"Bewilder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bronze, the myriad lamps of every fantastic form, the quaint and daring designs for shop fronts, the infinite arts employed to "set off" goods, and the surprising, never-ceasing varieties of art-manufacture—whether in chocolate or the popular Algerian onyx—bewilder strangers. Does successful Mr. Brown, who, having doffed the apron of trade, considers it due to himself to become—so far as money can operate the strange transformation—a fine fleur; does he desire also to make of plain, homely Mrs. Brown a leader of fashion ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... of the sassafras, And the gold of the spicewood-bush, Bewilder the ways of the forest pass, And brighten the underbrush: The white-starred drifts of the wild-plum tree, And the haw with its pearly plumes, And the redbud, misted rosily, ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... soberly, Down looking aye, and with a chasten'd light, Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white, And meekly let your fair hands joined be, As if so gentle that ye could not see, Untouch'd, a victim of your beauty bright, Sinking away to his young spirit's night, Sinking bewilder'd 'mid the dreary sea. 'Tis young Leander toiling to his death. Nigh swooning, he doth purse his weary lips For Hero's cheek, and smiles against her smile. Oh, horrid dream! See how his body dips Dead-heavy; arms and shoulders gleam awhile; ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... boss." This genius for spelling is in some people a sixth sense, a matter of intuition. Some spellers are born, and not made, and their facility reminds one of the mathematical prodigies that crop out every now and then to bewilder the world. Bud Means, foreseeing that Ralph would be pitted against Jim Phillips, had warned his friend that Jim could "spell like thunder and lightning," and that it "took a powerful smart speller" to beat him, for he knew "a heap of spelling-book." To have ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... about him, Philip could scarcely convince himself as he made his way back to the canoe and the fire. The discovery of this girl, buried six hundred miles in a wilderness that was almost a terra incognita to the white man, was sufficient to bewilder him. And only now, as he kicked the burning embers from under the pails, and looked at his watch to time himself, did he begin to realize that he had not sensed a hundredth part of the miracle ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... fullest and deepest meaning they form part of the activities of the Logos, but as being only secondarily reflected in the Christ, and therefore also in every Christ-Soul that treads the way of the Cross. Thus studied they will be seen to be profoundly true, while in their exoteric form they often bewilder the ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant
... slight indication of my unlover-like hauteur, let me confess that I am going to bring you a marvellously glittering bauble when I come back from the city, something that will bewilder you by day and dazzle ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... left to bewilder me? Why, and by whom? What interest had my lady of the dark in elaborately deceiving me? Why muffle her identity in mystery? Why the indefinable quaintness of language, the choice of words that made her speech so different from even ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... No; she would bewilder the Hiltonbury mind. I mean you to see her; I would not miss the shock to Honor. No, don't show it to her! I ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fifty or five hundred—in the time that she would give to one, she felicitates herself on her clever management. The idea of inviting her friends because she really wishes to talk with them would bewilder her. She does not converse; she "receives." She arrays herself in her smartest gown, and her social interchange with each guest consists in a graceful greeting and a no less graceful adieu, followed by an epoch of private gratitude ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... said she, "you bewilder me; I never in all my life heard of such a person as Mr. Frank Montgomery; and I certainly never gave him any money to buy ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... that we can use our companion hunters best, for the shunkas will intimidate and bewilder the buffalo women," said ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... given him an actual presence in the sacraments of hell, wherever administered, in all the bread of bitterness, in all the cups of blood." And in general, indeed, the Conciones ad Populum, as Coleridge named these lectures on their subsequent publication, were rather calculated to bewilder any of the youthful lecturer's well- wishers who might be anxious for some means of discriminating his attitude from that of the Hardys, the Horne Tookes, and the Thelwalls of the day. A little warmth of language might no doubt be allowed to a young friend ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... since taught sensible men to beware of beautiful women—to sound them carefully before they give them their confidence. Beauty is shallow—only skin deep; fleeting—only for a few years' reign; dangerous—tempting to vanity and lightness of mind; deceitful—dazzling often to bewilder; weak—reigning only to ruin; gross—leading often to sensual pleasure. And yet we say it need not be so. Beauty is lovely and ought to be innocently possessed. It has charms which ought to be used ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... encouraging. This was not, it appeared, the chief town of the country. That was many miles up the river, and was called Hochelaga. It would not be safe for the white men to go there. Their ships might be caught between ice-floes, and the falling snow would blind and bewilder them. Cartier glanced at the blue autumn sky and smiled. No one is quicker than an Indian to read faces. Daghnacona saw that the white chief intended to ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... malice he set himself to bewilder Margot. They made a little, shadowy knot in the long corridor. For he wished to give Udal, who in his long gown stood deaf-faced, like a statue of contemplation, the time to come ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... down the outer slopes struggling to free themselves from their winter cloak; the cloud of frost scintillating in the sunlight as a mass of loosened snow rushed into the depths below;—was not such a scene as this, presented to our gaze in unveiled splendour, more than sufficient to bewilder in the intensity of its ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... Reader, you, John Murray, Have published "Anjou's Margaret,"[66] Which won't be sold off in a hurry (At least, it has not been as yet); And then, still further to bewilder him, Without remorse, you set up "Ilderim;"[67] So mind you don't get into debt,— Because—as how—if you should fail, These books would be but baddish bail. And mind you do not let escape These rhymes to Morning Post or Perry, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... this, I am saying nothing against the deep piety and earnestness which were characteristics of this second phase of the Movement, in which I had taken so prominent a part. What I have been observing is, that this phase had a tendency to bewilder and to upset me; and, that, instead of saying so, as I ought to have done, perhaps from a sort of laziness I gave answers at random, which have led to my appearing ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... authors,' this is it; but weak as the patient is, he commonly declines to have his tastes dictated to; perhaps there is an unpleasant association in his mind, arising from Brand and Liebig, with all 'extracts;' but, at all events, those literary compilations oppress and bewilder him; he objects to the extraordinary fertility of 'Ibid,' an author whose identity he cannot quite call to mind, and prefers ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... every resolution is subject to criticism, changes could be more readily effected. But as their meetings are now conducted, a motion to amend a resolution would throw the platform into the wildest confusion and hopelessly bewilder the chairman. We saw this experiment made at the great demonstration in St. James' Hall the night before Mr. Mason's bill was to be acted on in the House of Commons. For its effect on their champions some were desirous that a resolution ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... its skill to try, Amid the chords bewilder'd laid, And back recoil'd, he knew not why, E'en at the sound ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... mad. The lack of sympathy—that contrast between himself and his neighbors which took away the restraint of example—was enough to make him so. Or possibly he had caught just so much of ethereal radiance as served to bewilder him, in an earthly sense, by its intermixture with ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... arabesques running into each other, graceful, but without significance, without any perceptible principle of unity in the jarring 'motifs;' and our poems have some certain theme, that their highly wrought details may not confuse and bewilder the spirit always in search of some central unity. Like the burning sands which, clinging not together in any sweet union of fellowship, blind and confuse us with their drifting masses, are all such essays in art; for an idea capable ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... are homeless as the breeze, Vocal are they, like storm-bewilder'd seas. Their faces are the fair, unshrouded night, And planets are their eyes, their ageless dreams. Tenderly stooping earthward from their height, They wander in the dusk with chanting streams; And they are dawn-lit trees, with arms up-flung, To hail the burning ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... now without any positive form of religion, any unattractive symbols, or mysterious rites, we are in the less danger of stopping at surfaces, of accepting a mediator instead of the Father, a sacrament instead of the Holy Ghost. And when I see how little there is to impede and bewilder us, I cannot but accept,—should it be for many years,—the forlornness, the want of fit expression, the darkness as to what is to be expressed, even that characterize ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... thus; I homeward sped my way, 610 Bewilder'd in the wood till dawn of day; And met the merry crew who danced about the May. Then late refresh'd with sleep, I rose to write The visionary ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... was then a fashion; nay, it was more, it was absolutely a rage. In the drawing-rooms, nothing was talked of but the brilliant discovery. There was to be no more dying; people's heads were turned, and their imaginations heated in the highest degree. To accomplish this object, it was necessary to bewilder the understanding; and Mesmer, with his singular language, produced that effect. To put a stop to the fit of public insanity was the grand difficulty; and it was proposed to have the secret purchased by the court. Mesmer fixed his claims at a very extravagant ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... into tears. "Oh, Bianca, you bewilder, you terrify me! What is this of husbands and ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... good, wise judge upon the bench. I admit its painful nature, and the judge's goodness and wisdom to the fullest extent—but I submit that his prominent share in the excitement of such a trial, and the dread mystery involved, has a tendency to bewilder and confuse the judge upon the general subject of that penalty. I know the solemn pause before the verdict, the bush and stifling of the fever in the court, the solitary figure brought back to the bar, and standing there, observed ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... terrible hunts are lost somewhere in him and he shuffles along, his sloping forehead in a pucker of thought as if he were trying to remember. But no memories come. Instead a bewilderment. The swarming streets bewilder him. The towering buildings, the noises of traffic and people dull his eyes and bring his shoulders together like the shoulders of some ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... ounce. It did weigh two ounces, the gravity being not one 1600th but one 800th of terrestrial gravity, or just double what, I expected. I puzzled myself over this matter longer, probably, than the intelligent reader will do: the explanation being obvious, like that of many puzzles that bewilder our minds intensely, only to humiliate us proportionately when the solution is found—a solution as simple as that of Columbus's egg-riddle. At length, finding that the lunar angle—the apparent position of the Moon—confirmed the reading of the discometer, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Sunday mornings it was Jack's custom to hide his work-day garb in an angle of the ivy-covered wall of the Dovecot garden, only letting his head appear over the top, from whence he watched to see Phoebe pass on her way to Sunday School, and to bewilder himself with the sight of her starched frock, and her airs with her Bible and Prayer-book, and class card, ...
— Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot and Other Stories • Juliana Horatio Ewing
... sweeping up the grand procession, brilliant with scarlet and gold, waving with plumes, sparkling with gems,—it seemed as if earth had been ransacked and human invention taxed to express the ultimatum of all that could dazzle and bewilder,—and, with a rustle like that of ripe grain before a swaying wind, all the multitude went down on their knees as the cortege passed. Agnes knelt, too, with clasped hands, adoring the sacred vision enshrined in her soul; and as she knelt with upraised eyes, her cheeks flushed with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... bewilder yourself into something dreadful with that horrid science,' said Lily. 'What ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thunder-storm flash follows flash, so, in this dreadful night, one horror had followed another, to bewilder the brain of a maiden who had always lived a quiet life among good and quiet men and women. And now the guardians of the peace had laid hands on the man who had so bravely taken her part, and whose bright eyes ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... once there, it begins to breed as disease germs are said to breed, by millions, and one moment of worry weds another moment, and the next moment a family of worries is born that surround, hamper and bewilder. Is this kindly, is it helpful, is it ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... from the outward world, to be thought upon, to be made subjects of patient reflection, to be brought by our own intellect and activity into their true connection with all our other thoughts. A great idea, without reflection, may dazzle and bewilder, may destroy the balance and proportion of the mind, and impel to dangerous excess. It is to awaken the free, earnest exertion of our powers, to rouse us from passiveness to activity and life, that inward inspirations, and the teachings of ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... is only one small part of His administration. He gives no hint of the means that He will use in future aeons for the fulfillment of His designs. That is not for us to know in this life. Indeed such a revelation would only confuse and bewilder us. For consider how such a revelation might involve the revelation of a great many other things far ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... was one thing wanting to bewilder me it was this incomprehensible thing!... Diggory, if we, who remain alive, were only allowed to hold conversation with the dead—just once, a bare minute, even through a screen of iron bars, as with persons in prison—what we might learn! How many who now ride smiling ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... make him clamber in the dark over every possible obstruction; while a noisy crowd hustled him, and laughing women called him Colin Maillard, the name of the chief player in blindman's buff. [Footnote: Juchereau, 323.] Amid a prodigious hubbub, intended to bewilder him and impress him with a sense of immense warlike preparation, they dragged him over the three barricades of Mountain Street, and brought him at last into a large room of the chateau. Here they took the bandage from his eyes. He stood for a moment with an air of astonishment ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... self-respect might bring it to light? He could see that Mrs. Prichard must be the twin sister, somehow. But he did not see how, as yet; and he wanted confirmation and elucidation. These letters would contain both, or correction and guidance. Was he to bewilder Gwen with his own partial insights, or take on himself to sift the grist clean before he milled it for her consumption? He was ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... intended for quite another party with whom, at the moment, her back towards you, she is engaged in a whispered conversation. When he is gone she turns again to you. But the varied expressions that pass across her face while you are discussing with her the disadvantages of Protection, bewilder you. When, explaining your own difficulty in arriving at a conclusion, you remark that Great Britain is an island, she roguishly shakes her head. It is not that she has forgotten her geography, it is that she is conducting a conversation by signs with a lady ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... several star players this year, fellows who moved to Marshall lately, and who have played on other teams before. Two of them are grand goal kickers, and may give you the surprise of your lives later on. Then we've got a dandy end who is like lightning on his pins; and once he gets the ball he can bewilder the best of them by his ducking and doubling. Well, enough for the present. I don't want to discourage you, Winters, but take my word for it, Chester has to go the limit if she hopes to snatch that game from ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... and He uses such when they are willing to be used, and governed by the true God-standards of life. But talent seems specially beset with temptation. The very power to do great things seems often to bewilder the man possessing it. Wrong ambition gets the saddle and the reins and whip too, ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... pictures!" said Agnes. "It seems to me that the making of such holy things is one of the most blessed of good works.—Dear uncle," she said, after a pause, "they say that this deep gorge is haunted by evil spirits, who often waylay and bewilder the unwary, especially in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... multiloquence, hath he given utterance to such a senseless jingle-jangle of verse-jargon as to-night! Strange it is that the so-called 'poetical' trick of confusedly heaping words together regardless of meaning, should so bewilder men and deprive them of all wise and sober judgment! By my faith! ... I would as soon listen to the gabble of geese in a farmyard as to the silly glibness of such inflated twaddle, such mawkish sentiment, such turgid garrulity, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... parties still flourish? and do you continue to bewilder your company with your thousand faces running down through all the keys of idiotism (like Lloyd over his perpetual harpsicord), from the smile and the glimmer of half-sense and quarter-sense to the grin and hanging ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... his is as tender as a baby's, and he is snuffed out by a blow that would hardly bewilder for a moment any other forest animal, unless it be the skunk, another sluggish non-combatant of our woodlands. Immunity from foes, from effort, from struggle is always purchased with ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... am at the bottom of; and that only through his consciousness of hating and wanting to injure me. Then, in the opposite case—of one as innocent as the whitest flower in all this pasture—in my Erica's case, the ghosts she sees are all from passions that leave her heart pure, but bewilder her eyes. It is the fear that she was early made subject to, and the grief that she feels for her mother, that create demons and sprites for her. The day may come, if I can make her happy enough, when I may convince her that, for all she now thinks, she never yet saw a token of any evil ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... march from the beginning,' and he has many flattering things to say about her teacher. I think he is inclined to exaggerate; at all events, his language is too glowing, and simple facts are set forth in such a manner that they bewilder one. Doubtless the work of the past few months does seem like a triumphal march to him; but then people seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... Poor body! bewilder'd, I scarcely do ken The haunts that were dear ance to me; I yirded a plant in the days o' my youth, An' the mavis now sings on the tree. But, haith! there 's nae scenes I wad niffer wi' thae; For it ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... ministers, so as to be able to make them comprehend how every thing which has been done and demanded by the authorities at Vienna is just and reasonable. But unluckily none are more deaf than those who will not hear; and, besides, they have such a number of terms and phrases which mean nothing, that they bewilder themselves before they come to say a single reasonable thing. I will try one plan, and that is to speak to them both in the king's presence, to induce them, at least, to hold language suitable to the occasion to the King of Prussia; and in good truth it is for the ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... the fisherman; 'and hark thee, Joshua, before we part I will put thee in the way of doing one good deed, which, credit me, is better than twenty moral speeches. Here is a stranger youth, whom Heaven has so scantily gifted with brains, that he will bewilder himself in the Sands, as he did last night, unless thou wilt kindly show him the way to Shepherd's Bush; for I have been in vain endeavouring to make him comprehend the road thither. Hast thou so much charity under thy simplicity, Quaker, as to ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... perfect, and to you I tender (Kneeling) My truth and love, still in their infancy, And therefore may they seem to you but feeble. (Rises.) Yet blame me not: this sudden change of state Hath left me so bewilder'd I scarce know Myself, or what I feel; like to the eyes Of one long plunged in gloom, on whom the sun, At length admitted, pours at once a flood Of glorious ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... Sparta! Do you not know that the Senate always treats those who appear before it in a kindly and reasonable manner, but the people are always full of pride and ambition? If you say that you have plenary powers, they will bewilder you by their violence and force great concessions from you. So come, cease this folly, if you wish to negotiate with the Athenians in a moderate way, and not to be forced into conceding points against your will. Discuss all the points at issue, but do not ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... once the querist and the oracle: and to regard it as something out of itself, like a mineral in the hands of the analytic chemist. We cannot fully enter into the absurdities of its condition, except by remembering that it is our own wise selves who so grotesquely bewilder us. The mind, on such occasions, takes itself (if we may so speak) into its own hands, turns itself about itself, listens to the echo of its own voice, and is obliged, after all, to lay itself down again with a very puzzled expression—and acknowledge that of its ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... dreamlike and mysterious impression left by a ballad of Coleridge's or a story of Tieck's, but rather, as in Shelley's case, from the dizzy splendour and excitement of the diction. His verse, like Shelley's, is full of foam and flame, and the result upon the reader is to bewilder and exhaust. He does not describe in pictures, like Rossetti and Morris, but by metaphors, comparisons, and hyperboles. Take the following very typical passage—the portrait of Iseult ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... to her, I could well believe in the far-famed Orpheus lute. It was enough to bewilder any man. She had a sweet, rich voice, a contralto of no ordinary merit, and the way in which she used it was ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... relate, to report, to explain; but you can't disintegrate my synthesis; you can't resolve the elements of my whole into different responsible agents or find your way at all (for your own fell purpose). My mixture has only to be perfect literally to bewilder you—you are lost in the tangle of the forest. Prove this value, this effect, in the air of the whole result, to be of my subject, and that other value, other effect, to be of my treatment, prove that I haven't so shaken them together ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... avert thy face: So did the sun his radiant visage hide, And swerve his chariot from the eternal path. These, monarch, are thy priestess' ancestors, And many a dreadful fate of mortal doom, And many a deed of the bewilder'd brain, Dark night doth cover with her sable wing, Or shroud ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... deeply. No man, not even his father, had come so closely into his life as Mr. Gorham, and the boy's heart was wrung with pain that he should be the cause of adding to his burdens. But his gaze into those expressive eyes seemed to bewilder him still further, for he passed his hand in a dazed ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... J——- and I walked to Ambleside,—distant barely two miles. It is a little town, chiefly of modern aspect, built on a very uneven hillside, and with very irregular streets and lanes, which bewilder the stranger as much as those of a larger city. Many of the houses look old, and are probably the cottages and farm-houses which composed the rude village a century ago; but there are stuccoed shops and dwellings, such as may have ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... master-builder, In his ship-yard by the sea, Whistling, said, "It would bewilder Any man but Thorberg ...
— The Children's Own Longfellow • Henry W. Longfellow
... sake, Mr Clayton," I cried out, interrupting him, "do not talk so. Do not deceive yourself. Do not attempt to bewilder me. Do not provoke the wrath of heaven. You have been kinder to me than I can express. The recollection of what you have done is ever present to me. Oh, would that I owed you nothing! Would that I could pay you back to the last farthing, and that the past could be obliterated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... floating in the air are quite enough to bewilder one, to steep him in delicious reveries, to transport him to ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Palace, and how he smiled tearfully at his captors and besought them to introduce him to her Majesty. I submit to Mr. Secretary Seward that he ought to make diplomatic remonstrances to the British Ministry, and require them to take such order that the Queen shall not any longer bewilder the wits of our poor compatriots by responding to their epistles and thanking them for ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shrouds on either hand—the former looking down on the quarter-deck below them, and the latter gazing towards the land that had just been sighted—uttered as if in chorus an exclamation of joy, the echo of which from the others seemed to bewilder both ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... trust you affect in my courage; but I am now on my guard against the cheats of the fancy, and the fumes of a vapor can scarcely bewilder the brain in the open air of this mountain land. I believe in no races like those which you tell me lie viewless in space, as do gases. I believe not in magic; I ask not its aids, and I dread not its terrors. For the rest, I am confident of one mournful courage—the courage that comes from ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... There is another possibility which observation has never detected and which science is powerless to disprove. Can we be sure that no malign spiritual influences hinder and bewilder? We cannot be sure. The common belief of nearly all peoples ought not to be rudely brushed aside. No one willingly believes in lies nor clings to them when he knows that they are lies. Superstitions always have some element of truth in them, and the truth, not the error, wins adherents. ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... to look at. Not only the two prominent figures, the woman and the half-dead man, which are as terrible as anything which Michael Angelo ever drew, but everything else in the print, contributes to bewilder and stupefy,—the very houses, as I heard a friend of mine express it, tumbling all about in various directions, seem drunk—seem absolutely reeling from the effect of that diabolical spirit of frenzy which goes forth over the whole composition. To show the poetical and almost prophetical conception ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Now therefore, out of your own mouth shall you be condemned. When the Spirit convinceth you of sin, you will see no faith, no prayer at the first opening of the eyes. But I add, there is no true confession but it is particular: the Spirit useth not to bewilder men's spirits in a general notion only, and a wide field of unknown sins. And such are many of your convictions. You mourn for sin, as you say, and yet you cannot condescend on a particular that burdeneth ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... their head, who set at nought the word of God, and think only of their own temporal interests; ay, and who learned Gitano—their own Gitano—from the lips of the London Caloro, and also songs in the said Gitano, very fit to dumbfounder your semi-Buddhist priests when they attempt to bewilder people's minds with their school-logic and pseudo-ecclesiastical nonsense, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... The girls are flying around, executing orders and pocketing change. The piano-player bangs and thumps his hideously-wiry instrument. Glasses are clinking, chairs and tables moving, and altogether there is a discordant tumult well calculated to bewilder the ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... wear silk stockings, and he really ought to be supplied with a new Adjective to help him to express his opinions: but, for all that, he is a great man. If you call him "the heroic defender of the national honour" one day, and "a brutal and licentious soldiery" the next, you naturally bewilder him, and he looks upon you with suspicion. There is nobody to speak for Thomas except people who have theories to work off on him, and nobody understands Thomas except Thomas, and he does not always know what ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... own, which are their parliaments." This was a favorite theory with him, in expounding which he likened the colonies to Ireland, and to Scotland before the union. Many sentences to the same purport occur in his writings; for example: "These writers against the colonies all bewilder themselves by supposing the colonies within the realm, which is not the case, nor ever was." "If an Englishman goes into a foreign country, he is subject to the laws and government he finds there. If he finds no government or laws there, he is subject there to none, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... story was requested by a brother clergyman to go with him to visit the prisoner. They found him quite stupid—unmovable by all that could be urged, or rather perhaps the style of the address, as it was described to me, was fitted to confound and bewilder the man rather than enlighten him. In the midst of all this Mr. Carleton came in—he was just then on the wing for America, and he had heard of the poor creature's condition in a visit to his father. He came,—my informant said,—like a being of a different planet. He took the man's hand,—he ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... puzzlingly beautiful. Her eyes sparkled like stars on ruffled waters, the flame of health and life burned in her cheeks, and the moist red mobile mouth expressed emotions so rapidly and irregularly as to bewilder the man who attempted to follow them. Ah, but she could act; comedy or tragedy, it mattered not; ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... Timbers were cracking. All the stories they had heard of the frailty of the building came now to goad them as they hurtled from one end of their pen to the other, while intermittent clouds of smoke and darting flames conspired to bewilder their senses. ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... sympathies, so that he who can weep with his bereaved neighbor at the grave of his child, may, with the malignity of a fiend, be inwardly pleased at the death of an enemy. Selfishness may so control the conscience, that it will utter no upbraiding accents; and so bewilder the keen-sightedness of reason, that one may put darkness for light, and bitter for sweet, and sin for holiness, while complacently feeling that he is standing on the everlasting hills of truth. Neither the natural sympathies, nor conscience, nor reason, then, can form the substantial basis of a ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... to be despised: as a figure-head, she was of doubtful value. There was always that mother in the background. If Vivie was in court for a suffrage offence of a grave character the prosecuting Counsel would be sure to rake up the "notorious Mrs. Warren" and drag in the White Slave Traffic, to bewilder a jury and throw discredit on the militant side of the Suffrage cause. Of course if the true story of Vivie were fully known, she would rise triumphant from such a recital.... Still ... throw plenty of ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Ireland, at least to those prehistoric Aryan tribes of which the Irish were a branch. Its basis is the art of weaving, and in some respects resembles the matting of Polynesia much more closely that the vine-stems of Sicily or the arabesques of Byzantium. Spirals occur that bewilder the eye, yet are so faultlessly perfect that only the magnifying-glass brings out the incredible accuracy of the drawing. Among them are mythological and allegorical beasts, snakes, and lizards—thought to represent demons, like the gargoyles of Gothic architecture—in ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... at least. This is life in a Border ballad. Such a life as you knew in France but beautiful in a wild—hawk sort of way. Don't the Khyber Rifles bewilder you? They are drawn from these very Hill tribes, and will shoot their own fathers and brothers in the way of duty as comfortably as if they were jackals. Once there was a scrap here and one of the tribesmen sniped our men unbearably. ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... this matter, otherwise the cares and anxieties with which it is attended would deter most persons from launching their bark of earthly happiness on the great ocean of matrimony. But too frequently the passions are the only guide, and these stimulate to bewilder: they exhibit pleasing and attractive imagery, and then the possession destroys ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... bewilder the savages—against whom he bore no grudge, and to avoid encountering whom was his chief desire—Dick varied his costume, appearing sometimes in the dress of a Blackfoot chief, or a Cree warrior; at other times in the hunting-shirt and cap of a trapper. But, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... despite her implied protest. We must understand woman before presuming to measure her passions or estimate her powers; and it is well to remember that after some sixty centuries of interested scrutiny she remains very much a mystery—to eminent physicians as well as others. Her mind seems to bewilder the psychologists no less than her body puzzles the physiologists—both find the factual impossible and the self-evident absurd. Dr. Maxwell has discovered, however, that comparatively few women marry men whom they would ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... all the Gardiner diamonds to-night, my dear," were the lady-mother's parting words. "Every one is expecting to see them on you. They are famous. You will create a sensation in them; you will bewilder, dazzle, and astonish these ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... small bark have following sail'd, Eager to listen, on the advent'rous track Of my proud keel, that singing cuts its way, Backward return with speed, and your own shores Revisit, nor put out to open sea, Where losing me, perchance ye may remain Bewilder'd in deep maze. The way I pass Ne'er yet was run: Minerva breathes the gale, Apollo guides me, and another Nine To my rapt sight the arctic beams reveal. Ye other few, who have outstretch'd the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... he did get beyond the borderland he would do the most amazing things. Sometimes it was the fighting instinct that would possess him, sometimes the preaching, and sometimes the comic, or they might come in succession, replacing each other so rapidly as to bewilder his companions. Intoxication brought all kinds of queer little peculiarities with it. One of them was that he could walk or run perfectly straight, but that there always came a time when he unconsciously returned upon his tracks and ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... twig, leaf, branch, and stone round you, and then leaving you in a sort of swirling dark until the next flash came; this, and the great conglomerate roar of the wind, rain and thunder, was enough to bewilder any living thing. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Parliamentary Committee. I was not long in it, before I began to wish for a hole to creep out at! I could not find words to satisfy either the Committee or myself. I was subjected to the cross-examination of eight or ten barristers, purposely, as far as possible, to bewilder me. Some member of the Committee asked if I was a foreigner, and another hinted that I was mad. But I put up with every rebuff, and went on with my plans, determined not to ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... style in everything he did or said. He is one to astonish drawing-rooms and bewilder promenades by the taste and elegance of his dress. Upon that altar, doubtless, he sacrificed his principles; but the sacrifice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... It is as though Nature had disported herself in bringing to life an infinite variety and diversity among her perfected children. But men, here and there, have always shown the golden cord of kinship to astonish and bewilder the unwary ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... evening spreads a calm around, Tell me, has thy bewilder'd fancy sought, Retir'd in some sequestered spot of ground, Rest, from the ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... of huts in the woods along the streamlets or half hidden among the fissured rocks of a granite kopje. The chief traces of man's presence in the landscape are the narrow and winding footpaths which run hither and thither through the country, and bewilder the traveller who, having strayed from his waggon, vainly hopes by following them to find his way back to the main track, or the wreaths of blue smoke which indicate the spot where a Kafir has set the grass on fire to startle and ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... urgent it is that each should guard his lips, chasten his pen, and aspire to simplicity of speech. No more perversion of sense, circumlocution, reticence, tergiversation! these things serve only to complicate and bewilder. Be men; speak the speech of honor. An hour of plain-dealing does more for the salvation of the world than ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... flying sparrows upon it, which the jinricksha man uses to wipe his face. The bank bills, the commonest copper coins, are things of beauty. Even the piece of plaited coloured string used by the shopkeeper in tying up your last purchase is a pretty curiosity. Curiosities and dainty objects bewilder you by their very multitude: on either side of you, wherever you turn your eyes, are countless ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... would be a joy to study chapter by chapter; and some of the chapters would surprise with their lightness and mirth, while others would surprise with their depth of sympathetic understanding, and yet others would bewilder alluringly with their whimsical, irresistible uncertainty. She knew that society papers sometimes spoke of the well-known millionaire's daughter as beautiful, but to her it seemed the word was hardly the right one. Meryl's face had in it something too strong and ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... the carlin' and lasses sae braw, And his bare lyart pow he smoothly straikit, And looked about, like a body half glaikit, On bonny sweet Nanny, the youngest of a': "Ha, ha!" quo' the carlin', "and look ye that way? Hoot! let nae sic fancies bewilder ye clean— An elderlin' man, i' the noon o' the day, Should be wiser than youngsters that come ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the scene of the robbery both men had dismounted and had examined the ground thoroughly. What they saw tended still more to bewilder them. Neither of them was a tenderfoot, and the little table at the summit of the long hill told a very tangled tale to those who had eyes to read. Obvious tracks took them at once to the spot where the bandit had stood in the bushes, but there was something about them that struck both ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... always thickly veiled. Turn round three times, and you don't know which trench to return to. It is an awkward predicament, and many a time I went blindly forward praying that it was in the right direction. The German's horn-rimmed glasses but bewilder him the more, and we have had several of them walk into our arms without intention, though they soon found that thereby they had bettered themselves. There was one young Bavarian officer who made this miscalculation. I saw ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... proceed to these supercilious and magisterial instructions.' The clue to the reading of his inner book. This is what Lord Bacon also condemns, as the magisterial method,—'My humour is unfit, either to speak or write for beginners;' he will not shock or bewilder them by forcing on them prematurely the last conclusions of science; 'but as to things that are said in common discourse or amongst other things, I never oppose them either by word or sign, how false ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... head down upon his bosom; convulsive rattlings shook his throat; and his whole frame waver'd to and fro like a tree in a storm. Bewilder'd and shock'd, Gills look'd at his apparently deranged guest, and knew not what answer to make, or what ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... hand the hilt remain'd alone. Then Rustum raised his head; his dreadful eyes Glared, and he shook on high his menacing spear, And shouted: "Rustum!"—Sohrab heard that shout, And shrank amazed: back he recoil'd one step, And scann'd with blinking eyes the advancing form; And then he stood bewilder'd, and he dropp'd His covering shield, and the spear pierced his side.[191-19] He reel'd, and, staggering back, sank to the ground; And then the gloom ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Railroad, thirty-two miles from Lexington, and about twenty-two by turnpike from Georgetown. By moving in this direction, and striking a blow at this point, he hoped to induce the impression that he was aiming at Cincinnati, and at the same time thoroughly bewilder the officer in command at Lexington regarding his real intentions. When he reached Cynthiana he would be master of three or four routes, by either of which he could leave Kentucky, completely eluding his ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... His side, shall be among that flock, whom He who is at once Lamb and Shepherd, our Brother and our Lord, our Sacrifice and King, 'shall feed and lead by living fountains of waters,' in the sweet pastures of the upper world, where there are no ravening wolves, nor false guides to terrify and bewilder His flock any more at ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... far I dare venture on her good nature. Already I knew that some feeling—either of friendship or sympathy—had impelled her to save me from immediate betrayal, but would she go even further? Everything between us conspired to bewilder me as to her real purpose. Even as I concluded, it seemed to me her eyes hardened, and the expression of ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... up from the fleshless and skeleton perfection of the problemed forms, which start at your slightest touch from the formal squares of the chess board,—forms which confuse me with their complexity, bewilder me in the mazes of their ceaseless combinations, dazzle me with their chill erudition, and appal me with want of life,—and smile acceptance on the glowing gifts here lovingly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... dilettanti: if it is impossible for us, under the circumstances amidst which we live, to think clearly, to feel nobly, and to delineate firmly: if we cannot attain to the mastery of the great artists—let us, at least, have so much respect for our Art as to prefer it to ourselves: let us not bewilder our successors: let us transmit to them the practice of Poetry, with its boundaries and wholesome regulative laws, under which excellent works may again, perhaps, at some future time, be produced, not yet fallen into oblivion through our neglect, not yet ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... maintained that they were dissolved in vats of hydrofluoric acid. Others argued that they were encased in cement, then taken out to sea in speedboats on moonless nights and jettisoned. The favorite rumor was that the entire firm was a decoy to bewilder agents of foreign powers and pre-empt their espionage efforts. There was neither proof of this ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... expression in California, through so many channels, did not seem to affect him in the least. He had his Christianity warm from the heart of the Son of God, and no caricature of its features or perversion of its spirit could bewilder him for a moment. He knew whom he had believed. None of these things moved him. O blessed mystery of God's mercy, that turns the night of heathen darkness into day, and makes the desert soul bloom with the flowers of paradise! O cross of the Crucified! Lifted up, it shall draw all men ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... Albano—on our left Soracte and the Appenines, and a blue line along the west betrayed the Mediterranean. There was nothing peculiarly beautiful or sublime in the landscape, but few other scenes on earth combine in one glance such a myriad of mighty associations, or bewilder the mind with such a crowd of ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... he set himself to learn many things, and then, after having begun them, abandoned them. Thus, in arithmetic, during the few months that he studied it, he made so much progress, that, by continually suggesting doubts and difficulties to the master who was teaching him, he would very often bewilder him. He gave some little attention to music, and quickly resolved to learn to play the lyre, as one who had by nature a spirit most lofty and full of refinement: wherefore he sang divinely to that instrument, improvising upon it. Nevertheless, although he occupied himself with such a variety ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... their ancestors had migrated, and of the period at which they had been transplanted to the new world. And although there were among them traditions seeming to cast a light upon these subjects, yet when thoroughly investigated, they tended rather to bewilder than lead to any certain conclusion. The origin of the natives has ever since been a matter of curious speculation with the learned; conjecture has succeeded conjecture, hypothesis has yielded to hypothesis, as wave recedes before wave, still it remains involved ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... to me for advice as to the best method of dealing with those symptoms of original sin which cause small children to bewilder their elders by the utter depravity of their moral nature. What, for example, could I say to Kingfisher who was heard, when praying audibly, to petition heaven that Rosebud with whom she had quarrelled might lose all ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... battle's bloody plain, And trampled down the warriors slain, And neither known remorse nor awe; Yet now remorse and awe he own'd; His breath came thick, his head swam round. When this strange scene of death he saw. Bewilder'd and unnerved he stood. And the priest pray'd fervently and loud: With eyes averted prayed he; He might not endure the sight to see. Of the man ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... rest of his round he did not find it easy to give due attention to his other cases. His custom was to brood upon them as he rode; but now that look and the tears that followed seemed to bewilder him, taking from him all command ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... the suggestion, which seemed somewhat to bewilder him, and said: "That is all you can do, is ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... affairs? Who lived so spotlessly before the world? Who so wisely aided me in my rejection of a dry morality? Who so clearly set aside the Pharisaism which, as years passed, threatened to creep in among us? Who so deeply discerned as to the spirits of delusion which sought to bewilder us? Who would have governed my whole economy so wisely, richly and hospitably, when circumstances commanded? Who have taken indifferently the part of servant or mistress, without, on the one side, affecting an especial spirituality; on the other, being sullied by any worldly pride? ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... men. They are careless and unscrupulous in their dealings in this behalf. The wayward follies and the teasing perplexities of the fancy-smitten persons are pure sport to them. If by their wanton mistakes they can bewilder and provoke the lovers into larger outcomes of the laughable, so much the higher runs their mirth. And as they have no fellow-feeling with the pains of those who thus feed their love of fun, so the effect of their roguish tricks makes no impression upon them: ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... through the evening fogs, Traverses alleys, streets, courts, lanes, and bogs, Seeking some love-bewilder'd maid by gin oppress'd, Alights—and sits ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... would be easy if only one had read some theories of art beforehand. The contrary holds true: if you have seen and felt Wagner's operas, you may understand what he is talking about in his articles and pamphlets; but to read these first is merely to bewilder yourself utterly when you go to see the operas. I will dismiss, therefore, much of the prose with very brief notice, and some of it without any notice at all. It may be remarked that of all the commentaries I have waded through (and been well-nigh choked with), on the prose, there ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... pass unpunished was to put an end to my authority and position, yet did not feel competent or authorized to give him a regular flogging, I caught him by the collar and jerked him into the middle of the room, setting him down on the floor with force enough to bewilder him a little, and ordered him to sit there till I released him, and his surprise was such that he actually did not move till I told him to. I met no attempt to put my authority at defiance after that. A schoolfellow here and classmate in ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the next convert, and afterwards, through her persuasions, the king Vishtaspa himself became a disciple. The triumph of the good cause was hastened by the result of a formal disputation between the prophet and the wise men of the court: for three days they essayed to bewilder him with their captious objections and their magic arts, thirty standing on his right hand and thirty on his left, but he baffled their wiles, aided by grace from above, and having forced them to avow themselves at the end of their resources, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... deceive ourselves. In fact the whole external world as perceived by us is one great illusion: if we gave the reins to fancy we might call it a mirage, a piece of witchery, conjured up by the spells of some unknown magician to bewilder poor ignorant humanity. Outside of ourselves there stretches away on every side an infinitude of space without sound, without light, without colour, a solitude traversed only in every direction by an inconceivably complex web of silent and impersonal forces. That, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... worth while out of this talk," he decided, "I've got to mix up my delivery, shuffle the cards, spring first one thing and then another at him—bewilder him." ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... there creature more formed to bewilder A gay youth like me, who of castles aerial (And only of such) am, God help me! a builder; Still peopling each mansion with lodgers ethereal, And now, to this nymph of the seraph-like eye, Letting out, as you see, my first floor next ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... salient features stand out more distinctly, and make us feel that there was a groundwork of noble conceptions which has been covered and distorted by an aftergrowth of fantastic nonsense. We shall do best for the present to leave out all proper names, which only bewilder the memory and which convey no distinct meaning even to the scholar. It will require long-continued research before it can be determined whether the names so profusely applied to the Deity were intended as the names of so many distinct personalities, ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... this great thought of the permanence of faith, hope, and love as being the highest conception that we can form of our future condition. It is very easy to bewilder ourselves with speculations and theories of another life. I do not care much about them. The great gates keep their secret well. Few stray beams of light find their way through their crevices. The less we say the less likely we are to err. It ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... fast asleep, And closed is every flower, And winking tapers faintly peep High from my lady's bower; Bewilder'd hinds with shorten'd ken Shrink on their murky way; Uprouse ye then, my merry men! It ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... they did. But now we will only single out, here and there, a few of those names which are perhaps greater than the rest. Just as on a clear night, when we look up into the starlit sky, it would bewilder us to try and remember all the stars, so we learn first to know those that are most easily recognised—the Plough, or the Great Bear, as they shine with a clear steady light against the background of a ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... during the period since last it met may have had much to do with silence or brief mention of the heretofore darling shibboleth with which they were wont to inspire the faithful, rally the laggards, or capture converts. "Consistency, thou art a jewel" that dazzles, confuses, but doth not bewilder the ordinary politician, who can allow a former policy noiseless and forsaken to sink into the maelstrom of neglected and unrequited love. Prolific in schemes is the procedure of a minority party, not the least ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... So Juan stood, bewilder'd on the deck: The wind sung, cordage strain'd, and sailors swore, And the ship creak'd, the town became a speck, From which away so fair and fast they bore. The best of remedies is a beef-steak Against sea-sickness: try it, sir, before ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... of our working on schedule time or on guarantee of a maximum delivery; we are dependent on the humors of battle, on incalculable rushes and lapses, on violent outbreaks of energy which rage and pass and are expressly designed to bewilder. It is not for the poor wounded to oblige us by making us showy, but for us to let them count on our open arms and open lap as troubled children count on those of their mother. It is now to be said, moreover, that our opportunity ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the obvious weights and measures was to find herself buffeted and astray in a chaotic and menacing universe. Goodness was her guide, and she could cling to it if the enchanting will-o'-the-wisp did not float into sight to beckon and bewilder her. She indignantly repudiated the conception of a social order founded on charm rather than on solid worth; yet, like other frail mortals, she found herself following what allured her nature rather than what responded to the neatly tabulated theories of her mind. It was her beliefs and ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the situation, Marsh paused, waiting for the girl to go on. He felt that in her dazed and weakened condition questions would still further bewilder her, might even cause a revulsion that would delay or prevent their getting information that would prove ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... shades, adieu! ye groves, Now buried in your fall: Where'er my eye bewilder'd roves, Tis ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... him to get it this morning." And Helen put the letter into her aunt's hands, while the latter gazed helplessly, first at it, and then at the girl. There is an essay of Bacon's in which is set forth the truth that you can bewilder and master anyone if you are only sufficiently bold and rapid; Mrs. Roberts was so used to managing everything and being looked up to by everyone that Helen's present mood ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... "I know I bewilder you, dear man," she said. "But this is the point: I don't want to be protected. I mean I don't want to be made dependent; I don't want my interpretations of life at second-hand. I object to having life filter through anybody ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... hearts bewilder'd in their choice, And hence our feet from Virtue led astray: Truth calls imperious with repulsive voice To follow on a steep and rugged way; While Beauty beckons us along a gay And flowery path, that leads, with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... the most intricate, complex and detailed idea of reward for good, and punishment for evil (even when called "the operation of natural law") possible to the mind of man. In its entirety, and carried to its last refinement of interpretation and analysis, it has a tendency to bewilder and terrify, for the chance of escape from its entangling machinery seems so slight. But still, the same authorities inform us that every soul will surmount these obstacles, and everyone will Attain—so there is no need to be frightened, even if you accept the interpretation ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... hidden in the penetralia of the home, that no one sees, none knows, have an effect, immediate or remote, on the common life of the nation. There is, between these small, insignificant facts and the wars, the revolutions, the tremendous political and social events that bewilder men, a tie, often invisible to ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... freedom. When a prisoner first leaves his cell he cannot bear the light of day: he is unable to discriminate colours, or recognise faces. But the remedy is, not to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle and bewilder nations which have become half blind in the house of bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear it. In a few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of opinion subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. The scattered elements of truth cease to contend, and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... errors were distinctly visible, and when the sun of Imperial favour began to shine upon the Christians, these errors rapidly reached maturity. The Eucharistic bread and wine were viewed with superstitious awe, and language was applied to them which was calculated to bewilder and to confound. A system of penitential discipline alien to the spirit of the New Testament was already in existence; rites and ceremonies unknown in the apostolic age had now made their appearance; and in the great towns a crowd of functionaries, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... carelessly got up, simply to gratify the vanity and fill the purse of some educationist, anxious to get into print. Grammar also appears to be a lost art in the Public Schools, where the students are perplexed by books, not simple, but most complex in their teachings, calculated to bewilder persons of mature analytical minds, and to make one appreciate more highly than ever the intelligible lessons of Lennie's homely little volume, which was the favourite in those times when education was not quite so much reduced to a science. But ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... her swept as it were a whirlpool of snow. The swift fakes struck at her eyes and ears like a swarm of vicious flies. In such a wind, the blows of the soft thin snow, beating upon her face, now from one quarter, now from another, were enough to bewilder even a strong woman like Kirsty. They were like hail to a horse. After trying for a while to force her way, she suddenly became aware of utter ignorance as to the direction in which she was going, and, for the first time in her life, a fell terror possessed her—not ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald |
