"Puzzle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a puzzle to decide which appeared first, the egg out of which the fowl was hatched, or the hen which laid the egg; and it is an equal puzzle to the anthropologist to say whether man was first brought into existence as a babe or in maturity. In both ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... character and aspect of its original native vegetation. Nevertheless, even in the matter of its plants and trees, Australia must still be considered a very old-fashioned and stick-in-the-mud continent. The strange puzzle-monkeys, the quaint-jointed casuarinas (like horsetails grown into big willows), and the park-like forests of blue gum-trees, with their smooth stems robbed of their outer bark, impart a marvellously antiquated ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... "Indians" of South and Central America they were always on excellent terms, and the Californians proffered divine honours to Francis Drake. These are paradoxes precisely similar in kind to those which so often puzzle amiable and mature observers of the British schoolboy to-day. Broadly, they were governed by instincts and impulses rather than by reasoned ethical theory, instincts occasionally barbaric but for the most part frank and generous; and ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Coal, wrote: "...I sometimes think it could not have been formed at all. Old Sir Anthony Carlisle once said to me gravely that he supposed Megatherium and such cattle were just sent down from heaven to see whether the earth would support them, and I suppose the coal was rained down to puzzle mortals. You must work the ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... inferences, be denominated a gang of desperate robbers. But it seldom happens that robbers in the vicinity of a rich and populous city are to be found in a state of such utter destitution; and if such were really the case, it might puzzle the beholder to discover what possible inducement they could have to continue in so unprofitable ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... "It's a puzzle," she went on. "I think there must be something in you of the weakling, you know, something that appeals to the mothering instinct in women. I know that my first feeling for you was that I wanted to help you. Tell me what ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... see your sleek muzzle in front! It will puzzle Your critics, my boy, to pick holes in you then: There's howling "HISTORICUS,"—he's but a sorry cuss! WEG, too, that grandest of all grand old men; He's ridden some races; of chances and paces, Of crocks versus cracks he did ought to be judge. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... this question with the greater earnestness. "And why has she given me a most violent desire towards sculpture and an equally violent desire to leave off work directly I begin it, eh?... Let's have some more coffee. I put it to you, these things puzzle me, Ponderevo. They dishearten me. They ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... and keen now, was dovetailing together the pieces of the puzzle. Those who had originally planned the crime had in some way discovered that the Rat, in the actual theft, had forestalled them. Possibly, for instance, bent on the same errand, they had seen the Rat leaving the building; then, finding the safe already looted, they had put two ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... the "door" that gave them the greatest trouble. The opening by which they entered the hollow was about four feet high and a foot and a half across, and both boys looked at it a long time before they could see a way to solve the puzzle. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... the shelter of a hovel by the roadside, while the horses were baiting, a party of the fanatics watched us with growing malignity and a truculent interchange of sentiments of an evidently unfriendly nature. To puzzle them as to our status, I took the pains to repeat in conversation with my colleague the formula of adherence to the faith as it is in Islam, a scrap of Arabic I had learned in Crete, the repetition of which, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... the living British Constitution, are cold, crude, and insufficient to a degree that makes them deceptive. Take them, for example, as represented, fairly enough, by Voltaire: the picture drawn by him is for us nothing but a puzzle:— ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... the terrestrial workshop, but (except his soft hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a still intelligence) called upon for little voluntary movement there. Hitherto, accordingly, his aspect is rather generic, that of an incipient Philosopher and Poet in the abstract; perhaps it would puzzle Herr Heuschrecke himself to say wherein the special Doctrine of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. For with Gneschen, as with others, the Man may indeed stand pictured in the Boy (at least all the pigments are there); yet only some half of the Man stands in the Child, or ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... big a puzzle for me," he answered. "Five minutes ago I would have said three hundred at the utmost, but I ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... responsible for everything. For how much more, how many other changes, she would be responsible the future only could answer. And the future would answer in its own good, or bad, time. My conundrum "What are we going to do with her?" was as much of a puzzle as ever. For my part I gave it up. Sufficient unto the day was the ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Then he began to puzzle about a likeness to somebody he knew. He had remarked this before, but the likeness was faint and eluded him. Lighting his pipe, he tried to concentrate his thoughts, and by and by made an abrupt movement. He had it! When he was in British Columbia, engaged on the ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... and showed it to my mistress, who told me, that wenches like me might spend their time better; that she never knew any of the readers that had good designs in their heads; that she could always find something else to do with her time, than to puzzle over books; and did not like that such a fine lady should sit ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... 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 ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... be done? It would never do to wake up poor tired father, and bring him out in the cold too. So she stood there trying to puzzle out some ...
— Dick and His Cat and Other Tales • Various
... enjoyed the joke perpetrated by Madaline, in her suspicion of a possible goat farm being tucked away in the mountains, thence Maid Mary and the pompous Reda were wont to lug the roots; at the same time she felt unequal to a better guess at the puzzle, for it was now conspicuously clear that roots, all kinds of roots, were being gathered continuously by the little ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... then resolve this puzzle? He the birthday-wit, For so we thought him—keener yet, if aught is so— Becomes a dunce more boorish e'en than hedge-born boor, If e'er he faults on verses; yet in heart is then 15 Most happy, writing verses, happy past compare, So sweet his ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... Raised in extremes, and in extremes decryed, With oaths affirmed, with dying vows denied; Nor weighed nor winnowed by the multitude, But swallowed in the mass unchewed and crude. Some truth there was, but dashed and bruised with lies, To please the fools, and puzzle all the wise. Succeeding times did equal folly call. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... that attracted him most, for it was full of toys of the most fascinating kind. A rocking-horse as big as a pony, the finest dolls' house you ever saw, boxes of tea-things, boxes of bricks—both the wooden and the terra-cotta sorts—puzzle maps, dominoes, chessmen, draughts, every kind of toy or game that you have ever had or ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... was the smallest part of the matter, and it still remains a puzzle not only how Burke was able to maintain so handsome an establishment, but how he could ever suppose it likely that he would be able to maintain it. He counted, no doubt, on making some sort of income by farming. The Irish estate, which he had inherited from his brother, ...
— Burke • John Morley
... dear; but what can puzzle you about him? He seems to me the most simple and charming old gentleman I have seen in this house for ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... pole was without any limbs or appurtenances, but around the space were gathered a score of figures in rapid motion, the meaning of whose actions was a puzzle to the white ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... they could succeed. We know that Glinda is the most complete mistress of magic who has ever existed, and she was wise enough to guess that the clever but evil magician who had enchanted Prince Bobo had used a spell that would puzzle any ordinary wizard or sorcerer to break; therefore she had given the matter much shrewd thought and hoped she had conceived a plan that would succeed. But because she was not positive of success she would ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... was, in a sense, the Bible of the Greeks, and as society improved in morals, and thought was directed more and more fearlessly towards religious questions, the puzzle as to the immoralities of the gods became acute. The religious and intellectual developments of the sixth century B.C. led to various ways of explaining the old stories. Sophocles is conciliatory, conceiving religion in a sunny good ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... he gives it up, Jehu takes the reins in hand; mounts rapidly to his seat; adjusts the "apron;" glances backward; gets the signal from the guard, who has just jumped up—bugle in hand—behind; arranges the "ribbons" in his well-gloved hand; produces a sound, somehow, with his tongue, that would puzzle the most skilful printer in the world to print phonetically, but which a Pole or a Russian would possibly understand if printed "tzchk;" gently shakes the reins, and we ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... wrenched his thought from his present urgency, and brought it to focus upon a puzzle which now seemed oddly like an ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... many things in Hillsborough likely to puzzle a stranger. Little Compton observed that the young men, no matter how young they might be, were absorbed in politics. They had the political history of the country at their tongues' ends, and the discussions they carried on were interminable. ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... and money; and many times it was a puzzle to find the latter, though she had been drawing a slight advance in salary for several months, and Morton, by working in the college laboratory at odd hours, was now earning ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... is more difficult to separate it, as that also has indusiate glands. The collector needs to study authentic specimens and have in mind the type, with its rather long, narrow blade as an aid to the verbal description, and even then he will often find it an interesting puzzle. Shaded swamps ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... hallmark of such persons is that they have found, and come into, their own. There is a sign upon the face and in the eyes. Having somehow discovered the 'piece' that makes them free of the whole amazing puzzle, they know where they belong and, therefore, whither they are bound: more, they are definitely en route. The littlenesses of existence that plague the majority pass ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... many depicted on these walls, and I do not think, Henry, we are first rate classics;—and yet it would be difficult to puzzle us, in naming the story whence these frescoes have their birth. Look at this Latona—and Leda—and the Ariadne abbandonata—and this must certainly be the blooming Hebe. Ah! and look at this little niche! This grinning little deity—the facsimile of an Indian idol—must express ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... disposed a person who regards certain things and events as being what they are through designed laws (whatever that expression means), but as not themselves specially ordained, or who, in another connection, believes in general, but not in particular Providence. We could sadly puzzle him with questions; but in return he might equally puzzle us. Then, to deny that anything was specially designed to be what it is, is one proposition; while to deny that the Designer supernaturally or immediately made it so, is another: though the reviewers ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... through idle curiosity to know the number of the Angels; nor for the solution of a logical puzzle, nor for that of a question in metaphysics, or ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... may be remembered, fell on a Saturday. In their ambition to reproduce ancient Judaism (and this ambition is the key to their whole puzzle) the Mormons are Sabbatarians of a strictness which would delight Lord Shaftesbury. Accordingly, in order that their festivities might not encroach on the early hours of the Sabbath, they had the ball on Fourth-of-July eve, instead of the night of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... hear of Howe in Boston, working in the shop of Ari Davis, an eccentric maker and repairer of fine machinery. Here the young mechanic heard of the desirability of a sewing machine and began to puzzle over the problem. Many an inventor before him had attempted to make sewing machines and some had just fallen short of success. Thomas Saint, an Englishman, had patented one fifty years earlier; and about this very time a Frenchman named Thimmonier was working eighty sewing machines making ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... did I set my brain to puzzle out some way of escaping this horrible infliction. Was it not possible to give them the slip, somehow, somewhere? I took the Colonel's hint, and pretended to take refuge in sleep, and at last, I believe, I dozed off. ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths
... to produce perfectly literal translations. Her version of Lavater's "Physiognomy," now unknown, was but an abridgment. She purposely "naturalized" the "Elements of Morality," she explains, in order not to "puzzle children by pointing out modifications of manners, when the grand principles of morality were to be fixed on a broad basis." She made free with the originals that they might better suit English readers, and this she frankly confesses in her Prefaces. Her translations are, in consequence, proofs ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... she said, with a smile that served to puzzle rather than to delight him. He was more than ever convinced that she was playing with him. "But pray do not look so gloomy, Mr. Schmidt, I shall not make any demands upon your time while I am ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... "River Clyde" had been a great puzzle to the Turks. She was not long aground when the guns on Kum Kale, across the Dardanelles, opened on us, and this fire was kept up the whole day—on us and us only as far as I could make out. It took them some time to get our range, and for a considerable time we were not hit, all the shells ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... head, at last, as though forced to give up hope of finding any positive signs pointing to the solution of the puzzle, the officer remounted, slowly. "I can't make it out," he said. "The road is so dry and cut up with tracks, and the trail is so gravelly, that there are no clear signs at all. Come, we better get back to Carleton's, and start the boys out. When Milt returns from ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... purposes, miracle followed as an occasional auxiliary. The former served to bewilder the mind, the latter to puzzle the senses. The one was the lingo, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... usual in a safe burrow, I have noticed Ugly—who, after a very short experience, had learned not to waste his time in vain digging—turn toward us with a waddling, disconsolate trot, and having approached a few rods, stop and sit down to revolve the puzzle over in his mind. He would look where the rabbit had housed himself, then drop his head, cock up an ear, and cast an inquiring glance toward us, as much as to say: "Why, do tell Ugly why you did not shoot that old ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... Most of the species have a curious buff-coloured spot on the back, rounded or oval in shape and often with a darker border, which seems placed there on purpose to make them conspicuous; and this was a great puzzle to naturalists, because the long coarse gray or greenish hair was evidently like tree-moss and therefore protective. But an old writer, Baron von Slack, in his Voyage to Surinam (1810), had already explained the matter. He says: "The colour and even the shape of ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... with me as I with her—though this was in a poor way enough—I must think well of her also. Wherefore, being obliged thus to think of one another, it would be likely enough that there would be pretence of love on both sides—and so things would be bad. Whereupon the puzzle in my mind grew more tangled yet, and I waxed savage, being ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... to puzzle him, Who never knew their force, Because his unfreed spirit kept A low and ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... confounded temple steps! How it chanced that I escaped With whole vertebrae will puzzle ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... the Werewolves, made wonderfully credible and told with great skill and feeling. This is far from being an ordinary detective novel. Mr. Biss is on brand new ground and will puzzle every reader till the mystery is at last solved by the right man—the mystery of the baffling murders ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... all this, so much radiant joy over the disposal of a baby, had never entered into any previous negotiation, and Mr. Bingle was quite carried away by the novelty of the situation. Never before had the ceremony resolved itself into an enigma, a puzzle, so to speak, in which it was his privilege to make ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... a native, and knew what was idiomatic, Sarah, with her clumsy pronunciation, had further insight into grammar, and asked perplexing questions; if she played admirably and with facility, Sarah could puzzle her with the science of music; if her drawing were ever so effective and graceful, Sarah's less sightly productions had correct details that put hers to shame, and, for mere honesty's sake, and to keep up her dignity, she was obliged to work hard, and recur to the good grounding ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a puzzle! It had never occurred to me that I did not know my way. Not a human being was to be seen in the quiet early morning whom I could question, and right before me the road divided into many roads, which went on far, far over the highest mountains, as though to the very end of the world—so ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... always called out to Sally Ann, "I'll tend your loom, if you'll look after this." Sally Ann never failed to locate the trouble or to untangle the yarn. Yet she was never made overseer, and this continued to puzzle Susan.[1] ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... and dissected a melolontha as exquisitely as Strauss Durckheim himself ever did it? So the Master, recalling these studies of his and certain difficult and disputed points at which he had labored in one of his entomological paroxysms, put a question which there can be little doubt was intended to puzzle the Scarabee, and perhaps,—for the best of us is human (I am beginning to love the old Master, but he has his little weaknesses, thank Heaven, like the rest of us),—I say perhaps, was meant to show that some folks knew as ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... contour of her face, the rather odd trick she had of shaking back the straying tresses of her dark, glossy hair, and, above all, that quick smile with which she greeted any flash of humor, and which produced a fascinating dimple in her cheek, all served to puzzle and stimulate him; while admiration of her so apparent womanliness began as instantly to replace the vague curiosity he had felt toward her as an actress. She was different from what he had imagined, with absolutely nothing ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... British flag at the gaff. That will puzzle him for a while longer. Well, old friend, I must go aft. It's likely we won't both of us come out of this little affair alive, so good-by, and God bless you. You 've been a good friend to me, Bentley, ever since I was a child, and I doubt I 've requited you ill enough," he said, reaching ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... Perhaps I puzzle my head a great while about it, but not being able to find out, I sit down easy and satisfied, and say, 'Well, I don't much concern myself about it; it is better to be so than L18 missing; I cannot tell where it lies, but let it lie where it will, here is the ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... Castle. It would be possible for any one to creep up to the barn at night, to push open the somewhat frail windows or equally frail door, and to accomplish that deed which had already been attempted. Nora knew well that she must act, she must do something—what, was the puzzle. Squire O'Shanaghgan was one of the most generous, open-hearted, and affectionate of men. His generosity was proverbial; he was a prime favorite with his tenants; but he had, like many another Irishman of his type, a ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... all I write grammar as I speak, to make my meaning known, and a solecism in point of composition, like a Scotch word in speaking, is indifferent to me. I never learned grammar; and not only Sir Hugh Evans but even Mrs. Quickly might puzzle me about Giney's case and horum harum horum.[253] I believe the Bailiff in The Good-natured Man is not far wrong when he says, "One man has one way of expressing himself, and another another, and that is all the difference between them."[254] Went to Huntly Burn to-day and looked at the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the present time, about 600,000 aliens are coming to America yearly. What is the result? I was invited to meet a distinguished German visiting in New York last month, and at the dinner a young lady who sat by my side said to me, "I wish I could puzzle him." "Why?" I asked, in amazement. "Oh," was her reply, "he looks so cram full of knowledge; I would like to take him down." "Ah," I said. "Ask him which is the third largest German city in the world. It is New York; he will never guess it." She did so, and I assure you he ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous
... spoke to his sister-in-law, Miss Hogarth, about his fear that he had not sufficiently concealed his tracks in the latest numbers. Yet, when he died in June, 1870, leaving three completed numbers still unpublished, he left his secret as a puzzle to the curious. Many efforts have been made to decipher his purpose, especially his intentions as to the hero. Was Edwin Drood ...
— The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot • Andrew Lang
... that if he had had night binoculars he would have seen the iceberg earlier. / We ourselves believe that this is the most feasible explanation of the tradition. / This would appear to offer a feasible explanation of the scaffold puzzle.' ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... dear boy!), is that you?" said Betto; "there's glad I am! You are late to-night, and I was beginning to puzzle." ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... had such a strange expression—puzzle and amusement, and something else. He came ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... year, and longer, his sense of the persons around him is in this stage. The incessant "why?" with which he greets any action affecting him, or any information given him, is witness to the simple puzzle of the apparent capriciousness of persons. Of course he can not understand "why"; so the simple fact to him is that mamma will or won't, he knows not beforehand which. He is unable to anticipate the treatment in detail, and he has not of course learned any principles of ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... established for generations, he has left the tradition and the discipline which have made him what he is. The necessary readjustments are immensely difficult. For the first generation they are largely a dumb puzzle, or a dull, aching homesickness or a gray laborious life whose outcome must be often strangely different from their dreams, but for the second generation the whole experience is a heady adventure in freedom not easy to analyze though social workers generally are agreed ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... of his daughter Coronis. The actions of gods were not to be questioned, in Dante's opinion, even though the gods turned out to be false Jugghanaut is as good as any, while he lasts. It is an ethico-theological puzzle, involving very nice questions; but at any rate, had our poet been a Brahmin of Benares, we know how he would have written about ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... forced to use a great deal of diligence before I can spring anything to my mind, whereas in town, whilst I am following one character, it is ten to one but I am crossed in my way by another, and put up such a variety of odd creatures in both sexes, that they foil the scent of one another, and puzzle the chace. My greatest difficulty in the country is to find sport, and in town to chuse it. In the mean time, as I have given a whole month's rest to the cities of London and Westminster, I promise myself abundance of new ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... and one of them tackled Fred. He went into battle very promptly, the wagon jumping and rattling until it turned bottom up. Re-enforced by Uncle Eb's cane he soon saw the heels of his aggressor and stood growling savagely. He was like the goal in a puzzle maze all wound and tangled in his harness and it took some time to get his face before him and his ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... and speak to him; but we found Hawthorne very different." Of course we had to tell this on our return, and Whittier laughed heartily. Mrs. Thaxter said, "Reserved was no word for it;" and Whittier added, "Hawthorne was a strange puzzle. I never felt quite sure whether I knew him or not. He never seemed to be doing anything, and yet he did not like to be disturbed at it." He disliked to hear people say that Hawthorne wrote the life of General Pierce for the sake of a government office. They were old college friends, and ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... time he began to notice the words that showed dimly through the stain, began to read them, to puzzle them out, as if they ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... nature. Mind is One and at the same time, Many. Subjectively, it is ONE. Objectively; many. So by looking impartially into "yourself" in the calm light of the intellect and through silent introspection, you will always find a clue to the working bases of other minds. Each man is a puzzle and most of all are YOU a puzzle unto yourself. Solve either and you have solved ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... not wonder that it has been hard to make thee understand the first, the nature of it, and the cause why most men are born to it; as for the second, it would be treason for thee and me to do more than whisper it here, and sigh for it when none are listening; but the third need hardly puzzle thee; thy hookah [Footnote: Hookah: a kind of pipe for smoking tobacco, used in Eastern Europe and Asia.] is bright with it; all thy jewels are set in it; gold is inlaid in the ivory of thy bath; thy cup ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... a puzzle," the giant responded, thoughtfully. "I do not see how you could ride on a bicycle even if you had one, and you certainly can not walk far in your ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... cried Bridgie, laughing. "He never troubles himself about anything, and he has it all fitted up like a puzzle. Esmeralda is to marry a duke, Jack a countess in her own right, and meself a millionaire manufacturer, who will be so flattered at marrying an O'Shaughnessy that he will be proud to house Pixie into the bargain. Pat and Miles are to go to London ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... when T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., sneaks out, bearing a football, like an amateur cracksman making a getaway; but when you appear, imitating a Nihilist about to hurl a bomb—say, what's the answer to the puzzle, old man?" ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... and historians have expressed a blank and utter amazement at the effect which Swift's letters produced. They have chosen to regard it as a mere historical curiosity, a sort of political paradox and puzzle. They have described the Irish people at the time as under the spell of something like sorcery. Even in our own days, Mr. Gladstone, in a speech delivered to the House of Commons, treated the convulsion caused by Swift's letters and Wood's ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... believing, they say, and what they can't see, some men won't in the least give credit to. Neverthless, chief, that isn't quite as good reason as it mayat first seem. You believe in the Great Spirit, I know, and yet, I conclude, it would puzzle you to show where ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... seems to have been a sad puzzle to the hunters, who hardly knew how to come at so valuable a piece of game. Some described the horn as movable at the will of the animal, a kind of small sword, in short, with which no hunter who was not exceedingly cunning in fence could have a chance. Others ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of Mrs. Wragge's face as she spoke those words roused her to a sense of present things. "My poor dear!" she said; "I puzzle you, don't I? Never mind what I say—all girls talk nonsense, and I'm no better than the rest of them. Come! I'll give you a treat. You shall enjoy yourself while the captain is away. We will have a long drive by ourselves. Put on your smart ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... asked it of Loria also, when they met—as secretly as if the bond between them had been a forbidden love. But if the truth about the yachting trip had been told, even he had no solution ready for the puzzle. ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... physically, of course, the regulated exercises may be far superior to the haphazard work in sport. To solve picture puzzles, even if they absorb the attention for a week, can never have the same effect as a real interest in a human puzzle. There is a chance for social work for every woman and every man, work which can well be chosen in full adjustment to the personal preference and likings. Not everybody is fit for charity work, and those who are may be entirely ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... visible depths, and to speak of these as though they were merely the cubic contents of some known quantity. This is the direct result of the present conception of a three-dimensional space. The turn of a four-dimensional world is near, but the puzzle of science will ever continue until their concepts reach the natural dimensions of visible and invisible space—in its septenary completeness. "The Infinite and the Absolute are only the names for two counter-imbecilities of the human (uninitiated) mind;" and to regard them as ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... serious face. "From our—from Hindu point of view, greatest richness of life come from greatest possible difference between men and women. And most of all it is so in Rajputana. But over here...." She sighed, a small shivering sigh. The puzzle and pain of it went too deep with her. "All this screaming and snatching and scratching for wrong kind of things hurts my heart; because—I am woman and they are women—desecrating that in us which is a symbol of God. Nature made women for ministering to Life and Love. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... but a few of these mysterious rustlings far and near, and the ceaseless accompaniment of the river and the frogs. I learned next day that the chestnut gardens are infested by rats; rustling, chirping, and scraping were probably all due to these; but the puzzle, for the moment, was insoluble, and I had to compose myself for sleep as best I could, in wondering ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thin old man who stood with his head bare, leaning upon his cane with an air of reverence. Beneath the coffin lid below Sarah Mosely lay with her hands folded, faintly smiling like a little withered girl who has done something, left a curious deed which was to puzzle those who were still awake when they discovered what she had done. ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... land and sea been less familiar, I should none the less have known that I stood on the planet whose ruddy hue is at once the admiration and puzzle of astronomers. Its explanation I now recognized in the tint of the atmosphere, a coloring comparable to the haze of Indian summer, except that its hue was a faint rose instead of purple. Like the Indian summer haze, it was impalpable, and ...
— The Blindman's World - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... It did not puzzle the Colonel at all to know where the sperrit came from, and he did not like the child the less because of it. She was in the room now, scrubbed till her face shone, and her hair, which was curly, lay in rings ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... this was so confusing that Gabriella was obliged to stop and puzzle it out. At the end she could only admit that Mrs. Fowler's reasoning processes, which were by nature singularly lucid and exact, showed at times a remarkable subtlety—as if some extraneous hybrid faculty had been grafted on the simple parent stock ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... any character!" cried Alice Wigram indignantly. "And she would have gone to perdition without us, and taken that poor youth with her. Oh, I know, I know! But morals are a great puzzle to me. However, I firmly remind myself of that 'one in the eye,' and then all my doubts depart. Good-night. Sleep well! You know very well that I should have shirked it if it ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... no duke, he is a slick one. I don't like him. I can tell, though, whether it is the Sansevero picture as soon as I lay my eyes on it—but what gets me is that the prince chose such a go-between. Why didn't he come to me direct?" He didn't puzzle over that long, however; planning to get the picture out of Italy occupied his attention. An excellent idea presented itself: some furniture ordered by his firm should carry it in a sofa, and his partner should ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... case rather puzzle me," said the inspector. "From what I heard at Halvey I guessed it might be common robbery and murder by some tramp, though such a thing is very far from common in these parts. But as soon as I began my inquiries ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... spoke, she betook herself into Tai-yue's apartments. Contrary to her expectation Tai-yue was not at this time in her own room, but in Pao-yue's; where they were amusing themselves in trying to solve the "nine strung rings" puzzle. On entering Mrs. Chou put on a smile. "'Aunt' Hsueeh," she explained, "has told me to bring these flowers and present them to you ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... doubtful interpretations will be ignored or at least queried. It is, on the other hand, impossible to give detailed proofs of what is certain to the writer, when it disagrees with recognized authorities. Nor is it desirable to puzzle the reader with alternative views, when there is no opportunity for him to ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... a puzzle to the Red man. To the banks of the Red River and to the east of Lake Winnipeg had come many of the Chippewas. They were known on the Red River as Sauteurs, or Saulteaux, or Bungays, because they had come to the West from Sault Ste. Marie, thinking nothing of the hundreds of ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... sharp, flat pieces of ice to and fro, and placed them together in all kinds of positions, as if he wished to make something out of them; just as we try to form various figures with little tablets of wood which we call "a Chinese puzzle." Kay's fingers were very artistic; it was the icy game of reason at which he played, and in his eyes the figures were very remarkable, and of the highest importance; this opinion was owing to the piece of glass still sticking in his eye. He composed many complete figures, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... letter to be sent to Philip's father? I wonder whether that circumstance will puzzle you ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... He remembered how the aliens had strolled unconcerned through the burning village. As the suit had insulated him against the cold of the ice, so it would seem that it had also protected him against the fire, for which he was duly thankful. His escape from injury was a puzzle to the tribesman, who, failing to find any trace of burn on him, left Ross alone and went to sit well away from his prisoner as ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... another flower can be found open through the whole country round. Accidental as the choice may appear, it is undoubtedly based on laws more eternal than the stars; yet why all subtile influences conspire to bless that undistinguishable knoll no man can say. Another and similar puzzle offers itself in the distribution of the tints of flowers,—in these two species among the rest. There are certain localities, near by, where the Hepatica is all but white, and others where the May-flower is sumptuous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... just a puzzle to know how to bring the children up," Mrs. MacDougall replied. "Since my good man died and left me with them, it's been a hard matter at times, but never so hard as now. There's my Elsie, growing as fine a lass as may be, though a deal bit wilful without a man to ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... what is the object of these paradoxes, some have answered that they are a mere logical puzzle, while others have seen in them an Hegelian propaedeutic of the doctrine of Ideas. The first of these views derives support from the manner in which Parmenides speaks of a similar method being applied to all Ideas. Yet it is hard to suppose that Plato ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... came from here, there, everywhere. He seemed to be constantly traveling, carrying the words of the Prophet his brother. Something was going on, underneath the peace blanket. Governor Harrison and others of the whites read the puzzle in this wise: ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... Chinese puzzle to me. I give it up," declared Tom, at last. "The only way I imagine, Dick, is that, somehow or other, somebody ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... difficulty of arbitrating between some inward beauty, and that which is outward; with the odd mixture everywhere, save in its still unapprehended but eternal essence, of the beautiful with what is otherwise; but he is yet more harassed by the experience (it is in this shape that the world-old puzzle of the existence of evil comes to him) that even to the truest eyesight, to the best trained faculty of soul, the beautiful would never come to seem strictly concentric with the good. That seems to have taxed his understanding ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... this Pavilion would puzzle Quintilian, Daymosthenes, Brougham, or young Cicero; So heavenly Goddess, d'ye pardon my modesty, And silence, my lyre! about ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... consequence in what reign of what kingdom our clever artist has laid his scene—and sooth to say, from the diversified and pleasantly incongruous costume and accessories of the picture, it might puzzle an uninitiated to tell. But we, who are in the secrets of Maga, and to whom the very brain-workings of her poets and painters are as palpable as the crystal curdling of the lake beneath the filmy breath of the Frost King, of course know all about it, and will whisper ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... insignificant compared to those at Nimes and Arles, and there is no beautiful example of Roman art like the Maison Carre at Nimes; but there is an exceedingly curious monument of antiquity, which was long a puzzle to archaeologists, but which is now generally believed to be the cella of a Gallo-Roman temple dedicated to the city's tutelary divinities. It is called the Tour de Vsone, and, indeed, it was supposed for centuries to have been originally a tower. Its cylindrical shape and its height (ninety ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... your activity is wonderful, and you might well puzzle the oldest swordsman, by such tactics. Marsden did exceedingly well, too. Many times I thought that your sword would have gone home, but up to the last, his guard was always ready in time. As for yourself, we had scarce the opportunity of seeing ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... know; but he is very accomplished and clever. Every one says that,—even papa, who doesn't generally praise young men. That made the puzzle the greater when he did so badly ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... bows of his pudgy little person, and Laverick was left with another puzzle to solve. He was not in the least conceited, and he did not for a moment misinterpret this woman's interest in him. Her invitation, he knew very well, was one which half London would have coveted. Yet ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... might have misled a mere tiro in these matters, who alighted on this passage, without reading anything before or after. But that a professor in an American university could have taken my words in that sense is to me, Iconfess, apuzzle, call it intellectual or moral, ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... leave church after divine service, a car waits them at the nearest street corner, and they slip into it, don trilby hats and civilian overcoats, and sweep outside the restricted area at a haste that causes the slow-witted country policeman to puzzle over the speed of the car and forget its number while groping for ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... in which he omits to name one or more of the properties he has become acquainted with, she introduces the practice of asking him whether there is not something more that he can tell her about the thing he has got. Probably he does not understand. After letting him puzzle awhile she tells him; perhaps laughing at him a little for his failure. A few recurrences of this and he perceives what is to be done. When next she says she knows something more about the object than he has told her, his pride is roused; he looks at it intently; ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... country's poets, and among English poets generally,—a cropping out again, after so many centuries, of the old bardic prophetic strain. Had he dropped upon us from some other sphere, he could hardly have been a greater surprise and puzzle to the average reader or critic. Into a literature that was timid, imitative, conventional, he fell like leviathan into a duck-pond, and the commotion and consternation he created there have not yet subsided. All the ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... up: Natural languages are all hard, and the beginner can never go far enough to get a rule fixed soundly in his mind without meeting exceptions which puzzle and confuse him. Esperanto is as clear, logical, and consistent as arithmetic, and, like arithmetic, depends more upon intelligence than upon memory work. If Esperanto were adopted as the first foreign language to be taught in schools, and all grammatical teaching were postponed until Esperanto ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... said, "if we are to hit people, at least let us hit them fairly." But all the same he found himself playing with the word-puzzle whose solution was the absolutely right letter to Betty's father, asking her ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... bricks, with a door in the middle and one window on each side. Over the door was a stone tablet, bearing the name,—River's Cottage. There was a little garden between the road and the house, across which there was a straight path to the door. In front of one window was a small shrub, generally called a puzzle-monkey, and in front of the other was a variegated laurel. There were two small morsels of green turf, and a distant view round the corner of the house of a row of cabbage stumps. If Trevelyan were living there, he had certainly come down in the world since the days in which he had occupied ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... "That's the puzzle we have to solve, as we found out about the hidden water. Up to now the raids of Del Pinzo and his crowd— assuming that they are the ones—have been small. They're the kind that's always going on, and a lot of the cattlemen, and Dad among 'em, seem to shut their ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... if no such entertainment was proffered them, occupied arm-chairs at the county club, or laboriously amassed a hundred at billiards. Though tea-parties were profuse, dining out was very rare at Tilling; Patience or a jig-saw puzzle occupied the hour or two that intervened between domestic supper and bed-time; but again and again, Miss Mapp had seen lights burning in the sitting-room of those two neighbours at an hour when such lights as were ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... fetch a sledge for the wounded," quoth Stark, full of energy and enterprise as usual. "It will puzzle the enemy to find the route we have taken. Lie you here close and keep watch and ward, and I will fetch succour from the fort before the French have time to seek ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... thus rendered accessible, and which he then laid out very prettily, he placed afterwards a Swiss chalet[224] presented to him by Mr. Fechter, which arrived from Paris in ninety-four pieces fitting like the joints of a puzzle, but which proved to be somewhat costly in setting on its legs by means of a foundation of brickwork. Once up, however, it was a great resource in the summer months, and much of Dickens's work was done there. "I have put five mirrors in the chalet where ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... him and have had to be refused at least twice a day for a year. A widow can't say she didn't understand what she was doing, even to herself, but— My humiliation is complete, and the only thing that can make me ever hold up my head is to puzzle him by—by ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Moreover, experience had shown that the protecting sheath or armour of the core should be light and flexible as well as strong, in order to resist external violence and allow it to be lifted for repair. There was another consideration, however, which at this time was rather a puzzle. As early as 1823 Mr. (afterwards Sir) Francis Ronalds had observed that electric signals were retarded in passing through an insulated wire or core laid under ground, and the same effect was noticeable on cores immersed in water, and particularly on the lengthy cable ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... peculiarly shocking to the ears of Northern peoples, though Southern races have ears that are less delicate. It was in Somerset's power to explain James's conduct respecting some things that puzzled his contemporaries, and which have continued to puzzle their descendants; but the explanation would have ruined the monarch in the estimation of even the most vicious portion of his subjects, and probably would have given an impetus to the growing power of the Puritans that might have led to their ascendency thirty years earlier than it came ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... said Penfentenyou, "whether it would puzzle a monkey?" He had forgotten the needs of his Growing Nation, and was earnestly parting the white-thorn ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... spite of him, to puzzle him. What in all the world of worlds did she want of him? Also, and again in spite of him, he began to wonder what sort of female ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... of those opinions I have erred, I have not the least shadow of doubt upon my mind that a wise, just and beneficent Creator and father of all, will pardon my errors. I do not feel the least disposed now to investigate, or puzzle myself, in my last moments, in a vain endeavour to enquire whether I have been right or wrong; the Lord's will be done, say I, and may he in his goodness assist you to continue an honest and an upright ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... as it may, this I say, that, of all men, seafaring men are the most likely to solve this great puzzle about the limits of science and of religion, of law and of providence; for, of all callings, theirs needs at once most science and most religion; theirs is most subject to laws, and yet most at the mercy of Providence. And I say that many seafaring men have solved ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... we understand them too well," said Virginia. "It's like solving a puzzle. There's no more fun in it, when it's finished. But you wish ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... till the sleeve was soaked and dripping, then Rube tore off a strip from his shirt and bandaged my arm up tight. We rolled the sleeve in a ball and threw it down, then took a turn, made a zigzag or two to puzzle the brute, and then went on our line again. For another ten minutes we could hear the barking get nearer and nearer, and then it stopped all of a sudden. On we went, and it was half an hour again before we heard it, and then it was a long way off. "I expect ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... But the puzzle was too difficult for him, and he finally abandoned it to dismount and practice the things the ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... mind was impelled to clothe this thought in the most bizarre garments. Literary paradox he loved; his mind turned naturally to metaphor, and despite the protests of his closest friends he continued to puzzle and exasperate the public. He who could have written the greatest novels of his age merely wrote stories which serve to illustrate his theories of life and conduct. No man ever put more real thought into novels than he; none had ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... it were all my fault," she began. "Things lie so still here; we seem so shut in. Cynthia has been like a child to me—I haven't thought ahead and I just played with her and worked out—my puzzle piece by piece. It was only a week ago that I felt sure; I meant to tell Cynthia slowly and little ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... puzzle on the civilian side. It is situated at the junction of two waterways, one of which leads directly from the Thames Valley to the West of England, yet it does not seem to have been of a considerable civil importance until the establishment ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... himself he could not explain the contradiction between the constant longing for more ample and stable conditions, for triumph and victory, and his impotency at home, where his fortunes were declining. He wearied himself in trying to puzzle it out, and he was seized by a desire that he might become indifferent to the whole matter. He felt no inclination to drink, but none the less something was working convulsively within him; a certain indifference as to his own welfare, causing him to run ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... How kind of you to come! I wish Maxwell were in. He would have enjoyed a chat with you so much. But Lord Ardagh sent him a note at breakfast-time, and he has just gone over to Downing Street. Hallin, move your puzzle a little, and make a way for Sir George to pass. Will you ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Warren, as well as an address 'to the reader' signed with the initials of the publisher. There Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' were described as 'serene, clear, and elegantly plain; such gentle strains as shall re-create and not perplex your brain. No intricate or cloudy stuff to puzzle intellect. Such as will raise your admiration to his praise.' A chief point of interest in the volume of 'Poems' of 1640 is the fact that the 'Sonnets' were printed then in a different order from that which was followed ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee |
