"Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... until I found, and by the early spring of 1889 I had grown desperately determined to find at all hazards what I sought. At last, sitting alone in deep thought as I had become accustomed to do after the sun had set, filled with an intense but nearly hopeless longing to solve the riddle of life and mind, I heard a Voice that was later to become to me the holiest sound on earth, bidding me take courage for the light was near. A fortnight passed, and then Mr. Stead gave into my hands two large volumes. "Can you review these? My young men all ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... it over; puzzling again over the mystery of their suspicion of him. He tried to recall some careless act, some imprudent question, an ill-considered remark. He was giving up the riddle again when that trained memory of his flashed before him a picture that, trivial as it was in itself, yet was as enlightening as the white paper of the cigarette on ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... loose and led horses were all mixed together in unsortable confusion, the two oldest hags in the world trusting themselves on sorry, lame nags between Fred and me as if proximity to us would solve the very riddle of the gipsy race. And last of all came a pack of great scrawny dogs that bayed behind us hungrily, following for an hour until hope ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... should fret us this constant riddle, To know if Nature be kind or harsh To the pensive frog on his green-ribbed raft, The scarlet queen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... transformed death. To the eye of flesh it was the final direction of our fate,—the consummate riddle in this mystery of being,—the wreck ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... and addresses, and that you all, half generosity and half prudence, resolved to stand by him rather than break up the Government, which his resignation would have done. That's my solution of the greatest political riddle ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... pangs not to be borne or supported; he was often ready to recall him, and was angry the boy did not urge him for an answer. He read the letter again, and wonders at nothing now after her last night's action, though all was riddle to him: he found it was writ to some happier man than himself, however he chanced to have it by mistake; and turning to the outside, viewed the superscription, where there happened to be none at all, for Sylvia writ in haste, ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving for ever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time. (It is certainly not the solution of any problems of natural ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... instead of 1 Men; 26 more to 1 Cauac, a day not found in either column as given in the original. Taking the second column and counting 26 days from 1 Ymix, we reach 1 Manik, instead of 1 Been. This gives us the key to the series and solves the riddle. We must commence with 1 Ymix, then take 1 Manik, then 1 Been, and so on, going alternately from ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... thrones, the carvers of continents, the arbiters of empires, the fashioners of the new heaven and the new earth—or were they only the flies on the wheel of circumstance, to whom the world was unaccountably becoming a riddle? ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... things; and, after some reflective pipes and ineffectual rubbings of his head, he "gave it up". How was it possible, indeed, for him to solve the mental enigma when the woman herself was to him a physical riddle? It was extraordinary that the child he had seen growing up by his side day by day should be a young woman with little secrets, now to be revealed to him for the first time. He found that she had a mole on her neck, and remembered ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... nature persistently demands a moral, and, as, to say truth, Thackeray was constantly meeting the demand, what is the lesson of his life and his writings? So people may ask, and yet how futile is the answer! Life has a different meaning, a different riddle, a different reply for each of us. There is not one sphinx, but many sphinxes—as many as there are women and men. We must all answer for ourselves. Pascal has one answer, "Believe!" Moliere has another, "Observe!" Thackeray's answer is, "Be good and enjoy!" but a melancholy enjoyment was ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... I was by that obscure jingle of German, something seemed to tell me that it was a message from my brother. It was dated from Berlin, and I felt that the solution of the riddle, if riddle it were, must ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... Christ Church, which, of course, is the same as a Fellowship anywhere else. He went into residence at his new home in January, 1871, and remained there for thirteen years, a "don," indeed, by office, but so undonnish in character, ways, and words, that he became the subject of a eulogistic riddle: "When is a don not a don? When ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... them set to work to exert the energies of his mind, and, when they arrived at a guess, they noted it down on paper; after which every individual member of the family made a choice of some object, and composed a riddle, which was transcribed in a large round hand, and affixed on the lantern. This done, the eunuch took his departure, and when evening drew near, he came out and delivered the commands of the imperial consort. "The conundrum," he said, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... periods of doubt and anxiety, a species of religion? I trust so. We are, you and I, somewhat like those poor dreaming sphinxes who have been asking in vain for so many centuries, from the solitudes of the desert, the solution of the eternal riddle. Would it be a greater and more guilty folly than the happy carelessness of the Little Countess? We shall see. In the meantime, retain, for my sake, that ground-work of melancholy upon which you weave your own gentle mirth; for, thank God! ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... mind, comes back and gets into the cab, after telling the cabby to drive down to St. Kilda. Then he polishes the drunk one off with chloroform, gets out of the cab, jumps into another, and after getting out at Powlett Street, vanishes—that's the riddle I've got to find out, and I don't think the Sphinx ever had a harder one. There are three things to be discovered—First, who is the dead man? Second, what was he killed for? ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... embarrassed way. "Ah! Monsieur, you tink to be varry conning; mais you not so conning as Kookoo, no;" and the inquisitive little man would shake his head and smile, and shake his head again, as a man has a perfect right to do under the conviction that he has been for twenty years baffled by a riddle and is learning to read it at last; he had guessed what was in 'Sieur George's head, he would by and by guess ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... to speak it, And silly doves are better mates than we? And yet our love is Jesus' due,—and all things Which share with Him divided empery Are snares and idols—'To love, to cherish, and to obey!' . . . . . O deadly riddle! Rent and twofold life! O cruel troth! To keep thee or to break thee Alike seems ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... brightening up his placid countenance, like one that had found out a riddle, and looked to have the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... perishable glory and the imperishable hope of man. He looked up into the vast countenance of the crouching Sphinx and vainly tried to read the meaning of her calm eyes and smiling mouth. Was it, indeed, the mockery of all effort and all aspiration, as Tigranes had said—the cruel jest of a riddle that has no answer, a search that never can succeed? Or was there a touch of pity and encouragement in that inscrutable smile—a promise that even the defeated should attain a victory, and the disappointed should discover a prize, and the ignorant should be made wise, and ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... taken off his hat before the might of death, and made a perfunctory sign of the cross. He looked up and down the lofty wall, as if it could give him the word of that riddle. Twice his spurs clashed softly, and, with one hand grasping the rope, he stooped low in the twilight over ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... absurd that Mallow proceeded to riddle it. It was, upon its face, a contradiction, for none but smart men could be crooked, and the laws of logic proved the converse to ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... ran the risk of becoming the dullest of monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier he had resented her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment he found himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and to be agreed ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... order a horse at once. It is all very mysterious and extraordinary; but then you have been a mystery, Rupert Hyde, a riddle and a puzzle, ever since ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... the Book of Judges, xiv. 19, you will find that the taking of spoil even by violence and bloodshed, is not necessarily a crime—is not necessarily robbery and murder. It is the case of Samson when he had to give thirty changes of raiment to those who had expounded his riddle. It is said: "And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he went down to Askelon and slew thirty men of them, and took their spoil, and gave change of garments unto them which expounded the riddle." Now, notice this particularly, that Samson did all this under the ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... which you have in mind, Vespasian, whether it is to build a house or to enlarge your estate, or to increase the number of your slaves, there is granted to you a great habitation, vast acres, and a multitude of men.' Rumour had immediately seized on this riddle and now began to solve it. Nothing was more talked of, especially in Vespasian's presence: such conversation is the food ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... yet come. But I beg you to return at once to Paris, because I am in a secret affair, which concerns me personally, and which I shall intrust to you alone, and in which I need your assistance. The Countess Lamotte-Valois will give you the key to this riddle." ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... representation of truth. Truth in this form, supported by authority, appeals first of all to those elements in the human constitution which are strictly metaphysical, that is to say, to the need man feels of a theory in regard to the riddle of existence which forces itself upon his notice, a need arising from the consciousness that behind the physical in the world there is a metaphysical, something permanent as the foundation of constant change. Then it ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the place where mine once was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, .. yet two to the soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, there to a hair, do I. Is't a riddle? I should humbly call it a poser, sir. Hist, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking thing may not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where thou now standest; aye, and standing there in thy spite? In thy most solitary hours, then, dost ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... spectators had the good will to hope that they did. How he would have lived if Daniel and St. John had dreamed no dreams, one cannot conjecture. As it was, they provided the doctor with endless openings for his fancy. Since no one could solve the riddle of their prophecies, it was certain that no one could disprove his solutions. Yet these came so often to their own disproof by lapse of time, that I can only think that the good doctor hoped to die before his critical ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... panacea for the ills and delusions of life. For, call it what he would—Biblical criticism, scientific inquiry—this was his aim first and last. He was trying to pierce the secret of existence—to rede the riddle that has never been solved.—What am I? Whence have I come? Whither am I going? What meaning has the pain I suffer, the evil that men do? Can evil be included in God's scheme?—And it was well, he told himself, as he pressed forward, that the flame in him burnt unwaveringly, which ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... soft cadences are breathed through strains of music,—all is a rapid succession of hope, fear, terror, and gladness; exciting our sympathies now for the result of the merchant's danger; now for the solution of a riddle on which hangs the fate of the wealthy heiress; and now for the fugitive Jessica, who resigns her creed at the shrine ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... questioned him about the hints she had gathered on the way. He did not know the two ladies next to her, he did not even, as it chanced, know Mrs. Lorin Boulger; but he knew New York, and New York was the sphinx whose riddle ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... him that under existing entanglements, the girl's speedy death would prove the most felicitous solution of this devouring riddle, which so unexpectedly crossed his smooth path; then what meant the vehement protest of his throbbing heart, the passionate longing to snatch her from disease, and disgrace, and keep her safe forever in the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... afraid of venturing my life? No, it cannot be that. But what else, then, can be keeping me back? Perhaps a secret doubt of the practicability of the plan. My mind is confused; the whole thing has got into a tangle; I am a riddle to myself. I am worn out, and yet I do not feel any special tiredness. Is it perhaps because I sat up reading last night? Everything around is emptiness, and my brain is a blank. I look at the home pictures and am moved by them in a curious, ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... 39: Davus, not Oedipus)—Ver. 194. Alluding to the circumstance of Oedipus alone being able to solve the riddle of the Sphynx.] ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... heart into a woman's when it has need to be of flint. Sit you here on the ledge the while that I take one more turn. You will not? Then come with me, and we will make the round together, and apply our wits once more to the riddle. Until swords have put an end to me, I shall not cease to believe that it has ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... was dead, the Nazarene came and seized his seat beneath the sun, The votary of the Riddle-god, whose one is ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... other chamber; and you do not understand the cranks and the wheels here unless you know that they go through the partition and are doing something there beyond. If you shut out Eternity from our life in time, then it is an inexplicable riddle; and I, for my part, would venture to say that in that case, the men who answer the question, 'Is life worth living?' with a distinct negative, are wise. It is a tale told by an idiot, 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,' unless ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... steady eyes seemed fixed upon some point where the clouds and sea meet. She took no heed of, she did not even see, my gesture of farewell. I left her there inscrutable, a child with the face of a Sphinx. She had set me a riddle which ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... interpretation of the hermetic mystery, and of the red powder, "glistening and glorious in the sun." And the solution shone out at last, bright and amazing, as he lay quiet in the court of Avallaunius. He knew that he himself had solved the riddle, that he held in his hand the powder of projection, the philosopher's stone transmuting all it touched to fine gold; the gold of exquisite impressions. He understood now something of the alchemical symbolism; ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... riddle-me-ree, Perhaps you can tell what this riddle may be: As deep as a house, as round as a cup, And all the king's horses can't ...
— The Little Mother Goose • Anonymous
... on Lichtenberg's prophecy. But whether the end be seventy years hence, or seven hundred,—be the close of the mortal history of humanity as far distant in the future as its shadowy beginnings seem now to lie behind us,—this only we may foretell with confidence,—that the riddle of man's nature will remain unsolved. There will be that in him yet which physical laws will fail to explain,—that something, whatever it be, in himself and in the world, which science can not fathom, and which suggests the unknown possibilities of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... This gives occasion for a scene of some merit between Callidora, Bellula, and Florellus, in which, after vainly disputing of their loves, they form a sort of triple alliance under the name of Love's Riddle. A similar scene could obviously be worked with Callidora, Hylace, and Palaemon, and it is perhaps to Cowley's credit that he has avoided the obvious parallelism. Meanwhile Clariana has met the mad ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... commanded the queen sharply. "Thy wits are addled. Who is there who will read the riddle clearly? Thou, ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.... Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled; The glory, jest and riddle of the world. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... student of Nature quits the narrow workshop of his own particular inquiry, and sets out upon an excursion into the vast kingdom of philosophical investigation, he does so, doubtless, in the hope of finding the answer to that great riddle, to the solution of a small part of which he devotes his life. Those, however, whom he leaves behind him still working at their own special branch of inquiry, regard his departure with secret misgivings on his behalf, while the born citizens of the kingdom of speculation among whom he would ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... say that professed moralists and philosophers did much to help me out of the dilemma; but the riddle which history presented I found solved in the pages of Shakspeare. There the crooked appeared straight; the inaccessible, easy; the incomprehensible, plain. All I sought, I found there; his characters combine history and real life; they are complete individuals, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... boy?" asked Sir Wulfric haughtily. "Thy speech is dark, and eke scarce courteous. Unravel me this riddle!" ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... him, and lay awake a long time, musing on the past and the present. "Ah, I see," he said to himself, "why I am an object of wonder and something of awe to the people of the valley. I have lived apart from human ties, while they have grown old and ripe together. I must be a riddle to them all—a something which they have invested with an air of veneration, because I was not daily in their midst. Had it been otherwise, I should have been neither new nor fresh to them. How know I but this is God's reserve force wherewith ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... she managed to surround herself. There was something about her as cold and as pure as blue ice, and she gave the same impression of crystal clarity. All in all, hers was a baffling personality and Phillips fell asleep with the riddle of it unanswered. He awoke in the morning with it still upon ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the circumstances connected ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... lip, which she said were sure marks of high blood, and never found in the lower ranks! With a scornful expression on her face, old Hagar would listen to these remarks, and then, when sure that no one heard her, she would mutter: "Marks of blood! What nonsense! I'm almost glad I've solved the riddle, and know 'taint blood that makes the difference. Just tell her the truth once, and she'd quickly change her mind. Hester's blue, pinched nose, which makes one think of fits, would be the very essence of aristocracy, while Maggie's lip would come of the little Paddy ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... to him in my hearing this plain word: 'Man, do the dead no wrong; but, if thou dost, Be sure thou shalt have sorrow.' Thus he warned The infatuate one: ay, one whom I behold, For all may read my riddle—thou art he. ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... must have put the students to sleep, for every thing became quite still; and at last the riddle was silent. The evening breeze stirred gently, and the stars climbed silently up into the sky one after the other, until they were ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... died on Undine's lips. She found herself grappling with a new social riddle, and such surprises were always stimulating. The name of the untidy-looking young woman she had been about to repel was one of the most eminent in the impregnable quarter beyond the Seine. No one figured more largely in the Parisian chronicle ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... silhouette of the man at the window for an answer to the riddle. But Matheson's face was set, and the answer to the riddle was such as Lars Larssen could never have guessed. It lay outside the shipowner's pale of thought—beyond ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... we shall have sharp work. Our difficulty will be to prevent them from making a rush at all the windows together. If they were to get there, they could riddle us with balls." ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... or dreamed, this bird could say. Then down he shot, bounced airily along The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain: How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... be a simple and convenient solution of the riddle if the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type, to the realization of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But there is no warrant for such an expectation. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... Riddle's work on pigeons [5,6] brings us much nearer to man, and suggests the results noted by both Goldschmidt and Lillie. As in the Free-Martin cattle, there is an apparent reversal of the sex predisposition of the ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... Dying Alexander', at Florence. This well-known, beautiful, and deeply affecting head, which bears a strong resemblance to the Alexander Helios of the Capitol —especially in the treatment of the hair—has been called by Ottfried Mueller a riddle of archaeology. It is no doubt a Greek original, and one of the most interesting remains of ancient art, but we cannot take it for granted that it is intended for Alexander, and still less that it is the work of Lysippus. It is difficult to imagine that the favored and ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... "Here's a riddle," she said. "The brownie you locked into the stable that night always makes the butter. He isn't never thanked nor yet paid, but you've looked him in the face ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... headed by the industrious and indomitable Horace Greeley. His claim to the feelings of humanity should never be disputed; but as a practical man who sought to solve the riddle of every-day life he placed his practical views in the foreground. As a political economist he reasoned that slave labor was degrading to free labor; that free labor was better than slave labor, and, therefore, he most earnestly desired its abolition. Wherever you turn in his writings ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... interrupted that nap. He spoke out as strongly as the others concerning the great excellence of the likeness. He had some sheets of MS. in his hand, and said, "I've been reading what you wrote this morning, General, and it is of the utmost value; it solves a riddle that has puzzled men's brains all these years and makes the thing clear and rational." I asked what the puzzle was, and he said, "It was why Grant did not immediately lay siege to Vicksburg after capturing Port Hudson" (at least that is my recollection, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... again that feeling of unsatisfied comprehension came back to her. For the first time it struck her painfully that the son whom she idolized so much—whose life and character had been her one study and her one delight ever since the day of his birth—was nevertheless a riddle to her. That the secret of his inner self was as much hidden from her—his mother—as though she had been the merest stranger; that the life she had striven so closely to entwine with her own was nothing after ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... read. This fact raised a new problem far me to work upon, and I could but ask when these lines were written—before or after Mr. Pfeiffer's death and whether he had ever succeeded in solving the riddle he had suggested, or whether it was still a baffling mystery to him. I was so moved by the suggestion conveyed in his final and half-finished sentence, that I soon lost sight of these lesser inquiries in the more important one ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... trigger they saw—they were made to mount—in momentary apprehension that the backwoodsman, whose determined character was sufficiently seen in his face, might yet change his resolve, and with wanton hand, riddle their bodies with his bullets. It was only when they were mounted, that they drew a ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... mask is a riddle to which everyone wishes to guess the answer. Some say that he was the Duc de Beaufort: but the Duc de Beaufort was killed by the Turks at the defence of Candia, in 1669; and the man in the iron mask was at Pignerol, in 1662. Besides, how would one have arrested the Duc de Beaufort surrounded ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... how fine this has been. To have—the girls here, I know is due to your—special generosity, and some day I hope I'll have a chance to tell you what it has meant to me. Just now," he smiled broadly, "those freshies have me bound in their riddle game and I can't ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... which have remained perhaps a mystery for hundreds of years. I can conceive, even, that this might be of importance in settling the heirships of estates; but which now, only the two insulated parts of the story being known, remain a riddle, although the solution of it is actually in the world, if only these two parts could be united across the sea, like the ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Bible is not a riddle, neither inconsistent with itself; but if you take off one leg of a pair of compasses, ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... charm would be broken, and the evil spirit would no longer have control over me. When the fortune-teller's answer was brought to my father, he gave up hope, and so did I, for no one understood the meaning of such a senseless riddle. ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... not!" Rutherford's voice was like the snap of a whip. "Try it. Try it. I'll hunt you down like a wolf and riddle yore carcass." ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... I would have studied them under the X-ray as they are being studied to-day; I would have tried the Reichert blood crystal test which is being perfected now so that it will tell heredity itself. There is no scientific stone I would have left unturned until I had delved at the truth of this riddle. Fortunately it was not necessary. Simple finger prints have told me enough. And best of all, it has been in time to frustrate that devilish scheme you and Veronica ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... taken measurements; and the edge of her weapon does not swerve by a hair's breadth. Need I give you any further proofs or examine all the other details with you? Surely not. You now possess the key to the riddle; and you know as I do that only a lunatic can behave in this way, stupidly, savagely, mechanically, like a striking clock or the blade of ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... point of entering Viterbo when a detachment from the French garrison in Rome suddenly occupied the town: one of Napoleon's facing-both-ways evolutions by which he thought to save the goat and cabbages of the Italian riddle, but the final result was to lose both one and the other. Lamoriciere went home, declaring that he took his defeat less to heart than the cruel disillusions he had undergone in Rome. Some one proposed that he should go to the ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... and stopped in front of Philippe. Philippe, he half thought, had perhaps not done his utmost. Philippe perhaps had still one stage to travel. But how was Le Corbier to find out? How was he to fathom that mysterious soul and read its insoluble riddle? Le Corbier knew those men endowed with the missionary spirit and capable, in furtherance of their cause, of admirable devotion, of almost superhuman sacrifice, but also of hypocrisy, of craft, sometimes of crime. What was this Philippe Morestal's evidence worth? ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... been so may seem very strange to us who now have been told the answer to the riddle; for the upper waters of this great river were known of before Christ and spoken of by Herodotus, Pliny and Ptolemy, and its mouths navigated continuously along by the seaboard by trading vessels since the fifteenth century, but they were ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... a riddle; you are not one, you are two men; and they fight the whole time. But I know the wiser one is winning and I think the best friend you ever had was that big fellow that threatened you with the 'bone-rot' if ever you broke your word. I believe in you more and more," and impulsively ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the same. It is the purpose of the writer to attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it. The book is therefore arranged upon the positive principle of a riddle and its answer. It deals first with all the writer's own solitary and sincere speculations and then with all the startling style in which they were all suddenly satisfied by the Christian Theology. The writer regards it as amounting to a convincing ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... will do. Yes, there are precedents for that. A riddle would be quite in accordance with Court etiquette. Ask him ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... seen through the riddle that knocked me silly, Frank. That's just what it must mean—the pay-car would offer fat pickings, all in cash; and they've held up their flight to Canada just to try and gobble it. Oh! what a slick game, with Todd giving ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... grimness of the tragedy faced him. Throughout the day he knew that he had, to a large extent, prejudged Paul's case. His own inherent dislike of the man had caused him to feel sure he was guilty. Of course there were difficulties, and of course a clever counsel would mercilessly riddle the evidence which had been adduced. Nevertheless, he had felt convinced that the jury would find him guilty. There was a perfect chain of circumstantial evidence, and he, with his long experience, knew what juries were. They ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... having discovered and demonstrated this truth.[37] One asks oneself with astonishment how this same Bakounine could declare that private property was only a consequence of the principle of authority. The solution of the riddle lies in the fact that he did not understand the materialist conception of history; he was only "adulterated" ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... he knows of no leading biologist who is of a different opinion. The prince of biologists, the late Professor Haeckel, occupied this position and impregnably fortified it in several great books, especially in his "Riddle of the Universe." ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... palest gold in the grays of dawn on the mountains. As he walked leisurely up the slight natural terrace to the plaza, he halted a moment and laughed aloud boyishly at a discovery of his, for he had solved the century-old riddle of the view of El Alisal seen from the "portal" of Soledad. The portal was not anyone of the visible doors or gateways of the old mission, it was the hidden portal of the picture,—once leading to a little balcony under which the neophytes had gathered for the morning blessing ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... into two," explained Thrush, "and go on so dividing them until you come down to the indivisible unit which is the answer to the riddle. Animal or Vegetable? Vegetable or Mineral? Northern or Southern Hemisphere? Ah! I thought your childhood was not so very much ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... For as neither king nor people are at much expence to make or mend the high ways, except just about the capital cities, they are dry or wet, rough or smooth, steep or rugged, just as the weather or the soil happens to favour or befoul them.—Now, here is a riddle for your son; I know he is an adept, and will ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... a rational explanation of the universe is covered, although it does not offer an explanation of the "ultimate," or "the riddle of the universe," does insist that any view held be one that shall be based on truth and conformity to reality. It further maintains that if a view be propagated it should be held in the same position that any scientific proposition ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... while each man was a master of his own especial art, had done most of their work in cities, and when it came to matters of the fields and woods they were not to be trusted. But when David found Roger a little inclined to vaunt his superior woodcraft he set him a riddle to answer: ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... ready shelled. To have them in perfection, they must be gathered the same day that they are dressed, and be put on to boil within half an hour after they are shelled. As large and small peas cannot be boiled together, the small ones should be separated from the rest, by being passed through a riddle or coarse sieve. For a peck of young peas, which will not be more than sufficient for two or three persons, after they are shelled, set on a saucepan with a gallon of water. When it boils, put in the peas with a table-spoonful of salt. Skim it well, keep them quickly boiling from twenty to thirty ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... baggage was the pair of snowshoes. It was the season of light travel. A single Englishman touring the world as the crow flies occupied the car. He looked at me so askance that I made an opportunity of talking to him. I should like to read his "Travels" to see what he made out of the riddle. In similar circumstances, and without explanation, I had fun talking French and swapping boulevard reminiscences with a member of a Parisian theatrical troupe making a long jump through northern Wisconsin. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... is not conclusion; A sequel stands beyond, Invisible, as music, But positive, as sound. It beckons and it baffles; Philosophies don't know, And through a riddle, at the last, Sagacity must go. To guess it puzzles scholars; To gain it, men have shown Contempt ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... read this riddle to his satisfaction—in as far, that is, as it was satisfactory to feel still more certain that Roddy's ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... that something inevitable had happened which would admit of no interference. Gorgo, as she freed herself from Constantine's embrace, stood strangely solemn and unapproachable. To the simple matron she was an inscrutable riddle to which she could find no clue; but she was pleased, nevertheless, when Gorgo came up to her and kissed her hand. She could not utter a word, for she felt that whatever she might say, it would not be the right thing; and it was a real relief to her to busy herself over the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... which was refused by the players, and was, therefore, given by him to Mr. Bullock, who, having more interest, made some slight alterations, and brought it upon the stage, under the title of Woman's a Riddle[57], but allowed the unhappy author no ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... made known to the mayor of Morganton the cause and the purpose of my mission in North Carolina. I assured him that my chief had given me full power, and would render me every assistance, financial and otherwise, to solve the riddle and relieve the neighborhood of its anxiety ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... not answer, and he got stiffly to his feet. He was hot and more tired than he had been since he had left the hospital. Because he was just as sure as Ricky that the key to their riddle must be directly before them at that moment, he ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... to go. And we went to sleep at night, because we felt tired. All our existence seemed to be only for the sake of discipline; and that discipline, again, seemed a thing in itself. But the moment they told us of mobilization and war, our riddle was solved. It suddenly became clear to us why we had been caught and brought to where we were, and why we had been suffering all the time. It looked as if year in, year out, we had been walking in the darkness of some cave, and all of a sudden our path became ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... first and fifteenth of the month. Life is indeed dramatic,—at least it has seemed so to me. Some men say that life has no meaning; that men are the playthings of blind forces that crush them, and there is no answer to the riddle. This is nonsense. I admit that we are in the grip of blind forces. But we are not blind. We can not change those forces. If we fight against them they will crush us. But by going with them, guiding our careers along their courses, they will ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... assembled to the number of upwards of two hundred, including Gellie Duncan, Agnes Sampson, Euphemia Macalzean, one Barbara Napier, and several warlocks; and each embarking in a riddle or sieve, they sailed "over the ocean very substantially." After cruising about for some time, they met with the fiend, bearing in his claws a cat, which had been previously drawn nine times through the fire. This he delivered to one of the warlocks, telling ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... it, even if poor Lochaber King had competed. But,—oh, I wish I could make head or tail of any of the things that have happened, today! How do you suppose it all started, anyhow, dear?" she asked, turning to her husband for help in the riddle. ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... woman and half lion, she crouched always by a precipice near the highway, and put the same mysterious question to every passer-by. None had ever been able to answer, and none had ever lived to warn men of the riddle; for the Sphinx fell upon every one as he failed, and hurled him down the abyss, to be ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... short, we may not throw the gospels into the waste-paper basket, or put them away on the fiction shelf of our libraries. I venture to reply that we shall be, on the contrary, in the position of the man in Bunyan's riddle who found that "the more he threw away, the more he had. "We get rid, to begin with, of the idolatrous or iconographic worship of Christ. By this I mean literally that worship which is given to pictures and statues of him, and to finished and unalterable ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... great choice of very delicious fruits. We wondered whence this inexhaustible abundance, particularly of wild fruits, came; for in the forest clearings which we had passed through pasturage and agriculture were evidently only subordinate industries. At the end of the second day's march, however, the riddle was solved; for when we had reached the considerable river called the Guaso Amboni, which falls into the Indian Ocean, we found spreading out before us farther than the eye could reach a high plateau which, so far as we could see, had the character ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... giving me a riddle to guess, and I never guess riddles. I won't even try at it. But they ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet will go on talking pertly about God in nature, and of their ability to find themselves in him by studying him in his works? God in nature, without Christ, is a riddle, a ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... had gone differently these past months,—no, from his birth and from hers, too,—if every circumstance of society had not conspired to put them apart, who knows! They might have solved a riddle or two together and been happy. But it was all foolish speculation now, and it was well that their differences should be emphasized at this last chance meeting; that she should be hostile to him. He summed the matter up thus, and, as if answering her ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of the causes and results of Pessimism. It can touch the practical side of the riddle of life by asking certain questions, the answers to which lie within the province of human experience. Among these are ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... the religion of Christ do not, however, disturb the faith of Browning in the Christian revelation of Divine love. In Cleon he exhibits the failure of Paganism, even in its forms of highest culture, to solve the riddle of life and to answer the requirements of the human spirit. All that regal power liberally and wisely used can confer belongs to Protus in his Tyranny; all that genius, and learning and art can confer ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... troubled him, Michael tried to solve the riddle of how Millicent had gained her knowledge of his movements. Freddy's words had come back to him—that the fair Millicent had not come to their camp to learn of his engagement to Margaret! She had come to find out something which was more ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... silent land, removed from all human company but Marc'antonio's, with no clock but the sun and no calendar but the creeping change of the season upon the macchia, what wonder if I forgot human probabilities at times in piecing and unpiecing solutions of a riddle which itself ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... trouble. Dear, dear,' the doctor shook his head sadly, 'I shall never understand human nature; there is always an abyss below an abyss, and the firmest seeming ground is usually quagmire when you come to step on it. George Pendle is a riddle which would puzzle the Sphinx. Hum! hum! another fabulous beast. Well, well, I can only wait and watch until I discover the truth, and then—well, what then?—why, nothing!' And Graham, having talked himself into a cul-de-sac of thought, shook his head furiously and strove to ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... We shall guess it all too soon; Failure brings no kind of stigma - Dance we to another tune! String the lyre and fill the cup, Lest on sorrow we should sup; Hop and skip to Fancy's fiddle, Hands across and down the middle - Life's perhaps the only riddle That we shrink from ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... levelled dead at their heads. 'See that you stow that main-topsail in a brace of shakes! And you lubbers below, wake up there!' he exclaimed over the fore-hatch, firing a shot down below as he spoke. 'Wake up there and on deck; or, I'll riddle every mother's son of you before I count ten. You, Black Harry, I know you've set this pretty little scheme going! Up with you, or by the Lord Harry, your namesake, I'll put a bullet ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... explanation of this last riddle, except, "Dat mean, if you go on de leff, go to 'struction, and if you go on de right, go to ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... that his curiosity about them could never be quite satisfied. Other mysteries come and go, but the gipsy mystery stays with us, and was to Borrow a source of endless content. For after sharpening his wits on the ethnological riddle, he could refresh himself with the psychical aspect of the matter, discovering in them the incarnation of one essential human quality, incompletely present in all men. They are the perfect vagabonds; but the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... sake, and in the name of One Whom mayhap ye will know one day. He died that ye should live! Bear that in mind and ponder on it. Mayhap ye will find the solution to that riddle. That such as you should live in eternity, therefore did He die.... When ye have understood this and can explain the value of your lives as compared with His, come and tell it to the praefect of Rome and he will shower on ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of mystification—religious, political, scientific and artistic," suggested Gouache. "The people of that day will guess the Sphynx's riddle." ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... Middlemount before anything of the kind should happen. She gave Milray these impressions of Clementina in the letter she wrote to thank him for her, and to scold him for sending the girl to her. She accused him of wishing to get off on her a riddle which he could not read himself; but she owned that the charm of Clementina's mystery was worth a thousand times the fatigue of trying to guess her out and that she was more and more ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... her, and they were civil to her for his sake. Curiosity was very much excited, but entirely baffled; no one, of course, dared speak to P. on the subject, and no other means could be found of solving the riddle. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... of thirty the face of a woman is a book written in a foreign tongue, which one may still translate in spite of all the feminisms of the idiom; but on passing her fortieth year a woman becomes an insoluble riddle; and if any one can see through an old woman, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Life and Being, Thou wouldst see through Birth and Death. Thou wouldst solve the eternal Riddle, Thou, a speck, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... half-forgotten dream. The blank space in her memory remained as a patch of darkness through which her thread of life had run indeed but of which no record remained. She had ceased to attempt to read the riddle, half in dread and half in sheer helplessness. It did not seem to matter. Surely, as Max had once said to her, ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Christian baron of France had pointed out with ill-disguised contempt, but whose plans and purposes had now acquired such world-wide importance that grave diplomats and shrewd churchmen esteemed the difficult riddle of her sphinx-like countenance and character a worthy subject of prolonged study. Not far from their royal brother, were two children: the elder, a boy of ten years, Edward Alexander, a few years later to appear on the pages of history under the altered ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... parasites of field and meadow so far from being hurtful, are well worth cultivating for the good they do. For a long time the men who devoted themselves to the study of peas, beans, clovers, and other plants of the pulse family, were confronted with a riddle they could not solve. These plants all manage to enrich themselves with compounds of nitrogen, which make them particularly valuable as food, and these compounds often exist in a degree far exceeding ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... had gone, Dom Manuel went again to the farthest window, opened it, and looked out once more. He shook his head, as one who gives up a riddle. He armed himself, and rode over to Perdigon, whither sainted King Ferdinand had come to consult with Manuel about contriving the assassination of the Moorish general, Al-Mota-wakkil. This matter Dom Manuel deputed to Guivric the Sage; and ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... crumbled to pieces at my feet. That transient vision of the beautiful half reclaimed me from my doubts; the darkness of the succeeding night taught me juster views of the miseries of man and the incomprehensible riddle of his existence; and I half blushed at my glimpse of ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... sees only efficient causes at work in it. Dualism, on the contrary, holds that nature and spirit, matter and force, the world and God, inorganic and organic nature, are separate and independent existences. Cf. The Riddle of the Universe chapter 12.) At this point the science of human evolution has a direct and profound bearing on the foundations of philosophy. Modern anthropology has, by its astounding discoveries during the second half of the nineteenth century, ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... the as yet virgin domain of entomology he unravelled the riddle of the marvellous republic of the bees, and was able to expound and interpret a large number of those tiny lives which every one had hitherto despised, and which indeed they continued to despise until the ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... catch sight of them," said Mr. Edison, "we shall have to riddle the car on the chance of ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... Legislature has no constitutional right to exclude slavery. And I have argued and said that for men who did intend that the people of the Territory should have the right to exclude slavery absolutely and unconditionally, the voting down of Chase's amendment is wholly inexplicable. It is a puzzle—a riddle. But I have said that with men who did look forward to such a decision, or who had it in contemplation, that such a decision of the Supreme Court would or might be made, the voting down of that amendment would be perfectly rational and intelligible. It would keep Congress from coming ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... Leviticus. But it was about the wave-offering, and the sin-offering, and the burnt-offering. That was not it, and so he went from book to book until he had reached the twelfth and thirteenth verses of the fourteenth chapter of the book of Judges. He was just reading in that place about Samson's riddle, when his mamma called him ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... since our Maker Himself cannot undo the work of yesterday, or obliterate events embalmed in vanished time, yet there is always the future; and if we could but read the past aright, which we never can, then the future would prove less of a painful riddle than mankind generally ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... "That is a riddle, but I think I see an answer at any rate to half of it. Then the marriage would still take ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... I thinking about?" was the way Thad took himself to task presently; "trying to find the answer to a riddle by bothering my brains, when it ought to be written here on the sand as plain ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... outside a tenement door, awaiting the return of the doctor from a visit to a poor sick soul inside the tenement, he became deeply moved by the ragged children playing in the gutters and reaching into garbage barrels for crusts of bread. He said: "Ah! here's the riddle of civilization. I wish I could help to ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... fiercer grapple joyn'd, Throttl'd at length in the Air, expir'd and fell; So after many a foil the Tempter proud, Renewing fresh assaults, amidst his pride 570 Fell whence he stood to see his Victor fall. And as that Theban Monster that propos'd Her riddle, and him, who solv'd it not, devour'd; That once found out and solv'd, for grief and spight Cast her self headlong from th' Ismenian steep, So strook with dread and anguish fell the Fiend, And to his crew, that sat consulting, brought Joyless ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... solve the riddle. A door which she had often noticed, but never seen opened, now stood wide open, and the old quadrangular garden, which was James Steadman's particular care, smiled at her in the golden evening light. Seen thus, this little old Dutch garden seemed to Mary ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... you: To the rich men that eat up a realm there cometh a time when they whom they eat up, that is the poor, seem poorer than of wont, and their complaint goeth up louder to the heavens; yet it is no riddle to say that oft at such times the fellowship of the poor is waxing stronger, else would no man have heard his cry. Also at such times is the rich man become fearful, and so waxeth in cruelty, and of that cruelty do people misdeem that it is power and might ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... past. From this flight path he could determine where they would have hit the earth—if they were meteorites. They would search this area, and if they found parts of a meteorite they would have the answer to the green fireball riddle. ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... destroyer signaled she was almost abreast of them, but about two miles away to the north. Her message then could be read by all the boys. The words it spelled out, however, were a complete riddle: ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... Why? Porter" (a respectable Samoan trader) "told him that he would riddle him if he came inside his fence, and the scoundrel knows me well enough not to come into my place with anything but a civil word on his foul tongue; but then you see, Porter and I are Americans. If either or both of us shot the man no commander of ...
— The Flemmings And "Flash Harry" Of Savait - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... was the continued inactivity of Moira's force in the Solent and the Channel Islands. The reports of an intended French invasion form a wholly inadequate excuse for his inaction. His troops could have rendered valuable service either in Brittany, Flanders, or at Toulon. The riddle of their inaction has never been solved. Ultimately the blame must rest with Pitt, Dundas, and ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... ambition of France and the cautious reactionary despotism of Spain, remained suspended. Students are left, face to face with the sixteenth century, to decipher an inscription that lacks its leading verb, to puzzle over a riddle whereof the solution is hidden from us by the ruin of a people. It must ever be an undecided question whether the Italians, undisturbed by foreign interference, could have passed beyond the artificial and exceptional stage of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... kind Gessina," he answered, taking her hand. "But this is a riddle that I cannot explain. Art thou in the habit of entering the palace ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... are rather stupid to have given up the riddle?" she asked, as she and her escort turned away and stepped out again ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... look beyond them we might read the Riddle of the Universe. I think we could—I think so!" Here was the undercurrent of sadness again, sounding through an odd intensity of tone. "Surely, there is something beyond them. There must be! What ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... memoir so just and tender which, he prefixes to his son's literary remains, remarks that all his son's talk about this old desperate riddle of the origin and significance of evil, like the talk of Leibnitz about it, resolved itself into an unproved assumption of the necessity of evil. In truth there is little sign that either Arthur Hallam ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... it goes far toward explaining both the physiological and the structural gradations and relations between the two kingdoms, and the arrangement of all their forms in groups subordinate to groups, all within a few great types; that it reads the riddle of abortive organs and of morphological conformity, of which no other theory has ever offered a scientific explanation, and supplies a ground for harmonizing the two fundamental ideas which naturalists and philosophers conceive to have ruled the organic world, though they could not reconcile ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... previous millennium. With the city before me I could well believe that, but I am very curious to know what some of the changes have been. To make a beginning somewhere, for the subject is doubtless a large one, what solution, if any, have you found for the labor question? It was the Sphinx's riddle of the nineteenth century, and when I dropped out the Sphinx was threatening to devour society, because the answer was not forthcoming. It is well worth sleeping a hundred years to learn what the right answer was, if, indeed, you have found ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy |
