"Unexplained" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his obtaining employment, probably through the Charlton clergyman, in the office of a religious periodical, the Christian Witness; but the situation, though a comfortable one, was not adapted to his tastes, and from some unexplained attraction to the profession, he decided to study dentistry. This he accordingly did, graduating at the Baltimore Dental College in 1842. He then engaged an office in Boston, and soon acquired a lucrative practice. He was an uncommonly handsome man, with a determined ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... come under my own personal knowledge; but there are thousands of others similar and even more extraordinary, which numerous persons quite as credible as I am can vouch for in like manner to be true facts while remaining unexplained miracles. For myself, I must suspend judgment; waiting to see what in these wonderful times—some further development of electricity, for example, may haply produce for us. After recent marvels of the telephone, microphone, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... is, unhappily, not rigidly confined to Tando, but is used by many spirits as a method of collecting arrears in taxes in the way of sacrifices. I have found traces of it among Bantu gods or spirits, and it gives rise to a general hesitation in West Africa to take care of waifs and strays of unexplained origin. ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... It has been suggested by very excellent people that these resemblances are due to some unexplained necessity of adherence to type, as though, the power that they assume created these animals originally, as they are now, coupled creative ability with a plentiful lack of ideas, and so perforce repeated itself with impotent variations. On the other hand, we have the supposition that these ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... something still unexplained in the dread which an elephant always exhibits on approaching a fence, and the reluctance which he displays to face the slightest artificial obstruction to his passage. In the fine old tank of Tissa-weva, close by Anarajapoora, ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... papers he left behind him was to be found his perplexed endeavours to explain this mental leap, that after all his efforts still remained unexplained. He had been vividly impressed by the decision and courage of her treatment of the dogs; it was just the sort of thing he could not do. And there was a certain contagiousness in the petting admiration with which ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... denial that we so often permit ourselves: for in all questions of this kind our endeavour should not be to prove, but rather to arouse attention, to create a certain grave, courageous respect for all that yet remains unexplained in the actions of men, in their subjection to what appear to be general laws, and ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... tragedy of her poor, witless son, the hatred of old Mrs. Brenner, and her ever-present fear of Mart. She had never quite given up her unreasoning hope that some day some one might come to the house in one of Mart's long, unexplained absences and sit down and talk with her over a cup of tea. She put away the feeble hope again as she turned back into the dim room and closed ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... election in the people." Here the noble orator was interrupted by loud cries of "To the bar, to the bar," and Lord Marchmont moved that his words should be taken down. Chatham himself seconded this motion: "My words," he thundered forth in an indignant tone, "My words remain unretracted, unexplained, and reaffirmed. I desire to know whether I am condemned or acquitted, and whether I may still presume to hold up my head as high as the noble lord who moved to have my words taken down." Chatham paused for a reply, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... treatment kindly. The irritation and inflammation following are surprisingly slight and of short duration, the pain subsiding immediately on removal of the lens. There is a curative power in the chemical rays of the sun yet unexplained." ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... a specimen of the simple ditty style which leaves nothing unexplained, and never goes out of its course for the sake of ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... Scheele in 1786, and exists ready formed in the bark of many trees, and in gall-nuts. It is always associated with tannin, a substance to which it is allied in a manner hitherto unexplained. It is distinguished from tannin by causing no precipitate in a solution of gelatine. With a salt of iron it forms a dark blue coloured compound, which is the basis of ink. The finest colour is procured when the peroxide and protoxide of iron are mixed together. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... follow that such study, to be scientific, shall be made repellent by the use of technical terms the significance of which the reader is left to guess at, but finds unexplained. I fear such treatment of vocal physiology has brought it into disrepute. The aim of the writer will be to give a clear scientific treatment of the subject, which shall not be obscured by unexplained technical terms, and which shall be practical—capable ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... clerical, the long gown (toga) or cassock, which was worn under the cappa. The dress of the 'Blues' at Christ's Hospital preserves the gown in an earlier stage of development. The modern usage which gives the gown of the B.A. sleeves, while that of an M.A. has them cut away, has in some unexplained way grown out of a similar usage ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells
... I suppose?" said Durrance. He had moved back again into the room. Like his companions, he was conscious of an unexplained relief. ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... after traversing the banks of the river for three days, had his heart gladdened by the sight of a small village. From an eminence he saw that the country beyond was fertile, well cultivated and dotted here and there with hamlets. In the village, for some unexplained reason, he found a large amount of provisions accumulated, consisting mainly of corn. He immediately dispatched four horsemen back to De Soto with the joyful tidings. They took with them such food ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... consternation, speculation, and vague hue-and-cry that followed the mysterious disappearance of the Honorable Mr. and Mrs. Pennroyal, it never for one moment occurred to any one to suggest any connection between that unexplained circumstance and the equally curious but unpertinent fact that poor Sir Archibald ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne
... woody tissue, which extended down the outside of the tree to the ground, and farther to the extremities of the roots. The mode in which this descending masonry was added appeared to depend on the peculiar functions of cambium, and (the speaker believed) was as yet unexplained by botanists. ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... colour was returning to her cheeks. Stuart studied her attentively—even delightedly, for all her shortcomings, and knew in his heart that he could never give her in charge of the police. More and more the wonder of it all grew upon him, and now he suddenly found himself thinking of the unexplained incident ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... rarely the right tooth of the male narwhal grows to full size side by side with the left tooth. A specimen showing this double-toothed condition is in the Natural History Museum. A most curious fact, quite unexplained as yet, is that the spiral grooving on both the teeth turns in the same direction; in both it is like a spiral staircase in mounting which (starting from the base implanted in the jaw) you continually turn to the right. Now, in all other animal structures which have a spiral growth and are paired—one ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... recalling the name and a still unexplained incident of our first interview. "Who is this Senora de Moche?" he asked, studying her as if she had been under ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... explanation of this, though it is an explanation which leaves a good deal unexplained, is, of course, that the sense both of historical criticism and of the duty of one writer to another was hardly born. The curiosity of the Middle Ages was great; their literary faculty, though somewhat incult and infantine, was ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... laws could be so correlated as to produce universal harmony—then I have brought the matter to this issue:—Notwithstanding the scientific train of argument being complete in itself, it still leaves us in the presence of a fact which it cannot conceivably explain; and it is this unexplained residuum—this total product of the operation of general laws—that I appeal to as the logical justification for a system of metaphysical teleology—a system which offers the only conceivable explanation of this ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... colonial Virginia was similar in all essential respects to that in England at that time, that is, to represent the Crown by investigating the circumstances of unexplained deaths. Originally, this function was performed by the justices, acting without fee. However, by the 1670's, coroners were being appointed by the governor, and authorized to collect fees for their services ...
— The Fairfax County Courthouse • Ross D. Netherton
... equipment and learn to adjust it. As it was, many of the extreme greenhorn type marched away garbed in most sketchy fashion. Some had parts of their equipment in bags; others utilized their pockets as holders for unexplained, and to them inexplicable, parts ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... (-en, -er), place, locality. orknelig, innumerable. ortt, wrong. ortt (-en), injustice, wrong. osedd, unseen. oskadd, uninjured. oskapelig, unshapely. oskuld (-en), innocence. oskuldsfull, innocent. oss, us. osviklig, unfailing. osdd, unsown. outsglig, unspeakable. outtydd, unexplained. ovan, above. ovan, unaccustomed, unusual. ovanfrn, from above. ovanfr, above. ovanom, above. ovanupp, above. oviss, uncertain. ovn (-nen, ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... of pedagogics being so broad, and its presuppositions so vast, its limits are not well defined, and its treatises are very apt to lack logical sequence and conclusion; and, indeed, frequently to be mere collections of unjustified and unexplained assumptions, dogmatically set forth. Hence the low repute of pedagogical literature as ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... happened no one knew. John had descended from the platform to a verandah, where countless hands were stretched out to shake his. A pile of shutters was leaning against the wall, and in some unexplained fashion these had fallen, striking John a blow that knocked him down. When Mahony got to him he was on his feet again, wiping a drop of blood from his left temple. He looked pale, but pooh-poohed injury or the idea of ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... army. There were cavalry forces (horse soldiers), having a ratio to the infantry that had been determined by the experiences of the Franco-German war in 1871. There was also artillery, and for some unexplained reason much of this was still drawn by horses; though there were also in all the European armies a small number of motor-guns with wheels so constructed that they could go over broken ground. In addition there were large ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... required for the examples, in some definite and concrete way. It will not suffice to take the pupil's judgment of his own preparation and mastery, for many will allow a hazy or doubtful point to go by unexplained rather than confess before teacher and class their lack of study or inability to grasp the topic. Further, pupils seldom have the standards of mastery which enable them to judge what constitutes an adequate ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... the consideration is not stated. The clergy were, by reason of their frequent meagre days and seasons, great consumers of fish. The phosphorescent character of that diet may have contributed, if we accept certain modern theories of animal chemistry as connected in some as yet unexplained way with psychology, to the intellectual predominance of that class of the population in the Middle Ages. That occasional fasting, whether voluntary and systematic as in the cloisters, or involuntary and altogether the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... root manth, or not, we have, in the ancient inevitable idea, that the original patentees of fire would not willingly part with their treasure, the obvious origin of the myth of the Fire-stealer. And this theory does not leave the analogous savage myths of fire-stealing unexplained and out in the cold, as does the philological hypothesis. {198} In this last instance, as in others, the origin of a world-wide myth is found, not in a 'disease of language,' but in a form of thought still natural. If a foreign power ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... his hands into his pockets, and stood in front of the fireplace in a horribly British manner while she turned over her songs. Estelle sang rather prettily. She preferred songs of a type that dealt with bitter regret over unexplained partings. She sang them with a great deal of expression and a slight difficulty in letting go of the top notes. After she had sung two or ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... clung to the professor the first two days of his stay. His arrival, late one afternoon, in the sewing-machine man's buggy, was as unexplained as it was unexpected; and when he was shown to the little girl's room, which she hospitably relinquished, he volunteered neither his name nor his place of residence. The following morning he left the house, carrying a small paper box and a black hand-bag, and crossed the fields to the prairie, ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... in the highest cases ornate art leaves upon a cultured and delicate taste, the conviction that it is not the highest art, that it is somehow excessive and over-rich, that it is not chaste in itself or chastening to the mind that sees it—that it is in an unexplained manner unsatisfactory, 'a thing in which we feel there ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... those listening hundreds, I could not say for my life. I suppose they must have been some garden party—I distinctly recall the gaiters of a bishop and the coloured linings of more than one doctor's hood among them. They are as sudden, as unexplained in my memory, as those crowds in dreams, so definite, so individualised, where haunting, special faces stand out and hands clasp and shoulders touch—and all fades away. Around the vivid emerald lawn they group themselves, and Margarita, a pearl in pearly trailing ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... name of the person who has killed himself if he is well known, the reason for the act, or some one of the attendant circumstances—often the manner of resuscitation if the crime is unsuccessful. For some unexplained reason many papers do not print accounts of ordinary suicides, except when the individual is prominent. At any rate the story must be told without gruesome details and as ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... the brougham moved past the window just as Sir William Gore, who had painfully pulled himself out of his chair, looked out, petrified with surprise at the unexplained crisis that seemed to have come upon the household. "Stamfordham!" he said to himself, "and Frank! What are the Imperialists hatching now, I wonder?" and he mechanically looked round him at Rendel's writing-table. It was, ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... as the "northern lights." We know that the magnetic and electric forces of the earth time after time envelop practically the whole globe in a mantle of light, but this mysterious phenomenon is still unexplained. Usually the aurora is inconstant. It flashes out suddenly, quivers for a moment in the sky, and then grows pale and vanishes. Most lasting are the bow-shaped northern lights, which sometimes stretch their ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... Theosophical Society, the three objects of which are: To found a Universal Brotherhood without distinction of race or creed; to forward the study of Aryan literature and philosophy; to investigate unexplained laws of nature and the physical powers latent in man. On matters of religious opinion the members are absolutely free. The founders of the society deny a personal God, and a somewhat subtle form of Pantheism is taught as the Theosophic view ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... knees by an opened bureau-drawer, was showing her all Raby's clothes, and the two women's faces were aglow with pleasure. James stole in softly, came behind his mother, and kissed her as he had not kissed her since he was a boy. Neither of the three spoke; but little Raby crowed out a sudden and unexplained laugh, which seemed a fitting sign and seal of the happy moment, and set them all at ease. When Sally described the scene ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... a thing! He came to a dead stop, and began unsteadily to walk back. Regaining the hotel, he went to bed again, and dreamed that in some wild country he was living in a room full of insects, where a housemaid—Rozsi—holding a broom, looked at him with mournful eyes. There seemed an unexplained need for immediate departure; he begged her to forward his things; and shake them out carefully before she put them into the trunk. He understood that the charge for sending would be twenty-two shillings, thought it a great deal, and had the horrors of indecision. "No," ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... apparent, for the tie. They are not all selected for intellectual or artistic brilliance—they are the symbols of undesigned friendships, which existed before I exercised the faculty of choice. They are there, uncriticised, unexplained, these friends of mine. The modest man, you will remember, finds his circle ready-made. I am attached to them, and they to me. They understand no language, some of them, as you will see, except the language of the heart; but you will help me, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... imperfectly, by trying their power to harmonize the known facts, and to account for what is otherwise unaccountable. So the question comes to this: What will an hypothesis of the derivation of species explain which the opposing view leaves unexplained? ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... pretended to see nothing strange or mysterious in my deeply agitated state of mind. The substance of the matter he had now explained to me scientifically, biologically, physiologically and anatomically; to this nothing need be added nor did it leave anything unexplained. ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... possessed of the manuscript of the following letter, which it was our employment, during many a long evening that ensuing winter, to translate, and in some parts to abbreviate. The letter began with some reference to the pain which she had already inflicted upon her daughter by some unexplained opposition to a project of marriage; but I doubt if, without the clue with which the good miller had furnished us, we could have made out even this much from the passionate, broken sentences that ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was hitching the horse and throwing a blanket over him. Suddenly, before they realized it, the farmer had vanished into the storm, and this unexplained desertion of their host gave rise to an awkward silence between them, which each for a while strove vainly to break. In the great moments of life, trivialities become dwarfed and ludicrous, and the burden of such occasions is on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... frisilis remains unexplained. None of the various readings can be satisfactorily rendered. If the vegetables had remained whole the dish might be compared to a chartreuse, those delightful creations by the Carthusian monks who compelled by the strictest rules of vegetarianism evolved a number of fine ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... delay caused in sending the case before a prize court; Captains of the American steamers Navajo, Joseph W. Fordney, and Llama appeal to American Embassy at London to procure their release from British marine authorities at Kirkwall; British collier Newlyn is damaged by an unexplained explosion off the Scilly Islands, but makes port; a French battleship, assisted by French aeroplanes, bombards the Turkish ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a loss to account for my having plunged thus headlong into an act so monstrous. There is something in it of unexplained and involuntary sympathy. One sentiment flows, by necessity of nature, into another sentiment of the same general character. This was the first instance in which I had witnessed a danger by fire. All was confusion around ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... continued pressure, never let up, had constantly been exerted by the headquarters of the army. The troops had been kept in constant movement towards Banks's Ford. Hooker had all but reached his goal. Suddenly occurred a useless, unexplained pause of twenty-four hours. And it was during this unlucky gap of time that Lee occupied the ground which Hooker's cavalry could have seized, and which should have been ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... are—a figure which has been sometimes described as that of the Eternal Father, and again as St. John the Baptist, with the Agnus Dei; St. Paul and St. Anthony breaking a loaf in the desert; the Flight into Egypt; two figures unexplained; a man seated on the ground with a bow, taking aim; the Visitation; our Lord healing the man born blind; the Annunciation; and traces almost obliterated, of the Crucifixion, on the bottom panel of the ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... heard a fifth week was to be now added to this excursion, and he confessed a most anxious solicitude to be gone before that time. He dropped something, unexplained, yet very striking, of a peculiar wish to be away ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... whispers to Dixon, when he came to stay with them. Ellinor had had no idea when she parted from Mr. Corbet how total the separation between them was henceforward to be, so much seemed left unfinished, unexplained. It was so difficult, at first, to break herself of the habit of constant mental reference to him; and for many a long year she kept thinking that surely some kind fortune would bring them together again, and all this heart-sickness and ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... ambiguous reply, that the 'weapons of their warfare were not carnal, that they wrestled not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers,'.... an answer which the tribune, being now somewhat sleepy, thought it best to leave unexplained. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... her cousin. "Oh, yes, I 'know' him; not well, but on the whole enough. I've never cultivated his society, and he apparently has never found mine indispensable to his happiness. Who is he, what is he? He's a vague, unexplained American who has been living these thirty years, or less, in Italy. Why do I call him unexplained? Only as a cover for my ignorance; I don't know his antecedents, his family, his origin. For all I do know he may be a prince in disguise; he rather looks like one, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... Muriel regarding my suspicions of the men who were our fellow-guests, and when in secret I showed her several places on board the yacht where valuables were secreted, she also became convinced that the men were expert thieves to whom her father, for some unexplained reason, rendered assistance and asylum. She told me that since she had left school she had been on quite a number of cruises, and that the same party always accompanied her father. She had, however, never suspected the truth until I pointed it ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... hours of the evening the waiting rooms, and even the platform itself, had been filled with crowds of "working men in their Sunday clothes," who had seemed to be waiting for somebody or something. There were many hundreds of them, and their unexplained presence had greatly puzzled the railway officials. Some time before ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... the deceased, but little is known of him. Letters found on his person prove his name to be W. Pfeiffer, and his residence Denver. His presence in Miss Moores house at a time so inopportune is unexplained. No such name is on the list of wedding guests, nor was he recognized as one of Miss Moore's friends either by Mr. Jeffrey or by such of her relatives and acquaintances as had the courage to enter the library to ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... conducive to rational well-being. It may be found convenient to follow Aristotle, and avow that the business of Ethics is not Duty, not Obligation, not Law, not Sanction, but Happiness. That fiery little word ought goes unexplained in Ethics, except in an hypothetical sense, that a man ought to do this, and avoid that, if he means to be a happy man: cf. p. 115. Any man who declares that he does not care about ethical or rational happiness, stands to Ethics as that man stands to Music ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... remained unexplained; a guilty party could not be found. Philippina Schimmelweis had sworn that the fire had already started when she reached the attic. It was therefore assumed that the suicide had knocked over a lighted candle in ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... very few men were imprisoned, fine being the usual punishment, but still, imprisonment there was, and so that would not seem to him strange; and as to the conduct of his master, he would be content to leave that unexplained. The Buddhist is content to leave many things unexplained until he can see the meaning. He is not fond of theories. If he does not know, he says so. 'It is beyond me,' he will say; 'I do not understand.' He has no theory of an occidental mind to explain acts of ours of which he cannot grasp the ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... itself through operation of circumstance; sometimes somebody who professes no special detective skill happens upon the secret of its mystery; once in a while some venturesome genius has the courage to leave his enigma unexplained. But ever since Gaboriau created his Lecoq, the transcendent detective has been in favor; and Conan Doyle's famous gentleman analyst has given him a fresh lease of life, and reanimated the stage by reverting to the method ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... dulled, and her mouth, so red of old, was now tinted only with a faint rose-tint like that of her cheeks. The blue flowerets in her hair were withered and had lost almost all their petals; yet she was still all charming—so charming that, despite the strangeness of the adventure and the unexplained fashion of her entrance, no thought of fear occurred to me. She placed the lamp on the table and seated herself on the foot of my bed; then, bending towards me, she spoke in the soft and silvery voice that I have heard from none but her. "I have kept you waiting long, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... life. They can talk learnedly about it but they must stop short of the source of life. Everything about anatomy and physiology they know, but the life that flows through the human machine remains unexplained. They can trace the circulation of the blood from the heart through the arteries, from the arteries across to the veins, from the veins back to the heart, but the greatest mind the race has produced cannot say what makes the heart beat. Life has not been explained and cannot be explained ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... colossal and unique. Whether we classify Jesus Christ with men, or regard Him as a special divine manifestation is of little consequence in our inquiry. If He is the consummate flower of the evolutionary process, then, because of some unexplained influence, that process reached a degree of perfection in Him that it has reached in no other. If it pleased God in a single instance to hasten the process, the result is not less inspiring and illuminating than it would have been if the divine ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... fact alike abhorrent to the completely logical philosophic mind. On the one hand the ordinary laws of physical science are constantly extending their sphere; on the other, the fact of life still remains unexplained by them, and becomes in itself more and more marvellous as we investigate it. The general position remains much as Johannes Mueller expressed it about the middle of the last century, himself sometimes described as the central ...
— Progress and History • Various
... do we know of the mysteries of the mind as well as of the body! We know that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that is all. That there are influences and attractions uncontrollable and unexplained I feel certain. Often have I reflected and wondered on this as I have lain in bed and meditated 'even to madness,' but have been unable to remove the veil. (Alas, poor Lady R—, thought I, I doubt it not, you were madder ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... Joseph Leverrier, born in Normandy in 1811, held the post of astronomical professor at the Ecole Polytechnique, founded by Napoleon. His first published papers directed attention to his wonderful powers; and the official head of astronomy in France, the famous Arago, suggested to him the unexplained perturbations of Uranus as a worthy object for his fresh and well-armed vigor. At once he set to work in a thorough and systematic way. He first considered whether the discrepancies could be due to errors in the tables or errors in the old observations. He discussed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... There was no trouble about anything he wanted done by others; he simply commanded, and that was the end of it. But the mass of knowledge about the Terranovans and their world before he came appalled him not only by its sheer bulk but by its intricacy, the unexplained gaps, the contradictions. For a long time after the founding of New Washington—later New Jerusalem—he was still bothered a little by doubt. He wanted to learn all that there was to learn about the Terranovans, so ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... been produced perfect as we now see them; but this assumption seems to me to be no explanation, for it leaves the case of the coadaptations of organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life, untouched and unexplained. ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... to the general, written immediately after his arrival at Paris. But it was plain that it must have been written before Lady Cecilia's letter, forwarded by Madame de St. Cymon, could have reached him. It was evident that matters were as yet unexplained, from his manner of writing about "the death-blow to all his hopes," and now he was setting off with Lord Beltravers for Naples, to follow M. de St. Cymon, and settle the business of the sister's ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... all the subtle and tremendous feelings he had attempted in his—excursions, the theory that he had expounded to Mr. Direck that it is only through our children that we are able to achieve disinterested love, real love. But that left unexplained that far more intimate emotional hold of Hugh than of his very jolly little step-brothers. That was a fact into which Mr. Britling ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... history and politics; they throw a new and vivid light on the dark and hidden depths of the Prussian mind. They reveal like no other German writings the meaning of German policy, the spirit which inspires it. They explain what without them would have remained unexplained. He is much more than the historian of the Prussian State, he is the champion of its ideals. Much better than Bismarck, or the Kaiser, or than the "Clown Prince," he makes clear to us the aims and the aspirations of the Hohenzollern monarchy ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... had just become acquainted, through the public prints, of her dear good mother's death, even before she had heard of any illness. What bitter pangs were there for her, poor child! That she should have lost that mother just then, without forgiveness, without blessing—whilst all was unexplained, and their whole conduct of affections without guile, wore the hideous mask of base, undutiful contrivance! Cheer up, Maria; cheer up! only in this bad world can innocence be sullied with a doubt: cheer up! the spirit of that mother whom you loved on earth knows it well already; ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... light on many events before the war. Among them the long-unexplained declaration of Emperor William at Damascus in 1898 that all Mohammedans might confidently regard the German Emperor as "their friend forever." There also is a complete understanding now of Germany's eagerness to obtain, in 1899, a concession ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... explain life and mind and consciousness by means of matter, all that is done is to assume that matter possesses these unexplained attributes. ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... the 1850s, the Comstock Company in lower Manhattan had an advertising agent, one Silas B. Force, whose correspondence by some unexplained happenstance was also deposited in the loft of the Indian Root Pill building in Morristown, even though he was not an exclusive agent and served other clients besides the Comstocks. One of these was Dr. Uncas Brant, for whom Force had the following ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... all cases preferably without knowledge of ray findings. Expert ray work will show all metallic foreign bodies and many of less density, such as teeth, bones, shells, buttons, etcetera. If the ray is negative, a diagnostic bronchoscopy should be done in all cases of unexplained bronchial obstruction. ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... truth as to the mysterious march (still unexplained) of that fearful malady, which has never been known to travel more than five or six leagues a day, or to appear simultaneously in two spots. Nothing can be more curious, than to trace out, on the maps prepared at the period in question, the slow, progressive course of this ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... a queer place that Cap'n Sproul decided upon after several days of rumination. His own abstraction during that time, and the unexplained absence of Hiram, the bridegroom of a month, an absence that was prolonged into a week, caused secret tears and apprehensive imaginings ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... with which they had to conspire—affects the imagination even more than cases where we see nothing. We are tempted less to musing and wonder by the Iliad, a work without a history, cut off from its past, the sole relic and vestige of its age, unexplained in its origin and perfection, than by the Divina Commedia, destined for the highest ends and most universal sympathy, yet the reflection of a personal history, and issuing seemingly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... round the neck, and the gag in his mouth, showed the silent way in which the hell-hounds had done their work. The clue which explained every event of our voyage came upon me like a flash of light as I gazed on poor Harton's corpse. Much was dark and unexplained, but I felt a great dim ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... their aid in soliciting subscriptions for this book. At length the desired advancement was obtained,—a nomination as a physician and surgeon to one of the factories on the coast of Coromandel. But banishment to the East Indies was not to be his destiny. For some unexplained reason the project came to nothing; and then—like Roderick Random—he presented himself at Surgeons' Hall for the more modest office of a hospital mate. This was on the 21st of December, 1758. The curt official record states that he was 'found not qualified.' What ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the Montague girl, as Miss Rebecca Hoffmeyer, had tired of being a mere New York society butterfly, had come out into the big open spaces to do something real, something worth while. The ruin of her father, still unexplained, had seemed to call out unsuspected reserves in the girl. She was stern and businesslike in such scenes as Merton was permitted to observe. And she had not only brought her ruined father out to the open spaces but the ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... subdued radiance of cabinets and old porcelain and the jars of winter roses standing in soft circles of lamp-light. Raymond felt himself in the presence of an effect in regard to which he remained in ignorance of the cause—a mystery that required a key. Cousin Maria's success was unexplained so long as she simply stood there with her little familiar, comforting, upward gaze, talking in coaxing cadences, with exactly the same manner she had brought ten years ago from California, to a tall, bald, bending, ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... to Rowland, something acutely touching in this humble petition. He had always felt a sort of imaginative tenderness for poor little unexplained Giacosa, and these words seemed a supreme contortion of the mysterious obliquity of his life. All of a sudden, as he watched the Cavaliere, something occurred to him; it was something very odd, and it stayed his glance ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... tables by arresting the Colonel in command. The soldiers rush to defend their Colonel, who is ill in bed at a house some distance away. The judge who had issued the writ is hot with anger at this military interference in civil affairs. Thereupon the soldiers seize him, but later, recognizing for some unexplained reason the majesty of the civil law, they release him. And the hot-tempered incident closes with the Colonel's determination to carry the case to the Supreme Court ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... doubt not, are sufficiently accurate; but I thought it worthy of public notice, that such deviations from the established rules do sometimes take place. This observation may not only be of service to navigators, by putting them on their guard against these hitherto unexplained and unnoticed irregularities, but it is also a circumstance that requires to be attended to in the solution of the great question about the causes of trade-winds and monsoons; a question which, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... little nettled. "Every problem becomes very childish when once it is explained to you. Here is an unexplained one. See what you can make of that, friend Watson." He tossed a sheet of paper upon the table, and turned once more to ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... them to. He had one failing to link his life with this nether world—he was a book-hunter. How with his poor income, much of which went to feed the necessities of those still poorer, he should have accomplished anything in a pursuit generally considered expensive, is among other unexplained mysteries. But somehow he managed to scrape together a curious and interesting collection, so that his name became associated with rare books, as well as with ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... said it could never come again. But her antagonism, and her idealism, and her strength of will all failed to satisfy an inarticulate something which locked her in her room for hours of repressed, unexplained sobbing. Her writing became exhausting. Talks before her literary class were a nightmare of anticipation—for through all, there had never been any weakening of the beauty and intensity of her unselfish desire to give to the world her best. The ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... presume that he had secured it from La Couteau, whom Celeste had acquainted with so many things. Indeed, he learnt at Broquette's nurse-agency that a short, thickset young man with pronounced jaw-bones had come there twice to speak to La Couteau. Nevertheless, many points remained unexplained; the whole affair had taken place amid the tragic, murky gloom of Parisian low life, whose mire it is not healthy to stir. Mathieu ended by resting content with a general notion of the business, for he himself felt frightened at the charges already hanging over those two young bandits, who lived ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... face in the congregation showed that this sentence struck home and threw light on hitherto unexplained emotions. "This is like what I mean," continued Draxy, "by the Gospel of Mystery, the good tidings of the things we cannot understand. This gospel is everywhere. Not the wisest man that has ever lived can fully understand the smallest ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... 10.4: 'Misaunter [ misadventure] have' was used in imprecations: cf. in the Merlin romance, 'Mysauenture haue that it kepeth eny counseile.' 11.3: 'Each at the other's heart.' 13.3: 'sanchothes': unexplained; but it obviously means that the arrow struck between his legs. 16.1: ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... selected that particular moment for its use. I ought to add, that CASANUOVA left England before the inquest, and has never returned. On the mystery of the final catastrophe the manuscript throws no light. It ends abruptly. But the whole tone of it leads me to believe, that in some unexplained manner Sir CHARLES himself had been instrumental in causing his wife's death. But you, no doubt, know, and could ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... science, he produces on me the effect of those story-tellers of the school of Edgar Poe, who end by going mad through constantly reflecting on queer cases of insanity. He has set forth some nervous phenomena, which are unexplained and inexplicable; he makes his way into that unknown region which men explore every day, and not being able to comprehend what he sees, he remembers perhaps too well the explanations of certain mysteries given by speaking on these subjects, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... what the earth produces, and the labour of man can create. Then, why should affluence, and the other accessories of power, have so uniformly a corrupting and dissolving effect upon society? This the common theory leaves unexplained. There is no necessary connection betwixt the enjoyment of abundance and the corruption of nations. The Creator surely has not ordained laws which must necessarily result in ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... the old hunter comes to a halt, stopping by the side of a cypress "knee"; one of those vegetable monstrosities that perplex the botanist—to this hour scientifically unexplained. In shape resembling a ham, with the shank end upwards; indeed so like to this, that the Yankee bacon-curers have been accused, by their southern customers, of covering them with canvas, and selling them for the ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... who led the column of the left, made himself master of the battery of Chapuis, and established himself there. Had the remainder of the project been as well executed, the proposed object would have been completely attained. Unfortunately, however, from some unexplained cause, the division which was the connecting link of the whole, that which was entrusted to Brigadier-General Perryn, did not perform its allotted part, by crossing the river at Cools. The consequence of this was that the ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... in a turn of the path, masked suddenly by trees, as if they had vanished in an abyss. Then Ramuntcho felt the grasp of an unexpected melancholy, unexplained like most of his complex impressions, and, with an habitual gesture, while he resumed his less alert march, he brought down like a visor on his gray eyes, very sharp and very soft, the crown of his woolen ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... soon destroy the strong instinct of sacredness and exclusiveness with which an unperverted girl guards her heart from all save the one who seems to have the divine right and unexplained power to pass all barriers. Even while fancy free, unwelcome advances are resented almost as wrongs and intrusions by the natural woman; but after a real, or even an ideal image has taken possession ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... Howard Cardew reached home again, a tired and broken man. Grace had been lying awake in her bedroom, puzzled by his unexplained absence, and brooding, as she now did continually, over ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... At the end of six months Herbert Bly's discretion and devotion were duly rewarded by Cherry's hand. But Tappington did NOT give her away. That saintly prodigal passed his period of probation with exemplary rectitude, but, either from a dread of old temptation, or some unexplained reason, he preferred to remain in Portland, and his fastidious nest on Telegraph Hill knew him no more. The key of the little door on the side street passed, naturally, into the keeping of ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... hatchment we find in the 16th century achement, and even achievement. It is archaic Fr. hachement, the ornamental crest of a helmet, etc., probably derived from Old Fr. achemer, variant of acesmer, to adorn. Hence both the French and English forms have an unexplained h-, the earlier achement being nearer the original. French omelette has a bewildering history, but we can trace it almost to its present form. To begin with, an omelet, in spite of proverbs, is not necessarily associated with eggs. The origin is to be found in Lat. lamella, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... the future, she dared not try to see a step before her feet. To go through life with the consciousness of this wrong to Horace unexplained was a thought at which she shuddered. Yet to explain it under existing circumstances was impossible. The agitation of this interview had almost overwhelmed her. Mr. Cortlin saw it, and, ringing for her maid, silently withdrew. When Nora came she found ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... with the grace and dignity which are never learned, but which come to certain naturally fine spirits like a second nature; assimilating choice things wherever they are met. If her reputation for virtue was unexplained, it gave at any rate much authority to her actions, her conversation, ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... that much impaired state, sundry rusty bric-a-brac, dolls, and tear-vials of spookish iridescence, until, in the vast lapse of time, even a ghost must have got tired. Unaided by the right comment, I was dragged down considerably by those pagan tombs; and as an antidote, the unexplained catacombs were not sufficiently elevating. I did not read the signs of the subterranean churches aright, any more than the uncultivated Yankee reads aright an Egyptian portraiture. Monkish skulls and other unburied bones, seen by the light of moccoletti, were to me nothing ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... "I don't know what has come over me, but for some unexplained and inexplicable reason I am inclined to give Lazarus a lead—across that gulf, the first one, I mean, ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... their injuries, and after receiving attention had resumed their places in the defence. Over thirty villagers had been badly wounded, but these were receiving the attention of their fellows, since, for some unexplained reason, they were reluctant to have their wounds dressed by their ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... onset of the fear he happens to have a slight pain in the arm. He makes use of the pain to explain his distress. He thinks about it and holds on to it. It serves a purpose, and is on the whole less painful than the feeling of unexplained impending disaster which is attached to no particular idea. Perhaps he happens to be tired when the conflict first gets beyond control. So he seizes the idea of fatigue to explain his illness. He develops chronic ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... Rudin's sudden, and wholly unexplained, departure had taken a great load off her heart, but she had expected tears, and hysterics.... Natalya's outward composure threw her ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... transportation in the Alpine valleys. The peasant had told his strange story of boulders carried on the back of the ice, of the alternate retreat and advance of glaciers, now shrinking to narrower limits, now plunging forward into adjoining fields, by some unexplained power of expansion and contraction. Scientific men were awake to the interest of these facts, but had considered them only as local phenomena. Venetz and Charpentier were the first to detect their wider significance. The former traced the ancient limits of the Alpine ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... 1761, the Duke of Douglas was unexpectedly taken ill, and his physicians pronounced his malady to be mortal. Nature, in her strange and unexplained way, told the ill-tempered peer the same tale, and, when death was actually before his eyes, he repented of his conduct towards his unfortunate sister. To herself he was unable to make any reparation, but her boy remained; and, on the 11th of July 1761, he executed an entail of his ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... to be quite a modern invention; and the third—the story of the cat—has been told of so many other persons in different parts of the world that there is every reason to believe it to be a veritable folk-tale joined to the history of Whittington from some unexplained connection. None of the early historians who mention Whittington allude to the incident of the cat, and it is only to be found in popular literature, ballads, plays, &c. The story seems to have taken its rise in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The reason why however the life of ...
— The History of Sir Richard Whittington • T. H.
... speaking, a neutral ground, it has not been forbidden to her, under certain conditions, to identify herself completely with her offspring. When she has not merely given life, but given of her whole life, you behold that wonderful, unexplained, and inexplicable thing—the love of a woman for one of her children above the others. The outcome of this story is one more proof of a proven truth—a mother's place cannot be filled. A mother foresees danger long before a Mlle. Armande can admit the possibility of it, even if the mischief ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... began, 'when I saw you last, that there was something unexplained, which might perhaps influence you. I have come this evening to explain it. I hope you will not judge of me by my hesitating manner when I speak to you. You see me at my greatest disadvantage. It is most unfortunate ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Look at the mysteriousness of the language. 'They gather them.' Who? 'They cast them into the fire.' Who have the tragic task of flinging the withered branches into some mysterious fire? All is left vague with unexplained awfulness. The solemn fact that the withering of manhood by separation from Jesus Christ requires, and ends in, the consuming of the withered, is all that we have here. We have to speak of it pityingly, with reticence, with terror, with tenderness, with awe lest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... of doors, quiet and damp with belts of unexplained shadow here and there, and a sense of illimitable space and silence. Julia sat down on the door steps and smelt the good smell of the earth and felt the nearness of it. But it did not comfort her; she was not in tune with the night; she had neither part ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... with a distinct negative. "There is too much that is unexplained as yet in your case against Franklin," I objected. "You have shown that he had motive for the murder and that he was connected more or less intimately with the crime we are considering, but you have by no means explained all the phenomena accompanying this tragedy. How, ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... is well taken, Miss Orator," said Mr. Evans with unexplained warmth. "You would make a famous criminal lawyer. You have a line of argument which admits of very little defense. Does anyone else speak for Antha? If three speak for her she may come, like Mowgli in the ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... by her original fright, her attention fixed on the injured part, arrested there amidst increasing pain, incapable of acquiring fresh notions unless it were under the lash of some violent emotion. Moreover, he also admitted the probability of accidents due to nutrition, as yet unexplained, and on the course and importance of which he himself would not venture to give an opinion. However, the idea that Marie dreamt her disease, that the fearful sufferings torturing her came from an injury long since healed, appeared such a paradox to Pierre when he gazed at her and saw her ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... as though something unexplained had upset her self-control, the poor patient creature utterly broke down. Leaning against the bare shelves which held their few pots and pans, she threw her apron over her head and burst into the forlornest ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that a child is more likely to be highly endowed with a trait which both parents possess, than with one that only one parent possesses. "Among the traits which have been said to occur in some such direct hereditary way," H. L. Hollingworth[164] observes, "or as the result of unexplained mutation or deviation from type, are: mathematical aptitude, ability in drawing,[165] musical composition,[166] singing, poetic reaction, military strategy, chess playing. Pitch discrimination seems to depend on ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... followed the precedents established in such cases. It differed in no important respect from the tens of thousands of other wills made under similar circumstances. Sir Joseph's motive in claiming special attention for it still remained unexplained, when Mr. Dicas reached the clause devoted to the appointment of executors and trustees; and announced that this portion of the ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... above us, Cruel, dark unexplained; Yet still the immortal through mortal incessantly pierces With calls, with appeals, and with lures. Lure of the sinking sun, into undreamed islands, Fortunate, far in the West; Lure of the star, with speechless news o'er brimming, With language of darted light; Of ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... unexplained, how many defects, how many harmful superficialities, and how many useless repetitions in this pamphlet, which I have thought over so long ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... what course to pursue. We will do our best for him—it is a delicate case of conscience. Possibly the poor fellow would very much prefer being allowed to die; but we cannot let him. Humanity, for some unexplained reason, forbids euthanasia and the use of the ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... The favour of the god precedes the thank-offering of the king. Thus, on closer examination, we find this multitude of episodes forming the several links of one continuous chain, while every scene, including such as seem at first sight to be wholly unexplained, represents one stage in the development of a single action which begins at the door, is carried through the various halls, and penetrates to the farthest recesses of the sanctuary. The king enters the temple. ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... a look in her face something like Richard's as a small boy. That drew down upon her her mother's fervent embrace, and she was sent back to the nursery very proud, and with a mysterious sense of an important and unexplained state of things, which time, by degrees, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... I myself know of an experience, of the most remarkable, to this day unexplained save by Spiritualism, Occultism, what you will! You shall hear! The case is one I conducted professionally some two years ago, though, of course, the events which I now tell in their proper sequence, ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... unattainable by other methods, and possessing always a charm of grace and power exclusively its own; yet, in its slightness addressing itself, purposefully, to the casual glance, and common thought—eager to arrest the passer-by, but careless to detain him; or detaining him, if at all, by an unexplained enchantment, not by continuance of teaching, or development of idea. But the work of Holbein is true and thorough; accomplished, in the highest as the most literal sense, with a calm entireness of unaffected resolution, which sacrifices nothing, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... very subtle and complex mixture, of which they could not then have given a very clear account even to themselves, and that the poet has therefore, with consummate artistic skill, purposely left them unexplained. ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... from below, as they stood looking out at the west, where some cirro-stratus clouds were waiting to see the sun down beyond the horizon, and keep his memory golden for half an hour. Bones was affecting ability to answer conundrums, asked by an unexplained person with a banjo, who treated him with distinction, calling him "Mr. Bones." Both were affecting an air of high courtesy, as of persons familiar with the Thrones and Chancelleries of Europe. The particulars of these conundrums were inaudible, from ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... even for him, as is related (if not feigned) of Pylades and Orestes, that they would gladly have died for each other or together, not to live together being to them worse than death. But in me there had arisen some unexplained feeling, too contrary to this, for at once I loathed exceedingly to live and feared to die. I suppose, the more I loved him, the more did I hate, and fear (as a most cruel enemy) death, which had bereaved me of him: and I imagined it would speedily make an end of ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... Wireless telegraphic messages are sent over the vast wastes of ocean. That is a fact, and we believe it. But how they go we do not know. That is not something to believe. It is a matter of pure speculation, and is unexplained. ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... promised at first to turn out a comfortably profitable one. Into the details of the "sealing" it is unnecessary for us to enter. Suffice it to say that the numbers of the "sealed," up to 1808, when for some unexplained reason the process appears to have been discontinued, exceeded six thousand simpletons; the numbers of her deluded followers in the metropolis and its vicinity alone, are supposed at one time to have amounted ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... any experience in growing orchids. To start with hybridizing seems very ambitious—too much of a short cut to fortune. However, in less than eighteen months Mr. Kerbach found it did not answer, for reasons unexplained, and he begged to be reinstated in Mr. Sander's service. It is clear, indeed, that the orchid-farmer of the future, in whose success I firmly believe, will be wise to begin modestly, cultivating the species he finds in his neighbourhood. It is not in our greenhouses alone ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... in their own defence. They have not been allowed, after hearing with patience both arguments, and "railing accusations" in abundance, to answer in their turn; but have been compelled, through the fear of confiscation, persecution, and death, to leave misapprehensions unexplained, and ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... elementary works, until even he was satisfied that nothing more remained to be done in that direction. I had my two grammars literally by heart, notes and all. Then we revised as thoroughly as possible, reading everything anew, and leaving no passage unexplained. I learned to scan, too, a fact that was sufficient to make a reputation for a scholar, in America, half a century since. [*] After this, we turned our attention to mathematics, a science Mr. Hardinge rightly enough thought there was no danger of my acquiring ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Jewish people the word "radical" is in high favor —it is the open sesame to their sympathy. For the ordinary layman, radicalism, for some unexplained reason, is associated with the words Socialism, Anarchism, etc. The deep dyed conservative, to whom comes the picture of flaunting red at the mention of the word, would be surprised to learn in what simple cases it is often used. We have, for instance, an organization meeting once a ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... story, and even when it got under way again there was an atmosphere of excitement quite unexplained by the ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... crossed the Rhine at Markolsheim, and there was not a single Prussian at Huningue. The passage of the Rhine at Markolsheim and the bridge of boats constructed under the electric light had existed merely in imagination, were an unexplained, inexplicable nightmare of the prefet at Schelestadt; and as for the army corps that had menaced Huningue, that famous corps of the Black Forest, that had made so much talk, it was but an insignificant detachment of Wurtemburgers, a couple of battalions of infantry and ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... filed in the War Department of the order actually given to the troops on November 29 explains how that mistake occurred. In brief, the draft of an order prepared in writing for another purpose, but not issued, was by some unexplained blunder substituted for the oral orders actually dictated to a staff officer. It was an example of how the improvised staff of a volunteer army, like the "non-military agencies of government," may interfere with ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... week of six days, and that God sat down and looked at it on Sunday, and behold it was very good. A week is quite a long while to a child, yet a definite division rounding off a square job. The bath-taps at home usually, for some unexplained reason, went wrong during the week-end: the plumber came in on Monday and carried out his tools on Saturday at mid-day. These little analogies really do (I believe) help the infant mind, and not at all to its later detriment. Nor shall I ask you to sentimentalise overmuch upon the ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the action which, at some previous period of the cosmical history of the Moon, had produced those bright radiating lines that diverge from the lunar volcanic craters. Sir John expressed his delight at witnessing my practical illustration of this hitherto unexplained subject, and he considered it quite conclusive. I also produced my enlarged drawings of the Moon's surface, which I had made at the side of my telescope. These greatly pleased him and he earnestly urged me to publish them, accompanied with a descriptive ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... cause he had been postponing the promised visit, and thereby postponing the taking of the final step in the campaign of intimidation. The unexplained telephone call decided him, however. He would go and see Elinor and have ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... the writer that the key to the explanation of much that has been the subject of dispute, or has remained unexplained, in the story about Bothvar Bjarki in the Hrlfssaga is the influence of the fictitious (in part, also historical) life of Siward, Earl of Northumberland under Canute the Great and ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... truth of life to stage effect. They shared with him one grave fault which is indeed the besetting sin of dramatists, resulting in part from the necessarily curt and outline action of the drama, in part from the love of audiences for strong emotional effects; namely, the abrupt and unexplained moral revolutions of their characters. Effects are too often produced without apparent causes; a novelist has space to fill in the blanks. The sudden contrition of the usurper in 'As You Like It' is a familiar instance; Beaumont and Fletcher have plenty as bad. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... abstained from quoting M. Du Chaillu's work, then, it is not because I discern any inherent improbability in his assertions respecting the man-like Apes; nor from any wish to throw suspicion on his veracity; but because, in my opinion, so long as his narrative remains in its present state of unexplained and apparently inexplicable confusion, it has no claim to original authority ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... which I will here quote the words of a writer to whom I have referred before. {244b} He says, “A mile away from Woodhall is one of the loveliest little gems of architecture in the country, a pure, little, Early English church, now dreadfully dilapidated, which belonged, in some unexplained way,—probably as a chantry chapel,—to the Cistercian Abbey of Kirkstead.” As this little gem is now locked away from public view, I will here give extracts from the description of it given by the late Bishop Suffragan, Dr. Edwd. Trollope, one of our greatest authorities, ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter |
