations succeed one another naturally, and in great number; if their being well linked together conducts them with rapidity, from the first situation to the last, which must clearly and strikingly unravel the whole; the choice is complete, and the theatrical ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... man bold enough to wish to go out and unravel the mystery of the west now walked in chains from a Spanish ship to a Spanish prison! It was monstrous ingratitude, all declared; and they did not hesitate to show their sympathy. The story of his disgrace ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... Surgeons Museum; and the other was in a Hindoo described by Pestonji. Both occurred in young women, and in both it came on after washing the hair in warm water, one in a few minutes, and the other in a few hours. The hair was drawn up into a hard tangled lump, impossible to unravel, limited to the right side in Le Page's patient, who had very long hair, and in Pestonji's case to the back of the head, where on each side was an elongated mass, very hard and firm, like a rope and about the size of the fist. There ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... their number and lamentable inexperience, of taking the sole lead in military affairs. Is there not some one either amongst them or in the background, who knows how to think, direct, and act? Is it Bergeret? Is it Cluseret? The future perhaps will unravel the mystery. In the meantime, and in spite of the reverses to which the Federals have had to submit during these last days, the whole of Paris unites in unanimous surprise at the extreme regularity with which the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... Owl's dark retreats Showed sages the sweets Of brooding, to spin, or unravel Fine webs in one's brain, Philosophical—vain; The Swallows,—the pleasures of ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... enough to expect, of course, that Duncan might nurse some slight curiosity as to his family and its welfare. This will be his third day back, and he has neither put in an appearance nor sent a word. He's busy, of course, with that tangle to unravel—but where there's a will there's usually a way. And hope dies hard. Yet day by day I find less bitterness in my heart. Those earlier hot tides of resentment have been succeeded, not by tranquillity or even indifference, but by a colder ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the next-door building, that the distracted Jew was no longer visible. It seemed plain that the person or the event he had awaited with such obvious nervousness had arrived and passed; one more of the problems, anxieties or crises that join and unravel moment by moment in the human ant-hill of London, had perhaps closed for good or ill within the past half-hour; perhaps it had ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... hope to unravel the lines of his ancestry. In all the wonderfully mixed and varied dog-tribe I never saw any creature very much like him, though in some of his sly, soft, gliding motions and gestures he brought the fox ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... not say the same of our Caucasian empire. To our race the present belongs,—to England, France, Germany, America,—to us. Will you see what we have done, and, perhaps, bring home, after long wanderings, a message for your country which may help to unravel the tangled ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... unfriended, With sophistry blended, Deep science in Chaos had slept; Its limits were fettered, Its voters unlettered, Its students in movements but crept. Till, despite of great foes, Great WALSH first arose, And with logical might did unravel Those mazes of knowledge, Ne'er known in a college, Though sought for with unceasing travail. With cheers we now hail him, May success never fail him, In Polar Geometrical mining; Till his foes be as tamed As his works are ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... seethes, hisses, in raging rout, As when water wrestles with fire, Till to heaven the yeasty tongues they spout; And flood upon flood keeps mounting higher: It will never its endless coil unravel, As the sea with another ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... unravel itself, and the knot in his head began to loosen, but he did not quite like to reflect that he owed his relief to Tom, and that Tom had seen his agitation. Accordingly, when a proof of the poster was brought, he was the master, most particularly the master, and ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... could say that Maximilian had so much as listened. Such tangles had long since become irksome, though he never ceased plunging into the mesh. To unravel details, and incidentally confuse them more, was a notorious mania with the poet-prince. But his thoughts now were all for a girl who had fainted. Murguia he would leave to a court martial. If guilty, the medal should be torn from his ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Hadden, and once or twice he was shaken by so sharp a pang of remorse at the thought of his share in this tragedy, that he cast about in his mind seeking a means to unravel the web of death which he himself had woven. But ever that evil voice was whispering at his ear. It reminded him that he, the white Inkoos, had been refused by this dusky beauty, and that if he found a way to save him, within some ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... can bring it back? Zeus struck dead the Healer who found how to restore life. I would give my misgiving relief in pouring out words of warning: but I know that fate is certain and can never be escaped; so I am plunged in gloom, with little hope ever to unravel my soul that burns ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... impossible, without many words,—far more than Mr. Jowett's sentences commonly deserve.—Sometimes he strings together several heads of thought; of which enumeration the kindest thing which can be said is that it betrays an utter want of intellectual perspective. To unravel even a part of this tangled web so as to expose its argumentative worthlessness, soon fills a page.... But there is another kind of fallacy which the same gentleman wields with immense effect, and in the use of which he ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... in giving such relations of Japheth and Shem in their own places. Would Noah, who was so much disgusted at his son Ham as to curse him, permit the children of his other sons, whom he blessed, to have any communication with his children? Bishop Cumberland, in the last century, took some pains to unravel this, and concluded that the marginal translation in our bibles is the right one—that in the text being, "Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh", &c.; that in the margin, "And he [Nimrod] went ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... a thumb with a bone felon. Take yore time, son. Don't go off half-cocked." The little Captain rose and put his hand on the shoulder of the boy. "I reckon things have got in a sort of kink for you. Give 'em time to unravel, Tex." ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... a word passed her lips. She began again to try and unravel the meaning of his letter. Why had he gone in search of them to the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... eloquent. He knew, he said, that the story he had to relate would appear almost incredible, but a soldier, a diplomat, a master of strategy, such as the personage to whom he now addressed himself, would understand—none better—how to unravel the tangled web, and follow up the clue to its ending in a den of secret, black, and midnight conspiracy. A blob of foam appeared upon his under-lip. He waved his hands, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... new-born litter of thirty head: white she couches on the ground, and the brood about her teats is white. By this token in thirty revolving years shall Ascanius found a city, Alba of bright name. My prophecy is sure. Now hearken, and I will briefly instruct thee how thou mayest unravel and overcome thy present task. An Arcadian people sprung of Pallas, following in their king Evander's company beneath his banners, have chosen a place in these coasts, and set a city on the hills, called Pallanteum after Pallas their forefather. These wage perpetual ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... Having politely assisted his egress, he passed onward with a graceful gesture of acknowledgment. He had taken but a few steps, when the thought occurred to me that he must have come from within the perplexing structure by some secret door, and that he could unravel its mystery. I was impelled to follow him, and proceeded hastily to do so, when the indelicacy of my intrusion on one evidently connected with the grief which the monument was designed to commemorate, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... very active-minded girl. It was not her way to sit wondering and puzzling over anything she could not understand. She had a knack of setting herself to unravel problems which required explanation in the most common-sense way. After giving her uncle time to leave the house—intuition told her that he would do so—she rose and rang the bell. Then she moved to the window while she waited for an answer to her ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... enigmatic smile. "And I can't help having a sneaking admiration for the person who's engineering the whole thing. How he must laugh at the state of the old Yard, with never a clue to settle down upon, never a thread to pick up and unravel! All of which is unbusinesslike of me, I've no doubt. But, cheer up, man, I've a piece of news which ought to help matters on a bit. Just came from ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... "then it is of no use troubling you further. I have got my book back; but I confess that this affords me but small gratification in comparison to that which I should feel if I could unravel ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... woods. The trail was not a good one; but the snow among the trees was far from being the hindrance it was in the open; and though their progress was slow, on the whole it was steady. Except for forced halts to unravel the harness when it caught in the bushes, they did not stop for two hours, but pressed on until they reached an open space in the woods, which they crossed in a smother of blinding snow. On the other side of this break they came to a fresh ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... safe, and then he is appeased by one of the ordinary divine interpositions. This device has been so used and abused by Euripides, that in nine out of his eighteen tragedies, a divinity descends to unravel the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... and I looked forward to the fresh enterprise of new rivers and lower latitudes, that should unravel the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... made out very distinctly, as it runs across them longitudinally. Now cut oesophagus just in front of stomach, and cut the rectum, cut through the mesentery supporting the intestine, and remove and unravel alimentary canal; cut open, wash out, and examine caecum and stomach. Bleeding to a considerable extent is inevitable, chiefly from the portal vein. The liver had better remain if the same rabbit is to serve ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... process of deciphering the papyri, which is very ingenious. The manuscript (which is like a piece of charcoal) is suspended by light strings in a sort of frame; gum and goldbeater's skin are applied to it as it is unrolled, and, by extreme delicacy of touch, they contrive to unravel without destroying a great deal of it, but probably they have been discouraged by the small reward which has attended their exertions; for there are several black-looking rolls which have never yet been ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... title Mr. Hastings had to seize upon the property of the Begums, except upon his hypothesis of the rebellion. He was asked if he knew any other. He answered, No. It consequently appears that Mr. Hastings, though he had before him his doctors of all laws, who could unravel for him all the enigmas of all the laws in the world, and who had himself shone upon questions of Mahometan law, in the case of the Nuddea Begum, did not dare to put this case to Sir Elijah Impey, and ask what was his opinion concerning the rights of these people. He was tender, I suppose, of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... dare not take upon me, to commend the Fabric of it; because it is altogether so full of Art, that I must unravel every Scene in it, to commend it as I ought. And this excellent contrivance is still the more to be admired; because 'tis [a] Comedy where the persons are only of common rank; and their business, private; not elevated ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... one of Blanche's silks over the back of a chair, and so often looking up to revel in the contemplation of Harry's face, that her skein was in a wild tangle, which she studiously concealed lest the sight should compel Richard to come and unravel it with ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of a respectable boarding-house, No. 5 had been used as the headquarters of the gang, and the operations had been so widespread, so all-embracing in the field of crime, that after the raid many mysteries which the police had failed to unravel were credited to Randall. Many of these he could have had nothing to do with, but he had quite enough to answer for. He seems to have exercised a kind of terrorism over his subordinates, or he would ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... to the naked eye through the ports of the supply-ship the enemy rockets had become visible. They were a thin skein of threads of white vapor which seemed to unravel in nothingness. The vapor curled and expanded preposterously. It could just be seen to be jetting into existence from four separate points, two a little ahead of the others. They came out from Earth at a rate which ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... surrender to the German, but it annoyed him exceedingly that the German should have any similar feelings about surrendering to him. Once more he bent his persuasive powers and indifferent German to the task of over-persuading the sergeant, and in return had to wait and slowly unravel some meaning from the odd words he could catch here and there in the ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... cry either, my little Delphine. Look up and let me kiss away the tears. There! I shall find my wits and unravel this ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... was good and never at night, for he maintained that the coloring required the best of light. Before this odd, homely, wooden machine, a combination of unpainted rods and cords, he would sit, cross-legged or on a bench at times, and pound and pick and tie and unravel—a most wearisome-looking ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... card playing and theatre-going rank side by side with lying, stealing and idolatry. As I sat there I tried to reconcile my opinion of these worldly pleasures with the conduct of my new friends. The tangle is too complicated to unravel at once. I could feel blushes of shame staining my cheeks as the game progressed. What would Aunt Maria say, what would daddy say, what would even tolerant Mother Bab say, if they knew I sat passively by and watched a game of cards? After a little while ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... water-course, and shaded by some lime trees, in which the birds paid her homage morning and evening.... Such a place and such solitude refreshed the more than human Rosemund, and in such peace she was able to unravel ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... to unravel the mystery that seems to hang about the child, although the Bishop assured us we were quite right in consenting to assume the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... and painfully unravel their tattered socks for wool. They tie the bits together, often two or three inches in length, and knit new feet in old socks, or—when they secure enough—new socks. For the Germans hold the wool ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... burning, yet No rest, no pause of conflict. Swede and German, Papist and Lutheran! neither will give way To the other, every hand's against the other. Each one is party and no one a judge. Where shall this end? Where's he that will unravel This tangle, ever tangling more and more; It must be cut asunder; I feel that I am the man of destiny, And trust, with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... few people who have a right not to believe in Christianity. If the great mass of people only knew how strong is the net woven by the theologians, how difficult it is to break the threads of it, how much erudition has been spent upon it, and what a power of criticism is required to unravel it all.... I have noticed that some men of talent who have set themselves too late in life the task have been taken in the toils and have not been able to ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... no hint. She was still absorbing, sifting and digesting the welter of impressions. She had been overpowered, smothered by the innovation; and she now found her thoughts a tangled jumble, which she strove incessantly to unravel and classify according to their content of reality, as judged ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... invaders were very far from doing so. The complicated state of foreign politics made it imperative that there should be no friction between the Powers. Yet here a great number of them were in perhaps as embarrassing a position as ever diplomatists were called upon to unravel. When nine dogs are assembled round one bone, it is rarely on the bone alone that teeth-marks are found at the ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... all may see, Were by a skilful artist wrought; But, Time! the secret rests with thee, Which to unravel ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... removed, but as far as she is concerned, the truth must still be concealed for Clemency's sake. It must not be known that that dead man was her father, and the very instant we let go one thread of the mystery the whole fabric will unravel. Poor Clara can never be acknowledged openly as my wife, the best and most patient wife a man ever had, and under a heavier sentence of death this moment than the utmost ingenuity of man could contrive." Gordon groaned, and let his ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... and were now universally abolished. The ridiculous quibble was also used that, in the preachings other religious exercises were not included, whereas it was notorious that they had never been separated. It is, however, a gratuitous task, to unravel the deceptions of tyranny when it hardly deigns to disguise itself. The dissimulations which have resisted the influence of centuries are more worthy of serious investigation, and of these the epoch offers ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was for this," I said to myself—"it was to hear such propositions as this that I came to Sicily! That Polizzi is simply a scoundrel, and his son another; and they made a plan together to ruin me." But what was their scheme? I could not unravel it. Meanwhile, it may be imagined how discouraged and ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... strove to do; but I see now that I prepared the way, and that when thou didst go by chance to her, she was ready for thee. But if this is all she knows, it goes not far. Still it may help—it may help. In a tangled web, no one may say which will be the thread which patiently followed may unravel ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... told me he thought his men could unravel that message and that I should wait a while," panted Roy, breathless from running up the stairs. "And they did get it. It's what they call a transposition cipher. ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... In particular, that potent instrument called the infinitesimal calculus, which Newton had invented for the investigation of nature, had become so far perfected that Laplace, when he attempted to unravel the movements of the heavenly bodies, found himself provided with a calculus far more efficient than that which had been available to Newton. The purely geometrical methods which Newton employed, though they are admirably adapted for ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... I could not yet unravel and did not care to learn, had become absolutely livid with rage now, and the others, who were all Catholics, shared his fury. They said that here converts had been tortured to death—killed by being slit into small pieces and then burned. Everybody knew it. With spasmodic gestures ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... a key which would unravel this tragic tangle? He leant out of his taxi-cab and redirected the driver. It happened that the cab drove up to the door of the Great Midland Hotel as ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... this might have happened under a Parliamentary government. But, then, many members of Parliament, the entire Opposition in Parliament, would have been active to unravel the matter. All the principles of finance would have been worked and propounded. The light would have come from above, not from below—it would have come from Parliament to the nation instead of from the nation to Parliament But exactly ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... a coil to unravel! Julius's father—the Spanish marquis that was—supposed to be dead, but yet wandering in singular fashion about the London streets, clearly not desiring, much less courting, opportunities of being recognised; Julius not caring to speak of his father, apparently ignoring his continued ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... truthful man, and he told himself the case interested him. When, later, he was accosted by an old college-chum, George Clifton, who proceeded to give him the newest confidential slander at the lake, it was but natural he should try to unravel this mystery. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... to place himself by the side of Newton, in virtue of his discovery of this new law of attraction. If any comparison can be made, we think—inasmuch as to unravel the problem of humanity is a greater task than to elucidate the movements of the planets—that Fourier was warranted in placing himself infinitely above Newton. Unfortunately, there is this difference between the two, that Newton's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... strengthening balm to her irresolute will; her soul inhaled the profound peace of these leafy retreats. By the time she had reached the inmost shade of the forest her mind had become calmer, and better able to unravel the confusion of thoughts that surged like troubled waters through her brain. The dominant idea was, that her self-respect had been wounded; the shock to her maidenly modesty, and the shame attendant upon the fact, affected her physically, as if ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... were so easily soaked through in the snow. But I remembered the way in which the Lapps who tended our reindeer carried grass with them, to use in their boots in place of dry socks. As soon as I could sit down I began to unravel the ropes from the dogs' harnesses, and although by this time my fingers were more or less frozen, I managed to stuff ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... of affairs was duly reported to the captain, who had become very impatient at the long delay. The masters were then sent aloft to help the midshipmen unravel the snarl, but they succeeded no better. It was evident enough to all the officers that this confusion could not have been created without an intention to do it. An accident might have happened on the main or the mizzen-mast, but not on every yard ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... of heart, the melancholy that their music brings us is a mystery which none on this earth may ever unravel. ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... on my part. This is the first spring in years we have resided here. It is really our summer home. I am not more than normally timorous. Some one we do not know enters the house at will. How or why I can't unravel. Nothing has ever disappeared, either money, jewels, or silver, though I have laid many traps. There is the huge fireplace in the library, and my room is above. I have heard a tapping, like some one hammering ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... his "Manuel d'Architecture Musulmane," after attempting to unravel the influences which went to the making of the mosque of Kairouan, the walls of Marrakech, the Medersas of Fez—influences that lead him back to Chaldaean branch-huts, to the walls of Babylon and the embroideries ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... would unravel the mysteries involved in present religious faiths, we should begin not by attempting to analyze or explain any existing system or systems of belief and worship. Such a course is likely to end not only in confusion and in a subsequent denial of the ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... down the anger that inflames me, and hear all you have to say about your mission. I must unravel this confusion before I see my wife. Collect your senses, think well over what you say, and answer each question ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate, And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road; But not the Master-knot ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... important commercial city as early as the fourth century, and had a regular intercourse with Asia. The name of Valaam does not come from Balaam, as one might suppose, but seems to be derived from the Finnish varamo, which signifies "herring-ground." The more I attempted to unravel the history of the island, the more it became involved in obscurity, and this fact, I must confess, only heightened my interest in it. I found myself ready to accept the tradition of Andrew's visit, and I accepted without a doubt the grave of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... disproportionately greater, when we extend our view over vast periods of time and undertake to determine the mutual relationships of classes and types. If the evidence were complete and available, we should hardly be able to unravel its infinite complexity, or to find a clue through the mazes of the labyrinth. "Our ideas of the course of descent must of necessity be diagrammatic." (D.H. Scott, "Studies in Fossil Botany", page 524. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... task to attempt to unravel all the fine-spun intrigues, by which the marquis of Villena contrived to defeat every attempt at an ultimate accommodation between the parties, until he was very generally execrated as the real source of the disturbances in the kingdom. In the mean while, the singular ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... similarity of name or error in number (as may occur in large cities), permit a perplexed guest, perhaps a stranger, to drift across the wrong threshold, let it be a hospitable one. The hostess, though she may not be able to unravel the mystery, should be ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... opportunity for them to display their attainments, to show their clients what brilliant lawyers they have retained; to let the judge know how well they have understood the case; to move and sway the jury to their side; to unravel the mysteries and by the power of oratory to bring justice where she belongs. When his lawyer is talking, the client watches him with admiration, but while the opposing lawyer speaks the client can hardly conceal his contempt. He feels that his case is secure and he does not understand how ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... patriotic one. Take care, Gentlemen Members of Congress! look to your words and your Acts honestly and wisely in future! don't palter with Liberty again! it is not well that soldiers should get into the habit of thinking they are always to unravel the snarls and cut the knots twisted and tied by clumsy or crafty fingers. The traitor States already need the main de fer,—yes, and without the gant de velours. Let us beware, and keep ourselves worthy of the boon of self-government, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... that a woman of her ordinary gentleness could be here to-night, faced even by so great exposure, yet be so solicitous for him as she had been and then at the same time be plotting against him. I gave it up, determining to let Kennedy unravel it in ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... various distinguished scientists who undertook to unravel the mystery, either much study had made them blind, or the lights were unpropitious; for not one of them ever attained to a vision of the violet gleam. They went away ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... possession and the other in Barker's, brought about the discharge of the prisoner from custody; and the "Frewenton Atrocity" became one of many horrible murders, the mystery of which time alone, if anything, could unravel. ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... as simple an affair to unravel as that; for I can tell you one of the things, at least, which was apparently occupying her thoughts at the time, yet I can't quite see why or how it could have much to do with you. You remember, perhaps, that you came while we were at luncheon ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... be able to prove; but what this will amount to, he knows not. And next, that he hath taken money for several bargains that have been made with the Crown; and did instance one that is already complained of: but there are so many more involved in it, that, should they unravel things of this sort, every body almost will be more or less concerned. But these are the two great points which he thinks they will insist on, and prove against him. Thence I to the Chapel, and there heard the sermon and a pretty good ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... satisfactory as those which the other man had given. When the two were placed face to face, Arnold du Tilh vehemently denounced the last arrival as an impostor in the pay of Peter Guerre, and expressed himself content to be hanged if he did not yet unravel the whole mystery. Nor did he confine himself to vituperation, but cross-questioned Martin as to private family circumstances, and only received hesitating and imperfect answers to his questions. The commissioners having directed Arnold to withdraw, put several questions to Martin that were ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... at these challenges, we must never give in to the belief that America is in decline, or that our culture is doomed to unravel. The American people know better than that. We have proven the pessimists wrong before — and we will do ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... follows Goethe's tragedy very closely, and is confined to the first part. It may be briefly told. Faust, an aged German student, satiated with human knowledge and despairing of his ability to unravel the secrets of nature, summons the evil spirit Mephistopheles to his assistance, and contracts to give him his soul in exchange for a restoration to youth. Mephistopheles effects the transformation, and reveals to him the vision of Marguerite, a beautiful village maiden, with whom ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... view of the case has been proved to be all wrong, I admit—but, as things are now, my advice may be worth having for all that. I tell you plainly, we shall be wasting our time, and cudgelling our brains to no purpose, if we attempt to try back, and unravel this frightful complication from the beginning. Let us close our minds resolutely to all that happened last year at Lady Verinder's country house; and let us look to what we CAN discover in the future, instead of to what we can NOT ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... mean, Hereward, the last of the Saxon defenders of his land against William the Norman.[42] The analysis of the Hereward legend affords a good example of the process by which tradition is preserved by historical fact, and in its turn helps to unravel the real history which lies at the source. Instead, therefore, of attempting to travel over the voluminous literature which is the outcome of the King Arthur story, I will use for the same purpose the shorter story of ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... of which it ever reaps the harvest, building its own fate with tireless fingers, and finding nowhere in the measureless time and space around it any that can lift for it one weight it has created, one burden it has gathered, unravel for it one tangle it has twisted, close for it ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... Oliver, to think, or rather to unravel my own entangled thoughts. Do not suffer me to continue in a state of delusion, if thou perceivest it to be such. Be explicit; tell me if thou dost but so much as forebode: for at moments I myself despond; though ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... within himself,—she had enticed him on in a thousand ways,—most especially by the amazing "grip" she had of scientific problems in which he was interested and which puzzled him, but which she seemed to unravel as easily as she might unravel a skein of wool. Her clear brightness of brain and logical precision of argument first surprised him into unqualified admiration, calling to his mind the assertion of a renowned physiologist that "From the beginning woman ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... attentively noted when the heart begins to flag, to move more slowly, and, as it were, to die: the movements then become slower and rarer, the pauses longer, by which it is made much more easy to perceive and unravel what the motions really are, and how they are performed. In the pause, as in death, the heart is soft, flaccid, exhausted, lying, as it were, ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... convulse the heavens and to subvert the earth. But at an unforeseen moment resounded in the air the gentle rapping of a 'wooden fish' bell. A voice recited the sentence: "Ave! Buddha able to unravel retribution and dispel grievances! Should any human being lie in sickness, and his family be solicitous on his account; or should any one have met with evil spirits and come across any baleful evils, we have the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... much distressed; he could not exactly comprehend the meaning of this dumb show; and yet felt that some dire mystery was connected with these phantoms, which he was called upon to unravel. After breakfast he wandered out, and lost in the maze of thought, sauntered, ere he was aware of it, into the churchyard. Shortly afterwards the church-door was opened by the sexton, who kept his pickaxe and mattock in a corner of the belfry, and Frantz remembering that as yet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... in the glittering spring sunshine, this big silent man and I, there came upon me a swift, poignant impulse, the keener perhaps because of the loneliness of my days, to implore him to unravel all the things which lay between us. I wanted the story of that night, of my concern in it, stripped bare. Already my lips were opened, when round the corner of the rough lane by which Braster Grange was approached on this side came a doctor's gig. Ray shaded his ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mankind in bloody battle-fields; dark of counsel, and terrible of execution; him to whom in after years the Empress Sophia sent word that he was more fit to spin among maids than to command armies, and he answered, that he would spin her such a thread as she could not unravel; and kept his word (as legends say) by inviting ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... "life might have brought her a heavier cross than marrying a handsome millionaire, even though considerably her senior. I'm probably a conceited fool for thinking it any very great burden at all. But how, then, can I account—? Well, well, time alone can unravel this snarl. One thing is certain: she will do nothing that she does not believe right; and after what Mrs. Yocomb said I would not dare to wish her ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... useful purpose can be gained by discussing my brother's death," Austin interposed, turning to him. "It is a very painful subject, and does no good. The police are endeavouring to unravel the mystery—let us ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the suggestion that eight bullets could have hit the bell in succession without anybody hearing a sound was treated with ridicule. I believe the bell was subsequently exorcised with holy water. I was afraid to remain with the regiment with my air-gun after this, lest some one should discover it and unravel the mystery; besides, I felt a sort of traitor to the brave friends who had so generously offered me their hospitality; so I invented urgent private affairs which demanded my immediate return to Naples, and on the morning of my departure found myself embraced by all the officers of the regiment ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... They will write up and down and across lots and on the bias until the whole thing is so hopelessly mixed and tangled up that if the mystery of a woman's ways, or the fate of Charlie Ross were solved upon one of these cards all the "experts" in the world could not unravel it. A penny saved may be as good as a penny earned, and I have no objections to your saving it in a legitimate way, but when it comes to saving it at the expense of my time, patience, and eye-sight, I object most decidedly. ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... through the book is so disjointedly arranged, mixed up with doctrinal parts, and repeated, that it is not easy to unravel it. The following summary of it is contained in a letter to Colonel John Wentworth of Chicago, signed by Joseph Smith, Jr., which was printed in Wentworth's Chicago newspaper and also in the Mormon Times and Seasons of March ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn |
