"Intricate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... subject is acute and perennial. From point to point we follow the writer, always looking back to the subject itself in order to understand the logic of the course he pursues. We find that we are creating a design, large or small, simple or intricate, as the chapter finished is fitted into its place; or again there is a flaw and a break in the development, the author takes a turn that appears to contradict or to disregard the subject, and the critical question, strictly so called, begins. Is this proceeding of the author the right one, the best ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... he was married, he had an intricate case on hand, and forgot his engagement, until reminded of his waiting bride, and that the legal time for performing the ceremony had nearly elapsed. He then quitted law for the church; after the ceremony, the serjeant returned to his ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... that labyrinth in which we grope for the discovery of Truth, and are so often entangled in the maze of Error when we attempt to explain the origin of Science, or to trace the manners of remote antiquity. I should be at a loss to enter upon this perplexed and intricate subject, if I did not know, that History has already familiarized to your Lordship the principal objects which occur in this research, and that it is the effect of extensive knowledge and superior penetration to invigorate the ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... as effective toilet. Mme. la Marquise was a handsome brunette, whose embonpoint, which had succeeded to the slender outline of early youth, had added to her beauty; her magnificent black hair, which was one of her ladyship's greatest charms, was dressed in the most elaborate fashion—an intricate mass of glossy braids, puffs and curls, forming a lofty structure, and ornamented with a large bow of crimson ribbon, while one long curl fell upon her fair neck, making it look all the whiter by contrast. Her dress of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... politician. For manner has brought forth its usual talent;—for manner cannot discover the genius who has discarded platitudes—the genius who has devised a new and surpassing order for mankind, simple and intricate enough, abstract and definite enough, locally impractical and universally practical enough, to wipe out the need for further discoveries of "talent" and incidentally the discoverer's own fortune and political "manner." Furthermore, he (this genius) never ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... has there appeared in British affairs that divine passion to do things in the clearest, cleanest, least wasteful, most thorough manner that is needed to straighten out, for example, these universal local tangles. Always we have been content with the old intricate, expensive way, and to this day ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... incredibly difficult. By the sly drawing of the frontier when in 1866 Austria ceded Venetia to the Italians, every pass, every access, from Italy into Austria was left in the hands of the Austrians. Some of those passes are so intricate and narrow that an Austrian regiment could defend them against an army. And yet, in two years' fighting the Italians have advanced and have astonished the world by their exploits in campaigning above the line of perpetual snow and among crags as ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... Committee had appointed their sub-committee of six to deliberate on the new Constitution; and through the rest of the month, both in the sub-committee and in the general committee, there had been that intricate discussion in which Vane led the extreme party, or party of radical changes, while Whitlocke stood for lawyerly use and wont in all things, and Johnstone of Warriston threw in suggestions from his peculiar ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... as the water fell on the ebb. Still there were many channels, and it would have been possible, for one who knew their windings, to have sailed a ship several leagues among them, without passing the inlet; these channels forming a sort of intricate net-work, in every direction from ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... obliged to you; it is a curious and intricate affair. As I am here, I may as well ask one question, although not of great consequence. The earl is married, I perceive, by the peerage, but I do not find that ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... "but he teaches more than that. I knew a girl in Paris who studied with him. She was quite intricate and self-seeking when she began. And in six months he had changed her whole nature. She became elemental and direct, and," she put her hands together and threw them apart with the gesture which he knew so well, "and splendid! Like Shakespeare's ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... looking at the intricate system of wires and the stupendous proportions of the place, when suddenly I heard some one mention a name with which I was familiar. I was attracted close to the side of the operator that I might hear at least the one ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... Spenserian stanza—that it is cumbrous and monotonous, and presents difficulties of construction—that the two former criticisms will be just or the reverse, according to the skill of the writer, while it is quite possible that the last is really an advantage, for the intricate machinery imposes a restraint on careless or hasty composition. And finally we must turn a deaf ear, even to so high an authority as Matthew Arnold, when he says that it is not suited to the grand manner. When he said this he cannot have remembered either the lament of Florimell in the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... of every other circumstance, and fixes it on that, and that alone, which excites such interest and such eagerness in his own breast! Besides, he is a logician, has a theory in support of whatever he chooses to advance, and weaves the tissue of his sophistry so close and intricate, that it is difficult not to be entangled in it, or to escape from it. "There's magic in the web." Whatever appeals to the pride of the human understanding, has a subtle charm in it. The mind is naturally pugnacious, cannot refuse a challenge of strength or skill, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... books or nature. I must, therefore, attack the only accessible point I know about you, meaning your compassion, which you never refuse to those who really require it. Now I do require it greatly; for I am at this present engaged in business of a very painful and intricate nature, which I cannot clearly understand, and in which I have no one to advise me but a country attorney, whose integrity as well as ability I much doubt. To whom can I apply so well as to you, when I need the counsel and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... the sounds are rapid and precipitate, yet sweet and pleasing. It is extraordinary, in such rapidity of the fingers, how the musical proportions are preserved, and the art everywhere inherent among their complicated modulations, and the multitude of intricate notes so sweetly swift, so irregular in their composition, so disorderly in their concords, yet returning to unison ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... if I had placed my eye to that little circlet, looking through it as through a spyglass towards my goal. I shall work after this, Miss Cunningham, as I could not work before, because I have now a fixed starting-point. It may be an intricate tangle that I shall have to unravel, it may be a tedious ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... on a very intricate subject, for naturalists have not defined to each other's satisfaction what is meant by an advance in organization. Amongst the vertebrata the degree of intellect and an approach in structure to man clearly come into play. It might be thought that the amount of change which the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and waggons; furrows that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets branched off, and made intricate channels, hard to trace, in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Severinus the Dane complains [163]in physic, "unhappy men as we are, we spend our days in unprofitable questions and disputations," intricate subtleties, de lana caprina about moonshine in the water, "leaving in the mean time those chiefest treasures of nature untouched, wherein the best medicines for all manner of diseases are to be found, and do not only neglect them ourselves, but hinder, condemn, forbid, and scoff at others, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... It was vile wet weather, and he could never have been dry. By night he walked the streets, and by day slept upon Glasgow Green, and heard, in the intervals of his dozing, the famous theologians of the spot clear up intricate points of doctrine and appraise the merits of the clergy. He had not much instruction; he could "read bills on the street," but was "main bad at writing"; yet these theologians seemed to have impressed him ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have arrived at Molo's place by now. If only they know where they are! I have lookouts throughout the city with intricate and complete connecting ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... descended the steps, Fletcher unhesitatingly drawing her forward. The garden was a marvel of many-coloured lights, intricate and bewildering as a maze. Its paths were all carpeted, and their feet made no sound. It ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... wife had already suggested as much to him, and he had insinuated to her that she might try, cautioning her at the same time against undue precipitation. Finally he left the whole matter in her hands without uttering either assent or dissent, and went about his own more important and much more intricate affairs. ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... be easy, the problems known, the interrogations plain, familiar, and not intricate and dark that they might neither vex the unlearned, nor fright them from the disquisition. For—as it is allowable to dissolve our entertainment into a dance, but if we force our guests to toss quoits or play at cudgels, we shall not only make our feast ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... already there was a throng before the door. The music had started up, and half a block away you could hear the dull "broom, broom" of a cello, with the squeaking of two fiddles which vied with each other in intricate and altitudinous gymnastics. Seeing the throng, Marija abandoned precipitately the debate concerning the ancestors of her coachman, and, springing from the moving carriage, plunged in and proceeded to clear a way to the hall. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... before you. I shall, however, endeavor to raise a corner of the veil which surrounds this most mysterious, most baffling and most complex of all human emotions, so that you may get a glimpse into its intricate mechanism and perhaps understand what Love is in ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... removed. Indeed, many discerning persons without doors began to despair of seeing the mystery unfolded, as soon as the inquiry was undertaken by a committee of the whole house. They observed, that an affair of such a dark, intricate, and suspicious nature, ought to have been referred to a select and secret committee, chosen by ballot, empowered to send for persons, papers, and records, and to examine witnesses in the most solemn and deliberate manner; that the names of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... laws of other governments. The wisdom of Congress in shaping any particular law that may be presented for my approval may wholly supersede the necessity of my entering into these considerations, and I willingly avoid either vague or intricate inquiries. It is only certain plain and practical traits of such legislation that I desire to recommend to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Rutherford B. Hayes • Rutherford B. Hayes
... Etruscan ring. He fitted his words together as the Byzantine jewelers fitted priceless stones. He found the inner harmony and kinship of words. Where lived another man who could blend the beautiful and the horrible, the gorgeous and the grotesque in such intricate and inexplicable fashion? Who could delight you with his noun and disgust you with his verb, thrill you with his adjective and chill you with his adverb, make you run the whole gamut of human emotions in a single sentence? Sitting ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... her abilities were naturally more vivacious than those of her companions, or whether they had been more early developed by accidental excitation, we cannot pretend to determine, lest we should involve ourselves in the intricate question respecting natural genius—a metaphysical point, which we shall not in this place stop to discuss. Till the world has an accurate philosophical dictionary (a work not to be expected in less ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... do I. Sirrah, your writing is so intricate, that you must speak your mind; otherwise we shall not know ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... A.M., Ph.D., author of "Theology of Evolution." Dr. Cope answers in a very voluminous and intricate manner, but the following is ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... paper. His eye fell on what was common to every edition now, a crime editorial—and the paper crackled suddenly under the long, slim, tapering fingers, so carefully nurtured, whose sensitive tips a hundred times had made mockery of the human ingenuity squandered on the intricate mechanism of safes and vaults. No; he was wrong—the Gray Seal had not ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... went to his private laboratory to check the thermostat controlling the temperature of the annealing oven in which his batch of new glass was being slowly cooled. Then he spent some time at his desk over certain intricate formulas. The room was in semi-darkness, lighted only ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... while giving itself over to the Emperor, had not desired war; he himself, only a week previously, had declared it to be a culpable and idiotic measure. There were long discussions concerning the right of a German prince to occupy the throne of Spain; as the question gradually became more and more intricate and muddled it seemed as if everyone must be wrong, no one right; so that it was impossible to tell from which side the provocation came, and the only part of the entire business that was clear to the ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... kind. At the time of our visit all the natives went bareheaded, the men with their black tallow-like hair clipped to the root, with the exception of the common small border above the forehead. The women wore their hair plaited and adorned with beads, and were much tattooed, partly after very intricate patterns, as is shown by the accompanying woodcuts. Like the children they mostly went barefooted and barelegged. They were well grown, and many did not look ill, but all were merciless beggars, who actually followed our naturalists on ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... complicated a complete language must be, with its long and arbitrary vocabulary, its intricate system of sounds; the many forms that single words may take, especially if they are verbs; the rules of grammar, the sentence structure, the idioms, slang and inflections. Heavens, what a genius for tongues these simians have![2] ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... in this enterprise of improving the birth supply must lie, therefore, through research. If we cannot act ourselves, we may yet hold a light for our children to see. At present, if there is a man specially gifted and specially disposed for such intricate and laborious inquiry, such criticism and experiment as this question demands, the world offers him neither food nor shelter, neither attention nor help; he cannot hope for a tithe of such honours as are thrust in profusion upon pork-butchers and brewers, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... vantage point could pick out the intricate succession of lanes and highroad that he must take to cross the river and reach John Massey's place, showing from here as only a dot of a gray house at the angle of the stream. The sunshine was very clear and hot over the valley below, but the oak ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... glister, was always adorned with a nasturtium-vine, whose vivid flames seemed like some personal emanation, and whose odor, acrid and single, dispersed a character about her; and the only ornaments she condescended to assume were of Etruscan gold, severely simple in design, elaborately intricate in workmanship. It is evident she was a poet in costume, and had at last en regle acquired a manner. But thirteen years ago she apparelled herself otherwise, and thirteen years ago it was that Mr. Roger Raleigh fell in love with her. This ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... and abortive peace negotiations with Southern commissioners at Niagara, he had displayed the lack of tact and penetration which made the people doubt the solidity and coolness of his judgment. His methods of dealing with the most intricate problems of finance seemed experimental and rash. The sensitive interests of business shrank from his visionary theories and his dangerous empiricism. His earlier affiliation with novel and doubtful social schemes ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... table, illuminated an open book, wood chairs with roughly split, hickory backs, a couch with no covering over its wire springs and iron frame; there was no carpet on the floor of loosely grooved boards, no decorations on the plastered walls save a dark engraving of a man in intricate armor, with a face as passionate, as keen, as relentless, as ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... while Master Nehemiah Solsgrace pronounced a benediction of portentous length, as an introduction to the banquet. Her presence was in some measure a restraint on the worthy divine, whose prolusion lasted the longer, and was the more intricate and embarrassed, that he felt himself debarred from rounding it off by his usual alliterative petition for deliverance from Popery, Prelacy, and Peveril of the Peak, which had become so habitual to him, that, after various attempts to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... thing about a navy is its material: the ponderous battleships, the picturesque destroyers, the submarines, the intricate engines of multifarious types, the radio, the signal-flags, the torpedo that costs $8,000, the gun that can sink ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... French-speaking Switzerland, and so on! And more than this, the production, such as it was, had been a production born of effort and difficulty; and the labor squandered on poetical forms, on metrical experiments and intricate problems of translation, as well as the occasional affectations of the prose style, might well have convinced the critical bystander that the mind of which these things were the offspring could have no real importance, no profitable message, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I said so; and by so saying produced a blank silence—a mute consternation. I was, indeed, obliged to dissent on many occasions, and to offend by dissenting. It seems now very much the custom to admire a certain wordy, intricate, obscure style of poetry, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes. Some pieces were referred to about which Currer Bell was expected to be very rapturous, and ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... along intricate roads, or rather no roads at all, through the woods, going straight ahead as the reaper does. The Bohemian knew that by pushing on a little toward the west and constantly in a southerly direction, he would reach Mazowsze and then ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... and practical help is what is craved; and just such help Christ ever gave when he came to manifest God's will and ways to men. By whose authority do some religious teachers now lead the suffering through such a round-about, intricate, or arid path of things to be done and doctrines to be accepted ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... The handles of the drawers, the arcades of the alcoves, the pillars of the pigeon-holes—all were of ivory, and all were carved with the fantastic art of the Mussulman. It was so beautiful and so intricate that for a time Dartmouth forgot the papers. He had seen it before, but it was a work of art which required minute observation and study of its details to be appreciated. After a time, however, he recurred to his quest and ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... in a most intricate and perplexing maze of circumstance; the situation of the man who wears another man's collar and whose vassalage ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... willing to risk. He went as high as Blakiston Island, twenty-five to thirty miles from the river's mouth, and from there Cockburn, with a couple of frigates and two smaller vessels, tried to get beyond the Kettle Bottom Shoals, an intricate bit of navigation ten miles higher up, but still below the Narrows.[166] Two of his detachment, however, took the ground; and the enterprise of approaching Washington by this route was for that time abandoned. A year afterwards ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... honeycombed by the solvent action of water. Where forests have been cut from the mountain sides and the red soil has washed away, the surface of the white limestone forms a pathless desert of rock where each square rod has been corroded into an intricate branch work of shallow furrows and sharp ridges. Great sink holes, some of them six hundred feet deep and more, pockmark the surface of the land. The drainage is chiefly subterranean. Surface streams are rare and a portion of their courses ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... activities but the social, moral, material, and spiritual state of the people among whom the mission was planted, and seek for signs of a change which we could trace with some certainty to the influence of the mission. That would be a stupendous and most intricate undertaking. Where innumerable forces are at work such as are implied in the impact of western civilisation upon the peoples of the East, or of Africa, it would be extremely difficult to state the exact impression ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... than this season of the year admitted. The coast, though bold, was dangerous and unknown; and we had been told that Falkenborg, though famous for its salmon streams, had no harbour where the yacht might lie with safety, unless, by sailing through a very intricate and narrow channel, we anchored within a reef of rocks stretching three miles from the land. The nearer, therefore, we approached the shore, the more requisite was it to get a pilot on board; but ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... practiced, and with cool discernment embrace the parent church. The germ of Catholicism is in his blood. He cannot be a free thinker. The barbarian is subdued by the solemn and majestic form of the Church of Rome, while he might regard with disdain the intricate reason of the Presbyterian faith. And in this respect the negro is akin to the barbarian. He is moved by music ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the chemist, "it will. It's a good thing you have this. But, Mr. Strong, this is going to take some time. I'll have to compare all these tickets with the admittedly genuine one, and I'll have to make some intricate tests." ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... more time than she was aware, so interesting was the intricate work. She was presently startled by a sound in the corridor. Mr. Kauffman was coming back to his room, whistling an aria from "Die Walkure." Josie paused, motionless; her heart almost ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... over 200 miles. In the upper Pripet basin the woods were everywhere full of countless little channels which creep through a wilderness of sedge. Along the right bank of the Pripet River the land rises above the level of the water and is fairly thickly populated. Elsewhere extends a great intricate network of streams with endless fields of bulrushes and stunted woods. Over these bogs hang unhealthy vapors, and among the rank reeds there is no fly, nor mosquito, nor living soul or sound in ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the victims of medieval cruelty. Always one was confronted by solid brick walls; and to turn back was to meet others seemingly risen to cut off all escape. For this passage follows the simple and yet intricate pattern of the ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... to carry his papers to Committees after him: he was a kind of an atturny: but for all this, I believe will be a great man, in spite of all. In the evening home, and there to my unexpected satisfaction did get my intricate accounts of interest (which have been of late much perplexed by mixing of some moneys of Sir G. Carteret's with mine) evened and set right: and so late to supper, and with great quiet to bed; finding by the balance of my account that I am creditor 6900l. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... control of stern banks, the Danube here wanders about at will among the intricate network of channels intersecting the islands everywhere with broad avenues down which the waters pour with a shouting sound; making whirlpools, eddies, and foaming rapids; tearing at the sandy banks; carrying away masses of shore and willow-clumps; ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... by the continual wear and tear incidental to daily life: the wear and tear of the muscles in all physical exertion, of the brain in thinking, of the internal organs in the digestion of food, in all the intricate processes of metabolism, in the excretion of waste matter, and the secretion of vital fluids, etc. The ideal diet is one which replenishes waste with the smallest amount of suitable material, so that the system is kept in its normal condition of health at a minimum of expense of energy. ...
— No Animal Food - and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes • Rupert H. Wheldon
... De Morgan was unrivalled. He gave instruction in the form of continuous lectures delivered extempore from brief notes. The most prolonged mathematical reasoning, and the most intricate formulae, were given with almost infallible accuracy from the resources of his extraordinary memory. De Morgan's writings, however excellent, give little idea of the perspicuity and elegance of his viva voce expositions, which never failed to fix the attention of all who ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... standpoint. He easily defeated Adams for the Presidency in 1828. His election marked the ascendancy, long to continue, of a more ignoble element in the nation's political life. His administration began the employment of the spoils system; and it "handled intricate financial problems as a monkey might handle the works of a watch." Jackson had small regard for the rights of those who got in the way of himself, his party, or his country; he had trampled recklessly ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... prophecy. It is the same science which is now preparing its fetters for the minutest atoms that nature has created: already it has nearly chained the ethereal fluid, and bound in one harmonious system all the intricate and splendid phenomena of light. It is the science of calculation—which becomes continually more necessary at each step of our progress, and which must ultimately govern the whole of the applications of science to the arts ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... hand and wrung it, Cleer crying the while with delight and relief, it struck him all at once, for the very first time, he had done no good by coming, save to give her companionship. It would be hopeless to try carrying her through those intricate rock- channels and that implacable surf, whence he himself had emerged, alone and unburdened, only by a miracle. They two must stop alone there on the rock ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... with that lightning-like rapidity of thought which came to him at such moments of peril, however intricate and vast the machinery, however carefully planned the line of impending campaign, the human element would be an essential part of it. And his last forlorn hope, his final fighting chance, lay in the fact that ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... be made by pointing out the beauty and character of the individual forms and branching, their harmony in their relations to each other as factors of a beautiful composition and the wealth of shades and colors in their leaves, bark and flowers. Compare, for instance, the intricate ramification of an American elm with the simple branching of a sugar maple, the sturdiness of a white oak with the tenderness of a soft maple, the wide spread of a beech with the slender form of a Lombardy poplar, the upward pointing branches of a gingko with the drooping ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... Sarcognomy explains the very intricate and mysterious relations of the soul, the brain and body, which prior to Prof. Buchanan's discoveries were unknown to all scientific teachers, and are even now only known to his students and the readers ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... beautiful-braided and woven With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,— Emerald twilights,— Virginal shy lights, Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, When lovers pace timidly down through the green ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... And I'll say now that your solving this intricate and devilish cipher is, to me, a more utterly amazing performance than the rebel ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... concolorous zones; hymenium with flexuous, winding, intricate, acute dissepiments, at length torn and toothed. The pores are whitish cinereous, sometimes fuscous; variable in thickness, color, and character of hymenium; sometimes with white margin; often imbricated and fuliginous when moist. Widely distributed over ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... most intricate and carefully unraveled plot. A naturally probable and excellently developed story and the reader will follow the fortunes of each character with unabating interest * * * the interest is keen at the close of the first chapter and ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... due north until we anchored at the mouth of the Hoogly River to await a favorable tide, finally arriving at Calcutta on the evening of the 15th of January. The intricate navigation of the Hoogly, with its treacherous sands and ever-shifting shoals, is conducted by a pilot system especially organized by government, and is composed exclusively of Englishmen. No vessel can hope to ascend the river safely without being in charge of one of these pilots. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... flanked about with iron and coal yards, chimney stacks, and a forest of shipping, and to quickly seek the open country lower down on the Ohio. The lock-keepers appreciated our situation. Two or three sturdy, courteous men helped us carry our cargo, by an intricate official route, over coils of rope and chains, over lines of shafting, and along dizzy walks overhanging the yawning basin; while the Doctor, directed to a certain chute in midstream, took unladen Pilgrim over the great ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... is therefore unique and, if we would understand it, we must seek its reason in the peculiar nature and purpose of art. Since, moreover, art is a complex fact, the explanation of its unity is not simple; the unity itself is very intricate and depends upon ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... worth only 5d. or 6d. a lb., in France fetched half-a-crown. The whole population, from the highest to the lowest, flung themselves energetically on the side of the smugglers. The coast-line was long and intricate; the excise practically powerless. Wool was packed in caves all along the south and south-west coast, and carried off as opportunity served by the French vessels which came to seek it. What was meant by nature and Providence to have been the honest and open trade of ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... the character of domestic architecture was thus hampered by economic considerations and an intricate system of land-tenures, public and ecclesiastical architecture was greatly improved. The rebuilding of St. Paul's Cathedral and fifty city churches by Sir Christopher Wren marks an epoch in the history ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... says: "The plot is intricate with mystery and probability neatly dovetailed and the solution is a series of surprises skillfully retarded to whet the interest of the reader. It is excellently written and the denouement so skillfully ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... and a thick mop of fine, bright hair, rebellious like herself, of the sort that goes with an ardent personality, waved and curled over her little poll, and generally ended the day in a tangle only less intricate than can be achieved by a skein of silk. Of her small oval face, people were accustomed to say it was all eyes, an unoriginal summarising, but one that forced itself inevitably upon those who met Christian's eyes, clear and shining, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... before the larger; but the latter soon overtake and crush them, whilst they are themselves shivered by the collision. These medanos assume all sorts of extraordinary figures, and sometimes move along the plain in rows forming most intricate labyrinths.... A plain often appears to be covered with a row of medanos, and some days afterwards it is again restored to its level and uniform aspect.... "The medanos with immovable bases are formed on the blocks of rocks which are scattered about the plain. The sand ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... theory when Lavoisier claimed to disprove it by burning phosphorus in oxygen and weighing the result, which was heavier than the phosphorus had been. Thereupon the world derided the alchemists and lauded Lavoisier whose experiments laid the foundation for the intricate science of modern chemistry. For all that, science gives us the truth only from one angle and the science of one age is often disproved by the science of the next. Modern chemists may agree on what happens when phosphorus burns, but many a theory of Lavoisier's day has been disproved in ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... Heaven, told with cynical laughter instead, and impatient contempt of the innocence, sullied years ago by Hilyard—the friend I trusted and loved. I could draw to-day exactly the pattern of that portiere, the curling leaves of dull crimson, the intricate tracery of gold thread. ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... detailed advice in this short chapter, but I may say that I am engaged in the preparation of a book on vocal culture which will deal with the subject in an unusually practical manner. Voice culture, in many instances, is a mysterious and intricate study that even many of its teachers do not seem to understand in every detail. It is a notorious fact that many so-called vocal instructors, including some of the highest-priced members of the profession, frequently ruin magnificent ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... Underneath the later concoction of fable is a solid substratum of fact which no serious student can ignore. Even where the narrative is otherwise plainly myth or fiction it sheds many a useful sidelight on ancient manners, customs and laws as well as on the curious and often intricate operations of ...
— The Life of St. Mochuda of Lismore • Saint Mochuda
... Heavy-visaged and hesitating, the twelve men filed into court, and at sight of them John North's heart seemed to die within his breast. He no longer hoped nor doubted, he knew their verdict,—he was caught in some intricate web of circumstance! A monstrous injustice was about to be done him, and in the very name of ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... prevented him from uttering any such assertion as that which he had now made; but he looked upon those letters as the work of the enemy, and chose to go back for his authority to the last words which Margaret had spoken to him. He knew that he was playing an intricate game,—that all was not quite on the square; but he thought that the enemy was playing him false, and that falsehood in return was therefore fair. This that was going on was a robbery of the Church, a spoiling of Israel, a touching with profane ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... this, however, will not enable you to draw a mass of foliage. You will find, on looking at any rich piece of vegetation, that it is only one or two of the nearer clusters that you can by any possibility draw in this complete manner. The mass is too vast, and too intricate, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... Hosokawa troops, and the defections to which this must ultimately expose Sozen's ranks were supplemented by fomenting in the domains of the Yamana and their allies intrigues which necessitated a diversion of strength from the Kyoto campaign. Curious and intricate was the attitude of the Hosokawa towards the rival aspirants to the shogunate. Sozen's aid, as related above, had originally been invoked and exercised in behalf of Yoshimasa, the shogun's son ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... looked despairingly at that young Colossus, Thor. The behemoth Norwegian, oblivious to everything except the geometry problem now causing him to sweat, rested his massive head on his palms, elbows on the study-table, and was lost in the intricate labyrinth of "Let the line ABC equal the line BVD." The frail chair creaked under his ponderous bulk. On the table lay an unopened letter that had come in the night's mail, for, tackling one problem, the bulldog Hercules never ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... movement, and grateful to the ear both in its quiet opening and animated, happy close, after the terrors which have preceded it. The following chorus ("Egypt was glad"), usually omitted in performance, is a fugue, both strange and intricate, which it is claimed Handel appropriated from an Italian canzonet by Kerl. The next two numbers are really one. The two choruses intone the words, "He rebuked the Red Sea," in a majestic manner, accompanied by a few massive chords, and then pass to the glorious march of the Israelites, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... judgment only, but in that of all who heard him, no man ever acquitted himself, on a day of great expectation, so well as Mr Francis did yesterday. He was clear, precise, forcible, and eloquent, in a high degree. No intricate business was ever better unravelled, and no iniquity ever placed so effectually to produce its natural horror and disgust. * * * * All who heard him were delighted, except those whose mortification ought to give pleasure to every good mind. He was two hours and a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... several folds being beat and incorporated together; after which it is cut in breadths, about two or three feet wide, and is painted in a variety of patterns, with a comprehensiveness and regularity of design that bespeaks infinite taste and fancy. The exactness with which the most intricate patterns are continued is the more surprising, when we consider that they have no stamps, and that the whole is done by the eye, with pieces of bamboo-cane dipped in paint; the hand being supported by another ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... contour of its original growth, with its superb ramifications supporting the precious slab above—shows an elaborate design in its carvings, far beyond my power to describe, so luxuriant, so various, so intricate, one might almost suppose that the matchless tool of the famous Benevanta Cellini had traced its wild and graceful grotesque. The four claws, which are like roots from the stem of the pedestal, partake of the same rich arabesque in their design, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... coffee-berry; possibly inclined to be fat, but now lean exceedingly. The deep wrinkles in his face and neck were not merely from time and exposure; there were those unmistakable signs where flesh or fat has fallen away, and the skin has become loose. The neck was simply an intricate surface of seams and wrinkles, and sun-scarred with the burning of the Desert. The Far East, the Tropic Seasons, and the Desert—each can have its colour mark. But all three are quite different; and an eye which has once known, can thenceforth easily distinguish them. The dusky pallor ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... Hering suggests, to molecular vibrations, which must be at least as distinct from ordinary physical disturbances as Rontgen's rays are from ordinary light; or it may be correlated, as we ourselves are inclined to think, with complex chemical changes in an intricate but orderly succession. For the present, at least, the problem of heredity can only be elucidated by the light of ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... heard the click of the gate-latch and then in an ecstasy of barking from his demonstrative dog his serious head went past my window on the other side of the hedge, its troubled gaze fixed forward, and the mind inside obviously employed in earnest speculation of an intricate nature. One at least of his wife's girl-friends had become more than a mere shadow for him. I surmised however that it was not of the girl-friend but of his wife that Fyne was thinking. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... organic life as Alpine tracts usually do—skirts the plateau-belt throughout its length on the north and north-west, forming an intermediate region between the plateaus and the plains. The Caucasus, the Elburz, the Kopetdagh, and Paropamisus, the intricate and imperfectly known network of mountains west of the Pamir, the Thian-Shan and Ala-tau mountain regions, and farther north-east the Altai, the still unnamed complex of Minusinsk mountains, the intricate ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... with the years. Inventing an intricate instrument, the "Resonant Cardiograph," Bose then pursued extensive researches on innumerable Indian plants. An enormous unsuspected pharmacopoeia of useful drugs was revealed. The cardiograph is constructed with an unerring ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... and struggled with its many and intricate fastenings. Then she went to the guest room to stand before the full-length mirror there. Slowly she turned. Critically she ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... apt to be attended by considerable bleeding, are rendered free from the danger of aspiration pneumonia by endotracheal anesthesia. It is the safest anesthesia for goiter operations. Endo-tracheal anesthesia has rendered needless the intricate negative pressure chamber formerly required for thoracic surgery, for by proper regulation of the pressure under which the ether ladened air is delivered, a lung may be held in any desired degree of expansion when the pleural cavity ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... Honorable Erastus had no intention of "taking chances," or "monkeying with fate," as he tersely expressed it. Every scheme known to politicians must be worked, and none knew the intricate game better than Hopkins. This was why he held several long conferences with his friend Marshall, the manager at the mill. And this was why Kenneth and Beth discovered him conversing with the young woman in the buggy. Mr. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... carnival of murder came at the siege of Zaritzin. Here Michelson came up on the 22d of August and forced him to raise the siege. On the 24th the insurgents were attacked when in the intricate passes of the mountains and encumbered with baggage-wagons, women, and camp-followers. Though thus taken at a disadvantage, they defended themselves vigorously, the mass of them falling in the mountain passes ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... county in the House of Commons, and had been a trusted friend of Oliver Cromwell himself. It was only latterly, men said, since Oliver showed a disposition to grasp more and ever more power for himself that the good Judge, unable to prevent that of which he disapproved, had retired from the intricate problems and difficulties of the Capital. He now filled the office of Judge on the Welsh Circuit and later on that of Vice-Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. But whether he dwelt in the country or in London town it was all one. Wherever he came, men thought highly of ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... that is cut off when the aforesaid ice breaks away from the land, soon slips its bonds and bars, though it be made fast with ever so great joins and knots. The mind stands dazed in wonder, that a thing which is covered with bolts past picking, and shut in by manifold and intricate barriers, should so depart after that mass whereof it was a portion, as by its enforced and inevitable flight to baffle the wariest watching. There also, set among the ridges and crags of the mountains, is another kind of ice which is known periodically to change and in a way reverse ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the sudden bird's flight, the thrill, pause, and unaccountable ecstasy of the very finest lyrics of Blake or of Coleridge; one never wholly forgets the artist in the utterance. But where he is incomparable is in an 'arduous fulness' of intricate harmony, around which the waves of melody flow, foam and scatter like the waves of the sea about a rock. No poet has ever loved or praised the sea as Swinburne has loved and praised it; and to no poet has it been given to create ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... entangling himself frightfully in intricate calculations upon the blackboard, without making a single convert, was only too glad to take advantage of the suggestion, and Paul followed the rest into the playground with a sense ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... any words, this spectacle removed any lingering doubt which John might have had as to the possibility of this being some intricate practical joke. ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... the discussion an aged stranger from the valley of Taaoa, a withered man whose whole naked chest was covered with intricate tattooing, laid down his pipe and artlessly revealed his idea of the communion service. It was, he thought, a religious cannibalism, no more. And he was puzzled that his people should be told that it was wrong to feed on the flesh of a fellow human creature ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Where the river flowed once more in a more northerly direction we found rocks and two tiny wooded islands on the left side of the stream, one 20 m., the other 70 m. long. There a corrideira occurred soon after we had negotiated a dangerous rapid—dangerous because of the number of intricate rocks which forced the canoe to describe a snake-like dance like a double S, bumping and swerving with such force from the restless waters underneath, that it was all we could do to prevent ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... scale that has produced the conditions they would redeem. Socialism is now as completely materialistic as the old capitalism, and as international in its scope and methods. Anarchy is becoming imperial and magnificent in its operations. Secular reformers must organize vast committees with intricate ramifications and elaborate systems supported by "drives" for money which must run into at least seven figures, and by vast and efficient bureaus for propaganda, before they can begin operations, ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... the public road on the other side. We followed the path that leads from house to house; two or three times it took us through some of those copses or groves that cover the little hillocks in the middle of the vale, making an intricate and pleasing intermixture of lawn and wood. Our fancies could not resist the temptation; and we fixed upon a spot for a cottage, which we began to build: and finished as easily as castles are raised in the air.—Visited ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the intricate, electronic witchery of the 21st century could not pin guilt on fabulous Lonnie Raichi, the irreproachable philanthropist. But Jason, the cop, was sweating it out ... searching for that fourth and final and all-knowing rule that ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... absent fits fell upon her, Emily Hastings was not more joyous, more full of pure delight, than when, in a gay and sparkling mood, she moved her father's wonder at what he thought light frivolity. But now it was all bitter: the labyrinth was dark as well as intricate, and the thorns tore her as she groped for some ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... timorous wan mountain-ash, That clings to the rocks, with her garments all torn, Like a woman in fear; then he blows his hoarse horn And is off, the fierce guide of destruction and terror, Up the desolate heights, 'mid an intricate error ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... upon their priests almost in the light of gods. But agriculture and cattle-breeding were not all the resources of the missions; for the Jesuits engaged in commerce largely, both with the outer world and by the intricate and curious barter system which they had set on foot for the mutual convenience of the different mission towns. In many of the inventories printed by Brabo, one comes across the entry 'Deudas', showing ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... chevaux-de-frise. Though no longer protected by the fort at Billingsport, they were defended by the water force above, and the work was found more difficult than had been expected. It was not until the middle of October that the impediments were so far removed as to afford a narrow and intricate passage through them. In the mean time, the fire from the Pennsylvania shore had not produced all the effect expected from it; and it was perceived that greater exertions would be necessary for the reduction of the works than could safely be made in the present relative ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... was dwelling in awe upon the erudition of that excellent Greek gentleman, Mr. Xenophon, whose acquaintance, by means of the Anabasis, he was just making; or perhaps he was thinking of no more serious a subject than football and the intricate art of punting. But, whatever his thoughts may have been, they were doomed to speedy ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... that there are great mountains of coal piled up in the shipping places on the coast of Alaska which the government at Washington will not permit to be sold? It is because the government is not sure that it has followed all the intricate threads of intrigue by which small bodies of men have tried to get exclusive control of the coal fields of Alaska. The government stands itself suspicious of the forces by which it ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... class while in New York, would have been struck by the beauty and simplicity of her father's method, and her clear and direct exposition of it. Here was no affectation. "I abhor all that is affected," she said. There were no intricate convolutions, no flourishes, and, above all, no ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... has won the esteem of the grave and reserved Washington, and is placed by that great man in a post of the closest confidence, and which really makes him the second man in the American service. At twenty-three, he has shown that he is master of the intricate subject of finance. At twenty-five, after an active military life that had allowed no time for study, he is known as a lawyer of the first order. At twenty-six, he is distinguished as a member of Congress. At thirty, he takes a leading ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... The long and intricate deceptions which he practised to secure the publication of his letters, while so manipulating them as to enhance his credit, were suspected to some extent in his own age, and have been painfully laid bare in ours. It is an amazing story, which may be read at large in Mr. Dilke's ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis |
