"Disentangle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stood dismayed at the sight of the terrible skein. If she did but turn it over to see where to begin, she broke a thousand threads, and not one could she disentangle. At last she threw it into the ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... against this festering darkness. It was a condition of affairs clamouring for remedies, but there was an immense amount of indifference and prejudice to be overcome before any remedies were possible. Perhaps some day some industrious and lucid historian will disentangle all the muddle of impulses and antagonisms, the commercialism, utilitarianism, obstinate conservatism, humanitarian enthusiasm, out of which our present educational organisation arose. I have long since come to believe it necessary ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... rare to find any of the class of patients I have described so free from the influence of their habitual surroundings as to make it easy to treat them in their own homes. It is needful to disentangle them from the meshes of old habits and to remove them from contact with those who have been the willing slaves of their caprices. I have often made the effort to treat them where they have lived and to isolate them there, but I have ...
— Fat and Blood - An Essay on the Treatment of Certain Forms of Neurasthenia and Hysteria • S. Weir Mitchell
... mine;—and for the future I shall have less and less chance against him. What shall we ever get out of her as a married woman? What would Mark Winnington—to whom she will give herself, body and soul,—allow us to get out of her? Better break with her now, and disentangle ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rheums, and colds, and distillations, is nothing else but an epidemical looseness to which that little commonwealth is very subject from the climate it lies under. Farther, that nothing less than a violent heat can disentangle these creatures from their hamated station in life; or give them vigour and humour, to imprint the marks of their little teeth. That if the morsure be hexagonal, it produces poetry; the circular gives eloquence. If the bite hath been ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... world at large, this idea of beneficent pleasure is true as between the sweethearts. To do good and communicate is the lover's grand intention. It is the happiness of the other that makes his own most intense gratification. It is not possible to disentangle the different emotions, the pride, humility, pity, and passion, which are excited by a look of happy love or an unexpected caress. To make one's self beautiful, to dress the hair, to excel in talk, to do anything and all things that puff out the character and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conceive with what untiring vigilant care Heaven will seek to disentangle the flower from the weed?—how (let me drop inadequate metaphor)—how Heaven will select for its warning chastisements that very error which the man has so blent with his virtues that he holds it a virtue itself?—how, gradually, slowly, pertinaciously, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them all, at a distance of six thousand miles, playing in the streets of Bagdad, he distinguishes the peculiar steps of the child Aladdin. Through this mighty labyrinth of sounds, which Archimedes, aided by his arenarius, could not sum or disentangle, one solitary infant's feet are distinctly recognized on the banks of the Tigris, distant by four hundred and forty days' march of an army or a caravan. These feet, these steps, the sorcerer knows, and challenges in his heart as the feet, as the steps ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... quite convinced that for that sort of study, seeing not reading is required. That would be true enough if every traveller were honest, if he only said what he saw and believed, and if truth were not tinged with false colours from his own eyes. What must it be when we have to disentangle the truth from the web of lies ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... amendment providing that the "States lately in insurrection" should be restored and relieved of military rule upon their ratification of the Constitutional Amendment and adoption of impartial suffrage. In order to "disentangle what seemed so much entangled," it was moved that the bill be recommitted to the Judiciary Committee, with instructions to report back immediately the amendment of Messrs. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Dennis with a very extraordinary caricature, which Steele, in one of his papers of "The Theatre," has given of Dennis. I shall, however, disentangle the threads, and pick out what I consider not to be caricature, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... finds it difficult to disentangle the varied accounts. Who was on the field and who was not, what part was taken by each, who was in command at this point and who there, and the total of men engaged, all either were or still are disputed points. It seems to be beyond doubt, however, that Prescott from ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... authority of Richelieu; but he was nevertheless so well aware of his own incapacity, that the idea of being thus abandoned by a minister whose grasp of intellect and subtle policy had complicated the affairs of government until he was compelled to admit his own utter powerlessness to disentangle the involved and intricate mesh, terrified him beyond expression; nor was Marie de Medicis, whom he hastened to summon on perceiving the apparently resolute position assumed by Richelieu, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... attempt,—vulgarized by so many a "fashionable novelist," and in which no poet has succeeded yet,—to disentangle from that turmoil its elements of romance and of greatness; to enter that realm of emotion where Nature's aspects become the scarcely noted accessory of vicissitudes that transcend her own; to trace the passion or the anguish which whirl along some lurid ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... remained. But to get it I had to disentangle Algernon first, and I had no hand available. There was only one thing to do. I put the block of ice down on the pavement, unwrapped the lobster, put the lobster temporarily in my pocket, spread its Daily Mail out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... these assemblies the villager broods over what he has just heard. He sees his grievances no longer singly as before, but in mass, and coupled with the enormity of evils under which his fellows suffer. Besides this, they begin to disentangle the causes of their misery: the King is good—why then do his collectors take so much of our money? This or that canon or nobleman is not unkind—why then do they make us pay in their place?—Imagine that a sudden gleam of reason should allow a beast of burden ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... putting on the bonnet, if that may be called a bonnet which was more like a pad to carry loads on, she caught it in her hair which grew luxuriantly, and could not immediately disentangle it. Good Mrs Brown whipped out a large pair of scissors, and fell into an ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... of races much more advanced than themselves in material culture, and steeped in highly developed polytheistic Animism. According to their history, the Israelites 'went a-whoring' incorrigibly after strange gods. It is impossible, perhaps, to disentangle the ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... diskreta. Discretion singardemo, diskreto. Discriminate distingi. Discursive tro skribema. Discuss diskuti. Discussion diskutado. Disdain malsxati. Disease malsano—ego. Disembark elsxipigxi. Disengage liberigi. Disentangle liberigi. Disfavour malfavoro. Disgrace malhonori. Disguise alivesti. Disgust nauxzi. Dish plado. Dishcloth telertuko. Dishearten malkuragxigi. Dishonest malhonesta. Dishonesty malhonesteco. Dishonour malhonori. Dishonourable malhonora. Disillusion ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... more common quality than diligence. Those who saw that they must employ conjecture to a certain degree, were willing to indulge it a little further. Had the authour published his own works, we should have sat quietly down to disentangle his intricacies, and clear his obscurities; but now we tear what we cannot loose, and eject what we happen not ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of / thought and diction. This latter fault however had insinuated itself / into my Religious Musings with such intricacy of union, that sometimes / I have omitted to disentangle the weed from the fear of snapping the / flower. A third and heavier accusation has been brought against me, that / of obscurity; but not, I think, with equal justice. An Author is obscure / when his conceptions are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect, / or unappropriate, or ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... orbit). Before that date Uranus had been hurried along, and after that date it had been retarded, by the pull of Neptune, and thus the observed discrepancies from its computed place were produced. The problem was first to disentangle the outstanding perturbations from those which would be caused by Jupiter and Saturn and all other known causes, and then to assign the place of an outer planet able to produce precisely those perturbations ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... phrases the better to disentangle the different trains of thought, I had leisure to examine behind my spectacles the entire hall. I can truly say that not the faintest smile could be seen on any lips. On the contrary, even the freshest faces wore an expression ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... the huge claws of the monstrous crab had been carefully tied with a couple of bits of fishing line, it was quite a task to disentangle the creature, which, in its eagerness to seize the bait, had passed the line round and under its curious armoured joints, and in its struggles to escape, ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... things that Benham said during these last conversations. The papers fitted in with his memories of their long talks like text with commentary; so much of Benham's talk had repeated the private writings in which he had first digested his ideas that it was presently almost impossible to disentangle what had been said and understood at Johannesburg from the fuller statement of those patched and corrected manuscripts. The two things merged in White's mind as he read. The written text took upon itself a resonance of Benham's voice; it eked out the ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... unexecuted, and projects suspended in deliberation. But when a design has ended in miscarriage or success, when every eye, and every ear, is witness to general discontent, or general satisfaction, it is then a proper time to disentangle confusion, and illustrate obscurity; to show by what causes every event was produced, and in what effects it is likely to terminate; to lay down, with distinct particularity, what rumour always huddles in general exclamations, or perplexes by undigested ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... the old salt who had for the past hour been experimenting over the side, leaned down the main cabin hatch and woke the port watch. Behind him on the deck a queer marine creature squirmed in a pool of water and sought vainly to disentangle itself from the apparatus that had ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... sport, even as in India he would write of caste, as in America he would note the undue emphasis laid upon politics. In Germany, wherever he turns, whether it be to look at the army, to inquire about the navy, to study the constitution, or to disentangle the web of present-day political strife; to read the figures of commercial and industrial progress, or the results of social legislation; to look on at the Germans at play during their yachting week at Kiel, or their rowing contests at Frankfort, he finds himself face ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... up out of humor. Frowning and gloomy, he clears his throat angrily and looks from under his brows at Yasha who, supporting a bullock with his powerful shoulder and slightly lifting it, is trying to disentangle its leg. ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... thousand tongues, To tell of joy and to inspire it. Who Could hear such concert, and not join in chorus? Not I;—sometimes entranced, I seem'd to float Upon a buoyant sea of sounds: again With curious ear I tried to disentangle The maze of voices, and with eye as nice To single out each minstrel, and pursue His little song through all its labyrinth, Till my soul enter'd into him, and felt Every vibration of his thrilling throat, Pulse of his heart, and flutter of his pinions. Often, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... beaches. They accepted our 6 inchers with a very good grace. Often one of our H.E. hundred pounders seemed to burst just where a field gun had been spotted:—and before our triumphant smiles had time to disentangle themselves from our faces, the beggars would open again. But the 15-inch shrapnel, with its 10,000 bullets, was a much more serious projectile. The Turks were not taking more than they could help. Several times we silenced a whole battery by one of these ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... in the land of its disciples. It is well, therefore, sometimes to withdraw a little from the dust and smoke of the battle, which, with us at least, announces the spread of this potentate's power, and to try to disentangle the real questions at issue in the struggle from the eternal complications produced by short-sighted politicians and popular issues. Looking at the policy and tendency of the reign of King Cotton, as hitherto developed and indicated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... comparison struck Charles Gould heavily. In his determined purpose he held the mine, and the indomitable bandit held the Campo by the same precarious tenure. They were equals before the lawlessness of the land. It was impossible to disentangle one's activity from its debasing contacts. A close-meshed net of crime and corruption lay upon the whole country. An immense and weary discouragement sealed his ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... but by a very intricate knot of gold cord. There appeared to be no end to this knot, and no beginning. Never was a knot so cunningly twisted, nor with so many ins and outs, which roguishly defied the skilfullest fingers to disentangle them. And yet, by the very difficulty that there was in it, Pandora was the more tempted to examine the knot, and just see how it was made. Two or three times, already, she had stooped over the box, and taken the knot between her thumb and forefinger, but without positively trying ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... Shakespearean drama must incorporate somewhere within its vast limits the personal thoughts and passions of its creator, even although they are for the most part absorbed past recognition in the mighty mass, and no critical chemistry can with confidence disentangle them. At any rate, there are in the plays many utterances—ethical utterances, or observations conceived in the spirit of "a natural philosopher"—which are repeated to much the same effect at different periods of the poet's career. These reiterated opinions frequently ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... potently influenced by the policy pursued at Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid, we must take a survey, wide but minute, sometimes to all appearance diffuse, yet in reality vitally related to the main theme. In order to simplify the narrative, I have sought to disentangle the strands of war policy and to follow them severally, connecting them, however, in the chapter entitled "Pitt as War Minister," which will sum up the results of these ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... and disentangle the clusters of fibres into even greater individualisation than existed when first picked, and to leave them in such condition that the subsequent operations can easily draw them out, and ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... seek to stand alone for economic life and for defence. They could not long succeed; they are too deeply implicated in one another's destinies. Even Britain with her vast extra-European territories could not hope to disentangle herself from the affairs of her near neighbors. America could do this, at any rate for some considerable time to come. True she has economic committals in Europe. She has loaned European governments and peoples some ten milliards of money. She is still lending her ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson
... armchair. But does our Arab believe in fact in Mohammed's sleeve? No. He makes efforts to believe; he says it is impossible, but that it is true; he believes what he does not believe. On the subject of this sleeve he forms in his head a chaos of ideas which he is afraid to disentangle; and this veritably is not ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... and large bouquets which the friendly people had brought down for me. There was so much noise that the boat's whistle, which the captain started, was no more than a forest-tree soaring slightly over those around it. As I tried to disentangle myself from those who encircled me I caught sight of the old gentleman of the poem—in appearance he was a smaller edition of the late Dr. Butler of Trinity; he was clearly nervous lest I should depart without his lines, which he extended towards me, written on the back of one of his visiting-cards. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... believe as being actually written by one character to another. The explanation of which is that this one is supposed to be sent to his wife by the new Vicar of Royd, himself a successful novelist, on a visit of inspection to his future parish. The efforts of Mrs. Grant, at home, to disentangle essential facts from the complications of the literary manner form as pleasant and human an introduction to a story as any I remember. The story itself is one highly characteristic of its author, Mr. ARCHIBALD MARSHALL, both in charm and truth to life, as also in one minor drawback, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... village where he is to be quartered, has not reached the end of his troubles. It rarely happens that either the squad or the section actually lodges in the place assigned to them, and this by reason of misunderstandings and cross purposes which tangle and disentangle themselves on the spot; and it is only after several quarter-hours of tribulation that each man is led to his actual ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... see that! I must see that!" cried Dolly, with all reserve and caution flown; "to see Capp'en Zeb in the arms of a Frenchman—yes, I declare, two have got him, if not three, and he puts his great back against the mast to disentangle it. Oh, what will he do next? He has knocked down two, in reply to excessive cordiality. What wonderful creatures Frenchmen are! How kind it is of you to show me this! But excuse me, Mr. Carne; there will be twenty people coming ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... without interrupting, or trying to help her disentangle her thought, of which he had in ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... whole extent of our language than any other man from its first formation. He hopes that, by comparing the works of Shakespeare with those of writers who lived at the same time, immediately preceded, or immediately followed him, he shall be able to ascertain his ambiguities, disentangle his intricacies, and recover the meaning of words now lost in the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... Thin Woman proceeded with this lesson it became at last so extremely complicated that she was brought to a stand by the knots, so she decided to resume their journey and disentangle her argument when the ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... crowd on the landing-stage before the steamer laid alongside and the cabmen and porters began shouting and calling, was enough to stupefy him, but he had made up his mind beforehand that nothing should disconcert him. It would have been difficult enough in any case to disentangle ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... another drawback. Some roses grew behind the hollyhocks, and her skirt was caught. She had felt a little pull at her skirt when she essayed a slight tentative motion. Therefore, in order to fly she could not merely slip away; she would have to make extra motions to disentangle her dress. She therefore remained perfectly still in the attitude of shrinking and flight. She thought that her only course until the man should wake and enter the house; then she could slip away. She had not much fear of being discovered ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... not necessary here to attempt to disentangle or explain away the numerous amours in which he was engaged through the greater part of his life. It is evident that Burns was a man of extremely passionate nature and fond of conviviality; and the misfortunes of his lot ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... many loads of wood had been dropped on the deck. Duncan jumped for the cabin. Weeks and the mate jumped the next second and the water sluiced down after them, put out the fire, and washed them, choking and wrestling, about on the cabin floor. Weeks was the first to disentangle himself, and he ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... of Eugene Morgan and of the Major; they seemed to be the same person for awhile, but he managed to disentangle them and even to understand why he had confused them. Long ago his grandfather had been the most striking figure of success in the town: "As rich as Major Amberson!" they used to say. Now it was Eugene. "If I had Eugene Morgan's ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... closely the phenomena of hereditary memory are related to those of individual memory: at this stage . . . it is practically impossible to disentangle the effects of hereditary memory from those ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... Farther or nearer on its orbit rolled, The immeasurable speed of light at last Should be reduced to measure? Could Newton dream When, through his prism, he broke the pure white shaft Into that rainbow band, how men should gather And disentangle ray by delicate ray The colours of the stars,—not only those That burn in heaven, but those that long since perished, Those vanished suns that eyes can still behold, The strange lost stars whose ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... of the smallest. It had been brought across country on a wagon. Some one had bought it at an auction for a lark; and a huge lark was its year on the waters of the Nibs River. The whole town took a sail in it by turns, always with one aft whose business it was to disentangle the rudder from the mass of seaweed which with brief intervals suspended progress, and all hands ready to get out and lift the steamer off when ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... was coming, though he did not know its name. Similarly, Dickens knew that the South African millionaire was coming, though he did not know the millionaire's name. Nobody does. His was not a type of mind to disentangle either the abstract truths touching the Socialist, nor the highly personal truth about the millionaire. He was a man of impressions; he has never been equalled in the art of conveying what a man looks like at first sight—and he simply felt the ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... a still more influential school seeks essential Christianity in the sphere of the ethical life. It also would disentangle religion from cosmology and formal philosophy. It studies the historic development of the Church, noting how element after element has been introduced into the simplicity of the gospel, and from all these it would turn back to the Bible itself. In a thorough-going ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... of Hereward has gathered round it such a mass of fiction, old and new, that it is hard to disentangle the few details of his real history. His descent and birth-place are uncertain; but he was assuredly a man of Lincolnshire, and assuredly not the son of Earl Leofric. For some unknown cause, he had been banished in the days of Edward or of Harold. He now ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... Holy Scripture about this land, we cannot afford to ignore and disregard. Nothing is easier than to discredit such a truth by raising the cry of Popery. It is one of the penalties which those have to pay who seek to disentangle the truth which He has in His Church revealed from the untruth which has ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... of kidnappers, the hero of some dreadful story that was never to be told, the mystery, the legend—behold he was there! Back from the unknown, dropped from the clouds, spewed up again from the bowels of the earth—a veritable god from the machine who in a single instant was to disentangle all the unexplained complications ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... my distress. He was unacquainted, however, with the full extent of it. He knew not by how many motives I was incited to retrieve the good opinion of Pleyel. He endeavored to console me. Some new event, he said, would occur to disentangle the maze. He did not question the influence of my eloquence, if I thought proper to exert it. Why not seek an interview with Pleyel, and exact from him a minute relation, in which something may be met with serving to destroy ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... then, we must be careful to distinguish the universal from the local and ephemeral element. The latter is indeed of great interest and value; but we shall tend to miss the really precious and permanent elements in their thought if we do not take pains to disentangle Thucydides the disillusioned Athenian patriot from Thucydides the scientific historian and psychologist, and Plato the aristocrat born out of due season from Plato the unrivalled student of human nature and of the permanent needs of ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... old, That, twining in his speckled breast, About the flowers disguised does fold, With wreaths of fame and interest. Ah, foolish man that wouldst debase with them And mortal glory, heaven's diadem! But thou who only couldst the serpent tame, Either his slippery knots at once untie, And disentangle all his winding snare, Or shatter too with him my curious frame,[142] And let these wither, that so he may die, Though set with skill, and chosen out with care; That they, while thou on both their spoils dost tread, May crown thy feet that ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... are looking at a landscape we think ourselves pleased; but it is only when it comes back upon us by the fire o' nights that we can disentangle the main charm from the thick of particulars. It is just so with what is lately past. It is too much loaded with detail to be distinct; and the canvas is too large for the eye to encompass. But this is no more the case when our recollections ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... discovery that the same claim was made for Alexander and Augustus. And I am not just now concerned with the credibility of the gospels as records of fact; for I am not acting as a detective, but turning our modern lights on to certain ideas and doctrines in them which disentangle themselves from the rest because they are flatly contrary to common practice, common sense, and common belief, and yet have, in the teeth of dogged incredulity and recalcitrance, produced an irresistible ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... early in the morning I lie in a drowsy sort of dream, trying to disentangle, one from the other, the various bird notes, trills, coos, croons, chirps, chirrups, and warbles. Suddenly there falls on the air a delicious, liquid, finished song; so pure, so mellow, so joyous, ...
— The Diary of a Goose Girl • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the Triple Alliance, the existence of which the King and the Government had expressly acknowledged after the outbreak of war, was still alive, Italian statesmen had long before engaged themselves so deeply with the Triple Entente that they could not disentangle themselves. There were indications of fluctuations in the Rome Cabinet as far back as December. To have two irons in the fire is always useful. Before this Italy had shown her predilection for extra dances. [Cheers and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to record what might happen. I auditioned it, but I can't disentangle it from what he told me. For example, in his words: Multiply distances by five, heights by ten, and slickness by twenty. And in the playback: Thirty chin-high ledges loaded with soft lard, and only finger holds and toe ...
— A Matter of Proportion • Anne Walker
... earnestly, "but must do so in my own words and trust to your intelligence to disentangle as I go along. He is a young author, and lives in a tiny house off Putney Heath somewhere. He writes humorous stories—quite a genre of his own: Pender—you must have heard the name—Felix Pender? Oh, the man had a great gift, and married on the strength of it; his future seemed assured. ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... wretched cablegram promised to upset everything, and he must look forward to spending the summer in trying to disentangle an involved business, instead of spending it with the girl of his heart. Perhaps, though, "badly involved" did not mean so very badly, and possibly he might get through with the hated business in time for the Norway ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... forwards. Oh! what a noise and a whirr rose afresh among the serpents. Thousands of heads were reared, and tongues were stretched out to sting the intruder to death, but happily for him their bodies were so closely entwined one in the other that they could not disentangle themselves quickly. Like lightning he seized a bit of bread, dipped it in the bowl, and put it in his mouth, then dashed away as if fire was pursuing him. On he flew as if a whole army of foes were at his heels, and ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... done now. It was twenty years ago that Roger bumped into his fate in that eddy of Broadway and I was as powerless as you are now to disentangle him and keep him for myself, which, selfishly enough, of course, I wanted terribly to do. You see, he was all I had, Roger, and I was hoping we would play the game out together. But—not to have known Margarita? Never to have watched that bending droop of ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... the most marked differences perceived; it is obvious that only the most simple laws of dependence could be ascertained—only those laws which, being uncomplicated with others, and not disturbed in their manifestations, required no niceties of observation to disentangle them. Whence it appears not only that in proportion as knowledge becomes quantitative do its previsions become complete as well as certain, but that until its assumption of a quantitative character it is necessarily confined to the most ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... felt by those who understand its secrets,' said Philip. 'I would not depreciate it; so you may hear me patiently, Guy. I only meant to warn you, that it is often the means of bringing persons into undesirable intimacies, from which they cannot disentangle themselves as easily as they ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the historical outline of the story; but if we look into Victor Hugo's "Histoire d'un Crime," and disentangle its facts from its hysterics, we may receive from his personal narrative a vivid idea of what passed in Paris from the night of Dec. 1, 1851, to the evening of December 4, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... relations of whose constituent parts are determined by certain laws to which we may, perhaps, make some approximation. We may do so, although their mutual actions and reactions are so complex and subtle that we can never hope to disentangle them with any approach to completeness. And one test of the legitimacy of our methods will be, that although we do not hope to reach any precise and definitely assignable law, we yet reach, or aim at reaching, results which, while wanting in precision, want ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... ragged cabmen, brandishing their reins and driving at full speed, overtook our sledge, and we laughed again. Next, Philip's whip got caught in the side of the vehicle, and the way in which he said, "Bother the thing!" as he drove to disentangle it almost killed us with mirth. Mimi looked displeased, and said that only silly people laughed for no reason at all, but Lubotshka—her face purple with suppressed merriment—needed but to give me a sly glance, and we again burst ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... been in operation since 1907, and the whole political circumstances of Finland have undergone so many striking changes, and so many new factors are at work that to disentangle particular causes and effects is an impossibility. But plainly the Finnish machinery gives a greater freedom to the elector than the Belgian system. The Finnish system in fact encourages the electors to arrange the candidates of a party in the order preferred by ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... escape. God alone knows what a load I was carrying on that day when I entered the boat. The storm came down on river, and covered the sky. In the midst of all fears I had a secret wish in my heart to be drowned, and so disentangle my life from the knot which I had tied it. I reached Mathurganj. There I heard the news which set me free. Your brother had married Hemangini. I cannot tell you with what joy and shame I heard it. I hastened on board the boat again. In that moment of self-revelation I ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... or the gates of material sentiency by which the soul's attribute of sensation feeds itself from the objective world; but they are so penetrated and percolated, through and through, by the other basic activities of the soul, that it is extremely difficult to disentangle from our impressions of sight, of sound, of touch, of taste, and of smell, those interwoven threads of reason, imagination and so forth which so profoundly modify and transmute, even in the art of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... vengeance. It is so easy to say "I'll cut that Gordian knot!" and then pack one's tooth-brush and start off unknotting, but it is quite another matter when one comes face to face with the problem and is met by the "buts" of those who have previously been essaying to disentangle it. ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... dreams so fantastic and irresolute that I cannot now disentangle them. I remember that I was standing beside the banks of the Neva. The river was rising, flinging on its course in the great tempestuous way that it always has during the first days of its release from the ice. The sky grew darker—the water rose. I sought ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... the look often seen when people are struggling, with introverted effort, to disentangle a thought which is either too high for quick discernment or ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... student curious in the lore of mankind and of nature—alert, sagacious, discriminating. He tells us, for example, that this legend of the visions and martyrdom of Saint Dodekanus, which he was the first to disentangle from its heterogeneous accretions, was vastly to his liking. Why? Because of its churchly flavour? Not so; but because he detected therein "truth and symbol. It is a tale of universal applicability; the type, as it were, of every great man's ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... them holds the pen; the one who contributes the least to the composition may contribute most of the thought; the writings which result are the joint product of both, and it must often be impossible to disentangle their respective parts, and affirm that this belongs to one and that to the other. In this wide sense, not only during the years of our married life, but during many of the years of confidential friendship which preceded, all my published writings were as much ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... archives of the Exchange will always contain the minutes of Committees and other documentary material embodying the story of the past, but this dry chronicle is never likely to see the light except when unearthed by law courts or legislative committees. It seems worth while, therefore, to disentangle the essential thread of the tale of 1914 from the mass of unreadable detail in the minute books, and put it in a shape where those who are interested may look ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... to disentangle himself from the rest and come and speak to me was Frau Bornsted's father, Pastor Wienicke. He came and stood in front of me, his legs apart and a cigar in his mouth, and he took the cigar out to tell me, what I already ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... round and return to him, you will find it next to impossible to do so. So many paths come in at acute angles; they look so much alike; and the light of a lamp reveals them so imperfectly, that none but the practised eye of a guide can disentangle their windings. A gentleman who retraced a few steps, near the entrance of the cave, to find his hat, lost his way so completely, that he was not found for forty-eight hours, though twenty or thirty people were in search of him. Parties are ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... breed of cattle and sheep; "they were indigenous to the soil, climate, and pasturage of the locality on which they grazed: they seemed to have been formed for it and by it."[538] But in this case we are quite unable to disentangle the effects of the direct action of the conditions of life,—of use or habit—of natural selection—and of that kind of selection which we have seen is occasionally and unconsciously followed by man even during the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... will take me many a day yet—if days, many or few, are given me— to disentangle in anywise the proud and practised disguises of religious creeds from the instinctive arts which, grotesquely and indecorously, yet with sincerity, strove to embody them, or to relate. But I think the reader, by help even of the imperfect indications already given to him, ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... Wondersmith. For how many days he had been shut up, bound in the terrible net, in that dark closet, he did not know; but now he felt that his last hour was come. His little strength was completely worn out in efforts to disentangle himself. Once a day a door opened, and Herr Hippe placed a crust of bread and a cup of water within his reach. On this meagre fare he had subsisted. It was a hard life; but, bad as it was, it was better than the horrible death that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... since that evidence was given, to make a part of Irish literature accessible to many, especially among my young countrymen, who have not opportunity to read the translations of the chief scholars, scattered here and there in learned periodicals, or patience and time to disentangle overlapping and contradictory versions, that they may judge for themselves as to its "lowness" and "want of imagination," and the other well-known charges brought against it ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... reply to his questions they made statements superficially so clear and simple, and essentially so bewilderingly involved, that the longest experience could do little more for a constable than teach him the futility of wasting his time in attempts to disentangle them. ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... Christ. I know there are many will answer—as I suppose my friend the Rev. R.J. Campbell would answer—that what confuses me is the overlaying of the personality of Jesus by stories and superstitions and conflicting symbols; he will in effect ask me to disentangle the Christ I need from the accumulated material, choosing and rejecting. Perhaps one may do that. He does, I know, so present Him as a man inspired, and strenuously, inadequately and erringly presenting a dream of human brotherhood and the immediate ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... but for mercy's sake what for? You surely aren't thinking of pelting the fire out with them!" she gasped, hurrying downstairs and struggling to disentangle her eyeglasses from her bonnet strings; a complication that was always happening at crucial moments, such as picking out change in an elevated railway station, and thereby blocking ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... to disentangle the flesh from the spirit, love—the love that so amazingly illuminated Dodge Pleydon—from comfort. Dodge had disturbed all her sense of values, even to the point of unsettling her allegiance to the supremacy of a great deal of money. He had worked this without giving ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... a precipice. Presently they appear high above, creeping with the line along a ledge of rock. And your "boy" remarks nonchalantly, "Plenty coolie fall here. Too high place." Or they are clambering over boulders, one or two told off to disentangle the line wherever it catches. Or they are struggling along a greasy slope, their bare feet gripping the mud, hardly able to advance a step or even to hold their own. As a labour-saving machine one must welcome the advent of the steamboat, as one is constrained to welcome even that ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... which continued until the year 1113, was one continued storm of war. It would only weary the reader to endeavor to disentangle the labyrinth of confusion, and to describe the ebbings and floodings of battle. Every man's hand was against his neighbor; and friends to-day were foes to-morrow. Sviatopolk himself was one of the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... alone, stood engrossed in thought. The wild beast instinct in him gave him intuition of danger. Elmur was playing Germany's game, but since his aim was the Count's own, it was impossible at this stage to disentangle the ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... Cotton, whom you will recollect as Miss Arndt, and was introduced to her husband, Lieutenant Cotton, U.S.A. I was also introduced to the Rev. Mr. Nash, a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal order, on missionary duty here. I went to my room, as soon as I could disentangle myself from these greetings, with a bundle of papers, to read up the news, and was truly pained to hear of the death of my early friend Colonel Charles G. Haines of New York, an account of which, with the funeral honors paid to him, I read ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... literature, and the close study which he has given to the history of English opinions and controversies, speculative, political, and economical, have enabled him to survey an extensive field, to trace the lines of origin and development, to disentangle complicated ideas, and to summarise conclusions in a masterly manner. Nearly twenty-five years have passed since he published his work on English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, and his present book on the Utilitarians continues, and indeed ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... impenetrable eye. And anyhow he started in with his accustomed energy to rape the mysteries of the Costly Life, and become the calmest of its lords. On the whole, I think he did it—thoroughly. I have crowded memories, a little difficult to disentangle, of his experimental stages, his experimental proceedings. It's hard at times to say which memory comes in front of which. I recall him as presenting on the whole a series of small surprises, as being again and again, unexpectedly, a little more self-confident, ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... no doubt strengthened his determination to try prose romance. He had never cared mach for his own poems, he says, Byron had outdone him in popularity, and the Muse—"the Good Demon" who once deserted Herrick—came now less eagerly to his call. It is curiously difficult to disentangle the statements about the composition of "Waverley." Our first authority, of course, is Scott's own account, given in the General Preface to the Edition of 1829. Lockhart, however, remarks on the haste with which Sir Walter wrote the Introductions to the magnum opus; and the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... be Burral out after a buck!" called out Tryon. He and Gay were still some way behind. Marice half-way between them, and Druro was apparently trying to disentangle her flickering, fluttering chiffons from a fresh engagement with the bushes when the terrible thing happened. The lithe, speckled body of a leopard came sailing, with a grace and swiftness indescribable, through the air and, leaping upon the fluttering figure, bore ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... Mayor of Dumfries Corners only by courtesy of those who honor defeated candidates with titles for which they have striven unsuccessfully, was strolling through the country along the line of the Croton Aqueduct, trying to disentangle, with the aid of the fresh sweet air of an early summer afternoon, an idea for a sonnet from the mazes of his brain. Stopping for a moment to look down upon the glorious Hudson stretching its shimmering length ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... deal more oppression and cruelty; and the escape into Europe, where the old enchantress appears to be now prowling in poverty and degradation, concludes the curious story. The narrative bears marks of having passed through a French translation and then a British version. To disentangle the thread of actuality that probably runs through it would be too troublesome and futile; but the truths that the wily Melek cannot help telling—the facts of the harem and of Eastern life that involuntarily sprinkle it all like a flavoring ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... ever undeceive him?" was her most perplexing thought. "I cannot make advances. Well, well, the future must disentangle itself." ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... intricate knot, he was so overcome by the warmth of his own body that he fell asleep, and did not wake until nightfall. In the darkness he was unable to find his head or his tail, and so could not disentangle and slide into his hole. Per consequence, he froze ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... that had decided it; he was a witness, and so far the only one. Then with an effort he forced himself to be calm. Every minute was of importance. He sat down at the writing-table, took up the paper, and pored over it to try to disentangle the strange dots, scratches, and lines which, flowing from Stamfordham's pen, took the place of handwriting. Some ill-natured people said that Stamfordham was quite conscious of the advantage of having writing which could not be read without a close scrutiny. It was no doubt ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... one has told you forcibly enough how the very persons who justly admire your work, constantly complain of this fragmentary style of publication, which is the despair of those who have not the leisure to place your scattered sheets where they belong and disentangle the skein.* (* Owing to the irregularity with which he received and was forced to work up his material, Agassiz was often either in advance or in arrears with certain parts of his subject, so that his plates and his text did not ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... said, "George, my boy, this is the happiest part of your life." I guess my Aunt Libby don't know much. I guess she never worked a week to make a kite, and the first time she went to fly it got the tail hitched in a tall tree, whose owner wouldn't let her climb up to disentangle it. I guess she never broke one of the runners of her sled some Saturday afternoon, when it was "prime" coasting. I guess she never had to give her biggest marbles to a great lubberly boy, because he would thrash her if she didn't. I guess she never had a "hockey stick" play round her ankles in recess, ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... called it—vulgar soft-heartedness, and declared there was not room to move for the cats and dogs in the house. 'Lenotchka,' he would shout to her, 'come quickly, here's a spider eating a fly; come and save the poor wretch!' And Lenotchka, all excitement, would run up, set the fly free, and disentangle its legs. 'Well, now let it bite you a little, since you are so kind,' her father would say ironically; but she did not hear him. At ten years old Elena made friends with a little beggar-girl, Katya, and used to go secretly to meet her in the garden, took her nice things to eat, and ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... it do to go back and help that boy disentangle his kite-string? He's a little fellow, and does not know so much about kites and kite-strings ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... unsuited to the holy grove. She hurries off with her two companions, but as she goes she declares that a prickly kusa-grass has stung her foot; a kuruvaka-bush has caught her garment, and while her companions disentangle it, she takes a long look at the king, who confesses that he cannot turn his mind from Sakoontala. This is the opening episode ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... in Mrs Maidan's hair just before dinner. There was not a single word spoken. Little Mrs Maidan was very pale, with a red mark down her left cheek, and the key would not come out of her black hair. It was Florence who had to disentangle it, for Leonora was in such a state that she could not have brought herself to touch Mrs Maidan ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... greater the masses of the troops concerned (which are now not only in a demoralized condition, but are compelled, under pressure of pursuit, to change their communications into new directions, and for this purpose to disentangle the columns drawn in for the concentration) and the greater the certainty that conditions must arise which will give to an active Cavalry an even richer opportunity of harvest than was ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... Taou Yuen had been killed by America. It was a fantastic thought, and he attempted to dismiss it, waiting for more secure knowledge, but it persisted. She had been killed by unfamiliar circumstances, tradition, emotions. In some manner, but how he was unable to disentangle from the pressures of mere curiosity and conjecture, Nettie Vollar—or rather Gerrit's old passing affair with Nettie—had entered into the unhappy occurrence. After an hour's vain search he gave up all effort to pierce the darkness until he had actual knowledge—if he ever had, he ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... and morbidly conscious of all those eyes on her wig. At length the train glided in unconcernedly, and shot out a medley of passengers. Her poor old eyes strained towards them. They surged through the gate in animated masses, but Madame Valiere's form did not disentangle itself from them, though every instant she expected it to jump at her eyes. Her heart contracted painfully—there was no "Princess." She rushed round to another exit, then outside, to the gates at the end of the drive; she peered into every cab ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... him for the present, in order to give intelligence of a traveller to some gang of robbers with whom he was connected; and that he must of necessity fall a prey to those banditti, unless he should have the good fortune to elude their search, and disentangle himself from the mazes of ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... thought that he had not asked Blanche Leary to be his wife. His hand was unpledged. He could not marry the other girl, of course, but they must meet again. The rest he would leave to Fate, which seemed reluctant to disentangle threads which it ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... mixture.] Simpleness — N. simpleness &c adj.; purity, homogeneity. elimination; sifting &c v.; purification &c (cleanness) 652. V. render simple &c adj.; simplify. sift, winnow, bolt, eliminate; exclude, get rid of; clear; purify &c (clean) 652; disentangle &c (disjoin) 44. Adj. simple, uniform, of a piece [Fr.], homogeneous, single, pure, sheer, neat. unmixed, unmingled^, unblended, uncombined, uncompounded; elementary, undecomposed; unadulterated, unsophisticated, unalloyed, untinged^, unfortified, pur et simple [Fr.]; incomplex^. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... centuries to come; that, even if some calamity were imminent, the immediate future and the very distant future were so intermingled in his discourse, that it would require the labours of commentator after commentator, for many hundred years, to disentangle them, and that their labours would be in vain; that the coming of the Son of Man, and of the Kingdom of God, of which he had spoken, were to be referred to a time thousands of years hence; though we were told in the same breath to look to the fig-tree and all ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... of each custom or belief and of its separate parts in this way enables us, in the first place, to disentangle it from the particular personal or social stratum in which it happens to have been preserved. It may have become attached to a place, an object, a season, a class of persons, a rule of life, and ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... the floor," continued Greusel. "I am not attempting oratory, but trying to disentangle a skein in which we have involved ourselves. I wish to receive neither applause nor hissing until I have finished the business. You say it is the case. I say it is not. Roland gave Herr Kurzbold the alternative either of apologizing or of paying ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... That the colors seem confused is because, viewing the spectacle from an elevation, we see the enormous indentations of the opposite rim in broken and disorganized perspective. Few minds are patient and orderly enough to fully disentangle the kaleidoscopic disarray, but, if we can identify the strata by form as well as color, we can at least comprehend without trouble our principal outline; and comprehension is ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... were of that order which sometimes startles one when in passing a stranger one finds one's eyes entangled for a second in his or hers, as the case may be. At such times it seems for that instant difficult to disentangle one's gaze. But neither of these two thought of the other much, after hurrying away. Each was too fully mastered ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... reverence commanding merit made them admirable panygerists; and few would celebrate where they did not mean to praise. Of his general character as a historian Mr. Oscar Browning in his useful edition says: "He is most untrustworthy. It is often difficult to disentangle the wilful complications of his chronology; and he tries to enhance the value of what he is relating by a foolish exaggeration which is only too transparent to deceive." His style is clear, a merit attributable to the age in which ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... thoughts came upon her unsolicited, and she walked on and on. At last she rested her burden on the parapet of a bridge, and saw the London night, blue and gold, vast water rolling, and the spectacle of the stars like a dream from which she could not disentangle her individuality. Was she to die in the star-lit city, she and her child; and why should such cruelty happen to her more than to the next one? Steadying her thoughts with an effort, she said, "Why not go to the workhouse, only ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... sportsman would be with the disabled player. I began to say something to Buchanan, when suddenly I could not hear my own voice. The great machine, with another behind us, was working at a fabulous speed and with a fabulous clatter. All that my startled senses could clearly disentangle was that the blue arc-lights above us blinked occasionally, and that folded green papers were snowing down upon the iron table far faster than the eye could follow them. Tall lads in aprons elbowed me away and carried off the green papers ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... came to be-tied, she had to apply to Geordie, her unfailing help in all extremities; and he in his efforts to make an imposing bow like the one which decorated Mistress Gowrie's ample chin, had knotted the strings after the manner of whipcord, so that they required all Grace's ingenuity to disentangle them. ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... forming a desirable accountant for a desk, than a whole year's exercise otherwise. In the one case, the pupil starts to the race without preparation, and with all his natural impediments clinging to him, which he has to disentangle and throw off one by one during the fatigues and turmoil of the contest; while the other, on the contrary, delays his start till he has deliberately searched them out and cast them aside, and thus prepared himself for the course. He ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... second period, the modern Sanskrit literature, never was a living or national literature. It here and there contains remnants of earlier times, adapted to the literary, religious, and moral tastes of a later period; and whenever we are able to disentangle those ancient elements, they may serve to throw light on the past, and, to a certain extent, supplement what has been lost in the literature of the Vedic times. The metrical Law-books, for instance, contain old materials ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... had rapidly acquired the most brilliant reputation. Laborious, patient, and acute, he knew with singular skill how to disentangle the skein of the most complicated affair, and from the midst of a thousand threads lay hold to the right one. None better than he, armed with an implacable logic, could solve those terrible problems in which X—in algebra, ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... worldly embarrassments which either their ignorance or their improvidence are almost certain at some time or other to bring them into: then, just at the time when we ought to hasten to help them, and disentangle them, and teach them how to manage better in future, we rush forward to pillage them, and force all we can out of them in their adversity. For, to take one instance only, remember this is literally and simply what ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... directions. In the mean time, whoever forms young people to a religious life, ought to leave nothing untried to bring them to a candid and free discovery of their evil inclinations, and the suggestions of the devil, at the same moment when they are tempted: for without this they will never be able to disentangle themselves from the snares of the tempter; never will they arrive to a religious perfection. On the contrary, those first seeds of evil being brooded over, and nourished, as I may say, by silence, will insensibly produce most lamentable effects; even so far, until the ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... stretched on his sick-bed, and in sharp struggle between life and death. It is difficult to disentangle, one by one, all the threads in a nature so complex as Rameau's; but if we may hazard a conjecture, the grief of disappointed love was not the immediate cause of his illness, and yet it had much to do with it. The goad of Isaura's refusal had driven him into seeking distraction in excesses which ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the whole kingdom of such things; to avoid jealously, in his way through the world, everything repugnant to sight; and, should any circumstance tempt him to a general converse in the range of such objects, to disentangle himself from that circumstance at any cost of place, money, or opportunity: such were, in brief outline, the duties recognised, the rights demanded, in this new ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... suggestive of some operator deliberately seeking to mix them in with his message and render it illegible. At first they are small and regular, so that with a little care and the loss of very few words we have been able to disentangle Cavor's message; then they become broad and larger, then suddenly they are irregular, with an irregularity that gives the effect at last of some one scribbling through a line of writing. For a long time nothing can be made of this madly zigzagging trace; then quite abruptly the ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... yellow, all shining in the sun? And one used to wonder how he ever contrived to pick them all up—I don't know how!—and what would happen if he put them all down. I always knew exactly which one I wanted, and it was generally on a very inside string and took a long time to disentangle. And how maddening it was if the grown-ups grew tired of waiting, and walked on with the penny. Only I would rather have had none, than not have the one on which I had fixed my ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... still struggling to disentangle his revolver from the lining of his pocket. He was bellowing like a bull—yelling at Billy that he was under arrest. Men at the tables were on their feet. Those at the bar had turned around as Flannagan started to run ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to disentangle Mr. J. C. Symons, but failed. Mr. Airy[175] can correct the error of a ship's compasses, because he can put her head which way he pleases: but this he cannot do ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... ears of her husband, now a very old man and failing in health, begged a cousin, M. Sedillot, to come forward, and at least to save the honour of the family. M. Sedillot, who appears to have been a good man of business, at once set gallantly to work to disentangle the embroglio, and to free Honore from its meshes. As a result of his efforts, the printing-press was sold to M. Laurent, and the type-foundry became the property of the De Bernys, under whom it was highly successful. At the same time, to save Honore ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars |
