"Baffling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bag. In this scene she seemed to demand the actor's intentions toward the daughter, and again overwhelmed him with confusion, as Parmalee had been overwhelmed when she revealed her true self under the baffling disguise. The wager of a kiss was prettily paid. This much of the drama he knew. And there was an affecting final scene on ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... small a thing To have enjoy'd the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done; To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes— ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... night, and we had a succession of rain and baffling winds for six or seven days, during which I had no opportunity of hearing the remainder of the boatswain's history. We joined the fleet off Toulon, closed the admiral's ship, and the captain went on board to pay his respects. When he returned, we found out, through ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... alone, I read the book. Never shall I forget the effect it produced on me. I seemed to be holding communion with Satan himself, robed as an angel of light, the transparent drapery revealing his hideous form but baffling my endeavors to rend it away. Such sophistry, such impudence of unsupported assertion, such distortion of truth and gilding of gross falsehood, I never met with. I tried in vain to find an answer to things that I saw and ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... our lives are made up of small things. We must break wholes up into fractions, and then seek their common multiple. Only thus can we deal with them. We deal with God by limiting Him and breaking Him up into his attributes, or by conceiving Him under the figure of the Trinity. He is thus less baffling to us. We can handle Him the better. We make a huge man of Him and then try to dodge the consequences of our ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... off in her reading. But often she laid the book absent-mindedly in her lap to listen with an ear turned toward the bed, and often, too, she looked out into the spreading softness of golden-green laced through by dove-gray and sepia-brown branches on which played baffling reflexes of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... in deep waters. He began to talk, to assert himself, to prove himself cock of his own walk. And Maule suavely encouraged him to lay down the law on things Australian, while Lady Bridget withdrew into herself, baffling and enraging McKeith still more hopelessly. He did not seem now to know his wife! A catastrophe had happened. What? How? Why? .... Nothing was the same, or could ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... In the pale moonlight, 'Mid sunshine and storm on they sail'd; Baffling winds and still calms Caused our friends no alarms, For Faith ever ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... the attention of the reader from the very start. It is full of action, presenting a baffling situation, the solving of which carries one along in a whirlwind of excitement. Through the story runs a love plot that is interwoven with the mystery ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... note that the most remarkable criminal case in which the famous French detective, Paul Coquenil, was ever engaged, a case of more baffling mystery than the Palais Royal diamond robbery and of far greater peril to him than the Marseilles trunk drama—in short, a case that ranks with the most important ones of modern police history—would never have been undertaken by Coquenil (and ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... gathered about us. They voiced their amazement when Tatini announced our wish to find a navigator and vessel to Tautira. They all said it was impossible, that the coast to Pari, with the submerged reef of Faratara, was too rough now for any but a large power boat, and the wind would be baffling and threatening. But as fear of the sea was unknown to them, they expressed a will to make the attempt. We launched a large canoe, and two sturdy natives, relations of Tatini, took the paddles. They had made the journey more than once, but not ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... Champneys, a newer and better personality dominating that old, unhappy, ignorant self. If at times the man glimpsed that other shadowy self of hers, it was part of her mysterious appeal, her enthralling, baffling charm. It invested her with a shade of inscrutable, prescient sorrow, as of old unhappy far-off things. He hadn't the faintest idea of Nancy Simms, a creature utterly foreign to his experience. And because she did ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... leave the baffling earthly prize, Which fails the earthly weak endeavor, To gaze into those holy eyes And ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... it doesn't matter," spoke up Tom Reade. "We have just one move more to make in this baffling game, and then I fancy we shall have won. When Mr. Sambo Ebony, as I have nicknamed him, is safely jailed I think we shall find ourselves undisturbed in the future. We shall then be permitted to go ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... suffered, what he suffers day by day only those can understand who have had the privilege of access to this hero: the most sensitive and the gentlest of men, silent and reserved; a man of controlled emotions, modest with a timidity that is at once baffling and delightful; loving his people less as a father loves his children than as a son loves his adoring mother. Of all that cherished kingdom, his pride and his joy, the seat of his happiness, the centre of ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... in truth is more distinct to me than the tune to which they were, without exception, at their ease on such ground—unless it be my general dazzled, humiliated sense, through those years, of the common, the baffling, mastery, all round me, of a hundred handy arts and devices. Everyone did things and had things—everyone knew how, even when it was a question of the small animals, the dormice and grasshoppers, or the hoards of food and stationery, that they kept in their desks, just as they kept in their ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... yet unseen, beaming across the ages, Brimful of fun And wit and wisdom, baffling all the ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... wonderful capacity for minute observation of the elder persons about them, which is one among the many baffling mysteries presented by the minds of children, Zo had long since discovered that the member of the household, preferred to all others by Carmina, was the good brother who had gone away and left them. In his absence, she was always talking of him—and ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... for refreshments, and learned that a steamboat called periodically at Luss. We left this favourite resort by the Dumbarton road, walking alongside Loch Lomond—one of the finest walks we ever took and quite baffling description. It was rather provoking, therefore, when darkness came on just as we reached the widest part of the Loch where quite a number of islands could be seen. The road still continued beautiful, being arched over ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the horses and cattle, which was rather wasted. She was as miserly about her master's money, as if it had been her own, and by dint of making good bargains, of getting high prices for all their produce, and by baffling the peasants' tricks when they offered anything for sale, he at last entrusted her with buying and selling everything, with the direction of all the laborers, and with the quantity of provisions necessary for the household, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... marriage was growing from a mere untoward incident of a night's carouse into a baffling thing which hung over him like an impending doom. He was not the sort of man who marries easily. It seemed incredible that he could really have done it; more incredible that he could have done it and then have wiped the slate of his memory clean; ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... subject, we review our state and history in life. From time to time, however, and specially, I think, in talking art, talk becomes effective, conquering like war, widening the boundaries of knowledge like an exploration. A point arises; the question takes a problematical, a baffling, yet a likely air; the talkers begin to feel lively presentiments of some conclusion near at hand; towards this they strive with emulous ardour, each by his own path, and struggling for first utterance; and then one leaps upon ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... watched her in the light of the electric candle-lamps on the table, which, sending their shaded light upwards reflected from the white cloth, made her face luminous in the shadow of her cloudy hair, he was struck again by a baffling resemblance to someone he had known. Now and again during the months since they had known each other her face had seemed familiar; then the likeness had disappeared; he had forgotten to be curious about it. At this moment the ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... woman and her party. Being almost the last, it will be understood that they created no little sensation as she led them down the thronged room to her table. She was wearing an evening gown of lustrous black with the apparently simple lines that are so baffling to any but the expert maker, with a black picture hat that suited her no end. I saw more than one matron of the North Side set stiffen in her seat, while Mrs. Belknap-Jackson and Mrs. Effie turned upon her the chilling ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... "It's a most baffling one," continued the financier. "I suppose, Mr. Carson," he added, "that if we do put it in and pass around a subscription paper, we can count on you for—say two hundred ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... make her out? It cannot be; I've seen no rag of canvass on the sea." "Belike," said Ben, "you might not from the bay, But from the bluff-head, where I watched to-day, I saw her in the doldrums; for the wind Was light and baffling."—"When the Sun declined Where lay she? had she anchored?"—"No, but still 510 She bore down on us, till the wind grew still." "Her flag?"—"I had no glass: but fore and aft, Egad! she seemed a wicked-looking ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... serving the food as assistant butler in Ben's absence. In the kink of his hair, the bulge of his smiling lips, the spread of his nostrils, the whites of his rolling eyes, he saw the Slave. He saw the mystery, the brooding horror, the baffling uncertainty, the insoluble problem of such a man within a democracy of self-governing freemen. He stood bowing and smiling over his guests, in shape a man. And yet in racial development a million years behind the wit and intelligence of the ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... arrived for the introduction of the witnesses, the court room again filled up; but he no longer looked for faces he knew. He held himself sternly aloof, as if he feared his reason might leave him if he continued to strive against those baffling eyes, who knew him and did not know that they knew him, but who looked at him as if trying to penetrate a mask when he wore no mask. Occasionally his counsel turned to him for brief consultation, in which his part consisted generally of a nod or a shake of the ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... The winds were baffling and light, so we made but slow progress. Fortunately frequent rains, with sometimes a genuine tropical downpour or cloud-burst, gave us an opportunity of replenishing our water casks, and by spreading the awnings we were able to get a good supply. I found on inspection ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... adverse, baffling, contrary, perverse; petulant, peevish, cynical, surly, unamiable, inaffable, crabbed, crusty, captious, fractious, churlish, vixenish, querulous, fretful, choleric, touchy, waspish, morose, sullen, ill-natured, irascible acrimonious, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... stanch friend, and trusted Him implicitly. Often, when perplexed and troubled, a half-hour's quiet talk with Him close shut behind her own door would give her wisdom and strength for the baffling question, and when she again appeared among them the girls wondered at her serene expression and winning smile, for in that half-hour's seclusion she had managed to remove all trace of the soil from the "slough," and, refreshed and strengthened by an unfailing ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... November days young Kedar and his trusty slave, Lauto, hunted along the Calawassee, with hope to get a shot at a buck—a buck that wore a single horn and that eluded them with easy, baffling gait whenever they met it in the fens. Kedar was piqued at this. He drained a deep draught and buttoned his coat with an air of resolution. "Now, by my soul," quoth he, "I'll have that buck to-day or die myself!" Then he laughed at the old slave, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... shadow of a spruce. It was evident that somebody was following his trail, and the pursuer, passing his hiding-place, followed it straight on. Geoffrey's was a curious character, and the very original cure for a disappointment in love, that of baffling a game watcher while his faithless mistress escaped, brought him relief; it ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... the League of Nations which could not with equal force be applied to the Four-Power and Naval Treaties. The Four-Power Treaty was the main object of attack, and Senators Lodge and Underwood were greatly embarrassed in attempting to explain its meaning. Its "baffling brevity" demanded explanations, but no satisfactory explanations were forthcoming. They talked in general terms about the tremendous importance of the treaty, but they dared not state the real fact that the treaty was drafted by Mr. Balfour ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... (there's a dear fellow) and send it soon. We sadly want books, and this will be readable again and again, and pay itself. Tell Emma I grieve for the poor self-punishing self-baffling Lady; with all our hearts we grieve for the pain and vexation she has encounterd; but we do not swerve a pin's-thought from the propriety of your measures. God comfort her, and there's an end of a painful necessity. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... least is clear; that the rock is well nigh insurmountable to those who know not the passes; that strict watch, baffling even Welch spies, is kept night and day; that the men on the summit are desperate and fierce; that our own troops are awed and terrified by the belief of the Welch, that the spot is haunted and the towers fiend-founded. One single defeat may lose us two years of victory. Gryffyth may break ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... likewise guessed the President's underhand manoeuvres with the Blandureaus, and his object in baffling old Blondet's efforts, but she saw nothing to be gained by opening the eyes of father or son to the perils of the situation; she was enjoying the beginning of the comedy; she knew about the proposals made by Chesnel's successor on behalf of Fabien du Ronceret, but she did not suspect ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... abashed by his success. "The deed, no less than the attempt, confounds him." His mind is assailed by the stings of remorse, and full of "preternatural solicitings." His speeches and soliloquies are dark riddles on human life, baffling solution, and entangling him in their labyrinths. In thought he is absent and perplexed, sudden and desperate in act, from a distrust of his own resolution. His energy springs from the anxiety and agitation of his mind. His blindly rushing forward on ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... state juggler, Oliver Cromwell, excelled in this species of eloquence; his speeches are models in their kind. Count Cagliostro, and the Countess de la Motte, were not his superiors in the power of baffling the understanding. The ancient oracles, and the old books of judicial astrologers, and of alchymists, were contrived upon the same principles; in all these we are confounded by a multiplicity of words which convey a ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... succeeded, at the point of the pike, in establishing a safe egress for the twelve hundred visitors, it was then first ascertained that all traces of The Masque had been lost in the smoke and subsequent confusion; and that, with his usual good fortune, he had succeeded in baffling his pursuers. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... long and baffling silence, during which the doctor grew first red, then pale, then red again, and Messer Gambara stood with his scarlet cloak sweeping about his shapely limbs, sniffing his pomander and smiling almost ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... breaking around it? There's a current sets right across it and on it. And you see them bafflin' little cat's-paws? It's good weather and a falling tide. You just start to beat out, the two of you, and all you have to do is miss stays in the same baffling puff and the current ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... doctor. He soon makes his escape from the real difficulties with which the subject is beset, and mouths away at immense length and width about what he calls "the secret of Chaucer's rhythm in his heroic verse, which has been the baffling subject of so much discussion among scholars, a trifling increase in the syllables occasionally introduced for variety, and founded upon the same laws of contraction by apostrophe, syncope, &c., as those followed by all modern poets; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... personal and its achievements are so intimately conditioned by the author's idiosyncrasies that it was quite plainly impossible to imitate it, or even to learn from it. This is still more the case with the later works of Sologub, like the charming but baffling and ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... the words which are already yours, or which you can make yours through your own unaided efforts. For convenience we have grouped with them some words of a nature more baffling—words of which you know perhaps but a single aspect rather than the totality, or upon which you can obtain but a feeble and precarious grip. These slightly known words belong more to the class now to be considered than to that just disposed of. For we have now to deal with words over which ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... the section of the chamber may be narrowed down by laying sand in the bottom and fire-brick thereon; also that baffle walls may be built into various portions of it, and that cooling surfaces with baffling may be introduced. In addition to variations in the tests, due to changes in construction in the combustion chamber, there will be variations in the fuels tested. Especial effort will be made to procure fuels ranging ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... baffling the inquisitor, foreseeing his wiles by intuition, evading his masked pitfalls by instinct. She was terribly afraid of him, yet more afraid of herself, afraid that she would break down and become a brainless, weeping thing. It was the sincerity of her fight against this weakness that made her so ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... which in reality foamed beneath his furrowing keel as he ploughed the sea in search of it. It is the same thrill which the wilting west wind steeps from the salt marsh as it comes across, some baffling and alluring ether distilled from under-sea caverns where cool green mermen tend emerald fires. The scent of it levitates from the wash of every wave and if you will watch with pure eyes and clear sight you may of moonlight nights see white-bodied mermaids flashing through the combers ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... disposal. He had heard it told at the newspaper office that Tisdale, whose golden statements were to furnish his little scoop, Hollis Tisdale of Alaska and the Geographical Survey, who knew more about the coal situation than any other man, was also the most silent, baffling sphinx on record when it ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... shoulders collapsed without a struggle into the powerful bulk of his chest and belly. He was excellently and quietly dressed. Amory noticed that he was inclined to stare straight at the back of the chauffeur's head as if speculating steadily but hopelessly some baffling hirsute problem. ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... at the table, his eyes upon the wide-spread loveliness of the landscape, but his thought elsewhere. It wandered over the years already lived through, wandering backwards even to the days when existence, opening before the child eyes, was a baffling and vaguely ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... well meant, but were not practically of much value. As Glendower could call spirits from the vasty deep, so they, with like success, sought to call soldiers from the earth in the midst of defeat, and in the teeth of a North American winter. Washington, baffling pursuit and flying from town to town, left nothing undone. North and south went letters and appeals for men, money, and supplies. Vain, very vain, it all was, for the most part, but still it was done in a tenacious spirit. Lee would not come, the Jersey militia would ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... priestly craft, has something in it closely akin to the English temperament. Sarpi was a sound Catholic Christian in religion, and in politics what we should call a staunch Whig. So far as it is now possible to penetrate his somewhat baffling personality, we might compare him to a Macaulay of finer edge, to a Dean Stanley of more vigorous build. He was less commonplace than the one, more substantial than the other. But we must be cautious in offering any interpretation of his real opinions. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... the importance of secrecy, General Gage quietly got ready eight hundred picked troops, which he meant to convey under cover of night across the West Bay, and to land on the Cambridge side, thus baffling the vigilance of the townspeople, and at the same time considerably shortening the distance his troops would have to march. So much pains were taken to keep the actual destination of these troops a profound secret, ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... regular soldiers. But when Pompey also passed over the Pyrenees, and Sertorius pitched his camp near him, and offered and himself accepted every occasion by which military skill could be put to the proof, and in this contest of dexterity was found to have the better, both in baffling his enemy's designs and in counter-scheming himself, the fame of him now spread even to Rome itself, as the most expert commander of his time. For the renown of Pompey was not small, who had already won much honor by his achievements in the wars of Sylla, from whom he received ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of adventure occurred, and not of a kind pleasant to recall, even on this short voyage. The passage to Dublin from the Head is about sixty miles, I believe; yet, from baffling winds, it cost us upwards of thirty hours. On the second day, going upon deck, we found that our only fellow-passenger of note was a woman of rank, celebrated for her beauty; and not undeservedly, for a lovely creature she was. The body of her travelling coach had been, as usual, unslung ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... must entreat you, friends, below! The angry storm begins to blow, For the weather changes with the moon. All this morning, until noon, We had baffling winds, and sudden flaws Struck the sea with their cat's-paws. Only a little hour ago I was whistling to Saint Antonio For a capful of wind to fill our sail, And instead of a breeze he has sent a gale. Last night I saw St. Elmo's stars, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the custom officer. "I shall be glad to listen to any evidence you may offer. This is a very baffling case. The government is losing thousands of dollars every month, and we can't seem to stop the smugglers, or get much of a clew to them. This one is the best we ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... Mad-men, and at Times I have met with People who have Boxed, fought at Back-sword, and taken Poison before King Charles II. In a Word, he was so pleasant a Man, that no one could be sorrowful under his Government. This made him capable of baffling, with the greatest Ease imaginable, all Suggestions of Jealousie, and the People could not entertain Notions of any thing terrible in him, whom they saw every way agreeable. This Scrap of the familiar Part of that Prince's History I thought ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Matthew Flinders, was beating off the eastern extremity of Kangaroo Island, endeavouring to make the mainland of Terra Australis, to follow the course of discovery and survey for which she had been commissioned. The winds were very baffling for pursuing his task according to the carefully scientific method which Flinders had prescribed for himself. He had declared to Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, before he left England, that he would endeavour so to explore the then unknown coasts of the ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... was brewing she was not far from the Downs, but the baffling winds retarded her progress, and it was pitch dark when she reached the neighbourhood of the Goodwin sands. Nevertheless those on board of her did not feel much uneasiness, because a good pilot had been secured in ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... by an extraordinary development of the passion for delitescency! I the rather suspect some natural disposition of this kind; for, from the instant I perceived the extreme curiosity manifested on the subject, I felt a secret satisfaction in baffling it, for which, when its unimportance is considered, I do not well ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... cumulative vote have been almost universally rejected as schemes for baffling the majority. But the principle of dividing the representatives equally between population and property has never had fair play. It was introduced by Thouret into the constitution of 1791. The Revolution made it inoperative; and it was so manipulated from 1817 to 1848 by ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... the portal of the Temple of Isis: 'I am whatever has been, is, or ever will be; and my veil no man hath yet lifted.' Not thus do modern seekers after truth confront Nature—the word that stands for the baffling mysteries of the Universe. Steadily, unflinchingly, we strive to pierce the inmost heart of Nature, from what she is to reconstruct what she has been, and to prophesy what she shall be. Veil after veil we have lifted, ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... on the trail, trying to cut a calf away from its mother. The gray brutes boldly trotted to within a few yards of him, and slyly looked at him, with pale, fiery eyes. They had already scented his captive. Precious time flew by; the situation, critical and baffling, had never before been met by him. There lay his little calf tied fast, and to the north ran many others, some of which he must—he would have. To think quickly had meant the solving of many a plainsman's ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... what I go after—sometimes," answered the man meeting her gaze with a flash of the baffling grey eyes. A subtle something, in look or words, seemed a challenge. Instinctively she realized that despite his rough exterior here was a man infinitely less crude than the other. An ordinary cowpuncher, to all ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... brought with him in the ships. But what in the world could a Greek slave know of that affair? I wandered up and down among the streets trying to unravel the mystery, and the more I considered it, the more baffling it grew. One thing only seemed certain and that certainty took away my breath for the moment. If I came to full knowledge of anything at all, it would not be one life of the soul in Charlie Mears's body, but half a dozen—half a dozen several and separate ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... herself if not her interlocutors. She was perfectly aware of the opinions of her fellow servitors. She knew all about them while they knew nothing whatsoever about her. Her limited English could be used as a means of baffling them. She smiled, and fell into Hindustani when ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... require much narrative from us here. Ill-luck, which, Friedrich complains, had followed him like his shadow, in a strange and fateful manner, from the day of Kunersdorf and earlier, does not yet cease its sad company; but, on the contrary, for long months to come, is more constant than ever, baffling every effort of his own, and from the distance sending him news of mere disaster and discomfiture. It is in this Campaign, though not till far on in it, that the long lane does prove to have a turning, and the Fortune of War recovers its old ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... thoughts here, and tried to make herself feel like a woman engaged to be married. Somehow the fact persisted in baffling her. There was an unreality about it that prevented her from tasting the full sweet. Engaged—to a rich man, and a rich man's son. Well, perhaps when Ward came back, it would seem ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... of his opponent, had nothing in it consolatory to his wounded feelings. He was lowered in his own eyes, when he recollected how completely the proposed victim of his ingenuity had seen through his schemes, and only abstained from baffling them entirely, because to do so suited best with his own. There was a shade of suspicion, too, which he could not entirely eradicate from his mind.—What occasion had this young nobleman to preface, by the voluntary loss ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... treachery, "Without whose aid the links accurst, "That bind these impious slaves, would be "Too strong for ALLA'S self to burst! "That rebel fiend whose blade has spread "My path with piles of Moslem dead, "Whose baffling spells had almost driven "Back from their course the Swords of Heaven, "This night with all his band shall know "How deep an Arab's steel can go, "When God and Vengeance speed the blow. "And—Prophet! by that holy wreath "Thou ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... having been the scene of frequent British operations in previous wars. Owing to this, "the Maria, because of her distant situation (from which the Inflexible and Carleton had chased by signal) when the rebels were first discovered, and baffling winds, could not get into close action."[13] For the same reason the Inflexible could not support the Carleton. The Americans, in the aggregate distinctly inferior, were thus permitted a concentration of superior force upon part of their enemies. It is needless to enlarge upon ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... his home, in his school, in the streets, he seized upon and how he made this his own. I tried to determine what were the relationships he used to order his experiences. Fortunately for the purposes of writing stories I did not have to get behind the baffling eyes and the inscrutable sounds of a small baby. Yet I learned much for understanding the twos by watching even through the first months. What "the great, big, blooming, buzzing confusion" (as James describes it) means to an infant, I fancy we grown-ups will really never know. But I suppose we may ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... little chin met Mr Fledgeby's gaze with such a baffling hitch, that that agreeable gentleman was for some time at a loss how to resume his fascinating part in the dialogue. At ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... watch struck the hour on the bell. “It is ten o'clock; let us turn in.” There is an inviting glimmer through the cabin skylights. We are better off in this floating hotel than has often been our lot, baffling with storm and tempest, benighted, weary, cold and wet, in rough roads, forest or desert waste, with dubious hopes of shelter and comfort at the end ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... addressing itself to the angels. Being, as it were, ourselves the angels we had only a limited quarrel in each case with the event; but its inconsequent character, given the forces set in motion, was peculiarly baffling. It was like an interminable sum that wouldn't come straight; nobody had the time to handle so many figures. Limbert gathered, to make his pudding, dry bones and dead husks; how then was one to formulate the law that made the dish ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... as far up as we could in the history of primitive societies. The phenomena which early societies present us with are not easy at first to understand, but the difficulty of grappling with them bears no proportion to the perplexities which beset us in considering the baffling entanglement of modern social organisation. It is a difficulty arising from their strangeness and uncouthness, not from their number and complexity. One does not readily get over the surprise which they ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... near this baffling secret at times; in the dewy silence of mornings, just before the sun comes up, when familiar woods and trees stand in a sort of musing happiness; at night when the sky is thickly sown with stars, or when the moon ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... not heed the city any more, It has given me a duty to perform. I pass along nonchalantly, Insinuating myself into self-baffling movements. Impalpable charm of back streets In which I find myself: Cool spaces filled with shadow. Passers-by, white hammocks ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... yours, you have, in fact, a legal right to inspect the printer's books. But this is valueless. The printer would cook his books to please the publisher. You can have no conception of the villany done under all these sharing agreements. But forewarned forearmed. Think of some way of baffling this invariable fraud. Ask a knowing printer some way. Do anything but underrate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... contest, and hovered, smiling ineffectually, on the outskirts of his little chaos. Perhaps he tried to find comfort in a conscience satisfied for a party spoiled. But for Audrey this wild confusion was rich in possibility. However baffling to those officially responsible, it offered a wider field for individual enterprise; and if she did not possess that fine flow of animal spirits which sometimes supports lesser minds under such circumstances, ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... mantle about them; and they vanished, God's holy light between the world and them, leaving behind a memory, half mortal and half myth. From first to last they were the creations of some special Providence, baffling the wit of man to fathom, defeating the machinations of the world, the flesh and the devil, until their work was done, then passing from the scene as mysteriously as they had ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... is traversed, I'll await Your well-timed counsel. If I have you by me I'll laugh at all the baffling strokes of Fate And lay the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... experience that the men who have been most eagerly sought in friendship have not as a rule been the most open-hearted and expansive natures. I suppose that a certain law of pursuit holds good, and that people of self-contained temperament, with a sort of baffling charm, who are critical and hard to please, excite a certain ambition in those who would ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the story centers in London and Italy. The book is skilfully written and makes one of the most baffling, mystifying, exciting detective stories ever written—cleverly keeping the suspense and mystery intact until the surprising ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... with simplicity or with a baffling irony. "Why not open my mind's eye for me? My friend Harold March here will tell you I sometimes see things, ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... its contradictory and fluctuating interests, the transition from one situation to another, the hours, months, years spent in one fond pursuit after another; that it is, in a word, the length of our common journey and the quantity of events crowded into it, that, baffling the grasp of our actual perception, make it slide from our memory, and dwindle into nothing in its own perspective. It is too mighty for us, and we say it is nothing! It is a speck in our fancy, and yet what canvas would be big enough ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of insight. He was in his glory in a case like this. This was shown now by his gleaming eyes and the trembling hand which pulled nervously at his short, black moustache. Goldberger's moustache was a good index to his mental state—the more ragged it grew, the more baffling he found the ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... was, but mark the sequel: 'She did not outgrow it.' He puts this in italics. 'The power within her gained in mastery, and, what is most singular and baffling to me, she continues to be a hearty, healthy child in all other ways, and yet at times she seems the calm centre of a whirlwind of invisible forces. Chairs, books, thimbles, even the piano, move to and fro without visible pushing. Electric snapping ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... hopes of baffling your Majesty's sagacity," said Heriot; "the piece is really what I say, and the price a hundred and fifty pounds sterling, if it pleases your ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... a chief part in making the poet's career his fixed ideal, and ultimately, with his father's willing consent, his definite choice. What we know of his inner and outer life during the important years which turned the boy into the man is slight and baffling enough. The fiery spirit of poetry can rarely have worked out its way with so little disturbance to the frame. Minute scrutiny has disclosed traits of unrest and revolt; he professed "atheism" and ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... not remain as Easy as it would have liked under the erring attribution of prominence. Yet to have refused to help in so good a work would not have been in its nature, and it lost as little time as possible in summoning a real author of prominence to consider the problems so baffling to a mere editorial effigy; for, as we ought to explain, the de facto editor is to be found in the Study next door, and never in the Easy Chair. The author prominently before the public came at once, for that kind of author has very little to do, and is only too happy to respond ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... well though not expensively furnished, and both mother and child had the unmistakable air of good birth and refinement. As Silvia glanced at Mrs. Bell she was conscious of something in her face at once baffling and appealing. She had the indefinable look of one who dwells with a sorrow for which ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... the prisoner's wrists and knees, With doleful sniffs between recurrent howls; Till Gaea's lap receiving them, they stretched, And both upon her bosom shaken to speech, Burst the hot story out of throats of both, Like rocky head-founts, baffling in their glut The hurried spout. And as when drifting storm Disburdened loses clasp of here and yon A peak, a forest mound, a valley's gleam Of grass and the river's crooks and snaky coils, Signification marvellous she caught, Through ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... those who have played at hare and hounds, can fully appreciate the excitement, the interest, and the pleasure of the game; or the proud feeling of the hare, who finds that he is successfully baffling his pursuers when he is distancing them by the rapidity of his pace, or by the artfulness of his dodges; still all the time, whatever twists and turns he may make, knowing that he is bound to leave traces of his scent sufficiently strong to ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... brig from Rio, bound to Norfolk. Weather hazy, with a light baffling wind from the eastward. To-day Hartman Rogers died, having been attacked on the eighth with spasms after drinking a glass of grog. This man was of the cook's party, and one upon whom Peters placed his main reliance. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... had ordered differently. Towards midnight, the breeze almost failed and became baffling, and when the day dawned the officer of the watch reported that it was ahead. The pursuing ship, though still in sight, was luckily so far astern and to leeward as to prevent any danger from a visit by boats, and there was leisure to make the preparations that might become ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... baffling question; for diplomatic destinies were at stake. But missionaries are usually honest, so she said, "Yes, if they are ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... descriptions, with the full confidence of always being able to keep his seat; but when at Paris he met with a master who could not only defy any horse to throw him, but under all circumstances could always preserve a graceful position, even while baffling every attempt of a horse to floor him. In order to try the capabilities of Mr. W., the French master placed him on all kinds of horses, and amongst the rest those which had been taught all sorts of tricks to fling their riders, but W. resisted all their attempts, but it was ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... silent on the way home. The world sometimes seemed desperately sordid, and human nature a baffling proposition. ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... entirely engrossed in his devotions. Starting from the front entrance of the church he moved slowly nearer and nearer to the altar, and, slipping from the shelter of one pillar to another, anxiously scanned the rows of kneeling women. He found the mantilla a baffling disguise, and as each woman present in the church wore one, and as the hair of each was black, and as the back of the head of one woman is very much like that of another, it was not until the worshippers ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... a miserable thing for a question of truth {319} to be confined to mere presumption and counter-presumption, with no decisive thunderbolt of fact to clear the baffling darkness. And, sooth to say, in talking so much of the merely presumption-weakening value of our records, I have myself been wilfully taking the point of view of the so-called 'rigorously scientific' disbeliever, and making an ad hominem ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... away from us when we tried to overtake him? That was a baffling question, and the only way we could explain it was that he was afraid we would accuse him of theft. That he had not gone very far away from us was shown by the way he had appeared in the picture theatre that afternoon. But if he was a detective, why did he not boldly march ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... I! Out!—Oh, so far, far, far, Over the lofty mountains! Here is this cramping, confining bar, Baffling my thoughts, that so buoyant are;— Lord! Let me try the scaling, Suffer no ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... Andrews with some show of gratification. "I flatter myself that we have pulled the wires so as to keep the thing out of the papers as much as possible. We don't want to frighten the quarry till the net is spread. The point is, though, to find out who is the quarry. It's most baffling." ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... was often baffling to the observer, especially in its restraint. It was only after many years that the present writer found the master-key to Dilke's actions, and it was revealed in a flash at the time of the passing of the South Africa Union Act. The question was the representation of the native population ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... from the road to the school-room was not without many a struggle on Sandy's part. The new life, the new customs, and the strange language, were baffling. ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... hand upon the door, wheeled abruptly and studied Yancey's face, trying to discover the jest hidden behind that baffling, ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... experience he was also by virtue of his rationality a participator in eternal truth. A substantial justice was thus done both to the conditions and to the functions of human life, although, for want of a natural history inspired by mechanical ideas, this dualism remained somewhat baffling and incomprehensible in its basis. Aristotle, being a true philosopher and pupil of experience, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... man had as much to do with the circumstance as the man himself. He was polite, engaging, and handsome; the objection to his complexion, if such there were, was at least offset by a very positive faculty of entertaining; besides which, the unspeakable something in manner, always baffling disguises, always whispering of other conditions, always exciting suggestions and expectations, was ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... she was thinking it over in her room that evening vague and baffling doubts came drifting across this conviction. She doubted how she stood toward him and what the restrained gleam of his face might signify. She felt that perhaps, in her desire to play an adequate part in the conversation, she had talked rather more freely than she ought to have done, and given him ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... prosperity. The West, then almost unexplored, began to develop, and has continued to do so until now it is studded with proud cities, teeming with throbbing life, growing like the grass of the prairies in spring-time, advancing like the steam-engine, baffling distance like the telegraph, and spreading the pulsations of their mighty hearts to the uttermost parts of the world. There they stand with their echoing marts of trade, their stately spires of worship and their magnificent institutions ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... what the law says," was her baffling rejoinder; "I have taken the trouble to find out since I came home. I am not ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... appealed to men to go back into their own thoughts and feelings, and there challenged them; were not the preacher's words the echoes and interpreting images of their own deepest, possibly most perplexing and baffling, experience? From first to last this was his great engine and power; from first to last he boldly used it. He claimed to read their hearts; and people felt that he did read them, their follies and their aspirations, the blended ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... later she left the studio. Bloeckman had promised that she should hear the result of the test within the next few days. Too proud to force any definite comment she felt a baffling uncertainty and only now when the step had at last been taken did she realize how the possibility of a successful screen career had played in the back of her mind for the past three years. That night she tried to tell over to herself the elements that might decide for or against her. Whether ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... him readily the larger share of their plunder. Under a variety of names and disguises, through a succession of frauds, some vast and some mean, but chiefly on the Continent, they had pursued their course, eluding all danger and baffling all law. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
