"Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Here's a ridiculous riddle for you: How many o's are there in Woolloomooloo? Two for the W, two for the m, Four for the l's, and that's plenty ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... riddle I remember is the one about: 'What goes around the house, and just makes one track?' I believe they said it was a wheelbarrow. Mighty few people in that settlement believed in such things as charms. They were too intelligent ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... he to find the answer to the riddle? He thought for a long time by himself, and then asked every one he met what it was that women loved best. But nowhere could he discover two people who agreed in saying the same thing. Some told him the answer ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... he had not all the clews to guide him which they had received, and, moreover, rather astonished that the former had not come to greet him, according to her usual custom, when he entered the house after an absence of some hours, had his tale to tell and his riddle to solve. ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... days' debate, ministers were defeated (June 11) by the narrow figure of thirteen in a House of six hundred and thirty-seven. Mr. Gladstone did not speak, but he answered the riddle that had for long so much harassed the wirepullers, by going into the lobby with Disraeli and his flock. The general sense of the majority was probably best expressed by Mr. Bright. Since the fall of the government of Sir Robert Peel, he said, there had ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... along, evidently obsessed by a train of thought which I was glad to have provoked. From time to time, he uttered a sentence which showed me the thread of his reflections; and I was able to see that the riddle remained as much a mystery to ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... dear fellow, it's a riddle; and, as I said before, I'm not good at guessing enigmas. There, my boy; go home and sleep upon this; and come back to me to-morrow morning, and tell me to throw this stupid letter in the fire—that's the wisest thing you can do. ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... a riddle that a child might read. Unless the maidens are given up—not to harm, but to be taken to our country up there—unless they are given up the spears of my braves will drink the blood of their kinsfolk, and my horses shall trample their bodies ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... not Oedipus)—Ver. 194. Alluding to the circumstance of Oedipus alone being able to solve the riddle ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... thought the same, and you have sent some to seek it, have you not, being so good an archer. For instance, that was a long shaft you shot before Crecy fray at the filthy fool who mocked your English host. Doubtless now he knows the answer to your riddle." ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... riddle of the Sphinx, he solved it not—only delighted with pure pleasure of poetry and of subtle thought as he led one along the pathways of his Enchanted Garden, where I shall always love ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... I wish it was daylight and I could get a good aim at one of them. I say, they'll riddle ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... And the riddle did not long remain unanswered. Upon that seat, as I swept up alongside and laid a sunburnt hand upon its edge, was a girl, and another look told ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... an analysis of things conducted on the presumption that scientific knowledge is the key to unlock the mystery and resolve the riddle of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... murmured the Judge blandly. "Good news travels almost ez fast sometimes ez whut bad news does—don't it, now? Well, son, I give up the riddle. Tell me jest whut our elderly friend did do with the first installment of ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... out the riddle yet? Hath she a fitting phrase selected? But time flies and she doth forget They long at home have her expected— Whither two neighbouring dames have walked And a long time about her talked. "What can be done? She ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... all that followed down to the words [Greek: kai meketi hamartane] in ch. viii. 11: after which he found himself instructed to 'recommence' ([Greek: arxai]). Again I ask (and this time does not the riddle admit of only one solution?),—When and how does the reader suppose that the narrative of 'the woman taken in adultery' first found its way into the middle of the lesson for Pentecost? I pause for an answer: I shall perforce be told that it never 'found its way' into the ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... of a loss of Spiritual vision, and is the final effort on the part of scientists to explain the riddle of human existence in accordance with a cleverly thought out, but most amazingly deficient, ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... confused and mysterious riddle to his childish recollection,—what strange gulf he fell into that day, and how the kitchen sink and those great, grabbing arms came to be at the end ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Happiness when we left the scroll and joined Him. Happiness here, and happiness there with Him. The quest for Eternal Happiness, which was always His Own Divine Thought. Why, then, did He create ugliness and evil? Why write those upon the scroll? Ah, this perhaps is the Eternal Riddle! But, in 2930, they told me that there could be no beauty without ugliness with which to compare it; no truth without a lie; no consciousness of happiness without unhappiness to make ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... cold, with the assurance that it can't last. Our misfortune this time has been that it has lasted unusually long. How the Italians manage without fires I cannot make out. So chilly as they are, too, it's a riddle. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... little Tiny, Let's hear what you have to tell Learned of the years you've scampered Over the hill and dell— What! Only a bark for answer? Now, Tiny, that isn't the thing Will help unravel the riddle ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... he was a holy terror and an unsolvable riddle. They thought him possessed of an evil spirit. He at one time took up his residence among them and commenced to trade. Shortly after he had established himself and gathered in a stock of goods, he became involved in a dispute ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... that professed moralists and philosophers did much to help me out of the dilemma; but the riddle which history presented I found solved in the pages of Shakspeare. There the crooked appeared straight; the inaccessible, easy; the incomprehensible, plain. All I sought, I found there; his characters combine ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... times over; exactly as you said it to him. He knew that was how you got the upper hand of me, according to your memory, but not mine; and he tried to do it the very same way; but the Lord makes a lot of change in thirty years of time. Mary quite turned her nose up at any such riddle, and he pulled his spotted handkerchief out of that new hat of his, and the fagot never saw fit to heed even the color of his poor red cheeks. Stephen, you would have marched off for a week if I had behaved to ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... mystery for hundreds of years. I can conceive, even, that this might be of importance in settling the heirships of estates; but which now, only the two insulated parts of the story being known, remain a riddle, although the solution of it is actually in the world, if only these two parts could be united across the sea, like the wires of an ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... This being done (number three on the fingers), matters might still be well. So much his electric French and gesticulations plainly asserted. Beppo strained all his attention for names, in despair at the riddle of the signs. Names were pillars of light in the dark unintelligible waste. The signora put a question. It was replied to with the name of the Maestro Rocco Ricci. Following that, the Signor Antonio accompanied his voluble delivery with pantomimic action which seemed to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... enigma, conundrum, intricacy, maze, crux, riddle, rebus, poser; confusion, quandary, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... those shuttered receptacles and showed him on the face of each occupant that strange ironic smile with which the dead husk of man seems often to betray the full knowledge now possessed by the spirit which has fled. That riddle of existence, of which through the ages philosophers and kings had sought the key, was now an open book to all those who lay here in the still majesty of death. Yes, they could well afford to smile—to smile at the littleness which denied to their tenements of flesh the smallest symbol of belief ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... her baby was grown too big for her slight arms, even then I was light-hearted. Without attempting to follow her, I sauntered homeward humming a snatch of song with a great deal of fal-de-lal-de-riddle-o in it, for I can never remember words. I saw her enter another shop, baby linen shop or some nonsense of that sort, so it was plain for what she had popped her watch; but what cared I? I continued to sing most beautifully. I lunged gayly with ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... nag - And the fog blows off, and the key is found - And the faulty scent is picked out by the hound - And the fact turns up like a worm from the ground - And the matter gets wind to waft it about; And a hint goes abroad, and the murder is out - And a riddle is guessed—and the puzzle is known - So the Truth was sniffed, and the Trumpet ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... books, riddle books, almanacs, craftsmen's proverbs, fabulous travels, prophecies, legends, romances and the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... known to the mayor of Morganton the cause and the purpose of my mission in North Carolina. I assured him that my chief had given me full power, and would render me every assistance, financial and otherwise, to solve the riddle and relieve the neighborhood of its anxiety ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... joke, though a little timely laughter is often the best weapon to meet trouble with, sometimes having an effect like that of a gay sunshade suddenly opened in the face of an angry bull. Unable to solve the riddle, I retired to my room to sleep my last ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... away with Pablo at her heels, Bill Conway unburdened himself of a slightly ribald little chanson entitled: "What Makes the Wild Cat Wild?" In the constant repetition of this query it appeared that the old Californian sought the answer to a riddle not even remotely connected with the ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... Edinburgh; while photographs of the plot-letters were compared with Logan's authentic letters at Hatfield, by Mr. Gunton, to whose acuteness and energy I owe the greatest gratitude. The results of the comparison settle the riddle of ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... again before the Senate, Mr. Clark renewed his amendment declaring that John P. Stockton was not elected a senator from New Jersey, on which the yeas were 22 and the nays 21. As thus amended the resolution passed by 23 yeas to 20 nays. Mr. Riddle of Delaware voted with the majority for the purpose of moving a reconsideration on a succeeding day—a privilege from which he was excluded by the action of Mr. Clark of New Hampshire, who made the motion at once ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... that night in the channel, that you were going to save my life some day. Well, I don't suppose, lad, I shall ever get quits with you, but if there is a chance you can count upon me. You come to me any night and say I am going to escape, Jacques, and I will help you to do it, even if they riddle me ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... looked up at him in credulous surprise. But he was too ill and weak to ask the meaning of this riddle. Montague Nevitt! What on earth could Waring mean by that? How on earth could Montague Nevitt have influenced and directed him in assaulting and murdering ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... The riddle was perhaps more easily solvable by an inveterate novelist than by the average member of the community. It was of a kind which Langholm had ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... Hoyday, a riddle! neither good nor bad! What need'st thou run so many miles about, When thou mayest tell thy tale the nearest ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... so Chesterton tells us in the 'Riddle of the Ivy,' he happened to be leaving Battersea, and being asked where he was going, calmly replied to 'Battersea.' Which is really to say that we find our way to Brixton more eagerly by way of Singapore than by way of Kennington. In a few words, it is what we mean when we say, as ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... remain a riddle, one supposes," said the Minor Poet. "Which is the real ego—I, the author of 'The Simple Life,' fourteenth edition, three ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... "Masulipatam." John Thorndyke looked at it in bewilderment; that it was connected with the secret he felt certain, but alone it was absolutely useless. Doubtless his brother had intended to give him the key of the riddle, when he had so desperately striven to speak. After in vain thinking the matter over ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... man is your enemy: no man is your friend. All alike are your teachers. Your enemy becomes a mystery that must be solved, even though it take ages: for man must be understood. Your friend becomes a part of yourself, an extension of yourself, a riddle hard to read. Only one thing is more difficult to know—your own heart. Not until the bonds of personality are loosed, can that profound mystery of self begin to be seen. Not till you stand aside from it will it in any way reveal ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... Agathon's sweet lips, which as he spoke 105 Was as the lovely star when morn has broke The roof of darkness, in the golden dawn, Half-hidden, and yet beautiful. I'll pawn My hopes of Heaven-you know what they are worth — That the presumptuous pedagogues of Earth, 110 If they could tell the riddle offered here Would scorn to be, or being to appear What now they seem and are—but let them chide, They have few pleasures in the world beside; Perhaps we should be dull were we not chidden, 115 Paradise fruits are sweetest when forbidden. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... as you term it, and as hell will always term it, is alike the riddle and the masterword of the universe," the old ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... not occur to him that the gossip about his family's great wealth had any thing to do with it). He could not account for it by any process of reasoning, and was simply obliged to accept the fact and give up trying to solve the riddle. He found himself dragged into society and courted, wondered at and envied very much as if he were one of those foreign barbers who flit over here now and then with a self-conferred title of nobility and marry some rich fool's absurd daughter. Sometimes at a dinner party ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... she had the account-books of the school in her upper bureau-drawer at that moment, and in the lower ones her wedding things. Dresses and cloaks all made; and such lovely linen! As for Hugh Guinness, he was, after all, but a perplexing shadow, a riddle that turned from her the more she tried to make him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... make that out," the keeper muttered in his beard. That Lucas should be in one moment cured of his urgent need of seeing the Comte de Mar was too much for him, but no riddle to me. I knew he had come to stab M. Etienne in his cell. It was his last chance, and he had missed it. I feared him no longer, for I believed in Mayenne's faith. My master once released, Lucas ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... not!" Rutherford's voice was like the snap of a whip. "Try it. Try it. I'll hunt you down like a wolf and riddle yore carcass." ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Riddle were in General Porter's staff; their bravery was conspicuous, and no officers of ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... playful fictions, after the manner of riddles to be guessed out, are clearly allowable. So "in war, too, something like a game of this kind is carried on, when by way of stratagem some deceptive appearance is produced, and a riddle is thus given to the enemy. In such cases there is no falsehood; for from the conditions of the situation,—whether friendly or hostile,—the appearance that is given is confessedly nothing more than an ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... its origin in the error to which I have adverted. To the same source may be traced the strange opinion that a fatal or malignant disease makes its first and most desperate attacks upon the healthy and the robust. The fact is—and this explains the whole riddle—those who are regarded, by the superficial and short-sighted in this matter, as the most healthy and robust, are usually persons whose unhealthy habits have already sown the seeds of disease; and nothing is wanting but the usual circumstances of epidemics to rouse them into action. ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... they're here, the problem that lays so heavy on the Southern and Northern heart and conscience and the riddle gits harder and harder to solve. The lurid blaze of livin' torches makes bloody blindness in the eyes of them that look on and light them fires. The disgraceful glare flames out, shamin' you in the eyes of the world, and streams up to the ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... a crowded circus once: The fool was in the middle. Loud laughed contemptuous Common-sense At every frisk and riddle. ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... fiercer grapple joyn'd, Throttl'd at length in the Air, expir'd and fell; So after many a foil the Tempter proud, Renewing fresh assaults, amidst his pride 570 Fell whence he stood to see his Victor fall. And as that Theban Monster that propos'd Her riddle, and him, who solv'd it not, devour'd; That once found out and solv'd, for grief and spight Cast her self headlong from th' Ismenian steep, So strook with dread and anguish fell the Fiend, And to his crew, that sat consulting, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... being, rebelling against the rules of life and the general philosophy of his fellow-creatures, and shrinking with a shy, uncomprehended pride from the companionship of society. Shelley's disposition was a marked and rare one, but there is nothing of the riddle in it; for thousands, of his temperament, may always be found going strangely through the world, here and there, and the interpretation of such a character could be made extremely interesting, and even instructive, by any ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... year 1858, but I have a fancy that if I should take it up now, I should think it a wiser and truer conception of the world than I thought it then. It is no solution of the problem; men are not going to answer the riddle of the painful earth by building themselves shanties and living upon beans and watching ant-fights; but I do not believe Tolstoy himself has more clearly shown the hollowness, the hopelessness, the unworthiness ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mind, as women do, about Narasinha, without being willing to admit it, even to herself; and come, only the other day, suddenly on me. Aye! beyond a doubt, this would be the true conclusion, and the answer to the riddle, but for one consideration that makes it utterly impossible, that I ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... my anecdotes about our being lost through inability to riddle out our name on the part of the police, I must relate an instance where the post-office displayed remarkable powers of divination. One day I received an official notification from the post-office that there was a misdirected ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... mistress out of stone, Had not so hard a-hearted one. 330 She had a thousand jadish tricks, Worse than a mule that flings and kicks; 'Mong which one cross-grain'd freak she had, As insolent as strange and mad; She could love none, but only such 335 As scorn'd and hated her as much. 'Twas a strange riddle of a lady: Not love, if any lov'd her! Hey dey! So cowards never use their might, But against such as will not fight; 340 So some diseases have been found Only to seize upon the sound. He that gets her by heart, must ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... his pistol, "Mr. Black will please note that while I am standing by the bulwarks I shall be watching indeed. Should he make an attempt to escape from the vessel I shall riddle him ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... full, the prisoners wondered what was going to be done with their cargo of dirt? The riddle was solved when the overseer ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... return. Philosopher that I was I could not explain the sinking and the fear that took possession of me. The philosopher did not know himself. All his thought and all his reasoning could not solve the simple riddle the quick intuition of a girl ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... but found, to his no small surprise and regret, that he had not even strength sufficient to lift his body from the bed; and, therefore, that nothing was left him, but to surmise whatever he chose, until some one should appear to solve the riddle; which, he doubted not, ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... The riddle was too great for solving. Perhaps Wilbur had disappeared merely to play a practical jest on her; but that supposition was too childish to be retained an instant. Perhaps—perhaps Pierre himself had discovered her, but having vowed ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... that—she seems to get rid of her troubles just by telling them. Now she had passed her riddle on to me, and I could not keep Peggy and her affairs from my mind. I tried to tell myself that it would be better for every one to find out now than later if Henry Goward was not worthy to be Peggy's husband. But, oh, for all their sakes, how I hoped this cloud, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... The riddle of personality! Are we at last upon the track of its uncovering? That elusive mystery, which philosophers have wrapped in the thousand veils of Greek and Latin words, and psychologists, even unto the third and fourth generation of Freudians, have floundered about in, ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... be, your majesty," said Caroline gayly, "but the explanation of the riddle that has been puzzling all the brains in the palace ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... its development; its unfoldment, etc. What is known as "Bhakti Yoga" deals with the Love of the Absolute—God. What is known as "Gnani Yoga" deals with the scientific and intellectual knowing of the great questions regarding Life and what lies back of Life—the Riddle of ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... out by France, but as regarded the very structure and relations of other European nations—would be justifiable. But to be justifiable they must be adequate; and to be adequate they must be unexpected and thorough. What should they be? The OEdipus who solves this riddle for France is the man of the hour. He was found in Bonaparte. What mean these ringing words from the headquarters at Nice, which, on March twenty-seventh, 1796, fell on the ears of a hungry, eager soldiery ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Cicerone, "but I 'ave something 'ere which was found on the top of his portmanteau. I wot ye know not the use of this." To the Barbarian's intense indignation, the Cicerone produced, from under his, his (the Barbarian's) own opera hat. "Marry, what should be this? Read me this riddle! ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... he found the Major a riddle that he could not read; but the Governor's first smile had melted his reserve, and he declared Mrs. Ambler to be "a ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... must be puzzled!" I said to myself confidently, and I do think justly. "For supposing I were on his job in Germany and an entire stranger suddenly sprang up out of nowhere, hailed me in excellent English, and then (even if he didn't know the particular riddle I used as pass-word) conducted himself like a confederate, made no attempt to arrest me or interfere with me, and spoke German with a distinct English accent, what would ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... the king's messenger rode up and down the kingdom with a message from the king's daughter. The king's daughter, the beautiful princess of the land, had promised to wed the man who could tell her a riddle she could not guess. All the princes who had sung of love beneath the palace window had been very stupid. The princess wished to marry a man who knew more ...
— Tales of Giants from Brazil • Elsie Spicer Eells
... three or four first years comparatively. They will grow both in moist and barren gravel, and poor ground, so it be not over-sandy and light, and want a loamy ligature; but before sowing (I mean here for large designs) turn it up a foot deep, sowing, or setting your seeds an hand distance, and riddle earth upon them: In five or six weeks they will peep. When you transplant, water them well before, and cut the clod out about the root, as you do melons out of the hot-bed, which knead close to them like an egg: Thus they may be sent safely many miles, but the top must neither be bruised, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... may understand such a girl's soul! Usually Wawerl does just the opposite of what one expects; but if she does accept you, she will—as an honest man I ought not to conceal it from you—she will give you many a riddle to guess. Whims and freaks are as plenty with her as buttercups in spring turf; but you can't find a more pious girl in all Ratisbon. From ancient times the motto of the Blombergs has been 'Faith, Courage, and Honour,' and for that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... glowing with her quick ride, and as Odo lifted her from the saddle her loosened hair brushed his face like a kiss. For a moment she seemed like life's answer to the dreary riddle of ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... and he had simply settled this service to his daughter well before him as the proper direction of his young friend's leisure, the cool darkness had again closed round him, but his moral lucidity was constituted. It wasn't only moreover that the word, with a click, so fitted the riddle, but that the riddle, in such perfection, fitted the word. He might have been equally in want and yet not have had his remedy. Oh, if Charlotte didn't accept him, of course the remedy would fail; but, as everything had fallen together, it was at least there to be tried. And success would ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... both shall slay. And if perchance My saying, dark as Themis or as Sphinx, Fail to persuade thee, (since like them it foils The intellect with blindness) yet ere long Events shall be the Naiads, that will solve This knotty riddle, and no damage light On flock or field. Take heed; and as these words By me are utter'd, teach them even so To those who live that life, which is a race To death: and when thou writ'st them, keep in mind Not to conceal how thou hast seen the plant, That twice hath ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the consistency of your conduct, or the morality of your principles. Sir, if you can but use the tomahawk skilfully, your fortune is certain. 'Sic itur ad astra.' Read Blackwood's Noctea Ambrosiance. Take the town by surprise, folly by the ears; 'the glory, jest, and riddle of the world' is man; use your knowledge of this ancient volume rightly, and you may soon mount the car of fortune, and drive at random wherever your fancy dictates. Bear in mind the Greek proverb, 'Mega biblion, mega kakon.' ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... groaned, "when at school, how conquerors put their feet on the necks of their captives. He has put his spurning foot on my heart. Oh, hateful riddle! Why should I love the man ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... shook my head, for the riddle seemed quite unreadable, and as we had already sat up until long past midnight I begged for my candle, and proposed to defer our conversation until the morning. Jack, declaring that none of the beds in the damp old house was fit to sleep in ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... yet formed one. It is a bit of a riddle there, for the crow and the eagle do not ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... well that to stay here is to get into our hands some time or other, and 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! It will become as tiresome as the siege of Granada was to ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... one of them set to work to exert the energies of his mind, and, when they arrived at a guess, they noted it down on paper; after which every individual member of the family made a choice of some object, and composed a riddle, which was transcribed in a large round hand, and affixed on the lantern. This done, the eunuch took his departure, and when evening drew near, he came out and delivered the commands of the imperial consort. "The conundrum," he said, "written by Her Highness, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... fortunes were made was not a riddle. Labor was cheap and unorganized, and the profits of trade were enormous. According to Weeden the customary profits at the close of the eighteenth century on muslins and calicoes were one hundred per cent. Cargoes of coffee sometimes yielded three ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... morning I was back on time. 'Well, Mr. Riddle,' says I, when he opened the bedroom door, 'and how is uncle ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... riddle," went on Laddie. "It's about how do the tickets feel when the conductor punches them. But I never ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... was a riddle which I could not solve. Was it good? Was it bad? I could not say. Some roast monkey took away all desire to make a steady diet of this animal, and the great monkey who roamed about among us at large and playfully pushed his head into my glass when I wished to drink cured me of any desire I ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... roaring against him, and he caught it and rent it in two, as if it had been a kid. When he passed the same way afterward he saw that the bees had built a nest in the body of the lion, and it was full of honey. At his marriage feast—for he married a Philistine woman—he made a riddle for the young men ...
— Child's Story of the Bible • Mary A. Lathbury
... very like a riddle, and I had to say the words over many times to myself before I could ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... and hitherto unsolved riddle of Tibet, Petrie," he replied—"a mystery concealed from the world behind the veil of Lamaism." He stood up abruptly, glancing at a scrap of paper which he took from his pocket—"Suite Number 14a," he said. "Come along! We have not a moment ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... You would know the cause: well, here it is," said she, flinging the book on the table. Her mother took the book and opened it; it was The Adventures of Telemachus. At first she could make nothing of this riddle; by dint of questions and vague replies, she discovered to her great surprise that her daughter was the ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... the faith that for his "I wish" there were no limits. At present his vanity, too, was wounded painfully. There was, besides, in Lygia's opposition and resistance, and in her flight itself, which was to him incomprehensible, a kind of riddle. In trying to solve this riddle he racked his head terribly. He felt that Acte had told the truth, and that Lygia was not indifferent. But if this were true, why had she preferred wandering and misery to his love, his tenderness, and a residence in his splendid mansion? To this question he ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... that memoir so just and tender which, he prefixes to his son's literary remains, remarks that all his son's talk about this old desperate riddle of the origin and significance of evil, like the talk of Leibnitz about it, resolved itself into an unproved assumption of the necessity of evil. In truth there is little sign that either Arthur Hallam or Gladstone had in him the making of the patient ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... reasoning for some minutes. His companion fitted a wooden chimney on the doll house, found it a trifle out of plumb, and proceeded to whittle a shaving off the lower edge. Then Asaph sighed, as one who gives up a perplexing riddle, put his hand in his pocket, and ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to the riddle, which puzzled all the magicians and wise men, was given by an old woman, who came up to the palace and told the chamberlain that, for two handfuls of gold, ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... however, in which they also recall Derbyshire, but in which they are far preeminent. This is the vast agglomeration of caves and vertical potholes—like those in Craven, but here called etonnoirs—that riddle the rolling wolds in all directions. Chief among these is the mammoth cave of Han, the mere perambulation of which is said to occupy more than two hours. I have never penetrated myself into its sombre and dank recesses, but something may be realized of its character ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... Greek influence have thus been exhibited in the case of Hercules and of Castor, and it remains to inquire what Etruria did. There is no race about which we know so much and yet so little as about the Etruscans. They have always been and still are a riddle, and as our knowledge of them increases we seem further than ever from a solution, and what we gain in positive knowledge is more than counterbalanced by the increased sense of our ignorance. Altogether aside from the problem of the origin ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter |
