"Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... every 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, and the caprices ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... assumed the form of a permanent and regular system. The agitation occasioned by so many unexampled scenes is succeeded by an habitual terror, and this depressing sentiment has so pervaded all ranks, that it would be difficult to find an individual, however obscure or inoffensive, who deems his property, or even his existence, secure only for a moment. The sound of a bell or a knocker at the close of the evening is the signal of dismay. The inhabitants of the house regard ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... only all hang together, but supplement each other to a remarkable extent. Unless a course of study such as this is undertaken many critics may think various statements and inferences in this volume to be far fetched or find them too obscure for comprehension. ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... soon came to consider the young clerk as a "deuced good fellow," fell into the habit of calling him by his Christian name, and whenever they were going to drink their coffee or to play a game of dominoes, they invariably invited him to join them. An obscure tradition of large means and mysterious relationship once more emerged from the abyss of past years, but, to do the squadron justice, it was not this which prompted their kind attentions to their countryman. Anton himself was more exalted by this good fellowship with these noble ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... of the most curious revolutions in literary history is the sudden bull's-eye light cast by M. Longnon on the obscure existence of Francois Villon[6]. His book is not remarkable merely as a chapter of biography exhumed after four centuries. To readers of the poet it will recall, with a flavour of satire, that characteristic passage in which he bequeaths his spectacles—with a humorous reservation of the case—to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... decidedly light nor dark. There might, indeed, to have been moonlight, but clouds veiled the light though they could not altogether obscure it; thus there was just enough to ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... to imagine any connexion between this portentous scene and the purpose that I had meditated, yet a belief of this connexion, though wavering and obscure, lurked in my mind; something more than a coincidence merely casual, appeared to have subsisted between my situation, at my father's bed side, and the flash that darted through the window, and diverted me from my design. It palsied ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... person is sufficiently courageous and robust to engage in anything approaching a serious examination of these families of books. The authors were true enthusiasts, labouring to their lives' last thread in some obscure cell or dim closet, where pride of authorship, as we may feel and enjoy it, there was none, when beyond the walls of a convent or those of a native town their names were unknown, their personality unrecognised. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... forgery it should be copied very frequently, as the clues and suggestions the experiments will produce are of much greater service than will at first appear, and of more practical value than pages of theory, as the how and why will be revealed for much that would be obscure without this assistance. As experience grows, it will not be necessary to adopt this copying process so often, for the eye soon becomes alert at detecting slight shades of difference in strokes, and a glance will convey more than could be explained ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... may be gathered not only from the literature, which is singularly devoid of hopefulness and enterprise, but from the rapid spread of monasticism and eremitism in this period. The prevalence of this world-weariness of course needs explanation, and the cause is rather obscure. It does not seem to be connected with unfavourable external conditions, but rather with a racial exhaustion akin to senile decay in the individual. But there is no real analogy between the life of an individual and that of a nation, and it would be very rash ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... aid, Disperse our hopes, and frustrate our designs, Yet shall the conscience of the great attempt Diffuse a brightness on our future days; Nor will his country's groans reproach Demetrius. But how canst thou support the woes of exile? Canst thou forget hereditary splendours, To live obscure upon a foreign coast, Content with ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... himself. He upon whom Richard had conferred the distinction of guarding his banner was no longer an adventurer of slight note, but placed within the regard of a princess, although he was as far as ever from her level. An unknown and obscure fate could not now be his. If he was surprised and slain on the post which had been assigned him, his death—and he resolved it should be glorious—must deserve the praises as well as call down the vengeance of Coeur de Lion, and be followed by the regrets, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... war, Stephen! Were your chivalrous notions any good, then? And, what was winked at in an obscure young Member is anathema for an Under Secretary ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Roentgen-ray, Xray; photography, heliography; photometer &c. 445. [Science of light] optics; photology[obs3], photometry; dioptrics[obs3], catoptrics[obs3]. [Distribution of light] chiaroscuro, clairobscur[obs3], clear obscure, breadth, light and shade, black and white, tonality. reflection, refraction, dispersion; refractivity. V. shine, glow, glitter; glister, glisten; twinkle, gleam; flare, flare up; glare, beam, shimmer, glimmer, flicker, sparkle, scintillate, coruscate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... "Lycidas"; of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing. What beauty there is we must therefore seek in the sentiments and images. It is not to be considered as the effusion of real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arthur and Mincius, nor tells of rough satyrs and "fauns with cloven heel." Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief. ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... misgivings in our mind; for, if Mr. Wilson was already in possession of the truth, independently of historical research,—whether by communications from the spirits of the Conquistadores, or by any other of the easy and popular methods of solving obscure problems,—what need was there of his consulting the standard authorities at all? But we were somewhat cheered, when, a little farther on, we found him stating, that the writer who enters into these discussions must ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... adjudged guilty of death, and accordingly was thrown down from a high Rock into the Sea, where he perished [73]in the waters. Execution being done upon him, the rest were pardoned for what was past, which being notified abroad, they returned from those Defait and Obscure places, wherein ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... should think not indeed! It is true, if you allude to the mechanical process of caligraphy, here is close to my elbow a big book, in which I enter all passages I meet with in my various readings tending to elucidate obscure parts of the Bible: I do not mean disputed points of theology, mysteries, or significations more or less mystical, but simply any notices whatever which I meet with relating to the customs of the Jews, their history, their language, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... sombre group of six, after protracted discussion, seemed almost to have exhausted the evidence, suggestion and counsel which could be brought to bear upon a crime so sudden and so obscure. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... stain in the middle of its back, produced by the touch of generations of damp and excited thumbs now fleshless in the grave; and the kings and queens wore a decayed expression of feature, as if they were rather an impecunious dethroned race of monarchs hiding in obscure slums than real regal characters. Every now and then the comparatively few remarks of the players at the round game were harshly intruded on by the measured jingle of Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner from ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... it was I." It was as some secret appointment of heaven. They were both grown men when they first met, and death separated them soon. "If I should compare all my life with the four years I had the happiness to enjoy the sweet society of this excellent man, it is nothing but smoke; an obscure and tedious night from the day that I lost him. I have led a sorrowful and languishing life ever since. I was so accustomed to be always his second in all places and in all interests, that methinks I am now no more than half a man, and ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... doubt, and so have done the best thing I know of. I have written to my old friend and master, Professor Van Helsing, of Amsterdam, who knows as much about obscure diseases as any one in the world. I have asked him to come over, and as you told me that all things were to be at your charge, I have mentioned to him who you are and your relations to Miss Westenra. This, my dear fellow, is in obedience to your wishes, for I am only too proud and happy to do ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... Hermitage, My gay Apparrell, for an Almes-mans Gowne, My figur'd Goblets, for a Dish of Wood, My Scepter, for a Palmers walking Staffe, My Subiects, for a payre of carued Saints, And my large Kingdome, for a little Graue, A little little Graue, an obscure Graue. Or Ile be buryed in the Kings high-way, Some way of common Trade, where Subiects feet May howrely trample on their Soueraignes Head: For on my heart they tread now, whilest I liue; And buryed once, why not vpon my Head? ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... the culture of mind in Greece, and that which resulted in the empire of Rome—only appear to have purpose and value when viewed in connection with, or rather as subsidiary to...the great stream of Anglo- Saxon emigration to the west." Obscure as is the problem of the advance of civilisation, we can at least see that a nation which produced during a lengthened period the greatest number of highly intellectual, energetic, brave, patriotic, and benevolent men, would generally prevail over ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... library always makes me melancholy, where the best author is as much squeezed and as obscure as a ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... courts, or the tangles of the distant alleys, where the dull little oil- lamps vied with the tapers burning before the street-corner shrines of the Virgin, [Footnote: In the early times these tapers were the sole means of street illumination in Venice.] in making the way obscure, and deepening the shadows about the doorways and under the frequent arches. I remember distinctly among the beautiful nights of that time, the soft night of late winter which first showed me the scene you may behold from ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... civilization everywhere, and to see the nations of the world bound so closely together by social and commercial relations. But we must remember that when they were uttered the true God was known and adored only in an obscure, almost isolated, corner of the earth, while triumphant idolatry was the otherwise ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... about which we are to study to-day is no ordinary visit. I think it is one of the most beautiful stories to be found in literature. This visit was made many centuries ago. It was made in an obscure corner of the earth, and yet it has never been forgotten. It never will be. The Inspirer of the Word saw in it too much of worth and winsomeness to allow it to slip out of the memories of men. It is remembered to-day, not because ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... two centuries Russian orthodoxy has been undermined by obscure sects, unknown to foreigners, and little known to Russians themselves. Beneath the imposing pile of the official Church have been hollowed out vast underground burrows and a labyrinth of gloomy crypts, which form a retreat for the popular beliefs and superstitions. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... victim of all whom he encounters—conceive him, in disgust, flying from the world that had deceived him, and divesting himself of those accidents of existence which, however envied by others, appeared to his morbid imagination the essential causes of his misery—conceive this man, unknown and obscure, sighing to be valued for those qualities of which fortune could not deprive him, and to be loved only for his own ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... said, addressing the other, "I am perfectly and entirely in my senses; I have not a single obscure or confused idea. All is clear and calm. Fielding, I made a will a short time ago; I wish to change it—to make another. Open that desk, and you will find parchment, pens, and ink. Now, come sit near me—so. Begin and write the ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... Rev. Thomas Twyford, a lean and lively old gentleman with a red, eager face and white hair. He was in the ordinary way a country clergyman, but he was one of those who achieve the paradox of being famous in an obscure way, because they are famous in an obscure world. In a small circle of ecclesiastical archaeologists, who were the only people who could even understand one another's discoveries, he occupied a recognized and respectable place. And a critic might have found even in that day's journey at least as ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... renowned astrologer, 'in the county of Leicester, in an obscure town, in the northwest part thereof, called Diseworth, seven miles south of the town of Derby, one mile from Castle Donnington.' 'This town of Diseworth is divided into three parishes; one part ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... pretext of showing him several picturesque sights, promenaded him, in the morning dew, through the lettuce in the kitchen garden and the underbrush in the park. But he knew through experience that all was not roses in a lover's path; watching in the snow, climbing walls, hiding in obscure closets, imprisonment in wardrobes, were more disagreeable incidents than a quiet tete-a-tete ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... wholly without justification, either as an occupation by consent or as an occupation necessitated by dangers threatening American life and property. It must be accounted for in some other way and on some other ground, and its real motive and purpose are neither obscure nor far to seek. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... Britain a fen of immense size which begins from the river Granta, not far from the city, which is named Grantchester ... a man named Tatwine said that he knew an island especially obscure, which ofttimes many men had attempted to inhabit, but no man could do it on account of manifold horrors and fears, and the loneliness of the wild wilderness.... No man ever could inhabit it before the holy man Guthlac ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... processes of digestion, respiration, and circulation, and the condition of various organs according to their state of nutrition, etc. During our waking life these organic feelings coalesce for the most part, forming as the "vital sense" an obscure background for our clear discriminative consciousness, and only come forward into this region when very exceptional in character, as when respiration or digestion is impeded, or when we make a special effort of attention to single them out.[85] When we are asleep, ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... been able to learn little about her father's death as yet. A Paris paper reported, and Boston papers copied, the statement that an American of his name, stopping at an obscure French town, was missing for two days, and found on the third, murdered, robbed, horribly disfigured. Mr. George Breynton had been traveling alone in the interior of the country, and had written home that he should be in this town—St. Pierre—at precisely ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... in India under the leadership of Champat Rai, the contemporary of Jahangir and Shah Jahan, in the first half of the seventeenth century. The line of Chandel kings was continued in the persons of obscure local chiefs, whose very names are, for the most part, forgotten. The story of Durgavati, briefly told in the text, casts a momentary flash of light on their obscurity. The principal nobleman of the Chandel race now occupying a dignified position is the Raja of Gidhaur in the Mungir (Monghyr) ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of the many testimonies in favour of Sir Bartle Frere, because he,—a man beloved and respected by many of us,—was the subject of a hastily formed judgment which continues in a measure even to this day, to obscure the memory ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... CHILDREN,—... We had a 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
... therefore from the former doctrine, that that God whose words they are, is able to make a reconciliation and most sweet and harmonious agreement with all the sayings therein, how obscure, cross, dark, and contradictory soever they seem to thee. To understand all mysteries, to have all knowledge, to be able to comprehend with all saints, is a great work; enough to crush the spirit, and to stretch ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... this limit is relief enough, Sweet bottom-grass and high delightful plain, 236 Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough, To shelter thee from tempest and from rain: Then be my deer, since I am such a park; 239 No dog shall rouse thee, though ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... horse on the instant, he felt an icy shudder pass through his frame. The same voice rose higher and called him again. He recognized it as the voice of Madame de Tecle. Looking around him in the obscure light with a rapid glance, he saw a light shining through the foliage in the direction of the cottage of the sabot-maker. Guided by this, he put spurs to his horse, crossed the cleared ground up the hillside, and found himself face to face with Madame ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... this moment that Mrs. Shiffney came into a box at the back of the stalls followed by Jonson Ramer. Without taking off her sable coat she sat down in a corner and looked quickly over the obscure space before her. Immediately she saw Charmian and the dressmaker, who sat within a few yards of her. Claude was not visible. Mrs. Shiffney sat back a little farther in the box, and whispered ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... confidence, do not suspicion and jealousy on her part appear strange? Were Mr. L—— and I shut up for life in the same prison, were we left together upon a desert island, were we alone in the universe, I could never think of him. And Leonora does not see this! How the passions obscure and degrade the finest understandings! But perhaps I do her injustice, and she felt nothing of what her countenance expressed. It is certain, however, that she was silent for some moments after she joined us, ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... you read history more and more, you will believe, as I do, that men, and even children, of high birth, are surer to be brave and courageous than those in more obscure station. They may have other faults—dreadful ones—but it seems as if they dare not be cowards, because their whole race is looking at them, and expecting them to be noble. In this country, where we know so little about our ancestors, we need a still ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... theory has presented itself in its stead. The old one has become useless; and the crowd has looked into the secret sanctuaries of the high priests, and has seen that there is nothing there, and that there has been nothing there, save very obscure and senseless words. This has ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... is not whether we shrink from our country's cause when the dangers to us are obvious and dose at hand, but, rather, whether we carry on when they seem obscure and distant—and some think that it is safe to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Lyndon B. Johnson • Lyndon B. Johnson
... galloping along let us see what has happened in France, and clear up the points in the conversation between Bonaparte and his aide-de-camp which must be obscure to the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Almamoulin cried out, "I have at last found the use of riches; I am surrounded by companions, who view my greatness without envy; and I enjoy at once the raptures of popularity, and the safety of an obscure station. What trouble can he feel, whom all are studious to please, that they may be repaid with pleasure? What danger can he dread, to whom every man is ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... a climate you can depend on," said the General, quite conscious that he was talking absurdly, yet none the less determined to talk, by way of relief to some obscure annoyance. "Here we are sweltering in this abominable heat, and in New York last week they had a blizzard, and here, even, it was cold enough to give me rheumatism. The climate's always in ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... adopting this uncompromising tone, and boldly setting the national above the personal interest, I was in point of fact best consulting the welfare of our friends who were in durance. But it was not to be expected that all persons would view in the same light a question of policy so obscure; and apart from the warm personal interest which I feel in their safety, your Lordship can well understand that it relieves me from a great load of anxiety to learn from the result that the course which I have followed was not ill- calculated ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... radiation; irradiation, illumination. actinic rays, actinism; Roentgen-ray, Xray; photography, heliography; photometer &c 445. [Science of light] optics; photology^, photometry; dioptrics^, catoptrics^. [Distribution of light] chiaroscuro, clairobscur^, clear obscure, breadth, light and shade, black and white, tonality. reflection, refraction, dispersion; refractivity. V. shine, glow, glitter; glister, glisten; twinkle, gleam; flare, flare up; glare, beam, shimmer, glimmer, flicker, sparkle, scintillate, coruscate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the nation seemed on the eve of possessing a drama of its own. Antonio Jose, an obscure Jew, composed a number of comic operas, in the vernacular tongue, which had long been banished from the theatre of Lisbon. In spite of much coarseness, their genuine humor and familiar gayety excited the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the burdensome Irish Church and improved the land laws, the franchise, and the opportunities of education in Ireland, and made an English statesman's name beloved in the Emerald Isle for the first time since Charles James Fox. Nor should his great work for Ireland obscure the grand achievements of the earlier years when he led the Liberal party through its wonderful program of reform in England; nor should any prejudice against the friend of Ireland dull our perception to the clear voice ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... satisfaction too manifest to be repressed, and we were told of it with expressions of the most triumphant exultation on every occasion. It was indeed curious, though ridiculous, to observe that, even among these simple people, and in this obscure corner of the globe, that little gossip and scandal so commonly practised in small societies among us were very frequently displayed. This was especially the case with the women, of whom it was not uncommon to see a group sitting in a hut for hours together, each relating her ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... his box from a small door which stood ajar, sat the little priest, behind the lattice of the confessional, silently wiping away the sweat that beaded on his brow and rolled down his face. At distant intervals the shadow of some one entering softly through the door would obscure, for a moment, the band of light, and an aged crone, or a little boy, or some gentle presence that the listening confessor had known only by the voice for many years, would kneel a few moments beside his waiting ear, in prayer for blessing and in review ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... which would seem to convey the exact reverse of what Phizanties intends—that he did not know Hermione's birth, but, presuming him to be of obscure birth, did not wish him ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... bars that hinder his advance And half obscure the goal, The stubborn bond of circumstance That irritates his soul, The countershafts of arrogance, All ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... more got rid of the old gentleman, and pursued his way. As he was passing under the porch, leading his horse by the bridle, a soft voice called him from the depths of an obscure path. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... third epoch, is even more calculated to encourage revolutionary principles, for in it was displayed the elevation to the highest grades in the army and in the state of those who in the ancien regime would have remained as the Revolution found them, in the most obscure stations, but who by that event had brilliant opportunities afforded for ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... whose jaws are at all times open to intelligence, informs me that there are a few enormous weapons still in being; but that they are to be met with only in gaming houses and some of the obscure retreats of lovers, in and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... like Earl Spencer, and the other exalted personages to whom the poet addressed his pathetic notes, should enter upon such a study. They saw before them nothing but large sheets of paper, of coarse texture, full of ill-spelt and ill-connected sentences, made more obscure by an utter absence of punctuation; and the not unnatural judgment thereupon was that the man who wrote such letters was a thoroughly vulgar and uneducated person. There came doubts into the minds of many, who ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... Spaniards, the oppressor of the Indians. For himself, he assumed the character of a redresser of grievances and champion of the injured. He pretended to feel a patriotic indignation at the affronts heaped upon Spaniards by a family of obscure and arrogant foreigners; and professed to free the natives from tributes wrung from them by these rapacious men for their own enrichment, and contrary to the beneficent intentions of the Spanish monarchs. He connected himself closely ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... sex. Fifty miles from a doctor or a friend, except her weary and perhaps morose husband, she must keep strong under labor, and be patient under suffering, till death. And thus the household, the hamlet, the village, the town, the city, the state, rise out of her "homely toils, and destiny obscure." Truly she is one of the founders of ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... that time on, he went almost nightly to the neighbourhood of Washington Square, regardless of weather or inconvenience. He saw her come and go, night after night, and he saw people enter the house to which he held a key,—always he saw from obscure points of vantage and with the stealth ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... towns founded by the American colonists of the seventeenth century. In their centres the parish churches, 'First,' 'Second,' or otherwise, stand forth challenging everybody's attention. There is no lack of self-assertion here, nothing at all like the shrinking of the Old English Presbyterian into obscure alleys and corners. Spacious, well appointed, and secure, these Unitarian parish churches, in the words of a popular Unitarian poet, 'look the whole world in the face, and fear ...
— Unitarianism • W.G. Tarrant
... lady striking him as before all things excited, as, in the native phrase, keyed-up, to a perception of more elements in the occasion than he was himself able to count. She was accessible to sides of it, he imagined, that were as yet obscure to him; for, though she unmistakeably rejoiced and soared, he none the less saw her at moments as even more agitated than pleasure required. It was a state of emotion in her that could scarce represent ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... 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. ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... borrow that vivacity, which we diffuse over the correlative idea. But when we have not observed a sufficient number of instances, to produce a strong habit; or when these instances are contrary to each other; or when the resemblance is not exact; or the present impression is faint and obscure; or the experience in some measure obliterated from the memory; or the connexion dependent on a long chain of objects; or the inference derived from general rules, and yet not conformable to them: In all these cases the evidence diminishes by the ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... Police. Certain of their findings made it inadvisable for Rene to appear again in the towns, and that autumn he spent in the outlands, avoiding the posts, stopping a day here—a week there, in the cabins of obscure trappers and camping the nights between, for he dared not show his face at any post. Then it was he bethought himself of his brother's cabin as a refuge and, for the time being laying aside thoughts of ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... flatly renounce, and those who cordially embrace the doctrine of Redemption by Christ. This class has a sort of general, indeterminate, and ill understood dependence on our blessed Saviour. But their hopes, so far as they can be distinctly made out (for their views also are very obscure) appear ultimately to bottom on the persuasion that they are now, through Christ, become members of a new dispensation, wherein they will be tried by a more lenient rule than that to which they must have been otherwise subject. "God will not now be extreme to mark what is done amiss; but will dispense ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... who had been a stirring though not very eminent politician in Jacksonian days. The choice is interesting as being the first example of a phenomenon recurrent in subsequent American politics, the deliberate selection of a more or less obscure man on the ground of ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... she had tried to see what influence she could command. Socially, as the rather wild-headed daughter of an impoverished and obscure Earl, she could do but little. She too was a poor intriguer. She could only demand with blatant vividness. Once on a flying visit to Lord Mountshire, she tried to interest him in the man whom, to her indignation, he persisted in styling her protege. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... reached a depth of bestiality below which a gaff in Shoreditch could net descend. Ah! Those bonny lads, how they roared with laughter, and how they exchanged winks with grinning elders! Not a single obscure allusion to filth was lost upon them, and they took more and more drink under pressure of the secret excitement until many of them were unsteady and incoherent. I think I should shoot a boy of mine if I found him enjoying such a foul entertainment. It was leze-Humanity. The orgie rattled on, ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... CADGER (a word of obscure origin possibly connected with "catch"), a hawker or pedlar, a carrier of farm produce to market. The word in this sense has fallen into disuse, and now is used for a beggar or loafer, one who gets his living in more or less ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... His Name in all His works. His action must be all self-manifestation. But after all it is obscure and hidden. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... with passion; but she knew her niece too well to doubt her putting her threat into execution, and there was distraction in the idea of the vulgar obscure Grizzy Douglas being presented to a fashionable party as her aunt. After a violent altercation, in which Mary took no part, an ungracious permission was at length extorted, which Mary eagerly availed herself of; and, charged with kind messages from Lady Emily, set ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Forge. It was not a great history, it had no brilliant and vivid style, but the simple facts were enough for Dick. He read once more of the last hope of the great man, never greater than then, praying in the snow, and his own soul leaped at the sting of example. He was only a boy, obscure, unknown, and the fate of but two rested with him, yet he, too, would persevere, and in the end his triumph also would be complete. He read no further, but closed the book and returned it carefully to his pocket. Then he stared into the fire, which he built up ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... little towns, dotted at intervals of a few miles apart, lit up the banks with the lights of homes, but their shining domesticity seemed to mock him. The birth of a new creature was a painful process; and yet, through all his confused sensations and obscure elemental suffering, he kept the conviction that a new creature was somehow ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... it is beautiful and poetic. London-pride is the commonest of all the saxifrages; but the one of which I speak is as different from London-pride as a Plantagenet upon his throne from that last Plantagenet who died obscure and penniless some years ago. It is a great majestic flower, which plumes the granite rocks of Monte Rosa in the spring. At other times of the year you see a little tuft of fleshy leaves set like a cushion on cold ledges ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... journey. The fortunate mortals are rare who can, without a heartache or regret, pass through their disused and abandoned dwellings; who dare to open every door and enter all the silent rooms; who do not hurry shudderingly by some obscure corners, and return with a sigh of relief to the cheerful sunlight and murmurs ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... were read above the ashes of Betty Higden, in a corner of a churchyard near the river; in a churchyard so obscure that there was nothing in it but grass-mounds, not so much as one single tombstone. It might not be to do an unreasonably great deal for the diggers and hewers, in a registering age, if we ticketed their ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... man, made so by subsequent events, under the command of Don Pedro. His name was Francisco Pizarro. He was a man of obscure birth and of very limited education, save only in the material art of war. He could neither read nor write, and was thus intellectually hardly the equal of some of the most intelligent of the natives. We have briefly alluded to him as entrusted with the command of one portion of the army ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... said, "When you have walked here a little longer perhaps you will not walk so bravely." There was an obscure smile on his lips ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... further proof of the truth of what I am saying, given by one whose testimony is worth much more than mine, go and read that eloquent and kindly and painfully fascinating book lately published by Dr. Forbes Winslow, on Obscure Diseases of the Brain and Mind; and you will leave off with the firmest conviction that every breathing ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... spirit." He was aware that his body would soon be consigned by the fury of persecution to its native dust; but this excited comparatively little concern. To him it was of no importance whether his grave was with the rich or the poor, whether his burying-place were an obscure or an illustrious spot: he was anxious for the salvation of his soul. Unhappily, mankind in general lavish all their cares upon the body, to embellish or preserve it, to pamper its appetites, or to minister to ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... in days when men had not yet intercalated into Holy Writ that line of an obscure modern hymn, which proclaims to man the good news that 'There is no repentance in the grave.' Let that be as it may, Cyril has gone to his own place. What that place is in history is but too well known. What it is in the sight of Him unto ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... If Hawthorne had been a young Englishman, or a young Frenchman of the same degree of genius, the same cast of mind, the same habits, his consciousness of the world around him would have been a very different affair; however obscure, however reserved, his own personal life, his sense of the life of his fellow-mortals would have been almost infinitely more various. The negative side of the spectacle on which Hawthorne looked out, in his contemplative saunterings ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... flame of the wood fire on the hearth rose or fell beneath the efforts of a half distinguishable figure, extended at full length on the floor, and puffing the enormous log with a pair of gigantic bellows. In the palpable obscure, Jane could scarcely make out the persons of the occupants of the apartment; but when the flame burnt up a little more powerfully than usual, she observed the figure of a tall man dressed in black, who shook hands with Reginald, and bowed very coldly and formally to her, when he was introduced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... "of an aged man of no plebeian mien or bearing, albeit most shabbily attired in the skins, now fabulously cheap, of the vermin that torment us; who, professing to practise as an herbalist, some little time ago established himself in an obscure street of no good repute. A tortoise hangs in his needy shop, nor are stuffed alligators lacking. Understanding that he was resorted to by such as have need of philters and love-potions, or are incommoded by the ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... radiated over the entire neighborhood. The pride seemed to be, not that the new bonnet was a superb affair, but that such a fashionable artist produced it, and that it cost so much money. Had it been equally beautiful at half the cost, or the handiwork of an obscure milliner, it would have been considered mean. Thus, instead of a necessity for being extravagant, it struck me there was a desire to be so, and principally in order that others, when they looked on the display, might be awed into deference, if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... was seemed to be of the mind rather than the body, and Ralph could find nothing in his father's circumstances calculated to worry any one in the slightest degree. He planned, vaguely, to invite a friend who was skilled in the diagnosis of obscure mental disorders to spend a week-end with him, a little later on, and to ask him to observe his father closely. He did not doubt but that Anthony Dexter would see quickly through so flimsy a pretence, but, unless he improved, something ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... repair its little bark; but it too often happens, that before he can regain it, it is by a species of shipwreck, dashed to pieces on the shore. Thus wretchedly situated, this hero of the testaceous tribe seeks some obscure corner "where to die," but which seldom, if ever, happens, until after he has made extraordinary exertions to establish himself anew. What a fine picture of virtue ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various
... is wisdom's light. Because I followed after you; When clouds obscure the moon by night, 'Tis hard to find a guide so ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... fields. Already in 1842 a law had been passed regulating labor in mines. This act was passed in response to the needs shown by the report of a commission which had been appointed in 1840. They made a thorough investigation of the obscure conditions of labor underground, and reported a condition of affairs which was heart-sickening. Children began their life in the coal mines at five, six, or seven years of age. Girls and women worked like boys and men, they were less than half clothed, ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... life and play for the stake of a world. His generals of division were themselves men of mark—personages no less than Massena, Augereau, Laharpe, and Serurier. Of Massena some account has already been given. Augereau was Bonaparte's senior by thirteen years, of humble and obscure origin, who had sought his fortunes as a fencing-master in the Bourbon service at Naples, and having later enlisted in the French forces sent to Spain in 1792, rose by his ability to be general of brigade, then division commander in the Army of Italy. He was rude in ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... be little doubt that the mysterious 'Lhasis,' referred to by Sir William Davenant[5]—a word whose etymology is so obscure—is nothing else than the mandrake or mandragora; if so, then we see that the plant was valued for its exciting and stimulating effects rather than ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... which the trail passes we find the inscription: "Ashley 18-5." The third figure is obscure—some of the party reading it 1835, some 1855. James Baker, an old-time mountaineer, once told me about a party of men starting down the river, and Ashley was named as one. The story runs that the boat was swamped, ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... Frank gave a "coo-ey," and in about the space of a minute the words "help, help,—come, come," in scarcely, audible sounds, answered to the call. We penetrated about thirty yards farther, and a few low groans directed us to a spot more obscure, if possible, than the rest. There, firmly bound to two trees close together, were two men. A thick cord was passed round and round their bodies, arms, and legs, so as to leave no limb at liberty. They seemed faint and exhausted at having ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... his mother? How had a baby so richly dressed come to be abandoned in a small obscure village outside the walls of Panama, which would have escaped the ravages of the buccaneers on account of its insignificance, had it not lain directly in their backward path. They had destroyed ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... merit; when cupidity succeeds to honorable industry; when vice and meanness are titles to distinctions, and the true means of making a fortune; when honours are no longer synonimous with honour; then society presents only disorder and anarchy, then people renounce obscure virtue, and laborious acquisition to follow the easy ways of corruption; then enlightened men, for whom public esteem is a sterile recommendation, the true servants of the king, the faithful friends of their country, are forced to disappear, to withdraw from employments, and the ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... came from Sicily, and some authorities speak of him as a Syracusan. But in his 'Lament' he alludes to his 'Ausonian' song, apparently as distinguished from that of Theocritus 'of Syracuse.' The passage, however, is rendered obscure by an hiatus. Another tradition made Theocritus a native of the island of Cos. More probably it was between the time of his leaving Syracuse and that of his settling at Alexandria that he was the pupil of the Coan ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... indeed it is the natural consummation of an epoch such as ours. Given a general insincerity of mind for several generations, you will certainly find the Talker established in the place of honor; and the Doer, hidden in the obscure crowd, with activity lamed, or working sorrowfully forward on paths unworthy of him. All men are devoutly prostrate, worshipping the eloquent talker; and no man knows what a scandalous idol he is. Out of whom in the mildest manner, like comfortable natural ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... gloom and despondency. And yet distressing inward struggles and depression arise sometimes in the midst of outward prosperity and even of unusual religious enjoyment. In truth, among all the phenomena of the Christian life none are more obscure or harder to seize than those connected with spiritual conflict and temptation. They belong largely to that terra incognita, the dark back-ground of human consciousness, where are the primal forces of the soul and the mustering-place of good and evil. A certain mystery enshrouds all profound ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... in the earliest periods of which we have any record is necessarily somewhat obscure, owing to the scarcity of the documents that have come down to us. The earliest of these have been carefully collected and printed in one volume by Dr Sweet, entitled The Oldest English Texts, edited for the Early English Text Society in 1885. Here we already ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... teachers aim to produce? First, a vital respect for facts and for sound reasoning therefrom; second, the power so to analyze and marshal the facts in an obscure and complicated case as to bring order and light out of confusion; and third, the appreciation of other men's point of view and training in the tact which will influence them. Incidentally a good course ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... was done by Lincoln and one that was to have an immediate effect upon the course of the war. This was the appointment of General Ulysses S. Grant to the position of Commander in Chief of the Union forces. General Grant, like Lincoln, came from obscure beginnings. He had volunteered his services at the beginning of the war, and had won his way upward through sheer merit. On the Fourth of July, 1863, he had captured the Southern city of Vicksburg, while General Meade in the same year beat ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... of "cook and steward." The story of how poor boys of the beginning and middle of the century and right up to the latter part of the 'sixties started sea-life is always romantic, often sensational, and ever pathetic. They were usually the sons of poor parents living for the most part in obscure villages or small towns bordering on the sea, which sea blazed into their minds aspirations to get aboard some one of the numerous vessels that passed their homes one way or the other all day long. The notion ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... board of ministers, whose appointments or dismissals were the results of palace intrigues, sometimes petty but more often bloody. Corruption ate its way through the entire office- holding element of the Ottoman state: positions were bought and sold from the Divan down to the obscure village, and office was held to exist primarily for financial profit and secondarily as a means of oppressing ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... illimitable in their compass of effect, are often, for the same reason, obscure and untraceable in the steps of their movement. Growth, for instance, animal or vegetable, what eye can arrest its eternal increments? The hour-hand of a watch, who can detect the separate fluxions of its advance? Judging by the past, and the change ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... affirmed this truth, and invented a formal mode of interpretation, upon which he wrote his multitudinous octavos, themselves mystical volumes, and whose effect has been to involve a subject already obscure in still deeper darkness, and to transfer the adoration of a small portion of the Christian world from the letter of the Scriptures to the letter of Swedenborg,—a questionable benefit to his followers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and subdivisions, though intended to make clear, too often entangle the ground unnecessarily, and keep the mind upon the stretch to remember, when it should only feel. We think this a fault with Mr Fuseli; it often renders him obscure, and involves his style of aphorisms in the mystery ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... droughts; seasonal August winds blow from the west, carrying sand and dust across the country, which can obscure visibility ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... he ran the risk of having his mandate withdrawn, and for some obscure reason he disliked the prospect. Now that the job had been thrust on him he did not propose to relinquish it; and, to guard against the possibility, he saw that he must reassure the unimaginative old man who was the legal conscience of ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... is of obscure birth, mother, I will at once give him up; but you, on your part, must be good enough not to insist upon my marriage with the Marquis ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... day spent at Covent 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 by special favour, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... present you close against men of talents that broad, that noble entrance which belongs to them, and which ought to stand wide open to them; and in exchange you open to them a bye entrance, low and narrow, always obscure, often filthy, through which, too often, they can pass only by crawling on their hands and knees, and from which they too often emerge sullied with stains never to be washed away. But take the most favourable case. Suppose that the member ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... young soldiers the sublime and perilous task of rushing upon the enemy when he is hidden behind the shelter of his fougades, his parapets, and his artificial brambles; and entrust to the brave Territorials the more obscure but not less glorious work of mounting guard ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... those that have burst out from an obscure original to great eminence. He was born July 21, 1664, according to some, at Winburn, in Dorsetshire, of I know not what parents; others say, that he was the son of a joiner of London: he was, perhaps, willing enough to leave his birth unsettled[1], ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... handed back the book and quitted the office, thence pursuing his way to an obscure coffee-house by the Strand, where he now partook of a light dinner. But rest seemed impossible with him. Some absorbing intention kept his body continually on the move. He paid his bill, took his bag in his hand, and went ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... truth, when it is spoken for some useful purpose, must necessarily seem obscure, extravagant, or merely false; for, were it of common knowledge, it would not be worth expressing. And truth being fact, and therefore hard, must irritate and wound; but it has that power of growth and creation peculiar ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... journey brought us within thirty miles of our future retreat, and we put up at an obscure inn in a village by the way. At the inn was a gentleman who, the landlord told me, had been so liberal in his charity that he had no money left to pay his reckoning. I could not avoid expressing my concern at seeing a gentleman in such circumstances, and offered ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... of the Street, and therein he was a being transformed, case hardened, supremely selfish, asking no quarter; no, nor giving any. Fouled with the clutchings and grapplings of the attack, besmirched with the elbowing of low associates and obscure allies, he set his feet toward conquest, and mingled with the marchings of an army that surged forever forward and back; now in merciless assault, beating the fallen enemy under foot, now in repulse, equally merciless, trampling down the auxiliaries of ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... the man of Macedonia which drew Paul across the water from Troas to Philippi speaks to us. 'Come over and help us,' comes from many voices. And if we, in however humble and obscure, and as the foolish purblind world calls it, 'small,' way, yield to the invitation, and try to do what in us lies, then we shall find that, like Paul by the riverside in that oratory, we are building better than we know, and planting a little seed, the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... was in singular sympathy with his task, and has written of his favourite master enthusiastically, yet with consummate judgment. Among living authorities, Dr. Gronau, Herr Wickhoff, Signor Venturi, and Mr. Bernhard Berenson have contributed effectively to the elucidation of obscure or disputed points, and the latter writer has probably come nearer than anyone to recognise the scope of Giorgione's art, and grasp the man behind his work. The monograph by Signor Conti and the chapter in Pater's Renaissance ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... before Day, they set out on their Journey, not in a Postchaise, or any Publick Vehicle, for fear of a Discovery, but on Foot; and lodging every Night at some obscure Village, till their Arrival ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... regard to facts relates to the principle of causation, and the foundation of all our beliefs in causation is experience, while the foundation of inference from experience is habit. As a matter of fact, it is strange how often an obscure event becomes suddenly clear by an inquiry into the possibility of habit as its cause. Even everything we call fashion, custom, presumption, is at bottom nothing more than habit, or explicable by habit. All new fashions ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... told, "your objective is clear, but your methods must be most indirect—even unclear. Some things you must obscure in a mass of obviously imaginative detail, while you bring others to the fore. You must hint. You must suggest. You should never fully explain or deny. And you must never be ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... manner without some trumpery local newspaper letting loose a volley of abuse against 'the disgraceful exhibition,' in which abuse it is sure to be sanctioned by its dainty readers; whereas some murderous horror, the discovery, for example, of the mangled remains of a woman in some obscure den, is greedily seized hold on by the moral journal and dressed up for its readers, who luxuriate and gloat upon the ghastly dish. Now, the writer of 'Lavengro' has no sympathy with those who would shrink from striking a blow, but would not shrink from the use of poison or calumny; ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... domestic animals, symptoms of liver diseases are more obscure than in the small animals. In certain parasitic diseases and in mixed and specific infectious diseases, the liver ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... about poisons than almost anybody," I explained. "Well, my idea is, that perhaps he's found some way of making strychnine tasteless. Or it may not have been strychnine at all, but some obscure drug no one has ever heard of, which produces much the ...
— The Mysterious Affair at Styles • Agatha Christie
... third vestibule is the old hall of the Chamber of Peers, which was built in 1805 for the Senate. This hall, which is small, narrow and obscure; supported by meagre Corinthian columns with mahogany-coloured bases and white capitals; furnished with flat desks and chairs in the Empire style with green velvet seats, the whole in mahogany; and paved with white marble relieved by lozenges of red Saint Anne marble,—this hall, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... theories of salvation, which, right or wrong, are not the things to be presented for men's reception—now any more than in the days of the first teachers who knew nothing of them: they serve but to obscure the vision of the live brother in whom men must believe to be lifted out of their evil and brought into the air of truth and the room for growing deliverance. Hester spoke of Christ, the friend of men, who came to save every one by giving him back to God, as one gives back to ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... several broken coffins, some skulls, and potsherds of glazed and crudely painted earthenware, of which, however, it was impossible to find two pieces that belonged to each other. A narrow hole led from the large cavern into an obscure space, which was so small that one could remain in it only for a few seconds with the burning torch. This circumstance may explain the discovery, in a coffin which was eaten to pieces by worms, and quite mouldered away, of a well-preserved skeleton, or rather a mummy, for in many places ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... whose composition was so obscure that Gil Blas could not comprehend the meaning of a single line of his writings. His poetry was verbose fustian, and his prose a maze of far-fetched ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... the obscure diseases of children arise from worms. In all doubtful cases, therefore, this fact should be borne in mind, in order that a thorough investigation may ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... recognize; not the slightest injury intended, far indeed from that; and so on!—"people are surprised at its brevity; and, studying it as theologians do a passage of Scripture, can make almost nothing of it. Clear as crystal, says one; dexterously obscure by ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of doubt. Dreading the resentment of the people whom he had so often and so wantonly oppressed, and having on his back that uniform which was never so dishonoured before, he skulked under a servant's bed in an obscure chamber of his house, but was at length discovered in this disgraceful hole, and conducted pale, trembling, and covered with flue,*** before the officer who had commanded his arrest; nor could this ...
— Statistical, Historical and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land • William Charles Wentworth
... of caverns, deserts, quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven; of cannibals, the anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. Count Abel spoke to Mlle. Moriaz of the fortunes and vicissitudes of partisan warfare, of vain exploits, of obscure glories, of bloody encounters that never are decisive, of defeats from which survive hope, hunger, thirst, cold, snow stained with blood, and long captivities in forests, tracked by the enemy; then disasters, ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... love is 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 shines ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Your husband, dear lady, has robbed me of my joy in life, the only happiness I have known since I became a widower. Yes, if I had not been so unlucky as to come across that old rip, Josepha would still be mine; for I, you know, should never have placed her on the stage. She would have lived obscure, well conducted, and mine. Oh! if you could but have seen her eight years ago, slight and wiry, with the golden skin of an Andalusian, as they say, black hair as shiny as satin, an eye that flashed lightning under long ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... strength, but their doom is upon them, and after numerous adventures they slay their fathers or some other unfortunate relative. But the most characteristic part of what seems an almost universal legend is that these children are born in the most obscure circumstances, afterward rising to a height of splendour which makes up for all they previously suffered. It is not necessary to explain nowadays that this is characteristic of nearly all sun-myths. The sun is born in obscurity, and rises to a ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... in the house of Fledermausse; only, in some distant room, an obscure light was burning. Some one was on the watch. "That is well," said I, closing the curtain. "I have ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... and fairly aching with cold and fatigue, he reached the little hotel, which appeared more miserable, obscure, and profane than ever. But a tempting fiend seemed to have got into the gin and whiskey bottles behind the red-nosed bartender. To his morbid fancy and eyes, half-blinded with wind and cold, they appeared to wink, beckon, and suggest: "Drink and be merry; drink and forget your ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... day ever opened with a fairer promise. Not a single cloud flecked the sky, and the sun coursed onward through the azure sea until past meridian, without throwing to the earth a single shadow. Then, low in the west, appeared something obscure and hazy, blending the hill-tops with the horizon; an hour later, and three or four small fleecy islands were seen, clearly outlined in the airy ocean, and slowly ascending—avant-couriers of a coming storm. Following these were mountain peaks, snow-capped and craggy, with desolate valleys between. ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur |
