"Unsolved" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... present Emperor William II., has been called "a modern man, notwithstanding certain proclivities which still adhere to him, like pieces of the shell of an egg from which the bird has issued." He is yet an unsolved problem, but may be regarded not without hope for a wise, strong, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... you feel any better if we get the others?" Allen asked, just a little exasperated, for he liked mysteries and hated to leave them unsolved. "We can get to them in ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... not in the existence of the unanswered question—of the mystery—but that the question could remain unanswered—the mystery remain unsolved—and no attempt be made to lift the veil. That a young man, a gentleman, of prominent connections, of handsome features and distinguished bearing and address, of rare mental gifts and cultivation, and of magnetic personality, could disappear from the face of the earth—could, almost ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Where this treasure is, there, naturally enough, our hearts will be also. Looking back over the ages since the life-principle first glided into our planet waters—how it did so is as yet part of our unsolved mystery—what we chiefly see is a great surging of the living thing upward and upward toward that Highest Universal to which we give the ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... Cartoner would come back; for he was an unsolved problem to her, and there had been very few unsolved male problems in her brief experience. She had usually found men very easy to understand, and the failure to achieve her simple purpose in this instance aroused, perhaps, an additional attention. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... the protracted process of gestation. Here, when subjected to the required conditions, this minute and apparently insignificant particle of living matter becomes animated by a new and mysterious activity. The germinal vesicle and spot cease to be discernible (their precise fate being one of the yet unsolved problems of embryology), but the yelk becomes circumferentially indented, as if an invisible knife had been drawn round it, and thus appears divided into ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... unsolved, for just then a hearty cheer rang on the air. The boys hurried back to the mouth of the valley, reaching there just as Jerry emerged from the bushes. His eyes opened wide with amazement when he saw the dead bucks. Then he ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... I had long ago learned to laugh at the old and foolish assertion that murder will out, that not the most skilful criminal can long conceal a capital crime. It is not true. No one knows how many murders and other crimes go unsolved or even unknown. The trouble with murderers, as I knew well enough, was that they lacked mentality. And often I said to myself that were it in my heart to kill a man, I assuredly could do so, and all my life escape unsuspected of ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... of the north of the {71} continent of America, and at any rate the vast distance to be traversed to reach the Pacific from the Atlantic, could now be surmised with some accuracy. But the internal geography of the continent still contained an unsolved mystery. It was known that vast bodies of fresh water far beyond the basin of the Saskatchewan and the Columbia emptied towards the north. Hearne had revealed the existence of the Great Slave Lake, and the advance of daring fur-traders into the north had brought some knowledge of the great ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... not indifferent to chemistry, and that it is not to be supposed that he ever could be, especially as his visits to Philadelphia brought to his attention problems which he would never suffer to go unanswered or unsolved because of his interest in so many other things quite foreign to them. However, a backward look may be taken before resuming the ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... his grave with the riddle still unsolved, and it remained for the famous Dutch astronomer, Huyghens, to clear up the matter. It was, however, some little time before he hit upon the real explanation. Having noticed that there were dark spaces ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... the universe still remains unsolved because unsolvable, no one can deny that Astronomy has made mighty strides forward during the past few years. What has been termed the "Old Astronomy," which concerns itself with the determination of ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... support of the evolution hypothesis are multitudinous, and many of them of great cogency; the facts against it are few, and none of them absolute. It is simply argued that some questions remain unsolved, and that there are facts which seem inconsistent with the Darwinian theory of development, and which no supplementary hypotheses have explained. But no advocates of evolution hold that the Darwinian theory is final. ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... project, reprinted his "dissertation" as an appendix to his edition of Blackstone in 1803, where the people and the politicians let it remain buried. In public opinion, the problem as to the freedmen remained unsolved and insoluble. ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... blindness seemed to be so likewise; a feverish impulse carried people away into all newfangled ways, serious or frivolous. Mesmer brought from Germany his mysterious revelations in respect of problems as yet unsolved by science, and pretended to cure all diseases around the magnetic battery; the adventurer Cagliostro, embellished with the title of count, and lavishing gold by handfuls, bewitched court and city, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Malone said, trying to sound friendly and trustworthy. "After all, every place has unsolved crimes. Even the FBI ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Brouncker's unjustifiable action in July, and yet he kept the culprit in his service for nearly two years after the offence had come to his knowledge. After Brouncker had been dismissed from the duke's service, the House of Commons ejected him. The whole matter is one of the unsolved difficulties of history. See Lister's "Life of Clarendon," ii., ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... should be stopped everywhere. But the legislatures of many states paid small heed to the little minority of their constituents who voiced such sentiments, and the problem of how to bring about the desired results remained unsolved. ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... come again, I fancy?" she asked, simply. An hour ago he would have answered yes, meaning in his heart never. Now the unsolved woman opposite prompted him to say: "If you want to see me again, ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... thrown in the air, with lily-pads broken from their mooring, the water pattered down, the wavelets settled, and the boys stood in astonishment to see what strange animal had made this disturbance; but nothing more of it was seen, and the mystery remained unsolved. ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of contrition. Some change, either in his mind or in his view of my position, had taken place; and I was happy to find him once more able, not only to feel fraternally, as he had always done, but to act also fraternally. Nevertheless, to this day it is to me a painfully unsolved mystery, how a mind can claim its freedom ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... looked up from the pages. Never in her life had she seen a man read as he read; hungrily, as a starved man eats; rapidly, his eyes traveling like a shuttle across the page; down, down—flip a leaf quickly and let the shuttle-glance go on. Billy Louise let her slate, with the goat problem unsolved, lie in her lap while she watched him. When she finally became curious enough to decipher the name of the book—she had three or four in that dull, brown binding—and saw that he was reading The Ring and the Book, she felt stunned. She read Browning just as ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... knowledge was such a unique thing that it revealed with itself, the knower and the known, Kumarila however admitted a transcendent element of movement as being the cause of our objective consciousness, but regarded this as being separate from self. But the question remained unsolved as to why, in spite of the unique character of knowledge, knowledge could relate itself to the world of objects, how far the world of external objects or of knowledge could be regarded as absolutely true. Hitherto judgments were only relative, either referring to one's being prompted ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... the ballistics of archery that are unsolved, waiting the experiments of modern science. Empirical methods have dictated the art so far. In target equipment and shooting there is a wide field for investigation. Our interests, however, are more those of the hunter, and less those ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... his position and then sailed for Chile, whence he went to the Argentine Republic. Later, he proceeded to Europe, where he died in the middle of the century, a great man, the victim of the ingratitude of his fellow citizens, always modest and reserved, and, in many respects, an unsolved mystery. He harbored no resentment towards Bolvar. When he arrived in Callao after the interview, the papers published the ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... the supreme moment of their life saw each other, yet did not understand. A word, a touch would have given them both the key to one another's heart, and it now seemed as if death would part them for ever, whilst that great enigma remained unsolved. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... first edition of the Principia the problem of comets was unsolved, and their theory is not given; but between the first and the second editions a large comet appeared, in 1680, and Newton speculated on its appearance and behaviour. It rushed down very close to the sun, spun half round him very quickly, and then receded from him again. ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... one way. Take them to Him, tell Him about them. Told to Him, they often dwindle. They become smaller when they are looked at beside Him, and He will help us to understand as much as may be understood, and patiently to wait and leave the residue unsolved, until the time shall come when 'we shall know even as ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... patient investigation, the problem remained unsolved. The poor devil of a Baudru could not be kept in prison indefinitely, and to place him on trial would be ridiculous. There was no charge against him. Consequently, he was released; but the chief of the Surete resolved to keep him under surveillance. ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... of abstraction like this is made in the subject the great problem 'What causes progress?' will, I am confident, long remain unsolved. Unless we are content to solve simple problems first, the whole history of philosophy teaches that we shall never solve hard problems. This is the maxim of scientific humility so often insisted on by the highest enquirers that, in investigations, ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... progress of the past fifteen years, we may well ponder the possibilities of the next fifteen. They will be fruitful of grand results in proportion as we persistently and combinedly pursue the yet unsolved problems and are not tempted to the immediate presentation of separate facts, which are so innumerable and so easily observed that their very wealth becomes an element of weakness. Epoch-making discoveries result only from this power of following up unswervingly any given problem, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... Masonry, 625-m. Nature's immutable Law, the Eternal Will of the Justice which is God, 847-l. Nature's magnificences are an algebra of graces and splendors, 845-u. Nature's problems unanswered; the problems unsolved, 647-l. Nature's regularity suggested by common appearances very early, 699-m. Nature's single and absolute law, the equipoise of contrary forces, 848-u. Nature's Soul released at the end for a brighter existence, 614-u. Naya philosophers declare the individual Soul and God are distinct, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... young poet, and how he contrived to exist for the next year or so, is a mystery still unsolved. It has always been believed that he found his way to Europe and met with some curious adventures there, and Poe himself certainly alleged that such was the case. Numbers of mythical stories have been ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... my jewels, papers, and clothes; all, in a word, that still connects me with Cuba and my dreadful past. They must now be smuggled out of England; or, by the opinion of my lawyer, I am lost beyond remedy. To-morrow, on board the Irish packet, a sure hand awaits the box: the problem still unsolved, is to find some one to carry it as far as Holyhead, to see it placed on board the steamer, and instantly return to town. Will you be he? Will you leave to- morrow by the first train, punctually obey orders, bear still in mind that you ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... to give a homily by way of sermon. But as I was going to the altar, all vested for the Mass, two men came into my soul: one, the man who lived in that village in former years, a blind man, groping about for light, a soul with every problem unsolved; the other a man full of light, with every problem solved, the universe and the reason of his existence known as they actually are. Well, there were those two men in my soul. I had to get rid of them, so I preached them of to ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... become like a stagnant pool breeding nothing but weeds and the slimy creatures pertaining to foulness. Even in love, the most divine of passions, there should be a wave of uncertainty and a sense of unsolved mystery to give ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... wonder whose little girl she would have been, her father's or mother's, in case they had each married some one else! As there was no one whose opinion Anna dared to ask, the question is undoubtedly to this day, with her, unsolved. ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... was out of the station, and then she followed slowly and with extreme discretion until the bifurcation of the Avenue from the field way insured her escape. Ramage went up the Avenue, and she hurried along the path with a beating heart and a disagreeable sense of unsolved problems ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... excited sympathy, and he had the wit to cover his eyes, his own tell-tale feature, with coloured glasses. He had cheated several scores of persons in the Slav colony of Munich, and had then gone in search of other pastures. How he had obtained possession of the Wiener Gigerl was a mystery as yet unsolved. It had certainly seemed odd in the tobacconist's opinion that a man of such outward appearance should have received such an extremely improbable Christmas present, for such the adventurer declared the doll to ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... of the heart? Did it not rather proceed from childish disappointment at his lack of enthusiastic praise of her splendid exploit? As I say, he judged it prudent to leave the problem unsolved. Of the exploit itself, needless to remark, she talked interminably. Generous and kind-hearted, he agreed with her arguments. Of the humiliation she had wrought for him, he allowed her to have ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... Beauty" was has been the source of much speculation, but the question is still unsolved, every suggested damsel—Lucy Grymes, Mary Bland, Betsy Fauntleroy, et al.—being either impossible or the evidence wholly inadequate. But in the same journal which contains the draughts of these letters is a ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... clusters of blossoms which were set at either side of the gold cross on the altar. Stepping softly, and with reverence, Maryllia went up to the Communion rails, and looked long and earnestly at the white alabaster sarcophagus which, in its unknown origin and antiquity, was the one unsolved mystery of St. Rest. A vague sensation of awe stole upon her,—and she sank involuntarily on ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... metropolitan river, the stockpile of centuries, will have to be dredged out if the river is going to be as pleasant and useful at the capital as it ought to be, and so will the yearly additions that can inevitably be expected. This can be done if the money is available, though a considerable unsolved problem, under research at present, is where to put the silt after it has been taken out of the river, for appropriate fill sites ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... arrived at the main entrance of Market Snodsbury Grammar School. I parked the car, and went in, well content. True, the Tuppy-Angela problem still remained unsolved and Aunt Dahlia's five hundred quid seemed as far off as ever, but it was gratifying to feel that good old Gussie's troubles were over, at ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... exist. Now it is essential to an hypothesis that, if admitted, it should at least remove the difficulty and account for the facts. But it does not account for mind to refer our mind to a prior mind for its origin. The problem remains unsolved, nay, rather increased." ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... argued, and most of the inmates did not appear to be insane. It was not a time to busy one's self about other people's affairs, it was much safer neither to gossip nor to listen to gossip; so to many persons the riddle of Monsieur Legrand's sudden prosperity remained unsolved. ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... toil, And, lending life to the dead form of faith, Give human nature reverence for the sake Of One who bore it, making it divine With the ineffable tenderness of God; Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, The heirship of an unknown destiny, The unsolved mystery round about us, make A man more precious than the gold of Ophir. Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things Should minister, as outward types and signs Of the eternal beauty which fulfils The one great ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... explanation of his strange conduct. There was nothing the matter with him physically; and, mentally, the alienists found him normal in every way save for his one remarkable idiosyncrasy. His remaining in his chair was purely voluntary, an act of his own will. And now he is dead, and the mystery remains unsolved. ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... has yet discovered us; as they have all left the Space Problem unsolved, and as it has been uncovered to us, that is ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... happiness of all without that security from wrong which, often rude in its operation, had been the fundamental basis of social order for ages! The ideal was no doubt pure and noble, but unfortunately it only raised once more the old unsolved problem of the forum whether that which is theoretically right can ever be practically wrong. The French Revolution did not, as a matter of fact, rest with a mere revulsion of moral forces, but as the infection ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... dimly that this will be attained. I suspect a great majority believe it to be impossible, and that the question as to whether life evolved upon this planet, or this planet became infected with life through meteoric dust from some other center, will forever remain an unsolved problem. ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... produce remarkably fine fruits and agricultural products. Yet there were hundreds of thousands of acres that could not be irrigated for lack of water, and the problem of finding a use for these barren, semi-arid lands remained unsolved for many years. ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... think that if the Social Revolution had the misfortune of proclaiming such a principle, it would mean its necessary failure; it would mean leaving the social problem, which past centuries have burdened us with, unsolved. ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... is, we think, almost certainly applicable to Lathyrus odoratus, though in Darwin's latest publication on the subject he gives reasons to the contrary. See "Cross and Self-Fertilisation," page 156, where the problem is left unsolved. Compare Letter 714 to Delpino. In "Life and Letters," III., page 261, the absence of cross-fertilisation is explained as due to want of perfect adaptation between the pea and our native insects. This is Hermann Muller's view: see his "Fertilisation ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... getting on so well in my profession that in the minds of many of the unsuccessful there was a natural feeling of disappointment. Why one man should succeed and a dozen fail has ever been an unsolved problem at the Bar, and ever will be. But the curious part of this natural law is that it manifests itself ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... suggestion of a new idea, we ran off to explore the house again in search of the key to the Glenarm riddle, and always we came back to the library with that riddle still unsolved. ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... The Peace of Augsburg, 1555, had been intended to settle the differences between the Lutherans and Catholics but it had left many problems unsolved. ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... the unsolved riddles of history. Ablest but unhappiest of all his house, he was an instinctive democrat, sincerely solicitous for the welfare of the plain people, but incredibly cruel and faithless when the dark mood seized him. The coronation feast ended with the wholesale butchery of the unsuspecting ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... problem is still unsolved, and we get very thirsty; but thirst is a small fleabite, after all. "Which would you rather have," I asked a discontented lance-corporal, "a bit of a thirst or a dentist drilling a hole down a pet nerve?" And he owned he'd rather have ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... Teaching him how trade and commerce is carried on. Money and its uses. How it gets its value. Why it is a measure only. The trip to the north in charge of the Chief's son. Gruesome tales of the ferocity of the convicts. John still anxious to find some particular cave. His chart. The unsolved mystery of the boat. The clothing of the natives. Bracelets. Glitter to attract natives. Weaving, the only industry. The aptness of native women to adopt fancy articles of dress and ornament. John's scheme, anticipating ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... ghostly character and my fantastic superstitions had vanished. I was back once more in the world of men and women, and could only think of the inhumanity of man to man, and of the infinite pain silently endured by many hearts in that Purple Land. The only mystery still unsolved in that ruinous estancia was Don Hilario, who locked up the wine and was called master with bitter irony by Ramona, and who had thought it necessary to apologise to me for depriving me of his precious company ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... several men who had been found drowned, which would serve to explain their similar fate. But all my efforts in this direction were fruitless. There was no bond between them, and the matter remained for a while an unsolved mystery. ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... reverted character, or return to the characters of the plant which bears the retrograde branch? Will all of them do so, or only part of them, and how large a part? It is very astonishing that this question should still be unsolved where so many individual trees bear atavistic branches that remain on them through long series of years. But then many such branches do not flower at all, or if they flower and bear seed, no care is taken ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... missing, some of the old stories would wake up and get a fresh currency, until some new circumstance gave rise to a new hypothesis. Unconscious of all these inquiries and fictions, Maurice Kirkwood lived on in his inoffensive and unexplained solitude, and seemed likely to remain an unsolved enigma. The "Sachem" of the boating girls became the "Sphinx" of the village ramblers, and it was agreed on all hands that Egypt did not hold any hieroglyphics harder to make out than the meaning of this young man's odd way ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... associated with the stirring scenes thus presented in this prosperous little seaport. As we know that he was a careful observer, endowed by nature with an active temperament and an unusual degree of practical sense we are sure that no event escaped his attention, and that no mystery was permitted to go unsolved. The military and commercial enterprise of the place brought him into daily contact with men of the highest character in their departments. The salt-factors of Brouage were persons of experience and activity, who knew their business, its methods, and the markets at home and abroad. The fortress ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... whose work and governance is Plausibility, and also is Falsity and Fatuity; to which Nature says, and must say when it comes to her to speak, eternally No! Nations cease to be befriended of the Law-Maker, when they walk not according to the Law. The Sphinx-question remains unsolved by them, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... when nine years old or thereabouts, that while looking at a map of Africa of the time and putting my finger on the blank space then representing the unsolved mystery of that continent, I said to myself, with absolute assurance and an amazing audacity which are no ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... unsolved to this day; others were soon made clear. Where he got Carthew's name is still a mystery; perhaps some sailor on the Tempest, perhaps my own sea-lawyer served him for a tool; but I was actually at his elbow when he learned the address. It fell so. One evening when I had an engagement, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... judge. Yet there are few important names in human history of men who have left us so complete materials for a just judgment of their conduct; and it is only a lover of paradox who can read these and still regard Bacon's character as an unsolved problem. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... this explanation of life processes it can not fail to be apparent that we have not really reached the centre of the problem. We have explained many secondary processes, but the primary ones are still unsolved. In studying digestion we reach an understanding of everything until we come to the active vital property of the gland-cells in secreting. In studying absorption we understand the process until we come to what we have called the vital powers of the absorptive ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... but one of Joe's questions was answered. There were other problems yet unsolved, though. What were they going to do with him? He could ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... of the Lualaba remained unsolved, but Livingstone began to suspect that his theory of the Nile sources was wrong. He heard a doubtful tale of the Lualaba bending off to the west, but he still hoped that it flowed northwards, and that therefore ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... line suggests simplicity. Yet, on further inspection, you see that each line contributes to a rather bewildering variety of perspectives. I strongly suspect that the city and the people of Miracastle will remain one of the great, unsolved mysteries of the universe." ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville
... deserted house—the dead man on the floor below, the inexplicable clanking of a chain by some unseen THING from the depth of the cellar upward toward them; and, to heighten the effect of these, there were the grim stories of unsolved tragedy and crime. All in all Bridge could not have denied that he was glad of the room at the end of the hall with its suggestion of safety in the door which might be closed against the horrors of the hall and the Stygian gloom ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... strikers would have stood their ground or not is still an unsolved problem, but at that opportune moment the big school bell began to clang, and Miss Willough, the drill mistress, in her blue tunic, entered the gymnasium ready to take her next class. At sight of ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... do? I told her in so many words that we had our unsolved problems, that we had dishonesty and corruption, vice and crime, disease and insanity, prisons and hospitals; and it made no more impression on her than it would to tell a South Sea Islander about the temperature of the Arctic Circle. She could intellectually see that it was bad to ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
... birthday, and I celebrated it by taking a long walk and talk with her. She took some sewing with her, and as we rested under a great oak tree, we spoke of many intimate, personal things, always with the weight of our unsolved problem on our mind. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... a still more remarkable voyage was said to have been made by the Portuguese, LORENZO FERRER MALDONADO. He is believed to have been a cosomographer who among other tilings concerned himself with the still unsolved problem, of making a compass free from variation, and with the question, very difficult in his time, of finding a method of determining the longitude at sea (see the work of AMORETTI quoted below, p. 38). Of his ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... reports, conclusions—the case complete up to the moment he left it. The precaution is a useful one. A death-bed confession may implicate confederates, accomplices may quarrel, a jealous woman may give information. There have been unsolved mysteries, but no man may say when ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... volumes, so that the praise and explanation of the greatness and importance of the representation of the character of a man who has no character form in volume a library. It is true that some of the critics timidly express the idea that there is something strange in this figure, that Hamlet is an unsolved riddle, but no one has the courage to say (as in Hans Andersen's story) that the King is naked—i.e., that it is as clear as day that Shakespeare did not succeed and did not even wish to give any character to Hamlet, did not even understand ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... which I live and by virtue of which, though I know every road and house of the world, I yet am homeless. No happening in my being but I must view it in the light of that strange initial mystery. With the problem of that past unsolved, I have never found anything in the ordinary matters of life proposed as all-absorbing occupations. Because of that, I am upon the road. I have made research, and have asked questions of all whom ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... to Omaha to further mystify the adjutant-general and to eat his Christmas dinner. The order for the court-martial hung fire until the preliminary investigation could be concluded. Fort Cushing set itself to enjoy the sweet festival as best it might, while such a problem remained unsolved. Veterinary Surgeon Mayhew had taken seven days' leave, an eastbound train, and at three P.M. the day before Christmas came a telegram from —— Arnold, Esq., of Standish Bay, Massachusetts, announcing that he would leave forthwith for the West, bringing ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... cannot preserve even a shred of mystery to cloak the bareness of one's life, when the very surface of the globe is all mapped out, and the mysterious griffins of untraversed deserts are vanishing from the map, it is an amazing relief to know that an unsolved, nay more, that an insoluble, mystery is standing on one's very hearth-rug. No wonder great philosophers have spent their lives in vain in looking for the riddle of existence, when they never dreamt of looking for it at home. Why woman is so peculiarly mysterious, why the laws of her ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... to a great extent an unsolved problem. We have no definite rule by which we can fix the most important factor of the whole, namely, the diameter. Mr. Froude has pointed out that by reducing the diameter, and thus the peripheral friction, we can increase the efficiency; and this is confirmed by cases—of ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... intelligent face, with deep eyes; he wore moustache and side-whiskers, and long, bluish, unwashed hair. He dressed always in mourning; in winter and summer alike he went around in an overcoat, and, by some unsolved mystery of chemistry his overcoat kept turning green while his trousers, which were also black, kept quite as ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... drearily for the inhabitants of Aescendune, for the "mystery of the forest" was yet unsolved; none knew whence those incendiaries had issued who had given Yew Farm, with all its inmates, to the vengeful flames; but that this latter conflagration was in some way connected with the earlier destruction of St. Wilfred's Priory seemed ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... acid concealed among the coils of a young girl's hair? And when Leam said in that quiet if desperate manner that it was she who had killed madame, her words made the whole mystery clear and solved the as yet unsolved problem. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... it was complicated, adjourned, and finally botched by interweaving it with a mutilated scheme for the complete readjustment of the politico-social forces of the planet. The result was a tangled skein of problems, most of them still unsolved, and some insoluble by governments alone. Out of the confusion of clashing forces towered aloft the two dominant Powers who command the economic resources of the world, and whose democratic institutions and internal ordering are unquestionably more conducive to the large humanitarian end ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... which we live and move Outlasts aversion, outlasts love..... Nay, and since death, which wipes out man, Finds him with many an unsolved plan,.... Still gazing on the ever full Eternal mundane spectacle, This world in which we draw our breath In some ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... singular fact that the scream of the cougar, like the roar of the lion, seems to come from any or every side. It is difficult to tell in what direction the animal is who utters it. Whether this illusion be produced by the terror of the listener is a question yet unsolved. ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... It is not necessary to fathom the ground or the structure of everything in order to know what to make of it. Stones do not disconcert a builder because he may not happen to know what they are chemically; and so the unsolved problems of life and nature, and the Babel of society, need not disturb the genial observer, though he may be incapable of unravelling them. He may set these dark spots down in their places, like so many caves or wells in a landscape, without ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... connection between melody and adoration is yet an unsolved religio-psychological problem. But we all know that everywhere in the habitable globe the two intermingle, and stimulate each other, whether the adoration be offered to heavenly or earthly objects. And so it came to pass that, at the Bottle Flat singing-school, the ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... wants and of what is congenial to him. But then the congenial cannot be the same as the like; for like, as has been already shown, cannot be the friend of like. Nor can the congenial be the good; for good is not the friend of good, as has been also shown. The problem is unsolved, and the three friends, Socrates, Lysis, and Menexenus, are still unable to find out what a ...
— Lysis • Plato
... are the possibly superfluous broodings of those who are critical even in their warmest admirations and who sometimes suspect that it may be better for an artist to have a certain part of his property invested in unsolved difficulties. When this is not the case, the question with regard to his future simplifies itself somewhat portentously. "What will he do with it?" we ask, meaning by the pronoun the sharp, completely forged weapon. It becomes more purely a question ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... the whole tribe of nymphs and heroes and demigods—no, not quite all, for the cruelty and greed of Medea and Jason were too monstrous to be forgiven, and I used to wonder why the gods permitted them to do wrong and then punished them for their wickedness. And the mystery is still unsolved. I often ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... her whole gaze was turned inward; she was looking so intently at the picture of a sorrowful child, that she was blind to everything else. Susy was decidedly in a bad temper; Hester's brave heart was full of aches, doubts, and fears; and Annie was again going back to that unsolved problem of how she was to get back the ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... course said, in 1914, that she would take up war work. She subscribed most handsomely to the Soldiers' and Sailors' Families' Association, to the Red Cross, to the Prince of Wales's Fund (one of the unsolved war-time mysteries ... what's become of it?), to the Cigarette Fund, the 1914 Christmas Plum Pudding Fund, the Blue Cross, the Purple Cross, the Green Cross funds; to the outstandingly good work at St. Dunstan's ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... beastly sham fires, wherein gas jets flare among firebrick—a mechanical fire without vitality or variety, that never dances nor crackles nor blazes, a monotonous horror, a fire you cannot poke. That is what it will certainly come to if the problem remains unsolved. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... had no such testing department whatsoever. From his tone I was impelled to accept his statement as a truthful one, all of which but served to confirm my suspicions without in the least explaining the mystery which at this hour remains unsolved. I am puzzled—nay, more, I am nettled, and did I not possess the power of holding my emotions under a well-nigh perfect control, I would go so far as to say that I have been ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... unguarded moment of self-betrayal,—but Nature is jealous of her secrets,—they have to be coaxed out of her in the slow course of centuries. And with all the coaxing, the subtle work of her woven threads between the Like and the Unlike remains an unsolved mystery. ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... sparks fly upward. He had ever been a creature of unreason, morbidly conscious of self—and naturally, for in him struggled the blood of three races. His father was Scotch, and his mother—Spanish on the spindle side and Irish by way of a most mercurial father—remained an unsolved problem all her days, even to her husband. Her laughter was as illogical as her tears. Her household could never tell what the next hour would bring forth, so ready were her sympathies, so instant her despairs. She lived all her life at the heights or the depths, with never a day of ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... and yet the mystery was unsolved. The large reward offered by Mr. Voss for the recovery of his son's remains kept hundreds of fishermen and others who frequented the river banks and shores of the bay leading down to the ocean on the alert. As the spring opened and the ice began to give way and float, these men examined every inlet, ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... him from the bonds of that theology, and even of dogmatic Christianity in general, and had taught him to respect all creeds alike as expressions of the cravings and conjectures of the human spirit in face of the unsolved mystery of things, rather than to cling to any one of them as a revelation of ultimate truth. The shock to the father was great when his son's opinions came to his knowledge; and there ensued a time of extremely painful ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... one ray of hope; neither Harris nor I had disclosed our names, nor the whereabouts or quantity of the silks; and as each had been dealing with folk with whom he'd never before met, we were both as yet mysteries unsolved. Nor were we ever solved. Harris and I kept off the streets during daylight hours for a full month. We were not utterly idle; we unpleasantly employed ourselves in trimming away that tell-tale selvage. Preferring safety to profit, we put forth no ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... close of the palaeozoic period the relative positions of the ancient land masses and oceans remain unsolved; but the absence of marine strata of early palaeozoic age from Central Africa points to there being land in this direction. In late Carboniferous times Africa and India were undoubtedly united to form a large continent, called by Suess Gondwana Land. In ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... An opportunity will present itself after this war, for solving her own racial question which has in the past presented scarcely less grave embarrassment than the parallel problem of Austria-Hungary, and which, if left unsolved, may at no distant date endanger the unity and welfare of the Empire. The grant of Polish autonomy, the restoration of the Finnish constitution, the recognition of the special position of the Ukraine or Ruthene language and cultural traditions, the relaxation of linguistic ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... last day but one of the 1999th year of our era, and the first day of the Long Vacation. Having amused myself till a late hour with my favourite recreation of Geometry, I had retired to rest with an unsolved problem in my mind. In the night I had ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... that weird place, whispering for an indefinite period. Even as it was, the cavern had given back the sounds of my footfalls, multitudinously. The place was awesome, and I would willingly have retraced my steps, and left the mysteries of its solitudes unsolved; only, to ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... the vehicle, it was driven quickly enough, and they soon had the exhilarating impression of distancing altogether those, whoever they were, who were hunting them. For, after all, the riddle as to where the anarchists had got all these followers was still unsolved. One man's presence had sufficed for them; they had fled at the first sight of the deformed smile of the Secretary. Syme every now and then looked back over his shoulder at the army on ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... der Naturkraefte.'] Here, then, was the mine in which our gem must be sought. A modified and more refined form of the ancient faith revived; and, for aught I know, a remnant of sanguine designers may at the present moment be engaged on the problem which like-minded men in former ages left unsolved. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... disposed to look gently even upon the behaviour of the Prussians. The masses suspected that the ministry would welcome a peace with Germany which would mean little more than a cessation of hostilities and which would leave the great problems of the war unsolved. That this opinion was unjust, that, on the contrary, the British Foreign Office was steadily resisting all attempts to end the war on an unsatisfactory basis, Page's correspondence, already quoted, abundantly proves, but this unreasoning belief did ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... embrace, instead of shaking him for being there, and why she followed up this novel performance by the unexpected gift of a big slice of bread and jelly, remained one of the problems over which Demi puzzled his small wits, and was forced to leave unsolved forever. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... not practised them. As for the pauses, Malherbe first brought them into France within this last century, and we see how they adorn their Alexandrines. But as Virgil propounds a riddle which he leaves unsolved - ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... the universe; or he leaves them utterly unaccounted for, and takes refuge in an eternal series of derived and dependent beings, without attempting to assign any reason for their existence. He undertakes to account for nothing. He leaves the great problem unsolved, and discards it as insoluble. "Mr. Harrison demanded of me, where the first man came from? I said, I did not know; I was not in the secrets of Nature." "I cannot accept, says one, the theory of progressive development, it is so intricate and unsatisfying." ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... more than he does. Here we find the reason for the silence of the former advocates of a constitutional administration. They have realized that by the formation of the republic the fundamental problem of the country has been left unsolved. In this wise it happens that the situation is something like this. Whilst the country is governed by an able president, the people enjoy peace and prosperity. But once an incapable man assumes the presidency, chaos will become the order of the day, a state of affairs which will finally lead to ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... also the important question yet unsolved, as to what Matter is. Lord Kelvin and Dr. Larmor have recently given to the world certain conceptions as to the origin of Matter, and I shall endeavour to show that such conceptions receive confirmation and support by the proposed new conception of ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper
... many dark things clear, and often in a wonderfully short and decisive way. So we said hopefully two years and more ago in regard to one of the unsolved problems which then pressed on the minds of thoughtful men—how, namely, it was to fare with slavery in the progress and sequel of the war. The history of our national struggle has illustrated the truth and justified the hope. Time has quite nearly solved that problem and some others almost equally ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... conclusions that are at war with both logic and the facts. So with the question of sex specifically. I have read, literally, hundreds of volumes upon it, and uncountable numbers of pamphlets, handbills and inflammatory wall-cards, and yet it leaves the primary problem unsolved, which is to say, the problem as to what is to be done about the conflict between the celibacy enforced upon millions by civilization and the appetites implanted in all by God. In the main, it counsels yielding to celibacy, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... definition of Life, indeed, that has yet appeared can be said to be even approximately correct. Its mysterious quality evades us; and we have to be content with outward characteristics and accompaniments, leaving the thing itself an unsolved riddle. At the same time Mr. Herbert Spencer's masterly elucidation of the chief phenomena of Life has placed philosophy and science under many obligations, and in the paragraphs which follow we shall have to incur a further debt on behalf ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... engraved leaden plates at the mouths of streams. They also fortified the present sites of Ogdensburg and Toronto. Even now, therefore, France's power this side the Atlantic was not visibly shaken. The continental problem remained unsolved. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... mysteries profound I lean upon Thy loving breast; The great unknown still girts me round, But Thou art mine, and here I rest; Unsolved the mysteries remain; But they no ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... Another of the hitherto-unsolved difficulties in Fielding's life has been the date of his first marriage (p. 38). Lawrence gave the year as 1735; and Keightley suggested the spring of that year. This, as Swift would say, is near the mark, though confirmation has been slow in coming. In a letter dated ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... that such a difficult problem has remained thus far unsolved. Here and there a man gives his wife a household allowance, from the money they earn in common, and she struggles to save from it some fragments for her individual needs; others put their wives on a salary; and some others divide ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... from discussing this very question. "Every one," he said, "is assuredly decided upon the influence of heredity in the production of insanity (Mr. Buckle had not then written); but in this primary question, how many secondary ones there are which remain unsolved." Since he thus wrote, his own countrymen, Morel and Lucas, have, by their researches, advanced our knowledge, and rendered the task of their successors in the ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... credit detectives with oracular powers. "If Norvallis has the right pig by the ear, Maxon may break down, turn State's evidence and hang his accomplice. That's one possibility. Another—we may as well face it—is that this case will go to swell the great army of unsolved mysteries." He hesitated, then added, "There's a third possibility, ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... meaning in your riddle lurks. One knot is yet unsolved; that told, this strange And most mysterious drama ends. The name ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... insoluble puzzles for the world at large, that no one soldier fights anything but a partial battle, and that it wasn't an absolute condemnation of me to declare that I went on living and working for social construction with the cardinal riddles of social order, so far as they affected her, unsolved. Wasn't I at any rate preparing apparatus for that huge effort at solution that mankind must ultimately make? Wasn't this dredging out and deepening of the channels of thought about the best that we could hope to do at the ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... does not live by blood alone, how is it nourished? Female mosquitoes are by nature vegetarians; they are plant feeders. Why they should draw blood at all is a question which remains unsolved by entomologists—as well as by the suffering victims. The females have been observed sucking the nectar from flowers; obtaining nutriment from boiled potatoes, even from watermelon rinds, from which they extract the juice. As regards the blood habit, the male mosquito is a "teetotaler." ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... instance acts towards the dream only in repelling, not in a creative manner. If we limit ourselves to a consideration of what the second instance contributes to the dream, we can never understand the dream. If we do so, all the riddles which the authors have found in the dream remain unsolved. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... years since. Steam cars have been moved, as an experiment, both here and abroad, many hundred miles, at the rate of sixty miles an hour; but what will be the highest velocity ultimately attained in common use, either upon the water or the land, is a most important problem, as yet entirely unsolved. Our respected citizens, Morey and Drake, have endeavored to substitute the force of explosion of gaseous compounds for steam. The first was the pioneer, and the second has shown that the problem ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... had said to himself "father's bound to speak to me sometime about what I'm going to do, and when he does I shall just tell him." But his father never had begun; and by timidity, negligence, and perhaps ill-luck, Edwin had thus arrived at his last day at school with the supreme question not merely unsolved but unattacked. Oh he blamed himself! Any ordinary boy (he thought) would have discussed such a question naturally long ago. After all it was not a crime it was no cause for shame, to wish not to be a printer. Yet he was ashamed! Absurd! ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... intended to celebrate. While Beethoven was engaged upon this score, he one day woke up to the fact that some of his pages were missing. "Where on earth could they be?" he asked himself, and the servant too; but the problem remained unsolved. Beethoven, beside himself, spent hours and hours in searching, and so did the servant, but it was all in vain. At last they gave up the task as a useless one, and Beethoven, mad with despair, and pouring the very opposite to blessings upon the head of her who, he believed, was the author ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... with the problem yet unsolved. They were still much together, for she could not turn him away, and he would not stay away. There was more pleading on his part, and more anger sometimes. It seemed to him absurd that lives should be blighted because of ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... experience failed, they drew, in their believing ignorance, assurances and omens from the winds of heaven, the changes of the moon, and the flights of the wandering birds. Filled (by the voices of the elements, and the variety of mysteries which ever shift along the face of things, unsolved by the wonder which pauses not, the fear which believes, and that eternal reasoning of all experience, which assigns causes to effects) with the notion of superior powers, they assisted their ignorance by the conjectures of their superstition. But as yet they knew no craft and practiced ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... longer the three stood silent, then Wabi and the old Indian returned to the fire to finish the preparation of breakfast, leaving Rod alone in his enchantment. What unsolved mysteries, what unwritten tragedies, what romance, what treasure of gold that vast North must hold! For a thousand, perhaps a million centuries, it had lain thus undisturbed in the embrace of nature; few white men had broken ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... and indexed and filed away in the archives of the profession. To those who wish to look it up it will be spoken of as one of the great unsolved mysteries of the century. A crime that leads two ways, one into murder—sordid, cold and calculating; and the other into the nebulous screen that thwarts us from ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... when you sit in the midst of finery and wealth, protected by a self-assuring halo of moral rectitude, than under less fortunate circumstances. Too often, I'm afraid, we have good-naturedly admitted the unsolved burglary and paid the insurance claim. That has got to stop. Here's a case where we considered the moral hazard a safe one, and we are mistaken. It's the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve |
