"Perplexing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contest was perplexing, there being many candidates who received only a few votes each. Many persons thought that it would be fitting that Samuel Adams, the father of the Revolution, should be chosen to serve with Washington, the father ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... tone of things is disquieting, and new in our experience. Hitherto, in our first occupation, the phenomena affected one as melancholy, depressing, and perplexing, but now all, quite independently, say the same thing, that the influence is evil and horrible—even poor little Spooks, who was never terrified before, as she has been since our return here. The worn faces at breakfast were really ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... perplexing. Michael felt great pity for him, that his last few weeks on earth should be so saddened; even though he was convinced that this agony was to be for the final triumph of Islam, it was tearing at his bowels of compassion. His ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... course," Isabelle replied, "and you can bring Molly and the governess back with you. I will telegraph them." It was all easily decided, what had seemed perplexing earlier in the evening, when she had been occupied merely with herself and John. "I can be of some help to Alice any way, and if he ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... trumpets blow strength, his trumpets neigh, They and his horse, and waft him away; They and his foot, with a tir'd proud flow, Tatter'd escapers and givers of woe. Open, ye cities! Hats off! hold breath! To see the man who has been with Death; To see the man who determineth right By the virtue-perplexing virtue of might. Sudden before him have ceas'd the drums, And lo! in the air of ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... and to me most perplexing event has occurred to-night," replied Ranulph, "which may ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a perplexing reflection that there is no absolute moral standard. The moral law appears to vary with environment and according to conditions of time and place. I ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... resources of being,—its combinations, phenomena, and outcome,—but have built instead upon the sand of human reason. They have not accepted the simple teaching and life of Jesus as the only true solution of the perplexing problem of human existence. ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... looked restless, uncomfortable, as if his sister slightly fidgeted him; she had indeed, with all her heartiness, a certain quicksilverishness of manner, jumping here, there, and everywhere like mercury on a plate, in a fashion that was very perplexing ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... which certainly was from no unfriendliness for me; she could not have been more affectionate to me, after our engagement, if I had been really her own son; and it was not until after our common kindness had confirmed itself upon the new footing that I felt this perplexing qualification on it. I felt it first one day when I found her alone, and I talked long and freely to her of Eveleth, and opened to her my whole heart of joy in our love. At one point she casually asked me how soon we should expect to return from Altruria after our visit; and at first ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... forty- story buildings and watch-springs, into bridges and mariners' needles, into battle-ships and lancets, into almost every conceivable instrument of human use, can hardly be rightfully called a preoccupation with dollar- getting, though it has brought the perplexing problem that has so much disturbed the hopes of democracy, dreaming of such masterful children, producers, and poets, yet dreading the very inequalities that their ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... of the perplexing points in Burke's private history to know how he lived during these long years of parliamentary opposition. It is certainly not altogether mere impertinence to ask of a public man how he gets what he lives upon, for independence of spirit, which is so hard to the man who lays his head on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Brownies and Fairies are of the same kindred as the Lares of Latium. "The English Puck, the Scottish Bogle, the French Esprit Follet, or Goblin, the Gobelinus of monkish Latinity, and the German Kobold, are only varied names for the Grecian Kobalus, whose sole delight consisted in perplexing the human race, and calling up those harmless terrors that constantly hover round the minds of the timid." "The English and Scottish terms, 'Puck,' 'Bogle', are the same as the German 'Spuk' and the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... situation was somewhat perplexing. Iroquois spies had brought reports of great preparations on the part of the English. As neither party dared offend these wavering tribes, their warriors could pass with impunity from one to the other, and were paid by each ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... aboriginals of this country long before the advent of the white men, if we may judge from the traces and traditions of ancient populousness in regions which were silent and deserted at the time of the discovery; and from the mysterious and perplexing vestiges of unknown races, predecessors of those found in actual possession, and who must long since have become gradually extinguished or been destroyed. The whole history of the aboriginal population of this country, however, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... making his first researches beneath the surface of English history, few facts are more painful and perplexing than the judicial corruption which prevailed in every period of our country's growth until quiet recent times—darkening the brightest pages of our annals, and disfiguring some of the greatest chieftains of ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... word she had spoken, every passing shade of thought reflected on her face, and while these reveries occupied his mind, there was a tender look in the deep black eyes and a smile on his lips. But these pleasant memories were apparently often followed by more perplexing thoughts. One afternoon he had been standing for some time lost in a dream, while he looked with eyes that saw nothing over the heaving waters to the distant horizon, when the captain's voice at his elbow recalled ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... German authorities. They have no more compunction in fooling the American Ambassador than they have in depriving the prisoners of sufficient food to keep body and soul together. The task of Mr. Gerard in the immediate future is certain to become more perplexing, intricate, and delicate, but we hope that he will prove equal ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... forsooth, we showed without a license. And this, mind you, in what we regard as a free country. Ye gods! Well, be that as it may, you can readily see we were in a bad box, and how to get out of it was the perplexing ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... of importance was elicited, although several other persons were examined. A murder so mysterious, and so perplexing in all its particulars, was never before committed in Paris—if indeed a murder has been committed at all. The police are entirely at fault—an unusual occurrence in affairs of this nature. There is not, however, the shadow ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... thenceforth live and move. The old cabin was gone forever. The horizon of life was totally new and unfamiliar. The unexpected had swept its wizardry over the face of things, changing the perspective, juggling values, and shuffling the real and the unreal into perplexing confusion. ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... thus avoiding the long detour by Runcorn. Probably, as a feat of engineering, the construction of the new station at Bold Street is not inferior to any part of the scheme advanced. Under very singular and perplexing difficulties it could only be proceeded with in its first stages from midnight until six o'clock the following morning, it being of course essential that the traffic at the Central Station should not be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... American Missionary Association, held in Chicago last week, and of which a full account will be found elsewhere, brought out anew the directness and energy with which this society is bringing its aid to the solution of some of the most immediate and perplexing problems in this country. The Negro, the Indian and the Chinese are the especial objects of its care, and it has rendered immense service to these races in this country, not only by its direct answer to the appeal for help which comes, consciously or unconsciously, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... Taragona. The sub-lieutenant in command, having no tidings of Ney, was prepared to return to Taragona at daybreak, in pursuance of his orders. He knew that we were barely two leagues from Agreda, but did not know of which side that town was in possession. This was perplexing for me. The infantry detachment would return in a few hours, and if I went back with it, when it might be that in another league I should fall in with Ney's column, I should be giving a poor display of courage, and laying ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... indefinable charm of her presence, her piquancy, and her beauty, was a perpetual challenge to the admiration of Deputy-Marshal Woodward. It pursued him in his dreams, and made him uncomfortable in his waking hours, so much so, indeed, that his duties as a revenue officer, perplexing at best, became a burden ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... likely to be "pitted" and disfigured. But, perhaps worst of all, a patient so inoculated became the source of infection to others, and it sometimes happened that disastrous epidemics were thus brought about. The case was a most perplexing one, for the awful scourge of small-pox hung perpetually over the head of every person who had not already suffered and recovered from it. The practice of inoculation was introduced into England by Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1690-1762), who ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... enormous piles; great smoking tureens of the savory succotash, an Indian gift to the table for which civilization need not blush; sliced egg-plant in delicate fritters; and marrow- squashes, of creamy pulp and sweetness; a rich variety, embarrassing to the appetite, and perplexing ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... after this before the long, multitudinous, and perplexing task of visiting the mine-regions again claimed me. I found myself at a place called Ingleborough, which is a big table-mountain, with a top of fifteen to twenty acres, from which the sea is visible ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... task all too colossal for any private publishers or teachers, but it is a task altogether trivial in comparison with the national value of its consequences. But whether it will ever be carried out is just one of those riddles of the jumping cat in the human brain that are most perplexing to ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... they are saying and doing what they are doing they are determining that they are hearing what they are hearing and seeing what they are seeing. This is not exciting, this can be annoying, this can be common, this can be convincing, this can be perplexing, this ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... the problem of dramatizing our fight for democracy in competition with the drama of a world-war, was most perplexing. Here were we, citizens without power and recognition, with the only weapons to which a powerless class which does not take up arms can resort. We could not and would not fight with men's weapons. Compare the methods women adopted to those men use in the pursuit of democracy; ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... will undoubtedly discover instances of repetition and re-statement. Now and then, it has seemed advisable to include matter from earlier writings, long out of print; and new light has been thrown upon some phases of a perplexing problem. Will it tend to induce conviction of the need for reform? Assuredly, this is not to be expected where there is disagreement regarding certain basic principles. First of all, there must be some common ground. ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... evaporation required, whereas the demand upon the boiler for steam is very often reckoned contingent upon the nominal horse power of the engine; and as the nominal power of an engine is a conventional quantity by no means in uniform proportion to the actual quantity of steam consumed, perplexing complications as to the proper proportions of boilers have in consequence sprung up, to which most of the failures in that department of engineering may be imputed. It is highly expedient, therefore, in planning boilers for any particular ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... at me and I found to my surprise that during this story I had grown as calm as he and had quite forgotten, in my sympathy for the little man, just why he had begun to tell it. It was most perplexing. The room had taken on its homely comfort again: the ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... while we were in doubt as to what to do, a second order came to us cancelling entirely the evacuation order which we and all the other hospitals in Antwerp had received a few hours before. It was all so perplexing that we felt that the only satisfactory plan was to go round to the British Consul and find out what it all meant. We came back with the great news that British Marines were coming to hold Antwerp. That was ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... difficulties in the nature of the Godhead quite as great as any which the doctrine of the Trinity involves. 'The Omnipresence, the Incarnation, Self-existence, are all mysteries, and eternity itself is the greatest mystery of all. There is nothing peculiar to the Trinity that is near so perplexing as eternity.' And then he finely adds: 'I know no remedy for these things but a humble mind. If we demur to a doctrine because we cannot fully and adequately comprehend it, is not this too familiar from a creature towards his ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... painting.... He was considered the first wit in Berlin, where he died in 1870." In 1812, when Byron wrote his note to the third edition of Childe Harold, Gropius must have been barely of age, and the statement "that he has for years assumed the name of his (a noble Lord's) agent" is somewhat perplexing.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... unsatisfactory. It seemed probable that the habit of expressing our feelings by certain movements, though now rendered innate, had been in some manner gradually acquired. But to discover how such habits had been acquired was perplexing in no small degree. The whole subject had to be viewed under a new aspect, and each expression demanded a rational explanation. This belief led me to attempt the present work, however imperfectly it may ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... tender annuals generally require starting in a green-house, or hot-bed, to bring them to perfection, and should not be set in the open ground until the weather is fine and warm, some time in June. From a perplexing number to be found in plant catalogues, we select the following twelve sorts of annuals as being the most desirable for the garden; they are a galaxy of ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... the problems contingent upon space flight it is doubtful if any are more perplexing than the biological ones. In fact, it now appears quite likely that the limiting factor on manned space exploration will be less the nature of physical laws or the shortcoming of space vehicle systems than the vulnerability of ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... generation. "When I was a girl," she said, "all the young men in London were at my feet." "My dear lady," said Lord Houghton, "were all the young men of your generation chiropodists?" Mr. C. Milnes Gaskell of Thornes told me of a perplexing situation in which he had once found himself, and of how he sought counsel about it from Lord Houghton, his kinsman. Gaskell's difficulty was this. A friend for whom he was acting as trustee had, without imposing on him any legal obligations in the matter, begged him with his dying ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... the court to the other. All the reflections which I had made during the day, the strange discovery of the morning, that grotesque love and passionate attachment for me, the recollections which that revelation had suddenly called up, recollections at once charming and perplexing, perhaps, also, that look which the servant had cast on me at the announcement of my departure—all these things, mixed up and combined, put me now in a jolly humor of body, recalling the tickling sensation of kisses on the lips, and in the veins, something ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... present confines himself to abstractions, and to taste and sensibility adds creative power, is to my mind the best of the bunch: while Leger, Gris, Gleizes, and Metzinger are four painters who, if they did not limit themselves to a means of expression which to most people is still perplexing, if not disagreeable, would be universally acclaimed for what they are—four exceptionally inventive artists, each possessing his own peculiar and precious ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... can scarcely be said to have had any mind at all, for, as with drugs, she had sapped it away by a practically unremitting perusal of all the fiction that makes the average reader wonder why it was written. In fact, she supplied the answer to that perplexing question, since it was clearly written for her. She was not in the least excited by these tales, any more than the human race are excited by the oxygen in the air, but she could not live without them. She subscribed to three ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... of as one who will come to the front.' He was greatly disappointed at his personal appearance, 'which is that of a Roman catholic ecclesiastic, but he is very agreeable.'[121] Few men can have been more perplexed, and few perhaps more perplexing, as the social drama of the capital was in time unfolded to his gaze. There he beheld the glitter of rank and station, and palaces, and men and women bearing famous names; worlds within worlds, high diplomatic figures, the partisan leaders, the constant stream of agitated rumours ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the anteroom. Not even a telephone could sound its insistent note in this place where the doctor gained, in a reclining chair, his few brief moments of rest, or where he worked out the intricacies of perplexing problems. Now and then he saw a patient there, but rarely. Usually he shut his door against all distracting influences, and gave his attention to the things which concerned ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... playing a bold game. His marriage was fixed for the following Tuesday. From Mr. Brooke's attitude in general towards the Kenyons, he felt sure that Caspar would not place them in any painful or perplexing situation. He would not, for instance, refuse to welcome Oliver to his house again, if Oliver went in Ethel's company. Accordingly, the young man put his pride and his delicacy (if he had either—which is doubtful) in his pocket, and went with his affianced wife to Mr. Brooke's Saturday ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... likewise use the same scholastic jargon; but none of them spout and spread out so complacently and lengthily as he. For hours, we grope after him in the vague shadows of political speculation, in the cold and perplexing mist of didactic generalities, trying in vain to make something out of his colorless tirades, and we grasp nothing.[3191] When we, in astonishment, ask ourselves what all this talk amounts to, and why he talks at all; the answer ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... suffering in youth, and accompanied by a revival of all the old dreams. This is the point of my narrative on which, as respects my own self-justification, the whole of what follows may be said to hinge. And here I find myself in a perplexing dilemma. Either, on the one hand, I must exhaust the reader's patience by such a detail of my malady, or of my struggles with it, as might suffice to establish the fact of my inability to wrestle any longer with irritation and constant ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... though none the less powerful on that account. He is apt to be perplexing to the reader who looks for system or a definite and reasoned statement of doctrine; but his aphorisms are all the more fitted to impress readers who are not inclined to criticism, and might shirk an elaborate argument. It is difficult, accordingly, to select from him a series ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley
... was Lucretia Clavering in outward appearance at the age of twenty,—striking to the most careless eye; interesting and perplexing the student in that dark language never yet deciphered,—the human countenance. The reader must have observed that the effect every face that he remarks for the first time produces is different from the impression it leaves upon him when habitually seen. Perhaps ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Stewart had volunteered. And when we had been served with our simple viands, she sat composedly before us with her hands in her lap, and her eyes turned on us with an appearance of sedate scrutiny no whit the less perplexing because we knew her orbs were but fair clean window-panes ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... and depressing reactions from intense imagination and other severe intellectual exercise. Not only must the repression of this period have amounted at times to positive anguish, but there was also the perplexing perception that his life's fairest possibilities were still barren. "Every individual has a place in the world, and is important to it in some respects, whether he chooses to be so or not." So runs one of the extracts from the "American Note-Books"; and now and then ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... tempter's offer contained another great world-mystery. By accepting the "bread," Thou wouldst have satisfied and answered a universal craving, a ceaseless longing alive in the heart of every individual human being, lurking in the breast of collective mankind, that most perplexing problem—"whom or what shall we worship?" There exists no greater or more painful anxiety for a man who has freed himself from all religious bias, than how he shall soonest find a new object or idea to worship. But man seeks to bow before that only which is recognized ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky
... animal with great attention, perceived on its collar the twelve large rubies, as she had heard [them described]. She praised God, and began to consider thus: "By what means can I carry those rubies to the king, and show them to him, and get my father released?" She was plunged in these perplexing reflections; meanwhile, all the people in the square and on the road, seeing her beauty and comeliness, were struck with astonishment, and remained utterly confounded. All the people said one to another, "Even unto this day, we have never seen a human being of ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... room, and was soon on his way to Carmansville. Once he got off the road, which was rather a perplexing one, but he soon found it again. However, it was half past five before he reached the village, and nearly an hour later before he had done the errand which brought him over. Finally, he came back to the tavern, and being by this time hungry, went in at once to the tavern, and being by this ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... the trunk, I approached at one extreme, scaled the headboard, fell over into an absorbing sea of feathers, and, at that very instant it seemed, the perplexing nature of mortal affairs ceased ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... hardly bring herself to believe that he could have deserved it in any way, but his submission was much less grievous and perplexing to her than his rebellion had been; and she received these few words—spoken rather gruffly, with his back turned to her—as a great proof of confidence, which indeed ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... and the strength of a quiet will, which was, however, inflexible. All that was restless, uncertain, and unsatisfied in men's hearts and lives, found something in him to which they clung as if it had been an anchor of hope; and so his popularity had a very wide, and at first sight very perplexing range. ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... This is perplexing on account of the German verb (which is like dessert at dinner—the best thing, but at the end), and gehabt or geworden is sometimes as far down as the foot-scraper. Some houses are like barns: one roof shelters many families, having ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... about her lips when she gave me the branch of lilacs! I have thought her crafty, dissembling, interested sometimes, it is true; but may not much that looks like cunning and dissimulation in her conduct be only the efforts made by a bland temper to traverse quietly perplexing difficulties? And as to interest, she wishes to make her way in the world, no doubt, and who can blame her? Even if she be truly deficient in sound principle, is it not rather her misfortune than her fault? She has been brought up a Catholic: had she ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... seemed satisfied,—at least she never recurred to the subject; and, so far as Lucy knew, it was the last time that any perplexing doubts clouded the sunshine ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... of any land animal, save perhaps those so great as the mammoth or the great elk, or, possibly, even the cave bear or the cave tiger. The mammoth was, of course, an impossibility, even to the sea-serpent. The elk, with its size and vast antlers, was, to put it at the mildest, a perplexing thing to swallow. The rhinoceros was dangerous, and as for the cave bear and the cave tiger, they were uncomfortable customers for anything alive. But there were the cattle, the aurochs and the urus, and the little horses and deer, and wild hog and a score of other creatures which, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... always insisted on the idea that "error" is a delusion which arose first in the mind of mortal man; what is error doing away back here before man was created, and why was God himself compelled to take measures against it? Certainly the account of the Creation which came from Lynn is even more perplexing than that which is related in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... irritable, and Mary, all unconscious of the cause, stayed in to "take care of him" as she said, and gave up her afternoon walks with Angus for a time altogether, which made the situation still more perplexing, and to Helmsley almost unbearable. Yet there was nothing to be done. He felt it would be unwise to speak of the matter in any way to her—she was a woman who would certainly find it difficult to believe that she had won, or could ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... a perplexing question," replied the voice; "for, by showing you how to obtain possession of the girl, I ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and predictable order of moving bodies defined in physics, is not known through sense-perception, but through thought. Its necessities are the necessities of reason. Descartes finds himself, then, in the perplexing position of seeking an internal criterion for an external world. The problem of knowledge so stated sets going the whole epistemological movement of the eighteenth century, from Locke through Berkeley and Hume to Kant. And the issue of this ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... without immediate settlement, or subsequent examination, and scarcely recorded in any well-authenticated or accurate narrations, had been almost forgot; or were so obscurely remembered, as only to serve the purpose of producing perplexing debates about their situation and extent, if not to suggest doubts ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... contrived to remove it to the Star-Chamber, where, being omnipotent with clerks and counsel, he was sure of success,—the complaints being so warily contrived, the examinations so adroitly framed, and the interrogatories so numerous and perplexing, that the defendant, or delinquent, as he was indifferently styled, was certain to be baffled and defeated. "The sentences of this court," it has been said by one intimately acquainted with its practice, and very favourably inclined to it, "strike to the root of men's reputations, ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... solacing green hast spun White radiance hot from out the sun. So thou dost mutually leaven Strength of earth with grace of heaven; So thou dost marry new and old Into a one of higher mould; So thou dost reconcile the hot and cold, [101] The dark and bright, And many a heart-perplexing opposite, And so, Akin by blood to high and low, Fitly thou playest out thy poet's part, Richly expending thy much-bruised heart In equal care to nourish lord in hall Or beast in stall: Thou took'st from all that thou mightst give ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... which she was confident, of her having closed the door on entering the room where her father had died, she would have concluded that her imagination had deluded her; but she now feared lest she might be watched by spies for some unknown and hostile purpose. It was perplexing, to say the least of it; and Nisida determined to adopt all possible precautions against her secret enemies, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... sea has a language, beyond a peradventure,—an exceedingly arbitrary, technical, and perplexing one, unless it be studied with the illustrated grammar of the full-rigged ship before one, with the added commentaries of the sea and the sky and the coast chart. To learn to speak it requires about as long as to learn to converse passably in French, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... But her difficulties were increased by the inevitable antagonisms with her great Protestant rival, Elizabeth of England, and through the involved relations of Great Britain with Spain and Catholic Europe generally. These historical puzzles seem always to call for fresh explanation. No less perplexing are the circumstances into which this Queen was drawn by her marital relations and other ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... attention was naturally drawn to it. There was an advantage also in its location. Hiram was a small country village, where the expenses of living were small, and, as we know, our young student's purse was but scantily filled. Nevertheless, so limited were his means that it was a perplexing problem how he would be ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... which set them in motion had broken; his expression became sombre and savage; he sank back in his chair motionless, a stranger to all that surrounded him, and gave himself up to some mysterious thought against which resistance seemed powerless. Suddenly he appeared to wake from some perplexing dream, and by another powerful effort aroused himself and joined in the conversation with sharp, cutting speeches; he encouraged the noisy humor of his guests, inciting them to drunkenness by setting the example himself; then ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... realization in miniature of human life. If a frog is heard to speak, if a dog is changed before our eyes into a prince by having cold water dashed over it, the charm of the fairy tale has fled, and, in its place, we have the perplexing pleasure of legerdemain. Since the real life of a fairy is in the imagination, a wrong is committed when it is dragged from its shadowy hiding-place and made to turn into ashes under the calcium ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... where he had lived for ten years as Austrian ambassador. Thugut, therefore, never entered this cabinet without a pleasant smile lighting up his hard features, and he only went thither when he wished to permit himself an hour of happiness amidst the perplexing occupations and cares ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... time, as he went on along the difficult track, the narrow little toe-print pointed the way to him, like an arrow through the wilds. It was a pleasant thought, and yet a perplexing one. Would he have undertaken this quest just to see her? Would he be content with that if his other motive failed? For as he made his way up to the ridge he was more than once assailed by doubts of the practical ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... consciousness goes much deeper. Foreign policies that fail to take it into account and that think that relations with China can be conducted upon the old basis will find this new consciousness obtruding in the most unexpected and perplexing ways. ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey
... viz. because it confirms and justifies the inward feeling of their hearts. This is certainly possible in idea, though what there is venerable, awful, superhuman, in the Wesleyan Conference to persuade one to take it as a prophet, is a perplexing problem; yet, after all, the matter of fact we conceive to lie the other way, viz. that Wesleyans and other sectaries put themselves above their system, not below it; and though they may in bodily ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... that the famous highwayman had been taken, and invited all persons who had been robbed by him to repair to Newgate and to see whether they could identify him. To identify him should have been easy; for he had a wound in the face, and had lost a thumb. [340] He, however, in the hope of perplexing the witnesses for the Crown, expended a hundred pounds in procuring a sumptuous embroidered suit against the day of trial. This ingenious device was frustrated by his hardhearted keepers. He was put to the bar in his ordinary clothes, convicted and sentenced ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... matter we are able to gain stronger confidence from our harmony with others, and from the knowledge that we do not think and work alone, but in common. The perplexing doubt whether our method of thought belongs only to us—a doubt which often comes over us when others express the direct opposite of our convictions—is softened, even dispelled, when we find ourselves ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... life, and the entire cessation of the occupation which for many years employed the greater part of your waking thoughts, and all this amid the failing powers and flagging hopes of declining years, is both a sad and a perplexing prospect to a thoughtful person. For such a person cannot regard this great change simply in the light of a rest from toil and worry; he will know quite well what a blankness and listlessness and loss of interest in life will come of feeling all at once that you have nothing at all to do. And ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... importance. I went on past her unconscious back, left her working at her loose-leaf ledgers, beside her adding machine, my mind a whirl of ugly conjecture. Dykeman's employee; that would instantly and very painfully clear up a score of perplexing questions. Dykeman would need no detectives on my trail to tell him of my lack of success in the Skeels chase. Lord! I had sent her as concise a report as I could make—to her, for Worth. I walked on stupidly. In front of the last door in ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... is the sallow complexion any improvement; but despite these facts, there is indeed much that is attractive in Mr. Lawson's face. His gray eyes have a tender sympathetic look—tender as that of a woman; his brows have the reflection of genius as they are being knitted over some intricate and perplexing law points at issue; and the look of benevolence expressed in the lips, mouth, and chin, impart a tone of self-respect and dignity which, united with culture and refinement, make our legal friend an ornament to ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... wasting of vital power in the hopeless effort to save the body from wasting, I had a clear right to presume that my patients recovered more rapidly and with less suffering. With no perplexing study over what foods and what medicines to give, I could devote my entire attention to the study of symptoms as evidences of progress toward recovery or death; and in addition to all this there was the great satisfaction of being strictly in line with Nature ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... Dinosaurs. We still have to solve one of the most perplexing problems of fossil physiology; how did the very small head, provided with light jaws, slender and spoon-shaped teeth confined to the anterior region, suffice to provide food for these monsters? I have advanced the idea that the food of Diplodocus consisted of some very abundant and nutritious ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... was his own Foreign Minister, and being what he was, and swayed by the considerations I have imperfectly described, his foreign policy was necessarily tortuous and perplexing. As Ranke says, "Charles was capable of proposing offensive alliances to the three neighbouring powers, to the Dutch against France, to the French against Spain and Holland, to the Spaniards against France to the detriment of Holland, but in these propositions two ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... might receive my halting story. For it would not do to conceal anything vital to the case. Her clear, wise eyes would see instantly through any evasion, not to say deception—even a harmless deception. No; if she were to be of any aid in this deeply-perplexing business, I must tell her the story of Lois—not betraying anything that the girl might shrink from having others know, but stating her case and her condition as briefly and as honestly as ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... circumstance, out of circles totally different and unlike. Why it was that Mr. May, so good a Churchman, permitted two people so entirely out of his sphere to become his habitual guests and the companions of his children was very perplexing to the outside world, who half in mere surprise, and a little in despite, wondered and commented till they were tired, or till they had become so familiar with the strange spectacle that it ceased to ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... a most extraordinary, perplexing room. The cheap and the costly, the rare and the common, the exquisite and the tawdry jostled one another on walls and floor. At one end of the Louis XVI sofa on which Dale had been sitting lay a boating cushion covered with a ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... excellent a one to their speaking Pictures, that it would be as much stupidity, as pride, not to imitate them. They have not done like those Painters, who present in one and the same cloth a Prince in the Cradle, upon the Throne, and in the Tombe, perplexing, by this so little judicious a confusion, him that considers their work; but with an incomparable address they begin their History in the midle, so to give some suspence to the Reader, even from the first opening of the Book; and to confine themselves within reasonable ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... continuous roar of the artillery; scarce a morning dawned that the same sound did not usher in my day's work. The ear grew so accustomed during those weeks to the terrible roar, that when Sebastopol fell the sudden quiet seemed unnatural, and made us dull. And during the whole of this time the most perplexing rumours flew about, some having reference to the day of assault, the majority relative to the last great effort which it was supposed the Russians would make to drive us into the sea. I confess these latter rumours now and then caused me temporary ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... certainly more affected by the death (which I witnessed) of a beautiful bird, viz., a kingfisher, which had been injured by an accident. With my sister Jane's death (though otherwise, as I have said, less sorrowful than perplexing) there was, however, connected an incident which made a most fearful impression upon myself, deepening my tendencies to thoughtfulness and abstraction beyond what would seem credible for my years. If there was one thing in this world from which, more than ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... existence, it has not yet reached the condition of the adult. Here lies an inexhaustible mine of valuable information unappropriated, from which, as my limited experience has already taught me, may be gathered the evidence for the solution of the most perplexing problems of our science. Here we shall find the true tests by which to determine the various kinds and different degrees of affinity which animals now living bear not only to one another, but also to those that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... part to pieces, and began over again. It was a sort of barometer of his feelings, and when his companions saw him take down the clipper and go to work, they knew he was either thinking deeply upon a perplexing problem or was troubled ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... to ask for the girl's confidence, nor even to show that she desired it. Emily was more perplexing to her now than even at the time of Wilfrid Athel's rejection. She consoled herself with the thought that a period of active occupation was no doubt the best means of restoring this complex nature to healthy views of life; that at ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... Perplexing as were all these difficulties in the way of the expedition, a still more formidable embarrassment presented itself in the turbulent and almost mutinous disposition of those Suliote troops on whom he mainly depended for success in his undertaking. Presuming as well upon his ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... was not especially pleasurable. It was perplexing and tragic as now. But Adelle was beginning to realize very dimly that she was not living for her own happiness, not even for the happiness of her child, wholly. She did not know why she was living. But she knew that life meant much ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... not room to become heavy. This entailed a constant struggle, as, with a full head of steam during the squalls, the vessel drove steadily seaward to where the rising waves broke on board and rendered steering more perplexing. Then, when it had moderated to a mere "howl," we would crawl back, only to be driven out again by the next squall. The blinding spray which was swept out in front of the squalls froze solidly on board and lent additional difficulty to ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... hand, to be brought before him as a prisoner, was indeed a circumstance equally perplexing as unpleasing, but it was one which was beyond her control, and the Douglas, into whose hands she had fallen, appeared to her to represent the deity in the play, whose entrance was almost sufficient to bring its perplexities to a conclusion; ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... to deal with the case, it being of a more perplexing nature than had previously come within range of his own personal experience; still, he had his suspicions, and thought it best to entertain the young person in conversation for a bit, until he should be able to find out something ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... war. In such cases there always is a main question; but in this case that question is a perplexing compound—Union and slavery. It thus becomes a question not of two sides merely, but of at least four sides, even among those who are for the Union, saying nothing of those who are against it. Thus, those who are for the Union with, but not without, slavery; those for it without, ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... A second perplexing circumstance which happened on the same day, and which took me completely by surprise, added greatly to the sense of uneasiness that was ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... chiming church-bells, they met at the station and were whirled as fast as steam could take them to new streets, lodging-houses, and theatres. To Kate this constant change was at once wearying and perplexing, and she often feared that she would never become accustomed to her new mode of life. But on the principle that we can scarcely be said to be moving when all around is moving in a like proportion, Kate learned to ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... abroad, and, what was a greater drawback, without any knowledge of English! But, nothing daunted, with his usual energy he set about the task of acquiring the language, which he did in an incredibly short time—commencing, like a child, by naming all familiar objects, and going on, until, without perplexing himself with rules or their exceptions, he had acquired facility enough to lecture in public. His work on Music and Education shows with what force and purity of style he could afterwards write in English. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... be tedious, and at last but clumsily performed: But if an hundred Watches were to be made by a hundred Men, the Cases may be assigned to one, the Dials to another, the Wheels to another, the Springs to another, and every other Part to a proper Artist; as there would be no need of perplexing any one Person with too much Variety, every one would be able to perform his single Part with greater Skill and Expedition; and the hundred Watches would be finished in one fourth Part of the Time of the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... were grounded, there remained the new task, longer and more perplexing, if not more difficult, than the first, of restoring the South to its normal position in the Union. It was, from the nature of the case, a delicate one. The proud and sensitive South smarted under defeat and was not yet cured of the illusions which had led her to ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... incorporated itself with his being! The intimacy with a beautiful, sprightly girl had been a holiday diversion to him after arduous brain-labor, recreation sought conscientiously and systematically, that his mental powers might be clearer and fresher for the next day's toil in court and among perplexing records; in hunting up titles and disputed property, and proving their validity. He had gained the cause that had brought him to the capital, and cost him so much fatigue and anxiety, and was proud of his success. But what of this other ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... Gilbert himself declared, they are once more strong enough to bear spires, and it is to be hoped that the hint will some day be taken. The more the west front of Ripon is studied, the more it becomes apparent how much thought has been expended upon it. Yet as a work of art it is perplexing. To some it will appear beautiful as a design; to others its excellence of detail will be its only commendation, and they will complain that the tiers of windows are wider than the gable, that there is a disproportion between the little ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... of the afternoon session it happened that Binny Wallace and myself, having got swamped in our Latin exercise, were detained in school for the purpose of refreshing our memories with a page of Mr. Andrews's perplexing irregular verbs. Binny Wallace finishing his task first, was dismissed. I followed shortly after, and, on stepping into the playground, saw my little friend plastered, as it were, up against the fence, and Conway ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... smiling at him, "who would never wish to make speeches to the moon, who is, indeed, not aware of the moon. But he is very much aware of Karen; so much so," and she continued to smile, as if over an amusing if still slightly perplexing memory, "that when she is there he is not aware of me. What do you say ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... true—that is, about things that had been in my life—not about things that might be; nor could I account for the solidity of your hand, nor understand why you didn't fade away when I took it, and blur the dream. It was a most perplexing mystery that troubled many hours of both my waking and sleeping life. Then came that meeting with you at Cray, and part of the mystery was accounted for, for you were my old friend Gogo, after all. But it is still a mystery, an awful mystery, that two people should meet as we are meeting ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... essay upon 'Contingent remainders'(published in 1772) it was said that no work 'in any branch of science could afford a more beautiful instance of analysis.' Fearne had shown the acuteness of 'a Newton or a Pascal.' Other critics dispute this proposition; but in any case the law was so perplexing that it could only be fully understood by one who united antiquarian knowledge to the subtlety of a great logician. The 'vast and intricate machine,' as Blackstone calls it, 'of a voluminous family settlement' required for its explanation the dialectical skill of an accomplished ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... look. We evidently astonished the people, but we never tempted them to forget their natural good-nature, forbearance, and self-restraint. On our side, the attentive scrutiny to which we were subjected, was at first not a little perplexing. It was difficult not to doubt occasionally whether some unpleasantly remarkable change had not suddenly taken place in our personal appearance—whether we might not have turned green or blue on our travels, or have got noses as long as the preposterous nose of the traveller through ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... by projections of rock, that she had nothing to fear but from sound. But she could not be sure of this; and she would have extinguished her fire by heaping sand upon it, and left herself in total darkness in a labyrinth which was always sufficiently perplexing, if Rollo had not held her hand. He stepped cautiously through the sand to the nearest point to the foe, listened awhile, and then smiled and nodded to Lady Carse, and seemed wonderfully delighted. This excited her impatience so much that it seemed to her that the enemy would never decamp. She was ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... his depression, and told him that all he had done of late to soothe his retirement and pain had been making canons to solemn words, and with such difficulties of composition as, in better health and spirits, would have rather proved oppressive and perplexing than a ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... life is preferable to a virtuous one. When Duryodhana is in a flourishing state and Yudhishthira, robbed of his throne, is suffering thus, what should people do in such a matter?—This is the doubt that is now perplexing all men. Here is the lord of men sprung from the god of virtue, holding fast to a righteous path, strictly truthful and of a liberal heart. This son of Pritha would give up his kingdom and his pleasure but would ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the contemplation of our national financial situation we are immediately aware that we approach a subject of domestic concern more important than any other that can engage our attention, and one at present in such a perplexing and delicate predicament as to ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... who upon the evening of representation never desert him if they can possibly help it. But I, who have studied my part after the manner of English actors, could easily dispense with the Cuban prompter's services. His prompting is perplexing, and fills me with prospective terrors of a 'break-down.' Often while I am in the middle of a speech, my officious friend at the footlights has already whispered the remainder, besides uttering the words which belong to the next speaker. If I pause for purposes of 'by-play,' the gentleman in the ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... something unflattering to Don Luis in the eyes of Currito; but when Currito saw that, in addition to his learning, and to all those other matters of which he himself knew nothing, although he supposed them to be difficult and perplexing, Don Luis knew, besides, how to keep his seat so admirably on the back of a fiery horse, his veneration and his affection for his cousin knew no bounds. Currito was an idler, a good-for-nothing, a very block of wood, but he had an affectionate and ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... hurled to the ground, its Government might have been thought likely to welcome any security that it should not be abandoned in its utmost need. Haugwitz, however, was at head-quarters, dictating lying bulletins, and perplexing the generals with ridiculous arguments of policy until the French actually opened fire. When the English envoy made known his arrival, he found that no one would transact business with him. Haugwitz ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of my situation, moreover, were from various causes extremely perplexing. The old North-West agents, acting for the Hudson's Bay Company in Canada, had declared a bankruptcy the preceding winter; the principal manager having quitted the country rather precipitately, as was supposed, and forgotten to appoint a successor; the management devolved in consequence ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... tendency. Johnson, to whom nothing could be more abhorrent than an alliance with any assailant of orthodoxy, draws no inference from his pessimism. He is content to state the fact of human misery without perplexing himself with the resulting problem as to the final cause of human existence. If the question had been explicitly brought before him, he would, doubtless, have replied that the mystery was insoluble. To answer either in the sceptical ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... came the perplexing question as to how the man had reached Hilarity when Creed was known to have arrived there with the team eight hours after the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... swayed by a woman's look or a fit of Quixotism; he was a strong grown man who had seen the world. He had been in the habit of supposing his impulses to be good, and of following them naturally without much thought; it seemed desperately perplexing to be forced into an analysis of those impulses in order to decide what he should do. He was in a thoroughly bad humour, and Del Ferice guessed that if Giovanni could ever be induced to speak out, it ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... extensive learning and knowledge of the world, is not as much designed for the professional scholar as for intelligent readers of all classes who take an interest in the history of by-gone ages, and are inclined there to seek information that may guide them safely through the perplexing ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... previous occasion already fought this principle of duty out with herself, but because to-night, unlike that other night, the way and the means seemed to present no insurmountable difficulties, and because she was now far better prepared, and free from all the perplexing, though enormously vital, little details that had on the former occasion reared themselves up in mountainous aspect before her. The purchase of a heavy veil, for instance, the day after the Hayden-Bond affair, would enable ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... portion of the sun's heat goes day by day into what we call empty space, and it is only this very small remainder that is made use of by the various planets for purposes of their own. Can anything be more perplexing than this seemingly frightful expenditure of the very life and essence of the system? That this vast store of high-class energy should be doing nothing but travelling outwards in space at the rate of 188,000 miles per ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... grieve, they may quench the Holy Spirit. He is grieved whensoever He is resisted; He may be resisted until He is quenched. It was Christ Himself who spoke of a sin against the Holy Spirit which "hath never forgiveness." Is there any more painful, perplexing, and yet more certain fact in life than this, that man can resist God? Is there any that has bound up with it more terrible and inevitable issues? "Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears," cried the martyr Stephen to his judges, "ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... and munificent toward the gods—the first destroyer of Hellenic liberty in Asia—then precipitated, at once and on a sudden, into the abyss of ruin. The sin of the first parent helped much toward the solution of this perplexing problem, as well as to exalt the credit of the oracle, when made to assume the shape of an unnoticed prophecy. In the affecting story of Solon and Croesus, the Lydian king is punished with an acute domestic affliction because he thought himself the happiest of mankind—the gods not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... reach them. Such an immense loss of time and labor troubled him no little, and, as he had no desire to sell his property, he determined by hook or by crook to remedy the evil. Day and night he turned the perplexing problem over in his mind. He might, to be sure, swim across, but then there were his tools to be carried. At last it flashed upon him: Why not make an aerial car? He bought for this purpose some very thick iron wire, stretched it in two parallel ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... pause, he said to him: "Gabriel, I am not ready for thee at this moment; go sit on yonder bench. I wish to think out a matter which is perplexing me." Then as Gabriel obediently went over to the bench and seated himself, he added: "Thou canst pass the time looking at the books on the ...
— Gabriel and the Hour Book • Evaleen Stein
... of charity, it was all right; she could accept it on those terms. She even tempted him to patronize her, but when he ventured upon something elderly and paternal in his monitions, she resented it so fiercely that she was astonished and ashamed. There was an inconsistency in it all that was perplexing, but not so perplexing as to spoil ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... that you may have before you a clear and comprehensive picture of this most perplexing and dangerous situation, which is so fraught with peril for the future peace of the world, suppose that I sketch for you, in the fewest word-strokes possible, the arguments of the rival claimants for fair Fiume's hand. Italy's claims may be classified under three heads: sentimental, commercial, ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... culprit is Shelley, who, we are told, "deserted his young wife and children in the most shameful and heartless fashion." It does not matter to Mr. Watkinson that Shelley's relations with Harriet are still a perplexing problem, or that when they parted she and the children were well provided for, Nor does he condescend to notice the universal consensus of opinion among those who were in a position to be informed on the subject, that Harriet's suicide, more than two ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... the invader was Henry IV of England, the father of the other prodigal, whose object is somewhat perplexing, and differs much from the usual raid to which the Scots were so well accustomed. So far as appears from all the authorities, his invasion was a sort of promenade of defiance or bravado, though it seems ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... no longer in doubt concerning the place to which he had been conveyed; and the more he reflected on his situation, the more he was overwhelmed with the most perplexing chagrin. He could not conceive by whose means he had been immured in a madhouse; but he heartily repented of his knight-errantry, as a frolic which might have very serious consequences, with respect to his future life and fortune. After mature deliberation, he resolved to demean himself with ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... been remarked that Napoleon stood in a perplexing situation in this conflict between the King and his son. This is not correct. King Charles, though he afterwards said that his abdication had been forced from him by violence and threats, had nevertheless tendered it. By this ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... man. Here was the owner of the lady, ready to take her off his hands and relieve him of all the perplexing responsibility and misery which her possession had caused him. As he looked at the stalwart figure of the returned husband it made him laugh ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... continues to grow, which is very strange and perplexing. I never knew one to be so long getting its growth. It has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, but exactly like our hair except that it is much finer and softer, and instead of being black is red. I am like to lose my mind ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and that then there be a general condonation, disarmament, and a concert of nations based upon an acceptance of the principle of arbitration; that by a similar concert freedom of the seas be established; and that the territorial claims of France and Italy, the perplexing problems of the Balkan states, and the restitution of Poland be left to such conciliatory adjustments as may be possible in the new temper of such a peace, due regard being paid to the aspirations of the peoples whose political fortunes and affiliations ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... dinner for his nap, and Brent sat alone under the trees indulging several rather curious speculations. His eyes were closed, though in no sense was he sleepy. He was thinking of a force; a new, an entirely new force; a perplexing force that each day more determinedly gripped and held him. He had at last taken his character into his hands and ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... unfortunate and perplexing phase of the voyage of the Snark. Roscoe, who is to be my co-navigator, is a follower of one, Cyrus R. Teed. Now Cyrus R. Teed has a different cosmology from the one generally accepted, and Roscoe shares his views. Wherefore Roscoe believes that the surface of the earth is concave and that ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... driving past in solid drifts. Chet heard Spud shouting down a voice tube. And, curiously, it was plain that the Irish pilot had lost all tenseness from his voice; he was happy and as carefree as if he had found the answer to all his perplexing questions. He was calling an order ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... October witnessed the ratification of this proposal by the Unionists. The action at once consolidated the Premier's position. I doubt if in all political history you can uncover a series of events more paradoxical or perplexing or find a solution arrived at with greater skill and strategy. It was a revelation of Smuts with his ripe statesmanship put to the test, ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... certainly remarkable (as an indication of the pleasure the multitude take in voluntarily perplexing themselves), how eagerly they enter into all sorts of contrivances which conduce to bewilderment and doubt. In 'Hampton Court' there is a famous enclosure called the 'Maze,' so arranged with hedged alleys as to form ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "handed down the story" (see Medwin, Conversations, p. 173), they depart in numerous particulars from the facts recorded in contemporary documents. Unquestionably the legend, as it appears in Sanudo's perplexing and uncritical narrative (see, for the translation of an original version of the Italian, Appendix, pp. 462-467), is more dramatic than the "low beginnings" of the myth, which may be traced to the annalists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... whom it would seem the height of presumption to assume even the unconsidered dignity of a "steward of science," may well find this conflict of apparently equal ecclesiastical authorities perplexing—suggestive, indeed, of the wisdom of postponing attention to either, until the question of precedence between them is settled. And this course will probably appear the more advisable, the more closely the fundamental position of the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... and enthusiastic temper grows up into youth in a dream of love. The lady of his mystic passion dies early. He dreams of her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction—quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; but, on the other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep feeling. It is a first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied with his work, but ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "that you are losing in both weight and color. That would be no advantage to yourself—and it might complicate Miss Dunton's problem. It's perplexing to an artist when one's subject changes under one's ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller |
