"Puzzle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that point puzzle you?" exclaimed Florian, greeting the allusion to Browning as the war-horse welcomes the battle. "Then you have never chanced to run across the first edition of Child's Scottish Ballads. You get the story there, of ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... page threatens to bring down doom on the head of the miserable Mark. Will he confess? Will he drown himself? Will Vincent denounce him? Will Caffyn inform on him? Will his wife abandon him?—we ask eagerly as we read, and cannot cease reading till the puzzle is solved in a ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... his unwillingness to come to England, when he saw how solitary the great house was, and how utterly the feeble and paralytic old man was left to the care and companionship of servants. He wondered at first that this should be so, for the rich generally have no want of friends; but the puzzle soon explained itself as he began to know his grandfather better. Mr. Beresford had been a powerful and very active man; he had been proud of his strength and retained it to old age. Then, suddenly, paralysis came, ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... proper nag - And the fog blows off, and the key is found - And the faulty scent is picked out by the hound - And the fact turns up like a worm from the ground - And the matter gets wind to waft it about; And a hint goes abroad, and the murder is out - And a riddle is guessed—and the puzzle is known - So the Truth was sniffed, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... difficult to separate it, as that also has indusiate glands. The collector needs to study authentic specimens and have in mind the type, with its rather long, narrow blade as an aid to the verbal description, and even then he will often find it an interesting puzzle. Shaded swamps throughout ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... and apparently in ill health. He was afterward, for many years, the British Minister at Constantinople, where he defeated the machinations of Russia, and held in cunning hand the tangled thread of that delicate puzzle, the Eastern Question. His private secretary while he was at Washington was his nephew, Mr. Robert Bulwer (a son of the novelist), who has since won renown as Lord Lytton, Viceroy of India, and as the author ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... "What's the plot, anyhow? It's bad enough when T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., sneaks out, bearing a football, like an amateur cracksman making a getaway; but when you appear, imitating a Nihilist about to hurl a bomb—say, what's the answer to the puzzle, old man?" ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... him so, Frank!" she said, "even after that terrible flight and its awful ending. And you have been so good to me, and have made me so happy. It has all grown into such a strange puzzle. If they were to find out that we got the money do you think they would force you to make the amount ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... will keep this band in control, and unless I am much mistaken he will tell Monitaya all he knows of us, which surely will not do us any harm. At any rate, we can sleep in safety to-night. And since it does no good to puzzle about what is gone by or to worry about what has not yet to come to ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... Mackintosh a very great puzzle. He had certainly been insubordinate in his first year (Mr. Mackintosh gravely suspected him of the Bread-and-Butter affair, which had so annoyed his colleague), but he certainly had been very steady and even deferential ever since. (He always took off his hat, for example, to Mr. Mackintosh, ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... of metempsychosis is founded on the consciousness of gradation between beasts and men. The belief in a soul-endowed animal world was present among the ancients, and the laws of intelligence and instinct were misconstrued, or were regarded as a puzzle, which ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... of this. Incidents, characters, motives which we ourselves have never made completely real by imagination are realised for us by the dramatist. Intimations of humanity which in our own minds have lain jumbled fragmentary, like the multitudinous pieces of a shuffled picture-puzzle, are there set orderly before us, so that we see at last the perfect picture. We escape out ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... pure white sand, thrown up in ridges, and sometimes in cones, to the height of a hundred feet, and without tree, bush, or shrub, to break their soft outlines, or the uniformity of their colour. But the greatest anomaly of this geological puzzle is, that water-ponds are found in their very midst—even among their highest ridges—and this water not occasional, as from rains, but lying in "lagunas," with reeds, rushes, and nymphae growing in them, to attest that the water is permanent! The very last place ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... does not understand," said my friend, "but says that her people are much like human beings, and do most of the things human beings do." I asked her other questions, as to her nature, and her purpose in the universe, but only seemed to puzzle her. At last she appeared to lose patience, for she wrote this message for me upon the sands—the sands of vision, not the grating sands under our feet—"Be careful, and do not seek to know too much about us." ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... noted for reckless pace, where many Jehus drove furiously; not a bolt or joint had started, the hickory of shafts and spokes still seemed tough as hammered steel. These carriages are roomy enough, and fairly comfortable, when you are in them, but that same entrance is apt rather to puzzle a stranger. The fore and hind wheels are nearly the same height, and set very close together; even when the fore-carriage is turned so that they nearly lock, the space left for ascent between them is narrow indeed; this same arrangement ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... of the Larve had long been the acknowledged puzzle of the whole neighborhood. After skirting the town for some distance, it vanished into the earth through a narrow cleft, and was seen no more. Where it went to after that, no one could tell; and, as we have seen, the first attempt to find ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... it's a puzzle to me. Look at Nancy. What is it she wants? She's got forty or fifty years ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... voice had become brusque, the politeness had gone from his address. He carried the card and the fragments of paper to the round table. There he sat down and, with infinite patience, gummed the fragments on to the card, fitting them together like the pieces of a Chinese puzzle. ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... one of a female, and they had evidently just mated; yet one was distinctly a "silver-tip" and the other a "cinnamon." The skin of one very big bear which I killed in the Bighorn has proved a standing puzzle to almost all the old hunters to whom I have showed it; rarely do any two of them agree as to whether it is a grisly, a silver-tip, a cinnamon, or a "smut-face." Any bear with unusually long hair ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... who read it be scholars who would argue about the origin and date of the poem, ingenious theorists who would fain use all the fragmentary tales and rhymes of the nursery as parts of a vast jig-saw puzzle of nature myths, or merely simple folk who read a tale for a tale's sake, every reader of the poem of Beowulf must own that it is one of ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... tells us what we are meant to think of his arguments; and they also convict themselves by landing him in an act of immorality, which brings its own punishment. This character is nevertheless a standing puzzle to Mr. Browning's readers, because that which he condemns in it, and that which he does not, are not to be distinguished from each other. It is impossible to see where Mr. Browning ends and where Don Juan ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... press harder, and the Mexicans, despite their numbers and their cannon, yielded a little, but the fire from the men in the gully was stinging their flank. If they pushed forward much farther they would be caught between the two forces and might be destroyed. It was an alarming puzzle, but at that moment a great shout rose behind them. The sound of the firing had been heard in the main Texan camp and more ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the soft earth. "He was one of the very best, and it was not right. He was too young and too much missed. I don't understand it. He had twenty-five years to his credit, and I wanted to show him what I was going to do. It's all a puzzle to me. There's something frightfully wrong about it all, and ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... Bella had followed the men up and had been put out, and sat sniffling by herself in the den. Aunt Selina was working over a jig-saw puzzle in the library, and declaring that some of it must be lost. Anne and Leila Mercer were embroidering, and Betty and I sat idle, our hands in our laps. The whole atmosphere of the house was mysterious. Anne ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... pretty neck, and he was glad to know that Helen had one, though why he should care was a puzzle. He could hardly have analyzed his feelings then, or told what he did think of Helen. He only knew that by her efforts to repel him she attracted him the more, she was so different from any young ladies he had known; so different ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... your sleek muzzle in front! It will puzzle Your critics, my boy, to pick holes in you then: There's howling "HISTORICUS,"—he's but a sorry cuss! WEG, too, that grandest of all grand old men; He's ridden some races; of chances and paces, Of crocks versus cracks he did ought to be judge. He sees you are speedy; when MORLEY ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... was simply a puzzle to me. She was a mystery. She lived amid those infamous surroundings with a quiet, tranquil ease that was either terribly criminal or else the result of innocence. She sprang from the filth of that class like a ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... be all right," he answered; "I promised to burn a blue light as soon as you were safe on board, when they were immediately to shove off. It may puzzle the Spaniards somewhat to know what it means; but as they are not fond of turning out of their beds, we shall be away long before they ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... fort or castle than the ruins of a city," said Denham. "It's a puzzle, and it must be very, very old; but I say bless the people who built the place, for it's a regular haven of refuge for us. Why, we could hold these old walls against the whole ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... little balcony and fine windows, the whole surmounted by a gay fringe of dazzling white stone—whether or not this is the most beautiful building in the world is a question for individual decision; but it would, I think, puzzle anyone to name a more beautiful one, or one half so charming. There is nothing within it so entrancing as its exterior—always with the exception of Tintoretto's, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... could not get away from the feeling that he was an intruder in their meeting. He was surprized that no one else seemed to look upon his being there as strange. In fact, all were so very kind that he decided to get all the good possible from being there and to solve, if he could, the puzzle of prayer, also to find out what ...
— The Poorhouse Waif and His Divine Teacher • Isabel C. Byrum
... comes to guess the word, you go into the parlor, take part in a discussion, and return at the call of a smiling young lady. They have selected a word that may be applied to the most enigmatical replies. Everybody knows that, in order to puzzle the strongest heads, the best way is to choose a very ordinary word, and to invent phrases that will send the parlor Oedipus a thousand leagues from each ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... makes the best and the worst cigarettes, she is the quickest and she is the slowest, as the mood moves her; and now, when she flashes on to the stage in red and yellow fringes and bedraggled finery, cigarette in mouth and bangles tinkling, opera has given to the stage the supreme puzzle of humanity: the woman who does always what she pleases, and who pleases never to do ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... the colour of your hair, then you must have a false nose, and put a spot on some part of your face, or a wart, or a few hairs." I laughed, and said, "Help me to contrive this for the next ball; I have not been to one for twenty years; but I am dying to puzzle somebody, and to tell him things which no one but I can tell him. I shall come home, and go to bed, in a quarter of an hour."—"I must take the measure of your nose," said he; "or do you take it with wax, and I will have a nose ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... not noble!" cried Margaret, gazing in bewilderment from Belasez to Doucebelle, as if she expected one of them to help her out of the puzzle. ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... stone left upon another at Schloss Hrvoya, she can't cry off her bargain, so it's easy to understand why the Prince is no longer anxious. Exactly why he should seem so eager to get us to our destination is more of a puzzle; but perhaps, as Beechy thinks, it's because he hopes to influence Aunt Kathryn to rebuild. And certainly he has influenced her in some way, for she could hardly wait to ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... have thought should be naturally concentrated on her adopted daughter, her sister's orphan child? In conjectures such as these, I completely lost myself. Let me hear what your ingenuity can make of the puzzle; and let me return to Mr. Farnaby's dinner, ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... not to be solved, nor was it designed that it should be. The world is only a big coral for us to cut our teeth upon, a proving-ground, a hotbed from which we shall presently be transplanted according to our several deserts. No power can solve the puzzle save the power that cut it up into pieces to start with. Try as we may, the blanket will always be just a little too small for the bedstead. Meanwhile, the thing for us to do is to go right along figuring, figuring, figuring on our little slates,—but rather for the sake of keeping busy than from ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... a degree I should think they were. But she's very affectionate, too, and you can do anything with her through her love of praise. She puzzles me a good deal. I wish I knew something about her mother. But Mr. Peck himself is a puzzle. With all my respect for him and regard and admiration, I can't help seeing that he's a ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... another row of marks resembling crosses. Then there were rows of double crosses; and also one of triple crosses; and finally a series of stars. All these hieroglyphics appeared to have been cut with the blade of a knife; but their purpose was a puzzle ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... this hopeless puzzle from every angle I could think of. I tried 'phonin' to Claire's old street number. Nothin' doin'. They didn't know ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... disappearance of many of those anomalous types of the Coal Measures which so puzzle the botanist, and the extensive introduction of types that still exist, we can better conceive of the general features and relations of the flora of the Oolite than of those of the earlier floras. And yet the general result at which we arrive may be found not without its bearing on the older vegetations ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... upstanding wing of Friar's Park, actually the house and the park were some two miles distant. Where the park ended and the woods began it was impossible to determine, yet such was my curious mood that I lingered there endeavoring to puzzle out those details which were veiled ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... if shoo happened to see 't, 'At mi frolic wod prove a done job. But aw'll gladden mi e'en wi' its face, To mak sure at its safe in its nick;— But aw'm blest if ther's owt left i' th' place! Why, its hook'd it as sure as aw'm wick. Whear its gooan to's a puzzle to me, An' who's taen it aw connot mak aat, For it connot be th' wife, coss you see It's a paand 'at shoo ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... Could this be the sensual, passionate voluptuary he had known two days since?—the strange, unprincipled, impulsive being, who yielded like the reed, to every gust of passion—this deep, clear, vigorous thinker! It was indeed a change to puzzle sager heads than that of Arvina! a transformation, sudden and beautiful as that from the torpid earthy grub, to the swift-winged etherial butterfly! He gazed at her, until she smiled in reply to his look of bewilderment; and then he met her smile with ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... as bad as at first it had been good. It seemed to Granny that Bowser the Hound had become very smart, smarter than she had ever known him to be before. Do what she would, she couldn't fool him. Not one of all the tricks she knew, and she knew a great many, fooled him at all. They didn't puzzle him long enough for ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... daughter of Marius, is something of a puzzle. Against its genuineness may be urged that he is represented as conqueror of the Cimbri, whereas the Cimbri were not defeated till the following year, near Vercelli. Now it is strange that he should have left his daughter at Arles instead of moving her into Italy; and it is also ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... successful litigant passed on with the decree in his hand to the Primiscrinii, who appointed an officer to execute the judgment of the Court[139]. These men then put the decree into its final shape by means of the persons appointed to assist them[140] (men who could puzzle even the professors themselves in logical discussions), and endorsed it on the litigant's petition in characters which at once struck awe into the reader, and which seemed actually swollen with official importance[141]. The name ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... puzzle me to understand how the birds knew when it was time to wake up and begin their matin songs, for it was so like night there. Roberta, who was an early riser and withal a child of poetic imagination, used to say "that the fairies woke them up." She declared she saw a little glittering thing, with ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... glided away from me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often puzzle myself with it. Now, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the supernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to those which I experienced on waking up and seeing Queequeg's pagan arm thrown round me. But at length all the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... beautiful thing and every ray of hope. It may come from many causes: perhaps, a body not too robust, worn down by a tireless mind; perhaps, the memory of long years of effort, seemingly swallowed in oblivion and futility; perhaps contact with men on your own side whose presence there is a puzzle, who have no character and no conception of the grandeur of the Cause, and whose mean, petty, underhand jealousies numb you—you who think anyone claiming so fine a flag as ours should be naturally brave, straightforward and generous; perhaps the seemingly overwhelming ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... neither winds nor sun had been able to change the rich golden tint of his hair, which clustered in thick curls under his hat, which hat he managed to stick on the very back of his head; whether cocked hat, or tarpaulin, or sou'-wester, he wore it the same; it was a puzzle, though, to say how it kept there. But to see Tom as he was, was to catch him at work, with knife and marlin-spike, secured by rope-yarns round his neck, his hands showing intimate acquaintance with the tar bucket, while not a job was there to be done which he ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... stole round her waist. Well, this was not unnatural. Would they not be soon man and wife? The puzzle was that she had no feeling of response. She would rather that he did not embrace her. She did not want to be noticed. Yet she could not find it in her heart to be unkind, so she allowed him to draw her nearer, to let her head droop on his shoulder. She tried to ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... and feeling as proud as though I owned the army. Suddenly the colonel and staff turned out of the road, and faced to the rear, and started to ride back to one of the regiments in the rear. I saw them coming, and felt that I must salute them. How to do it was a puzzle to me. If I saluted with my left hand, it would be wrong, besides I would have to drop the reins, and my horse might start to run, as he was prancing and putting on as much style as I was. If I saluted with my right ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... attended by all the idle populace between Hammersmith and London, besides a host of radicals, who will not let go by such an auspicious opportunity. How the peace of the metropolis or the safety of the Parliament is to be secured under all these circumstances, might puzzle wiser heads than those whose business it will be to decide upon it. T—— admits himself to be considerably alarmed, and describes the appearance of the Ministers in these latter days as betraying more anxiety and apprehension ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... utterly did it stake its safety on its winter camouflage. The whole flock had been sitting in plain sight but their snow-white coats made them hardly distinguishable from their background. They faded into the landscape like an elusive puzzle picture. In summer they had depended on their speckled plumage, so like the mottled patches of sand and snow and grass and granite whereon they lived, to protect them. They certainly put their trust ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... wretched, man-forsaken stretch of country it beats anything I ever saw," Walter exclaimed in disgust. "The river itself is about a half mile wide, but it twists, turns, and forks every few yards so as to puzzle a corporation lawyer. The shores for half a mile back from the water are nothing but boggy marsh, with here and there a wooded island. Ugh, the sight of it is enough ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... a strange puzzle to the Ion children: no blessing asked at the table, no gathering of the family morning or evening for prayer or praise or the reading ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... remain, however, a puzzle to Europeans. The high development of tribal solidarity and the good feelings with which primitive folk are animated towards each other, could be illustrated by any amount of reliable testimony. And yet it is not the less certain that those same savages practise infanticide; that ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... literature, for that is nothing; and—it may seem odd enough to say—I do not think it was my vocation. But you will see that I shall do something,—the times and Fortune permitting,—that 'like the cosmogony of the world will puzzle the philosophers of all ages.'" He then adds this but too true and sad prognostic:—"But I doubt whether ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... their little girl was to be left at home with her grandmother. But just a short time before they were to leave, her grandmother had a bad illness, and it was found she would not be well enough to take charge of the child. And in the puzzle about what they should do with her, it had struck her father and mother that perhaps their friends, Rosy's parents, might be able to help them, and they had written to ask them; and so it had come about that little Beata was to come to live with them. It had all seemed ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... passion can die, In this prosaic meeting we had! Now, ought we to laugh or to cry— Was it sorrowful, or was it sad? 'Tis a puzzle not worthy our time, So let's ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... a puzzle to which for weeks I could obtain no clue whatever, but one day as I was sitting under the shade of the huge walnut tree overlooking the garden, the idea came into my mind that this kind of tree flourishes for generations, and from the gigantic proportions of this particular tree, it must ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... looking on curiously. He still had his lesson to learn, for the quill he had once picked up in his foot had been a loose quill. But since the porcupine seemed to puzzle Thor, the cub turned and made ready to go back along the slide if it became necessary. Thor advanced another foot, and with a sudden chuck, chuck, chuck—the most vicious sound he was capable of ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... not satisfied. He was perhaps rather pleased to think that there was some mystery connected with the tool-house; it was like trying to solve a very interesting puzzle. ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... But the old man shook his head sadly, for he knew that the villain was only crushed for the moment, and that he would shortly be revenging himself upon them. No, the only way every to get any peace and quiet was to render the Tanuki harmless for ever. Long did the old man and the hare puzzle together how this was to be done, and at last they decided that they would make two boats, a small one of wood and a large one of clay. Then they fell to work at once, and when the boats were ready and properly painted, the hare went to the Tanuki, who was ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... and well-behaving Citizen who took home a dab of Steak, wrapped up in Brown Paper, nearly every Evening, and found his Excitement by working on the Puzzle ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... conscience, and his whole treatment of it, have created a great puzzle of classification, as to whether he is to be placed along with the upholders of a 'moral ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... rather my disguise, for, as I have said, I was wearing a poke bonnet with a plain black dress, seemed to puzzle him. ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... said Gary. "I have got more than my match. But I know who will plague people worse than a puzzle, if she gets well educated. There's a pair of ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... A program which solves a standard problem (such as the Eight Queens puzzle or implementing the {life} algorithm) in a deliberately nonstandard way. Distinguished from a {crock} or {kluge} by the fact that the programmer did it on purpose as a mental exercise. Lew Lasher was a student at Harvard around 1980 who became ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... can browse with me among dusty old dens that look now as they looked five hundred years ago; and puzzle over books in the British Museum that were made before Christ was born; and in the customs of their public dinners, and the ceremonies of every official act, and the dresses of a thousand dignitaries, trace the speech and manners of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... been left in two pieces, to puzzle the ingenuity of those gentry to unite. Yet, venerable and learned as they were, I doubt ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... been prefixed. They put us in the proper disposition for tasting as we read. Often they are guides with which we could hardly dispense. M. Sainte-Beuve is never more happy than in dealing with complexities or contradictions, with characters that puzzle the ordinary observer, with harmonies which are hidden in discords. Of women, it has been well said, he writes "as if he were one of them." Like Thackeray, like Balzac, he knows their secret. So, too, the spirit of a particular epoch ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... ovarian plates. The centre of this area containing the ovarian plates and the visual plates is filled up with small movable plates closing the space between them. I should add that one of the five ovarian plates is larger than the other four, and has a peculiar structure, long a puzzle to naturalists. It is perforated with minute holes, forming an exceedingly delicate sieve, and this is actually the purpose it serves. It is, as it were, a filter, and opens into a canal which conducts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of us will press on in the direction of the river as fast as may be," said Uncle Aleck. The boys looked at each other in dismay. Who would be willing to be left behind in a chase so exciting as this? Sandy bravely solved the puzzle. ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... puzzle to all the girls. Striking, they all agreed, but then the criticisms began. Many of the girls chattered a little broken French, and one of them, Miss Euphrosyne De Lacy, had been half educated in Paris, so that she had all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... tell me it is a foolish war we fight. My brother told me that, for one, back in the Sunset Country. But then, my brother is lame and good for nothing but drawing pictures of the stars. He connects them with lines, like a child's puzzle, and so makes star-pictures. He has fish stars, archer stars, hunter stars. That, I would say, ...
— The One and the Many • Milton Lesser
... again, and, seeing that he was troubled by the puzzle of his position, she explained to him, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... be sure, this is only his private reputation: no trace of such a feeling is observable in his writings, which show throughout a sturdy vein of republicanism, social and political. In truth, the party classification of American literary men is apt to puzzle the uninitiated. Thus Washington Irving is said to belong to the Democrats; but it would be hard to find in his writings anything countenancing their claim upon him. His sketches of English society are a panegyric of old institutions; and the fourth book of his Knickerbocker is throughout ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... fine blazing fire, and plenty of hot tea, toast, and eggs, it was easy to remedy one class of these poor people's wants; but how to rig them out in dry clothes was a puzzle, till the captain bethought him of a resource which answered very well. He sent to several of the officers for their dressing-gowns; and these, together with supplies from his own wardrobe, made capital gowns and petticoats—at least, till the more fitting drapery of the ladies ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... chapel on the north side of Redcliff church;" and thence, most rare young conjurer, he evoked its spirit in the shape of fragments of law-parchment, quaintly inscribed with spells of verse and armorial hieroglyphics, to puzzle antiquaries and make fools of scholiasts. Puzzle them he did; and they could not forgive a clever stripling, whom hunger had tempted to don an ancient mask, and impose himself on their spectacled eyes as a reverend elder. Rogue!—vagabond! ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... think of this or that, lightly or laughingly, as a child thinks, or as we think in a morning doze; we can make puns or puzzle out acrostics, and trifle in a thousand ways with words and rhymes; but when it comes to honest work, when we come to gather ourselves together for an effort, we may sound the trumpet as long and loud as we please; ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this process of adding suitable things and rejecting discordant things which has raised those scenes of strange manners which in every part of the world puzzle the civilised men who come upon them first. Like the old head-dress of mountain villages, they make the traveller think not so much whether they are good or whether they are bad, as wonder how any one could have come to think of them; to regard them as 'monstrosities,' ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... young soldier thought it over, the greater the puzzle became. Nor did it escape his imagination that possibly he was not to be allowed ever to see his comrades again. That thought, of course, sent a chill of horror chasing up and down young Overton's spine. He was not afraid to die in battle, if need be—but to be treated like a rat ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... face. "From our—from Hindu point of view, greatest richness of life come from greatest possible difference between men and women. And most of all it is so in Rajputana. But over here...." She sighed, a small shivering sigh. The puzzle and pain of it went too deep with her. "All this screaming and snatching and scratching for wrong kind of things hurts my heart; because—I am woman and they are women—desecrating that in us which is a symbol of God. Nature made women for ministering to Life and Love. Are they not believing, or ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... and one of no ordinary nature. Years ago, when I was but little older than Sweetwater, I had just such a conviction concerning a certain man against whom I had even less to work on than we have here. A murder had been committed by an envenomed spring contained in a toy puzzle. I worked upon the conscience of the suspect in that case, by bringing constantly before his eyes a facsimile of that spring. It met him in the folded napkin which he opened at his restaurant dinner. He stumbled upon it in the street, and found it lying amongst his ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... apt to confound these terms; so that you will the less wonder, if in his endeavours to explain them, and in opposition to many misconceptions, that my uncle Toby did oft-times puzzle his visitors, and ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... new order of philosophers is appearing; I shall venture to baptize them by a name not without danger. As far as I understand them, as far as they allow themselves to be understood—for it is their nature to WISH to remain something of a puzzle—these philosophers of the future might rightly, perhaps also wrongly, claim to be designated as "tempters." This name itself is after all only an attempt, or, if it ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... earth as resting upon the shoulders of Atlas, and Atlas as standing upon a turtle; but what the turtle stood upon was a puzzle. An acute person says that science has but changed the terms of the equation, but that the unknown quantity is the same as ever. The earth now rests upon the sun,—in his outstretched palm; the sun rests upon some other ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Queux, who has been styled "The Master of Mysteries," has here woven one of his most mystifying tales. It is like a Chinese puzzle in its ingenuity, and holds the reader breathless from the first line to ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... instinctively that he was not dreaming, and yet was powerless to solve the mystery. He was not, however, the man to puzzle himself for long over any insoluble problem. "Come what may," he presently exclaimed, "we will make up our minds for the future ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... doubt, very much in the Talmud that possesses a recondite, spiritual meaning; but it would likely puzzle the most ingenious and learned modern Rabbis to construe into mystical allegories such absurd legends regarding Biblical personages ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... and it continued to puzzle me for a short while, but I soon saw what it meant, and saw why I had not understood from the first. My mind had been so fixed upon my direct duty that I had not once thought of my pretended character. For his part, the captain had supposed ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... asked Philip to cut his salary in two, because he could not hold his men. On that same day the little sub-foreman and two others left him, leaving only nine men at work. The delay in Brokaw's arrival was another puzzle to Philip. Two weeks passed, and in that time Thorpe left camp three times. On the fifteenth day the Fort Churchill messenger returned. He was astounded when he found that Brokaw was not in camp, and brought amazing news. Brokaw and his daughter had departed from Fort ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... five letters find: 1st. An hour-glass puzzle, the central letters of which, read downward, signify to perform again; horizontally, a symbol often used in writing, a beverage, a vowel, a performance, to provide. 2d. A word-square containing a unit, a vehicle, an epoch. 3d. Words to each of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... under such circumstances! They don't marry with their eyes open: they are put to sleep, in one sense, and a'n't more than half responsible for what they do, if they are that. Then rises the question that has puzzled wiser heads than any of ours here, and will puzzle more yet, till society is different from what it is now—how much a refined and sensitive woman is bound to suffer from a coarse and disgusting master, legally called her husband, before she is entitled to ...
— The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House - 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" • J. T. Trowbridge
... before her, and when her thinking was ended she would return to her text. I do not know how long a time it required for her to connect the sentence that followed the word "love;" but it became clear to her finally, just as a difficult puzzle will sometimes resolve itself as you are idly regarding it. And this is what she saw: "Love! But it cannot be sounded: my affection hath an unknown bottom, like the bay of Portugal." The phrase struck her as if it was her own, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... life. My former sad experience, as you know, has gifted me with some degree of insight into the gloomy mysteries of the human heart, through which I have wandered like one astray in a dark cavern, with his torch fast flickering to extinction. But this man, this class of men, is a hopeless puzzle." ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the whole thing as a joke, but determined to paint the pictures; and at Caper's suggestion, each one agreed, as there was a play of words in the clause, 'most work on it,' to puzzle Uncle Bill, and have the laugh ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... troubled faces turned to where Oliver, by the side of his friend Wraysford, was sitting. Wraysford's face was beaming as he clapped his friend on the back. Oliver looked as unconcerned and indifferent as ever. The fellow was a puzzle, certainly. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... is taxation?] What, then, are taxes? The question is one which is apt to come up, sooner or later, to puzzle children. They find no difficulty in understanding the butcher's bill for so many pounds of meat, or the tailor's bill for so many suits of clothes, where the value received is something that can be seen and handled. But the tax bill, ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... will puzzle the best of them!" replied Ingleborough. "I'm not afraid of their marksmen, but I am of the flukes. However, we're in for it! Easy now! We're getting more and more ahead as they close in. There, those behind are obliged to leave off firing for ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... "Frank, you're a puzzle to me. You are cautious about running into danger of any sort, but, once in it, you seem to take a strange and unaccountable delight in the peril. The greater the danger, the happier you ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... as if it were all my fault," she began. "Things lie so still here; we seem so shut in. Cynthia has been like a child to me—I haven't thought ahead and I just played with her and worked out—my puzzle piece by piece. It was only a week ago that I felt sure; I meant to tell Cynthia slowly and little by little—and ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... He was a continual puzzle to her, this man. There was no servility about him, but she had a feeling that he, too, was in some fashion under Mercer's heel. He made himself exceedingly useful to her in his silent, unobtrusive way; but he seldom spoke on his own initiative, and it was some time before she ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... but his heart was already given to theology, and in 1509 he became a bachelor of theology, and commenced lecturing on the Holy Scriptures. His lectures made a great impression, and the novelty of his views already began to excite attention. "This monk," said the rector of the university, "will puzzle our doctors and bring in a new doctrine." Besides lecturing, he began to preach, and his sermons reached a wider audience, and produced a still more powerful influence. They were printed and widely circulated ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... I want to make him happy. But there are so many things, so many different aims and motives, that complicate life, that puzzle one. One doesn't know how much to give ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... grandfer was a clever chap, as ye say; but I knowed a cleverer. 'Twas my uncle Levi. Uncle Levi made a snuff-box that should be a puzzle to his friends to open. He used to hand en round at wedding parties, christenings, funerals, and in other jolly company, and let 'em try their skill. This extraordinary snuff-box had a spring behind that ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... stepping forward so as to get Quatermain between me and the faint angry light of the dying day, for I wanted to see if he would "wipe my eye." I knew him to be a wonderful shot, but I thought that cock would puzzle him. ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... they mean to take your machine away, it's little good your wrecking their bronze panels, and if they don't, you will get it back as soon as you can ask for it. To sit among all those unknown things before a puzzle like that is hopeless. That way lies monomania. Face this world. Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end you will find clues to it all." Then suddenly the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought of the years I had spent in ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... on man's nature or destiny. (We refer our readers to the notes of Dr Croly's edition for a running commentary of confutation to the "Essay on Man" distinguished by solid and unanswerable acuteness of argument.) But such an eloquent and ingenious puzzle as it is! It might have issued from the work-basket of Titania herself. It is another evidence of Pope's greatness in trifles. How he would have shone in fabricating the staves of the ark, or ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... borrowed from a source outside ourselves is not Higher Thought; and that whatever explains to us the Infinite source of our own inherent power and the consequent limitless nature of that power is Higher Thought. This avoids the use of terms which may only puzzle those not accustomed to abstract phraseology, and is substantially the same as the resolution ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... point and Ras Za'farnah, higher up, the wind seems to split: a strong southerly gale will be blowing, whilst a norther of equal pressure prevails at the Gulf-head, and vice vers. Suez, indeed, appears to be, in more ways than one, a hydrographical puzzle. When it is low water in and near the harbour, the flow is high between the Straits of Jobal and the Daedalus Light; and the ebb tide runs out about two points across the narrows, whilst the flood runs in on a line parallel with it. Finally, when we returned, hardly ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... get the balls over the plate, but he used his head in a wonderful manner, and the slow ball proved a complete puzzle for Harvard after they had been batting speed all through the game, so they got but one safe hit off Heffiner that inning ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... things which seem to greatly puzzle the average student of the subject of mental vibrations, and thought-transference, is that which may be called "thought waves." The student is unable to conceive of a wave of "thought" being projected into the air, and ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... Deh-i-Husena—a man who said he was a descendant of the Kayani family, and who professed to know everything about everything,—Gul Khan and I gradually climbed to the higher part of the mountain. I say "gradually" because there was a great deal to interest and puzzle one on ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... to know what Dicky had written to me had been appeased by Lillian's offhand remark that country mails were never reliable, and that my letter would probably arrive later, the elder woman went to her own room to puzzle anew over her son's letter, which simply said over again what he had told her over ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... to moralize In scientific doubt On certain facts that Nature tries To puzzle us about,— For I am no philosopher Of wise elucidation, But speak of things as ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... necessary for the scheme he had in view, so he became for some time quite a familiar figure in the dusty deserted streets and in the meadows by the river. His continual visits to Caermaen were a tortuous puzzle to the inhabitants, who flew to their windows at the sound of a step on the uneven pavements. They were at a loss in their conjectures; his motive for coming down three times a week must of course be bad, but it seemed undiscoverable. And Lucian on his side was at first a good deal put out by ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... ceased to be dark. Trade was opened with the interior, and the discovery of diamond mines and gold mines in South Africa (1867, 1884) stimulated emigration. Railways have been pushed forward in many directions (S622), new markets are springing up, and Africa, once the puzzle of the world, seems destined to become one of the great fields which the Anglo-Saxon race is determined to ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... be considered the great difficulty of this book of the Republic, the so-called number of the State. This is a puzzle almost as great as the Number of the Beast in the Book of Revelation, and though apparently known to Aristotle, is referred to by Cicero as a proverb of obscurity (Ep. ad Att.). And some have imagined that there is no answer to the ...
— The Republic • Plato
... and death, of conscious and unconscious life, by a theory of a double human spirit, one associated with the heart and the other with the shadow. The psychology is rudimentary, still it is interesting as an attempt to solve problems which still puzzle civilised man. ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... was shattered, but a dozen feet back of him the treacherous Mexican threw up his arms and fell lifeless, a bullet through his cowardly heart. It was a puzzling bit of trick-work, he thought, but Baird of course would know what was right, so the puzzle was dismissed. Buck Benson, silent man of the open, had got the scoundrel who would ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... didn't know what idea was in her head. She had already left him, but he called after her, "If you do stay, I will come!" She neither turned nor made an answer, and all that was left to him was to watch her till she passed out of sight. Her back, with its charming young form, seemed to repeat that last puzzle, which ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... down the ax. There were vague misgivings in him which he was not able to realize. The state of his own mind was fast becoming a puzzle ...
— The Frozen Deep • Wilkie Collins
... which prevailed was, perhaps, that Marjorie and Alan were fully occupied in trying to discover why Thomas was making so much effort to get into the ruined summer-house. It seemed a delightful thing to be mixed up in a mystery, and each hoped to have a share in solving it. Such a puzzle made constant private talks necessary, in order to think out a clue. Estelle took an almost painful interest in their conjectures, but shrank from all part in their wanderings round the ruin, or down to the cliff walk. Alan had shown Marjorie ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... a time when woman had interested him as a puzzle to be worked out, a maze to be explored, a temple to be penetrated—until one reached the place where the priests manipulated the machinery for the wonders and miracles to fool the devotees into awe. Some men never get to this stage, never realize ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... eyes shamed him. "What's it matter? I guess two kin puzzle out the roads better than one, an' if I have been in a brick house with a high fence an' a playground between where never a blade of grass grew, for about eighteen years, it looks to me as if I could take care of myself a lot better ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... memory of it. If the "Mary" of my early days were still living, and if I had met her, would she have treated me as this woman had treated me? Never! It was an injury to "Mary" to think even of that heartless creature by her name. Why think of her at all? Why degrade myself by trying to puzzle out a means of tracing her in her letter? It was sheer folly to attempt to trace a woman who had gone I knew not whither, and who herself informed me that she meant to pass under an assumed name. Had I lost all pride, all self-respect? In the flower of my age, with a handsome fortune, ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... of Alexandria, about a hundred and thirty years before Christ. His machine was also the first known illustration of what is now called the "turbine" principle; the principle of reaction in mechanics. [Footnote: This principle is often a puzzle to students. There is an old story of the man who put a bellows in his boat to make wind against the sail, and the wind did not affect the sail, but the boat went backward in an opposite direction from the nozzle of the bellows. There is probably no better illustration of ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... whether Nature, acting as she does according to definite and invariable laws, can be rightly called an unintelligent agent, such a position as this is wholly untenable. Mix salt and sand, and it shall puzzle the wisest of men, with his mere natural appliances, to separate all the grains of sand from all the grains of salt; but a shower of rain will effect the same object in ten minutes. And so, while man may find it tax ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... and imperfect ideas often involve our reason, so, upon the same ground, do dubious words and uncertain signs, often, in discourses and arguings, when not warily attended to, puzzle men's reason, and bring them to a nonplus. But these two latter are our fault, and not the fault of reason. But yet the consequences of them are nevertheless obvious; and the perplexities or errors they fill men's minds with ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... surly visit; in half an hour she was back with tea and toast and an altered mien. She not only lit my fire, but treated me the while to her original tone of almost fervent civility and respect and determination. Her vagaries soon ceased to puzzle me: the psychology of Jane Braithwaite was not recondite. In the night it had dawned upon her that Rattray had found me harmless and was done with me, therefore there was no need for her to put herself out any further on my account. In the morning, finding me really ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... November 14, 1916—new style—the approaching doom of Czar Nicholas II was already manifest. Why the Revolution did not occur at that time is a puzzle not easy to solve. Perhaps the mere fact that the Duma was assembling served to postpone resort to drastic measures. The nation waited for the Duma to lead. It is probable, also, that fear lest revolution prove disastrous ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... out taking with him the sense of puzzle felt by so many over this unusual personage. At the main entrance the Colonel came ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... leagued together to help another boy save a peculiar invention of his father's, a talking frog, from thieving hands,—wait breathlessly in the lonely brick house where the puzzle maker had met with such a strange death. ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... you found?' cried the doctor, resuming that great shake by both hands, which in his momentary puzzle he had suspended. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... this nocturnal expedition, and why should I go armed? Where were we going, and what were we to do? I had the hint from Holmes that this smooth-faced pawnbroker's assistant was a formidable man—a man who might play a deep game. I tried to puzzle it out, but gave it up in despair, and set the matter aside until night ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various |
