"Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... greate indignation) then he putt himselfe into the first troopes which were raysed in the West, for the Kinge, and bore the uneasinesse and fatigue of winter marches, with an exemplar courage and alacrity, untill by to brave a pursuite of the enimy, into an obscure village in Devonshyre, he was shutt with a musquett, with which (without sayinge any worde more, the[n] oh god I am hurte) he fell deade from his horse, to the excessive griefe of his frends, who were all that knew him, and the irreparable damage of ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... grotesque; and what the sage designed but for symbols of a truth were cultivated to the prejudice of the truth itself. The influence of Pythagoras became corrupt and pernicious in proportion as the original tenets became more and more adulterated or obscure, and served, in succeeding ages, to invest with the sanctity of a great name the most visionary chimeras and the most mischievous wanderings of perverted speculation. But, looking to the man himself—his discoveries—his designs—his genius—his marvellous accomplishments—we cannot but consider ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... having many tastes and convictions in common, became fast friends. In 1653, the former returned to England, and for some time acted as tutor to Mistress Fairfax; he being an excellent scholar, and a great master of the Latin tongue. He now led a peaceful and obscure life until 1657. In that year, Milton, "laying aside," as he wrote, "those jealousies, and that emulation which mine own condition might suggest to me," introduced him to Bradshaw; soon after which he was made assistant-secretary ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... counter-marched, recrossed the swamp, and hurried forward to overtake Stuart, marching for Fort Hindman. The first line of the rebels was about four miles below Fort Hindman, and the intervening space was densely, wooded and obscure, with the exception of some old fields back of and close to the fort. During the night, which was a bright moonlight one, we reconnoitred close up, and found a large number of huts which had been abandoned, and the whole rebel force had fallen back ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... degree, of course. But keep your body in perfect health, and you ought to be immune from extreme depression. And I believe you are immune. Frankly, Doctor Meyer Isaacson, I don't think you are right. I am sure something is out of order in my body. There must be some pressure somewhere, some obscure derangement of ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... have erected against the Christian dogma a dogma no less obscure,—that of the depravity of society. MAN IS BORN GOOD, cries Rousseau, in his peremptory style; BUT SOCIETY—that is, the forms and institutions of society—DEPRAVES HIM. In such terms was formulated the paradox, or, better, the protest, of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... of the result of this battle, he sent presents and honorary dresses to his officers, saying, "We must not be contented with this triumph; you have yet to obscure the martial glory of Rustem and Khosrau." Piran replied, "No doubt that object will be accomplished with ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... where the fine folk of Europe now bathe, and flirt, and prattle politics or scandal so cheerfully during the summer solstice—cool and comfortable Ostend—was throughout the sixteenth century as obscure a fishing village as could be found in Christendom. Nothing, had ever happened there, nobody had ever lived there, and it was not until a much later period that the famous oyster, now identified with its name, had been brought to its bay to be educated. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... less than nothing. My mind, I think, is equal to my fortune; I am still young, and I would now avail myself of my power and establish myself in the land, a recognised member of society. But this cannot be. Society shrinks from an obscure foundling, a prizefighter, a leg, a hell-keeper, and an usurer. Debarred therefore from a fair theatre for my energy and capital, I am forced to occupy, perhaps exhaust, myself in multiplied speculations. ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Wednesday is Woden's-day, as Thursday is the day of Thunder, the god of air and storm and rain. Friday is Frea's-day, the deity of peace and joy and fruitfulness, whose emblems, borne aloft by dancing maidens, brought increase to every field and stall they visited. Saturday may commemorate an obscure god Saetere; Tuesday the dark god, Tiw, to meet whom was death. Eostre, the goddess of the dawn or of the spring, lends her name to the Christian festival of the Resurrection. Behind these floated the ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... herself such liberties in conversation, it was shocking! Darya Mihailovna certainly did not care to stand on ceremony in the country, and in the unconstrained frankness of her manners there was perceptible a slight shade of the contempt of the lioness of the capital for the petty and obscure creatures who surrounded her. She had a careless, and even a sarcastic manner with her own set; but the shade of ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... father—alas, I have none!—had you left me at the asylum, without any clue, or hopes of a clue, to my hereafter being reclaimed, it would have been a kindness; I should then have been happy and contented in some obscure situation; but you raised hopes only to prostrate them—and imaginings which have led to my destruction. Sacred is the duty of a parent, and heavy must be the account of those who desert their children, and are required by ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... presented a glazed or smelted appearance. Mr. Darwin, in his work upon volcanic islands, page 143, alludes to this formation, under the head of "Superficial ferruginous beds," and thus concludes his observations: "The origin of these superficial beds, though sufficiently obscure, seems to be due to alluvial action on ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... between hope and fear, between life and death. At last towards the middle of the night, Heaven, which had seen our resignation, commanded the floods to be still. Instantly the sea became less rough, the veil which covered the sky became less obscure, the stars again shone out, and the tempest seemed to withdraw. A general exclamation of joy and thankfulness issued at one instant from every mouth. The winds calmed, and each of us sought a little sleep, whilst our good and generous pilot steered our boat ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... looking at his watch. "He was only to be gone a moment," and while he went on to talk with Dryfoos, he wondered why the old man should have come first to speak with him, and whether it was from some obscure wish to make him reparation for displeasures in the past, or from a distrust or dislike of Fulkerson. Whichever light he looked at it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... as she said this, looking full in Euphra's eyes. It was a smile of meaning unfathomable, and it quite overcame Euphra. She had never liked Margaret before; for, from not very obscure psychological causes, she had never felt comfortable in her presence, especially after she had encountered the nun in the Ghost's Walk, though she had had no suspicion that the nun was Margaret. A great many of our dislikes, both to persons and things, arise from a feeling of discomfort associated ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... squirting out town houses, country houses, butlers, chefs, under-chefs, diamonds, lady's-maids, horses, carriages, seaside gardens, thousand-acre poultry-yards, private sidewalks, and clouds of money which obscure the sun, daze my eyes and amaze my soul! John Gayther, I wish you would send me one of your turnip-hoers; I want him to take my second-best shoes to ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... attention, gave a salute in which mock deference could not entirely obscure the respect beneath, and set about on his commissions, while Grant devoted the afternoon to a session with Murdoch and Jones, to neither of whom would he reveal his plans further than to say he was going west "to engage in some development work." During ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... motions. A statuary who would have wished to represent Voluptuousness, would have taken her for his model; and she would equally have served for him who might have had a figure of Modesty to display. Even the gloomy and clouded sky of England had not been able to obscure the brightness of that aerial kind of soul, unknown in our climates. In every thing that Eliza did, an irresistible charm was diffused around her. Desire, but of a timid and bashful cast, followed her steps in silence. Any man of courteousness alone must have loved her, but would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... must always possess a high value by reason of their large scientific insight into character and life." This value consists, as he indicates, in the fact that she interprets the inner personality as it is understood by the scientific student of human nature. She describes those obscure moral tendencies, nascent forces, and undertones of feeling and thought, which enter so much into life. She lays much stress on the subconscious mental life, the domain of vague emotion ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... without perceiving that sensible representation of the Deity. Such is the fascination of worldly trifles that obscure their eyes. Nay, oftentimes they will not so much as open them, but rather affect to keep them shut, lest they should find Him they do not look for. In short, what ought to help most to open their eyes serves ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... fitful flashes of red light flickering on the walls, as the 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... of the earth as well as in all living beings. Nevertheless, all the time the science should be taught as the backbone of the entire course. The allusions to history and the manifold applications to daily life are indeed very important, but they must never obscure the science itself, for only thus can a thorough comprehension of chemistry be imparted and the benefits of the mental drill and culture be vouchsafed to ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... Chinik for the Portage, going east. It was storming, but it was not dark, and they knew each foot of the way. At first, on the level, the woman rode in one of the sleds, but when it grew hilly, she trudged behind. Her sharp eyes now keenly searched every dark or obscure spot along the hillside trail. The wind lessened somewhat, and the moon came ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... preparation of his own invention, "Greek fire," which he offered the Emperor for use against the Saracen. This, according to one historian, "was a semi-liquid substance, composed of sulphur, pitch, dissolved niter, and petroleum boiled together and mixed with certain less important and more obscure substances.... When ejected it caught the woodwork which it fell and set it so thoroughly on fire that there was no possibility of extinguishing the conflagration. It could only be put out, it is said, by pouring vinegar, wine, or sand ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... of rescuing this story from a far-back number of the English Review, in which it first appeared, and putting it in a book. It may be a shock to the reader to be brought down from a story of a great king and queen of England in the tenth century to the obscure annals of a yokel and his wife who lived in a Wiltshire village only a century ago; or even less, since my poor yokel was hanged for sheep-stealing in 1821. But it is, I think, worth preserving, since it is the only narrative I know of ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... periodic droughts; seasonal August winds blow from the west, carrying sand and dust across the country, which can obscure visibility ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... within our breast Is inactivity at best: But never shall the Muse endure To let your virtues lie obscure; Or suffer Envy to conceal Your labours for the public weal. Within your breast all wisdom lies, Either to govern or advise; Your steady soul preserves her frame, In good and evil times, the same. Pale Avarice and lurking Fraud, Stand ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... captain, received him with great honour, and wrote a letter on his behalf to our King James the Second, who on his return to England gave him a ship. This was his introduction to the British Navy, in which he served with distinction in the reigns of William the Third and Queen Anne. But his obscure origin is the point here under notice, and the following traditional anecdote is preserved in Shropshire:—When a boy he was left in charge of the house by his mother, who went out marketing. The desire to go to sea, long cherished, was irresistible. He stole forth, locking the cottage ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... whose exploits and career the author is about to narrate. This is a truer commencement of the history than that which appears at first sight more strictly historical—namely, an investigation into the obscure tribes which inhabited the same country prior to that people who are known to us as Greeks—an investigation that is to be carried on by strained interpretations of these very legends. We congratulate both author and reader ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... evidently must be given to Mr. Mathews: for, as Mr. B.'s part is simply to relate a matter of fact, of which he was an eye- witness, he is by no means to answer for Mr. Mathews's private convictions. As this insinuation bears an obscure allusion to a past transaction of Mr. M.'s, I doubt not but he will be surprised at my indifference in not taking the trouble even to explain it. However, I cannot forbear to observe here, that had I, at ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... school-room was as a dead thing, though I sat on the old benches and mounted the rostrum whereon I was wont to "speak my piece" with much trepidation of spirit and an inexplicable weakness of the knees. I wrote my name on the wall in an obscure corner, simply because I didn't want it to be stricken off from the roll entirely, and then turned back into the street with less regret than I had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... you are not the only preacher who has been talked about by his church, and branded by his official board with the mark of the devil in the name of the Lord. It's easy enough! Go farther, get a little obscure congregation somewhere, stay long enough to get a letter, not long enough to make another name; try another in the same fashion. Lay low, keep quiet, stay away from conventions, watch your chance, and—when the time is ripe—make a hit with the state workers ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... the best bleaching agent for cotton goods. It is not suitable for animal materials, such as silk and wool, as it attacks their fiber. It does not discharge either mineral or carbon colors. The chemistry of bleaching is obscure. ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... shepherds, near their flocks, Were watchful for the morn; But better news from heaven was brought, Your Saviour Christ is born. In Bethlem-town the infant lies, Within a place obscure, O little Bethlem, poor in ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... Persephone, who must be always either in heaven or hell; and Hecate, who was one thing by night and another by day. The Sibyls were females, and so were the Gorgons, the Harpies, the Furies, the Fates, and the Teutonic Valkyrs, Nornies, and Hela herself; in short, all representations of ideas obscure, inscrutable, and portentous, are ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that there was a stranger in his deep-withdrawn cell. Diligently as a lace-maker shifts her bobbins, he shifted and arranged his balls. Flashes of meaning would now pass from them to Tangle, and now again all would be not merely obscure, but utterly dark. She stood looking for a long time, for there was fascination in the sight; and the longer she looked the more an indescribable vague intelligence went on rousing itself in her mind. For seven years she had stood there watching the ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... altogether, Rujub; I can understand your power of sending messages, and of your daughter seeing at a distance. I have heard of such things at home; they are called mesmerism and clairvoyance. It is an obscure art; but that some men do possess the power of influencing others at a distance seems to be undoubted, still it is certainly never carried to such perfection as I ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... the dark heavens around the cities of the sky, and held it off secure from every other life-containing place. The roads that pierced the wall of the forest led in deeper and deeper, cutting their way around shaggy foothills down to swift streams and on and up again to heights, in and out of obscure notches. They must finally have sprung out again through another wall of forest to other towns. But as far as Five Points was concerned, they led simply to lumber mills sitting like chained ravening creatures at safe distances from one another eating slowly away at the thick woods as if trying ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Manetho's list) is at their head. From Menes to Seti I., this formidable list passes through nearly all the dynasties. The first six are represented therein. We are next introduced to sovereigns still unknown to us, belonging to the obscure period which extends from the end of the sixth to the beginning of the eleventh. From the eleventh to the eighteenth the new table follows the beaten track, which it does not quit again during the reign ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Jewish money lenders of ancient London were permitted to deposit the bonds of their Christian debtors in a chamber of the abbey. The Hebrew word for 'bond' being 'star,' the chamber was so named. The reason for the name in time became obscure. A subsequent custodian, having his own conception, had stars painted on the dome and walls ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... what seemed another world, equally blind, snowy and obscure, but divided from this one by fathoms of frozen water, a car was coming out from Pont-a-Moussons on to the main Nancy road. Its two head-lamps glowed confusedly under the snow that clung to them, and the driver, his thick, blue coat buttoned about his chin, leant forward peering through ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... disappearance—he was astounded but dreamy. His stupefaction was complicated by a sense of the dark reality of existence. It seemed as if there were experience in this dawning being. Did he, perchance, already exercise judgment? Experience coming too early constructs, sometimes, in the obscure depths of a child's mind, some dangerous balance—we know not what—in which the poor ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... humourists are prone; which lie indeed deep in their nature; and from which they derive their genial sympathy with eccentric characters that enables them to find motives for what to other men is hopelessly obscure, to exalt into types of humanity what the world turns impatiently aside at, and to enshrine in a form for eternal homage and love such whimsical absurdity as Captain Toby Shandy's. But Dickens was too conscious of these excesses ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... He had thought at 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 boys in their ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... There was an obscure indication of Alice's hands raised in the rearrangement of her hair. George Willard half turned, facing the rear of the car. "I can't see much," he said, "but it is evident that you two have been fighting. Why don't you live in peace and happiness? The trouble's all with Lee, too, you don't ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... allusions are far-fetched and obscure as in Scandinavian poetry. Mr. Payne (ii. 314) translates "Naml" by "net." I understand the ant (swarm) creeping up the cheeks, a common simile for a young beard. The lovers are in the Laza (hell) ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... tortoises and mussels, very hard-coated bombadier beetles, stinging insects and nauseous-tasted caterpillars, can afford to be brilliant by the various means of active defence or passive protection they possess, other than obscure colouration. He says "the {27} attitudes of some insects may also protect them, as the habit of turning up the tail by the harmless rove-beetles (Staphylinidae) no doubt leads other animals, besides children, to the belief that they can sting. The curious ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... of some charitable sailors. And there he was, with two francs left in his pocket, and an unlimited supply of courage, cheerfulness, and ambition, fully determined to make the whole world familiar with the obscure name of Alphonse Daudet. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... individual desires to be loved and not hated; and he also feels and sees his obligation to exercise the same disposition toward others. The carrying out of this obligation is loving another as himself. But evil lust and sinful love obscure the light of natural law, and blind man, until he fails to perceive the guide-book in his heart and to follow the clear command of reason. Hence he must be restrained and repelled by external laws and material books, with the sword ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... of white light fell on the unpapered wall, and then two dusky shadows slid over it, vague, obscure, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... passes. And this is what has been going on in this valley while I have been dining and gambling; she was probably born here, and will be buried in a corner of the cemetery, by the side of her father. Thus will that obscure woman die, a woman of whom no one speaks and of whom the children say: "Don't ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... had, by fair means or foul, induced an enormous number of witnesses to come forward and prove the truth of his statement, and day after day there were the most wearisome references to old diaries, to reports of meetings held in obscure places, perhaps more than a dozen years ago, or to some hashed and mangled report of a debate which, incredible though such meanness seems, had been specially constructed by some unscrupulous opponent in such a way as to alter the entire meaning of Raeburn's words—a process ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... institution as a home, no such thing as a fireside, no such object as a beautiful woman. His dear Miss Marguerite would excuse him, if he accounted for her attractions on the theory that English blood must have mixed at some former time with their obscure and unknown ancestry. Survey this English nation, and behold a tall, clean, plump, and solid people! Look at their cities! What magnificence in their public buildings! What admirable order and propriety in their streets! Admire their ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... a logical fallacy, but I am not fond of the attempt to obscure by logic-chopping what is a writer's real meaning. I will therefore say that, as far as I can make out, what this particular writer really believes is that the German people, through some innate and incurable frowardness of disposition, have turned the inestimable blessings ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... statesmanship of Bulgaria's political evolution is specially noteworthy because that evolution was both complicated and obscure. In fact, its roots reach down to the fundamental aspirations of the Bulgarian people. Bulgaria's present volte-face is no chance product of panic, but a logical step in her national policy. Its consequences thus promise to be not ephemeral, but lasting. An understanding of the factors that brought ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... hazard a guess at the origin of the dancer, but merely remarks (5 p. 86) that the exact physiological basis of the dancing character is uncertain and the origin of this curious variation in behavior still more obscure. "Mouse fanciers have assured me," he continues, "that something like it may appear in strains inbred from the normal type, though I cannot find an indubitable case. Such an occurrence may be nothing but the appearance of a rare recessive ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... induced me to write a book on Donna Lucretia. I had treated the political history of Alexander VI and Caesar at length, and had elucidated some of its obscure phases, but to Lucretia Borgia I had devoted no special attention. Her personality appeared to me to be something full of mystery, made up of contradictions which remained to be deciphered, and I ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... possibly an hour and a half, when he heard someone singing, and that very sweetly. She sang with the joyous freedom of one who suspected no listener. The song came nearer and nearer. Plonville standing amazed, dropped his implements, and stole to the somewhat obscure little window. He saw a vision of fresh loveliness dressed in a costume he never before beheld on a vision. She came down the bank with a light, springy step to the next cottage, took a key that hung at her belt, and ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... of Nice at latest, the only exceptions being that doubtful one of the corrupt Romish Church implied, though not avowed, in its equalisation of the Apocryphal Books with those of the Hebrew Canon, and the irrelevant one of the few and obscure sects who acknowledge no historical Christianity. This somewhat more, in which Jerome, Augustine, Luther, and Hooker were of one and the same judgment, and less than which not one of them would have tolerated—would it fall within ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... exercised? Women are all alike—except Alice." He smiled as he thought of his girl, and instantly the hardness in his face lifted, as a cloud shadow lifts and leaves sunshine behind it. Then some obscure sense of fitness made him pull himself together, and put his mind on affairs that had nothing in common with Helena; affairs in which he could include his girl without ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... the great master the French deem him. Assuredly he might justifiably apply to himself the "Et-Ego-in-Arcadia" inscription in one of his most famous paintings. And the specific service he performed for French painting and the relative rank he occupies in it ought not to obscure his purely personal qualities, which, if not transcendent, ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... the chances on his dying, as thousands of other wives do every day, and for his good she put on the best face possible, and kept her tears back. But how many obscure women have done the same thing, as they sat by the side of their dying husbands, and made the patient believe that he was getting better, and smiled while their hearts were breaking? Was Mrs. Garfield braver than the sister of charity, God bless her, who goes from the North to ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... Drusus having been abetted by the patricians in proposing a law for exempting the Latin soldiers from being flogged, about thirty years earlier; and it seems to have been passed, but, from this passage of Sallust, appears not to have remained in force. Lipsius touches on this obscure point in his Militia Romana, v. 18, but settles nothing. Plutarch, in his Life of Marius, c. 8, says that Turpilius was an old retainer of the family of Metellus, whom he attended, in this war, as prafectus fabrum, or master ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... consent to their engagement, Richard Barry promptly made trouble—the very worst kind of trouble. He descended on Bridgeport and completely overwhelmed poor Miss Sara in his wrath. He laughed at the idea of countenancing an engagement between a child like Marcella and an obscure country doctor. And he carried ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... threatened by a formidable parly, in the different states hostile to all authority. In Sweden this j'ear witnessed the death of Bernadotte, the king of that country, the most permanently successful of all the generals who took part in the French revolution. Although of obscure birth and a foreigner, he was called upon to wear the crown of Sweden by the unanimous voice of the nation; and he so identified himself with their interests, that he reigned in peace and died universally beloved by his subjects. In Switzerland disturbances took ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... his voice with an effort, for it shook a little—"in the last few minutes some things have been made plain to me which were hitherto obscure. I have wondered sometimes, here in these forsaken barracks, at actions of yours which seemed deliberately calculated to annoy one who—Heaven knows—started with every wish to be friendly. Saving my own small personal dignity, of which from indolence ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... were all a farce, and he had never seen one in his life, much less struggled with them. They added that Manin had never been anything more than a country clown, until Don Pedro took it into his head to raise him from his obscure position. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... That this brilliant affair did not come off is owing to my own lack of enterprise; for I did not want to go across the continent, and I do not hanker after Zanzibar, but only to go puddling about obscure districts in West Africa after raw fetish and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... that so quickly after the death of her who loved me so dearly and who was so dear to me,—is such an affront as I cannot bear and hold up my head afterwards. I have come to be known as her whom your uncle trusted and loved, as her whom your wife trusted and loved,—obscure as I was before;—and as her whom, may I not say, you yourself trusted? As there was much of honour and very much of pleasure in this, so also was there something of misfortune. Friendships are safest when the friends ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... upright in the coal- beds and those not upright, and which might have been drifted. Is it not possible that the same circumstances which have preserved the vegetation in situ, should have preserved drifted plants? I know Calamites is found upright; but I fancied its affinities were very obscure, like Sigillaria. As for Lepidodendron, I forgot its existence, as happens when one goes riot, and now know neither what it is, or whether upright. If these plants, i.e. Calamites and Lepidodendron, have VERY CLEAR RELATIONS ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... of this obscure chapel, amid the floating dust, the surly priest placed his withered hands on the bared heads of Gervaise and Coupeau, blessing their union amid a hubbub like that of moving day. The wedding party signed another registry, this time in the sacristy, and then ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... entombed in the bone-caves and other deposits of the same age; though of course the changes effected by domestication in almost all the tame animals renders the question of their identity with the indigenous breeds somewhat obscure. Cuvier was, however, unable to detect any difference between the skeleton of a fossil horse, contemporary with the elephant, and that of our domestic breed: a fossil goat of the same age cannot be distinguished from the domesticated animal; and one of our ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... is so obscure as to be invisible, but at the back of the obscurity are French windows, through which is seen Lob's garden bathed in moon-shine. The Darkness and Light, which this room and garden represent, are very still, but we should feel that it is only the pause in which old enemies regard ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... 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 the ...
— Miscellaneous Pieces • John Bunyan
... Nemesis in the Agora stood the tanner Anytos chatting with Thrasybulos, a hitherto obscure ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... up into fragmentary collections, in which the words of many different and obscure prophets are grouped under the name of some great prophet, as was quite natural in an uncritical age; the whole mass being ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... world, and one which the princes of art have made it their loftiest ambition to picture worthily on their canvas; a spot whose history is familiar to the very children of every house, and city, and obscure hamlet of the furthest lands of Christendom; a spot which myriads of men would toil across the breadth of a world to see, would consider it a priceless privilege to look upon. It was easy to think these thoughts. But it was not easy to bring myself up ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... took refuge was faintly lighted by pointed stained windows, with black diamond-shaped divisions set with minute panes darkened by the accumulated dust of years, rendered still more obscure by the woodwork of the chapels, which cut ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Commons, though no particulars were given her—and told to go alone to 14, Dexter Street, Westminster, and not to ask any policeman to direct her. 14, Dexter Street, Westminster, she found was not a house but a yard in an obscure street, with big gates and the name of Podgers & Carlo, Carriers and Furniture Removers, thereon. She was perplexed by this, and stood for some seconds in the empty street hesitating, until the appearance of another circumspect woman under the street lamp at the corner ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Chippewa to Queenstown (ten miles), and started from Niagara to Toronto about noon of the first Friday in July. When a little more than half way across the lake, I encountered a heavy north-east storm of rain and wind, and a fog so thick as to completely obscure the Toronto light-house, which was within a mile of me. When it became so dark that I could not see my compass, I laid my course, with the sail reefed, by the wind and waves, reaching (a mile west of my due course) the east side of the Humber Bay, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... by his horse on the Jumpoff trail, so there could be no mistake—when he knew perfectly well that she must ride that way, when he could not have failed to see her horse saddled and waiting at the door. It seemed to Mary Hope an obscure form of mockery to tell her not to be lonely—to tell her in a caressing tone that left with her all the effect of kisses—and then to ride away without one backward glance, one word of excuse. Until she had mounted and had seen him on the trail ahead, ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... such wayside objects as might serve to feed contemplation. On one occasion, having turned aside to visit the duke of Hamilton's picture-gallery, they were told by the porter, after he had scanned them over, that they ought not to have come to the front door, and were directed to an obscure entrance at the corner of the house, where they seated themselves humbly on a bench while waiting for admittance, which was finally refused. They were mortified, but had a deeper pang in the grounds around Bothwell Castle, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... of an obscure dramatic presentation, an early and rudimentary draft of Book I. was published in 1910. It has since been entirely re-written. Book II., written 1919-22, has not been printed hitherto. Though the work was not conceived with a view to stage-production, the author reserves ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... old man. Atkinson and Meyers and even the volatile Mexican lawyer, Martinez, remained unstirring, for in the situation they suddenly sensed something beyond their ken, some current of deep unknown forces, some play of fierce, obscure and ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... blown Baltic with their clubbed sounds —than their opposite (Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered more intense by numbers, and by sympathy. She too hath her deeps, that call unto deeps. Negation itself hath a positive more and less; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the great ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... the lunar cycle, and of the movable feasts of the Church. In his book De temporum ratione he had treated of the seventh and eighth ages of the world, which were to follow the age in which he lived. He had prophesied. During the siege of Orleans, churchmen were circulating these obscure lines attributed to him, and foretelling the coming of ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... files of newspapers for the true records of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, I have caught occasional glimpses of a plot perhaps more wide in its outlines than that of either, which has lain obscure in the darkness of half a century, traceable only in the political events which dated from it, and the utter incorrectness of the scanty traditions which assumed to preserve it. And though researches in public libraries ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... and carrying the war into the enemies' quarters. In July 1658, on learning from some prisoners that the galleons were in Porto Bello awaiting the plate from Panama, Doyley embarked 300 men on a fleet of five vessels and sent it to lie in an obscure bay between that port and Cartagena to intercept the Spanish ships. On 20th October the galleons were espied, twenty-nine vessels in all, fifteen galleons and fourteen stout merchantmen. Unfortunately, all the English vessels except the "Hector" and the "Marston ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... she had for many days been moving with her mother in darkness, deeply stricken by Nick's culpable—oh he was culpable!—loss of his prize, but feeling an obscure element in the matter they didn't grasp, an undiscovered explanation that would perhaps make it still worse, though it might make them, poor things, a little better. He had explained nothing, he had simply ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... restraint. It had arrested, also, the attention of the nation, and it had produced a kind of holy flame, or enthusiasm, and this to a degree and to an extent never before witnessed. Of the purity of this flame no better proof can be offered, than that even Bishops deigned to address an obscure committee, consisting principally of Quakers; and that Churchmen and Dissenters forgot their difference of religious opinions, and joined their hands, all over ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... suggested with a considerable degree of probability, that in Auvergne volcanic eruptions persisted even into historic times. The subject is obscure, depending on the interpretation of difficult passages in two Latin chronicles of the fifth century. The most obvious meaning of both passages would certainly appear to be the occurrence of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, but attempts have been made to explain them as referring to some artificial ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... of Ilion, it had not been his more blessed lot to crystallize in deathless song the rising glories of Duluth. (Great and continued laughter.) Yet, sir, had it not been for this map, kindly furnished me by the Legislature of Minnesota, I might have gone down to my obscure and humble grave in an agony of despair, because I could nowhere find Duluth. (Renewed laughter.) Had such been my melancholy fate, I have no doubt that, with the last feeble pulsation of my breaking heart, with the last faint exhalation of my fleeting breath, I should ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... ago, the property of two families, who then found happiness in this solitude. Their history is affecting; but what European, pursuing his way to the Indies, will pause one moment to interest himself in the fate of a few obscure individuals? What European can picture happiness to his imagination amidst poverty and neglect? The curiosity of mankind is only attracted by the history of the great; and yet from that knowledge little use can be derived." ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... was a stranger from nobody knew where; he went by the name of "Jones," which was not believed to be his; he had a magnificent voice, and he remained in Morningquest in an obscure position, making nothing of it. True, he must have means; but what after all were the means which he appeared to possess compared with the means which he might be enjoying? And further—and this was considered the most extraordinary circumstance of all—there was his attitude ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... his accents lingered, they were gone By an obscure and solitary path, Until they came upon some rough-hewn steps, Which wandered round and down, interminable.— A stairway leading to the upper world For the ascent of gnomes, who dwelt beneath In those huge tidal caves which underlaid Old Thug, upheaved from earth in ancient ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... scanty dollars. There were bulletins, rules, counter-rules. As she talked, Sommers caught the atmosphere of the great engine to which she had given herself. A mere isolated atom, she was set in some obscure corner of this intricate machine, and she was compelled to revolve with the rest, as the rest, in the fear of disgrace and of hunger. The terms "special teachers," "grades of pay," "constructive work," "discipline," etc., had no special significance to him, typifying merely the exactions of the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... entirely by Mr. NICHOLAS TRÜBNER. I am not aware that he had any assistance in writing it. I mention this because I have never met with any person who was so equally familiar with obscure and obsolete old German facetious literature (as the text indicates), and at the same time with Americanisms. I should say that in all of the later ballads, or at least in fully one half of all in the book, the author was indebted to him for ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... will from henceforth happen, that they shall be freed from the Trouble, and the World from useless Volumes. This Project will be a Registry, to which Posterity may have recourse, for the clearing such obscure Passages as tend that way in Authors; and therefore we shall not for the future submit our selves to the Learning of Etymology, which might persuade the Age to come, that the Farthingal was worn for Cheapness, or ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the action of the sun in equatorial regions. According to Balfour Stewart, auroras and earth currents.(q. v.) may be regarded as secondary currents due to small but rapid changes in the earth's magnetism. The subject is very obscure. Stewart treats the earth as representing the magnetic core of an induction coil, the lower air is the dielectric, and the upper rarefied and therefore conducting atmosphere is the secondary coil. This makes the aurora a phenomenon of induced currents. Then the sun may be regarded as the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... End I made the acquaintance of the authors whose letters you have just had the opportunity of reading—men who have since attained to the topmost pinnacle of Fame. At that time they were comparatively obscure; they 'eard my conversation, they realised that I 'ad ideers, of which they knew the value better, perhaps, than I did myself. I used to see them taking down notes on their shirt-cuffs, and that, but I took no notice of it at the time. Probably ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... door, he would take a bag of gold coin, or a gold cup as big as a washbowl, or a heavy golden bar, or a peck measure of gold dust, and bring them from the obscure corners of the room into the one bright and narrow sunbeam that fell from the dungeonlike window. He valued the sunbeam for no other reason but that his treasure would not shine ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... now possessed of absolute power, and called upon to nominate his master of the horse, he chose a poor man named Tarqui'tius, one who, like himself, despised riches when they led to dishonour. Thus the saving a great nation was devolved upon a husbandman taken from the plough, and an obscure sentinel found among the dregs of the army. 15. Upon entering the city, the dictator put on a serene look, and entreated all those who were able to bear arms, to repair, before sunset, to the Cam'pus Mar'tius (the place where the levies were made) with necessary arms, and provisions for five days. ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... of whole biographies, epics, systems of philosophy, and epochs of history, in bulk. That which is understood excels that which is spoken in quantity and quality alike; ideas thus figured and personified, change hands, as we may say, like coin; and the speakers imply without effort the most obscure and intricate thoughts. Strangers who have a large common ground of reading will, for this reason, come the sooner to the grapple of genuine converse. If they know Othello and Napoleon, Consuelo and Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin and Steenie Steenson, they ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... source of his solicitude was lest he should be detected by means of his ears! Some years before, when he was in a comparatively obscure position, he had in some way or other offended his sovereign, and was punished by having his ears cut off. It was necessary, therefore, to keep the marks of this mutilation carefully concealed by means of his ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... then it is better to be poor, and to enjoy; that if one has no other way of being humble except being imbecile, then it is better to be imbecile, and to enjoy. That is the deep unconscious truth in the character of Toots—that all his externals are flashy and false; all his internals unconscious, obscure, and true. He wears loud clothes, and he is silent inside them. His shirts and waistcoats are covered with bright spots of pink and purple, while his soul is always covered with the sacred shame. He always gets all the outside things of life wrong, and all the ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... is time for me to leave the summer cirrus and turn to the tempest-born rain-cloud. It is represented in ancient Indian mythology by the Vritra or Rkshasas. At first the form of these dmons was uncertain and obscure. Vritra is often used as an appellative for a cloud, and kabhanda, an old name for a rain-cloud, in later times became the name of a devil. Of Vritra, who envelopes the mountains with vapour, it is said, "The darkness stood retaining the water, the mountains lay ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... had been a poor lay brother," cried out the dying Philip II. of Spain, "washing the plates in some obscure monastery, rather than have borne the crown ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... thousands of blots as black as that on earth, and I think you will find nobler game than an obscure Russian provincial prison. Russia has cities and palaces and fortresses that will make far grander ruins than that—ruins that will be worthy monuments of fallen despotism," replied the girl, who had been introduced by the President as Radna Michaelis. "But here is some one else waiting to ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... HERACLIUS. The Exarch of Africa, Heraclius, one of the chief officers of the state, also received the shocking tidings with indignation. He was determined that the imperial purple should not be usurped by an obscure centurion of disgusting aspect. "The person of this Phocas was diminutive and deformed; the closeness of his shaggy eyebrows, his red hair, his beardless chin, were in keeping with his cheek, disfigured and discolored by a formidable scar. Ignorant ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... thought, and he had an abrupt manner of withdrawing attention that was to us rather disconcerting until we got used to it. His pockets were bulging with newspapers and memoranda, scrawled in the curiously obscure handwriting which I subsequently found much difficulty in learning to read, though it was plain enough when the meaning of the strange hieroglyphics intended for letters was once fully understood. He was pressed with business ...
— My Friends at Brook Farm • John Van Der Zee Sears
... had taken to lecturing. The professorship was obscure; he said it was Athenian, and Bobus had no immediate means of finding out whether it were so or not, nor of analysing the alphabet of letters that followed his name upon the ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... langour in studying curves to be described only with a pencil; but not in tracing those which are to be described with a rocket. Your knowledge of a wholesome herb may involve the feeding of an army; and acquaintance with an obscure point of geography, the success of a campaign. Never waste an instant's time, therefore; the sin of idleness is a thousandfold greater in you than in other youths; for the fates of those who will one day be under your command hang upon your knowledge; lost ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the going of the five hundred and odd souls that made up the population. In the town itself the excitement grew rather than waned. Men talked themselves into a fever, others took fire, and the epidemic spread like some obscure nervous disease. Nobody slept, everybody drank and hurrahed, and said it was the greatest night in the history of Minook. In the Gold Nugget saloon, crowded to suffocation, Pitcairn organized the new mining district, and named it ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... of justice, and should I hold my peace, the very stones would cry out against me. Yonder young lady has no right to the prize, for the piece which she has palmed off as her own appeared in the Woodland Gazette, a paper published in an obscure New Hampshire village. How she came by it, she can, perhaps, explain, but ...
— Rosamond - or, The Youthful Error • Mary J. Holmes
... gravely, "that they are unreadable. What menace may they not contain? I am afraid of them, as I am of all obscure and mystifying things." ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... quite impossible to trace back any circumstance which could, to speak advisedly, have led to such a course of deception as was practised by this boy; born of obscure parents, his father, a man of dissolute habits, was sub-chanter of the Cathedral, and also master of the free school in Pyle-street; this clever, but harsh, and dissolute man died in August, 1752, and the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... they are cheap and clear and do not obscure the grain as oil stains are likely to do, and they penetrate deeply into the wood, especially when applied hot. They may be made of any coloring matter that is soluble in water, and are particularly good for hard woods and for use in ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... Major's invariable courtesy to the poor or unfortunate was no longer in evidence when he found that John Merrick was a multi-millionaire with a strongly defined habit of doing good to others and striving in obscure and unconventional ways to make everybody around him happy. His affection for the little man increased mightily, but his respectful attitude promptly changed, and a chance to reprove or discomfit his absurdly rich brother-in-law was one of his most satisfactory diversions. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... across technical terms in the secular papers which, unless understood, obscure the sense of the reading. There is a dictionary of medical terms as a separate department which adds much to the usefulness of the work; the spelling, pronunciation and definition being concisely ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... the rich and shut off from the poor. This proposition was, however, too direct, too undisguised to pass through Parliament, and was dropped. I have no room to enumerate the many concealed attacks of even one single session upon the proletariat. One from the session of 1844 must suffice. An obscure member of Parliament, a Mr. Miles, proposed a bill regulating the relation of master and servant which seemed comparatively unobjectionable. The Government became interested in the bill, and it was referred to a committee. Meanwhile the strike among the miners in the North broke ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... the mount, where clouds obscure the day; Where scarce the mule can trace his misty way; Where lurks the dragon and her scaly brood; And broken rocks oppose the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... see what had upset her. The last idea had sound salesappeal, but it was a low income market.... Oh well—her queer notions and obscure reactions undoubtedly went with her scientific gift. You have to lead individuals of this type for their own good, otherwise they spend their lives wandering around in a dreamy fog, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... "Call to mind the sentiments which nature has engraved on the heart of every citizen, and which take a new force when they are solemnly recognised by all:—For a nation to love liberty, it is sufficient that she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient that she wills it." How dry, barren, and obscure is the source from which Mr. Burke labors! and how ineffectual, though gay with flowers, are all his declamation and his arguments compared with these clear, concise, and soul-animating sentiments! Few and short as they are, they lead on to a vast field of generous ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... learning that my mother was a poor woman, he consented to undertake the case and make his charges only sufficient to cover his expenses. It would be well here to give a brief sketch of Judge Bates, as many people wondered that such a distinguished statesman would take up the case of an obscure negro girl. ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... remains obscure with respect to Inheritance, we may look at the following laws as fairly well established. Firstly, a tendency in every character, new and old, to be transmitted by seminal and bud generation, though often counteracted by various known and unknown ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... there will be a through railway connection between Constantinople and Bombay and between Baku and Bombay in the next half-century. From such grades of certainty as this, one may come down the scale until the most obscure mystery of all is reached: the mystery of the individual. Will England presently produce a military genius? or what will Mr. Belloc say the day after to-morrow? The most accessible field for the prophet is the heavens; the least is the secret of the jumping cat within the ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... it worse, and finally impossible, was the character of the king. The pathetic circumstances of his old age have combined somewhat to obscure the viciousness of his maturity. He was excessively ignorant and as obstinate as arbitrary. He trusted no one but himself, and he totally misunderstood the true nature of his office. There is no question which arose in the first forty years of his reign in which he ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... There were many in London, moldy and musty, in obscure corners, some of them in cellars and in narrow passageways, ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... besides those of the mediaeval hierarchy. Neither of these elements is strong enough to expel the other; and either of them would, if it prevailed alone, be again a form of disease. Yet, in the history of the last few years I recognise symptoms of convalescence, however feeble, obscure, and equivocal its traces may appear. What we behold is not death or hopeless decay, it is a purifying process, painful, consuming, penetrating bone and marrow,—such as God inflicts on His chosen persons and institutions. There is abundance of dross, and time is ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... face of a god—Hermes. The third coin is a king's, not a city's. I will not tell you, at this moment, what king's; but only that it is a late coin of the third period, and that it is as distinct in purpose as the coin of Tarentum is obscure. We know of this coin, that it represents no god nor demi-god, but a mere mortal; and we know precisely, from the portrait, what ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... widow-woman, and was a great humorist in all parts of his life. This is all we can affirm with any certainty of his person and character. As for his speculations, notwithstanding the several obsolete words and obscure phrases of the age in which he lived, we still understand enough of them to see the diversions and characters of the English nation in his time: not but that we are to make allowance for the mirth and humour of the ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... of this obscure and neglected young soldier's departure to spread the blessings of Fraternity in Italy, the voluptuous Barras was commissioned by him to announce to the Directory his marriage with Citizeness Tascher Beauharnais. Then began a period of devouring love ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... mysteries, that the same miscreant had committed all three crimes; and before that extraordinary fact had had time to soak well into the public mind there took place yet another murder, and again the murderer had been to special pains to make it clear that some obscure and terrible ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... of these captured caboclos are soon found by the "police warriors" of the tribe and carried to the maloca. On such occasions a day of feasting always follows and an obscure religious ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... in that young affection's early dream, There was the presence and the soul of joy, Which, like the stars, though clouds obscure them, beam With hues of Heav'n, that earth cannot destroy: Dark desolation may be o'er our path, And the fierce lightnings rive it in their wrath, And scalding tears may weep their sources dry, Yet, will that love live on, ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... IV. (847-855) to the Abbot Honoratus, Ex registro Leonis IIII. "There is something quite incredible, the sound of which has reached our ears: a thing which, if true, tends rather to diminish our consideration than to give it honour, to obscure it rather than to give it lustre. It appears in short that you feel nothing but aversion for the beautiful chant of St. Gregory, and for the manner of singing and reading laid down and taught by him in the Church, so that you are ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... trifling, however hidden in some obscure corner of our consciousness,—a sin which we do not intend to renounce,—is enough to render real prayer impracticable. A course of action not wholly upright and honorable, feelings not entirely kind and loving, habits not spotlessly ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... Kenelm Digby's philosophic reputation his name has not become obscure. It stands, vaguely perhaps, but permanently, for something versatile and brilliant and romantic. He remains a perpetual type of the hero of romance, the double hero, in the field of action and the realm of the spirit. Had he lived in an earlier age he would now ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... individual; the writer's own life is chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of all things. It is at once the mirror to all time of the sins and perfections of men, of the judgments and grace of God, and the record, often the only one, of the transient names, and local factions, and obscure ambitions, and forgotten crimes of the poet's own day; and in that awful company to which he leads us, in the most unearthly of his scenes, we never lose sight of himself. And when this peculiarity sends us to history, it seems as if the poem ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... my Headquarters made salaams, viz., Captain Bertier de Sauvigny, Lieutenant Pelliot and Lieutenant de la Borde. The first is a man of the world, with manners suave and distinguished; the second is a savant and knows the habits of obscure and out of the way people. What de la Borde's points may be, I do not know: he is a frank, good looking young fellow ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... total defeat which has ever befallen an English army. Twenty-seven nobles were killed, twenty-two more and sixty knights made prisoners, and the number of obscure soldiers slain, drowned in the Forth, or killed by the peasantry, exceeds calculation. The camp was taken, with an enormous booty in treasure, jewels, rich robes, fine horses, herds of cattle, machines for the siege of towns, and, in short, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the sun despite her duskiness. Eagerly he awaited the deep, lustrous eyes that would presently sweep round upon him, big and dark and sparkling. When she turned her head, they were full of that new womanly dignity that yet did not obscure the shy innocence. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... upon this Head I will further add: A wise and a just Magistrate, may so far give way to a common Stream of Dissatisfaction, as to forbear acting up to the heighth of his own Perswasion, about what may be judged convictive of a Crime, whose Nature shall be so abstruse and obscure, as to raise much Disputation. Tho' he may not do what he should leave undone, yet he may leave undone something that else he could do, when the Publick Safety ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... commands. She received them with the greatest kindness; and ordering them to withdraw, she thus addressed the astonished prince. "Do not imagine, dear prince, that I have always been a cat, or that I am of obscure birth. My father was the monarch of six kingdoms; he tenderly loved my mother, leaving her always at liberty to follow her own inclinations. Her prevailing passion was to travel; and a short time before my birth, having heard of ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... curiously blurred face of the doctor seemed for a moment to take on sharper lines. Spence had observed it do this before under stress of feeling. But as the exact feeling which caused the change was usually obscure, it seemed safest to ignore it altogether. He was growing quite expert at ignoring things. For, quite contrary to the usual trend of his character, he was reacting to the urge of a growing desire to stay where he wasn't wanted. ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... delicate, gentle child. Twelve summers and winters had passed over her little head without a cloud to obscure the sunshine of her life save one—but that one was a terribly dark one, and its shadow lingered over her for many years. When Alice lost her mother, she lost the joy and delight of her existence; and although six years had passed since ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the penitent, and the wisdom of the Director. It is quite possible for the priest to over-direct, and it is fatally possible for the penitent to think more of direction than of Absolution. It is quite possible to obscure the Sacramental side of Penance with a human craving for "ghostly counsel and advice". Satan would not be Satan if it were not so. But this "ghostly," or spiritual, "counsel and advice" has saved many a lad, and many a man, from many a fall; and when rightly ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... and preached twice. My views of Scripture of late have been obscure; I can recall the truths to my mind, but they don't make that impression they have hitherto done. Is this change of feeling inherent, or the effect of neglect of duty, and want of watchfulness? I will examine ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... determined to offer to you and Mr. Fox the honor of Citizenship. Had this honor never been conferred before, had it been conferred only on worthy members of society, or were you and Mr. Fox only to be named at this moment, I should not have interfered. But as they have given the title to obscure and vulgar men and scoundrels, of which they are now very much ashamed themselves, I have presumed to suppose that you would think yourself much more honored in the breach than the observance, and have therefore caused your nomination to be suspended. But I was influenced ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... clothes, hanging the coat and waistcoat, folding the trousers in a drawer, with exact care; changing his light boots for fiber slippers he set the former in the row of footgear drawn up like a military review against the wall. Though it was quite obscure now, and no one would see him, he paused to brush his slightly disarranged hair, before—tying the cord of his chamber ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... are obscure and not very trustworthy. It seems that the Outagamies began the fray by an attack on the Illinois at La Salle's old station of Le Rocher, on the river Illinois. On hearing of this, the French commanders mustered their Indian allies, hastened to the spot, and found the Outagamies ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... way out he stopped to telephone his friend of his detention, took a Westchester Avenue car at the nearest point, and in twenty minutes was at the library. He found an obscure corner and opened ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... 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 ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... Ammon Ra, the supreme and primeval being, at once male and female; who is his own father and his own mother, whose husband he is also; from whom come all the other gods which unite heaven to earth and which are but forms of those two obscure principles. The wise know it, and the priests, who have long studied mysteries in the colleges and in the temples consecrated to his diverse representations. Do not, therefore, allege another god of your own invention ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... Puff. These I have heard spoken of as the joint productions of Verplanck and Rudolph Bunner, a scholar and a man of wit. The State Triumvirate is in octo-syllabic verse, and in the manner of Swift, but the allusions are obscure, and it is a task to read it. The notes, in which the hand of Verplanck is very apparent, are intelligible enough and are clever, caustic and learned. The Epistles, which are in heroic verse, have striking passages, ...
— A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - Verplanck • William Cullen Bryant
... by degrees down to this. It was on Alfred he had counted to keep him informed of David's state; but, on his putting a smooth inquiry, the young man's face flushed with shame, or anger, or something, and he gave a very short, sharp, and obscure reply. In reality, he did not know much, nor did Sarah, his informant; for of late the servants had never been allowed to enter ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... descendants. There is 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 ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... was strong in him had been awakened; and though he made no emotional advances, he found himself strangely drawn to the boy, with a feeling for which he could not wholly account. He did not care for Jack's athletic interests; his tastes and mental processes were obscure to him. Howard's own nature was at once intellectual and imaginative, but he felt an extreme delight in the fearless and direct confidence which the boy showed in him. He criticised his work unsparingly, he rallied him on his tastes, he snubbed him, but all with a sense of real ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... God. And justifiable to men; Unless there be who think not God at all; If any be, they walk obscure, For of such doctrine never was there school, But the heart of the fool, And no man therein doctor but himself. But men there be, who doubt His ways not just, As to His own edicts found contradicting, Then give the reins to wandering thought, Regardless of His glory's diminution; Till, by their own ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... gossip-monger, Byron took refuge, on June 10, at the Villa Diodati; but still the pursuers strove to win some wretched consolation by waylaying him in his evening drives, or directing the telescope upon his balcony, which overlooked the lake, or upon the hillside, with its vineyards, where he lurked obscure" (Dowden's Life of Shelley, 1896, p. 309). It is possible, too, that now and again even Shelley's companionship was felt to be a strain upon nerves and temper. The escape from memory and remorse, which could not be always attained in the society of a chosen few, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... volubly of the illustrious origin of their leader Selivanoff, "the second Christ," and of their "divine mother," Akoulina Ivanovna, their doctrines were in fact obscure and nebulous, and they avoided—with good reason—all religious argument. They insisted, however, upon the sacredness of their initiation ceremony—which invariably ended in deportation for life, or the delights of ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... close by showed the head and horns of a cow; the mule was mercifully sheltered too, and stood near, munching his fodder; a cluster of sheep pressed after the steps of half a dozen men, that somehow in the clare-obscure reminded him of the shepherds of old summoned by good tidings ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... great astronomer now, for the first time, rendered something like a rational account of the changes of the seasons. Nor did certain of the more obscure astronomical ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball |
