"Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... departure from France. Then people saw, at last, where all the golden schemes that had flooded upon popular credulity had borne us;—not to the smiling and fertile shores of Prosperity and Confidence, as may be imagined; but to the bleak rocks and dangerous sands of Ruin and Mistrust, where dull clouds obscure the sky, and where there is no protection ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... she chirped, "and, do you know, I am afraid it is rather demoralizing in its effects on young people. No, of course, I didn't think of bringing the children, Mr. Charteris—Shakespeare's language is not always sufficiently obscure, you know, to make that safe. And besides, as I so often say to Mr. Rabbet, it is sad to think of our greatest dramatist having been a drinking man. It quite depressed me all through the play to think of him hobnobbing with Dr. Johnson at the ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... tongue, and every heart, a hymn for the longevity of Wucics and Petronievitch. "The solemn song for many days" is the expressive title of this sublime chant. This hymn is so old that its origin is lost in the obscure dawn of Christianity in the East, and so massive, so nobly simple, as to be beyond the ravages of time, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... and posted his letter, taking care to word it so that it would be hard for anyone except Colonel Throckmorton to understand it. And, even after having purposely made the wording rather obscure, he put it into code. And, after that, he thought of still another precaution that might be wise. "We won't need the credentials we've got in there tonight, Dick," he said. "Nor our copies of the ...
— The Boy Scout Aviators • George Durston
... doorway below had frightened her. He had been so uncompromising in his ugliness. The shock of her awakening had been rudely unexpected, and had bewildered her with its brutal significance. She was a prisoner in this Turkish house, in an obscure quarter of a half Oriental town, and night was imminent, a night which seemed to possess untold possibilities for evil. What was to happen? Why had not Captain Goritz returned? Enemy though she now knew him to be, even Goritz was a refuge in this perilous ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... the grounds of this maxim, not to go beyond the evidence, not to distribute a term that is given as undistributed, it is one of the things so plain that to try to justify is only to obscure them. Still, we must here state explicitly what Formal Logic assumes to be contained or implied in the evidence afforded by any proposition, such as 'All S is P.' If we remember that in chap. iv. Sec. 7, it was assumed that every ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... the honest mate were open to a reasoning which the reader may find a little obscure: for his mind contained a sort of chart of the ocean, to which he could at any time refer, with a proper discrimination between the various winds, and all the different points of the compass. When properly ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... themselves upon the attention of the moose. They appreciated too well the fury of her mother wrath, the swiftness and deadliness of the stroke of her knife-edged forehooves. They were not going to let their curiosity obscure their discretion, you may be sure, like some of the childish deer and antelope ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... made to stand out with undue distinctness, and though the vowels should not be distorted into a wrong form, they should be obscured. In "gentlemen," for example, the "e" is, according to the dictionary, an "obscure" vowel, and the word is pronounced almost as "gentlem'n,"—not "gentlemun," of course, but not "gentlemen." The fault in such forms is more easily avoided by throwing a sharp accent on the accented syllable, letting the other syllables ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... experiment, I had supposed that every man, whose wealth or power gave him influence in society, would start up, the moment it was known that an obscure individual, the usher of a school, had written a tragedy; not only to protect and produce it to the world, but to applaud and honour the author! Would secure him from the possibility of want, load him with every token of respect, and affectionately clasp him to their bosom! The indifference ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... he had not waited for her to succeed before discovering how charming she was; and, in fact, their liaison had begun when she was making an obscure first appearance at the Odeon in a revival ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... Russian army was regaining power and receiving adequate munitions. The captures of Erzerum and Trebizond were a warning that deserved, but did not earn, attention in Berlin and the British failure and surrender at Kut-el-Amara served to obscure the Eastern situation. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... mounting on a camel, offered to guide us on our way during the night. It is no easy matter at any time, even for the Arabs, to find the way in a direct line across the boundless Desert; and when clouds obscure the stars, it is almost impossible without a compass. The old recluse, on seeing white strangers, cast a look of disgust and disdain at us, expressing his surprise that any true believers should allow infidel Nazarenes to remain in their company. ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... other's sorrows, and each other's fears. And now, child of my heart, be happy if you can. Let nothing of gloom, of suffering, or of bitterness, be connected with my thoughts of you; let no cloud ever obscure your spotless character; let your name never be pronounced but with blessings; your presence never be hailed but with joy. Then, when in absence, I call to mind your loved features, your proud smile, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... number of books in its library is 2,630. The number of its books relating to the fine arts is 233. The number of its art illustrations is 3,284. Still it has no convenient rooms for its books, pictures, casts. They are highly valuable, but are scattered in different and obscure places. It has a good cabinet of specimens illustrating conchology. Where is the cabinet? A large part of it I have never seen. It is kept in the boxes in which it was sent to the academy. Where is the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... all time study with advantage the acts of such obscure and almost forgotten men as these. For, through them, Napoleon was now teaching the world that a fortified place might be made stronger than any had hitherto suspected. That he should turn round and teach, on the other hand, ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... politicians, corruption. I, think that, by holding the subjects of your majesty in pay, he trespasses upon the royal prerogative, and cannot, if this continues so, be long in placing your majesty among the weak and the obscure." ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... chair and gradually the others settle themselves; FARRANT seeking an obscure corner. But there follows an uncomfortable silence, which O'CONNELL at ...
— Waste - A Tragedy, In Four Acts • Granville Barker
... In the blackness of the hazy light from the sky, and the vague tossing of the candle behind him, he saw that the hammock in which Frank so often lay was tenanted. A gleam of white shirt was there, as if a man sitting up in it, but across that there was an obscure dark shadow, and as he approached the acrid odor grew ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... Raymount's utterance may perhaps seem obscure to a better thinker. He concluded merely that his host was talking for talk's sake, so talking rubbish. The girl came in again, and the conversation dropped. Mr. Raymount went to his writing, Vavasor toward the piano. Willing to please Cornelius, whom he almost regarded ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... results to civilization. Of these the principal were gunpowder, the mariner's compass, and printing by movable types. Gunpowder was not first made by Schwartz, a monk of Freiburg, as has often been asserted. We have notices, more or less obscure, of the use of an explosive material resembling it, among the Chinese, among the Indians in the East as early as Alexander the Great, and among the Arabs. It was first brought into use in firearms in the middle of the fourteenth century. The effect was to ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... would add nothing, my Lord, to the fame with which your genius has surrounded you, for an unknown and obscure individual to express his admiration of it. I had rather be numbered with those who wish and pray, that 'wisdom from above,' and 'peace,' and 'joy,' may enter such ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... in large part made up the passenger list, since her beauty was her one endowment for the position in the great world which all her life she had intended and expected to occupy. She was anxious, therefore, to know whether the personal appearance which had been rated so high in the obscure places hitherto known to her would or would not hold its own when she got out into life, ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... the inscrutable and mysterious union existing between matter and mind, or to endeavour to point out the manner in which the body influences the mind, and the mind the body. Such subjects we do not think to be legitimate objects of inquiry. The medical philosopher is engaged in less obscure and less uncertain researches; he does not attempt to solve the question regarding the intimate union subsisting between the natural and intellectual portions of our nature, but he wisely confines himself ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... "An obscure village in Pennsylvania," he explained with dignity, "where your wood and your river will likely have definite ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... the Fortune told disappears. The Fortune-teller no longer possesses the singleness of mind or purpose necessary to a clear reading of the symbols he or she consults. The amount of the fee is the first consideration, and this alone is sufficient to obscure the mental vision and to bias the judgment. This applies to the very highest and most conscientious of Fortune-tellers—persons really adept at foreseeing the future when no taint of monetary reward intervenes. The greater number, however, of so-called Fortune-tellers ...
— Tea-Cup Reading, and the Art of Fortune-Telling by Tea Leaves • 'A Highland Seer'
... forms themselves are but partially shaded, yet wonderful harmony and beauty pervade the whole. All honor to Nai Dang! who alone, amid the national decay of art and culture, preserved this germ of glorious life and strength, wrapped in his own obscure, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... in immediate connection with this enlarged view of universal immutable natural order that I have regarded the narrow notions of those who obscure the sublime prospect by imagining so unworthy an idea as that of occasional interruptions in the physical economy ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... was not sorry to be left to himself in his utter bewilderment! Flo, separated from her detrimental uncle, and placed in a convent school! Tarbox, the obscure pioneer, a shrewd speculator emerging into success, and taking the uncle's place! And all this within that month which he had wasted with absurd repinings. How feeble seemed his own adventure and advancement; how even ludicrous his pretensions to any patronage and superiority. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... "the Divine commission to exterminate the Manchus, and to possess the empire as its true sovereign"; and, as it was also at this time that his followers became commonly known as Taepings, it may be noted that the origin of this name is somewhat obscure. According to the most plausible explanation it is derived from the small town of that name, situated in the southwest corner of the province of Kwangsi, where the rebel movement seems to have commenced. Another derivation ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... sparkling with pleasure, brighter than the rich jewels which covered her raiment, her cheeks suffused with the blushes of maidenhood. No one had, he thought, ever seen so much beauty before. As the silver moon obscures the light of the stars by its superior splendour, so did Kriemhild obscure the beauty of the ladies who surrounded her. When he beheld her each hero drew himself up more proudly than ever and appeared as if ready to do battle for such a paragon of beauty. She was preceded by chamberlains in rich attire, but no ushers might keep back the knights from sight of her, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... Schermerhorn. I, in common with the rest of the world, had imagined him anchored safely in Philadelphia, immersed in chemical research. Here he bobbed up at the other end of the continent, making shady bargains with obscure shipping captains, and paying a big premium for absolute secrecy. It ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... to the worship of the human knowledge. Man must die in the body, but in his knowledge he was immortal. Such, somewhere, was her belief, quite obscure and unformulated. She believed in the ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... trained eye, in the complexion and features of those that occupy them. So in the vegetable world—the bright and endlessly varied hues of flowers, and their sweet perfumes—even their very production—depend on sunlight. In obscure light plants grow lanky and become pale and feeble. They seldom produce flowers, and uniformly fail to ripen their seeds. In even partial darkness the green hue of their foliage gradually pales and disappears, and new growths, when they appear, are ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... charming visit from Sir Henry Taylor a few days ago, a long quiet real "crack" about many books and many authors, with a little touch of the events of the day-change of Ministry, causes of our utter defeat, which he thinks obscure, so do I—not creditable to the country, so do I—in so far as Disraeli can hardly be reckoned more trustworthy or consistent than Gladstone, and Gladstone's untrustworthiness and inconsistency are supposed to have caused his overthrow. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... having made his meaning clear. As I have written elsewhere of Tristan, "Wagner's consummate dramatic art, stage-craft and knowledge of stage effect have combined to make all clear as the day"; but the commentators have rushed in with their comments between the stage and the audience only to obscure everything and bamboozle people who are at least as capable as themselves of understanding the drama. The platitudes read into Tristan are of two sorts, truisms and lying commonplaces. To take one of the latter ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... themselves along to the brook, trembling with hope and fear; then entered the obscure path, a little reanimated by the soft twittering of Pensive. The sun had set; they walked in the twilight for some hours, and, when the moon rose, they were out of danger. They had still to journey over a painful and dangerous ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... the day were doing, and a number of artists who would live out their lives in obscurity, so that some day in the future some journalist might have the glory of discovering them and posing as their friend—and the little army of industrious and obscure men of learning who, without ambition and careless of their fame, were building stone by stone the greatness of the past history of France, or, being vowed to the musical education of the country, were preparing ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... the already glanced at group of Arthur's sisters or half-sisters, left mere sketches and hints, but most interesting. Not to be tedious, we need not dwell on Palomides, a very promising Lancelot unloved; on Lamoracke, left provokingly obscure, but shadowing a most important possibility in the unwritten romance of one of those very sisters; Bors, of whom Tennyson has made something, but not enough, in the later Idylls; and others. But it is probably unnecessary ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... celebrated traveller, and that European whom the savages of New France have most honored, left a description of this game in his manuscript Memorial. I would gladly have inserted it here but it is so obscure that it is nearly unintelligible." Charlevoix admits that he could understand nothing of the game, except as played by two persons in its simplest form and adds that he was told that "there was as much of art as of ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... ladder and sliding gently down, gradually losing not only the hope of finding a situation to suit me, but also relinquishing my previous strong faith in my own wonderful merits. I was ready to give it up as a bad job, and go and tell my uncle I must decline all his kind suggestions, when, in an obscure corner of one paper, my ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... of Captains, and of Kings, Of cities founded, Commonwealths begun, For my mean pen are too superior things: Or how they all, or each their dates have run Let Poets and Historians set these forth, My obscure Lines shall not so dim ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... scarcely have been the author; for he was then at the height of a vicious and ephemeral popularity; and any book, however trashy, with his name to it, would have been sure to sell. This "Life in Paris" was very probably the work of some obscure hack, who, when he was describing the "eccentric characters in the French metropolis," may not impossibly have been vegetating in the Rules of the King's Bench Prison. But crafty Mr. Cumberland, to insure the success of his enterprise, secured the services ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the most mobile portions of the earth's crust."[1] Whether the movements attending mountain elevation and denudation are a connected and integral part of those wide geographical changes which result in submergence and elevation of large continental areas, is an obscure and complex question. We seem, indeed, according to the views of some authorities, hardly in a position to affirm with certainty that such widespread movements of the land have actually occurred, and that the phenomena are not the outcome of fluctuations of oceanic ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... Marguerite stood, stunned and appalled by the Marquis de Valorsay's audacity, and by the language of this letter, which was at once so obscure and so clear, every line of it threatening her future. The reality surpassed her worst apprehensions, but realizing the gravity of the situation, she shook off the torpor stealing over her. She felt that every second was precious, and that she must act, and act at ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... discipline. There were for three centuries severe wars, especially on the banks of the Rhine and of the Danube, where Romans fought fierce barbarians in a swampy country, uncultivated, covered with forests and bogs. The imperial army exhibited, perhaps, as much bravery and energy in these obscure wars as the ancient Romans in the conquest ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... The informer has sometimes been directed to carry it fair towards his accomplices, and to let the evil design come to full maturity. As soon as his work is done, he is generally snatched from the public gaze, and sent to some obscure village or to some remote colony. The use of spies, even to this extent, is in the highest degree unpopular in England; but a political spy by profession is a creature from which our island is as free as it is from wolves. In France the race is well-known, and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and sixpence a head. As this method of earning a livelihood did not allow him to sojourn long in one place—which, indeed, was far from his desire—he spent a great part of his time upon the cheaper seats of obscure country vehicles. He delighted in this life of perennial transience, and enjoyed painting the portraits which justified it; and was, on the whole, one of the happiest ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... ill, though not seriously. Mary Ann volunteered to nurse the old lady. It must now be evident that Mary Ann was a 'carrier' of an obscure sort of intestinal fever, because soon after her appearance in her mother's place the old ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... slightly paler, more set and determined, not unlike that of a man, who, strongly assailed, has made up his mind to do battle to the end. With whom? How many? He might put out his hand, clench it; the thin air made no answer. He regarded the shadows now; they seemed to wave around him, intangible, obscure. A dark day in town, the streets were oppressive; the people below passed like poorly done replicas of themselves; the rattle of the wheels resembled a ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... to the light of his own lanthorn he saw nothing. Presently he heard another splash and the sound of blowings and of puffings, but still unable to see clearly whence they came, he was forced in bewilderment to resume his march. But he had no sooner entered the next bend of that obscure and winding avenue than the most lamentable, lusty cries assailed him. Again he stood still, blinded by his own light. Somewhere at hand a citizen was being beaten, for vague, quick-moving forms emerged into the radiance of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the object of a liberal education not only to obscure the knowledge of one sex by another, but to magnify the natural differences between the two. Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords; and the little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with confidence, and with affection. Everywhere the black cloud of legitimacy is suspended over the world, save only one bright spot, which breaks out from the political hemisphere of the West, to enlighten and animate and gladden the human heart. Obscure that by the downfall of liberty here, and all mankind are enshrouded in a pall of universal darkness. To you, Mr. Chairman, belongs the high privilege of transmitting, unimpaired, to posterity the fair character and liberty of ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... situation well, the reporter had to admit; the only evidence he gave of strain was that the hands with which he lighted a cigarette were unsteady. He surveyed the obscure hotel at which the cab stopped with a sneering smile, and settled his collar as ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... being free from the obstructions of traffic; of sweeping forward smoothly, swiftly, and serenely—the land stretching below in an ever-changing panorama, with the drone of the motor in one's ears, and a wine-like exhilaration in the rush of the air: these, and others more obscure, are among ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... blindly led, and others run, And make both haste and speed to be undone; This alters not the Case in any wise, But that a Man sometimes may get a Prize, If some be wanton in obscure Nookes, And Ape the Saint, by framing modest Looks; Deceive the Husband, with her cunning Wiles, And cheat his Senses with her feigned smiles, These (I confess,) are hardships to be born, And worse to think the Fore-head ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... Garden, devoted to a thorough examination of this vast establishment, from its extensive catacombs to the leads which overlook the panorama of London; persuaded as we are that the public has but an obscure idea of the capital, labour, and ingenuity expended in the production of what is visible to the eye of the audience. Access to the stage during rehearsal is strictly confined to the performers, although that is the least part of the exhibition; but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... regret. As it gradually died into silence a mist seemed to pass from before my eyes, and I became suddenly conscious of the sweet face of my beloved, growing more and more distinct, until, as the last note died away, I was fully conscious that the music had passed between us, like a cloud, to obscure my sight utterly, and to recede as slowly, leaving her face ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... entangled in the process of his thought. The thought itself was as yet obscure to her. She inquired, therefore, where Miss Holland was to be "shown in." Was she a drawing-room author ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... the object of Paul. The means to accomplish that object were the necessities of the age to convert that generation. He could not dream of the idea that the means would obscure the object, that the servant would occupy the master's seat. His was a fearless, powerful, and unyielding character, terribly in earnest to break down the ancient world and create a new one, and his success, though incomplete, was wonderful. Men like Jesus and Paul, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... world should they direct their course, in order to sell the vessel and cargo and make their escape with their ill-gotten booty; for they knew the deed would soon be known and the avengers of blood be upon their heels. They, finally, concluded to shape their course to the northward, and enter some obscure port in Norway, where no very strict inquisition would probably be made into the character of the vessel of their intentions, and from which place they could easily find means of proceeding to other parts of Europe. Onion, who was a skilful penman, was directed to manufacture some new invoices ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... great mercantile and mechanical enterprises. I know a man who might have been the poet, the essayist, perhaps the critic, of this country, who chose to become a country judge, to sit day after day upon a bench in an obscure corner of the world, listening to wrangling lawyers and prevaricating witnesses, preferring to judge his fellow-men ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... written in a foreign tongue, a country given over to that worst tyranny, the tyranny of caste over caste, should have become the seat of civil liberty, the object of the admiration and envy of surrounding states, is one of the most obscure problems in the philosophy of history. But the fact is certain. Within a century and a half after the Norman conquest, the Great Charter was conceded. Within two centuries after the Conquest, the first ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this proposal, and promising to visit Tchang the following morning, returned to his home. In the evening, when Ming-Y left the house of Tchang, a servant followed him unobserved at a distance. But on reaching the most obscure portion of the road, the boy disappeared from sight as suddenly as though the earth had swallowed him. After having long sought after him in vain, the domestic returned in great bewilderment to the house, and related what had taken place. Tchang ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... becomes the present; the veil of three thousand years is raised, and the living picture is a witness to the exactness of the historical description. At the same time there is a light thrown upon many obscure passages in the Old Testament by a knowledge of the present customs and figures of speech of the Arabs, which are precisely those that were practised at the periods described. I do not attempt to enter ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... English; and in each case I had special reasons for hope and longing that the sermon might bring some spiritual help. Instinctively, I avoided every expression which could in the least complicate my English and thus obscure the message to my foreign friends. And so thankful was I for the pruning of periods that resulted, that I am much disposed, in all future preaching, to put mentally before ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... obscure in the idea of creation, if we think of things which are created and a thing which creates." If we follow the lead of our logical, scientific faculties, then, we shall all be mechanists and materialists. Science can make no other solution of the problem because it sees from the outside. ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO; his real name was Luciani, and he was a native of Venice (1485-1547). This artist excelled in his coloring and in the effect he gave to the atmosphere of his work, making it a broad chiaro-scuro, or clear-obscure, as it really means. This is an art term which is frequently used, and denotes a sort of mistiness which has some light in it, and is gradually shaded off, either into a full light or a deep shadow. But from the earliest efforts of this artist, it was plain that he had no gift of composition, ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... "we have learned little more than the fact, that a child was made to take a false character, without possessing any other clue to the circumstances than is given in the names of the parties, all of whom are evidently obscure, and one of the most material of whom, we are plainly told, must have borne a fictitious name. Even poor Monday, in possession of so much collateral testimony that we want, could not have known what was the precise injustice done, if any, or, certainly, with the intentions he manifests, he ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... that "he was perhaps never surpassed by any man in brilliancy of intellect and indefatigable activity." His career was a most varied one. He was at all times a boisterous reveller, but whether flaunting gayly among the guests of an emir or biding in some obscure apothecary cellar, his work of philosophical writing was carried on steadily. When a friendly emir was in power, he taught and wrote and caroused at court; but between times, when some unfriendly ruler was supreme, he was hiding ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... be plain. I enter the lists one of the last I have read all that my predecessors have published confident that all I state is true. I have no interest in deceiving, no disgrace to fear, no reward to expect. I ether wish to obscure nor embellish his glory. However great Napoleon may have been, was he not also liable to pay his tribute to the weakness of human nature? I speak of Napoleon such as I have seen him, known him, frequently admired and sometimes blamed him. I state what I saw, heard, wrote, and thought at ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... see these Puppets act a play called 'St. Helena, or the Death of Napoleon.' It began by the disclosure of Napoleon, with an immense head, seated on a sofa in his chamber at St. Helena; to whom his valet entered with this obscure announcement: ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... scepticism; we must doubt nearly every traditional or received notion, that we may hold fast one or two. The being of God in a personal or impersonal form was a mental necessity to the first thinkers of modern times: from this alone all other ideas could be deduced. There had been an obscure presentiment of 'cognito, ergo sum' more than 2000 years previously. The Eleatic notion that being and thought were the same was revived in a new form by Descartes. But now it gave birth to consciousness and self-reflection: it ...
— Meno • Plato
... a Western canal through a long stretch of wilderness, and stopping to spend the night at an obscure settlement of a dozen houses. We were directed to lodgings in a common frame house at a little distance, where, it seemed, the only hotel was kept. When we entered the parlor, we were struck with utter amazement at its prettiness, which affected us before we began to ask ourselves how ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Keats; and my scrivener—if I had one—might knock them both down with the name of Milton. It would be a pretty set-to; but I cannot see that it would affect the relative merits of mutton and laudanum and the obscure products of scrivenage. Nor, conversely (as they say at Cambridge), is it certain, or even likely, that the difference between a butcher or a doctor is the difference between Kirke White and Keats. And this talk about "University" poets ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... three thousand dollars. Then came another breaking up, with all of its harrowing consequences—consequences which to persons of their habits and mode of thinking, are so deeply mortifying,—followed by their shrinking away, with a meagre remnant of their furniture, into a couple of rooms, in an obscure part ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... discussion of this dark and difficult question to those whose studies have qualified them to give judgment on so obscure a subject, it so far appears clear that the Witch of Endor, was not a being such as those believed in by our ancestors, who could transform themselves and others into the appearance of the lower animals, raise and allay tempests, frequent the company ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... the one certainty for me! Fog may obscure the goal I aim at, the road I have to I read, the very ground I stand on; doubts may even for a while attack my faith; but my love for you ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... a-plundering," one of his first achievements being to go and pull down London Bridge. This peculiar kind of "distraction" (as the French call it) seems to have had the desired effect, as is evident in the romantic incident of his second marriage, when the Irish Princess Gyda chooses him—apparently an obscure stranger—to be her husband, out of a hundred wealthy and well-born aspirants to her hand. But neither Gyda's love, nor the rude splendours of her father's court, can make Olaf forgetful of his claims upon the throne of Norway—the inheritance of his ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... beneath which Canon Wilton, as Canon-in-Residence, would soon be sitting at right angles to her, at the distant altar lifted on high and backed by a delicate marble screen, beyond which stretched a further, tranquilly obscure vista of the great church. The sound of the bells ringing far above her head in the gray central tower was heard by her, but only just heard, as we hear the voices of the past murmuring of old memories and of deeds which are ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... anger of his own brother, whose cause he had so splendidly championed, he was forced to fly for refuge to the north, and was ultimately done to death. This most cruel return for glorious deeds has invested his memory with a mist of tears tending to obscure the true outlines of events, so that while Yoritomo is execrated as an inhuman, selfish tyrant, Yoshitsune is worshipped as a faultless hero. Yet, when examined closely, the situation undergoes some modifications. Yoritomo's keen insight discerned in his half-brother's ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... as it went, but Edmonds was quite aware that the gentlemen referred to usually played a very deep and obscure game. He had also reasons for believing that they were doing it now. It was, however, evident that Hawtrey's hesitation ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... that this Ananelus, the new high priest, was "of the stock of the high priests," and since he had been just telling us that he was a priest of an obscure family or character, ch. 2. sect. 4, it is not at all probable that he could so soon say that he was "of the stock of the high priests." However, Josephus here makes a remarkable observation, that this Ananelus was the third that was ever unjustly ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... "Obscure ideas," "metaphysical jargon," "pretentious and empty language," "puerile and superannuated personifications." Mr. Darwin has many and hot opponents on this side of the Channel and in Germany, but we do not recollect to have found precisely these sins in the long catalogue of those hitherto ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to the other side of the argument. Under domestication we see much variability, caused, or at least excited, by changed conditions of life; but often in so obscure a manner, that we are tempted to consider the variations as spontaneous. Variability is governed by many complex laws, by correlated growth, compensation, the increased use and disuse of parts, and the definite action ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... glimpses of another, still more brilliant existence, that life of the inaccessible "Faubourg" of which the first tantalizing hints had but lately reached her. Hitherto she had assumed that Paris existed for the stranger, that its native life was merely an obscure foundation for the dazzling superstructure of hotels and restaurants in which her compatriots disported themselves. But lately she had begun to hear about other American women, the women who had married ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... first that his capture was due to the fact that the boys' enemies knew that he had overheard their conversation in the stateroom of the Princeton, but it was now evident that they had some other motive in luring him to their obscure meeting place, and had no idea that he had played eavesdropper on their plan to forestall the ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... her Majesty, but that passed, and when at last his eye met that of the Duke's Daughter he grew steady; for she gave him as plainly as though her tongue spoke, a message from Angele. Angele herself he did not see—she was kneeling in an obscure corner, her father's hand in hers, all the passion of her life ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to more than half a century before the rise of the curtain, and with its chief actors all dead. And the irritating mystery in which it was wrapped only made things worse. Further, I suffered a considerable strain on both my head and my heart in consequence of obscure hints (vaguely involving a photograph on his mantelpiece) as to the reason why Fishpingle remained a bachelor to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various
... Mr. Parkinson Chenney's father was a rich but eccentric man, who had a grudge against a certain popular seaside resort for some obscure reason, and had initiated a movement to found a rival town. So he had started Lynhaven, and had built houses and villas and beautiful assembly rooms; and then, to complete the independence of Lynhaven, he had connected ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... is very obscure. Uluka is explained by Nilakantha as a brand (used for want of lambs). The line, however, is elliptical. The Burdwan Pundits ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and loved glory, and being a popular hero, he was forgiven all his amorous sins, which were by many looked upon as being part of his heroism. His laughable efforts to obscure the facts might have satisfied those who wished to rely on Hamilton's benedictory absolution, had not Nelson and Emma, as I have already said, left behind them incriminating letters and documents which leave no doubt as to what they were to each other. ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... partiality for meadows in which cattle are browsing in tranquil content. Thys Maris has a very different style. He paints grey and misty figures and landscapes all hazy and scarcely visible. His love of the obscure and the suggestive led to the common refusal of his portraits by patrons, who complained that they lacked distinctness. No painter, however, commands such large prices as he, and from L2000 to L3000 is no rare ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... bore it, but life—bursting life was behind it, and behind that seemed to come a driving and a mighty spirit. Beyond the growth of the wheat, beyond its life and perennial gift, was something measureless and obscure, infinite and universal. Suddenly Dorn saw that something as the breath and the blood and the spirit of wheat—and of man. Dust and to dust returned they might be, but this physical form was only the fleeting inscrutable moment on earth, springing ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... with the idea of organisation which promises most I am not satisfied, but endeavour to get beyond and outside it, so that the time now necessary may be shortened. Besides which, I see that many of our difficulties arise from obscure and remote causes—obscure like the shape of bones, for whose strange curves there is no familiar term. We must endeavour to understand the crookedness and unfamiliar curves of the conditions of life. Beyond that still there are other ideas. Never, never rest contented ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... visited the chamber of one who walks, obscure and lonely, on his mortal pilgrimage. He will leave not many living friends, when he goes to join the dead, where his thoughts often stray, and he might better be. I steal into his sleep, and play my part among the figures of his dreams. I glide through the moonlight ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... appearance nobody cared for it—it was regarded as nothing but a hopeless puzzle by a bewildered and defeated public. Even now, when Mr. Browning has long since formed his own public, "Sordello" is probably less read than any other work of his; it is too obscure and confused both in plot and in thought. But all the same, there are many interesting things in "Sordello," and among them, especially at this moment, are the references to the place which, for fifty yours, has fascinated the poet. Only the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Renard, scarcely able to repress a smile, interrogates the comical little figure at his leisure. Behind him stands Sorrocold, the surgeon; and in the farther corner Mauger (the headsman), Nightgall, and an assistant torturer, recline against the wall. The feeble rays of the lantern throw an obscure light upon the gloomy walls decorated with the stock in trade of the torturers, thumb-screws, gauntlets, collars, pinchers, saws, chains, and other horrible and suggestive implements. Affixed to the ceiling is a steel pulley, the rope which traverses ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... should move in a Circle, or in an Ellipsis; and proved it improbable that it should move in a Strait Line, he concludes, that there can be no other genuin, or at least, no other more probable cause of its Emersion and Occultation, than this, That the bigger part of that round Body is obscure and inconspicuous to us, and its lesser part lucid, the whole Body turning about its own Center, and one Axe; whereby for one determinate space of time it exhibits its lucid part to the Earth, for another, subducts it: it not being ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... the workers is greater by one-half than it was in 1834. The chief centre of this industry is Lancashire, where it originated; it has thoroughly revolutionised this county, converting it from an obscure, ill-cultivated swamp into a busy, lively region, multiplying its population tenfold in eighty years, and causing giant cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, containing together 700,000 inhabitants, and their neighbouring ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... clouds hanging in the sky, momentarily awaiting the transforming violence of a fresh onset. Sometimes continents of pale light are separated by narrow straits of comparative darkness; elsewhere obscure spaces are hemmed in ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... there not Authors, which, touching the verity of this Art, write more plainly, then all the number of them, which, concerning it, utter words so obscure, as perhaps they themselves did not understand, unless they adhibited the. Commentaries, and Annotations of evident Paraphrasists. I suppose you have in times past read them, and therefore are best able to inform me, ...
— The Golden Calf, Which the World Adores, and Desires • John Frederick Helvetius
... Schreiner during the months preceding the war is obscure. While refusing help to Kimberley he was allowing munitions of war, which were way billed as pianos and hardware, to pass through the Cape Colony to the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. He does not appear to have been actively disloyal to the Imperial Government and in his own ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... vacant place in the carriage back with Mrs. Stone. This was no way to treat me! But I was almost glad when Virginia came out to the carriage wearing a pink silk dress, and looking so fearful to the eyes of her obscure adorer that he could scarcely speak to her—she was so ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... of Jacob had mysteriously all the shapeliness of a character which Bonamy thought daily more sublime, devastating, terrific than ever, though he was still, and perhaps would be for ever, barbaric, obscure. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... means and appliances of language. On all he has impressed the stamp of his mighty spirit. His images and figures, in their unsought, nay, uncapricious singularity, have often a sweetness altogether peculiar. He becomes occasionally obscure from too great fondness for compressed brevity; but still, the labour of poring over Shakspeare's lines will invariably meet an ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... literary statesmen and the politicians at Will's and Button's. Perhaps some advocate of Free Trade might try upon a modern audience the lines in which Pope expresses his aspiration in a footnote that London may one day become a "FREE PORT." There is at least not one antiquated or obscure phrase in the whole. Here are ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... was delivered with much earnestness of enunciation; but of its use or meaning, probably, the speaker was fully as ignorant as his hearers. Even at the fountain-head his ideas were sufficiently obscure, but when fairly rolling forth from the spring, they sometimes begat such a froth and turbidity in their course, that no reasonable discernment could fathom their ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... already Friday afternoon. He gathered together his few personal belongings—his books, his manuscripts, opera innumerable. There was room in his portmanteau for everything—now he had no clothes. On the Monday the long nightmare would be over. He would go down to some obscure seaside nook and live very quietly for a few weeks, and gain strength and calm in the soft spring airs, and watch hand-in-hand with Mary Ann the rippling scarlet trail of the setting sun fade across the green waters. Life, no doubt, ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... to read its first pages declared they were incomprehensible. It seems that critics in those days had either less intelligence than we have, or were more impatient and less attentive, for not only Sordello but even In Memoriam was said to be exceedingly obscure. ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... power that had compelled the spirit and the lips to an unwilling confession, impossible. And if it had seemed that further information might have been extracted relative to my own personal danger, a stronger tie, a deeper obligation, bound them to the supposed object of the last obscure imputation, and none was willing to elicit further charges or clearer evidence. Probably also they anticipated that, when the word was extended to the Initiates, I should take up ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... dance. Struck by her skill in dancing, he courted her in the larrikin fashion. At night he stood in front of the house, and whistled till she came out. Then they went to the park, where they sprawled on the grass in obscure corners. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... matter of anxious consideration. Willy was fearful of detection, and all sorts of stratagems were resorted to. Sometimes they would walk down to the Old Steyne, and suddenly double and get back through a medley of obscure streets, or else they would publicly walk up and down the King's Road, and when they thought no one was looking, hurry up one of the by-streets, and so gain their haven, the lane. Once they were in the lane they slackened ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... little paper. "Here is the note, monsieur," said he; "it would be difficult to read it to you by this obscure light: but it is short, and I know it by heart, if ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... motor and physical phenomena. Here is, it seems to me, a rational explanation of the facts, and one which is in accord, not only with ordinary psychological phenomena, but with those more puzzling and obscure manifestations witnessed from time ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... obscure strife, made up of the individual contests of frontiersman and Indian, went on almost without a break. The sieges, surprises, and skirmishes in which large bands took part were chronicled; but there is little reference in the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... beans, I should know what it means— This blaze, which I certainly cannot endure; It is evil, too, For its colour is blue, And the sense of the matter is quite obscure. Celestial truth Is the food of youth; But the music was dark as a moonless night. The facts in the song ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... them all strangely at the farm; his mind was alternately so clear and so obscure. He would chat with Phoebe, and sometimes give her a good practical hint; but the next moment, helpless for want of memory, that great faculty without which judgment cannot act, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... least was the last man whom she could blame for rendering justice to the widow of her father's brother. But, then again, what reliance could be placed upon anonymous information—information which, after all, was but limited and obscure? Yet it was evident that the writer—a female beyond question—whoever she was, must be perfectly conversant with his motives and his objects. And if in volunteering him directions how to proceed, she had any purpose adversative to his, her note was without ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... to a Doctor Mayle, who was conducting a special research into the cause of an obscure fever; and to the other officers of this headquarters of a Province. They were all young, Hillyard himself was older than ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason |
