"Bewildering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that, as well as I've thought I've know you, I find that I've never known you at all. You're a creature of bewildering transitions. I hear that you're ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... or nobles who were virtually kings, enriched with the accumulated treasures of ancient civilization. Great were the capitals of Greece and Asia, but how preeminent was Rome, since all were subordinate to her. How bewildering and bewitching to a traveler must have been the varied wonders of the city! Go where he would, his eye rested on something which was both a study and a marvel. Let him drive or walk about the suburbs, there were villas, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... from a different standpoint. She had not heard Dr. Walden; instead she had wandered into a bit of holy ground. She began by losing her way. It is one of the easiest things to do at Chautauqua. The avenues cross and recross in an altogether bewildering manner to one not accustomed to newly laid-out cities; and just when one imagines himself at the goal for which he started, lo! there is woods, and nothing else anywhere. Another attempt patiently followed for an hour has the exasperating effect of bringing him to the very ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... reflections, Martin Paz hastened his steps to see the saya of the young girl sweep the threshold of the paternal dwelling; and Sarah herself, half-opening then her mantilla, cast on him a bewildering glance of gratitude. ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... behave in a more rational manner! Either come to heel and follow sedately, as a dog of your age should do; or trot on in front, in the gaily juvenile manner you assume when Michael takes you out for a walk; but, for goodness sake, don't be so fidgety; and don't run round and round me in this bewildering way, or I shall call for William, and send you in. I only wish Michael ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... throbbing and aching most atrociously, and when the young man sat up and attempted to rise to his feet he discovered, to his astonishment and chagrin, that he had no control over himself, the room seemed to be whirling and spinning round with him at bewildering speed, and his legs ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... which I saw from the front. 'Hie to high fortune,' and 'Where spirits resort' were simply incomparable.... Your mother looked very radiant last night. I told her how proud she should be, and she was.... The play will be, I believe, a mighty 'go,' for the beauty of it is bewildering. I am sure of this, for it dumbfounded them all last night. Now you—we—must make our task a delightful one by doing everything possible to make our acting easy and comfortable. We are ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... year the war was not general. One of the most bewildering problems to be solved by the Federal officers on the Ohio was to find out which tribes were friendly and which hostile. Many of the inveterate enemies of the Americans were as forward in professions ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... had given the promise to Wilfrid, Merthyr left, shaking her hand like any common friend. Georgiana remained, by his desire, to protect her. Emilia had written to Wilfrid for release, but being no apt letter-writer, and hating the task, she was soon involved by him in a complication of bewildering sentiments, some of which she supposed she was bound to feel, while perhaps one or two she did feel, at the summons. The effect was that she lost the true wording of her blunt petition for release: she could no longer put it bluntly. But her heart revolted the more, and gave her sharp eyes to ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Conlan up with a start. Everything was amazing; everything was bewildering. He felt like a lost soul, stunned with the noise, dazed by the sights. In the fastnesses of his beloved West he had never imagined that such a place existed on the face of the earth. He felt stifled and ill at ease. His clothes ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... streets wondering at himself vaguely, and yet with a pleasant glow of memory. He felt it bewildering that Lorraine Vivian, whose favours were so eagerly sought by men, should have ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... more closely. With his successful experiments behind him, Marconi was well received in England, and began his further work with all the encouragement possible. Then followed a series of tests that were fairly bewildering. Messages were sent through brick walls—through houses, indeed—over long stretches of plain, and even through hills, proving beyond a doubt that the etheric electric waves penetrated everything. For a long time Marconi used modifications of the tin boxes which were a feature of his early trials, ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... Yet with all this bewildering effect of frivolity, the first term I'd make use of in describing Vick's character would be Touch-me-not. I believe there's a flower called that—noli me tangere—or some such name. Well, that's Vicky Van. She'd laugh and jest with you, and then if you said ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... was echoed in dim pain from Gibbie's soul. That the prophetess who knew everything, the priestess who was at home in the very treasure-house of the great king, should be thus abandoned to dire perplexity, was a dreadful, a bewildering fact. But now first he understood the real state of the affair in the purport of the old man's absence; also how he was himself potently concerned in the business: if the offence had been committed ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the refectory had a flower or two laid beside it; and the day had gone by in a bewildering dream. He had walked with his father and sister a little, and had found himself smiling and silent in ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... accidental direction which Bertram had taken on extricating himself from the poor mad woman,—a direction which he was unwilling to change from his fear of again falling in with her,—brought him into direct opposition to it. To these disheartening and bewildering circumstances of his present situation were added those of previous exhaustion, cold, hunger, and anxiety in regard to the probable construction of the share he had borne, as a passive spectator, in the events of the day; having, however ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... did explain just how he made his way through a maze of water-cut pillars and heaps of sandstone so bewildering that Bud afterward swore that in spite of the fact that he was leading Sunfish, he frequently found himself at that patient animal's tail, where they were doubled around some freakish pillar. Frequently Eddie stopped and peered past his ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... Vega, not even the dear and immortal Don Quixote himself, served to attract him. His own thoughts, his own life, filled his whole horizon, leaving no space for the thoughts or lives of others. He found himself a prey to a certain mental incoherence, a bewildering activity of vision. More than once before in the course of his laborious, monotonous, and, as men go, very virtuous life had this same thing happened to him—the tides of the obvious and accustomed suddenly receding and leaving him stranded, as on some barren ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... readers with the most droll accounts of His Majesty's frivolities. "How wicked a wretch Cromwell was, and yet how much better and safer the country was in his hands than it is now." And often he will end the bewildering account with some such bitter comment as the assertion "that every one about the ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... statesmen are supposed to possess, and capable of blundering and hesitation about details—first, that upon questions like these he was free from ambiguity of thought or faltering of will, and further, that upon his difficult path, amid bewildering and terrifying circumstances, he was able to take with him the minds of very ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... the two boys were being carefully carried in a semi-unconscious state by the willing hands of the search-party, through the bewildering mazes of the old mine, with Grip trotting on in front as if he were in command; and in this way the foot of the shaft was reached and they were safely ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... say. The wonder is not, to the natural mind, that such interpositions of heaven come, but that they come so seldom. But that Jacques d'Arc's daughter, the little girl over her sewing, whose only fault was that she went to church too often, should have the genius of a soldier, is too bewildering for words to say. A poet, yes, an inspiring influence leading on to miraculous victory; but a general, skilful with the rude artillery of the time, divining the better way in strategy,—this is a wonder beyond the reach of our faculties; yet according to Alencon, ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... cold wind, striking down blanket-wise and bewildering from out the west, made Wilbur look up quickly. The gray sky seemed scudding along close overhead. The bay, the narrow channel of the Golden Gate, the outside ocean, were all whitening with crests of waves. At his feet the huge green ground-swells thundered to ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... honest Danish word he had heard since he came to this bewildering land. I read it in his face, no longer heavy or dull; saw it in the way he followed my speech—spelling the words, as it were, with his own lips, to lose no syllable; caught it in his glad smile as he went on telling me about his journey, his home, and his homesickness for the heath, with a breathless ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... into a small room behind the shop where he proceeded to whisk forth a bewildering array of garments for my inspection, until table and chairs were piled high and myself dazed ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... heavy, so much so, indeed, that I felt as though I were going to choke, till at length the litter took a sharp turn, then another and another, and the sound of the running water ceased. After this the air was fresher again, but the turns were continuous, and to me, blindfolded as I was, most bewildering. I tried to keep a map of them in my mind in case it might ever be necessary for us to try and escape by this route, but, needless to say, failed utterly. Another half-hour or so passed, and then suddenly I became aware that we were once more in the open air. I could see the light through my bandage ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Venice are numerous—about a hundred in all, being one for every thousand souls, while I am told there is a priest for every hundred. We visited eight or ten of the most remarkable; and so bewildering was their magnificence, and so confounding the multitude of fine things shewn in them, that if I had not taken note of everything at the moment, I must have had only one confused idea of something supra-mundanely ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... any portrait be anything but incomplete of her, in whom the play of swiftly-changing colour made discord only to produce a poetic confusion? For in her there shone a divine brightness, a radiance of youth that blended all her bewildering characteristics in a certain completeness and unity informed by her charm. Nothing was feigned. The passion or semi-passion, the ineffectual high aspirations, the actual pettiness, the coolness of sentiment and warmth ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... women for'ard Were frightened and behorror'd; And shrieking and bewildering, The mothers clutched their children; The men sung "Allah! Illah! Mashallah Bismillah!" As the warring waters doused them And splashed them and soused them, And they called upon the Prophet, And thought but ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... York version of a Parisian costume, with her lace hat of summer make and texture and the vivid parasol she twirled upon her shoulder, she was not only a very pretty girl, but a fashionable one. There was something touching in the fact, and a little bewildering. To the pretty girl, the fashionable girl, he could have answered with a joke, but the stricken intelligence had a claim to his seriousness. Now, especially, he noted what had from time to time urged itself upon his perception. If the broken ties which once bound her to ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... transformation was not a bewildering one, then two and two make five. The most level-headed scientist would temporarily have lost his mental equipoise on witnessing such a quick change as that within a span or two of his own nose I was not only witless, ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... I were diplomatic," went on Marian when it was evident that the other had no intention of making inquiries as to the cause of her coming, "I might say that I'd turned in to make inquiry about these bewildering roads—or to borrow gasoline." ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Sleep came not near my couch—while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavoured to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room—of the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... my long young life lay stretched before me? Nor did the revolving stars concern me—nor the moon, spring with its gaudy brush, nor gray-clad winter. Nor did I care how the wind blew the swift seasons across the earth. Let Time's horses gallop, I cried. Speed! The bewildering peaks of youth are forward. The inn for the night lies far ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... striking things to say. Instead of learning from the folk-song, Schiller had learned originally from Klopstock; and what he had learned was to pose and philosophize and invest fictitious sentiment with a maze of bewildering and far-fetched imagery. Then he had lost sympathy with Klopstock's religiosity, had acquired a better opinion of the things of sense, and had had his introduction to doubt and disgust and rebellion. When now these moods sought expression in ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... be appropriated are discussed in the presence of everybody, and any one who disapproves of any of these objects, or of the way in which it is proposed to obtain it, has an opportunity to declare his opinions. Under this form of government people are not so liable to bewildering delusions as under other forms. I refer especially to the delusion that "the Government" is a sort of mysterious power, possessed of a magic inexhaustible fund of wealth, and able to do all manner ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... say," and Nan thought suddenly that it was very hard for him to have had her appear on the scene by way of rival, if he had been led to suppose that he was her aunt's heir. There were so many new things to think of, that Nan had a bewildering sense of being a stranger and a foreigner in this curiously self-centred Dunport, and a most disturbing element to its peace of mind. She wondered if, since she had not grown up here, it would not have been better to have ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... from playing Greek chorus now began to give us advice: "Yes, we would do well to go: the only carriage in Assisi, and excellent, admirable!" The numbers of these vagrants, their officiousness, their fluency, were bewildering. "But what are we to do?" asked my anxious companion. "Why, if it comes to the worst, walk down to the station and take the night-train back." He walked away whistling, and I composed myself to a visage ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... formality of asking the wretched convicts what they had to urge why sentence should not be passed upon them was gone through; the judge, with unmoved feelings, put on the fatal cap; and then a new and startling light burst upon the mysterious, bewildering affair. ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... useless learning, tutored in a philosophy which demands age and experience for its perfect comprehension; of what use can all this Talmud delving be to you, when once life summons you to more practical duties? And yet how much better this training, confusing and bewildering though it be, than the absolute ignorance, the unchecked illiteracy of ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... a grave smile, amusing himself by bewildering and teasing these pretty fools. In the demi-monde he adopted a manner and style entirely his own, using grotesque phrases, launching the most ridiculous paradoxes or atrocious impertinences under cover of the ambiguity of his ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... on islands, enchanted islands, half-transparent with the prismatic lights of precious stones, of amethysts and emeralds. Odours of bewildering fragrance rose from the rounded shores; some of these islands showered on us a rain of roses and valley lilies; from others birds darted up, with ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... then, the Montauk was lying at a single anchor, not less than a league from the land, in a flat calm, with her three topsails loose, the courses in the brails, and with all those signs of preparation about her that are so bewildering to landsmen, but which seamen comprehend as clearly as words. The captain had no other business there than to take on board the wayfarers, and to renew his supply of fresh meat and vegetables; things of so familiar import on shore as to be seldom thought ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... almost impossible to tell, as everything is simply bewildering: in about five years from now I shall know how I felt; but at present I feel nothing but discomfort; I hate foreign countries and foreign people, and am finding more every day how hopelessly insular I am: because of course, under the circumstances, ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... spoken.' Thus said Y[a]jnavalkya. Then said M[a]itrey[i]: 'Truly my Lord has bewildered me in saying that after death there is no more consciousness.' And Y[a]jnavalkya said: 'I say nothing bewildering, but what suffices for understanding. For where there is as it were duality (dv[a]itam), there one sees, smells, hears, addresses, notices, knows another; but when all the universe has become mere ego, with what should one smell, ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... to worry me—and the worst is yet to come," replied Helen. Then she told Bo how complicated and bewildering was the management of a big ranch—when the owner was ill, testy, defective in memory, and hard as steel—when he had hoards of gold and notes, but could not or would not remember his obligations—when the neighbor ranchers had just claims—when cowboys and sheep-herders ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... are almost bewildering to read. From one point of view they seem those of a district visitor; from another, they look like the formless jottings of an artist in the picturesque. More than one woman, on whom I tried the experiment, immediately claimed the writer for a fellow-woman. More than one ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... called upon to decide the infinitely delicate problems of the place, powers, and composition of a Second Chamber in our governing system, the task proved as bewildering as it was unappetizing. Any nation which regarded its Constitution as a vital and familiar instrument would have heavily resented so gross an infraction of it as the Lords perpetrated in rejecting the 1909 Budget. But our own electorate, so far from punishing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... woodsman, utterly unused to the ways of the sea, the next half-hour was a bewildering melee of hurrying, sweating toil, with low-spoken orders and half-caught oaths and the glimmer of a dying fire over all the scene. He was rowed to the sloop with the first boatload and there Job Howland set him to work ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... put on like a pad or bolster, from the bump of benevolence, all over that and everything else gentle and beautiful, down to the bend of her neck; and her dress suggested always some one simple idea which you could trace through it, in its harmony, at a glance; not complex and bewildering and fatiguing with its many parts and folds and festoonings and the garnishings of every one of these. She looked more as young women used to look before it took a lady with her dressmaker seven toilsome days ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... may also have been used by smugglers of later date; but for its origin we must go farther back, and perhaps it takes us to the dim days when race was struggling with race on this far western limit of land. There are so many prehistoric relics near as to be almost bewildering, and this is surely not the place in which to discourse learnedly of them all; besides which, the utmost learning does little but reveal our dense ignorance of their real significance. Troove belonged to the ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... was a picture to see. His bow flew like lightning. His long fingers drummed and slid along the strings of the violin with bewildering swiftness. The little instrument jetted and effervesced its melody. The continuous and resounding noise poured out of it in tuneful bubbles. The air was filled with tinkling fragments of sound. The Lad's body swayed to and fro. His face glowed. His eyes flashed. The sweat stood in drops ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... than melody of brook or bird, Keener than any winds that breathe or blow; A magic music out of memory stirred, A strain that charms my heart to overflow With such vast yearning that my eyes are blurred. Oh, song of dreams, that I no more shall know! Bewildering carol without spoken word! Faint as a stream's voice murmuring under snow, Sad as a love forevermore deferred, Song of the arrow from the Master's bow, Sung in Floridian vales ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... pumice stone and cinders, the remains of burning mountains, and granite sand, and layers of different coloured clay, and cornelian, and agate, and jasper-like pebbles; these, with the various animals that graze or prowl among them, and the rolling river, and a bright blue sky, have afforded me bewildering delight. Some of the hunters and trappers believe that the great valley of the Missouri was once level with the tops of the table hills, and that the earth has been washed away by the river, and other causes; but the subject is involved in much doubt. It has ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... there are many sculptured grave-covers within the church. Many of the stones used in the building have evidently been brought from the great Wall, or probably from the Roman station of Borcovicus, some six or seven miles to the north; and what a rush of bewildering fancies crowds upon one's mind on first discovering that the font was ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... labours of the industrious Bee, we must repair to her workshop during the latter half of May. Then, but at a respectful distance, if, as novices, we are afraid of being stung, we may contemplate, in all its bewildering activity, the tumultuous, buzzing swarm, busied with the building and the provisioning ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... pearl oysters, he believed the island to be loaded with pearls and precious stones; when he saw a scrap of tinsel or bright metal adorning a native, he argued that there was a gold mine close at hand. And so he went on in an increasing whirl of bewildering enchantment from anchorage to anchorage and from island to island, always being led on by that yellow will o'-the-wisp, gold, and always believing that the wealth of the Orient would be his on the morrow. As he coasted along towards the west he entered the river ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... sprays. A saccharine, sticky substance, not unlike honey-dew, may often be found in the hollows of the immense petals, in search of which large black ants make pilgrimages from the root to the top of the largest tulip-trees, patiently toiling for two or three hours over the rough bark, among the bewildering wrinkles of which it is, a wonder how the way is kept with such unerring certainty. I have calculated that in making such a journey the ant does what is equivalent to a man's pedestrian tour from New York City to the Adirondacks by the roughest route, and all for a smack of wild ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... that of capitalization, though I have been chary of alterations in the case of old-spelling texts. This applies to English works. I have found it necessary myself to modernize to some extent the spelling of the quotations from early Italian in order to render it less bewildering to readers who may possibly, like myself, have no very profound knowledge of the antiquities of that tongue. I have been as sparing as possible, however, and trust I may have committed no enormities to shock Romance scholars. Lastly, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... be guilty of would never be shaped into thought, for at this moment down came a dainty little slipper, with a dainty little rosette, from the tree above, plump on to his sketch, and a violent start and a glance upward revealed a bewildering little pink-stockinged foot, which was the daintiest ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... "Stand back, bewildering politics! I've placed my fences round; Pass on, with all your party tricks, Nor tread my holy ground. Stand back—I'm weary of your talk, Your squabbles, and your hate: You cannot enter in this walk— I've ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... intend breaking through that tangle of trees, I hope, Polly!" cried Barbara, who had never seen such a bewildering growth of forest ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... battalion had been practically wiped out of existence in the third year of the war, and after a peaceful month in a north country hospital, near an aerodrome, the call of the air was too much for him—he joined the cheerful band of flying men, and soon filled his letters to Cecilia with a bewildering mixture of technicalities and aviation slang that left her gasping. But he got his wings in a very short time, and she was prouder of him than ever—and more than ever desperately afraid ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... last push of the pole from the man behind me, when he had no more breath in his body, that saved us from being whirled round and carried back. Before one gets used to it, the sensation of struggling up a river where it descends a rocky channel at a rather steep gradient is a little bewildering. The flash of the water dazzles, and its rapid movement makes one giddy. There is no excitement, however, so exhilarating as that which comes of a hard battle with one of the forces of nature, especially when nature does not get the best of it. This tug-of-war over, ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... advanced guard as they came confusedly to a halt, and almost at the same instant a more ominous sound, as of galloping horses in the path before us. The moonlight outside the woods gave that dimness of atmosphere within which is more bewildering than darkness, because the eyes cannot adapt themselves to it so well. Yet I fancied, and others aver, that they saw the leader of an approaching party, mounted on a white horse and reining up in the pathway; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... you—all day!" Truedale admitted, with truth but indiscretion. And then he noted, as he had before, the strange impression the girl gave of having been blown upon the scene. The pretty, soft hair resting on the cheek in a bewildering curve; the large, dreamy eyes and black lashes; the close clinging of her shabby costume, as if wrapped about her slim body by the playful gale that had wafted her along; all held ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... this at once absorbed and distracted the attention of the artists of the early Renaissance; and while they studied, copied, and calculated, another thought began to haunt them, another eager desire began to pursue them: by the side of Nature, the manifold, the baffling, the bewildering, there rose up before them another divinity, another sphinx, mysterious in its very simplicity and ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... me the gentlest little note of dismissal from Sylvia. Her duty to her father, and—my ideas seemed too much for her peace of mind; so bewildering. "I am no politician, you know; and truth to tell, these matters which seem so much to you that you would have them drive religion from me, they seem to me so infinitely ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... best, the gigolos all agreed, and they paid well, though they talked too much. Gedeon Gore was a favourite among them. They thought he was so foreign looking, and kind of sad and stern and everything. His French, fluent, colloquial, and bewildering, awed them. They would attempt to speak to him in halting and hackneyed phrases acquired during three years at Miss Pence's Select School at Hastings-on-the-Hudson. At the cost of about a thousand dollars a word they ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... the boulders towards the thickest spray, which soon became so weighty as to cause us to stagger under its shock. For the most part nothing could be seen; we were in the midst of bewildering tumult, lashed by the water, which sounded at times like the cracking of innumerable whips. Underneath this was the deep resonant roar of the cataract. I tried to shield my eyes with my hands, and look upwards; ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... old or new, and either of fine cotton, merino, serge, or other wool material, or of silk. The ordinary "silk-rag portiere" is not a very attractive hanging, being somewhat akin to the crazy quilt, and made, as is that bewildering production, from a collection of ribbons and silk pieces of all colours and qualities, cut and sewed together in a haphazard way, without any arrangement of colour or thought of effect, and sent to the weaver with a vague idea of getting something of worth from valueless ...
— How to make rugs • Candace Wheeler
... standing on the floor of the Salle de Conde. A large hall, a blaze of lamps, a bewildering flutter of fans and floating robes, strains of music, columns of gay promenaders, a long row of turbaned mothers lining either wall, gentlemen of the portlier sort filling the recesses of the windows, ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... is not easy to write, and for two reasons: it is the history of a secret Order, much of whose lore is not to be written, and it covers a bewildering stretch of time, asking that the contents of innumerable volumes—many of them huge, disjointed, and difficult to digest—be compact within a small space. Nevertheless, if it has required a prodigious ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... wonderful land of rosy skies, but I was not happy, as I had thought I should be. My long travel and the bewildering sights had exhausted me. I fell asleep, heaving deep, tired sobs. My tears were left to dry themselves in streaks, because neither my aunt nor my mother was near ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... lose my way last night, miss," said Walker. "Them backstairs is bewildering; but I thought to myself, I'll be even with them somehow, so I just tied my handkerchief on a table-leg in the passage as I went down, and counted the doors, and when I came up and saw my handkerchief I knew I was all right. The head housemaid came up-stairs with ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... story, followed the retiring swords of Rome. Now, after nearly forty years of uttermost neighbourliness, the Orange Free State, with machine gun and mauser hurls back the gift once so reluctantly accepted, and forces us to recall what now they still more reluctantly surrender. How bewildering are ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... now sat morning and evening, in order to examine Oates, whose evidence proved untrustworthy and contradictory to a bewildering degree. When it was pointed out to him the five letters, supposed to come from men of education, contained ill-spelling, bad grammar, and other faults, he, with much effrontery, declared it was a common artifice among the Jesuits to write ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... La Mare is a sunlight effect in the forest of Fontainebnleau. Dupre has seven to his account, several of great tonal beauty. The one Fortuny is an elaborate etching of his Anchorite. The Josef Israels are strong. Jacque pigs and sheep; Klinkenberg's view of the Binnenhof; Mancini's bewildering chromatic blurs and sensuously rich gamut, and seventeen in number. This painter is seldom encountered in America. He should be better known; while his ideas are not particularly significant he is colourist for colour's sake, as was Monticelli. The three brothers Maris, Jakob, Willem, and ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... to the inhabitants of an old-established unity like Great Britain or France. At least five different kinds of money, for instance, were in use in the different States of the Confederation, and, as stamp-collectors know, the postal system was bewildering in its complexity. More important was the deep gulf between different parts of the country due to religious divisions. The Reformation, which left England with a National Church, left Germany hopelessly divided; and the division between the Protestants in the north ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... who rode often in those days to the very rim of the Basin, there to search the wild, wide land with straining eyes for signs of her friends, the white glare of the camps was lost in the bewildering maze of color. The columns, clouds and spirals of dust— save perhaps from a near supply wagon coming in or passing out— could not be distinguished from the whirling dust-devils that danced always over the hot plains. The toiling pigmy dots of the little army were far beyond her vision's ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... haz lateli been st[p]did with great s[p]kses bei Mr. Ellis and Mr. Sweet. Ei m[p]st refer tu their buks "On Erli Inglish Pron[p]nsiashon," and "On the Histori ov Inglish Soundz," hwich kontain a welth ov il[p]strashon, almost bewildering. And even after Inglish reachez the period ov printing, the konfiuzhon iz bei no meanz terminated; on the kontrari, for a teim it iz greater than ever. Hou this kame tu pas haz been wel il[p]strated bei Mr. Marsh in hiz ekselent "Lektiurz on the Inglish Langwej," p. 687, seq.(69) Hwot we ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... similarity of our names confused us in our enemies' minds, who grossly mistook us for one and the same person: which not only humiliated us as artists but ended in positive inconvenience. At Sabugal, in April last, after a bewildering comedy of errors, the Duke of Ragusa captured my kinsman here, and held him to account for some escapade of mine, of which, as a matter of fact, he had no knowledge whatever. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... trappings of gold, and looking like newly-risen clouds, throwing down steeds, crushed them with their own legs. And some elephants struck on their frontal globes and flanks, and mangled by means of lances, shrieked aloud in great agony. And many huge elephants, in the bewildering of the melee, crushing steeds with their riders, threw them down. And some elephants, overthrowing with the points of their tusks, steeds with their riders, wandered, crushing cars with their standards. And some huge ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that has been done, Or say that nought is done amiss; For who the dangerous path can shun In such bewildering world as this? But love can every fault forgive, Or with a tender look reprove; And now let nought in memory live, But that we meet, and ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... colors of the spectrum, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. But this is not a very serviceable classification, since the average eye can distinguish about 35,000 color effects. It is also somewhat bewildering to find that all these colors seem to be produced from the four fundamental hues, red, green, yellow, and blue, plus the various tints. These four, combined in varying proportions and with different degrees of light (i.e., different shades of gray), yield all ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... he marked the top of the mountain, and aimed as straight as he could for its side, before plunging again into the bewildering maze of trees, whose wide-spreading foliage made all beneath a ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... to see if these hints respecting his pecuniary status did not impress her profoundly. Then he continued, "Well, I was about stating-Well, where was I?" he said, with a puzzled look of regret, as though he had lost, or was about to lose, some cherished remark, so bewildering had been the thought in reference to his money matters, ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... clearing in front was blotted out, and only the tree-tops, black as rugged hills one behind the other, stood out against the heavy purple of the circlet of sky above. As the evening deepened the quaintest noises began on every hand—noises so strange and bewildering that as I cowered down with my teeth chattering, and stared hard into the impenetrable, they could be likened to nothing but the crying of all the souls of dead things since the beginning. Never was there such an infernal chorus ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... his best for the Government, some in connection with the new Ministry, some with the Admiralty, some with the War Office. As for the leading firms of the city, the record of growth, of a mounting energy by day and night, was nothing short of bewildering. Take these few impressions of a long day, as ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the vehicles on both sides; still, everything was peaceable and well-conducted. At the Elephant and Castle a new mass joined in the rear of those who, walking eight abreast, and followed the train from the place of departure, and on reaching Newington Church the appearance of the masses was most bewildering. Proceeding along the Kennington Road the common was reached at half-past eleven o'clock. Here had already assembled the Irish confederalists, and the various bodies of the trades of London, who had intimated their intention of joining in the demonstration. These had taken their ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Dutch and Indian past of the Mohawk Valley, but here he was foiled by the immense ignorance of his wife, who, as a true American woman, knew nothing of the history of her own country, and less than nothing of the barbarous regions beyond the borders of her native province. She proved a bewildering labyrinth of error concerning the events which Basil mentioned; and she had never even heard of the massacres by the French and Indians at Schenectady, which he in his boyhood had known so vividly that he was scalped every night in his dreams, and woke up in the morning ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... with everything that could illustrate the gifts and virtues of the men in whose honor they were made. They contained rare manuscripts, rare pictures, autograph comments and notes, a bewildering variety of records,—memorabilia which were above price. Poets wrote humorous verse, and artists who justly held their time as too precious to permit of their working for love decorated the pages of the Bibliotaph's scrap-books. One does ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... which was pretty good work, in the opinions of our girls. If any name could be given to the objections they all secretly felt for Judy's new friend, it was that she was so excessively modern. She was a product of New York City; and so thoroughly up to date was this bewildering young person regarding topics of the day, from fashions and beauty remedies to international politics, that she fairly took the breath away even of such advanced persons ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... educated than the children of their parents' workmen; sedentary, luxurious, full of petty vanity, gossip, and intrigue, without work, without purpose, except that of getting married to any one who will ask them—bewildering brain and heart with novels, which, after all, one hardly grudges them; for what other means have they of learning that there is any fairer, nobler life possible, at least on earth, than that of the sordid money-getting, often the sordid puffery and adulteration, which ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... moved on steadily up the stream, her sturdy oarsmen pulling at a measured stroke through the bewildering fog. In this way the boat was kept on up the river until past midnight, a glimpse of the land being caught here and there, an assurance to Hanz that they were not far out at sea. Indeed, Hanz began to get somewhat uneasy, and to wish himself back with Angeline in the little house. As this expedition, ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... thoughts passing through the same human minds from year to year and century to century, just as the same clouds float across the same blue sky. The clouds are born in the sky, and the thoughts are born in the brain, and they both end in tears and re-arise in blind, bewildering mist, and this is the beginning and end of thoughts and clouds. They arise out of the blue; they overshadow and break into storms and tears, then they are drawn up into the blue again, and ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... conductor had not befriended her, she would probably have found herself at Hampstead or Chelsea, for London busses are as bewildering as London streets. Thanks to this amiable man, who evidently felt that the stranger in his gates needed all his care, the old lady safely reached the Elephant and Castle, and was dismissed with a moss rose-bud from the lips of her friend, a reassuring pat on the shoulder, and a paternal ''Ere yer ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... any soldiers will ever wear these remarkable coats—the most bewildering combination of brilliant, intense reds, greens, yellows, and blues in big flowers meandering over as vivid grounds; and as no table-cover was large enough to make a coat, the sleeves of each were of a different color and pattern. However, ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... communicate to me any memories of The Leader which may aid in understanding this most bewildering period of our history, I assure you that it will be appreciated by myself, by the authorities who wish the investigation made, and I ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... downstairs; and Ethel, who, while arranging her properties in her new room, had full leisure to lay out before herself the duties that had devolved on her and to grapple with them. She recalled the many counsels that she had received from Flora, and they sounded so bewildering that she wished it had been Conic sections, and then she looked at a Hebrew grammar that Norman had given her, and gave a sigh as she slipped it into the shelf of the seldom used. She looked about ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... old women mourned across the village shopboards of the evil days which were come or coming; while every kind of strangest superstition, fairy stories and witch stories, stories of saints and stories of devils, were woven in and out and to and fro, like quaint, bewildering arabesques, in the tissue ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... home," said Mrs. Peterkin, "I shall not wish to come again. It seems like being on the stage, sitting in a booth, and it is so bewildering, Elizabeth Eliza not knowing who she is, and going round ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... In regard to one's own history, it is still more evidently true that the one way to apprehend God's purposes in it is to keep in close friendship with Him. Then we shall see the meaning of the else bewildering whirl of events, and be able to say, 'He that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God.' But the reason assigned for intrusting Abraham with the knowledge of God's purpose is to be noted. It was because of his place as the medium of blessing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... the come to the conclusion that you have no other remedy than non-co-operation for the conservation of Islam and the honour of India, you will accept that remedy. I ask you not to be confused by so many bewildering issues that are placed before you, nor to be shaken from your purpose because you see divided counsels amongst your leaders. This is one of the necessary limitations of any spiritual or any other struggle that has ever been ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... comprehensive form the Physiology of the Human Voice. I have, as far as possible, discarded all scientific terms, and it has been my aim to treat my subject in so simple and direct a manner as really to enlighten my readers instead of bewildering them. A treatise like this can, under no circumstances, be light reading; and I ask those who are truly anxious for information to give me patient study, accompanied by careful reference to the diagrams. ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... Beginnings: the Conservative Ascendancy, 1861-1876.*—In Italy, as in France, political parties are numerous and their constituencies and programmes are subject to rapid and bewildering fluctuation. In the earliest days of the kingdom party lines were not sharply drawn. In the parliament elected in January, 1861, the supporters of Cavour numbered 407, while the strength of the opposition was but 36. After the death ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... and with bewildering rapidity again changed. "Bravo!" he cried, laughing heartily. "You are marrying the son, you mean, not the ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... restrained, something bred. Girlie did not know why the white tulle frock, absolutely plain, shamed her elaborate red satin with its exaggerated lines. But she did know. She did not know why Sheila's subtle beauty was greater than her obvious own. But she did know. And so great and bewildering a fear did this knowledge give her that, for an instant, ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... odious by their black arts to princes and people, were slain or driven out,—fifteen centuries and more,— Asirvadam the Brahmin has been selfish, wicked, and mischievously busy,—corrupting the hearts, bewildering the minds, betraying the hopes, exhausting the moral and physical strength of the Hindoos. He has taught them the foolish tumult of the Hooly, the fanatical ferocities of the Yajna, the unwhisperable obscenities of the Saktis, the fierce and ruinous extravagances of the Doorga Pooja, the mutilating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... citadel of the real business was the huge marble soda fountain, with its bewildering array of gaudy silver-plated faucets. Above the rows of bottled "bitters," the fiery drink of the temperance frauds, high over the three score jars of "nervines" and pick-me-up preparations, towered a life-size marble statue of Hygeia, glowing ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... explanation entirely puzzled the Baron. The first statement, though eminently satisfactory, was also a little bewildering. ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... times since from the same cause. All over the parish this half-breed element shows its presence by the extraordinary and unusual coarseness of manner. The true English rustic is always civil, however rough, and will not offend you with anything unspeakable, so that at first it is quite bewildering to meet with such behaviour in the midst of green lanes. This is the explanation—the gipsy taint. Instead of the growing population obliterating the gipsy, the gipsy has saturated the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... to eighteen were assembled, comparing holiday experiences, examining each other's tennis rackets or hockey sticks, passing jokes, or eagerly enquiring for news on various class topics. To Patty it seemed almost bewildering to see so many school-fellows, and she wondered whether it would ever become possible to learn to distinguish their various faces, and to call each one ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... "Ach, Stepan Trofimovitch, it's bewildering enough without you. You might at least spare me.... Please ring that bell there, near you, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and the South from destruction. I speak of the Simon-pure Democrats, alias Copperheads, such as the Woods, the Seymours, the Vallandighams, the Coxes, the Biddles, &c. The Sewards and the Weeds are ready for a compromise. The masses of the people, staggered by all this bewildering turmoil and impure factiousness, are nevertheless, stubbornly determined to persevere and to succeed ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... now, the lapse of a few short, rapid hours would behold a tenement in ruins, and a soul set free. Another day-break, and he would know the untried and unimaginable realities of a shoreless eternity, from whose everlasting portals men have so often shrunk back appalled. Oh, what a bewildering rush of thoughts crowded upon his mind. He stood by the prison-window, through whose iron bars came trooping the silent moonbeams, lighting up his countenance, ghastly and contracted with anguish, then flashing along the darkness, rested upon the floor in mellow ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... very cruel to herself in those days, telling herself that it would be folly to love a young man of twenty, so far apart from her socially in the first place; and her behavior to him was a bewildering mixture of familiarity and capricious fits of pride arising from her fears and scruples. She was sometimes a lofty patroness, sometimes she was tender and flattered him. At first, while he was overawed by her rank, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... and she watched the straining curves of canvas and line of half-submerged hull. It rose with streaming bows, swung high above the sea, sank again, and vanished with bewildering suddenness into a belt of driving fog. She was not sure that there had been any peril, but it was certainly over now, and she was rather puzzled by her sensations when Wyllard had held her shoulder. For one thing, she had felt ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... happened to be out on one of her many pilgrimages to town, Bessie took me up to her room in a half-frightened way, as if doing something that she was afraid was terribly improper, and showed me a bewildering profusion of these things, neatly tucked away in bureau drawers. I laughed outright, and asked her who was to see all that finery. She was vexed and bit her lip, and I was sorry and voted myself a brute. From ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous
... conference followed Hero Giles down a short corridor, through a couple of doors and into a chamber where a huge disc of crystal stood on edge fixed upon an axis above a bewildering array ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... her to swim. Then, in the evenings, sometimes the doctor would take them for a sail, and she would sit wondering at the clever way in which Marjory carried out his orders, pulling this rope, slackening the other. It all seemed most bewildering to Blanche, and she admired her capable friend the more. These holidays were full of delight. Lesson hours would come again ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... ancient town of Lescar (140-1/2 miles)—of which we shall have more to say later—the train is soon drawn up in the station of Pau, and directly the traveller shows his face outside, he is hailed by the "cochers" from the various hotels in a bewildering chorus. This is the same, more or less, at every French town where English people congregate, and Pau only inclines, if ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... he answered quickly; "magical, bewildering, magnificent! Who in the world wrought ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gone before me knew what love was, none that come after me will ever know what happiness is. I float in a gorgeous cloud land, a boundless firmament of enchanted and bewildering ecstasy!" ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Adam of Mabuse, painted by that wayward genius to enable him to get out of the prison where his creditors had kept him so long. The figure presented such fulness and force of reality that Nicolas Poussin began to comprehend the meaning of the bewildering talk of the old man. The latter looked at the picture with a satisfied but not enthusiastic manner, which seemed to say, "I have done ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... to throw herself on the sunlit woolly blankets of her bed and hug them, to think and think of the bewildering present happiness, to dream of the future, but she could not lie or sit still, nor keep her mind from grasping at actualities and possibilities of this place, nor her hands from ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey |
