"Intricate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sword. As Musa handed it to him, he extended it toward the rear of the booth, whipping it in an intricate saber drill. Musa watched, puzzled. An experienced swordsman himself he had thought he knew all of the sword arts. The sword flexed, singing as it cut through ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... saw other vast shapes—huge buildings with intricate parapets and tall columns, with a wooded hill-side dimly creeping in upon me through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic fear. I turned frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to readjust ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... bitterly, a closer acquaintance with facts might cure him of an infatuation against which pride and inherited instinct had rebelled ill vain: and so intricate are the mazes of self-deception, that he firmly believed in his ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... hero of the Aztecs was Quetzalcoatl, and the leading drama, the central myth, in all the extensive and intricate theology of the Nahuatl speaking tribes was his long contest with Tezcatlipoca, "a contest," observes an eminent Mexican antiquary, "which came to be the main element in the Nahuatl religion and the cause of its modifications, ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... the government of the country as a sort of mechanical clock, which from time to time sent out a few small figures, and from time to time took them in again; and they showed an astonishing acquaintance with the internal and intricate mechanism which produced these changes. Perhaps it was because they were so busy in watching for changes on the face of the clock that they seemed to forget the swinging onward of the great world outside and the solemn ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... perspiring, and with his whole soul in his task, he was everywhere at once; he "sashayed" officiously through the hall, artfully treading on the balls of his feet, which were shod with shining, pointed military boots, and setting them down crosswise in some intricate fashion, swung his arms in the air, made arrangements, called for music, clapped his hands,—and through all this the ribbons of the great, gay-colored bow which was fastened to his shoulder in token of his dignity, and toward which he occasionally turned his head lovingly, fluttered ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... knots have been used as symbols and badges and many old Coats of Arms bear intricate and handsome knots, or entwined ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill
... Cobenzl, enjoys, not only in his own country, but through all Europe, a great reputation as a statesman, and has for a number of years been employed by his Court in the most intricate and delicate political transactions. In 1790 he was sent to Brabant to treat with the Belgian insurgents; but the States of Brabant refusing to receive him, he retired to Luxembourg, where he published a proclamation, in which Leopold II. revoked all those edicts of his predecessor, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the same language as the relative handful of trained men who built and operated the unbelievably intricate robomachinery which activated and maintained the complex ...
— DP • Arthur Dekker Savage
... that the people of these islands are great gamblers. They have a game very much like our draughts; but if one may judge from the number of squares, it is much more intricate. The board is about two feet long, and is divided into two hundred and thirty-eight squares, of which there are fourteen in a row; and they make use of black and white pebbles, which they move ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... blast of red and green flame from the ground close to our tree, reminded us that one heavy still remained under firing orders. The flash seen through the forest revealed in intricate tracings the intertwining limbs and branches of the trees. It presented the appearance of a piece of strong black lace spread out and held at arm's length in front of ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... instinctively in the child's mind as soon as its unfolding consciousness is strong enough to grasp the first rough idea of personal existence. Far down, so to speak, below the surface of distinct consciousness, in the intricate formation of ganglion-cell and nerve-fibre, the connections between the idea of self and this emotion of esteem have been slowly woven through long ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... down, and destroy him. This group and the main fountain, as well as the sides of the beautiful court, are mirrored in the long still pool in which the fountain stands - a pool properly free from splashes or springs as befits the setting of this intricate and massive work. The rapid and stable growth of Robert I. Aitken, sculptor of the Fountain of Earth, is of particular interest to San Francisco, the city of his birth, and the site of several of his ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... aware of what was included in the duties of his office, he must perform them, or quit his post. But how to perform them? Can one learn to convey consolation to the dying, to teach the ignorant, to comfort the sorrowful? Are these matters to be acquired by study, like Greek verbs or intricate measures? The Rector's heart said No. The Rector's imagination unfolded before him, in all its halcyon blessedness, that ancient paradise of All-Souls, where no such confounding demands ever disturbed his beatitude. The good man groaned within himself over the ...
— The Rector • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... conceit, seem to have culminated in it. And the story itself is so touching that it would be poetical even if narrated in the plainest prose. How surpassingly beautiful is it, then, worked out with all the richness of that sweetest poet, who, in intricate verbal music and ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Latin. The substance was this: They had scent of a booty in a house that stood by itself three miles out of the town. But the servants were incorruptible, and they could not get access to inspect the premises, which were intricate. Now your professional burglar will no more venture upon unexplored premises than a good seaman will run into an unknown channel without pilot, soundings or chart. It appeared from the dialogue that the two men were acquainted with a party ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the captain. "What's the use—at sea? Everything's got to come to bearings at some port, hasn't it? You can't stop at sea for ever, can you?—No; the Flying Scud is rubbish; if it meant anything, it would have to mean something so almighty intricate that James G. Blaine hasn't got the brains to engineer it; and I vote for more axeing, pioneering, and opening up the resources of this phenomenal brig, and less general fuss," he added, arising. "The dime-museum symptoms will drop ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an intricate and long history which has often been treated in books on the New Testament: it is quite unnecessary to repeat it at length. But it has not usually been sufficiently noted that the difficulty of the problems raised by it are mainly due to its use in different ways in ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... in a tin. When a man lies down he lies on his mate, when he stands up, if he dare to do such a thing, he runs the risk of being blown to eternity by a shell. Rifles, packs, haversacks, bayonets, and men are all messed up in an intricate jumble, the reserves lie down like rats in a trap, with their noses to the damp earth, which always reminds me of the grave. For them there is not the mad exhilaration of the bayonet charge, and the relief of striking back at the ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... faith into her reasonings, at once so bold and so undoubting—her spirit of certainty, and her deep contemplations on the unseen and infinite. And in literature, he had taken as guides and models, above all criticism and all appeal, the classical writers. But with his mind full of the deep and intricate questions of metaphysics and theology, and his poetical taste always owing allegiance to Vergil, Ovid, and Statius—keen and subtle as a schoolman—as much an idolater of old heathen art and grandeur as the men of the Renaissance—his eye is yet as open ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... they have broken, being not so intricate, as that against which we have offended, theirs being a commandment with faithfulness to abide in the place in which their Creator had set them; methinks, considering also the aptness of their natures as angels, would not have made their complete ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... not appear that Colonel Boone was a member of any of these conventions. He had no taste for the struggles in political assemblies. He dreaded indeed the speculator, the land jobber, and the intricate decisions of courts, more than the tomahawk of the Indian. And he knew full well that should the hour of action come, he would be one of the first to be summoned to the field. While therefore others of the early pioneers were engaged in these important deliberations, he was ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... day the march of the tribe was to commence; but as several of the Nausetts were acquainted with the intricate path round the base of the hills, it was not necessary for Coubitant to lead them that part of their journey in person. He therefore proposed, after pointing out to Henrich all the necessary land-marks which could be so well observed from the summit, to find his own way down the steep ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... placing of accent are complicated. The International Dictionary says there are no principles by which to determine the accent in English. Another high authority says: "All attempts to assign rules for the place of the accent in English only serve to render the subject hopelessly intricate and confounded." ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... But a more intricate portion of the theory of Credit is its influence on prices; the chief cause of most of the mercantile phenomena which perplex observers. In a state of commerce in which much credit is habitually given, general prices at any moment depend much more upon the state of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... doing: "We will see you well instructed in the past, but you must make out the present for yourselves." Why, if the past is worth explaining, far more is the present—the pressing, noisy, complex present, where our work-field lies, the most intricate of all states of society, and of all schools of literature yet known, and therefore the ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... are associated with the sea. Twice a year it studs its branches with pink fruit, food for many weeks for a carnival of birds, the relics of the feast dully carpeting the sand. Before the first fruiting the old leaves fall, and for a brief interval the shadows of branches and twigs, intricate, involved, erratic, might be likened to unschooled scribblings, with here a flourish and there a blot and many a boisterous smudge. Soon—it is merely a question of days—the swelling buds displace millions of leaf-sheaves, pale green ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... sufficiently qualified for either kind of dramatic poetry. In this play, of which, when he afterwards revised it, he reduced the versification to greater regularity; there is more bustle than sentiment; the plot is busy and intricate, and the events take hold on the attention; but, except a very few passages, we are rather amused with noise and perplexed with stratagem, than entertained with any true delineation of natural characters. ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... things were inexplicable. He could not find even a plausible solution for such difficult problems. His excited brain reeled beneath the weight of puzzles so intricate and so complicated. He was compelled to dismiss them all from his thoughts. But though he dismissed such thoughts as these, there were others which gave occupation to his whole mind, and these at last excited his chief ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... and more intent on the consideration of the instance before us. The temptation to drag it under what we already know is great and must be resisted. Proverbs and wise saws are more suitable to common life than to intricate relationships. They are inapplicable to ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... a table. On it was an apparatus; the eyes of the older man widened as he saw it. It was intricate—a maze of tubing. There was a glass bulb above—the generator of a cathode ray, obviously—and electro-magnets below and on each side. Beneath was a crude sphere of heavy lead—a retort, it might be—and from this there passed two massive, insulated cables. The understanding eyes of the Professor ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... of the wood joined their branches into a dome of intricate groinings over the floor of ferns where the children sat sunk to the neck in a foam of tender green. The sunbeams that slanted in made shivering patches of gold about them. Joyce, the elder of the pair, was trying ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... borrowed from previous sources, instead of availing himself of the most popular and admired, has groped out his way, and made his most successful researches among the more obscure and intricate, though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our writers. He has raked among the dust and cobwebs of a remote period, has exhibited specimens of curious relics, and pored over moth-eaten, decayed manuscripts, for ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... ancients have said, that the same befell Zeno which befalls him who has sour wine which he can sell neither for vinegar nor wine; for his "things preferable," as he called them, cannot be disposed of, either as good or as indifferent. But Chrysippus has made the matter yet far more intricate; for he sometimes says, that they are mad who make no account of riches, health, freedom from pain, and integrity of the body, nor take any care to attain them; and having cited ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... alternative: "Or—He spoke distinctly enough to be heard by the whole assembly."—Ibid. This suggests that the man himself was heard. "When they hit upon a figure that pleases them, they are loth to part with it, and frequently continue it so long, as to become tedious and intricate."—Murray's Gram., p. 341. Is it the authors, or their figure, that becomes tedious and intricate? If the latter, strike out, "so long, as to become," and say, "till it becomes." "Facts are always ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... tide prevented entrance for nine days. "The river Mr. Gray mentioned," says Vancouver, "should be south of Cape Disappointment. This we passed on the forenoon of the 27th; and if any inlet or river be found, it must be a {270} very intricate one, inaccessible . . . owing to reefs and broken water. . . . I was thoroughly convinced, as were most persons on board, that we could not possibly have passed any cape . . . from Mendocino to ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... time since he had first seen her she wasn't on the spot. He had now no scruple about giving her time to arrive, but she didn't arrive, and when he went away still missing her he was profanely and consentingly sorry. If her absence made the tangle more intricate, that was all her own doing. By the end of another year it was very intricate indeed; but by that time he didn't in the least care, and it was only his cultivated consciousness that had given him scruples. Three times in three months he had gone to church without finding ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James
... family, being well adapted to that purpose by their refreshing coolness. Their ceilings for the most part are semicircular vaults, richly painted, and the more valuable because few ceilings have been found in existence. We should attempt in vain to describe the complicated subjects, the intricate and varied patterns with which the fertile fancy of the arabesque painter has clothed the walls and ceilings, without the aid of drawings, which we are unable to give; and, indeed, colored plates would be requisite to convey an adequate notion of their effect. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... she comes home, whether laden with provisions or not, hesitates, as I have said, for a while; in a series of rapid zigzags, she moves backwards, forwards and from side to side, at a short distance from the ground. This intricate flight at first suggests the idea that she is trying to lead her persecutress astray by means of an inextricable tangle of marches and countermarches. That would certainly be a prudent move on the Bee's part; but so much wisdom ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... lifted it, and received a vivid impression of a crowd of dancing forms suddenly arrested: something told him beyond dispute that at the moment he had drawn the hangings aside what were now lovely but motionless statues had sprung each to its pedestal out of the mazes of an intricate dance. Sound and movement had been frozen, in a flash of time, into a crowd of beautiful forms—in stone. No statue but seemed to tremble into immobility as the intruder's gaze turned this way and that no marble face but seemed to be aglow with the music that had died with his ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... youth, had almost passed away. The school had taken its place with its mock courts, contests in oratory, set themes in fictitious controversies. The analytical rules of rhetoric were growing ever more intricate and time-wasting, and how pedantic they were even before Vergil's childhood may be seen by a glance into the anonymous Auctor ad Herennium. The student had to know the differences between the various kinds of cases, demonstrativum, deliberativum and judiciale; ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... his seat, Frank Norton's fingers were speeding through the intricate pattern of setting up the next jump. He and Louie were working ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... over the far, ragged rim of the forest, touched them with phantom silver. Everywhere jutting rocks and sharp crevices broke the soft mantle of the blueberry thickets; and on the southerly slope, where sunset and moonrise mingled with intricate shadows, everything looked ghostlike and unreal. On the utmost summit of the mountain a rounded peak of white granite, smoothed by ages of storm, ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... torpid all winter in his hole took advantage of the first warm day to limber up for the spring campaign. Having tied himself into an intricate knot, he was so overcome by the warmth of his own body that he fell asleep, and did not wake until nightfall. In the darkness he was unable to find his head or his tail, and so could not disentangle and slide into his hole. Per consequence, he ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... they mounted to the first floor, where there was an account-book ruling and binding shop: the site of the old sitting-room and the girls' bedroom. In each chamber Edwin had to light a gas, and the corridors and stairways were traversed by the ray of matches. It was excitingly intricate. Then they went to the attics, because Edwin was determined that she should see all. There he found a ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... ulterior purpose, but seeing all things in their relation to itself, and subordinating them to its own boldly asserted ego, the Jewish race is not inclined to apply its powers to the solution of intricate philosophic problems, or to abstruse metaphysical speculations. It is, therefore, not a philosophic race, and its participation in the philosophic work of the world dates only from its contact with the Greeks." The same author, on the other hand, emphasizes the liberality, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... eyes twinkling, and a broad smile shortening his long, lean face till its great Roman nose and pointed chin were hobnobbing sociably together, the best hunter and guide on the Gatineau sat pouring boiling water through the barrel and into the innermost holy of holies of the intricate lock mechanism of his .303 Winchester—to dry it out and prevent rusting from the wetting it had ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... epoch covered in the present volume is identical with that viewed in the preceding one. But now as regards subject matter we pass on to those diverse phases of the physical world which are the field of the chemist, and to those yet more intricate processes which have to do with living organisms. So radical are the changes here that we seem to be entering new worlds; and yet, here as before, there are intimations of the new discoveries away back in the Greek days. The solution of the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... behind her every available door in the chambers and passages, but not as quickly as she wished, since attention to her feet was needful in the ruinous state of steps and walls. Through those massive walls she could hear nothing distinctly, but she fancied voices and a cry, making her seek more intricate windings, nor did she dare to look out till she had gained a thick screen of bushy ivy at the corner of the turret, where a little door opened on the broad summit ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thought about this. He had discarded his first instinct, which was to hide in the intricate Tetrahyde cloaca. Instead, an hour before dawn, he went directly to the large, brightly lighted building that housed the Ministry ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... this process of determining status on the basis of race is to be found in the various slave codes that grew up in the Southern States. They were supposed to be done away with forever by the war amendments and Sumner's famous Bill of Rights but the problem is one far too subtle and intricate for regulation by statute, as the Supreme Court has discovered. Status based upon color still exists both North and South though without ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... arcades, to shady streets mirroring brown mansions in glassy canals; on to toy villages of miniature painted houses, standing in flowery gardens, far below the level of adjacent ponds adorned with flower-islands; through large parks and intricate plantations; past solemnly flapping windmills; far beyond, to meadows where black and white cows recognized the fact that we were not Dutch and despised us for it; then back to parks and gardens again. "I shouldn't think there could be any sort of characteristic thing left which we haven't met ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... 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 effort of Diffidence, ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... lack of literary interest. She would read the feuilletons of the Petit Journal and the Matin in a desultory fashion; but she could not concentrate her mind on the continuous perusal of a novel. She spent hours over a pack of greasy cards, telling her fortune by intricate methods. The same with music; though in this case she had a love for it in the open air when a band was playing, and was possessed of a natural ear, and could read easy pieces and accompaniments at sight with some facility. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... "some subjects, by impetuous application, omit vision of intricate detail. This is due to subjects' lack ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... Mrs. Pat, and, whether from sympathy or from a petulant touch of her heel, Pilot at this moment involved himself in so intricate a series of plunges and bucks as to ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... inkhued shape loomed up, came in for a buzz of admiration. Malvoise, in a leathern jacket of black, with black leggings, gauntlets and goggles, instantly set to work on a final inspection, looking like some species of sable imp as he dodged in and out among the intricate wires. ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... they are looked upon with great favor by the farming class and are doing a magnificent work. Their function is that of research chiefly, although they attempt some control service, such as inspection of fertilizers, stock foods, etc. In research they aim both to study the more intricate scientific questions that relate to agriculture and to carry on experiments that are of more obvious and more immediate practical application to existing conditions in the various states. There is one of these stations in each ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... the richer, fuller song that he sings to his nesting mate in the far north! The volume is really tremendous, coming from so tiny a throat. Those who have heard it in northern Canada describe it as a flute-like and mellow warble full of intricate phrases past the imitating. Dr. Coues says of it: "The ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... still another task to perform—the capture or destruction of the slave-schooner of which Dicky Popo had told us. As the navigation of the river was intricate and dangerous above where we lay, the commander, unwilling to risk the safety of the ship, resolved to send up the boats, notwithstanding the assistance which the canoes might be expected to afford her. Three were accordingly sent away under the command ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... a wife's true position in the household may be opportune. There is no question but that her status has changed in the last generation. Whether this change is for the better is a matter of opinion. It is too large and too intricate a problem to be fully discussed in a book of this character. Any opinion on such a subject must of necessity, in our judgment, be a warped one. There are few, very few, absolutely happy and congenial homes. It has been estimated that only five per cent. of all marriages are ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... had almost forgotten to say, was fastened; not by a lock, nor by any other such contrivance, but by a very intricate knot of gold cord. There appeared to be no end to this knot, and no beginning. Never was a knot so cunningly twisted, nor with so many ins and outs, which roguishly defied the skilfullest fingers to disentangle them. And yet, by the very difficulty that there was in it, Pandora was the ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... throne was neither. He was the man to prove, too, for the instruction of the patient letter-writer of the Escorial, that the crown of France was to be won with foot in stirrup and carbine in hand, rather than to be caught by the weaving and casting of the most intricate nets of diplomatic intrigue, though thoroughly weighted ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Meanwhile, the sage whose faith is in magnitude and ambition is, like a giant, becoming larger and larger, which only means that the stars are becoming smaller and smaller. World after world falls from him into insignificance; the whole passionate and intricate life of common things becomes as lost to him as is the life of the infusoria to a man without a microscope. He rises always through desolate eternities. He may find new systems, and forget them; he may discover fresh universes, and learn to despise them. But the towering and tropical ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... four days. In the Roman Law department, I was on the spot with Stillicidium and similar servitudes, and in Criminal Law I did vastly distinguish myself by polishing off an intricate legal problem about Misters A., B. and C., and certain bicycles, though, as I stated in a postscriptum, not being the practical cyclist, I could not be at all responsible for the accuracy of my solution, and hinted that it was somewhat ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... instead of the ordinary tuning coil. The switch arms, pivoting shafts and attachments for same, the contact points and binding posts were home-made. A potentiometer puzzled them most, both the making and the application, but they mastered this rather intricate mechanism, as ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... head, such weather; and, by the way, that reminds me, I'll show you my new gallery and collection of curiosities—pictures, busts, marbles, antiques, and so on; there'll be fires on, and we shall be just as well there as here.' So saying, Jawleyford led the way through a dark, intricate, shabby passage, to where a much gilded white door, with a handsome crimson curtain over it announced the entrance to something better. 'Now,' said Mr. Jawleyford, bowing as he threw open the door, and motioned, or rather flourished, his guest to enter—'now,' said ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... tracery, each different, each telling a story. 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 took the drawers out, one by one, laying ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... almost overbalanced the other way, and only finally managed to come to an intricate halt on one leg. The other leg—the right one—was twisted back under him, in line with his closed wings and tail; that is to say, it was pointing the wrong way for a bird's leg, or, rather, so far as could be seen among the feathers, ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... to Verdun. But the mixture of units speaking different languages in the intricate web of communications required for directing modern operations, and the mixture of transport in the course of heavy concentrations in the midst of a critical action where absolute cohesion of all units was necessary, must result in confusion which would make any such plan impracticable. Only the ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... keeping the place while the others work. In one first grade where this plan was in vogue the children discovered a book on the teacher's desk which contained numerous designs, many of them much more intricate than she would have attempted to use as classwork. Their instinct for exploration led them to struggle with the directions until they had worked out some designs which would have proved dismal failures had they been attempted as class lessons. ...
— Primary Handwork • Ella Victoria Dobbs
... prefer the most favorable sense. There was perhaps some malice in the remark of Theodorus Metochita, that all who, like Eusebius, had been conversant with the Egyptians, delighted in an obscure and intricate ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... 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 their ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... narration, in that it affords no security of the fittest order of examination of the parts. For certain simple relations between the movements of a few definite objects a working model may be serviceable; but when complex changes of shape, pace, and local relations exist, when intricate interaction takes place, and when new phenomena arise affecting by their presence all former ones, little can be effected by such visual presentment. Still less can a succession of diagrams assist us to realise the continuity of the working of such ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... as the figure brought many together, and separating into a hundred elements again, when the next steps scattered them again; the jewels in the women's hair, the clasps of diamonds and precious stones at throat, and shoulder, and waist, all moved with an intricate motion, in orbits that crossed and recrossed in the tinted sea of silk, and flashed all at once, as the returning burden of the music brought the dancers to stand and turn at the same beat of the measure. Yet it was all unlike the square dancing of these days, which is either no dancing at all, ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... during the month of August, although the Allies were greatly hampered in their operations by heavy rains and mud. On a nine-mile front east and north of Ypres, a long drawn-out battle carried the advancing French and British troops more than a mile into the intricate hostile trench system on August 16, after successive advances on previous days. From Dreigrachten southward the French surged across the River Steenbeke, capturing all objectives, while at the same time the British occupied considerable ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... the colored pupils fail when they reach mathematics. A scholar in one of our Southern institutions made an original demonstration of an intricate problem in geometry, in a method different from any known previously by his teacher, an accomplished scholar, and it ...
— The American Missionary — Vol. 44, No. 4, April, 1890 • Various
... banks and islands is most singular in the part just referred to, namely, from latitude 15 deg to 17 deg, where the sea deepens quite gradually: the DHALAC group, on the western coast, is surrounded by an intricate archipelago of islets and shoals; the main island is very irregularly shaped, and it includes a bay seven miles long, by four across, in which no bottom was found with 252 feet: there is only one entrance into this ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... present now and here, America's busy, teeming, intricate whirl, Of aggregate and segregate for ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... the strength of the strong for granted; it is the strength of the weak that we applaud. If a man is known to be good or useful or great, we treat his goodness or usefulness or greatness as one of the given factors of life's intricate problem, and straightway dismiss it from our minds. It is when goodness or usefulness or greatness breaks out in unexpected places or in unexpected people that we vociferously shout our praise. We applaud the singers at a concert because it appeals to us as such an amazing ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... in the account of his voyage, has given a tolerably minute chart of the straight of Magellan, but the names do not correspond with those used here, or by the English navigators in general. Perhaps the fullest and most accurate chart of this very intricate and unsafe passage ever published, is to be found in the American Atlas of Jefferys, London, 1775. It is enlarged from one published at Madrid in 1709, improved from the surveys and observations of Byron, Wallis, and Carteret, and compared with those of Bougainville. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... hour they fix) they awoke him at the time appointed. Their language would bear the ordinary tests of sanity, and was like that we see in daily newspapers; but the various knowledge brought in, the complicated scenes gone through, made the whole resemble intricate concerted music, from the imperfect study of which possibly came the power to fabricate them. That they were owing to some physical cause was shown by their keeping a sort of cadence with the pulse, and in the fact, that, though not disagreeable, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... time in heading for Shan Tung's. He was like a man playing chess, and the moves were becoming so swift and so intricate that his mind had no rest. Each hour brought forth its fresh necessities and its new alternatives. It was McDowell who had given him his last cue, perhaps the surest and safest method of all for winning his game. The iron man, that disciple of the Law who was merciless in ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... those Sticks are black and the other 2 White and Something larger than the black ones. those Sticks they place in defferent positions which they perform under a kind of trencher made of bark round and about 14 inches diamieter. this is a very intricate game and I cannot Sufficiently understand to discribe it. the man who is in possession of the Sticks &c places them in defferent positions, and the opposit party tels the position of the black Sticks ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... they then became silent, he entered into an intricate discussion with the philosophers Maximus and Priscus on the sublime nature of the soul, while the wound of his pierced side was gaping wide. At last the swelling of his veins began to choke his breath, and having drank ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... pre-Mohammedan times is an unintelligible or, at least, unreadable, record of the complicated quarrels and varying frontiers of small states. Yet this is as true of the history of the Italian as of the Indian peninsula. The real reason why Indian history seems tedious and intricate is that large interests are involved only in the greatest struggles, such as the efforts to ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... the way, and with muffled, stealthy footstep conducted them across dark halls and along intricate passages, up long and winding staircases—all bare and cold; through vast gloomy rooms, the walls and floors of which were of black oak, the former richly carved, and in places hung with ancient tapestry, displaying ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... so long as they could do this their industry might conceivably consist in getting consumers' goods by labor only. The rudest pick, shovel, or ax and the simplest hunting implement are early types of what, in "capitalistic production," is represented by mills with their intricate machines, ships, railroads, and the like. Primitive industry has capital but is not highly capitalistic, since labor and a little capital in simple forms are all that it requires. These primitive capital ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... country in which they settled, between the Danube and Save and the Adriatic, is one of the most important. It is almost everywhere mountainous, and though the mountains themselves never attain as much as 10,000 feet in height, yet they cover the whole country with an intricate network and have always formed an obstacle to easy communication between the various parts of it. The result of this has been twofold. In the first place it has, generally speaking, been a protection against foreign ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... it is not correctly traced, in consequence of the line of descent being carried back through Henry VII., instead of being carried through his wife, nee Elizabeth Plantagenet. It may not be uninteresting to state the royal pedigree, which is at times rather intricate, and full of sinuosities,—in part due to the occurrences of political revolutions, old English statesmen never having paid much regard to political legitimacy, which is a modern notion. Queen Victoria is the daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, who was son of George III., who was son of Frederick, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... the mouth fixed in position with patent catches, and it lay where the disappointed thief had flung it, tumbled on its side, with a quantity of gold and crystal fittings scattered round about. On the gold backs of the brushes, and the tops of the bottles, was an intricate monogram, traced in ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... panels for this class of work use those finished in a contrasting color to the general tone of the specimens, a dark bird on a lighter panel and the reverse. On all panels and shields smooth rounded, beveled or Ogee edges are advisable. Small headings and intricate moulding are dust catchers. Wild cats, 'coons, foxes, coyotes, even bears and pumas gathered by night hunters and dog enthusiasts are usually best made up as more or less elaborate rugs. As wall and couch or chair hangings these have no trimming ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... wait for her to finish. "Let us not speak of that," he said. "It is enough to know that you are still satisfied with my, thus far, unsuccessful efforts in your behalf. There is nothing affords me keener pleasure than to struggle with and solve an intricate problem, whether it be in algebra, geometry, or the mathematics of crime; and then—well, even if I succeed, I shall ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... that had united my father and Prince M., prime minister to the emperor, and pass through the diplomatic instead of the military career; adding, that all the questions which were decided formerly upon the battle-field, would henceforth be decided by Congresses; that soon the intricate and base tradition of ancient diplomacy would give place to an enlarged and humane system of politics concerning the true interests of the people, who from day to day gained more knowledge of their rights; that a high, loyal, and generous ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... yellow-varnished geological map of the South of England. Over the mantel is a huge lump of white coral rock and several big fossil bones, and above that hangs the portrait of a brainy gentleman, sliced in half and displaying an interior of intricate detail and much vigour of coloring. It is the floor I think of chiefly; over the oilcloth of which, assumed to be land, spread towns and villages and forts of wooden bricks; there are steep square hills ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... been 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 ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... influence the body may possess; beyond this point the body is but the soul's inert companion, with whom she must sustain a constant battle, attendance on whose necessities robs her of all leisure, whose attacks and interruptions break the thread of the most intricate speculation, and drive the spirit from the clearest and plainest conceptions into a chaotic complexity of the senses, whose pleasures remove the greatest part of our fellow-creatures far from their high original, and reduce ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Above that point all was smooth, though fearfully steep; below was the confusion the earthquake had wrought. Each day Karstens felt sure they would reach the break, but each day as they advanced toward it the distance lengthened and the intricate difficulties increased. More than once a passage painfully hewn in the solid ice had to be abandoned, because it gave no safe exit, and some other passage found. At last the cleavage was reached, and it proved the most ticklish ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... we come to our types of theory, it is necessary to touch on an idea, not unfrequently met with, which would make it vain labour to discuss or propose any theory at all. It is sometimes said that Hamlet's character is not only intricate but unintelligible. Now this statement might mean something quite unobjectionable and even perhaps true and important. It might mean that the character cannot be wholly understood. As we saw, there may be questions ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... with dogged glumness. "I ... well, I don't know about the old days. A hundred, even fifty years ago, but as society becomes more complicated, more intricate, I simply don't think politicians are capable of directing it. The main problems are those of production and distribution of all the things our science and industry have learned to turn out. And politicians, all over the world, seem to foul ...
— Expediter • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... in either of these classes; he ranked somewhere between the biggest and the smallest. He coupled colossal boldness with the most expert knowledge of all the intricate workings of the congressional mechanism. Given money to spend among members to secure the defeat of a bill, he would frequently put most of the money in his own pocket and for a comparatively small sum defeat it by influencing the ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... this world, by running on the verge of the moat which once surrounded the Bastile, and where nothing but the screams of my companion prevented him from plunging in, wholly lost his way. The few lamps in this intricate and miserable quarter of the city had been blown out by the tempest, and our only resource appeared to be patience, until the tardy break of winter's morn should guide us through the labyrinth of the Faubourg St Antoine. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... threshold and at the basis of all existence. For example:—here is a lump of compact, whitish, cheese-like substance, about as much as would go into a thimble. From this I profess to be able to produce a gigantic, intricate structure, sixty feet in height and diameter, hard, solid, and enduring, which shall furthermore possess the power of extending and multiplying itself until it covers the whole earth, and even all the earths in the ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... conclusions; but examined well and profoundly every question—weighed well every argument; but he never forgot the advice of Mr. Crawford, and sometimes would strain a point in order to effect strict and substantial justice. As a judge, he was peculiarly cautious. However intricate was any case, he bent to it his whole mind, and the great effort was always to learn the right—to sift from it all the verbiage and ambiguity which surrounded and obscured it, and then to sustain it in his decision. Upright ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... tells her pupils what to do, but shows them how to do it. The gilding and colouring of the stamps was most elaborate; two monograms of the Queen's name and that of the Empress Eugenie being perfect marvels of artistic and intricate workmanship. Every process, from mixing the colours up to burnishing the gold, was gone through in detail by this practical lady and her intelligent pupils for my special edification, and I passed out a much wiser and certainly not a sadder ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... after the most scientific military tactics. The narrow, uneven, sinuous streets, full of angles and turns, were admirably chosen; the neighborhood of the Halles, in particular, a network of streets more intricate than a forest. The Society of the Friends of the People had, it was said, undertaken to direct the insurrection in the Quartier Sainte-Avoye. A man killed in the Rue du Ponceau who was searched had on his person ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... I've many times examined the charts of the region," Nichols went on. "But they don't begin to show it all. Beyond the middle island stretched a larger island, distant some five miles from the other; and between them lay the most intricate, extraordinary and terrible nest of reefs ever devised by the mind of the Maker and the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... photographed it upon her very soul. At first she had an impression of a dazzling incoherence of splendor, of a blare as of thousands of musical instruments all sounding different notes of delight, of a weaving pattern of colors, too intricate to master, of a mingled odor of paint and varnish, and pine and hemlock boughs, and then she spelled out the letters of the details. She looked at those counters set with the miniature paraphernalia of household life which ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... parts of the pound, shilling, and penny, used in that rule, and all the whys and wherefores of the thing, with great promptness. One lad, only ten years of age, whose attendance had been very irregular on account of being employed in learning a trade, performed intricate examples in Practice, with a facility worthy the counting-house desk. We put several inquiries on different parts of the process, in order to test their real knowledge, to which we always received ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... an engine would strike a mass of blocked trucks, splitting it into fragments, as a blow annihilates a cake of ice, Jimmie's team could usually be observed high and safe, with whole wheels, on the sidewalk. The fearful coming of the engine could break up the most intricate muddle of heavy vehicles at which the police had been swearing for the half of ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... or because they thought canvas too weak for the strain of the winter storms—were manufactured out of leather. Such vessels were unwieldy, but had been found available for voyages even to Britain. Their crews were accustomed to handle them, and knew all the rocks and shoals and currents of the intricate and difficult harbors. They looked on the Romans as mere landsmen, and naturally enough they supposed that they had as little to fear from an attack by water as from the shore. At the worst they could take to their ships and find a refuge ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... they led her into such dangerous parts of the coast that her whole crew invariably perished, while the 'Black Prince' glided out by some intricate passage, and got safely off. If one of the poor landsmen offended any of the gang, away he was dragged to Coppinger's vessel, and there made to serve until he was ransomed, and as the people were almost reduced to beggary by the rogues, there ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... apart, and in the fast-growing light something of their true character also stood revealed. Thus the solitary observer noted that while two of them, some six miles apart, were simply extensive reefs of bare coral rock, with a multitude of narrow, intricate channels of water running hither and thither through them, the third—some nine or ten miles to the southward—was an atoll of very similar character to that of the pearl-island which they had so abruptly left on the ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... clumsy, apologetic way, and thence crept into civil life the custom of raising the hand or nodding as one passed an acquaintance. The soldiers, however, kept their individual salute, and purposely made it intricate and difficult to learn in order that it could be acquired only by the constant training all real soldiers received. To this day armies have preserved their salute, and when correctly done it is at once recognized and never mistaken for ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... we need not brood O'er intricate isms and modes of faith— For this embodies the highest goal For the life we are ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... happiness and ethereal being. It was, in fact, the far-off mirror of the flaming furnace of the great Heddington factories. The light of the sky above was a soft radiance, as of a happy Arcadian land; the fire of the toil beneath was the output of human striving, an intricate interweaving of vital forces which, like some Titanic machine, wrought out in ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of guide. My new host wore a steel helmet, and at his belt dangled a mask against gas. He led us to the end of what had been a street, and which was now barricaded with huge timbers, steel doors, like those to a gambling house, intricate cat's cradles of wire, and ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... comprehension of which laborious and persevering efforts are not required, but which may be represented by the simple phrase "survival of the fittest." With nothing more than this, can, on the Darwinian theory, all the most intricate facts of distribution and affinity, form, and colour, be accounted for; as well the most complex instincts and the most admirable adjustments, such as those of the human eye and ear. It is in great measure then, owing to this supposed simplicity, and to a belief ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... to bed on the unroofed porch of a log house, but routed him out early, and when Hare lifted the blankets a shower of cotton-blossoms drifted away like snow. A grove of gray-barked trees spread green canopy overhead, and through the intricate web shone crimson walls, soaring with resistless onsweep up and up to shut out all but a ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... concomitant alike of the sharp bargain, the chemical experiment, and the fine frenzy of the poet. Music is number made audible; architecture is number made visible; nature geometrizes not alone in her crystals, but in her most intricate arabesques. ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... Tired workers were trying to forget the labours of the day in big draughts of beer, while one of them had thrown off his fatigue sufficiently to show a friend a fancy step of which he was somewhat vain. It was a difficult and intricate step for a crowded bar, and panic-stricken men holding their beer aloft called wildly upon him to stop, while the barman, leaning over the counter, strove to make his voice heard above the din. The dancer's feet subsided into ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... Nights contains the equivalent of some twenty thousand decasyllabic lines of poetry, that is to say more than there are in Milton's Paradise Lost, and that he has rendered faithfully the whole of this enormous mass in accordance with the intricate metrical scheme of the original, and in ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... at remembrance of this rough and rugged point of time where he had escaped from the chrysalid state to one of action and freedom and real life. He had been happy in reaching India before his uncle's death, in applying his own clear understanding to the intricate entanglements of the affairs before him, in rescuing his uncle's commercial good name, and in securing thus for himself a foothold on the ladder of life, although that step had not occurred to him till thrust there by the pressure of circumstances. For the rest, I am not sure that Mr. Raleigh ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... but not yet so complete. I listened to Mr. Uttley's account of his views with much interest; but they had no influence on my own, as it seemed to me much easier to refer everything to an intelligent Creator than to believe in the self-existence of all the intricate organizations that we see. Still, I was not indignant, as the reader may think I ought to have been. It seemed to me quite natural that thoughtful men should hold different opinions on a subject ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... ascent was so intricate and clogged with dirt and rubbish that we worked like moles in the dark; nevertheless, by diligent industry we gained ground considerably, yet as we endeavoured to mount, the slimy steps slipped from under us, and ever and anon ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... which was stormed and taken at the point of the bayonet, later in the day, by the 1st Division, which immediately pushed south-east, with the object of gaining possession of Namaokayama, or 180 Metre Hill. This hill was protected by, among other devices, an intricate barbed wire entanglement charged with a high-tension electric current, the penetration of which proved to be a task of almost insuperable difficulty; nevertheless, it was eventually accomplished. On the morning of 22nd August, by a splendid act of heroism and self-sacrifice on ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... white and gold tables, they appeared to float through an atmosphere of eternal enchantment. Watching them, Gabriella wondered idly if they could ever unbend at the waist, if they could ever let down those elaborate and intricate piles of hair. Then she overheard the tallest and most arrogant of them remark, "I'm just crazy about him, but he's dead broke," and she realized that they also belonged to the unsatisfied ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... companions. Bessie was looking stolidity itself, Marjorie's usually high color had reached peony point, Joyce was palpably in the throes of stage fright. All were soon marching and countermarching, swinging Indian clubs, and performing the intricate maneuvers of Swedish drill. Fortunately they had practiced well, and it went without a hitch. They breathed more freely as they retired to the ante-room to make way for the babies who were to do skipping ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... on rice-brandy and betel served by unreal women with chalked faces and vermilion-spotted lips, simpering and melancholy. By day, there was work, or now and then a lesson with Dr. Earle's teacher, a little aged Chinaman of intricate, refined, and plaintive courtesy. Under his guidance Rudolph learned rapidly, taking to study as a prodigal might take to drink. And with increasing knowledge came increasing tranquillity; as when he found that the hideous cry, startling him ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... lights, beautiful clothes, lively music, witty conversation. She had been born for the brilliant Courts of the eighteenth century when life in each class was more highly concentrated than is possible now—when love was put to severer tests, hatred permitted a crueller play, politics asked a more intricate genius, and art controlled the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... thee—plot for thee—live for thee—dare for thee—die for thee? Hast thou no better bliss to give thy martyrs—no choicer comfort for thy most consistent worshippers, no fairer fate for those, whose waking thoughts, and dreaming hopes, and intricate schemes, and desperate deeds, were only aimed at gold, more gold? God of this world, if such be thy rewards, let me ever escape them! idol of the knave, false deity of the fool, if this be thy blessing on thy votaries—come, curse ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... without issue. This splendid duchy, or rather combination of duchies, spread over a territory of several thousand square miles, and was inhabited by over a million of inhabitants. There were many claimants to the succession, and the question was so singularly intricate and involved, that there were many who seemed to have an equal right to the possession. The emperor, by virtue of his imperial authority, issued an edict, putting the territory in sequestration, till the question ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... shattered cohorts reel. 'Fix bayonets!' At once our lines bristle with burnished steel. 'Charge!' And our gallant regiments burst through the feu d'enfer. Before their furious onset the rebel hosts give way; And, surging backward, hide again within the forest's shade, Whose mazes dark and intricate our ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... was dim; yet she knew the tread and the voice of every lad in the village who had once been in her company, and she very rarely made mistakes in bestowing her greetings. Her face was like a walnut-shell, so deep and intricate were the creases in her brown skin; and the broad outlines of her features were massive and strong. At the end of the last century she had been a strapping girl with a fine gait, and she liked to tell how the young Squire used to admire her, and how he stopped his horse and spoke with ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... him—my own is all I can attend to! Mr. Ferguson!" she called out, as she came banging back into the private office, "what about that ore that came in yesterday?" She sat down at her desk and listened intently to a somewhat intricate statement involving manufacturing matters dependent upon the quality of certain shipments of ore. Then, abruptly she ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... a charm in these primitive strains discoverable in no other class of poetry. Every word retains something of its radical meaning, every epithet tells, every thought, in spite of the most intricate and abrupt expressions, is, if we once disentangle it, true, correct, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... his with gratitude, even while she gave him a gesture of silence. She thought how little could the bold, straight stroke of this man's frank chivalry cut through the innumerable and intricate chains that entangled her own life. The knightly Excalibur could do nothing to sever the filmy but insoluble ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... first glance we can observe a certain similarity between this Book and the last one. There are in each three distinct portions or adventures, two very short and simple, and one very long and intricate. Each Book culminates in a fabulous being with whom the Hero has a wrestle for supremacy, and in both cases he comes out victorious. We are still in Wonderland, we have to reach into the ideal realm in order to find out what these strange incidents mean. The two central figures are ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... then can I assist my bewildered brothers, who am myself bewildered? I see not whence we came, I know not where we are; I only know this—that we have ventured into a narrow and crooked path in the Lake Ouaquaphenogan, and are lost, as many of our nation have been before, in the intricate mazes into which it is death to venture." So concluded the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... arrangements for the cremation of the dead as well as for the refreshment of the living, are numerous roofed platforms and small, elevated shrines, reached by steep flights of narrow steps, every square inch being covered with intricate and fantastic carvings. These carvings are for the most part beautifully colored, so that, when illuminated by the sun, they look like those porcelain bas-reliefs which one buys in Florence, or, if the colors are undimmed by age, like Persian enamel. In some of the temples ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... speed Charles drove off to Paddington. Diligently he conned over the intricate mysteries of "Bradshaw" as he journeyed along, endeavouring to ascertain when trains would be leaving for any of the places to which he had imagined his friend might be going. It is hardly necessary to say he could not find ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder |
