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More "Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... himself entirely up to his genius and his taste. However important was his place, he perceived that a different work must employ his talents; that the citizen is accountable to his country and to mankind for all the good he may do; and that he could be more useful by his writings than by settling obscure legal disputes. He was no longer a magistrate, but only a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... so he said, for his service this morning the favourite hymns, Scripture, and text of an obscure member of the congregation taken from earth in a strange manner the day before. For more years than he could remember, there had come and gone in that congregation an old blind man. He had heard him spoken of from time to time in a kindly ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... either carry it away with them or lay it down, forgotten, or hide it in some unusual place. If it had been carried away, of course their search was useless. But if it had been thoughtlessly laid aside somewhere, or even hidden away in some obscure corner, there was a possibility that they might ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... to the labyrinthine shelter of some great city like London or Paris,—there to dwell solitary amid a multitude, buried by day in the cloister-like recesses of mighty libraries, and stealing away by night to some obscure lodging. Long indulgence in seclusion, and in habits of study the most lawless possible in respect of regular hours or any considerations of health or comfort,—the habit of working as pleased himself without regard ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... lamentation, the counterpart of which is found in Camille's work. The true secret of her literary metamorphosis and pseudonym has never been fully understood. Some delicate minds have thought it lay in a feminine desire to escape fame and remain obscure, while offering a man's ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... country before the Roman Conquest is, as is history everywhere in the West before that event, vague and obscure. But this at least may be said: it was first in the occupation of the Etruscans, who in time were turned out, destroyed, or enslaved by the Gauls, those invaders who crossed the Alps from the west and who during nearly two hundred years, continually, though never ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... deep as this? is there any night so dark as this first eclipse of the soul, this first conscious stilling of the instinct for right? He had conspired to obscure truth, he had made himself partaker in another man's wrong-doing, and, as the result, he had lost his moral foothold, his self-respect, his self-reliance. It was true that, even if he could, he would not have changed his decision now, yet the weight of a guilty secret, ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... walked up and down, looking at the waves as they washed this Sigeian land which has never had its Homer, and listening with curiosity to the strange, unfamiliar speech of its old possessors' obscure descendants,—bathing people, vegetable-sellers, and donkey- boys, who were all about me, suddenly I heard, through the stream of unknown Welsh, words, not English, indeed, but still familiar. They came from a French nursery-maid, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... from his alliance with Austria, and to throw her into the arms of Russia. But with regard to the Polish-Russian provinces, Napoleon declared he would see what he could do, should Providence favour the good cause. These vague and obscure expressions did not define what he intended to do for the Poles in the event of success crowning his vast enterprises. They excited the distrust of the Poles, and had no other result. On this subject, however, an observation occurs which is of some force as an apology ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Churchmen had more enthusiasm and courage in our teaching and our methods! This was the quality that enabled the infant church to emerge from its obscure dwelling in a Syrian town and spread all the world over. It is this warmth of conviction which lent fortitude to the martyrs of old time, and at this moment breathes valour into our brave enemies. But where is such vital enthusiasm to be found ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... that the Russian army was in such a hopeless situation it occurred to him that it was he who was destined to lead it out of this position; that here was the Toulon that would lift him from the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to fame! Listening to Bilibin he was already imagining how on reaching the army he would give an opinion at the war council which would be the only one that could save the army, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... religion are equally valid against the constitution of nature; and second, to establish a conformity between the divine order in revelation and the order of nature; his style is far from interesting, and is often obscure (1692-1752). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... large amount of baggage, came alongside and were taken aboard; and as a double precaution, the distinguished pasha and his attendants went down the forepeak until the vessel got outside. Their goods were put into the upper side-bunkers, and a wooden bulkhead put up to obscure them from view in case the vessel was boarded before getting clear. At midnight the anchor was weighed, and the steamer slipped out into the Black Sea. Every ounce of steam was used to make speed, and she was soon into safety so far ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... the widespread decadence of Buddhism, and the complete downfall of Taoism owing to gross practices in popular magic, and despite the disdain of the official world, another element in China was preserving the spirit of the past, the restless spirit that craved novelty. In all probability its obscure workings did not appear immediately upon the surface, concealed as they were by the strictly prescribed screen of official China. They were sufficiently strong, however, to give rise to an art which differed essentially from ...
— Chinese Painters - A Critical Study • Raphael Petrucci
... prince, that I have always been a cat, or that I am of obscure birth. My father was the monarch of six kingdoms; he tenderly loved my mother, and left her always at liberty to follow her own inclinations. Her prevailing passion was to travel; and a short time before ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... psalm from the old farm Bible, we all kneeled together, the flickering flames of the great log-fire flinging strange shadows on the whitened wall and rafters as we rose and bowed ourselves. I caught myself attempting, even in prayer, to make obscure but fitting reference to the special circumstances that had brought us together. But the reticence of my companion was contagious. It was like a bridle on my tongue. The sadness of it all haunted me, and paralysed my speech; and I swerved off again at every threatened allusion. ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... may not have been possible in the following pages to reproduce the elegant and incisive style of a master of French prose, not even the inadequacies of a translation can obscure the force of his argument. The only introduction, therefore, that seems possible must take the form of a request to the reader to study M. Faguet's criticism of modern democracy with the daily paper in his hand. He will then see, taking chapter by chapter, how in some aspects ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... agreed to this last imposed condition. He made the Pere de la Tour enter at night by a little back door, at which an attendant was in waiting to receive him. He was led by this attendant, who had a lantern in one hand and a key in the other, through many long and obscure passages; and through many doors, which were opened and closed upon him as he passed. Having arrived at last at the sick-chamber, he confessed M. le Prince, and was conducted out of the house in the same manner and by the same way as before. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the whole population was united as one man against him, contented himself with sending his galleys to ravage Teignmouth, now a gay watering place consisting of twelve hundred houses, then an obscure village of about forty cottages. The inhabitants had fled. Their dwellings were burned; the venerable parish church was sacked, the pulpit and the communion table demolished, the Bibles and Prayer Books torn and scattered ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... constitute technical perfection, are to some degree within the reach of industry and intellectual courage. What to put in and what to leave out; whether some particular fact be organically necessary or purely ornamental; whether, if it be purely ornamental, it may not weaken or obscure the general design; and finally, whether, if we decide to use it, we should do so grossly and notably, or in some conventional disguise: are questions of plastic style continually rearising. And the sphinx that patrols the highways ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... once traveling on a Western canal through a long stretch of wilderness, and stopping to spend the night at an obscure settlement of a dozen houses. We were directed to lodgings in a common frame house at a little distance, where, it seemed, the only hotel was kept. When we entered the parlor, we were struck with utter amazement at its prettiness, which affected us before ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... foreign tongue, a country given over to that worst tyranny, the tyranny of caste over caste, should have become the seat of civil liberty, the object of the admiration and envy of surrounding states, is one of the most obscure problems in the philosophy of history. But the fact is certain. Within a century and a half after the Norman conquest, the Great Charter was conceded. Within two centuries after the Conquest, the first ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I have had more cooking than usual," and with this she delivered another point-blank look as before, and dived into the palpable obscure, and came to light ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... I follow Dr. Oppert in the rendering of this obscure passage. Compare with Ammiba'al the name of the father of Bathsheba, which like many other proper names is indicative of the close relations between Assyria, ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... the g. The letter a, in this word, is pronounced like a in hate, or ey in obey. Chippewa—often written with a useless terminal y—is the Anglicized pronunciation. The meaning of this seems obscure. The final syllable wae, in compound words, stands for voice. In the ancient Massachusetts language, as preserved by Eliot, in his translation of the Bible, as in Isaiah xi. 14, Chepwoieu means ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Senorita had given her own life in saving that of her master, they turned into a barely discernible trail that soon brought them to the foot-hills, where they camped for the night. All the next day they pushed on, with infrequent halts, ever climbing higher over trails so rough and obscure that only experienced eyes could follow them. Here and there they passed food-stations guarded by old men, poorly clad women, and naked children. Each of these consisted of a thatched hut, an open fire, and a sweet-potato patch, and to the marching ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe
... considered as obscure. I suppose Dr. Johnson meant, that I assiduously and earnestly recommended myself to some of the members, as in a canvass for an election into parliament. BOSWELL. See ante, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Keats built 'Endymion' upon any structure of argument, however obscure—even Sir Sidney would acknowledge that the argument he discovers is very obscure—is so far from being a derogation from his genius that it is in our opinion necessary to a full appreciation of his idiosyncrasy. It is customary to regard the Odes as the pinnacle ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... progressed. The papers said everything had been wonderfully successful, but Mac was rather sceptical. At any rate, they were not wasting any time in pushing the mounted men in as infantry. The future was obscure and uncertain; but, with a feeling of eerie anticipation, he felt the freshness of the dawn of a new mysterious life, when men met men in mortal fight, when the false standards of civilization went ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... Church was becoming mistress of the world, when the old Religions were dying of allegory and moral interpretations and occult dreams. But, even so, Saint Augustine's interest in himself, in the very obscure origins of each human existence, in the psychology of infancy and youth, in school disputes, and magical pretensions; his ardent affections, his exultations, and his faults, make his memoirs immortal among the unveilings of the spirit. He has studied babies, that he may know his ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Spain, where Christendom was at its most acute activity in the struggle against Asia, then in the north-west, in England and in France. And indeed, in one form or another, throughout all the old limits of the Empire. It died, its fossil was preserved in one or two small and obscure communities, its ancient rules and form were captured by the English squires and merchants, and it was maintained, a curious but vigorous survival, in this country. When the Revolution in 1789 began the ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... aching with cold and fatigue, he reached the little hotel, which appeared more miserable, obscure, and profane than ever. But a tempting fiend seemed to have got into the gin and whiskey bottles behind the red-nosed bartender. To his morbid fancy and eyes, half-blinded with wind and cold, they appeared to wink, beckon, and suggest: ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... creatures, coming upon them altogether at unawares; but as it is, they tell, whether they will or no, that they are upon the way. At length, dark as a torrent of pitch, out of the forest flowed a multitude of obscure things, and streamed away, black over the snow, in the direction the child had taken. They passed close to the foot of my tree, but did not even look up, flitting by like a shadow whose substance was unseen. Where ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... physician, and by common reputation a magician, belonged to a family many members of which had been in the service of the house of Habsburg, and was born at Cologne on the 14th of September 1486. The details of his early life are somewhat obscure, but he appears to have obtained a knowledge of eight languages, to have studied at the university of Cologne and to have passed some time in France. When quite young he entered the service of the German king, Maximilian I., and in 1508 was engaged in an adventurous enterprise in Catalonia. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... dead wife's only brother. But the Major's invariable courtesy to the poor or unfortunate was no longer in evidence when he found that John Merrick was a multi-millionaire with a strongly defined habit of doing good to others and striving in obscure and unconventional ways to make everybody around him happy. His affection for the little man increased mightily, but his respectful attitude promptly changed, and a chance to reprove or discomfit his absurdly rich brother-in-law ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... those in the west showed faintly luminous. Objects about us became dimly visible. We could make out the windmill, and the adobe of the ranch houses, and the corrals. The cowboys arose one by one, dropped their plates into the dishpan, and began to hunt out their ropes. Everything was obscure and mysterious in the faint grey light. I watched Windy Bill near his tarpaulin. He stooped to throw over the canvas. When he bent, it was before daylight; when he straightened his back, daylight had come. It was just like that, as though someone had reached out his hand to ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... morals are only the metaphysics of physics; nature is everything, and I give you leave to consider as a madman whoever tells you that he has made a new discovery in metaphysics. But if I went on, my dear, I might appear rather obscure to you. Proceed slowly, think; let your maxims be the consequence of just reasoning, and keep your happiness in view; in the end you ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... In an obscure corner sat the young vintner. He had finished his supper and was watching and scrutinizing all who came in. His face brightened as he saw the goose-girl; he would have known that head anywhere, whether he saw the ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... and gave no sign of the vigorous and original genius which he afterward displayed. We have never thought that the world lost more in the "marvellous boy," Chatterton, than a very ingenious imitator of obscure and antiquated dulness. Where he becomes original (as it is called), the interest of ingenuity ceases and he becomes stupid. Kirke White's promises were indorsed by the respectable name of Mr. Southey, but ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... "essoines" and residents served as the "jury and homages." Characteristic findings were "that Samuell Harris broke the peace with a stick"; that John Mansell illegally entertained strangers; that land lines "are at this present unperfect and very obscure"; that a Cheptico Indian had stolen a shirt from Edward Turner's house, for which he is duly fined "if he can be knowne"; "that the lord of the mannor hath not provided a paire of stocks, pillory and ducking stoole—Ordered that these ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... is! There are times when I feel disgusted with everything, myself included! I'm getting old. I'm a failure. I'm losing my time and wasting my life over this ridiculous paper, which will never be anything but an obscure rag. I shall have done ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... that island! When Miss Trevor had spoken of it Leslie pictured to himself some tiny, obscure, bare atoll of perhaps a mile in length, and not more than a dozen feet high at its highest point—knowing from his reckoning that, at the time of the fatal outbreak, the brig had not been near enough any known land to render wreck upon it ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... to the woods where he said he could maintain himself all the winter by killing deer. In consequence of this behaviour and the expression of his countenance I requested him to leave us and to go to the southward by himself. This proposal increased his ill-nature, he threw out some obscure hints of freeing himself from all restraint on the morrow, and I overheard his muttering threats against Hepburn whom he openly accused of having told stories against him. He also for the first time assumed such a tone of superiority in addressing me as evinced that he considered us to be completely ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... a loyal subject to his royal master, would not accept of the high dignity offered him, but sent to let Pericles know their intentions, that he might return home and resume his lawful right. It was matter of great surprise and joy to Simonides, to find that his son-in-law (the obscure knight) was the renowned Prince of Tyre; yet again he regretted that he was not the private gentleman he supposed him to be, seeing that he must now part both with his admired son-in-law and his beloved daughter, whom he feared to trust to the perils of the sea, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... answered he, again leading her on: "and in truth, though your anxiety was obvious, its cause was obscure, and where any thing is left to conjecture, opinion interferes, and the judgment is easily warped. My own partiality, however, for Mr Belfield, will I hope plead my excuse, as from that, and not from any prejudice against the Baronet, my mistake arose: on the contrary, so highly I respect ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... ring in Carlisle's voice might have struck Canning as odd, if he had happened to notice it. Still more obscure, however, were the inner processes ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Majesty," and for this offence he was seized by Cromwell and carried in military custody to London, whence, after undergoing imprisonment in various goals, and experiencing other forms of hardship, he was at length permitted to retire to an obscure retreat in the country, there to commune with himself until that tyranny should be overpast. On the return of the exiled Stuarts Dr. Sterne was made Bishop of Carlisle, and a few years later was translated to the see of York. He lived to the age of eighty-six, and so far justified Burnet's ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... the Self; science is used to understand the Not-Self; but either is grasped, either is thrown aside, as it serves, or fails to serve, the needs of the moment. Often the man, in whom will is predominant, does not know how he gains the object he is aiming at; it comes to his hands, but the "how" is obscure to him; he willed to have it, and nature gives it to him. This is also seen in Yoga in the man of Ahamkara, the sub-type of will in cognition. Just as in the man of Ahamkara, Buddhi and Manas are subordinate, so in the man of Buddhi, Ahamkara and Manas are not absent, ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... to enforce the compromise measures of 1850, adding, "I fervently trust that the question is at rest, and that no sectional or ambitious or fanatical excitement may again threaten the durability of our institutions, or obscure the light ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... relied upon him. He approached his difficult task with a confidence in his own powers which long years of the free, independent life of the great outdoors had given him. He knew the secrets of the wilderness as few men knew them. He had little doubt that much which had remained obscure to those already engaged in the search for Tom Gray would be made clear to him. Alone in the world, Jean had long since come to regard the Eight Originals as "his folks." Of the four girls, Grace Harlowe had always been his favorite. Of the four boys, Tom Gray had held first place in his heart. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... with the late war I have sought to be just to both the Union and the Confederacy. The lapse of over thirty years has given a more accurate perspective to the events of that mighty struggle, in which, as a soldier-boy of sixteen, I was an obscure participant, and all true Americans, whether they wore the blue or gray, now look back with pride to the splendid valor and heroic endurance displayed by the combatants on both sides. Those who belittle the constancy and courage of the South belittle ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... where none but almost religious words may be heard, raise in our midst such an altar, a sacred and mysterious altar, to the invisible heroines of this war, that is to say, to all those who have died an obscure death and have left no traces and also to those who are yet living, whose sacrifices and sufferings will never be told. Here, with the eyes of the spirit, let us gaze upon all the heroic deeds of ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... and he seemed not to possess any talents which could qualify him to rise in that public sphere into which he was now at last entered. His person was ungraceful, his dress slovenly, his voice untonable, his elocution homely, tedious, obscure, and embarrassed. The fervor of his spirit frequently prompted him to rise in the house; but he was not heard with attention: his name, for above two years, is not to be found oftener than twice in any committee; and those committees into which ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... she arisen from her grave beneath the granite of the church-yard to warn me? Or are the dead jealous of their rights? Do they cling to their earthly love? I queried. But when he spoke I shook off these thoughts that were rising like mist to obscure my judgment, and answered, "I am. I am ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... in headlines to the public. Good and brave deeds were praised and recorded, and as a consequence—perhaps as a result of imitation—there were many heroes. In our times a good or brave deed is squeezed into an obscure paragraph,—while intellect and brilliant talent receive scarcely any acknowledgment—the silly doings of 'society' and the Court are the chief matter,—hence, possibly, the preponderance of dunces ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... instead of this being smooth and wind-swept, as that of their own place when they first discovered it, the floor was covered with footmarks leading from the mouth inward to where the great cave grew dim and obscure. There were sails, too, and ropes. Several small yards and spars lay together by the side of the wall, and farther in were sails and three ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... supported, rather than diminished, the evils of which even princes complained. The reform was not destined to come from dignitaries in the church or state; not from bishops, nor philosophers, nor kings, but from an obscure teacher of divinity in a German university, whom the genius of a reviving and awakened age had summoned into the field of revolutionary warfare. It was reserved for Martin Luther to commence the first successful ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... across it. The two on the western side looked, or rather peeped, between the willow branches, down into the orchard, with glimpses of the river through the trees. The third, facing northward, commanded a broader view of the river, at a spot where its hitherto obscure waters gleam forth into the light of history. It was at this window that the clergyman who then dwelt in the Manse stood watching the outbreak of a long and deadly struggle between two nations; he saw the irregular ...
— The Old Manse (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are credulous and confiding. Children of that character if reared by timid and over-fond parents, are deprived of the rough contact with society that is necessary to their development. There are many whom the lack of self-confidence, the lack of ambition, and lack of business energy condemn to an obscure life, when their intellectual capacities would fit them for an influential position. A kind but mistaken system of training confirms the defect, and dooms them to an inefficient life, or a stern system of repression deprives them of all self-confidence and energy. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... Farrago, That Drydens and Popes wrote three Centuries ago; Though they stared at my Comments, and sometimes might slumber, Yet the Truth they might fancy beneath all my Lumber: But your stupid Jargon is seen through instanter, And your Works give the Wits new Subjects for Banter. Such cler-obscure Aid may I meet again never! For now Milles and I will be ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... than this, it was charged that Clay's support was the result of a corrupt bargain, by which the Kentucky leader was promised the office of secretary of state. This accusation was first publicly made by an obscure Pennsylvania member, George Kremer, who, in an unsigned communication to a newspaper, when Clay's decision to vote for Adams was first given out, reported that overtures were said to have been made by the friends of Adams to the friends ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... object, more vitality and truth than are to be found in a highly-wrought and painstaking drawing, during the process of which the essential and vital things have been lost sight of in the labour of the work; and the non-essential, which is usually more obvious, is allowed to creep in and obscure the original impression. Of course, had the finished drawing been done with the mind centred upon the particular form significance aimed at, and every touch and detail added in tune to this idea, the comparison might have been different. But it is rarely that good drawings are done this ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... for the first time in his life, bereft of speech! When that faculty returned, he remarked in language which was obscure to Di:— ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... communication between the two worlds—the mortal and the spiritual. Two little children, the Fox girls, were the mediums, a combination of operator and electric battery—or, in other words the necessary instruments for successful spiritual telegraphy. In this obscure home of the poor and lowly, in a quiet way, unheralded and unannounced, there came to the world a knowledge of the existence of one of nature's grandest laws, the law of mediumship; thereafter the way was open, on the physical plane of existence, for an unlimited series of practical demonstrations ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... 'Moll' too seemed jealous of Jane's laurels, and went thoroughly into the business. She and the serjeant peeped together under beds and into closets, and she laughed brazenly at certain not very obscure hints of his as to the great services I should render to the search-party if I kept my eye on the house-place. She even said, "Master Noll, don't 'e think as 'ow th' ale be gettin' flat downstairs? It wunna be wuth ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... intimate not only with their poetry and politics, but with their frivolity and their slang; he knows not only Athenian wisdom, but Athenian folly; not only the beauty of Greece, but even its vulgarity. In fact, a page of Aristophanes' Apology is like a page of Aristophanes, dark with levity and as obscure as a schoolman's treatise, with its ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... genial observer, though he may be incapable of unravelling them. He may set these dark spots down in their places, like so many caves or wells in a landscape, without feeling bound to scrutinise their depths simply because their depths are obscure. Unexplored they may have a sort of lustre, explored they might merely make him blind, and it may be a sufficient understanding of them to know that they are not worth investigating. In this way the most chaotic age and the most motley horrors might be mirrored limpidly in ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... philanthropy but who never think of attributing their service or love of truth to religious motives. To this group belong many of our scientists. They give themselves no rest, seeking for truth which will help human need. In obscure and forgotten laboratories to-day they search for remedies for ancient, lamentable ills. They make it a point of professional honour not to take profit for themselves when they have succeeded, but to give freely ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... slowed the blue roan to a walk, and riding in long sweeping semicircles, methodically searched for Purdy's trail. With set face and narrowed eyes the man studied every foot of the ground, at times throwing himself from the saddle for closer scrutiny of some obscure mark or misplaced stone. So great was his anxiety to overtake the pair that his slow pace became a veritable torture. And at times his struggle to keep from putting spurs to his horse and dashing wildly on, amounted almost ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... in the New, - these facts show how a mortal and material sense stole 139:21 into the divine record, with its own hue darkening to some extent the inspired pages. But mistakes could neither wholly obscure the divine Science of the Scriptures seen 139:24 from Genesis to Revelation, mar the demonstration of Jesus, nor annul the healing by the prophets, who foresaw that "the stone which the builders rejected" would be- 139:27 come "the ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... veil of passions has been removed, will begin, as it were, naturally to gaze on the mysteries of Scripture, since these were not declared unto us by the grace of the Holy Ghost to remain unknown and obscure; but they are rendered obscure by our vices, as the veil of our sins cover the eyes of the heart, and for these, when restored to their natural health, the mere reading of Holy Scripture is amply sufficient for the perception ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... obscure paths of this phylogenetic labyrinth, clinging to the Ariadne-thread of the biogenetic law and guided by the light of comparative anatomy, we will first, in accordance with the methods we have adopted, discover ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... looking out over the river. Between the Drive and the distance-dimmed lights of the Jersey shore there rose like great silhouettes the grim figures of several huge steel-clad battleships, their fighting-tops lost in the shadows of the opposite hills. Beside them, obscure, with no lights visible, lay the great transports that in a few hours, or in a few days—who knew—they would be convoying with their precious cargo of fighting ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... the wall and said no more; but she had started a less pleasant train of thought. It was changed again by Temperance coming with lights. Though the tall brass lamps glittered like gold, their circle of light was small; the corners of the room were obscure. Mr. Park, entering, retreated into one, and mother was obliged to forego the pleasure of undressing Arthur; so she sent him off with Temperance and Charles, whose duty it was to rock the cradle as ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... circled around the house with a few quick strokes of its wing, and then sped away—a black bolt—in one straight undeviating line towards the paling north. He still gazed into the abyss—half expecting another, even fancying he heard the occasional stir and flutter of obscure life below, and the melancholy call of nightfowl. A long-forgotten fragment of old English ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... life, which interested and amused Fleda to the last degree, Mr. Carleton showed her many an obscure part of Paris, where deeds of daring and of blood had been, and thrilled the little listener's ear with histories of the past. He judged her rightly. She would rather at any time have gone to walk with him than with anybody else to see any show that could be devised. His object in ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... five-sided one in the centre, and several of larger size just over the front of the fork of the lower jaw: nostrils, surrounded by rather a large orbicular scale, situated nearly mid-way between the eye and the end of the upper jaw, the tubes pointing forwards: the side of the face has a very obscure ridge extending from the angle of the mouth to the under part of the ear: neck covered with small scales: frill arising from the hinder part of the head, just over the front of the ears, and attached to the sides of the neck and extending down to the front ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... highly crystalline, and where no metamorphic action in the strict sense has taken place, in which, nevertheless, the microscope fails to reveal any evidence that the rock is organic. Such cases are somewhat obscure, and doubtless depend on different causes in different instances; but they do not affect the important generalisation that limestones are fundamentally the product of the operation of living beings. This fact remains certain; and when we ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... effect to my narrative, I am obliged to confess that the work of which Elmore's friends spoke was a projected history of Venice. So many literary Americans have projected such a work that it may now fairly be regarded as a national enterprise. Elmore was too obscure to have been announced in the usual way by the newspapers as having this design; but it was well known in his town that he was collecting materials when his professorship in the small inland college with which he was connected lapsed through the enlistment ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... awhile, as David did before him, that God, and not he, might have the glory of all his wisdom. But then he was less than himself; then he had but lost sight of his lode-star. Then he had forgotten, but only for awhile, that he owed all to the teaching of that God who had given to the young and obscure advocate the mission of affecting the destinies of nations ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... they paused where a fountain gushed clear in its play, And the tall pines rose dark and sublime o'er their way. Alas for the visions that, joyous and pure, Wove a vista of light through the Future's obscure! Contention waxed fierce 'neath the evergreen boughs, And the braves of the chieftain were false to his vows; In vain knelt the Pale-Face to merciless wrath, The tomahawk gleamed on her desolate path, One prayer for her lover, one look towards the sky, And the dark hand of Death ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... miles, buying for trifles what would eventually (when the fashion he started grew to be general) have fetched large sums. Cabinets of all conceivable superannuated designs—so old in material or pattern that no one else would look at them—were unearthed in obscure corners, bolstered up by a joiner, and consigned to their places in the new residence. Following old oak, Japanese furniture became Rossetti's quest, and following this came blue china ware (of which he had perhaps the first fine collection made), and ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... forces materially and we are anxious to withdraw them further as the situation warrants. In Haiti we have about 700 marines, but it is a much more difficult problem, the solution of which is still obscure. If Congress approves, I shall dispatch a commission to Haiti to review and study the matter in an endeavor to arrive at some more definite policy than at present. Our forces in China constitute 2,605 men, which we hope also further to reduce to the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... instant before, the swelling canvas, the dusky spars, and the faint lines of the cordage, were only to be traced by the glimmering light of the stars; and now the whole hamper of the ship was the more conspicuous, from the obscure back-ground against which it was drawn in distinct lines. The sight was fearfully beautiful;—beautiful, for it showed the symmetry and fine outlines of the vessel's rig, resembling the effect of a group of statuary seen by torch-light,—and ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... VARIANS (Benth. MS.) glabra, pallida v. glauca, ramulis subangulatis, phyllodiis oblongo-lanceolatis v. inferioribus late obovatis summisve linearibus, omnibus basi longe angustatis apice obtusis v. oblique mucronatis subimmarginatis vix obscure glanduliferis uninervibus tenuiter reticulato-penniveniis, capitulis sub 20-floris solitariis subracemosis v. in racemos foliatos dispositis, calycibus truncatis, legumine glabro crasso sublignoso. Very near A. SALICINA, and ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... rude railing rhymer, a singular mixture of a true and original poet with a buffoon; coarse as Rabelais, whimsical, obscure, but always vivacious. He was the rector of Diss, in Norfolk, but his profane and scurrilous wit seems rather out of keeping with his clerical character. His Tunnyng of Elynoure Rummyng is a study of very low life, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Critias, says of him that he had a noble boldness of expression, with an imagination lofty and heroic, and his claim to the sublime has never been contested. At the same time it must be owned that his style is, at least to modern readers, obscure, and that his works are considered the most difficult of all the Greek classics. The improvements he made in the drama seemed to his cotemporaries to bespeak an intelligence more than human; wherefore, to account for his wonderous works, they had recourse to fable, and related that the god Bacchus ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... seemed positively pleased to think that Mr. Maddison had not extended his travels to Italy. There was a quiet gleam in his eyes which seemed almost like relief. Doubtless he had his reasons, but they were a little obscure. ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hieroglyphs. The first shows a hatchet and the moon; the second probably represents simply a head, while the third and fourth are those of god D, the moon-god. This passage, the meaning of which is unfortunately still obscure seems to contain a definite explanation of ...
— Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts • Paul Schellhas
... paroxysms of humility peculiar to an accursed creature who is crushed down in the mire from whence he has sprung. His fleshly desires, his spiritual needs, were confounded together and seemed to spring from the obscure depths of his being and to bear but one blossom on the tree of his existence. He abandoned himself to the power of love and of faith, those twin levers which move the world. And despite all the struggles of his ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... replied the Major, "that we, too, have our part in great events. This, with distance's long view, may seem obscure and small to the great world elsewhere, but it is not obscure and small to us. Could any spectacle be more tremendous than the ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Valleys his history ought not to be forgotten. With what interest would not the pen of Muston have clothed the recital! what attraction! what novelty! How the reformation, which originated in the cell of an obscure cloister, had already germinated in the mind of Waldo; how the rich merchant of Lyons, in search of the treasures of the age, was suddenly changed into a bumble disciple, voluntarily poor; and what were the principal traits of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... material but by mental power, are men and their actions governed. How noiseless is thought! No rolling of drums, no tramp of squadrons or immeasurable tumult of baggage-wagons, attends its movements; in what obscure and sequestered places may the head be meditating which is one day to be crowned with more than imperial authority; for kings and emperors will be among its ministering servants; it will rule not over, but in all ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... that the young girls should surround the car of the Virgin; behind them was the curate under his dais. The car of the Virgin was preceded by men dressed as phantoms, to the great terror of the children; the women wore habits like those of religious orders. In the midst of this obscure mass of robes and cowls and cordons one saw, like dainty jasmines, like fresh sampages amid old rags, twelve little girls in white, their hair free. Their eyes shone like their necklaces. One might have thought them little ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... whole, my Lord, we may conclude with probability, that the Greek Hymn was originally a loose allegorical Poem, in which Imagination was permitted to take its full career, and sentiment was rendered at once obscure and agreeable, by being screened behind a veil ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... about twelve or fifteen feet in diameter. Inside of this circle of great roots, the roots were mostly small, and the boys had cut them away with their knives, leaving just enough of them to stop up all the holes and obscure the view from without. The drift-pile, or hammock, as it is sometimes called at the South, had been years in forming, being drift-wood which had floated down the river during winter and spring freshets, and as it had lodged ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... are most of them excellently, all well, drawn and sustained. The fact that certain episodes had to be cut in representation in order to bring the comedy within a reasonable time limit, though it may have tended to obscure the connection of the intrigue, could not have insured in spite of its many real merits so absolute a doom for the much maltreated play, a sentence which seems to have wantonly precluded ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... established herself in the low chair by the fire downstairs. He played with Dossie as he watched her. And all the time, through all the play, his obscure instinct told him that she ought not to be there. It suggested that if he desired to preserve the integrity of the document, Winny and he must not be known to be alone ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... revelation, for any such powers. Judge, sir, of my surprise when I found that a very great proportion of the assembly was composed of practitioners in the law. It was composed, not of distinguished magistrates, not of leading advocates, not of renowned professors; the general composition was of obscure provincial advocates, of stewards of petty local jurisdictions, country attorneys, notaries, and the whole train of the ministers of municipal litigation, the fomenters and conductors of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... accompanying acts. But Cyprian was no dogmatist and was not able to form a doctrine of the means of grace. He never got beyond his "propitiate God the judge by sacrifices after baptism" ("promereri deum judicem post baptismum sacrificiis"), and merely hinted, in an obscure way, that the absolution of him who has committed a deadly sin after baptism emanates from the same readiness of God to forgive as is expressed in that rite, and that membership in the Church is a condition ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... fact that in using them the first essential parts to be examined are the blossoms and their organs. These remain on the trees a very short time, are often entirely unnoticed on account of their small size or obscure color, and are usually inaccessible even if seen. In this book the leaves, the wood, the bark, and, in an elementary way, the fruit are the parts to which the attention is directed; these all can ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... weaknesses and insufficiencies—and there are a lot of them—are inherited, but of my intellectual qualities, there is not much trace in my immediate forbears. No scholars or thinkers or lovers of books, or men of intellectual pursuits for several generations back of me—all obscure farmers or laborers in humble fields, rather grave, religiously inclined men, I gather, sober, industrious, good citizens, good neighbors, correct livers, but with no very shining qualities. My four brothers were of this stamp—home-bodies, rather timid, non-aggressive men, somewhat below ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... should fall with tragic greatness, lit by a blazing palace! She felt not a trace of pity for Gondremark or of concern for Gruenewald: that period of her life was closed for ever, a wrench of wounded vanity alone surviving. She had but one clear idea: to flee;—and another, obscure and half-rejected, although still obeyed: to flee in the direction of the Felsenburg. She had a duty to perform, she must free Otto—so her mind said, very coldly; but her heart embraced the notion of that duty even with ardour, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... preceding, born Sophie Grignault, in 1805, in Bretagne. She was a perfect beauty, her foot alone left something to be desired. When very young she tried the double career of pleasure and the stage under the now famous name of Florine. The details of her early life are rather obscure: Madame Nathan, as supernumerary of the Gaite, had six lovers, before choosing Etienne Lousteau in that relation in 1821. She was at that time closely connected with Florentine Cabirolle, Claudine Chaffaroux, Coralie and Marie Godeschal. She had also a supporter ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... doctrine which Paul and the Judaizing apostles, who agreed in little else, had alike made the basis of their speculative teachings. Nevertheless, by the dint of allegorical interpretation, the belief has maintained an obscure existence even down to the present time; the Antiochus of the Book of Daniel and the Nero of the Apocalypse having given place to the Roman Pontiff or to the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... dandling death, Bloud-thirsty pleasures and mis boding blisse: Brought forth of Fury, nurse of cankered Hate, 1540 To drowne in woe the pleasures of the world. Thou shalt no more in duskish Erebus: And dark-some hell obscure thy Deity, Insteede of Ioue thou shalt my Godesse bee, To thee faire Temples Cassius will erect: And on thine alter built of Parian stone Whole Hecatombs will I offer vp. Laugh gentle Godesse on my bould ...
— The Tragedy Of Caesar's Revenge • Anonymous
... often hauled from the bottom of the water the body of some German swollen in his uniform, killed with a knife or by a blow of savate, his head crushed by a stone, or pushed from a bridge into the water. The mud of the river-bed buried such obscure, savage and yet legitimate vengeances, unknown acts of heroism, silent attacks more perilous than battles in the open, and yet without any of the ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... he had got made, it was accidentally divulged that the Idea had never been his at all, but had sprung from the intelligence of his brother, an obscure Government Clerk. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... first, most difficult step, in the obscure and painful maze of my Confessions. We never feel so great a degree of repugnance in divulging what is really criminal, as what is merely ridiculous. I am now assured of my resolution, for after what I have dared disclose, nothing can have ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... must be some obscure and occult secret hidden within the looms that work such magic, and we want to pluck it out, lay it in the sunlight and dissect its intricacies. Well, then, let us enter a tapestry factory and see what is there. But it is safe to forecast the final deduction—which ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... sensuality. Of course this must be understood generally. The conjectures of a few philosophers, and the irradiations of poetical inspiration, constitute an occasional exception. Man can never altogether turn aside his thoughts from infinity, and some obscure recollections will always remind him of the home he has lost; but we are now speaking of the predominant ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the first use of this word which has been found is in one of Sterne's letters, written in 1740 to the lady who subsequently became his wife. (Letters, p.25). But these letters were not published till 1775, long after the word was in common use. An obscure Yorkshire clergyman can not be ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... are blindly led, and others run, And make both haste and speed to be undone; This alters not the Case in any wise, But that a Man sometimes may get a Prize, If some be wanton in obscure Nookes, And Ape the Saint, by framing modest Looks; Deceive the Husband, with her cunning Wiles, And cheat his Senses with her feigned smiles, These (I confess,) are hardships to be born, And worse to think the Fore-head tip'd with Horn, ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... basis which might make an accommodation between the two wings of the party possible; and there was an attempt by a small group of Liberal M.P.'s to bring this about. The treatment of this incident in Professor Skelton's volume is obscure. In any case it had no significance and it came to nothing. Laurier alike by choice and ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... Proclaimed a wild humanity, to sway Soothingly soft, and by fantastic wiles Persuade the passions to a milder clime! His was the song of chivalry, and wrought For like results upon society; Artful in high degree, with plan obscure, That mystified to lure, and, by its spells, Making the heart forgetful of itself To follow out and trace its labyrinths, In that forgetfulness made visible! Such were the uses of his Muse; to say How proper and how exquisite his lay, How quaintly rich his masking—with what ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... Emperor Maurice being, says Montaigne, advised by dreams and several prognostics, that one Phoeas, an obscure soldier, should kill him, questioned his son-in-law, Philip, who this Phoeas was, and what was his nature, qualities, and manners; and as soon as Philip, amongst other things, had told him that he was "cowardly and timorous," the Emperor immediately thence ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... them could read. After the cession of their land to Britain in 1713 they had been guaranteed by treaty the free exercise of their religion and they were Catholics to a man. It seems as if history need hardly mention a people so feeble and obscure. Circumstances, however, made the role of the Acadians important. Their position was unique. The Treaty of Utrecht gave them the right to leave Acadia within a year, taking with them their personal effects. To ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... towering above them. He perceived the extreme irregularity of its front, and numerous peculiarities of formation which had escaped him hitherto. Suddenly his puzzled face brightened to the birth of an idea. By heavens! it might be done! Surely it might be done! Inch by inch he traced the obscure passage, seeking to impress each faint detail upon his memory—that narrow ledge within easy reach of an upstretched arm, the sharp outcropping of rock-edges here and there, the deep gash as though some giant axe had cleaved the stone, those sturdy cedars growing straight out ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... slighted and humiliated to an intolerable extent that, before all that vast assemblage, consisting of the pick of the Mangeroma nation, Anamac should have absolutely ignored him, the chief priest, and have chosen instead to make his wishes known by the mouth of an obscure stranger, coming from heaven only knew where. Therefore, in response to the king's question, he rose ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... abandon them for ever, and, with such gathered store of experience, set up for a respectable family man. A few tears, a neat legal arrangement, and all would be as it had never been, only that the blood of the Montmorencies or Cliffords would meander unclaimed in this or that obscure channel, beautifying the race, and rousing England to noble deeds! But in his case it would be unpleasant—a little—that every one of his future tenantry should know the relation in which he stood to a woman of the fisher people. He did not fear any resentment—not that he would ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... coming, they perceived that help was at hand for the besieged, and they avoided the castle, and came to meet us; and all this great host, both horse and foot, drew up on the shore. And the Greeks on ship-board [The meaning here is a little obscure in the original ] when they saw that the emperor and his people meant to attack them in any case, drew back towards those on shore, so that the latter might give them help with bows ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin
... movement has succeeded in disentangling the authority of Christ from that either of Moses or of Paul. We are almost where the disciples were when they saw no man save Jesus only. Some things in the traditions remain obscure and baffling. But we see enough to measure afresh our distance from Him. And when the peoples of Europe are thoroughly weary of the work of destruction, it may be they will turn to Him again for the secret of rest, and ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... manliness. As the King's keen eye had seen from the first, and as Esclairmonde had felt, there was an elevation, tenderness, and refinement in his cast of character, which if left to his natural destiny would have either worn out his life early in the world, or carried him to the obscure shelter of a convent. In the novelty of the secular life, and temptations of all kinds, dread of ridicule, and the flood of excitements which came with reviving health, that very sensitiveness led him astray; and the elevated aims fell with a heavier fall when diverted ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Britain alone. And why is all this? Why is her foreign trade sixteen hundred millions of dollars per year, while ours is only seven hundred millions? Causes can not fail to produce their effects; and prime causes, however little understood in their half obscure workings, are yet made manifest as the sun at noon-day by effects so brilliant and important as these. Here, as ever, the tree is known by its fruits. The tree of knowledge, of British wisdom, "whose mortal taste ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... dangerous, till it is told,—like scarlatina, before it is brought to the surface: when either breaks out, it is more than half conquered. The only falsehoods of appalling efficacy for evil are those which circulate subtly in the vital unconsciousness of powerful but obscure or undemonstrative natures,—deadly from the intimacy which also makes them secret and secure, and silently perverting to their own purposes the normal vigors of the system. A Mephistopheles is not dangerous; he is too clear-headed; he knows ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... oblivion, as though it had never been.' Yet Walter Ralegh of Fardell was still a land-owner of importance. His third marriage indicates that he had not fallen out of the society of his class. Not even personally can he and his wife Katherine be set down as altogether obscure. Holinshed names one of them, and Foxe names both. Walter seems to have had much of his great son's restlessness and independence of character, if without the genius and the gift of mounting. After ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... alive to it all, almost too alive, for at first the flamboyancy of his spirit touched him off with melodrama. Yet, on the whole, he seemed at first more natural than involved or obscure. His love for children was real, his politeness to women spontaneous. He was seen to carry the load of old Madame Degardy up the hill, and place it at her own door. He also had offered her a pinch of snuff, which she acknowledged by gravely offering a pinch of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... can be obscure intimations of that bygone time when WE were rocked in the bosom of the Divine consciousness? Perhaps.... And now if the reader will pardon a piece of moralizing, we would say that these expressions teach us in the most emphatic way that—'This is not our rest.' So that when we have dived ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... knowledge of the laws of health, and the energies of some of the ablest intellects in the world had been employed in investigating the causes of disease, and in endeavoring to solve the problem of the prevention of disease. There was much that was still obscure in this very intricate problem, but the new light which was daily being thrown upon the causes of disease by the careful and exact researches of the chemist and physiologist was gradually tending to explain those causes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... picture in all its grewsome details—the two mule-drawn wagons moving slowly along the trail in the early morning; the band of hostile Indians suddenly swooping out from some obscure hiding place in the bluffs; the discovery of their presence; the desperate effort at escape; the swerving from the open trail in vain hope of reaching the river and finding protection underneath its banks; the frightened mules galloping wildly, lashed into frenzy by the man ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... wrestle with his fallen fortunes was now the beating heart of Carinthia's mind. Her husband was a shadow there. He did obscure it, and he might annoy, he was unable to set it in motion. He sat there somewhat like Youth's apprehension of Death:—the dark spot seen mistily at times through people's tears, or visioned as in an ambush beyond the hills; occasionally challenged to stimulate recklessness; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... most concerned, however, viewed the matter in a very different light. To them, this letter, with its obscure half-hints, opened up a chance of solving at last the mystery of their position which had so long oppressed them. They might now perhaps find out who they really were, if only they could follow up this pregnant clue; and the clue itself ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... answer to Beauchamp's question, "we have thought it necessary to call Monsieur de Villefort, although in the present state of his health there is little chance of his being able to clear up those points which are still obscure." ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... than the top of one of my fingers, I could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its roots, leaves, and fruit, without admiration. Can that Being (thought I) who planted, watered, and brought to perfection, in this obscure part of the world, a thing which appears of so small importance, look with unconcern upon the situation and sufferings of creatures formed after his own image? Surely not.—Reflections like these would not allow ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... decipher it, with results as various as they were ridiculous; and, like those of his predecessors and contemporaries, Price's opinions were mere guess-work; but he succeeded in interesting a certain class of students in this obscure branch of research, and may be said to have perpetuated the theories of Niebuhr and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Fanny's expression was obscure. At his admission she had shivered, as though it had reached her in the form of an actually threatened violence, and then she was rigid. "I knew that, all the while." Her voice was low, with a pause between the words. "Savina"; she repeated ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was it not a great blessing that the Marchesino should be prevented from throwing himself away in that manner? The first match in Ravenna to be carried off by an obscure and plebeian Venetian artist. Truly it was all for the best ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... imagine a Roman to have felt on learning that a Christian was capable of giving up his fish-ponds and nightingales' tongues, and his afternoons at the amphitheatre, for the sake of what he called 'Truth' proclaimed by an obscure few." ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... globular, thin, corneous, transparent (in the only known species smooth or marked by obscure lines of growth) imperforate; spire not produced (with a sinistral nucleus ?). Aperture oblong, entire, angulated below; peristome ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... correction of optical defects by glasses." In 1874 and 1876 he wrote two articles that "impressed upon the general profession the grave significance of eye strain." Since that time, "in Philadelphia at least, no study of the rebellious cause of headache or of the obscure nervous diseases has ever been considered complete until a careful examination of the eyes has included them as a possible cause ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... cavernous room Penn seemed to have seen in his dreams. The same irregular, rocky roof started up from the wall by his bed, and stretched away into vague and obscure distance. All was familiar to him, but all was somehow mixed up with frightful fantasies which had vanished with the fever that had so recently left him. The awful shapes, the struggles of demoniac men, the processions of strange and beautiful forms, which had visited him in his delirious visions,—all ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... commonly fixed as the test of literary merit. Whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allusions, local customs, or temporary opinions, have for many years been lost; and every topick of merriment or motive of sorrow, which the modes of artificial life afforded him, now only obscure the scenes which they once illuminated. The effects of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of his friendships and his enmities has perished; his works support no opinion with arguments, nor supply any faction with invectives; ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... reached the ears of one Mitridanes, a young man of a country not far distant. Who, knowing himself to be no less wealthy than Nathan, grew envious of the renown that he had of his good deeds, and resolved to obliterate, or at least to obscure it, by a yet greater liberality. So he had built for himself a palace like that of Nathan, of which he did the honours with a lavish courtesy that none had ever equalled, to whoso came or went that way; and verily in a short while he ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... becoming a rector, dignified and chaste in its language. It was the letter of a dignitary of the Church to an unknown and obscure child in a distant land, but it told of a father and mother's gratitude for a son's life saved, it breathed an admiration for the little girl's devotion and heroism, and a love for her that would last as ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... out with some insistence. He guesses with no one contradicting him that rice is useful, that flour is still more useful, and that every pound we can find in the native shops should be taken. The obvious is often somewhat obscure in times like these, and the men who act are very laudable. There is no denying it that on this 20th the Americans showed more energy than anybody else, and pushed everybody to sending out their carts and bringing in tons upon tons of food. Every shop containing grain was raided, ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... that it would be his last fight. In the turmoil of smoke and dust, his poor strivings, his upward gropings out of the dark; his glad inspirations, his thrilling hopes, must come to an obscure end. It was a miserable way to die, nothing to come out of it, no ennobling sacrifice demanding it to lift a man's name beyond his day. In the history of this violent place, this death-struggle against overwhelming numbers would be only ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... most unfavorable light before a select assembly—an obscure navigator, a member of no learned institution, destitute of all the trappings and circumstances which sometimes give oracular authority to dullness, and depending on the ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... saying, that he felt himself, as he sat there opposite Rendel, whose wisdom and sagacity in reality so far exceeded his own, to be in the position of the older, wiser man of great influence and many opportunities condescending to explain his own career to an obscure novice. ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... laws. In the ordinary course of Providence, the method of mediate production, gradual growth, and progressive development, may be observed in innumerable instances; but it can never be justly held to exclude, or even to obscure, the evidence of a presiding Intelligence and a supernatural Power. On the contrary, it may serve rather to enhance that evidence; since the very arrangements and provisions which have been made with a view to the reproduction of every thing after its kind, may bear on them the legible impress ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... Niagara. Above the falls they built The Griffin, a schooner of forty-five tons, to carry the necessities of the Mississippi settlement westward by way of the Great Lakes. This vessel was lost by some obscure calamity, and the conjecture is that she foundered in Lake Michigan. La Salle now found himself at the head of a mutinous company stranded at Fort Crevecoeur on the Illinois, facing a winter with practically no provisions. Six of his men deserted, and on two occasions treachery all ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... dear lord, that you have the reputation of a long list of ancestors to sustain. Your house has been the support of the throne, and the boast of Italy. You are not placed in an obscure station, where little would be expected from you, and little would be the disappointment, though you should act in an imprudent or a vicious manner. The antiquity of your house fixes the eyes of your countrymen upon you. Your accession ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... will give sweetness and beauty to the most rugged scenes. The man, that banishes envy and introduces contentment; the man, that converts the little circle in which he dwells into a terrestrial paradise, that renders men innocent here, and happy for ever, may be obscure, may be despised by the superciliousness of luxury; but it shall never be said that he has been a blank in creation. The Supreme Being will regard him with a complacency, which he will deny to kings, that oppress, and conquerors, that destroy the ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... after his marriage with the princess). "I do not say," continued the man, "that it is one of the wonders of the world, but that it is the only wonder of the world; since nothing so grand, rich, and magnificent was ever beheld. Certainly you must have come from a great distance, or some obscure corner, not to have heard of it, for it must have been talked of all over the world. Go and see it, and then judge whether I have told you more than the truth." "Forgive my ignorance," replied the African magician; "I arrived ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... and swearing code for field service.—(Ah! these dear old Generals, what depths of simplicity they disclose when they get by themselves! I sometimes think that if I had my life to live over again I would keep a newspaper and become a really great General. I know some five or six obscure aboriginal tribes that have never yet yielded a single war ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... fellow, was long since dead of his dragging ailment. His old father was dead, too, the house in Stuyvesant Square had been turned into a boarding-house, and the shifting life of New York had passed its rapid sponge over every trace of their obscure little history. Even the optimistic McCarren seemed to acknowledge the hopelessness of seeking for ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... region royal and mighty mansion, The seed celestial and heavenly wisdom, The Second Person, and God's one Son, For our sake is man become. This godly sphere, descended here, Into a virgin clear, She undefiled, By whose work, obscure our frail nature ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... have become so much a part of you that your innermost thoughts are as plain to me as though they were mine. But let me finish. I realized when I lay ill and about to die that I had permitted my theory of happiness to obscure my perception of the actual. As you know, my whole life has been given over to imagination—all save that portion of my existence, which I shall not dignify by calling life, when I was forced by circumstances to bring myself down to realities. ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... choice, rare. Danger, peril, jeopardy, hazard, risk. Darken, obscure, bedim, obfuscate. Dead, lifeless, inanimate, deceased, defunct, extinct. Decay, decompose, putrefy, rot, spoil. Deceit, deception, double-dealing, duplicity, chicanery, guile, treachery. Deceptive, deceitful, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... not so truly of ourselves. These bodily ornaments and endowments do not perfect or better a man as a man, they are but the alterable qualities of the vessel or tabernacle of a man, in which other baser creatures may far excel him. How many comely and beautiful souls are lodged within obscure and ugly cottages or bodies of clay, which will be taken down! And the great advantage is, that the soul of a man, which is a man, cannot be defiled from without, that is, from the body, though never so loathsome or deformed, the vilest body cannot mar the soul's beauty. But then, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... those who are retained must submit to a reduction of wages; though in these cases there is neither more nor less capital than before. This is true; and is one of those complications in the concrete phenomena which obscure and disguise the operation of general causes; but it is not really inconsistent with the principles laid down. Capital which the owner does not employ in purchasing labor, but keeps idle in his hands, is the same thing to the laborers, for the time being, as if it did not exist. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... must content herself with being the Inspiration of the life of Another, who would work out plans that should inure to the good of man and the honor of the Being, who would inspire and sustain the Toiler. The poem was considered very fine by H.M., though the thoughts were a little too obscure for the general public and the meter was not very smooth. You have doubtless had occasion to notice that poems which deal with Beings and Inspirations are usually ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... at both Royal Glen and Seneca tends to obscure another set of even more basically relevant considerations having to do with the whole question of flood plain occupancy and use, the extent to which those who benefit from it should share the cost of such protection as may be necessary, and possible ways of reversing a present trend toward ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... story, and raises the question, Why should Jesus have been angry? If we can find no reason for his anger, we must leave the thing as altogether obscure; for I do not know where to find another meaning for the word, except in the despair of a ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... optimist to say good things of April days, even in the sub-Himalayan tract. Fierce scorching west winds sweep over the earth, covering everything with dust. Sometimes the flying sand is so thick as to obscure the landscape, and often, after the wind has dropped, the particles remain suspended for days as a dust haze. The dust is a scourge. It is all-pervading. It enters eyes, ears, nose and mouth. To escape it is impossible. Closed doors and windows fail to keep it from entering ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... ports and of all their shipping; and your lordships may easily conceive with what security we should venture upon the ocean, in a state of war, when all the harbours of the continent afforded shelter to our enemies. If the French privateers from a few obscure creeks, unsupported by a fleet of war, or at least not supported by a navy equal to our own, could make such devastations in our trade as enabled their country to hold out against the confederacy of almost ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... there, sitting before the stove, in those last delicious moments before going to bed, when all the house is mellowed to such a warmth that it seems hard to leave it to the cold and dark. In this poor lady, who had so long denied herself spiritual comfort, there was a certain obscure luxury: she liked little dainties of the table; she liked soft warmth, an easy cushion. It was doubtless in the disintegration of the finer qualities of her nature, that, as they grew older together, she threw more and more the burden of acute feeling upon her husband, to whose ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... of the Commonwealths of Switzerland and Holland is of a like nature, though after a more obscure manner; for the sovereignties, whether cantons, provinces, or cities, which are the people, send their deputies, commissioned and instructed by themselves (wherein they reserve the result in their own power), to the provincial or general convention, or Senate, where the ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... la nuit, sous une voute obscure, Le silence conduit leui assemblee impure. A la pale lueur d'un magique flambeau S'eleve un vil autel dresse sur un tombeau. C'est la que des deux rois on placa les images, Objets de leur terreur, objets de leurs outrages. Leurs sacrileges mains out mele sur l'autel A des noms ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... knot at its end. Underneath the knot was chalked "Pull." I pulled. The door opened on a mass of enclosed night. From the street it was hard to see what was there, so I went inside. What was there might have been a cavern—narrow, obscure, and dangerous with dim obstructions. Some of the shadows were darker than others, because the cave ended, far-off, on a port-light, a small square of day framed in black. Empty space was luminous beyond that cave. Becoming ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... parades; he afterwards became eminent for his skill in the use of the flute. Having completed his education at school, which consisted of instruction in the elementary branches, he became apprenticed to a cotton-weaver. Collecting old or obscure airs, he began to adapt to them suitable words, which he jotted down as they occurred, upon a rude writing-desk he had attached to his loom. His spare hours were spent in the general improvement of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and beast, it is mine." From this verse females might be included with males. Reference is made to Deut. xv. 19, where it is found "All the firstling males." Still it is obscure, when there are firstling females, about the males born afterward. Reference is made to Exod. xxxiv. 19: "All that openeth the matrix is mine." Here all first-born are allowed. This, however, is too general, ...
— Hebrew Literature
... perform the duties assigned to him if either she or Havens knew him for what he was. His pride would have been deeply wounded if he had known that Grover & Dickhut recommended him to Wharton as "obscure." ...
— The Purple Parasol • George Barr McCutcheon
... signs are sometimes obscure and their real significance is frequently overlooked. The most prominent symptoms are the yellowness of the white of the eyes and of the mucous membranes lining the mouth, appetite poor, body presents an emaciated appearance, the feces is light in color, while the ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... in its Relation to Induced Electromotive Force and Current.—By ELIHU THOMSON.—A most impressive paper, bringing the obscure laws of magnetic induction within the understanding of all without the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... condition, and I have no higher ambition than to see my only child grow up an honest man, diligent in his calling, whatever it may be. My first wish is, that my boy may be a Christian: it will never trouble me that he must work hard and be obscure; for if he is pious, honest, and happy in his own mind, he will be a greater man than those who fill high stations without the qualifications ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers
... for several years, his nearest relations supposed him dead, and began to take the necessary steps for obtaining his estates; when, roused by this intelligence, he returned privately to England, and for a time took obscure lodgings in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... conducted party newspapers for them, without political convictions of his own. But when he had done the work of carrying elections and creating popularity, he did not find the idols he had set up at all disposed to reward the obscure scribe to whom they ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... at each other, the man and the girl, while the wild fear in her heart began to still. The dust of the drive was thick on his boots, his clothes, his face, but the soil of travel could not obscure the power of his carriage, the strong lines of his shoulders, the set of his broad, flat back, any more than it could tarnish her rarity, the sweetness of blood in her that under his gaze beat faintly into her dusky cheeks. The still force ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... mountains rear their heads of lasting snow, And seem like old men grouped around in high-backed chairs of space; And they bathe their feet like children in the brooks that run below, Or smoke their pipes in silence till the clouds obscure ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... by the Senatus, presided over by the Professors, to which every one might gain ready admittance on sight of his matriculation ticket, where it would be a favour and not a necessity to speak, and where the obscure student might have another object for attendance besides the mere desire to save his fines: to wit, the chance of drawing on himself the favourable consideration of his teachers. This would be merely following in the good tendency, which has been ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... subject, and its results, are well set forth by Mr. Livermore; and had his work been limited to these chapters alone, it should have won him a distinguished place among those who have cast a light as of life upon the obscure difficulties which now beset the great question. More encouraging and extremely interesting is that second portion of the work which gives the opinions of the founders of the republic respecting negroes as soldiers, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... reports that Laurier proposed to make way for a successor upon some basis which might make an accommodation between the two wings of the party possible; and there was an attempt by a small group of Liberal M.P.'s to bring this about. The treatment of this incident in Professor Skelton's volume is obscure. In any case it had no significance and it came to nothing. Laurier alike by choice and necessity ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... my equanimity with the thought that I had been visited by some stroke of an obscure and ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... restrictions binding our powers to penetrate certain secrets of an intermittent force, has in this great western country carefully prepared what might quite properly be termed a progressive course of study, wherein each locality makes plain a special point that somewhere else appears obscure. ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... Rome bow'd to Pompey, and confess'd her lord. Yet one day lost, this deity below Became the scorn and pity of his foe. His blood a traitor's sacrifice was made, And smok'd indignant on a ruffian's blade. No trumpet's sound, no gasping army's yell, Bid, with due horror, his great soul farewell. Obscure his fall! all welt'ring in his gore, His trunk was cast to perish on the shore! While Julius frown'd the bloody monster dead, Who brought the world in his great rival's head. This sever'd head and trunk shall join once more, Tho' realms now rise between, and oceans ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... forced to pay her scanty dollars. There were bulletins, rules, counter-rules. As she talked, Sommers caught the atmosphere of the great engine to which she had given herself. A mere isolated atom, she was set in some obscure corner of this intricate machine, and she was compelled to revolve with the rest, as the rest, in the fear of disgrace and of hunger. The terms "special teachers," "grades of pay," "constructive work," "discipline," etc., had no special significance ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... in life together. Now that dream had come to an end. Ericson, of course, would naturally desire to recover his position in South America; but even if he were to succeed he could hardly expect Helena to settle down to a life in an obscure and foetid South American town. Sir Rupert took this for granted. He did not argue it out. It came to his eyes as a certain, unarguable fact. He knew that his daughter was unconventional, but he construed that only as being unconventional within conventional ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... not cry out. As he was brought close to the staring eyes, and felt their sinister gaze run over him, it flashed through him for some obscure reason that the monster knew him for what he was, the leader, from the tiny bars on each shoulder of his sea-suit.... He waited for the ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... true of himself as of the rest. Hume is a very clever man, and probably knows more of the principles of trade and commerce than anybody, but so it is in every department of Government—great ignorance on the part of the chiefs, and a few obscure men of industry and ability who do the business and supply the knowledge requisite, sic vos ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... of state) of dispositions, and of means, and of probable consequences, rather than of positive rights. As it was not made for common abuses, so it is not to be agitated by common minds. The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single act or a single event which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... patented as the "Nelros Cup of Fortune." A short explanation of the symbols, and the method of using this cup, will be helpful for those who are not familiar with its signs. I am not suggesting the use of the "Nelros" saucer, for the reason that its signs are somewhat obscure, and students who have no experience in the science of astrology would find it confusing, if used in addition to the cup, in which ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... know it. Don't interrupt me; I am going to be eloquent. I want you to understand why I don't consider you sociable. You call Mr. Johnson conceited; but, really, I don't believe he's nearly as conceited as yourself. You are too conceited to be sociable; he is not. I am an obscure, weak-minded woman,—weak-minded, you know, compared with men. I can be patronized,—yes, that's the word. Would you be equally amiable with a person as strong, as clear-sighted as yourself, with a person equally averse with yourself to being under an obligation? ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... uneasily. His face was haggard, and behind his closed lids, somewhere in the center of thought and memory, a train of fiery words burned in an ever-widening circle, round and round and round, ploughing, searing their way through some obscure part of him that had heretofore been without feeling, but was now all ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of all things. It is at once the mirror to all time of the sins and perfections of men, of the judgments and grace of God, and the record, often the only one, of the transient names, and local factions, and obscure ambitions, and forgotten crimes of the poet's own day; and in that awful company to which he leads us, in the most unearthly of his scenes, we never lose sight of himself. And when this peculiarity sends us to history, it seems as if the poem which was to hold such a place in Christian ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... shook with fear,—under cover of 'the well turned and true filled lines in each of which he seems to shake a lance as brandished in the eyes of Ignorance,' without suspicion—without challenge, from the crowned Ignorance, or the Monster that crowned it. It is the history of this unknown, obscure, unhonoured Father of the Modern ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... grant you that, Dick," said I, making sure that his excitement would obscure the double meaning in the admission. And then I added, sincerely enough: "She has never given me the right ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... around him. He would keep them there till midnight. I would get tired, want to go home, cuss Abe most heartily. Abe was a good talker, a good reader, and was a kind of newsboy." One or two articles written by Abe found their way into obscure journals, to his infinite gratification. His foot was on the first round of the ladder. It is right to say that his culture was not solely political, and that he was able to astonish the natives of Gentryville by explaining that when the sun appeared to set, it "was we did the sinking ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... enough,' said Eugene, coolly. Far be it from me to say otherwise. The sister who is something too much upon your lips, perhaps—is so very different from all the associations to which she had been used, and from all the low obscure people about her, that it ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... was the usual character of these hybrids; and it has suggested itself to my mind as a possibility, which I have not, at present, sufficient data either to prove or to disprove, that the sterility of hybrids in general (still a somewhat obscure subject) may perhaps be partly due to hybridism having a tendency ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... neighborhood. The pride seemed to be, not that the new bonnet was a superb affair, but that such a fashionable artist produced it, and that it cost so much money. Had it been equally beautiful at half the cost, or the handiwork of an obscure milliner, it would have been considered mean. Thus, instead of a necessity for being extravagant, it struck me there was a desire to be so, and principally in order that others, when they looked on the display, might be awed into deference, if not into admiration, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... analogies from whence to reason. The objects which are attempted to be forced into an analogy are not found in the same classes of existence. Individuals are physical beings subject to laws universal and invariable. The immediate cause acting in these laws may be obscure; the general results are subjects of certain calculation. But commonwealths are not physical but moral essences. They are artificial combinations, and, in their proximate efficient cause, the arbitrary productions of the human mind. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... still dimly discern the form, but it was so obscure that had it not been moving about, he would not have been able to distinguish it or make sure it was within ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... estimates in such matters, not merely untrue, but precisely the reverse of the truth; it is truth, like reflections in water, distorted much by the shaking receptive surface, and in every particular, upside down. For my "language," until within the last six or seven years, was loose, obscure, and more or less feeble; and still, though I have tried hard to mend it, the best I can do is inferior to much contemporary work. No description that I have ever given of anything is worth four lines of Tennyson; and in serious thought, ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... Faust, Coster, and Gutenberg, invented the Book, craftsmen as obscure as many a great artist of those times appropriated paper to the uses of typography. In the fifteenth century, that naive and vigorous age, names were given to the various formats as well as to the different sizes of type, names that bear the impress of the naivete of ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... in honour of a departed relative of the king, Paris resolved to visit the capital and take part in them himself. There he so greatly distinguished himself in a contest with his unknown brothers, Hector and Deiphobus, that the proud young princes, enraged that an obscure shepherd should snatch from them the prize of victory, were about to create a disturbance, when Cassandra, who had been a spectator of the proceedings, stepped forward, and announced to them that the humble peasant who had so signally defeated them was their own {285} brother Paris. He was then ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... from the front by a mini-sneaker camera. About five feet tall. The stance was slightly bent forward, long arms. Two vertical nose slits. A flat, lipless mouth. Receding chin. Four-fingered hands. It wore a wide belt from which dangled neat pouches and what looked like tools, although their use was obscure. There appeared to be the tip of a tail protruding from behind one of the squat legs. Behind the creature towered the faery spires of the city ...
— Missing Link • Frank Patrick Herbert
... Sestiere di San Marco by the Grand Canal. And this they must have done at the traghetto di San Spirito. Neither the church nor the traghetto are now in existence, and this part of the story is therefore obscure.[226] ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... time to think of his answer. On subsequent days he always doubled the period required for deliberation; and when Hiero inquired the reason, he replied that the longer he considered the subject, the more obscure it appeared." ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... numberless parentheses, is very obscure. One of the counsel of the defendant requests them to be more explicit; and thereupon they become utterly unintelligible. Besides, they contradict each other. One has looked upon the act of the accused as a mere jest: the other has looked ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... as anything more than figures of fun. From first to last their conception of the enemy was an overstrenuous, foolish man, red with effort, with protruding eyes and a forced frightfulness of demeanour. That he might be tremendously lethal did not in the least obscure the fact that he was essentially ridiculous. And if as the war went on the joke grew grimmer, still it remained a joke. The German might make a desert of the world; that could not alter the British conviction that he was making a ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... every body whose face was visible was on the broad grin. All classes were represented. The wealthier nobles entered into the spirit of the scene with as great gusto as the humblest artisan who treated his obscure sweet-heart ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... shadowy world, Still more and more unfurled, The gathered mists upcurled Like phantoms melt and pass. In clear-obscure revealed, Brown wood, gray stream, dark field: Fresh, healthy odors yield Wet furrows, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... any body who knows London this will not be surprising.—The wonder was in the Misses Leaf being so simple as to imagine that a young country lady, settling herself in lodgings in an obscure metropolitan street, without friends or introduction, could ever expect such a thing. No thing but her own daring, and the irrepressible well-spring of hope that was in her healthy youth, could have sustained her in what, ten years after, would have appeared to her, as it certainty was, downright ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)
... resolved to ascend to the summit of Montanvert. I remembered the effect that the view of the tremendous and ever-moving glacier had produced upon my mind when I first saw it. It had then filled me with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the soul and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy. The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnizing my mind and causing me to forget the passing cares of life. I determined to go without a guide, for I was well acquainted with the path, and the presence of another would ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... asserted the present applicability of the full detailed programme of the Sermon on the Mount, and have endeavoured to carry it into immediate effect, have been scanty in numbers, and obscure. A few early Christian communities, soon extinct; a few hermits isolated from their fellows; a few monks in secluded cloisters; a few friars repudiated by their own orders; a few small antinomian Protestant sects springing up and vanishing with gourd-like rapidity; ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... and, according to Bayle, "the most monstrous that could be devised, and directly opposed to all the most evident ideas of our intelligence." He goes on to say that Bruno, in his war against Aristotle, invented doctrines a thousand times more obscure than the most incomprehensible things written by the disciples of ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... the document viii. 1-3, which introduces names so entirely unknown to the rest of the evangelical tradition as Joanna and Susanna [Endnote 215:1]. A trace of the same, or an allied document, appears in chap. xxiv, where we have again the name Joanna, and afterwards that of the obscure disciple Cleopas. Again, the mention of Martha and Mary is common only to St. Luke and the fourth Gospel. Zacchaeus is peculiar to St. Luke. Yet, not only does each of the sections relating to these personages re-appear in Marcion's Gospel, but it re-appears precisely ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... Charnwood were not destined always to obscure the path of our young hero. The premature death of Mrs. Sittingbourn, at the age of seventy, occasioned by incautious burning of a pot of charcoal in her sleeping-chamber, left him in his nineteenth year nearly without resources. That the stage at all should have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... that he had dated his use of Somebody's soap to an advertisement persistently borne upon him through the medium of a railway carriage window? No! Would he not have connected that man with that other certifying individual who always appends a name and address singularly obscure and unconvincing, yet who, at some supreme moment, recommends Somebody's pills to a dying friend,—afflicted with a similar address,—which restore him to life and undying obscurity. Yet these pictorial and literary appeals must have a potency ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... Lion, whose jaws are at all times open to intelligence, informs me that there are a few enormous weapons still in being; but that they are to be met with only in gaming houses and some of the obscure retreats of lovers, in and about ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... sickened and died. Her child was never born. The charitable gave her credit for having refused food through grief for her husband, Tungche. The skeptical listened to the details of her illness with scorn for the vain efforts to obscure the dark deeds of ambition. In their extreme anxiety to realize their own designs, and at the same time not to injure the constitution, the two empresses had been obliged to resort to a plan that could only have been suggested by desperation. For the first time since the Manchu dynasty ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... satisfied with metaphor. "We affirm that in all men is this majestic perception and command; that it is the presence of the eternal in each perishing man; that it distances and degrades all statements of whatever saints, heroes, poets, as obscure and confused stammerings before its silent revelation. They report the truth. It is the truth." In this last extract we have Emerson actually affirming that his dogma of the Moral Law is Absolute ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... every cottage fireside, while Froebel's writings were intelligible only to his disciples. Pestalozzi had an exuberant imagination and delightful directness and simplicity of expression; Froebel's style was labored and obscure, and his doctrines may be better known through the "Child and Child Nature" of the Baroness Marenholz von Buelow than through his own ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... present state beyond the fairly obvious effects of the morphia, he rightly surmised that her nervous system had sustained a severe shock. He saw, too, that while in the villa she had been the prey of some obscure but almost paralysing fear. Directly she was removed from the atmosphere of the Cliffords' house ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the Spaniards, the oppressor of the Indians. For himself, he assumed the character of a redresser of grievances and champion of the injured. He pretended to feel a patriotic indignation at the affronts heaped upon Spaniards by a family of obscure and arrogant foreigners; and professed to free the natives from tributes wrung from them by these rapacious men for their own enrichment, and contrary to the beneficent intentions of the Spanish ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... made him look up; and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. Now this must be done for you; and in order to have it done you must go to Christ Himself, not to one of His servants. Make your complaint, tell Him how obscure everything still looks to you, and beg Him to complete your cure He may see fit to try your faith and patience by delaying this completion; but meanwhile you are safe in His presence, and while led by His hand; ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... first consorted was a daughter of Fujiwara Motokata, who represented a comparatively obscure branch of the great family, and had attained the office of chief councillor of State (dainagori) only. She bore to his Majesty a son, Hirohira, and the boy's grandfather confidently looked to see him named Prince Imperial. But presently the daughter of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... modulations in his conversational husky tone. But the sense of being blinked at watchfully behind the blind glitter of these eye-glasses on the other side of the table disconcerted him. He stopped short with a gesture of absolute devotion. The useful, hard-working, if obscure member of the Embassy had an air of being impressed by some ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... Secretary of State. His gravestone is inscribed with a resounding verse from Tickell's lines to his memory, the only lines by which Tickell himself is now remembered, and which (as I discovered a little while ago) he mainly filched from an obscure versifier of somewhat ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... years, With all their toils and pleasures, griefs and fears. Go where I may, thou ever art with me, As Counsellor and Friend, dear Memory! Thy secret depths I would again explore, And must draw largely ere my task be o'er. Be thou no ignis fatuus to allure Me from the paths of truth, nor it obscure, While I attempt to paint the coming scenes, Which COOPER passed through with such slender means, 'Tis early Spring-time, and the opening buds Bestud the boughs of trees through all the woods. The snow and frost remain ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... Fanny said indulgently, and then chose to be more obscure in her meaning than ever, for she adopted a tone of deep sympathy for her final remark, as she left him: "I don't wonder you're nervous ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... has preserved Pedro Sancho's spelling of proper names, calling attention to the modern equivalent on the first occurrence of each name. In a few instances, where the text was unusually obscure, close translation has not ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... out and be killed, but they skulked in the desert, and hid in masquerade. But why should gentlemen in office, opulent and happy, set about worrying a handful of idiots, old, or poor, or boys, or women, or obscure, or amiable and well-meaning men, who were but a remnant of a former generation, and as little connected with the fanatics of Carthage, Alexandria, or Rome, as the English freemasons may seem to be with their namesakes on the continent? True, Christianity ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... The place was not magnificent; but, as he only wanted rest, it did well enough for that: he did not wish for daylight, and was even still less desirous of being seen; wherefore, having shut himself up in this obscure retreat, he fell into a profound sleep, and did not wake until noon. As he was particularly hungry when he awoke, he ate and drank heartily: and, as he was the neatest man at court, and was expected by the neatest lady in England, ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... the archaeological remains are the coins which are found in great abundance on the frontier and all over the Panjab. These take us back through the centuries to times before the invasion of India by Alexander, and for the obscure period intervening between the Greek occupation of the Frontier and the Muhammadan conquest, they are our main source of history. The most ancient of the Indian monetary issues are the so-called punch-marked coins, some ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... tell what it was, whether man or beast and the dusk only served to make it more obscure. Then the object scrambled up on to the trail and Jim at once recognized the dwarf Mexican with his high-crowned sombrero and his velvet suit richly slashed. With his crooked back and one eye, he was anything but a prepossessing-looking creature. ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... all mutilated and stripped of all their clothing. The Indians had left nothing which they thought might be turned to the least account. One poor fellow had escaped the rigid scrutiny of the red men by crawling to an obscure place where he had died from his wounds. On his body was found a belt that contained three hundred dollars in gold—his hard earnings that he had been saving up against a day of need. Had the savages known of this money, they would not have left it, for they are quite familiar with the use, if ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... brace and bit were at work. At last the wall had been penetrated, and he quickly removed every trace from the other side that would have attracted attention to a little hole in an obscure corner ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... house to which fate has led him, where, ill-starred and unhappy like himself, this other child of Waelse's lives, in subjection to Hunding, her lord, who has come by her through some obscure commerce, and to whom she is no more than part ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... less. He gazed at the others waiting for arriving travellers and wondered whether any of the peers of American letters had come to meet the poet. A stoutish, neatly dressed gentleman with a gray moustache looked like Mr. Howells, and he thrilled again. It was hardly possible that he, the obscure reviewer, was the only one who had been notified of Verne's arrival. That tall, hawk-faced man whose limousine was purring outside must be a certain publisher he ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... "s" and "f" are so nearly alike? Is it not enough that I, an impulsive American, accustomed to do a thing first, and reflect upon it afterwards, must grope my way through a blind alley of substantives and adjectives, only to find the verb of action in an obscure corner, without ruining my eyesight in ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... felt Though distant from thee Worlds between, yet felt That I must after thee with this thy Son; Such fatal consequence unites us three: Hell could no longer hold us in her bounds, Nor this unvoyageable Gulf obscure Detain from following thy illustrious track. Thou hast atchiev'd our libertie, confin'd Within Hell Gates till now, thou us impow'rd To fortifie thus farr, and overlay 370 With this portentous Bridge ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... of certain speculators of entirely insignificant standing of whom he had chanced to see and hear anecdotes in New York. Most of them were youths of obscure origin who sold newspapers or blacked boots, or "swapped" articles the value of which lay in the desire they could excite in other persons to possess them. A popular method known as "bluff" was their most trusted weapon, and even at twelve and fifteen years of age Tembarom had always regarded it ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to be. Starvation and death from thirst? I could see very little other prospect. For the first day I had been comparatively sanguine that a ship would come along, but hourly this hope dwindled, till there was no real hope left, but only the old obscure and unreasoning human obstinacy. So on the second day I suffered from my thoughts; I hadn't, as yet, ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West
... the circumstantialities of the case, explaining what may have been obscure to the general reader. By which term general reader is meant, that reader who has had no reason for cultivating any acquaintance whatever with India; to whom, therefore, the whole subject is unbroken ground; and who neither knows, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... January 3rd Friday 1806 The Sun rose fair this morning for the first time for Six weeks past, the Clouds Soon obscure it from our view, and a Shower of rain Suckceededlast night we had Sharp lightening a hard thunder Suckceeded with heavy Showers of hail, and rain, which Continud with intervales of fair moon Shine dureing the night. Sent out Sergt. Gass & 2 men to the ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... movement of the men out of the barroom, all talking together, clamorously suggesting plans, or merely, as in the case of the younger men and boys, venting their excitement in hoots and catcalls. It was a close dark night, obscure enough to make cowards brave, and the crowd that surged out of the tavern were by no means cowards, but angry and resolute men, whose exasperation at the action of the authorities, was sharpened and pointed by well-founded apprehensions of the ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... second reason, more obscure. I wanted to keep for a while the little mystery of the lady who had come to the farmhouse room in the dark of the night. She was pure romance, a rare incident in a prosaic age. My table had been bare of such delicately spiced morsels, and ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... has a bright green, scanty basis, including distinct crystals and patches of white carbonate of lime, and grains of red, semi-micaceous oxide of iron; in parts the basis becomes dark green, and assumes an obscure crystalline arrangement, and occasionally in parts it becomes soft and slightly translucent like soapstone. These red and green rocks are often quite distinct, and often pass into each other; the passage being sometimes affected by a fine brecciated ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... clear representation of a given conception (which is given in a confused state) has been fully developed, until I know that the representation is adequate with its object. But, inasmuch as the conception, as it is presented to the mind, may contain a number of obscure representations, which we do not observe in our analysis, although we employ them in our application of the conception, I can never be sure that my analysis is complete, while examples may make this probable, although they can never demonstrate ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... publication has been left to rest upon their details as far as possible. But as a collection of communications of this confidential nature, written from day to day upon passing events, must necessarily involve numerous allusions which, intelligible at the time, are either obscure or liable to misapprehension now, occasional notices of the principal topics and circumstances referred to have been introduced wherever they appeared to be required. By the help of this illustrative ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... have succeeded where they have failed. Don't you know also that there are papers here in London which would give hundreds of pounds for the chance of publishing such a scandal as this, especially against a powerful political opponent. Let it once come out that this obscure girl is ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... was converted to Christianity in his old age, about 360 A.D. The story of his conversion, and the joy which it caused in the Christian community, is told by St. Augustine[188]. He was a deep thinker of the speculative mystical type, but a clumsy and obscure writer, in spite of his rhetorical training. His importance lies in his position as the first Christian Neoplatonist who wrote ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... and secured a British Protectorate over Asiatic Turkey. No opportunity could have seemed better for the promotion of Zionist aims, but when Laurence Oliphant pointed this out he found scarcely an echo beyond a small circle of obscure Jewish dreamers in Southern Russia.[119] Indeed, until the time of Herzl all the most prominent protagonists of Zionism were Christians. The Dane, Holger Paulli, who in 1697 presented a Zionist scheme to King William III of England with a view to its submission to the Peace Conference ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... move fast enough. Their only other arms seemed to be bows and arrows. The march was a very weary one, and through a wild, mountainous country which would have been impassable for men who did not know it thoroughly. Occasionally they seemed to be following obscure paths, but as often there was no sign of a track, and the thick, tropical vegetation made progress difficult. For an hour or two they climbed up the half-dry bed of a mountain torrent, and more than once they were ankle-deep in swampy ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... himself, who, being a loyal subject to his royal master, would not accept of the high dignity offered him, but sent to let Pericles know their intentions, that he might return home and resume his lawful right. It was matter of great surprise and joy to Simonides, to find that his son-in-law (the obscure knight) was the renowned Prince of Tyre; yet again he regretted that he was not the private gentleman he supposed him to be, seeing that he must now part both with his admired son-in-law and his beloved daughter, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... British provincialism and plunged into the main stream of European art. On the other hand, the names of Mr. Steer, Mr. John, Mr. Orpen and Mr. McEvoy, here only less familiar than those of Cabinet Ministers or County Cricketers, abroad are as obscure. Mr. Steer, to be sure, has his portrait in the Uffizi, but then, as likely as not, the Poet Laureate has his birthday ode in the Bibliotheque Nationale. If Mr. Steer and Sir Edward Poynter are treated civilly abroad, that may be because England is an important country ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... Commonwealths of Switzerland and Holland is of a like nature, though after a more obscure manner; for the sovereignties, whether cantons, provinces, or cities, which are the people, send their deputies, commissioned and instructed by themselves (wherein they reserve the result in their ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... to go, she went to the Royal Red and had a little table in an obscure corner behind a pillar, where she could see, but was hardly seen, even if anyone had wanted to look at this woman, apparently just one of a thousand suburban shoppers. She lingered long at her table to get to the full the worth of her three-and-sixpence; ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... voices, yearning and sobbing, poured forth into the silence and freshness of the evening, everything about them seemed warmer and better; everything seemed to smile the sorrowful smile of sympathy on the anguish of the man whom an obscure power is tearing away from his native soil into some foreign place, where hard labour and degradation are in store for him. It seemed as though not the sounds, nor the song, but the burning tears of the human heart ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... was a blurred line where the ink had run, with only a letter or two distinct at intervals. Then half a blank line, and then, very much blurred and obscure, more resembling a row of blots than ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... 'estero' is a tract of country covered by water to the depth of two or three feet. The bottom is usually hard, but it is full of holes and hummocks. High pampa grass and reeds not infrequently obscure the view, and clouds of insects make life miserable. If the tract extends to more than a day's journey, the night passed on a dry hummock, holding one's horse and listening without a fire to the wild beasts, ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... the fish they caught and the animals they killed, the Indians were most expert woodsmen. They were swift of foot, quick-witted, keen-sighted, and most patient of hunger, fatigue, and cold. White men were amazed at the rapidity with which the Indian followed the most obscure trail over the most difficult ground, at the perfection with which he imitated the bark of the wolf, the hoot of the owl, the call of the moose, and at the catlike tread with which he walked over beds of autumn leaves the ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... ground. It was pitch dark, and ranging themselves in a line near a large tree, they each lit a small fire, and had a supply of dry leaves to give effect to the acting. On their commencing their chanting, the men came forward, emerging from the darkness into the obscure light shed by the yet uncherished fires, like spectres. After some performance, at a given signal, a handful of dry leaves was thrown on each fire, which instantly blazing up lighted the whole scene, and shewed the dusky figures of the performers painted and agitated with admirable effect, but ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... year. Lincoln was dead; Grant had had two terms; Stevens was gone; Sumner had been driven from party honor before his death; Chase had died Chief Justice, but unhappy. With these men living, lesser men had remained obscure. As they dropped out, a host of minor leaders, trained to a disproportionate view of the war and ignorant of other things, ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... CHILDREN,—... We had a charming visit from Sir Henry Taylor a few days ago, a long quiet real "crack" about many books and many authors, with a little touch of the events of the day-change of Ministry, causes of our utter defeat, which he thinks obscure, so do I—not creditable to the country, so do I—in so far as Disraeli can hardly be reckoned more trustworthy or consistent than Gladstone, and Gladstone's untrustworthiness and inconsistency are supposed to have caused his overthrow. The Queen made ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... complexion and features of those that occupy them. So in the vegetable world—the bright and endlessly varied hues of flowers, and their sweet perfumes—even their very production—depend on sunlight. In obscure light plants grow lanky and become pale and feeble. They seldom produce flowers, and uniformly fail to ripen their seeds. In even partial darkness the green hue of their foliage gradually pales and disappears, and new growths, when they ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... arise with regard to appellatives, or the names of species. It seems of no great use to set down the words horse, dog, cat, willow, alder, daisy, rose, and a thousand others, of which it will be hard to give an explanation, not more obscure than the word itself. Yet it is to be considered, that, if the names of animals be inserted, we must admit those which are more known, as well as those with which we are, by accident, less acquainted; and if they are ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... news, perhaps you read: 'Stock passings. Puckawidgee, Fat cattle: Seven hundred head Swept down the Murrumbidgee; Their destination's quite obscure, But, somehow, there's a notion, Unless the river falls, they're sure To reach the ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... may also be possible in my opinion. For if the deuil may forme what kinde of impressiones he pleases in the aire, as I haue said before, speaking of Magie, why may he not far easilier thicken & obscure so the air, that is next about them by contracting it strait together, that the beames of any other mans eyes, cannot pearce thorow the same, to see them? But the third way of their comming to their conuentions, is, that where in I think them deluded: for some of them sayeth, that being transformed ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... and persevering patronage. Returning from one of his visits to Ireland, whither he had gone on this occasion to inspect a seignorie which his 'sovereign goddess' had then lately conferred upon him, he makes his re-appearance at court with that so obscure personage, the poet of the 'Faery Queene,' under his wing;—that same gentleman, as the court is informed, whose bucolics had already attracted so much attention in that brilliant circle. By a happy coincidence, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... song is similar to painting a landscape. In the painting the grass, flowers, shrubbery etc., are in the foreground, then come the hills and if there be a mountain range it is in the background. If the mountain range were in the foreground it would obscure everything else. So in making a song. If it tells a story and reaches a climax the climax should come near the end of the song. When the singer has carried his audience with him up to a great emotional height then all it needs is to be brought ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... Mr. Adams took his seat in Congress, the movement for the abolition of slavery was begun by a few obscure agitators. It did not at first attract much attention, but as it went on it gradually exasperated the overbearing temper of the Southern slaveholders. One fruit of this agitation was the appearance of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the House of Representatives. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... or novelist imagine scenes so improbable. The son of an obscure lawyer in an unimportant island becomes Emperor of the French and King of Italy. His brothers and sisters become kings and queens. The sons of innkeepers, notaries; lawyers, and peasants become marshals of the empire. The Emperor, first making a West ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... individual destined to play an important part in the history of the World. Then why was it not reasonable to believe that that role was to be that of the Messiah come to sit on the throne of His father David, and destined to bring Israel from her now obscure position to once more shine as a bright star in the firmament of nations? Why was it not reasonable that He was to lead the Chosen People to ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... wrote the French "Life." Pierce Egan could scarcely have been the author; for he was then at the height of a vicious and ephemeral popularity; and any book, however trashy, with his name to it, would have been sure to sell. This "Life in Paris" was very probably the work of some obscure hack, who, when he was describing the "eccentric characters in the French metropolis," may not impossibly have been vegetating in the Rules of the King's Bench Prison. But crafty Mr. Cumberland, to insure the success of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... half-a-crown or three shillings, may skulk behind the press of a newsmonger, and have a stab at the first character in the kingdom, without running the least hazard of detection or punishment.' The scribblers who had of late shewn their petulance were not always obscure. Such scurrilous but humorous pieces as Probationary Odes for the Laureateship, The Rolliad, and Royal Recollections, which were all published while Boswell was writing The Life of Johnson, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... send you enclosed Quiros's memorial, presented to Philip the Second after his return from his voyage, translated from the Spanish in which it is published in Purchass. The voyage itself is long, obscure, and difficult to be understood, except by those who are particularly acquainted with the geography and navigation of those countries, and upon looking over a great number of Dalrymple's papers I imagined this was what you would like best to see. He is besides just finishing a geographical ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... was scarcely in the tomb, before his mountain pile of wealth began to dwindle. The founders of the greater part of the families which now compose the aristocracy of Salem might here be traced, from the petty and obscure beginnings of their traffic, at periods generally much posterior to the Revolution, upward to what their children look ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with freer movement and more mental ingenuity, come into the more perfect control and use of their environment, and consequently have greater likelihood of survival. Failing of this greater complexity, their chance of life lies in occupying so obscure a position, so to speak, that they do not come into collision with more dominant forms, or in reproducing at such a rate as to survive in spite of this. The number of devices in the way of modification of form and habit to secure advantage is ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... were thy wings When far away upon a barbarous strand, In fight unequal, by an obscure hand, Fell the last scion of thy brood ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... might afford them consolation and happiness. But that could not be. Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of unalterable evils, and I lived in daily fear lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness. I had an obscure feeling that all was not over and that he would still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past. There was always scope for fear so long as anything I loved remained behind. My abhorrence of this fiend cannot be conceived. ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... colony of American colored people that went over there in 1825. They retained their American customs, and especially their little American church, outside of the Catholic, which overspread the whole country. In an obscure room in an old ruin they sung the old hymns, and lived the old life of the United States. I asked how this thing was, and they answered that among those that went over so long ago were a few from Chester County, Pennsylvania, who were brought up among the Quakers, and had learned to read. Wherever ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to see these Puppets act a play called 'St. Helena, or the Death of Napoleon.' It began by the disclosure of Napoleon, with an immense head, seated on a sofa in his chamber at St. Helena; to whom his valet entered with this obscure announcement: ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... bosom as she passed down the stairs; her imperious chin was lowered, and her strong brown eyes were bent like a nun's before the altar. Worthy or unworthy, her lips moved in a prayer for Alan Macdonald, strong man in his obscure place; worthy or unworthy, she wished him well, and her heart yearned after him with a great tenderness, like a south wind roaming the night ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... but a country gentleman in a small way—an obscure bachelor, abiding from year's end to year's end on my insignificant farm—have witnessed things in my time, which, had they been said and done nearer the tropics, would have been cited far and near in evidence of the turbulence ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... an obscure corner of the suburb—obscure, for it had just sprung into existence. The scaffolding that had built it now littered an adjoining field, where in a few months it would rise about Horsely Gardens, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... story. The origin of Gaudin de Sainte-Croix was not known: according to one tale, he was the natural son of a great lord; another account declared that he was the offspring of poor people, but that, disgusted with his obscure birth, he preferred a splendid disgrace, and therefore chose to pass for what he was not. The only certainty is that he was born at Montauban, and in actual rank and position he was captain of the Tracy regiment. At the time when this narrative opens, towards the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... kind of "distraction" (as the French call it) seems to have had the desired effect, as is evident in the romantic incident of his second marriage, when the Irish Princess Gyda chooses him—apparently an obscure stranger—to be her husband, out of a hundred wealthy and well-born aspirants to her hand. But neither Gyda's love, nor the rude splendours of her father's court, can make Olaf forgetful of his claims upon the throne of Norway—the inheritance ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... crusted snow. Castellated crags loomed from the mystic river like fortified islands. Cattle, silent, enormously aggrandized, emerged like fabled beasts of the eld, and stared upon him, their jaws dripping with dew. Bulls roared from the obscure deeps. Dead trees, with stark and sinister arms, menaced warningly. All was as unreal as the world of pain's delirium, and yet was as beautiful as the poet's vision; and the ranger, feeling that he was looking upon one of Nature's rarest displays, removed his hat in worship of it, ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... celebrated Italian historian and bishop, in his treatise on devices, says, that the figure or emblem, which he terms the body of the device, must be exactly fitted to the motto, which he terms its soul; and though it should not be so obscure as to require a sibyl to explain it, yet the motto ought to be in a foreign or dead language, so that it may not be comprehended by the vulgar—'such dainties not being intended for vulgar appetites.' The human figure, also, should ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... bliss; either they are never realized in full, or never stay permanently. One has abundant riches, but is shamed by his ignoble birth. Another is conspicuous for his nobility, but through the embarrassments of poverty would prefer to be obscure. A third, richly endowed with both, laments the loneliness of an unwedded life. Another, though happily married, is doomed to childlessness, and nurses his wealth for a stranger to inherit. Yet another, blest with children, mournfully bewails the misdeeds ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... respectable. Her mother, a native of France, had preferred her religion to her country. The profession of her father did not extinguish the moderation and philosophy of his temper, and he lived content with a small salary and laborious duty, in the obscure lot of minister of Crassy, in the mountains that separate the Pays de Vaud from the county of Burgundy. In the solitude of a sequestered village he bestowed a liberal, and even learned, education on his only ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... the earliest meetings of the club were held at an obscure tavern in Shire Lane, which no longer exists, but ran parallel with Chancery Lane near Temple-bar. This was the tavern kept by Christopher Cat, and when he removed to the Fountain tavern in the Strand the club accompanied. Its ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... "Obscure ideas," "metaphysical jargon," "pretentious and empty language," "puerile and superannuated personifications." Mr. Darwin has many and hot opponents on this side of the Channel and in Germany, but ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... delighted in long hours of talk on social questions with a comrade to whom he need not show the galanteries d'epiderme necessary in intercourse with ordinary women. He says of her: "She had no littleness of soul, and none of those low jealousies which obscure so much contemporary talent. Dumas is like her on this point. George Sand is a very ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing. What beauty there is we must therefore seek in the sentiments and images. It is not to be considered as the effusion of real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arthur and Mincius, nor tells of rough satyrs and "fauns with cloven heel." Where there is leisure for fiction, there is ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... differing alike both inwardly and outwardly from that into which a happier fortune has introduced ourselves, is necessarily obscure to us. In the alteration of our own characters we have lost the key which would interpret the characters of our fathers. But some broad conclusions as to what they were are, however, at least possible to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... error. Straightway he forged an order on Beersheba for thirty yards of love-lock. To serve this writ he sent his business partner; for the Prince was wont to beguile his dragging leisure by tonsorial diversions in an obscure quarter of the town. At first Beersheba was sceptical, but when he saw the writing in real ink, his scruples vanished, and he chopped off the amount of ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... they die see and comprehend enigmas hidden from them before. The greatest poet, and one of the noblest thinkers of the last age, said on his death-bed:—"Many things obscure to me before, now ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... least artistic, and who by no means appreciated the merits of the portrait Gouache was painting, was very far from comprehending his definition of artistic comparison; but Del Ferice understood it very well. Donna Tullia had much foreign blood in her veins, like most of her class; but Del Ferice's obscure descent was in all probability purely Italian, and he had inherited the common instinct in matters of art which is a part of the Italian birthright. He had recognised Gouache's wonderful talent, and had first brought Donna ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... naturally desire to have their influence extended over others. The proposition which we have to consider is of another kind. It expresses the notions of those who—to take the most important kind of illustration—think untrue the popular ideas of supernatural interference in our obscure human affairs; who think untrue the notion of the prolongation of our existence after death to fulfil the purpose of the supernatural powers; or at least who think them so extremely improbable that no reasonable man ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... deep-withdrawn cell. Diligently as a lace-maker shifts her bobbins, he shifted and arranged his balls. Flashes of meaning would now pass from them to Tangle, and now again all would be not merely obscure, but utterly dark. She stood looking for a long time, for there was fascination in the sight; and the longer she looked the more an indescribable vague intelligence went on rousing itself in her mind. For seven years she had stood there watching the naked child with his coloured ...
— The Light Princess and Other Fairy Stories • George MacDonald
... of the poor struggling painter, painting his poor little pictures in his obscure corner to feed half a dozen hungry children and the anxious, careworn wife, whose beauty has long faded away in the petty, sordid, hopeless domestic struggle, just as her husband's little talent has long been wasted and used up in wretched ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... philological evidence of spoken modern languages, fragments or children of older primitive languages, ascends by their means to equal antiquity; both combining, therefore, to complete the history of mankind, where annals and traditions cease to lead us or are quite obscure: these combined bring more certainty to the scrutinising mind than the mere physical features of men, and their complexions, so fluctuating and mingled. But neither of them solve the question of the actual original Cradle or Cradles of mankind. ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque
... "In that case, my dear Dick, come back to me after you have become acquainted with all the facts, and we will discuss the matter together. That you may call me your friend goes without saying, as you ought to know by this time; and although I am only an obscure East-End practitioner I am not wholly without friends able and willing to do me, or any friend of mine, a good turn, if necessary. So come back here when you have threshed out the matter, and we will see what—if ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... spread even across the Atlantic, reaching obscure hamlets in Europe, where villagers gathered up their lares and penates, mortgaged their homes, and bought steamship tickets from philanthropists,—philanthropists in diamonds. Our Huns began to arrive, their Attilas ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... has shocked the public conscience and perplexed common sense, has been the sole cause of the amount of attention "Essays and Reviews" has excited. Laymen might have combined to produce this volume, almost unheeded. An obscure Clergyman might possibly have published any one of these seven papers; and with a rebuke for his immorality or his insolence, he would probably have been unnoticed by the world. But here is a combination of Doctors of Divinity; Professors; Fellows, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... definite place and thereafter took its own mode of diffusion and found its special development. The excellent investigation of Kirchhoff (-Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets-), which has thrown a clear light on the previously so obscure history of the Hellenic alphabet, and has also furnished essential data for the earliest relations between the Hellenes and Italians—establishing, in particular, incontrovertibly the previously uncertain home of the Etruscan ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and his descendants are the Ghase or Halde subcaste. Ever since this happened the shape of a calf may be seen in the flower of turmeric. This legend has, however, no real value and the meaning of the superstition attaching to the plant is obscure. Though the growing of turmeric is tabooed yet it is a sacred plant, and no Hindu girl, at least in the Central Provinces, can be married without having turmeric powder rubbed on her body. Mr. Gordon remarks in Indian Folk-Tales: "I ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... This accounts for that obviously characteristic want of clearly defined thought; in fact, they lack the die that stamps their thoughts, they have no clear thought of their own; and in place of it we find an indefinite, obscure interweaving of words, current phrases, worn-out terms of speech, and fashionable expressions. The result is that their foggy kind of writing is like print that has been done with old type. On the other hand, intelligent people ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... became interested in the work of an obscure chemist over in Brooklyn, Morgan Prescott. Prescott claims, as I understand, to be able to transmute copper into gold. Whatever you think of it offhand, you should visit his laboratory yourselves, gentlemen. I am told it is wonderful, though I have never ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... who was more offensive than usual, with reflective eyes as if marking him in order to know him at a future time. As is always the case, it was the smaller officials who were the most offensive—the little Jacks-in-office from the postal administration, the common officers, the hundred obscure civil servants who wear a sword and uniform unworthily in any one of the three European empires. On the other hand, the men in real authority, and notably the officers of the better regiments, sought to conciliate by politeness and a careful retention ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... Flamsteed[59] and Herschel,[60] in their glazed observatories, may catalogue the stars with the praise of all men, and, the results being splendid and useful, honor is sure. But he, in his private observatory, cataloguing obscure and nebulous[61] stars of the human mind, which as yet no man has thought of as such,—watching days and months sometimes for a few facts; correcting still his old records,—must relinquish display and immediate fame. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... passages uniting sublimity with beautiful simplicity. In my view, the general style of the version ought not to be altered. But in the lapse of two or three centuries changes have taken place, which in particular passages impair the beauty, in others obscure the sense, of the original languages. Some words have fallen into disuse; and the signification of others, in current popular use, is not the same now as it was when they were introduced into the version. The ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... he, "it occurs to me that you have not yet thought of selecting a profession; your future career seems at present somewhat obscure." ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... sorry to be left to himself in his utter bewilderment! Flo, separated from her detrimental uncle, and placed in a convent school! Tarbox, the obscure pioneer, a shrewd speculator emerging into success, and taking the uncle's place! And all this within that month which he had wasted with absurd repinings. How feeble seemed his own adventure and advancement; how even ludicrous his pretensions to any patronage and superiority. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... "Chapel" in St. Peter's that morning, with a procession of white vestments in honour of the Mass of the Resurrection, but the Pope did not attend. He sat alone in his simple chamber, with curtains drawn across the marble columns to obscure the bed, fingering the crucifix which hung from his neck, and waiting for the ringing of the ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... to delighting in Lydia's understanding of his perversely obscure figures of speech that he turned about, surprised to hear no appreciative comment. She was looking away ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... us recognise that our knowledge is very partial. A great stretch of wall is blank, and there is not a window in it. If there had been need for one, it would have been struck out. He has been pleased to leave many things obscure, not arbitrarily, so as to try our faith—for the implication of the words before us is that the relation between Him and us binds Him to the utmost possible frankness, and that all which we need and He can tell us He does tell—but for high reasons, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... a tavern landlady, it would have strained all probability. So I stuck to Mary Fitton. But I had another and more personal reason. I was, in a manner, present at the birth of the Fitton theory. Its parent and I had become acquainted; and he used to consult me on obscure passages in the sonnets, on which, as far as I can remember, I never succeeded in throwing the faintest light, at a time when nobody else thought my opinion, on that or any other subject, of the slightest importance. ...
— Dark Lady of the Sonnets • George Bernard Shaw
... down his flag and permanently came ashore. Within the space of fifty years there is crammed a life of adventure richly varied in range. A man of exuberant individuality, which has occasional tendency to obscure supreme capacity, of fearless courage, gifted with a combination of wit and humour, Lord CHARLES is the handy-man to whom in emergency everyone looked not only for counsel but for help. It is a paradox, but ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... knees beside the stabbed man, and I remember his horrible staring eyes and open mouth. I remember that, though she was white and shaky, she neither shrieked, went into hysterics, nor fainted. I remember rushing down to the manager; I remember running with him breathlessly through obscure passages of the hotel in search of a doctor who was attending a sick member of the staff. I remember the rush back, the doctor bending over the body, which Lola had ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... 14 months, high interest rates have had a severe impact on the nation's housing market. Yet the current pressures and uncertainties should not obscure the achievements of the past ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... subject only to the condition that nothing shall be allowed for any advance in the price of labor or material unless such advance occurred during the prolonged term for completing the work rendered necessary by delay resulting from the action of the Government. The bill is somewhat obscure, but I have, I think, correctly stated the legal ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... concerning this love, how he himself loves God. They do not at all understand what they say they only echo, just like the walls of a house, the little word "love," without understanding it. So confused and obscure is their doctrine: it not only transfers the glory of Christ to human works, but also leads consciences either to presumption or to despair. But ours, we hope, is readily understood by pious minds, and brings godly and salutary consolation to ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... D'Esgrignon, who was not wanting in cleverness, replied to Rastignac's speech with an apologetic portrait of the princess, which put the whole table in good humor. As the jest was extremely obscure to d'Arthez he leaned towards his neighbor, Madame de Montcornet, and asked her, in a whisper, ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... back to me," said Hallin, slily, "that when a certain person was once asked to name the winner of the Derby in some obscure year, he began at the beginning, and gave us all of them, from first ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the national historian (not to mention the common traditions), the Chaldean monarch might have justly envied, if he could scarcely hope to emulate, the excellence of a former prince of his now obscure province. Josephus says of Solomon that, amongst other attainments, 'God enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and sanative to men. He composed such incantations also by which distempers are alleviated, ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke and reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... France and England, which gave him fresh hopes that something would be undertaken. But after several months, seeing no appearance, he grew very impatient, and began to think of trying his fortune with such friends as would follow him: he was sick of the obscure way he was in; he thought himself neglected by the court of France, but could not bear the thoughts of returning to Rome. He had heard much of the loyalty and bravery of the Scotch Highlanders; but the number of those Clans he could depend ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... reserve to the last hour of her life remained her inexorable rule and habit. It arose from a wish to spare other people and fear of herself and her own feelings. To spare others was her ideal. Another characteristic was her pity for the obscure, the dull and the poor. The postman in winter ought to have fur-lined gloves; and we must send our Christmas letters and parcels before or after the busy days. Lord Napier's [Footnote: Lord Napier and Ettrick, father of Mark Napier.] coachman had never seen a comet; she would write and tell him ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... than those of The Romance of the Forest and Udolpho. It seldom strays far beyond the bounds of the probable, nor overstrains our capacity for belief. The motive of the story is the Marchesa di Vivaldi's opposition to her son's marriage on account of Ellena's obscure birth. The Marchesa's far reaching designs are forwarded by the ambitious monk, Schedoni, who, for his own ends, undertakes to murder Ellena. The Italian abounds in dramatic, haunting scenes. The strangely effective overture, which describes the Confessional of the ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... dignity," and every Russian was to act spontaneously and zealously at the great work of national regeneration. All thirsted for reforming activity. The men in authority were inundated with projects of reform—some of them anonymous, and others from obscure individuals; some of them practical, and very many wildly fantastic. Even the grammarians showed their sympathy with the spirit of the time by proposing to expel summarily all redundant letters ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... must first of all understand the society in which he was born and brought up. As certain lilies draw their colors from the subtle qualities of the soil hidden beneath the water upon which they float, so are men profoundly affected by the obscure and insensible influences which surround their childhood and youth. The art of the chemist may discover perhaps the secret agent which tints the white flower with blue or pink, but very often the elements, which analysis detects, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... and fairies "dance delicate measures" in the light of the moon and stars. The troll dances his gruesome jig on lonely hills the gnome executes his little pigeon wing in the obscure subterrene by the glimmer of a diamond. Nature's untaught children dance in wood and glade, stimulated of leg by the sunshine with which they are soaken top full—the same quickening emanation that inspires the growing tree ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... words perchance there was no offensive meaning, but in my tone and in the look which I bent upon the Cardinal there was that which told him that I alluded to his own obscure and dubious origin. He grew livid, and for a moment methought he would have struck me: had he done so, then, indeed, the history of Europe would have been other than it is to-day! He restrained himself, however, and drawing himself to the full height of his ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... throw himself on his clemency. As James returned from hunting in the park at Stirling, he saw a person at a distance, and, turning to his nobles, exclaimed, "Yonder is my Graysteil, Archibald of Kilspindie!" As he approached, Douglas threw himself on his knees, and implored permission to lead an obscure life in his native land. But the name of Douglas was an amulet, which steeled the king's heart against the influence of compassion and juvenile recollection. He passed the suppliant without an answer, and rode briskly up the steep hill, towards the castle. Kilspindie, though loaded ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... applying our table of air-pressures to their formulae, of designing air-propellers suitable for our uses. But, so far as we could learn, the marine engineers possessed only empirical formulae, and the exact action of the screw propeller, after a century of use, was still very obscure. As we were not in a position to undertake a long series of practical experiments to discover a propeller suitable for our machine, it seemed necessary to obtain such a thorough understanding of ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... but supplement each other to a remarkable extent. Unless a course of study such as this is undertaken many critics may think various statements and inferences in this volume to be far fetched or find them too obscure for comprehension. ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... object, ego and non-ego. All things are identical in essence but differentiated in the course of evolution. It was not inconsistent with these tenets that Schelling sought, in his last period, to discover the meaning of universal history in the obscure beginnings of mythology and revelation rather than in the lucid regions of an ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Cowen's, Haines' and McCarthey's, were run out upon the plain, and opened a fierce fire, whole batteries firing by volleys, until the whole plain, on the further side, was a sheet of flame from the bursting shells, and huge clouds of dust, plowed up by the shrieking missiles, rose so as to obscure the heights. The rebels could only load, and thrust their guns above the earthworks, firing at random, for no man could raise his head without coming in the way of the fiery messengers of death, which filled the air. Still their fire, although ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... and there, in the spaces between them, brown pictures, which I perceived to be bad, in battered frames, were suspended. With the exception of several straw-bottomed chairs with their backs to the wall, the grand obscure vista contained nothing else to minister to effect. It was evidently never used save as a passage, and little even as that. I may add that by the time the door opened again through which the maidservant had escaped, my eyes had grown used to the ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... the names were the same to her, all equally worshipful and happy in being printed, black on white, in the reports of these upper-worldly banquets. But after a while her sharp intelligence began to distinguish the grades of our republican aristocracy, and she would skip the long rolls of obscure guests who figured at the: "coming-out parties" of thrifty shop-keepers of fashionable ambition, to revel among the genuine swells whose fathers were shop-keepers. The reports of the battles of the Polo Club filled her with a sweet intoxication. She knew the names ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... beautifully termed, "the pomp that brings and shuts the day." The sun was in the tree-tops, and a softer or sweeter light could not have been chosen for such a ceremony. Most of the fields still lay in the soft brightness of the hour, though the forest was rapidly getting the more obscure look of night. A broad and gloomy margin was spreading from the boundary of the woods, and, here and there, a solitary tree cast its shadow on the meadows without its limits, throwing a dark ragged line, in ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... played at this crisis is also somewhat obscure. If the German Government wished to attack France, the natural plan would have been to keep that design secret until the time for action arrived. But it did not do so. Early in the month of April, von Radowitz, a man of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... allowed to be obscure, this attempt to explain its meaning is submitted with great deference to the opinions ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various
... phenomenon referred to may perhaps be partially explained. But, on the other hand, the origin of the generating force which sets the currents in motion must first be studied before the true conditions determining their direction can be understood. In other words, much that is now obscure, including the true origin of the earth's magnetism, must be to some extent cleared up before the reasons for the seemingly erratic strike of earth-currents and of richness in mineral lodes can ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... visit about which we are to study to-day is no ordinary visit. I think it is one of the most beautiful stories to be found in literature. This visit was made many centuries ago. It was made in an obscure corner of the earth, and yet it has never been forgotten. It never will be. The Inspirer of the Word saw in it too much of worth and winsomeness to allow it to slip out of the memories of men. It is remembered to-day, not because Jonathan left his calling card on David's center table. It is remembered ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... sessions of hypnotism, with Mr. Newman rigid in trances, while Carrick groped, as it were, among the springs of his mind. The pair of them had incurred the indignation of European authorities, writing in obscure and costly little journals whose names the general public never heard. The bond of martyrdom— martyrdom in ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... southern youth in the war of the revolution, uniting all the qualities of the famous chevalier, 'sans peur et sans reproche'. That he should have fallen, unnecessarily, at the close of the war, when nothing was to be gained, and nothing to be saved, by valor,—and in an obscure encounter on a field of mere predatory warfare, doubles the mortification of such a close to a noble and admirable career. A lesson from the pure and correct code of Marion's military morals would have saved this precious blood, and preserved this gallant youth for nobler fortunes. The following ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... long boat passage, and lay down to sleep in the home of the parish schoolmaster. But he had been seen landing. The inhabitants had identified him for a Pict, as, by some singular confusion of name, they called the dark and dwarfish aboriginal people of the land. Immediately the obscure ferment of a race-hatred, grown into a superstition, began to work in their bosoms, and they crowded about the house and the room-door with fearful whisperings. For some time the schoolmaster held them at bay, and at last despatched a messenger to call ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to attract the attention of English scholars to it. Whether or no it be accepted in whole or part by learned opinion, it will at least have the credit of suggesting a way in which not only the Lupercalia, but possibly other obscure rites, may be compelled ultimately ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... the conduct of the Kohlhaas affair at the wish of his hard-pressed master, asked the Elector what charge he now wished to have lodged against the horse-dealer in the Supreme Court at Berlin. As they could not refer to Kohlhaas' fatal letter to Nagelschmidt because of the questionable and obscure circumstances under which it had been written, nor mention the former plundering and burning because of the edict in which the same had been pardoned, the Elector determined to lay before the Emperor's Majesty at Vienna a report concerning the armed invasion of Saxony ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... time that the horseman left Lieursaint for Paris, the Lyons mail arrived there from Paris, and changed horses. It was about half-past eight, and the night had been obscure for some time. The courier, having charged horses and taken a fresh postilion, set forth to traverse the long forest of Senart. The mail, at this epoch, was very different from what it is at present. It ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... arranged, that none of the inhabitants of the cloister could see a face from the outside world. Suppose a church whose choir is grasped in a gigantic hand, and folded in such a manner as to form, not, as in ordinary churches, a prolongation behind the altar, but a sort of hall, or obscure cellar, to the right of the officiating priest; suppose this hall to be shut off by a curtain seven feet in height, of which we have already spoken; in the shadow of that curtain, pile up on wooden stalls the nuns in the choir on the left, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... phenomena of asexual propagation are so obscure, that at present we cannot be said to know much about them; but if we turn to that mode of perpetuation which results from the sexual process, then we find variation a perfectly constant occurrence, to a certain extent; ...
— The Perpetuation Of Living Beings, Hereditary Transmission And Variation • Thomas H. Huxley
... sins in the light of the Cross!). Indeed where there is evidence of the spectacular, it is often the least important part of revival. Our missionary friends seemed studiously to avoid reference to the spectacular side of what they had been through, lest it might obscure the real challenge of what God was saying to us. Then, too, revival is not something that God does firstly among the unconverted, but among His people. Revival simply means New Life, and that implies that there is already Life there, but that ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... for some obscure reason or other, convey an intolerable sting. Lessie jumps in her buckled Louis Quinze shoes, wheels, and confronts her newly-discovered enemy with ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of armes; behold, behold, see how this mightie conquerour king Arthur, whom in his humaine life all the world doubted, see also the noble queene Guenever, which sometime sat in her chaire adorned with gold, pearles, and precious stones, now lye full low in obscure fosse or pit, covered with clods of earth and clay; behold also this mightie champion Sir Launcelot, pearelesse of all knighthood, see now how hee lyeth groveling upon the cold mould, now being so feeble and faint that sometime was so terrible. How and in what manner ought yee to bee so desirous ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... made the experiment, I had supposed that every man, whose wealth or power gave him influence in society, would start up, the moment it was known that an obscure individual, the usher of a school, had written a tragedy; not only to protect and produce it to the world, but to applaud and honour the author! Would secure him from the possibility of want, load him with every token of respect, and affectionately ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... literary triumphs, and Emerson greeted Walt Whitman at "the opening of a great career", they generalized a strong personal impression. They identified their own preference with the public taste. On the other hand, Hawthorne says truly of himself that he was long the most obscure man of letters in America. Yet he had already published the Twice-told Tales and the Mosses from an Old Manse, the two series of stories in which the character and quality of his genius are fully disclosed. But although Longfellow hailed the publication of the first collection ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... transporting goods to market by water. A number of flatboats laden with the plunder of the freebooters lay moored close to the north shore, under the shelter of the overhanging bushes, at the distance of a mile or two up this narrow but deep creek. Farther up the bayou, and a few rods from it, in an obscure hollow and almost hidden by cypress trees, from which depended curtains and streamers of gray Spanish moss, stood a log building, the rendezvous of the outlaws. The structure was low and long, consisting of three huts so joined ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... might choose to say, his auditors had no choice but to believe him; wrong looked like right, and right like wrong; for when it pleased him, he could make a kind of illuminated fog with his mere breath, and obscure the natural daylight with it. His tongue, indeed, was a magic instrument: sometimes it rumbled like the thunder; sometimes it warbled like the sweetest music. It was the blast of war—the song of peace; and it seemed to have a ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... sergeant, and told him I would take the "cook" in hand at the next drill. On the following day, I marched him off into the dense chaparral, on the bottom lands near Matamoros. After following obscure paths, about three miles in their windings through the jungle, I halted him in a small open space a few hundred yards from the company camp. He thought no doubt, we were five miles from camp—in a boundless wilderness—whilst, in ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... other was an organism, an animal, a man. When I had sufficiently admired their exterior, I asked my attendant genius to allow me to examine the inside of them; and I did so. In the vase I found nothing but the force of gravity and a certain obscure desire, which took the form of chemical affinity. But when I entered into the other—how shall I express my astonishment at what I saw? It is more incredible than all the fairy tales and fables that were ever conceived. Nevertheless, ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... she answered-"His personal freedom may be effected, and God grant such a regard to your prowess! But his other rights, what can recover them? His estates sequestrated, his vassals in bonds, all power of the Earl of Mar will be annihilated; and from some obscure refuge like this, must he utter his thanks to his ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... by intercourse with you, so, a fortiori, may we in our tender years do the same. We therefore make you, by this present letter, Patrician, that the counsels which you give us may not seem to proceed from any unknown and obscure source. ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Selkirk utterly discounted ours by sending his hardy, dare-devil De Meurons across country under the leadership of that prince of braggarts, Captain D'Orsonnens. Indeed, we had only heard the rumor of their coming, when we awakened one morning after an obscure, stormy night to find them encamped at St. James, westward on the Assiniboine River. Day after day the menacing force remained quiet and inoffensive, and we began to look upon these notorious ruffians as harmless. For our part, vigilance ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the beasts, he never felt any sympathy for them: he used to pass them by without ever trying to feel what it was that worked their machinery: rather he was afraid to think of it: it was something like a bad dream.—And now everything was made plaint These humble, obscure creatures became in ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... with regard to appellatives, or the names of species. It seems of no great use to set down the words horse, dog, cat, willow, alder, daisy, rose, and a thousand others, of which it will be hard to give an explanation, not more obscure than the word itself. Yet it is to be considered, that, if the names of animals be inserted, we must admit those which are more known, as well as those with which we are, by accident, less acquainted; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... people in this faith. The Duke d'Orleans revenges himself upon the innocent and pure queen for the scorn which she displays to this infamous prince. The aunts of the queen revenge themselves for the obscure position to which fate has consigned them, they having to play the second part at the brilliant court of Versailles, and be thrown into the shade by Marie Antoinette. The whole court—all these jealous, envious ladies— revenge themselves for the favor which the queen ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... is before that ship, and a wider mystery. But in the passage of time, as the strange cruise proceeds, its course begins to tell upon the chart. The zigzag line, like obscure chirography, has an intelligible look, and seems to spell out intimations. As order after order is opened, those sibyl leaves of the cabin commence to prophesy, glimpses multiply, surmises come quick, and shortly the whole ship's company more than suspect, from the accumulating data ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... terraces are remarkably distinct, and the intervening valleys strongly marked. The brilliant compound central mountain rises at its loftiest peak to a height of more than 3000 feet. On the N. of it is an obscure circular ring, which may possibly merely represent a fortuitous combination of ridges, though it has all the appearance of a modified ring-plain. On the Mare, some distance N.E. of the formation, is a group of three ring-plains, with two small ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... Obscure as were the directions which Hopperdown's niece had taken from his dying lips, one point at least was clear—the treasure-cave opened on the sea. This seemed an immense simplification of the problem, until you discovered that the great wall of cliffs was ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... whole dream, or, at all events, all that I can remember. It appears to me not only obscure and meaningless, but more especially odd. Mrs. E.L. is a person with whom I am scarcely on visiting terms, nor to my knowledge have I ever desired any more cordial relationship. I have not seen her for a long time, ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... noteworthy that no inscription records the very first burial within the walls of the church. It is noteworthy too that the forgotten grave was not the grave of an obscure person, but of Lord Pigot, Governor of Madras; and, in view of the extraordinary circumstances of his death, the first burial is the most ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... receiving this letter she made enquiries, and learned that, a month or two after her departure from Lynbrook, Wyant had married a Clifton girl—a pretty piece of flaunting innocence, whom she remembered about the lanes, generally with a young man in a buggy. There had evidently been something obscure and precipitate about the marriage, which was a strange one for the ambitious young doctor. Justine conjectured that it might have been the cause of his leaving Clifton—or or perhaps he had already succumbed to the fatal habit she had suspected in him. At any rate ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... dignity offered him, but sent to let Pericles know their intentions, that he might return home and resume his lawful right. It was matter of great surprise and joy to Simonides, to kind that his son-in-law (the obscure knight) was the renowned prince of Tyre; yet again he regretted that he was not the private gentleman he supposed him to be, seeing that he must now part both with his admired son-in-law and his beloved daughter, whom he ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... elephant's back, and ride round the ring with some of the other fellows; but my boy at least never had the courage; and he never was of those who mounted the trick pony and were shaken off as soon as they got on. It seemed to be a good deal of fun, but he did not dare to risk it; and he had an obscure trouble of mind when, the last thing, four or five ponies were brought out with as many monkeys tied on their backs, and set to run a race round the ring. The monkeys always looked very miserable, and even the one ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... the very centre of Catholicity and of Catholic unity, and near the tombs of the martyred apostles, the founders of the Church. In this it contrasts with Trent, which, although the Fathers assembled at an obscure village in the Tyrol, was not less, on this account, an OEcumenical Council. Papal legates presided at Trent, whilst the Holy Father himself was present at all the solemn sessions of the Vatican Council which ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... later by appearance of BOBBY SPENCER at the Table. BOBBY doesn't often witch the House with oratory. Content with important though to outsiders obscure position he occupies in Party administration. His is the hand that pulls the strings to which Liberal Party dance. SCHNADHORST gets some credit, but everybody knows BOBBY's the man. To see these two political ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... property, but not the essence of love; and, as such authors have not sufficiently discerned love's essence, they have been unable to acquire a true conception of its properties, accordingly their definition is on all hands admitted to be very obscure. It must, however, be noted, that when I say that it is a property of love, that the lover should wish to unite himself to the beloved object, I do not here mean by wish consent, or conclusion, or ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... she has no people. An orphan, whom he took out of a convent. A gentlewoman, yes, but of obscure family." ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... earliest authorship of Mr. Carlyle," says Mr. James Russell Lowell, alluding to these papers, "we find some not obscure hints of the future man. The outward fashion of them is that of the period; but they are distinguished by a certain security of judgment, remarkable at any time, remarkable especially in one so young. Carlyle, in these first essays, already shows the influence of his master Goethe, the most ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... a considerable degree of probability, that in Auvergne volcanic eruptions persisted even into historic times. The subject is obscure, depending on the interpretation of difficult passages in two Latin chronicles of the fifth century. The most obvious meaning of both passages would certainly appear to be the occurrence of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, but ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... English nor Scotch, but British. It was the opinion of lawyers, however, that beyond the seas the churches of England and Scotland depended for their rights on parliamentary or colonial enactment; and that whenever obscure, a declaratory statute must fix the sense of a treaty, and decide whether an exclusive endowment of any class of clergymen was beyond the competence ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... almost suffocated with passion; but she knew her niece too well to doubt her putting her threat into execution, and there was distraction in the idea of the vulgar obscure Grizzy Douglas being presented to a fashionable party as her aunt. After a violent altercation, in which Mary took no part, an ungracious permission was at length extorted, which Mary eagerly availed herself of; and, charged with kind messages from Lady Emily, set off in quest of ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... remained a prisoner more than a year, until the Duke's death in 1447, when he made his escape, and profited by the disturbance of the Duchy to reacquire his lordships in the Bergamasque territory. The true motive for his imprisonment remains still buried in obscure conjecture. Probably it was not even known to the Visconti, who acted on this, as on so many other occasions, by a mere spasm of suspicious jealousy, for which he ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... brave and loyal people. Never surely was there a public event more fitted to reduce men, in all ranks of society, under the supremacy of their common nature; to impress upon them one belief; to infuse into them one spirit. For it was not done in a remote corner by persons of obscure rank; but in the eyes of Europe and of all mankind; by the leading authorities, military and civil, of a mighty empire. It did not relate to a petty immunity, or a local and insulated privilege—but to ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... tired, and to-day looked worn. The new toy was dragging her out. As the long St. Louis summer drew to an end, she was always tired. Some obscure woman's trouble, something in the delicate organism that had never been quite right, was becoming acutely wrong. She lived in fear of having another child,—the last baby had died. By the new year she was in care of Isabelle's specialist, who advised an operation. When that was over, it was ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... tipped with white, conspicuous in flight; a white spot on centre of outer wing feathers. A black band runs from bill, through eye to side of throat. Light gray below, tinged with brownish, and faintly marked with waving lines of darker gray. Bill hooked and hawk-like. Female — With eye-band more obscure than male's, and with More distinct brownish cast on her plumage. Range — Northern North America. South in winter to middle Portion of United States. Migrations — November, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... such a story as Cinderella, let the parent who loves his children, and who wishes to be no stranger to their interests, joys and sorrows, seat himself among them some time and begin to read to them. Pausing now and then to explain some word whose meaning may be obscure to them, or to comment on some phase of the story that may be of special interest, let him read on to the end without attempting to do much more than to make the story a vivid tale where the interest centers ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... fugitive by the waist, and struggled to hold him, while the magian struggled to get free. Gobryas called upon Darius, who was close behind him, to strike. Darius, brandishing his sword, looked earnestly into the obscure retreat, that he might ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... appearing there. Louis received his courtiers with that gay and smiling affability which was the result of his temperament, and had procured for him from one of his adorers the surname of Phoebus. But, all of a sudden, a cloud was seen to obscure the face of the sun, and the dismayed sycophants were in a flutter to know what was passing behind it. The firmament had darkened at the approach of the Duke de Vendome ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... in order to know him at a future time. As is always the case, it was the smaller officials who were the most offensive—the little Jacks-in-office from the postal administration, the common officers, the hundred obscure civil servants who wear a sword and uniform unworthily in any one of the three European empires. On the other hand, the men in real authority, and notably the officers of the better regiments, sought to conciliate by politeness and a careful retention of themselves in the background. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... lamps at unsuspected shrines. Their orchestra commenced in that suburban house, where he had to stand aside for the maid to carry in the luncheon. Music flowed past him like a river. He stood at the springs of creation and heard the primeval monotony. Then an obscure instrument gave out ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... between hope and fear, between life and death. At last towards the middle of the night, Heaven, which had seen our resignation, commanded the floods to be still. Instantly the sea became less rough, the veil which covered the sky became less obscure, the stars again shone out, and the tempest seemed to withdraw. A general exclamation of joy and thankfulness issued at one instant from every mouth. The winds calmed, and each of us sought a little sleep, whilst our good and ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... with a mantle, didst invest The rising World of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless Infinite! Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian Pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight, Through utter and through middle Darkness borne, With other notes than to the Orphean lyre I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture down The dark descent, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... did not himself know Mr. Newell's address, but opined that it might be extracted from a certain official at the Consulate, if Garnett could give a sufficiently good reason for the request; and here in fact Mrs. Newell's emissary learned that her husband was to be found in an obscure street of ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... of annihilation, however, is of brief duration, never exceeding more than five or six hours: losses are gradually repaired, an obscure sense of existence manifests itself, and the sleeper passes into the empire ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... prayers are offered for supply of water. The following lines seem to describe great haste when the inundation comes on; none wait for their clothing, even when valuable, and the nightly solemnities are broken up: but the passage is obscure. ...
— Egyptian Literature
... one, we managed to pull it across the pebbles and under the low cliff beneath the overhanging fringe of the wood. In the uncertain light—for there was no moon and since our setting out from the yawl masses of cloud had come up from the south-east to obscure the stars—the ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... to strangers a trivial thing, that an obscure court, like the presbytery, should proceed in the business of induction by one routine rather than by another; but was it a trivial thing that the power of appointing clergymen should lapse into this perilous dilemma—either that it should be intercepted by the Scottish ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... shine, and to let it down into the restful depths of an unremembering eternity. But into that place, which is the soul of man, no destroyer can penetrate; that solitary life neither the sword, nor pestilence, nor age, nor eternity can extinguish; that immortal memory no night can obscure. There was a beginning indeed, but end there can ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... largely accepted long before it can be proved. Moreover, the various notions that prevail—equally among the most and the least religious—as to the relations between natural agencies or phenomena and efficient cause, are seemingly more crude, obscure, and ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... ascertain its present bearing and effect. But, as many have raised the question, and asserted that caste had an idolatrous origin, and was the invention of an idolatrous priesthood, it may be worth while to gather together such facts as we can lay our hands on regarding this somewhat obscure subject. And it seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to clear away the rubbish which has been piled upon it in common with most Indian institutions—to ask what is evidence, and what is not. Our missionaries ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... meeting-house was two stories in height, the lower story having been formerly used by the Free Grace Believers as a place wherein to celebrate certain obscure mysteries appertaining to their belief. The upper story, devoted to the more ordinary worship of their Sunday meetings, was reached by a tall, steep flight of steps that led from the ground to a covered ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... know from these envious, whether Pliny and the other sages famous for their science sought, in communicating similar details to the powerful men of their day, to be useful only to the princes with whom they corresponded. They mingled together obscure reports and positive knowledge, great things and small, generalities and details; to the end that posterity might, equally with the princes, learn everything together, and also in the hope that those who crave details and are interested in novelties, might be able to distinguish between different ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... who have lived since Browning's first publication have seen as many attitudes taken toward one of the ablest poetic spirits of the century. To the first he appeared an enigma, a writer hopelessly obscure, perhaps not even clear in his own mind, as to the message he wished to deliver; to the second he appeared a prophet and a philosopher, full of all wisdom and subtlety, too deep for common mortals to fathom with line and plummet,—concealing below green depths of ocean ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... Could not all Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall! Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart An hour's importance to the poor man's heart; 240 Thither no more the peasant shall repair To sweet oblivion of his daily care; No more the farmer's news, the barber's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the Cardinal, "of an aged man of no plebeian mien or bearing, albeit most shabbily attired in the skins, now fabulously cheap, of the vermin that torment us; who, professing to practise as an herbalist, some little time ago established himself in an obscure street of no good repute. A tortoise hangs in his needy shop, nor are stuffed alligators lacking. Understanding that he was resorted to by such as have need of philters and love-potions, or are incommoded by the longevity of parents and uncles, I was about to have him arrested, when ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... came to her, Repent, and the prophecy continuing danced in her ears; yet still the way was obscure. In the echo she divined merely that the past must be put from her like a garment that is stained. The rest was vague. Then suddenly she was back again in Machaerus, and she heard the ringing words of John. Could this be the Messiah her nation awaited? ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... Milo making havoc of the dark forest, which did serve only to furnish dens, caves, and shelter to wolves, wild boars, and foxes, and afford receptacles, withdrawing corners, and refuges to robbers, thieves, and murderers, lurking holes and skulking places for cutthroat assassinators, secret obscure shops for coiners of false money, and safe retreats for heretics, laying them even and level with the plain champaign fields and pleasant heathy ground, at the sound of the hautboys and bagpipes playing reeks with the high and stately timber, and preparing seats and benches ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... is so great that the name of the tribe alludes to it. Tarahumare is a Spanish corruption of ralamari, the meaning of which, though somewhat obscure, may doubtless best be given as "foot-runners," ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... Nemesis in the Agora stood the tanner Anytos chatting with Thrasybulos, a hitherto obscure but rising patriot. ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... for fame tormented him; as the days went by and his name was not mentioned, he believed that he had come to an obscure death. He fancied that the youths turned their backs on him, to look in the opposite direction, storing him away among the respected dead, admiring other masters. His artistic pride made him seek opportunities ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... if the wild unfathered mass no birth In divine seats hath known; In the blank echoing solitude, if earth, Rocking her obscure body to and fro, Ceases not from all time to heave and groan, Unfruitful oft, and, at her happiest throe, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... got the full effect of their reception in the music and the cheers. I dared not look at Miss Anthony during this remarkable scene, and she, craning her venerable neck to get a glimpse of the incident from her obscure corner, made no comment to me; but I knew what she was thinking. The following year these Indians would have votes. Courtesy, therefore, must be shown them. But the women did not matter, the politicians reasoned, for even if they were enfranchised ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... accompanied all her motions. A statuary who would have wished to represent Voluptuousness, would have taken her for his model; and she would equally have served for him who might have had a figure of Modesty to display. Even the gloomy and clouded sky of England had not been able to obscure the brightness of that aerial kind of soul, unknown in our climates. In every thing that Eliza did, an irresistible charm was diffused around her. Desire, but of a timid and bashful cast, followed her steps in silence. Any man of courteousness alone must ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... absolutely nothing to warrant the expectation, nothing reasonable on which to base joyous anticipation, had gone to bed thinking of Santa Claus and hoping that, amidst equally deserving hundreds of thousands of obscure children, this little mite in her cold, cheerless garret might not be overlooked by the generous dispenser of joy. With the sublime trust of childhood she had insisted upon hanging up her ragged stocking. Santa Claus would ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... dropping out with the tide. When the entrance was cleared, and five miles distant, Mr. Westall took a view of it (Atlas Plate XVII, View 13.), which will be an useful assistance in finding this extensive but obscure port; and at eleven o'clock, when we bore away eastward to pass Cape Schanck, he sketched that cape and the ridge of hills terminating at Arthur's Seat (View 14). Cape Schanck is a cliffy head, with three rocks lying off, the outermost of which appears at a distance like a ship under ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... well-thumbed and nearly illegible leaves of some old book or pamphlet of songs, snugly resting on the 'pot-head,' or sharing their rest with the 'great ha' bible,' 'Scott's Worthies,' or 'Blind Harry's' lines. The parish dominie, or pastor of some obscure village amid the many nooks and corners of the Borders, possesses, no doubt, treasures in the ballad ware, that would have gladdened the heart of a Ritson, a Percy, or a Surtees; in the libraries, too, of many ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... equally avoided pawning his youth to any of the maturer married ladies, whose status and character, together with those of their husbands, license them to practice as certificated Egerias. His dangerous penchant was for highly spiced adventuresses, and for pastoral amourettes, wistful and obscure. But he never gave away his heart; he lent it out at interest. He received it again intact, with the profit of his musical inspiration. Thus his liaison with Veronique Gerson produced the publication of Les demi-jours, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... underclerks, perhaps?" "No." "The bookkeeper?" "No." "The confidential clerk?" "You must guess again." "The junior partner?" "No, it was Christian Van Pelt, the sole proprietor of that fine establishment, one of the merchant princes of the city." "But what right had Mary Trigillgus, this obscure school-teacher, to love this man of fortune? How did she ever come to his acquaintance?" And then I should tell you a very long story, and a tedious one perhaps, of two Hollanders, close friends, who settled in New Amsterdam; of how fortune had prospered the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... this loving embrace are, in their foundation, joyous and without mode, for God's infinite absence of mode is so obscure and so destitute of mode, that it envelopes in itself every divine mode and every work, and the individuality of the Persons, in the rich envelopment of essential unity, and forms a divine rejoicing ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... us, I wouldn't have any feeling about your singing in public other than pride in your ability to command public favor with your voice. It's a wonderful voice, too big and fine a thing to remain obscure. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... down one of the elevator-shafts, digging toes and fingers into the crevices in the metal framework and the cracks in the concrete, he managed at last to reach a vaulted sub-cellar, festooned with webs, damp, noisome and obscure. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... raised their heads and remembered that their grandfathers had spoken thus. They remembered having seen in certain obscure corners of the paternal home mysterious marble busts with long hair and a Latin inscription; they remembered seeing their grandsires shake their heads and speak of a stream of blood more terrible than that of the emperor. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... affection, two things must be taken care of:—In the first place, nature must be stimulated to expel these hurtful humours which obscure the senses, so that the woman may be brought back from that sleepy fit. Secondly, during the intervals of the attack, proper remedies must be employed, in order to ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... little interest in the thought that it was the Raja of Chandragiri that delivered the deed of possession to Mr. Francis Day. The Raja was an obscure representative of a magnificent Indian Empire of the past; Mr. Francis Day was an obscure representative of a magnificent Indian Empire that was yet to be; and the document that the Raja handed to Mr. Francis Day was in reality a patent of Empire, transferred ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... probable opinion than the other. But which is the truth cannot perhaps be discovered, and therefore it is not fit so peremptorily to find fault with the most acute and most famed philosopher, especially when the matter is so obscure, and the Platonists can produce such considerable ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... continually poring over visions of horror and mystery. Neither report was true; she lived till 1823, in full possession of her faculties, although she published nothing after 1797. The circulation of such stories shows how retired, and even obscure, a life this very popular writer ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... slighted right-hand path, dived in desperation in between the trees, amidst 'darkness that might be felt.' Walking steadily and quickly forward, during what seemed, in the deep gloom, a considerable time, I eventually emerged into 'the clear obscure,' the moon having at length set, and left the sky, and all such wanderers as myself, to the good offices of the stars. I was now on the opposite verge of the wood to that I had entered by, and found myself by the side of a narrow ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... steward, and after them came two slaves, carrying the lutes and pipes. Agne walked with downcast eyes, as if she desired to avoid seeing all that surrounded her, though when Orpheus addressed her she shyly glanced up at him and answered briefly and timidly. They presently came out of an obscure alley by the canal connecting Kibotus with Lake Mareotis where the Nile-boats lay at anchor. Karnis drew a deeper breath, for here the air was clear and balmy; a light northerly breeze brought the refreshing fragrance ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of extensive knowledge, and one who had meditated profoundly concerning the matters upon which he has treated. His style is clear, simple, easy, and in which we may remark a certain urbanity, that leads us to be sure that he was not an obscure individual, nor one to whom good company and polished society were unfamiliar. But what especially distinguishes this work, and which should endear it to all good and virtuous people, is the signal honesty which pervades and ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... foes found themselves face to face at Culloden, in the environs of Inverness. Charles Edward was completely beaten, and the army of the Highlanders destroyed; the prince only escaped either death or captivity by the determined devotion of his partisans, whether distinguished or obscure; a hundred persons had risked their lives for him, when he finally succeeded, on the 10th of October, in touching land, in Brittany, near St. Pol de Leon. His friends and his defenders were meanwhile dying for his cause on scaffold ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... elapsed since the town of Cumana had been almost totally destroyed by an earthquake. The people regard vapours which obscure the horizon, and the subsidence of wind during the night, as infallible pregnostics of disaster. We had frequent visits from persons who wished to know whether our instruments indicated new shocks for the next day; and alarm was ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... These, saner, frown upon unmeaning rites And go to church for rational delights. So all are suited, shallow and profound, The prophets prosper and the world goes round. For me—unread in the occult, I'm fain To damn all mysteries alike as vain, Spurn the obscure and base my faith upon The Revelations of ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... goods their trading names, for there are certain peculiarities in the trading language, which are to be observed as the greatest proprieties, and without which the language your letters are written in would be obscure, and the tradesmen you write to would not understand you—for example, if you write to your factor at Lisbon, or at Cadiz, to make you returns in hardware, he understands you, and sends you so many bags of pieces of eight. So, if a merchant comes to me to hire a small ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... the guide counselled his younger companion to patience, and for a considerable time they remained without stirring out of their obscure chamber. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... well. He was originally a merchant, and had a quantity of counting-house knowledge. He became member of a club of political economists, and a scholar of M'Culloch's. In this club there were some obscure but very able men, and by them he got crammed with the principles of commerce and political economy, and from his mercantile connections he got facts. He possessed great industry and sufficient ability to work up the materials he thus acquired into a very plausible exhibition ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... which follow, and the truth about the character of James, are exceedingly obscure. We have no Scottish chronicle written at the time; the later histories, by Ferrerius, an Italian, and, much later, by Queen Mary's Bishop Lesley, and by George Buchanan, are full of rumours and contradictions, while the State Papers and Treaties of England merely prove the extreme treachery ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... short of a positive sensation. Her methods are bold, startling, successful. Her husband, an insignificant looking man, invented something, an air-brake for railway trains, an improvement on the Westinghouse air-brake, "Brooks' Unbroken Circuit." This, after years of obscure struggling, brought them into immediate wealth, but not at once into social notice. Their first efforts in that direction, or rather, her first efforts, were complete failures. They nibbled about on the outer edge; finally, it dawned upon ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... because, the humbug being exploded, all that is necessary now is to laugh, hiss, and vociferously applaud. When men make up their minds to vilify the Bible, denounce the Constitution, and defame their country (although this is a free country), they should go down in some obscure cellar, remote from mortal ken, and, even there, whisper their hideous treason against God ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... diuers articles propounded, as well on the behalfe of England, as of Prussia, and of the cities of the Hans, both heretofore and also at the last conuention holden at Hage, were so obscure, that in regard of their obscurity, there could no resolute answere bee made vnto them: and other of the sayd articles exhibited, for want of sufficient proofes, could not clearely be determined vpon: it was appointed and concluded, that all obscure ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... this letter of James Stuart for the thirty-five years since it was received. It was written with a lead pencil on both sides of a sheet of paper, and I insert here a photograph of a half-tone reproduction of it. It has become somewhat illegible and obscure from repeated folding ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... the agency of the intervening neutral Power that Austria-Hungary was, of course, ready to put an end to further bloodshed, and did not look for any gains from the peace, because, as stated several times, we were engaged in a war of defence only. But I drew attention to the rather obscure sense of the application, not being able to understand whether the State applying to us wished for peace with us only, or with the entire group of Powers, and I was constrained to emphasise the fact that ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... 108 are rather obscure. What the king says in 107 seems to be that you two have referred your dispute to me who am a king. I cannot shirk my duty, but am bound to judge fairly between you. I should see that kingly duties should ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... little way down the street, then summoned a hansom from the door of a public-house, and gave an address which Dino did not hear. They drove for some distance. Dino thought that his new friend's lodgings were situated in a rather obscure quarter of London; but he made no remark in words, for he knew his own ignorance of the world, and he had never been in England before. Hugo's lodgings appeared to be on the second-floor of a gloomy-looking house, of which the ground-floor ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Mayes's example by stopping the cab in Charterhouse Street, and walking the short remaining distance to Barbican. Norbury Row was an obscure street behind it, at the corner of which stood "The Compasses," the public-house which Plummer had mentioned. We did not venture to show ourselves in Norbury Row, but hastened into the nearest door of "The Compasses," which chanced to be that ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... a word used to express that quality in metals or other material by means of which obscure rays are emitted, that have the capacity of discharging electrified bodies, and the power to ionize gases, as well as ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... .... One day an obscure and unimportant person pitched himself among the rolling porpoises, from a ferry-boat, and an officious busy-body, not at once clearly apprehending that the matter was none of his immediate business, hied ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... his pages so teem with fine sayings and magniloquent epigrams and gorgeous images and fantastic locutions that the mind would welcome dulness as a bright relief. He is tediously amusing; he is brilliant to the point of being obscure; his helpfulness is so extravagant as to worry and confound. That is the secret of his unpopularity. His stories are not often good stories and are seldom well told; his ingenuity and intelligence are always misleading him into treating mere episodes as solemnly ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... that obscure rush-light of the London Ghetto Theatre have blazed into the Star of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... of Nature's obscure and cheerless jokes; and in this instance, as in some few others, she is beyond Art. She even assists the illusion by a very slight depression of the plain in the right place. In fact, an artist's picture of a mirage ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... of that sent at once, by special delivery, to every physician and surgeon in town, no matter how obscure. See to it that not one is overlooked. Even those on the staffs of the different hospitals must be notified, although they are the least likely to be called upon. Above all, don't forget the old retired one, those of shady professional reputation and the fledglings just out of ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... and there registered his vow to avenge their blood in the disenthralment of the slave. The compeers of this "grand old man" or people of the nation could have scarcely supposed that this man, hitherto obscure, was to be the instrument of retributive justice, to inaugurate a rebellion which was to culminate in the freedom of 4,000,000 slaves. John Brown, at the head of a few devoted men, at Harper's Ferry, ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... I cannot myself recall a tithe of the material I collected. I carried out my inquiries in every conceivable direction. Suppose we take the obscure case of a—let me see—of a burglar. This was one of my most difficult researches. A burglar will assure you, if you happen to be in his confidence, that every time he enters a house, at a moment when absolute quiet is from his point of view essential, a door slams, or a pot of jam falls off ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... worthy to receive a copy of the Tribune—marked personal. Victoria Flint got one, and read it to her father at the breakfast table. (Mr. Flint did not open his.) Austen Vane wondered why any man in his obscure and helpless position should have been honoured, but honoured he was. He sent his to Victoria, too, and was surprised to find that she knew his handwriting and wrote him a letter to thank him for it: a letter which provoked on his part much laughter, and elements of other sensations ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of obscure family, was originally a common soldier in the Guards. He became field-marshal, Duke of Alcudia, Grandee of Spain, Councillor of State, and Cavalier of the Golden Fleece. For his intervention in the Peace of Basilea he received the title of Principe de la Paz. Baldomero Espartero ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... Just now she is wrestling with George Meredith; and she asks me to explain 'Modern Love' to her. I can't make head or tail of it. Nor can she. But when people come to tea she begins to talk about Meredith, and asks them if they don't think him very obscure. And as most people here who come to tea have never heard of him, it keeps up her dignity. All the same, she is a dear old thing—and she put a large case of chocolate in ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... view to business. Indeed, there was little opportunity for business, to tempt him. Everything was flat. Mr. Gartney must wait. Mrs. Gartney and Faith felt, though they talked of waiting, that the prospect really before them was that of a careful, obscure life, upon a very limited income. The house in Mishaumok had stood vacant all the summer. There was hope, of course, of letting it now, as the winter season came on, but rents were falling, and ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... OF INDIA (327 B.C.).—Although we find obscure notices of India in the records of the early historic peoples of Western Asia, yet it is not until the invasion of the peninsula by Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. that the history of the Indian Aryans ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... why he sought out the most obscure rooming house that gave any promise of decency and comfort, and stayed off Central Avenue and away from its loitering groups of range dwellers who might know him. That is why he hired a horse and rode early and alone to the fair grounds on the opening day, and avoided, by a roundabout trail a certain ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... the Akbarnamah, 'brought about excellent results: (1) the Court became a gathering-place of the sages and learned of all creeds; the good doctrines of all religious systems were recognised, and their defects were not allowed to obscure their good features; (2) perfect toleration, or peace with all, was established; and (3) the perverse and evil-minded were covered with shame on seeing the disinterested motives of his Majesty, and thus stood in the pillory of disgrace.' It has to be admitted that ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... Such have been, and are, my convictions, and upon them I shall act. I fervently hope that the question is at rest, and that no sectional or ambitious or fanatical excitement may again threaten the durability of our institutions or obscure the light of ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... obtrude the name of the old original superannuated obscure Jemmy Jackman, once (to his degradation) of Wozenham's, long (to his elevation) of Lirriper's. If I could be consciously guilty of that piece of bad taste, it would indeed be a work of supererogation, now that the name is borne ...
— Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings • Charles Dickens
... open to receive me, led into a hall, wide, vaulted and lofty, and decorated here and there with remnants of tapestry and grim portraits of the Wimpoles. One picture in particular riveted my attention. Hung in an obscure corner, where the light rarely penetrated, it represented the head and shoulders of a young man with a strikingly beautiful face—the features small and regular like those of a woman—the hair yellow and curly. It was the eyes that struck ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... invading army. Accordingly the German officers and soldiers could move about in the town without hindrance. A number of despatches and fresh war bulletins were found which threw some light upon the strategic position, although they were partly obscure, and partly contained ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... could offer, for your good opinion is worth much to my proud, sensitive soul. If all men were like you there would be no mutilated, ruined lives, such as mine,—no nominal wives roaming up and down the world in search of an obscure corner wherein to hide dishonored heads and crushed hearts. God grant you some day a wife worthy of the noblest man it has ever been my ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... force at all—that is, it should not be accepted as the rule of conduct—or it must be transformed, adapted to the limits within which its fulfillment is possible in our society. Another misconception is that the Christian doctrine of love of God, and therefore of his service, is an obscure, mystic principle, which gives no definite object for love, and should therefore be replaced by the more exact and comprehensible principles of love for men and the ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... remotest possible point from Palos, in Barcelona, the great seaport of northeastern Spain. It was a long, long land journey for a seaman to make, but Christopher Columbus did not mind, for every step of it was glory and triumph. He who had once wandered over this same land from city to city, obscure, suspected of being either a visionary or an adventurer, had returned as a great personage, an Admiral of Spain, a Viceroy, a Governor; and, best of all, a practical discoverer instead of a mere ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... the little that I had been able to do. This unhappy man must have been possessed of abilities which (under favouring circumstances) would, I don't hesitate to say, have ranked him among the greatest physicians of our time. The language in which he writes is obscure, and sometimes grammatically incorrect. But he, and he alone, has solved a problem in the treatment of disease, which has thus far been the despair of medical men throughout the ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... must needs confess, is but slubber'd invention: if your wisdom obscure the circumstance, your kindness ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with (an equivocal[1]) success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... according to the regular custom of the country, Johnny Darbyshire, was a farmer living in one of the most obscure parts of the country, on the borders of the Peak of Derbyshire. His fathers before him had occupied the same farm for generations; and as they had been Quakers from the days of George Fox, who preached there and converted them, Johnny also was a Quaker. That is, he was, as many ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... idea is) to every recruit here. We have at another conference been shown the detail work of supplying our camps both at the training ground and on the hike, and the immense importance of the work of the obscure quartermaster's department. Talk after talk has impressed us with the amount of work needed to drill, to equip, to work into fighting shape, even a few thousand men; and there is no Plattsburg rookie who does ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... eyes in prayer, Turn unto them for guiding ray: If storms obscure their radiance, The great ships ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... better known to the outer world than Cinderella—the despised and flouted younger sister, who long sits unnoticed beside the hearth, then furtively visits the glittering halls of the great and gay, and at last is transferred from her obscure nook to the place of honor justly due to her tardily acknowledged merits. Somewhat like the fortunes of Cinderella have been those of the popular tale itself. Long did it dwell beside the hearths of the common people, utterly ignored by ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... a remarkable man. At a time when the Mediterranean swarmed with warriors none was more feared, none was more redoubtable than he. By sheer valour and tenacity he had fought his way to the front, and the son of the obscure renegado of Mitylene died a king. It is true that his sovereignty was precarious, that it was maintained at the edge of the sword; none the less, in that welter of anarchy in which he lived he had forced himself to the summit, ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... of the steamer passengers who arrived that morning. It might meet HER eye, although he had been haunted during the voyage by a terrible fancy that she was still in Europe, and had either hidden herself in some obscure provincial town with the half-crazy Pendleton, or had entered a convent, or even, in reckless despair, had accepted the name and title of some penniless nobleman. It was this miserable doubt that had ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... Mrs. Leach's health. Other explanations were suspected; for the new establishment seemed to be on a more modest footing than that in Elgin Road, and the odd arrangement whereby Mr. Leach came home only on Saturday could not be without significance. Mrs. Leach, it was true, suffered from some obscure affection of the nerves, which throughout the whole of her married life had disabled her from paying any continuous regard to domestic affairs; this debility had now reached such a point that the unfortunate lady could do nothing but collapse in ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... may say, about those [234] obscure ancient people, it was ever so difficult really to know, who had hidden their actual life with so much success; but certainly a quite natural dream upon the paradoxical things we are told of them, on good authority. It is because they make us ask that question; puzzle us ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... ones are poor returns for the ardent note you have so affectionately conveyed to me by him on whom we now both alike rest our hopes and our confidence. The more I think of this whole affair, from its obscure beginnings, the more I am quite overcome by what he has already achieved; never did the finest season of blossoms promise a richer gathering. But he has not the sole merit, for you share it with him, in the grand view you take of the capability of this new intellectual ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... reaching almost to the surface of the soil, was entered upon. At the right a wide door led into a large chapel. The walls were covered with rudely scratched names and inscriptions, some in Greek and some in Latin. De Rossi, whose eyes were practised in the work, undertook to decipher these often obscure scribblings. They were for the most part the inscriptions of the pilgrims who had visited these places, and their great number gave proof that this was a most important portion of the cemetery. The majority ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... courage, popularity, address, and military conduct, raise the ambitious to eminence. With these qualities, the citizen or the slave easily passes from the ranks to the command of an army, from an obscure to an illustrious station. In either, a single person may rule with unlimited sway; and in both, the populace may break down every barrier of order, ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... this classing is to make the study of their natural history more easy and simple. But you are right, brother, in the present case; it appears quite useless, and only renders the thing more complex, and obscure. Where there are many varieties or species of a family or order of animals, and where these species differ widely from each other in appearance and habits, then such minute classifications become necessary to ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... as I have intimated, been removing or destroying the vital principle in the food—these vitamines. Clearly the purpose was to make this case look like an epidemic of beriberi, polyneuritis. That part has been clear to me for some time. It has been the source of this devilish plot which has been obscure. Just a moment, Kato, I will do the talking. My detective, Chase, has been doing some shadowing for me, as well as some turning over of past history. He has found a woman, a nurse, more than a nurse, a secret lover, cast off in favor of another. Miss Hackstaff—you wrote that letter—it is your ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... great seriousness and zeal for the truth. He showed very great courage and manhood, and was not easily disturbed. He was not intimidated by threats, danger, or alarms. He was also of such a high, clear intelligence that when affairs were confused, obscure, and difficult he was often the only one who could see at once what was advisable and feasible. He was not, as perhaps some thought, too unobservant to notice the condition of the government everywhere. He knew right well ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... were beating somewhere in the dark. It was the falling of the mules' hoofs upon the bridge made of strong hides lashed to poles and stretched across the chasm. Half a mile further was Tacuzama. The village was a congregation of rock and mud huts set in the profundity of an obscure wood. As they rode in a sound inconsistent with that brooding solitude met their ears. From a long, low mud hut that they were nearing rose the glorious voice of a woman in song. The words were ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... Select Letters of Columbus. It has been carefully revised by the present editor, and some important changes have been made. As hitherto published in English a good many passages in this letter have been so confused and obscure and some so absolutely unintelligible, that the late Justin Winsor characterized this last of the important writings of Columbus as "a sorrowful index of his wandering reason."[388-1] Almost every ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... simple diseases of the eye; and he knows how to put gold filling into teeth. His surgical instruments, however, are altogether too primitive. He is personally cleanly; but he has not the least idea of antiseptics; the result is that obscure internal diseases, calling for grave operations, are likely to baffle him. He will refuse to operate, or if he does operate the chances are against the patient.[*] In other words, his medical skill is far in advance ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... difficulties just mentioned it has been possible, after an extended search, to find enough volumes of the magazines to form an almost complete list for the period in question. What omissions there may be are, for the most part, obscure and unimportant publications, which failed to attract enough attention to be included in the large collections of this class of literature. One condition favored the preservation of the American magazines; there ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... so far it appears to be in a certain respect indigent of the things to which it is related. It has therefore, if it be lawful so to speak, an ultimate vestige of indigence, just as on the contrary matter has an ultimate echo of the unindigent, or a most obscure and debile impression of the one. And language indeed appears to be here subverted. For so far as it is the one, it is also unindigent, since the principle has appeared to subsist according to the most unindigent and the one. At the same time, however, ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... Our vile and obscure prison, termed The Dungeon, is a farther proof how little that prison has been an object ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... and closed with an impetus just short of a slam, irresistibly suggestive in some obscure fashion, of the entrance of ardent youth. "I didn't think 'twas worth while to ring," explained Persis Dale, nodding to the right and left as she advanced to greet her hostess. "Sorry to be so late. I guess you've ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... open face and his clear eyes called forth in Foma a feeling of respect for Shchurov, although he heard it rumoured that this lumber-dealer had gained his wealth not by honest toil and that he was leading an evil life at home, in an obscure village of the forest district; and Ignat had told Foma that when Shchurov was young and was but a poor peasant, he sheltered a convict in the bath-house, in his garden, and that there the convict made counterfeit money for him. Since that ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... said he would like to 'burn' a brother clergyman—one of the greatest Talmudists and Hebrew scholars now alive—it was only his humorous way of intimating that he was inclined to differ from him on one or two obscure points of historical or ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... easy to assert, that all the souls of the faithful departed were kept in the prison-house of Hades, and to allege in its behalf an obscure passage of St. Peter, to which many of the most learned and unprejudiced Christian teachers assign a meaning totally unconnected with the subject of departed spirits. But surely the case of Enoch's ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... president by the congressional caucus. More than this, it was charged that Clay's support was the result of a corrupt bargain, by which the Kentucky leader was promised the office of secretary of state. This accusation was first publicly made by an obscure Pennsylvania member, George Kremer, who, in an unsigned communication to a newspaper, when Clay's decision to vote for Adams was first given out, reported that overtures were said to have been made by the friends of Adams to the friends of Clay, offering him the appointment of secretary of ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... perplexing in the extreme and just as cultured Indians would be baffled by Italian and Flemish painting unless they already knew the life of Christ, it was clear that part, even the majority, of these pictures would remain obscure unless the character of their central figure was first explained. One further point remained. In many cases, the pictures were not intended to be viewed in isolation but were illustrations of a text. Many were inscribed with Sanskrit ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... as one handles them, to flow mysteriously together into one book, and this book is the book of the Last Judgment. The great obscure Land he leads us over, so full of desolate marshes, and forlorn spaces, and hemlock-roots, and drowned tree-trunks, and Golgothas of broken shards and unutterable refuse, is the Land of those visions which are our inmost selves, and for which we ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... were born: indeed every time a child was given to thee they wrapped it in a bit of blanket and putting it in a basket committed it to the stream which floweth by the palace to the intent that it might die an obscure death. But it so fortuned that the Intendant of thy royal gardens espied these baskets one and all as they floated past his grounds, and took charge of the infants he found therein. He then caused them to be nursed and reared with all care and, whilst they were growing up to man's estate, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... bar Samuel, a Spanish Rabbi of the twelfth century, is said to be still recited every year, during the Fast observed in commemoration of the Destruction of Jerusalem. The versifier has been much indebted to a very literal translation, from the original necessarily obscure Spanish of the Rabbi, into excellent French, by Joseph Mainzer, Esq., a gentleman to whom the sacred music of this country is under ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... giltbordered pierglass the undecorated back of the dwarf tree regarded the upright back of the embalmed owl. Before the mirror the matrimonial gift of Alderman John Hooper with a clear melancholy wise bright motionless compassionate gaze regarded Bloom while Bloom with obscure tranquil profound motionless compassionated gaze regarded the matrimonial gift of Luke ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... go into that," said Godfrey, with a little smile, "there are one or two questions I should like to ask you, M. Pigot, in order to clear up some minor details which are as yet a little obscure. Is it true that the theft of the Michaelovitch diamonds ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... this vague conception of God as one, was already in a transition toward separate impressions of the different powers of nature. If the idea of God was without any very clear personality and more or less obscure, it is not strange that it should come to be thus specialized as men thought of objects having a manifestly benign influence—as the life-quickening sun or the reviving rain. It is not strange that, without a knowledge of the true ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... gave himself headaches with stooping to pick up gloves, handkerchiefs, and other loose property, whereof Shirley usually held but insecure tenure. He would cut mysterious jokes about the superiority of woman's wit over man's wisdom; commence obscure apologies for the blundering mistake he had committed respecting the generalship, the tactics, of "a personage not a hundred miles from Fieldhead." In short, he seemed elate as ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Sanghatissa, who reigned A.D. 234 to 246, "caused this chatta to be gilt, and set four gems in the centre of the four emblems of the sun, each of which cost a lac."[2] And now follows the passage which is interesting from its reference, however obscure, to the electrical nature of lightning. The Mahawanso continues: "he in like manner placed a glass pinnacle on the spire to serve as ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... place in the traveler's mind. The progressive ameliorations that have taken place tend to obscure our sense of the old conflicts. A reform once accomplished becomes a part of our ordinary consciousness. We take it for granted, and find it hard to understand what the ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... sigh] All this misunderstanding and suspicion is horrible to me. How stupid the world is! There are times when I feel disgusted with everything, myself included! I'm getting old. I'm a failure. I'm losing my time and wasting my life over this ridiculous paper, which will never be anything but an obscure rag. I shall have done for ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... searchlight contained a pair of men tugging frantically at the oars, and a third seated in the stern, grasping the tiller ropes and urging the rowers to exert themselves to the utmost. He wore a cap pulled far down to obscure his features, and did not look up as did his companions when ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... to the children, explaining the more obscure words and phrases as you go along. Encourage the children to ask questions whenever they do not fully understand. Talk freely until you have made everything clear and have secured interest. Then read the whole ballad without interruption. Read with expression and enthusiasm. Show the spirit ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... be present at the marriage of any other friend on earth. This phrase might seem to most people only a pleasant hyperbole; but I am not quite sure that it was so intended. The fact is, she has seen so little of the world at any other hours than between noon and midnight, that she has a very obscure sense of other periods of daily time. She scarcely knows what morning is. Sunrise is to her as much of a phenomenon as a total eclipse of the sun to any other person. She cannot tell what mankind ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... new body is created apart from it. It is the creation of children that causes us to die, it would seem, because if this activity is, so to speak, dammed up or turned aside into new channels, the reproduction operates on the old body, renewing it continually. It is very obscure and very absurd, is it not? But the most absurd part of it is that it is true. Whatever the true explanation may be, the fact remains that the operation can be done, that it actually prolongs life indefinitely, and that I alone know ...
— The Coming of the Ice • G. Peyton Wertenbaker
... public places where the opulent people assemble, to refresh themselves with ices and sherbet. I solicited employment there, but was refused, and harshly sent away. Not knowing what to do, and not having money to procure a subsistence, I went at length to one of the obscure cafes, frequented by the lowest people. The master of this wretched place, who was named Mehdad, agreed to accept my services. I prepared a bottle of the liquor for which the good genius had given me the receipt, but the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 495, June 25, 1831 • Various
... shall quote a few stanzas. The old story on which Spenser founds his description is told with many variations of circumstance and meaning; but we need not quit the pages of the Faerie Queene to lose ourselves amidst obscure mythologies. We have too much of these indeed even in Spenser's own ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... Egypt. But I can show only the main features and characteristics of this form of paganism, avoiding the complications of their system and their perplexing names as much as possible. I wish to present what is ascertained and intelligible rather than what is ingenious and obscure. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... would have out his books and fall to some old critical problem—his worn and scored Greek Testament always beside him, the quick eye making its way through some new monograph or other, the parched lips opening every now and then to call Flaxman's attention to some fresh light on an obscure point—only to relinquish the effort again and again with ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... presents at New Year, and eggs at Easter; he believed in the duties of a godfather, and never deserted the customs which colored the life of the olden time. Maitre Mathias was a noble and venerable relic of the notaries, obscure great men, who gave no receipt for the millions entrusted to them, but returned those millions in the sacks they were delivered in, tied with the same twine; men who fulfilled their trusts to the letter, drew honest inventories, took fatherly interest ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... portrait painters; but there was only one painter for Jocelyn—his own memory. All that was eminent in European surgery addressed him in the person of that harmless and unassuming fogey whose hands had been inside the bodies of hundreds of living men; but the lily-white corpse of an obscure country-girl chilled the interest of discourse with ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... cared little for cock-fighting or the bull-ring, was of placid demeanor, and was altogether the sort of man who could be relied on not to attend secret meetings or lose valued sleep by drilling in hot barns or chigger-infested clearings in the woods. Yet it was on Morelos's oath that this obscure citizen ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... was he, that whatever he might choose to say, his auditors had no choice but to believe him; wrong looked like right, and right like wrong; for when it pleased him, he could make a kind of illuminated fog with his mere breath, and obscure the natural daylight with it. His tongue, indeed, was a magic instrument: sometimes it rumbled like the thunder; sometimes it warbled like the sweetest music. It was the blast of war—the song of peace; ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... pushed along in a bath-chair through the park-like grounds of the Hydro. She was Miss Mary Moultrie, and she coughed and cleared her throat just like Baxter. She suffered—she told me it was a Moultrie castemark—from some obscure form of chronic bronchitis, complicated with spasm of the glottis; and, in a dead, flat voice, with a sunken eye that looked and saw not, told me what washes, gargles, pastilles, and inhalations she had ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... more or less, somebody. It must be a very sad change to go home to England and be (comparatively) poor and shabby, and certainly obscure, to have people remark vaguely they suppose you are "something in India." I suppose we are all snobs at heart. Snobbery, sir, doth walk about the orb like the sun, it shines everywhere. A good lady talked to me quite seriously ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... nature of the Roman monks, called in this country the Latins. Mingling in the same crowd with these black-robed pontiffs can be seen shaven men in brown habits who seem in comparison to be both busy and obscure. These are the sons of St. Francis, who came to the East with a grand simplicity and thought to finish the Crusades with a smile. The spectator will be wise to accept this first contrast that strikes the eye with an impartial intellectual interest; it has nothing ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... parting with her friend, she left upon her mind the impression that she was going home. This was very far from her intention. Her purpose was to leave New York, the city of her residence, as quickly as possible, and flee to some obscure village, where she would remain hidden from her husband. She had resided, some years before, for a short time in Philadelphia; and thither she resolved to go, and from thence reach some point in the country. On ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... echoes of our steps. We often made use of the ladder. By the third time I had recovered my liberty of action, and no longer descended backward, but contemplating with an undefinable charm the gaping gulfs which vanished in the obscure recesses of the glacier, bluer than ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... absolutely; but only because she had long since proved him. He on his part yielded her the deepest respect, both for her sagacity in business and for the fine self-command with which she, an actress of obscure birth, had put the stage behind her, assumed her rank, and borne it through all these years with something more than adequacy. John Rosewarne, like a true Briton, venerated rank, and had a Briton's instinct for the behaviour proper to rank. About his mistress there could be ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... astonishment, this young beauty declined to understand such language. Couched in other terms, he renewed his suit, yet apparently was no whit less obscure than on the first occasion. Such a scandal as this well-nigh put him to the blush, and he was obliged to admit that this modest maiden either affected to be, or really was, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... smoking, monsieur; they must, if they looked, have seen the fire of my cigarette... As I was about to suggest: It would seem to me that there must be some obscure but not necessarily unfathomable connection between the three events; else how should they synchronise so perfectly? How did Popinot know the lights would go out a few minutes after five bells? He was prepared, he lost no time. How ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... a popular movement which had been spreading rapidly throughout that province and the adjoining one of Chih-li with the connivance of certain high officials, if not under their direct patronage. The origin of the "Boxer" movement is obscure. Its name is derived from a literal translation of the Chinese designation, "the fist of righteous harmony." Like the kindred "Big Sword" Society, it appears to have been in the first instance merely ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... accordingly was thrown down from a high Rock into the Sea, where he perished [73]in the waters. Execution being done upon him, the rest were pardoned for what was past, which being notified abroad, they returned from those Defait and Obscure places, wherein they ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... press hard on men. It was driving them into an iron cul-de-sac, from which there was no escape. Suicide and madness, obscure and hideous maladies of the brain herded in it. Perhaps, after all, there had been some value in those old fairy stories. And he remembered, with a faint movement of impatience, Francey Wilmot's final ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... correct unless it be understood to include the negative as well as the positive. For, in truth, the peculiarity of these Consensual Contracts is that no formalities, are required to create them out of the Pact. Much that is indefensible, and much more that is obscure, has been written about the Consensual Contracts, and it has even been asserted that in them the consent of the Parties is more emphatically given than in any other species of agreement. But the term Consensual merely indicates that the Obligation is here annexed at ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... not at all strange when we consider in what numerous forms and among how many peoples, this same parable and ritual had as a matter of fact been celebrated, and how it had ultimately come down to bring its message of redemption into a somewhat obscure Syrian city, in the special shape with which ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... this word which has been found is in one of Sterne's letters, written in 1740 to the lady who subsequently became his wife. (Letters, p.25). But these letters were not published till 1775, long after the word was in common use. An obscure Yorkshire clergyman can not be ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... and another in contemplation, while a mysterious shape was at the back; the ladies stiff-limbed but lovely faced, and the flowers—irises, anemones, violets, and even the grass-blossom, done with botanical accuracy. A friend of Lord Hollybridge had picked it up for him in some obscure place in Northern Italy, and had not yet submitted it to an expert. Avice, it appeared, had recognised it as representing Leah and Rachel, as Action and Contemplation in the last books of Dante's PURGATORIO, with the mystic griffin car in the distance. Our hosts were very much delighted; ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... received, as I believe, the selling price of a thousand copies of their books as compensation for the copyright.[1] Such being the facts in regard to well-known authors, some idea may be formed in relation to the compensation of those who are obscure. The whole tendency of the "cheap labor" system, so generally approved by English writers, is to destroy the value of literary labor by increasing the number of persons who must look to the pen for means of support, and by diminishing the market for its products. What has been the effect ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... these qualifications to advantage, and a degree of personal courage that even his rivals and enemies respected; but his Angelica must have been an admirer of the opposite qualities, as she chose for her husband an obscure plebeian, whom the very sight of a Toledo steel threw into an ague. Disgusted with the bad taste and vulgarity of those he had already courted, he boldly resolved to prefer his suit to the very first lady in the land. He accordingly laid siege to the ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... be said to be one with it. For who is the true critic but he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure. And who is the true man of culture, if not he in whom fine scholarship and fastidious rejection... develops that spirit of disinterested curiosity which is the real spirit, as it is the real fruit of the intellectual life, and thus attains to intellectual clarity; and ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... awake until the sun of dawn was shining in the cavern, although it was at its best a somewhat obscure sun, and the dawn itself was full of chill. When he went outside he found that heavy clouds were floating above the mountains and masses of vapor hung low over the valley, almost hiding the forest, which was thickest at the northern end and ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... multitude of cloudlets drifting slowly across the sky so as to reveal, veil, partially obscure, or sometimes totally blot out the orb of night, may be a somewhat romantic, but is not a desirable, state of things in an enemy's country, especially when that enemy is ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... parotis subsides, seems to arise from the association of successive action; as the tension of the penis in hydrophobia appears to arise from the previous synchronous associations of the sensitive motions of these parts; but the manner of the production of both these associations is yet very obscure. In women a swelling of the breasts often succeeds the decline of the mumps by another wonderful sympathy. See Class IV. 1. 2. 7. and I. 1. 2. 15. In many persons a delirium succeeds the swelling of the parotis, or the subsequent ones of the testes or breasts; which is sometimes fatal, and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... consciousness that all night long, and all the next day—perhaps for even a longer period—many of these mails, like fire racing along a train of gunpowder, will be kindling at every instant new successions of burning joy, has an obscure effect of multiplying the victory itself, by multiplying to the imagination into infinity the stages of its progressive diffusion. A fiery arrow seems to be let loose, which from that moment is destined to travel, without ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... with indigo rub badly. The causes of this defect vary from time to time, and in many instances are often obscure in their origin. All goods intended for indigo dyeing, and more especially when shades fast to rubbing are desired, should be (p. 148) thoroughly cleansed, and before passing into the indigo vat should be thoroughly freed from any soap which may have been ...
— The Dyeing of Woollen Fabrics • Franklin Beech
... they thought, not to be matched in Lacedaemon, yet as his mother truly said, plures habet Sparta Bracyda meliores, Sparta had many better men than ever he was; and howsoever thou admirest thyself, thy friend, many an obscure fellow the world never took notice of, had he been in place or action, would have done much better than he or ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... alliance with Austria, and to throw her into the arms of Russia. But with regard to the Polish-Russian provinces, Napoleon declared he would see what he could do, should Providence favour the good cause. These vague and obscure expressions did not define what he intended to do for the Poles in the event of success crowning his vast enterprises. They excited the distrust of the Poles, and had no other result. On this subject, however, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... in exegesis were not all based on numerals; he is sometimes equally profound in other modes. Thus he tells us that the condemnation of the serpent to eat dust typifies the sin of curiosity, since in eating dust he "penetrates the obscure and shadowy"; and that Noah's ark was "pitched within and without with pitch" to show the safety of the Church from the leaking in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... accordingly perused the letters of Richard Waverley, of Sir Everard, and of Aunt Rachel; but the inferences he drew from them were different from what Waverley expected. They held the language of discontent with government, threw out no obscure hints of revenge, and that of poor Aunt Rachel, which plainly asserted the justice of the Stuart cause, was held to contain the open avowal of what the others ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... afterwards made to assume. At the head of the Dunces at first stood one Theobald, who, with some of the requisite knowledge and aptitude for a reviser of the text of Shakspeare, was a poor creature, and a dishonest one, but too feeble and too obscure for the place. Fifteen years afterwards, (1742,) at the instigation of Warburton, Pope added to the Dunciad a Fourth Book. In it there was one line, and one line only, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... the meaning of this phrase is obscure; but if we take the reading "cered poketts," from the Harleian manuscript, we are led to the supposition that it signifies receptacles — bags or pokes — prepared with wax for some process. ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... resurrection of the dead. Some mocked and some put him off by saying they would hear him again of this matter. They felt so proud, their glory and magnificence seemed so sure and enduring, their learning, art and accomplishments seemed so fur above this obscure ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... the American people conscious of their interrelationship and their interdependence. They sense a common destiny and a common need of each other. Differences of occupation, geography, race and religion no longer obscure the nation's fundamental unity ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... opposite (Silence her sacred self) is multiplied and rendered more intense by numbers, and by sympathy. She too hath her deeps, that call unto deeps. Negation itself hath a positive more and less; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the great ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... well-turned verse. He was a patron of art, having brought back ivories and bronzes from Italy, pictures and china from the Low Countries, and enamels from France. He was a student, and collected the many rare and handsome leather-bound volumes telling of curious arts, obscure speculations, half-fabulous histories, voyages, and adventures, which still constitute the almost unique value of the Brockhurst library. He might claim to be a man of science, moreover—of that delectable old-world science which has no narrow-minded ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... the elder of two sons of Michael Johnson, who was of an obscure family, and kept a bookseller's shop at Lichfield, was born in that city on the 18th of September, 1709. His mother, Sarah Ford, was sprung of a respectable race of yeomanry in Worcestershire; and, being a woman of great piety, early instilled into the mind of her son those principles ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... the last half of the fifteenth century was an obscure personage named Gonzalo Pizarro. He was a gentleman whose lineage was ancient, whose circumstances were narrow and whose morals were loose. By profession he was a soldier who had gained some experience in the wars under the "Great Captain," Gonsalvo de Cordova. History would take ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to the story, and raises the question, Why should Jesus have been angry? If we can find no reason for his anger, we must leave the thing as altogether obscure; for I do not know where to find another meaning for the word, except in the despair ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... had assumed the character of a prophet, and the tribe of Hanifa listened to his voice. A female prophetess [1111] was attracted by his reputation; the decencies of words and actions were spurned by these favorites of Heaven; [2] and they employed several days in mystic and amorous converse. An obscure sentence of his Koran, or book, is yet extant; [3] and in the pride of his mission, Moseilama condescended to offer a partition of the earth. The proposal was answered by Mahomet with contempt; but the rapid progress of the impostor awakened the fears of his successor: forty ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... pinnatim trifoliolatis, foliolis dentatis punctatis lateralibus oblongis obtusis intermedio ovato obtuso basi cuneato, racemo pedunculato laxo multifloro foliis multo longiore, bracteis subrotundis striatis obscure multipunctatis, ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... peculiarities of speech or manner on the surface, overlooking the strength of the characteristics which underlie them. So, in these pages, it seems that we, in analysing the individual traits, have failed to get any vision of the character of either people as a whole. It is the trees again which obscure the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... understand, to pray that our minds might be enlightened to comprehend it. We read it, as the book itself tells us to do, with earnest prayer; we read it with faith, and we read it not in vain. Soon passages which seemed at first obscure were made clear to our comprehension. Every day we understood it better and better. We had no one to whom to go for information. We had no one to instruct us, so we went to God; we asked Him to show us the ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... by trying an obscure adventurer for attempting to trap a Senator into bribing him? Or would not the truer way be to find out whether the Senator was capable of being entrapped into so shameless an act, and then try him? Why, of course. Now the whole idea of the Senate seemed ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... seek refuge? The Persian Gulf? The King of Asia? The transpacific liner lay far out in a pool of great black, glittering under sharp, white arc-lights forward and aft as cargo was lifted from obscure lighters and stowed into her ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the obscure room where she and Clara were sitting on their blankets and skins. He kissed his hand to the one and the other, and rolled ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... Reader.' 'Sonnet decifring the perfyte Poete' followed by the 'Treatise' in eight chapters. 'The CIIII. Psalme, translated out of Tremellius' (half-title, N 2). 'Ane schort Poeme of Tyme.' (O 2). 'A Table of some obscure Wordis with their Significations, efter the ordour of the Alphabet.' 'Sonnet of the Author.' 'I haue insert for the filling out of thir vacand pageis, the verie wordis of Plinius vpon the Phoenix, ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... of one little soul who, with absolutely nothing to warrant the expectation, nothing reasonable on which to base joyous anticipation, had gone to bed thinking of Santa Claus and hoping that, amidst equally deserving hundreds of thousands of obscure children, this little mite in her cold, cheerless garret might not be overlooked by the generous dispenser of joy. With the sublime trust of childhood she had insisted upon hanging up her ragged stocking. Santa Claus would have to be very careful indeed ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... it came about seems to be rather obscure, but it is easy to conjecture his motives. Trained in a school in which scruple or principle were unknown and the man who arrives is the great man, Douglas, like other such adventurers, was accessible to visions of a sort. He cared ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... engaged to correspond by letter. I told you then that you were not to expect any thing either entertaining, or in any degree worth the trouble of perusing. What can a reasonable being expect from an inhabitant of such an obscure, remote, and dead place as Sheffield, to amuse, instruct, or even to merit the attention of a young, gay, enterprising, martial genius? I know you will expect nothing, and I dare pledge my honour, therefore, that you will not, either ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... now. Shall I go to her or shall I write? I resolved to write, and I told her in my letter that I should await her reply at Marseilles. I gave the letter to my late nurse, with some money to insure its being dispatched at once, and drove on to Marseilles where I alighted at an obscure inn, not wishing to be recognized. I had scarcely got out of my carriage when I saw Madame Schizza, Nina's sister. She had left Barcelona with her husband. They had been at Marseilles three or four days and were ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... animals—musk-deer, musk-sheep, musk-rats. I am not now attempting to enumerate the well-recognised odours of animals such as are extracted from them by man in order to "opsonize" himself, but am pointing to the more obscure cases. There is not a very great or marked variety in the odours of fishes; but reptiles with their dry, oily skins give off various aromatic smells, none of which are valued by man. Toads have distinct odours, and one ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... marking, and now and then what seems a thin vein of coal, but which proves to be merely the bark of some woody stem, converted into a glossy bituminous lignite, like that of Brora. But in beds of a blue clay, intercalated with the sandstone, we find fossils in abundance, of a character less obscure. We spent a full half-hour in picking out shells from the bottom of a long dock-like hollow among the rocks, in which a bed of clay has yielded to the waves, while the strata on either side stand up over it like low ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... comes out on a sailing vessel to Canada. For a score of years he is an obscure clerk at a distant trading post in Labrador. He comes out of the wilds to take a higher position as land commissioner. Presently he is backing railroad ventures of tremendous cost and tremendous risk. Within thirty years from the time he came out of the wilds penniless, that ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... clothes nervously, and looked hard at Ah Fe. Wanting the quick-witted instinct of affection that sharpened Carry's perception, she even then could not distinguish him above his fellows. With a recollection of past pain, and an obscure suspicion of impending danger, she asked him when ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... remains to be examined the signification of those three very obscure lines which immediately follow the description, already ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... with ambitions which had obsessed his waking hours and glorified his dreams—dreams, desires, ambitions, always before his eyes but out of reach. His hair fell to the opened collar of a homespun shirt, and homespun were his trousers, tucked into a pair of homemade boots. His saddle bore an obscure brand of the United States army, for it had carried one of his people through the War of the States fifty years before, and across its pummel balanced a long, ungainly rifle of an ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... makes up the complex sensation of fatigue. After prolonged mental work, there may be fatigue sensations from the eyes and perhaps from the neck, which is often fixed rigidly during strenuous mental activity; and there are perhaps other obscure fatigue sensations originating in other organs and contributing to the total sensation which we know as mental fatigue, or ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... minister was universally known to be a Papist in his heart. He was of a most avaricious nature, and is said to have died worth four millions, sterl.[178] besides his vast expenses in building, statues, gold plate, jewels, and other costly rarities. He was of a mean obscure birth, from the very dregs of the people, and so illiterate, that he could hardly read a paper at the council table. I forbear to touch at his open, profane, profligate life; because I desire not to rake into the ashes of the dead, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... has been shown in the treatment of obscure and chronic diseases. In many instances persons have been restored to health, or greatly relieved, by the use of mineral waters when all other remedies ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... disfavour of fortune and the fruits of his own limited capacity among the grievances of the oppressed nationality to which he belonged. Years of want, his little dilapidated dwelling—granted him in his capacity of village teacher but shoved away into an obscure corner of Hetfalu—his meagre barley-bread, his sordid frock-coat—all these things aggravated ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... heard and saw no more. There were times when she fancied, from oblique and obscure hints, that the Dominican had been aware of Don Juan's disguise and visit. But, if so, that knowledge appeared only to increase the gentleness, almost the respect, which Torquemada manifested towards her. Certainly, since that day, from some cause or other the priest's manner ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... wood-tick, cattle-tick, etc., and mites, are quickly told from the higher orders—true spiders and scorpions—by their rounded bodies, which appear like mere sacks, with little appearance of segmentation, and their small, obscure heads. The mites alone, of all the Arachinida, pass through a marked metamorphosis. Thus the young mite has only six legs, while the mature form has eight. The bee mite is very small, not more than one-fiftieth of an inch long. The female is slightly longer than the male, and somewhat transparent. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... confidence in his own powers which long years of the free, independent life of the great outdoors had given him. He knew the secrets of the wilderness as few men knew them. He had little doubt that much which had remained obscure to those already engaged in the search for Tom Gray would be made clear to him. Alone in the world, Jean had long since come to regard the Eight Originals as "his folks." Of the four girls, Grace Harlowe had always ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... chalk in England and France consist of a pure, white, calcareous mass, usually too soft for a building-stone, but sometimes passing into a more solid state. It consists, almost purely, of carbonate of lime; the stratification is often obscure, except where rendered distinct by interstratified layers of flint, a few inches thick, occasionally in continuous beds, but oftener in nodules, and recurring at intervals generally from two to four feet distant from each other. This upper chalk is usually succeeded, in the ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... Association, which, as you well know, is composed of some of the brightest men and most profound thinkers in the State; and it was utterly repudiated and denounced as fallacious and un- Christian in its teachings, and calculated to do inestimable harm. The idea of an obscure woman setting herself up as a reconstructor of the religious faiths of the world! It is simply the height of presumption and absurdity," he ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Hoover's firm. Or, perhaps, Chang applied directly to the great London mining man. The exact procedure, which is not very important, anyway, by which the head of Hoover's firm came to have the opportunity of making the recommendation, is a little obscure today. The important points in the whole matter, however, which are not at all uncertain, are that he did have it, and that he recommended Herbert Hoover, and that Chang Yen Mow, acting on the recommendation, offered the ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... also, to train the mind to be logical, critical and balanced: it is good to cultivate a retentive memory and to store up useful facts. But if while you are aiming at intellectual fitness and alertness you allow these good things to obscure other and better things, if, in short, you let means become ends, you will never be healthy, because you will miss half ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... from that home of so many happy and hospitable associations, to seek shelter in the obscure and humble chamber of a wretched building in the outskirts of the city. Fortune can afford him but a small cot, two or three broken chairs, an ordinary deal table, a large chest, which stands near the fire-place, and a dressing-stand, for furniture. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Sir Robert Harley, inasmuch as we are in expectation of receiving an account of the various forms of its name from a gentleman who has not only the ability, but also peculiar facilities for illustrating this and similar obscure terms.] ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... and sketches, which are enclosed within the covers of this Book, relate to certain brown men and obscure things in a distant and very little known corner of the Earth. The Malay Peninsula—that slender tongue of land which projects into the tepid seas at the extreme south of the Asiatic Continent—is but little more than a name to most dwellers in ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... with three heads, I could not leave this clique; the ground near them seemed to hold my feet. The canopy of entwined trees held out shadow, the night whispered a pledge of protection, and an officious lamp flashed just one beam to show me an obscure, safe seat, and then vanished. Let me now briefly tell the reader all that, during the past dark fortnight, I have been silently gathering from Rumour, respecting the origin and the object of M. Emanuel's departure. The tale is short, and not new: its alpha is Mammon, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... are obscure and not very trustworthy. It seems that the Outagamies began the fray by an attack on the Illinois at La Salle's old station of Le Rocher, on the river Illinois. On hearing of this, the French commanders mustered their ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... serve no purpose to follow the obscure labyrinth of legal procedure of that period, and to recite all the marches and countermarches which legal subtlety suggested to the litigants. At the end of three years, on the 9th of April 1661, the countess obtained a judgment by which the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... between them. Not only did they shrink from it; Lord Findon could not have borne it. The storm of family and personal pride which the disclosure of Fenwick's story had aroused in the old man had been of a violence impossible to resist. That Fenwick's obscure and crazy wife should have dared to entertain jealousy of a being so far above his ken and hers, as Eugenie then was—that she should have made a ridiculous tragedy out of it—and that Fenwick should have conduced to the absurd and ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... third story! O ye voluminous historians, who live in the guilt and glory of the past, and are proud in making the biggest and thickest books for the dust, cobwebs, and moths of the future! O ye commentators, who delight to render obscurity more obscure, and who assume that in a multitude of words, as in a multitude of counsellors, there is wisdom! O ye critics, who vote yourselves the Areopagites of Intellect, whose decrees confer immortality in the Universe of Letters! O all ye that ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... care was to detain him for that one night. There was a look of coming illness about him, and his desperate, maddened state of mind might obscure his judgment, and urge him into some precipitate measure, such as he might afterwards rue bitterly for the sake of the wife and children, the bare thought of whom seemed at present to sting him so intolerably. Moreover, Louis had a vague hope ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exactly as they were. But, at the same time, something new is introduced; namely, the sense of effort. If I try to discover where this sense of effort seems to be, I find myself somewhat perplexed at first; but, if I hold the fore-arm in position long enough, I become aware of an obscure sense of fatigue, which is apparently seated either in the muscles of the arm, or in the integument directly over them. The fatigue seems to be related to the sense of effort, in much the same way as ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... his breath as the two stood there facing each other, so sharp was the contrast. The man, the Mongolian, small, weazened, leather-colored, secretive—a strange, complex creature, steeped in all the obscure mystery of the East, nervous, ill at ease; and the girl, the Anglo-Saxon, daughter of the Northmen, huge, blond, big-boned, frank, outspoken, simple of composition, open as the day, bareheaded, her great ropes of sandy hair ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... from system, rather than ignorance or inability, he chose to be "hard of conceit, and harsh of style," in order that his poetry might correspond with the sharp, sour, and crabbed nature of his theme.[31] Donne, his successor, was still more rugged in his versification, as well as more obscure in his conceptions and allusions. The satires of Cleveland (as we have indeed formerly noticed) are, if possible, still harsher and more strained in expression than those of Donne. Butler can hardly be quoted as ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... picturesque night aspect of these ancient streets and houses that clustered round the cathedral. He had then, presumably, made his way to this old, tortuous and unsafe maze of streets, so full of dark archways, trap-doors, cellars, winding stairways, evil smells, and obscure alleys. ("These alleys," as a local guide-book coldly puts it, "are not well inhabited, but the visitor may safely go through those of houses 5 and 17." Had Dr. Chang, perhaps, been through, part of the way through, numbers 4 ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... quietly reclining under the obscure shadow of the tree, the birds did not notice them, but stalked along the shore ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... clearly demonstrated until the advent of Christianity; when it was proved to lie in a lack of pity. Now pity is not, as is sometimes supposed, a kind of weakness; it is a kind of knowledge, wherewith men are reminded of obscure and neglected interests. It is easy to understand why the Christian revolution should have been regarded as destructive of culture. For it meant not the qualitative refinement of the good, but the quantitative distribution of it. But it none the less marks an epoch in ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... our leader as an old acquaintance, and mounting on a camel, offered to guide us on our way during the night. It is no easy matter at any time, even for the Arabs, to find the way in a direct line across the boundless Desert; and when clouds obscure the stars, it is almost impossible without a compass. The old recluse, on seeing white strangers, cast a look of disgust and disdain at us, expressing his surprise that any true believers should allow infidel Nazarenes ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... expressed what every ambassador of Christ constantly experiences when in the thick of the Master's work. His are the joys of acquisition. His purse may be scanty, his teaching may be humble, and the field of his labor may be so obscure that no bulletins of his achievements are ever proclaimed to an admiring world. Difficulties may sadden and discouragement bring him to his knees; but I tell you that obscure, toiling man of God has a joy vouchsafed to him that a Frederick or a Marlborough never knew on the field of bloody ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... passionate resentment against the rival that had fascinated and won her, he had left off wandering and had buried himself in an obscure Cornish village, where he gave himself up to his work. He was not quite so successful as he had been; on the other hand, he cared less than ever about success. It was the end of the century, a century that had been forced by the contemplation of such realities as plague and famine, ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... the same time, from the information of Melinda, spoken of me as an Irish fortune-hunter, without either birth or estate; who supported myself in the appearance of a gentleman by sharping and other infamous practices; and who was of such an obscure origin, that I did not even know my own extraction. Though I expected all this malice, I could not hear it with temper, especially as truth was so blended with falsehood in the assertion, that it would be almost impossible to separate the one from the other in my vindication. But ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... appointing new boards of more seasoned stuff. Moslem and Christian alike were brought before them, and a general accusation of pro-French tendencies seems to have been sufficient to secure a sentence of death or lifelong imprisonment. He aimed not at the poor and the obscure, for whom hunger and pestilence were providing, but at the rich and the influential. The higher clergy in Christian circles, Bishops and Monsignors, were a favourite target, and among Moslems influential Sheikhs. Sometimes there was a parody of a trial; sometimes ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... pleasure in their Sunday evening meetings. None of them was of the acknowledged literary successes of the university: their names were not those seen every week in the undergraduate journals. And yet this obscure group, which had drawn together in a spirit of satire, had in it two or three men of real gift. Forbes himself was a man of uncommon vivacity. Small, stocky, with an unruly thatch of yellow hair and a quaintly wry and homely face, he hid his shyness and his brilliancy ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... rarely travelled by honest men. But not altogether. Another reason has influenced their selection of it while in Natchitoches they too have put up at the Choctaw Chief; their plans requiring that privacy which an obscure hostelry affords. To have been seen with Jupiter at the Planter's House might have been for some Mississippian planter to remember, and identify, him as the absconded slave of Ephraim Darke. A contretemps less likely to occur at the Choctaw ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... resulted in all the dice turning up with different faces. See the notes in Burmann's edition of Suetonius, Octav. Augustus, c. 71. It is said that sometimes they played with four-sided dice, sometimes with six-sided. The subject is somewhat obscure, and the investigation not suited to ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... A. S. AEmtiz. Nescio an sint ab [word in Greek] vel [word in Greek]. Vomo, evomo, vomitu evacuo. Videtur interim etymologiam hanc non obscure firmare codex Rush. Mat. xii. 22. ubi antique scriptum invenimus ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... Minnesota River, early in the morning of the 16th day of August, 1862, precipitated, doubtless, by the murders at Acton on the day previous. The massacre and the Indian war that followed developed many brave men, but no truer hero than Mauley, an obscure Frenchman, the ferry-man at the Agency. Continually under fire, he resolutely ran his ferry-boat back and forth across the river, affording the terror-stricken people the only chance for escape. He was shot down on his boat just as he had landed ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... would it not have required all the glow of his imagination and all the strength of his judgment to believe it? Let us who are seeing the fulfilment of this vision, utter the fervent prayer that no sullen clouds of coldness or estrangement may ever obscure these fair relations, and that the madness of man may never mar the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... of the reserved rights of the lodges is very important, and should never be forgotten, because it affords much aid in the decision of many obscure points of masonic jurisprudence. The rule is, that any doubtful power exists and is inherent in the subordinate lodges, unless there is an express regulation conferring it on the Grand Lodge. With this preliminary view, we may proceed to investigate the ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... down their nurses do not run up to them and scold, but pick them up, and clean them, and tidy their dress, and afterwards find fault and correct them. The story is told of Demetrius of Phalerum, when an exile from his native country, and living a humble and obscure life at Thebes, that he was not pleased to see Crates approaching, for he expected to receive from him cynical outspokenness and harsh language. But as Crates talked kindly to him, and discussed his exile, and pointed out that ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... may be safely assumed that, in the year 1845, the power and number of the machines and the number of the workers is greater by one-half than it was in 1834. The chief centre of this industry is Lancashire, where it originated; it has thoroughly revolutionised this county, converting it from an obscure, ill-cultivated swamp into a busy, lively region, multiplying its population tenfold in eighty years, and causing giant cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, containing together 700,000 inhabitants, and their neighbouring towns, Bolton with 60,000, Rochdale with 75,000, Oldham with 50,000, Preston ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... shame in recalling, it would rather be a man—a man of restless and versatile intellect—who, not content with (an equivocal[1]) success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... am dumb; my soul is inarticulate. There is that in me which I would pour out. Oh! why is it that the noblest actions of humanity speak not to my soul? All life is inadequate—but not in the sense of the world. I would joyfully be silent, obscure, dead to all the world, if this alone which is in me had life. I ask not for name, riches, external conditions of delight or splendor. No; the meanest of all would be heaven to me, if this inward impulse had action, lived itself out. But no; I am imprisoned in ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... time you are finished—say five years—for Miss Varley tells me you are quite up with the girls of your age in your studies, they will have a substantial country home which you will enjoy immensely between times. You will find that a country home, however humble, is not sordid like an obscure home in the city. So next week, Amarilly, or as soon as Mrs. Meredith can fit you out properly, you will be packed off to an ultra- smart school. There will be one term this year, but I think you should remain through the summer ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... "The Man with the Hungry Eyes," and they were hungry, for life was always a battle to him. From an obscure and humble position, without fortune, friends, or favoring circumstances he had fought his way upward in the face of ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... who thought clearly, who knew what she wanted and what she did not want, and who acted promptly and decisively. Perhaps she hesitated now because she had been forced to remain inactive in this particular case for such a long time; or perhaps she had received an obscure warning from something within her which knew what she—the whole of her that was ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... prosaic place. Yet at every point I have felt how much would have been gained could an old Celt or Druid have revisited his former haunts, and permitted me to question him on a hundred matters which must remain obscure. But this, ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... of a nebulous ocean, bewitched into sudden immobility; or a rack of tempest-driven clouds hanging in the sky, momentarily awaiting the transforming violence of a fresh onset. Sometimes continents of pale light are separated by narrow straits of comparative darkness; elsewhere obscure spaces are hemmed in by ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... felon! God have mercy on my brain, for I feel that it is wandering. Father, father—alas, I have none!—had you left me at the asylum, without any clue, or hopes of a clue, to my hereafter being reclaimed, it would have been a kindness; I should then have been happy and contented in some obscure situation; but you raised hopes only to prostrate them—and imaginings which have led to my destruction. Sacred is the duty of a parent, and heavy must be the account of those who desert their children, and are required by Heaven to render up an account ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... has anywhere shown itself unduly, or in a way irritating to others, I ask forgiveness. Whenever peace is made, the world will need a peace built on all the facts of human nature. I have tried to give here some of those which war passions inevitably obscure. That is the ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... he diagnosed a moral not a bodily disorder. We often find in The Nights, the doctor or the old woman distinguishing a love-fit by the pulse or similar obscure symptoms, as in the case of Seleucus, Stratonice and her step-son Antiochus—which seems to be the arch-type ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Two obscure forms pass in the dark, several paces from us; they are talking together in low voices—"You bet, old chap, instead of listening to him, I shoved my bayonet into his belly so that I ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... and that he travelled in Germany. The Shadow of Night, consisting of two "poeticall hymnes" appeared in 1594, and is his first extant work. It was followed in 1595 by Ovid's Banquet of Sence, The Amorous Zodiac, and other poems. These early compositions, while containing fine passages, are obscure and crabbed in style.[v-1] In 1598 appeared Marlowe's fragmentary Hero and Leander with Chapman's continuation. By this year he had established his position as a playwright, for Meres in his Palladis Tamia praises him both as a writer ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... I repeated to myself, as I exerted myself bravely in my new offices, as nurse and housekeeper, "there is no danger of that fair creature seeking out this little obscure spot. She will probably ask Richard Clyde who the little country girl was, whose water-pail he was so gallantly carrying, and I know he will speak kindly of me, though he will laugh at being caught in such an awkward predicament. Perhaps to amuse her, he will tell her of my flight from ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... was an act total, supreme, guaranteed by the whole of life. There was no need to sign, to stamp, to legalize. Speech was held between friends and enemies alike, more sacred than any sanctuary, and man maintained it, with the obscure but just sentiment that it is at the base of society, and that if words lose their value, there is no longer any society possible. Later the written word was considered sacred. And coming nearer to our own day, we have been able to see the masses, guided ever by that quite legitimate ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... took out his guitar. Not by way of payment, mind you—neither Sam Galloway nor any other of the true troubadours are lineal descendants of the late Tommy Tucker. You have read of Tommy Tucker in the works of the esteemed but often obscure Mother Goose. Tommy Tucker sang for his supper. No true troubadour would do that. He would have his supper, and then sing ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... of Zeus your father and chant his praise. Through him mortal men are famed or un-famed, sung or unsung alike, as great Zeus wills. For easily he makes strong, and easily he brings the strong man low; easily he humbles the proud and raises the obscure, and easily he straightens the crooked and blasts the proud,—Zeus who thunders aloft and has his dwelling ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... the currency of language, much is defective and counterfeit: but in general the authority of writers who are accredited, however they may disagree, is adopted. The intrinsic meaning of many words, especially the particles, will appear obscure; because they are disguised abbreviations of other words, and, in some instances, are sunk so deeply, that they cannot be fathomed. A protracted life might now be consumed in the investigation of these convenient and necessary particles, including the voluminous efforts of those illustrious ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... delicate, gentle child. Twelve summers and winters had passed over her little head without a cloud to obscure the sunshine of her life save one—but that one was a terribly dark one, and its shadow lingered over her for many years. When Alice lost her mother, she lost the joy and delight of her existence; and although six years had passed since that awful day, and a fond Christian ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... "characteristics," at p. 151:—"In the consecution of his narrations, Mark puts them together very loosely." "Mark is also characterised by a conciseness and apparent incompleteness of delineation which are allied to the obscure." "The abrupt introduction" of many of his details is again and again appealed to by Dr. Davidson, and illustrated by references to the Gospel. What, in the name of common sense, is the value of such ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... continued to practise; dressing with extraordinary plainness, and often going without a fire in winter; so that she was able, through her self-sacrifice, to keep from want a large band of poor relatives and friends. The society she mixed with was various, but, for the most part, obscure. There were occasional visits from the now triumphant Mrs. Siddons; there were incessant propositions—but alas! they were equivocal—from Sir Charles Bunbury; for the rest, she passed her life among actor-managers ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... couple of days he was dexterously landed on the end of a long pier, which they passed without stopping, on their way to their own obscure anchorage. As he jumped from the rail to the pier and felt again the touch of terra firma he drew a long breath of uncontrollable elation. Yet he had not a cent in the world, no friends, and certainly no prospects. He did not even know whether to turn ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... fought her first successful battle with the older generation for her woman's rights—and won. She directed the colored men who were hired to unpack the household goods to put the green velvet horrors in the obscure rear parlor. In the front room she had placed the battered mahogany, and had just rejected the figured parlor carpet when her grandmother came upon her unawares. The old lady had slipped in ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... whether this time of anticipation and desire, of endeavor and partial success, in which the new struggles with the old without conquering it, and the opposite tendencies in the conflicting views of the world interplay in a way at once obscure and wayward, is to be classed as the epilogue of the old era or the prologue of the new. The simple solution to take it as a transition period, no longer mediaeval but not yet modern, has met with fairly general ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... revolution, uniting all the qualities of the famous chevalier, 'sans peur et sans reproche'. That he should have fallen, unnecessarily, at the close of the war, when nothing was to be gained, and nothing to be saved, by valor,—and in an obscure encounter on a field of mere predatory warfare, doubles the mortification of such a close to a noble and admirable career. A lesson from the pure and correct code of Marion's military morals would have saved this precious blood, and preserved this gallant youth for nobler fortunes. The following ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... of Abteilung Sieben are, in reality, much wider. It does such work in connection with the newspapers as is even too dirty for the German Foreign Office to touch, comprising everything from the launching of personal attacks in obscure blackmailing sheets against inconvenient politicians to the escorting of unpleasantly truthful foreign correspondents to the frontier. It is the obedient handmaiden of the Intelligence Department ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... the daughter of a peasant dwelling in a obscure country village near Aska, in the province of Yamato,[16] should become a Queen! Yet such was the case. Her father died while she was yet in her infancy, and the girl applied herself to the tending of her mother with all filial piety. ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... hood that had a remote resemblance to a bowed head, and, squatting like some metal Buddha in this weird light that ministered to its needs, it seemed to Denton in certain moods almost as if this must needs be the obscure idol to which humanity in some strange aberration had offered up his life. His duties had a varied monotony. Such items as the following will convey an idea of the service of the press. The thing worked with a busy clicking so long as things ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... from its nature and design, must, of necessity, be replete with matter of obscure meaning, more inviting to the scholar, and more intelligible to those who are unversed in Classical literature, the translation is accompanied with Notes and Explanations, which, it is believed, will be found to throw considerable ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... has another malady besides her cough. It's an obscure disease, but I have diagnosed it as "chronic inflammation of the conscience". For four long years she has been kept incessantly at work, looking after house and children, and has been unable to have one undisturbed hour, either by day or by ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... few words as to the obscure Breton church which we have ventured to put into competition with such formidable Norman rivals.[12] Perhaps it derives some of its attractions from its being out of the way and comparatively unknown. It has that peculiar charm which attaches to a fine building ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... instinct; the first animal that took care of its young stood at the beginning of this wonderful advance. The originating causes of the first slight care of eggs or offspring lay, no doubt, in some obscure physiological readjustments, due to forces irrelevant to morality. But the young that had even such slight care had a survival advantage over their rivals, and would transmit the rudimentary instinct to their offspring. Thus, given a start in that direction, ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... whom she knew were all on her father's side, and lived scattered about England. When she sought information concerning her mother, Mr. Lord became evasive and presently silent; she had seen no portrait of the dead parent. Of late years this obscure point of the family history ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... to sum up our conclusions respecting the origin and development of this literary phase. Difficult as it is to unravel the tangled network of obscure influences which surrounded its birth, I venture to think that a sufficiently complete disproof of that extreme theory, which would ascribe it entirely to Guevara's influence, has been offered. Guevara, in the translation of Berners, undoubtedly ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... had a feeling that there was an obscure desecration in the toast, but it was not tangible enough to resent. "To her very good ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... total defeat which has ever befallen an English army. Twenty-seven nobles were killed, twenty-two more and sixty knights made prisoners, and the number of obscure soldiers slain, drowned in the Forth, or killed by the peasantry, exceeds calculation. The camp was taken, with an enormous booty in treasure, jewels, rich robes, fine horses, herds of cattle, machines for the siege of towns, and, in short, such an amount of baggage that the wagons ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... not, my name; it is an obscure one, and M. de Greville would not recall it. See here my good fellow, here is a gold piece to aid thy memory. At what hour will ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... the picture in all its grewsome details—the two mule-drawn wagons moving slowly along the trail in the early morning; the band of hostile Indians suddenly swooping out from some obscure hiding place in the bluffs; the discovery of their presence; the desperate effort at escape; the swerving from the open trail in vain hope of reaching the river and finding protection underneath its banks; the frightened mules galloping wildly, lashed into frenzy by the man on horseback; the pounding ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... be remembered that I said that the five planets in their new positions "will, of course, obscure five other stars in place of those at present covered." This was to exclude an easier solution in which only four ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... made a separate topic; but it may be said here that when they came into the Valley of Mexico they were much less advanced in civilization than their predecessors. There is no reason whatever to doubt that they had always resided in the country as an obscure branch of the aboriginal people. Some have assumed, without much warrant, that they came to Mexico from the North. Mr. Squier shows, with much probability, that they came from the southern part of the country, where communities are ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... tiny waterfalls, over the great roots of trees. The glen is deep and narrow, and filled with trees; so that, in the summer, it is all in dark shadow. Now, the foliage of the trees being almost entirely of a golden yellow, instead of being obscure, the glen is absolutely full of sunshine, and its depths are more brilliant than the open plain or the mountain-tops. The trees are sunshine, and, many of the golden leaves having freshly fallen, the glen is strewn with light, amid which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... and Old Reliable in the express car forward. I had an idea in my head and followed it out. I felt as certain as I was of my own name that they'd have scouts out to wire ahead when Evans was coming; so it wouldn't be any use to get off at an obscure place. I also knew that the chances were I couldn't get a conveyance there at once for love or money; so Old Reliable was already—good and ready. Every tank was full. The tonneau was packed: ten gallons extra gas, five gallons of water, a week's rations—everything ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... have discoursed about it already, rather sillily I think, in the PALL MALL, and I mean to say no more, but the ways of the Muse are dubious and obscure, and who knows? I may be wiled again. As a place of residence, beyond a splendid climate, it has to my eyes but one advantage - the neighbourhood of J. A. Symonds - I dare say you know his work, but the man is far more interesting. It has done me, in my two winters' ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with wandring Feet The dark unbottom'd Infinite Abyss, And through the palpable Obscure find out His uncouth way, or spread his airy Flight Upborn with indefatigable ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... fifteen feet in diameter. Inside of this circle of great roots, the roots were mostly small, and the boys had cut them away with their knives, leaving just enough of them to stop up all the holes and obscure the view from without. The drift-pile, or hammock, as it is sometimes called at the South, had been years in forming, being drift-wood which had floated down the river during winter and spring freshets, and as it had lodged ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... appointments were wise; several of the most important ones quite remarkably so. He managed discreetly in crises. He saw the whole of a situation as few statesmen have done, penetrating to details and obscure aspects, which others, even experts, had overlooked. During the Spanish War his advice was always wise and helpful, and at points vital. Courteous to all foreign powers, and falling into no spectacular jangles ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... called in at the Patmans' with a view to possible commissions. Meal was wanted, and, while Tishy M'Crum stitched up a rent in the bag, Mrs. M'Gurk noticed where little Katty, who had been "took bad wid a could these three days," rustled uncomfortably among wisps of rushes and rags in an obscure corner. Fever made her bold and self-assertive, for she was wishing nothing less than that her daddy would get her an orange—"An or'nge wid yeller peel round it"—Katty laid stress upon this point—"like the one her mammy got her a long time ago. And daddy'd be a good ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... haughtily,—and will yield their best values to him who can best do without them. Keep the town for occasions, but the habits should be formed to retirement. Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter, where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... a pleasure in viewing the picture of a friend, when it is set before us; but when it is removed, rather choose to consider him directly than by reflection in an image, which is equally distant and obscure. ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... me to reply before he was again questioning my aunt Dorothy concerning Mr. Bannerbridge, and my father as to 'that sum of money.' But his method of interrogation was confused and pointless. The drift of it was totally obscure. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... having been lampooned by some obscure scribbler, who could not be discovered, the ministry, in consequence of her complaint, ordered no fewer than five-and-twenty abbes to be apprehended and sent to the Bastille, on the maxim of Herod, when he commanded the innocents to be murdered, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... price of labor or material unless such advance occurred during the prolonged term for completing the work rendered necessary by delay resulting from the action of the Government. The bill is somewhat obscure, but I have, I think, correctly stated ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... that had sent his father to a small local government post at Newcastle, and himself to a grammar school with openings on the University. Yet as a rule he thought himself anything but a successful man. He held a lectureship at Cambridge in an obscure scientific subject; and was in his way both learned and diligent. But he had few pupils, and had never cared to have them. They interfered with his own research, and he had the passionate scorn for popularity which grows up naturally in those who have no power with ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... people too would be there—like the telephone girl from a suburb, who for one day, as the most important witness in a sensational case of graft, was suddenly before the whole country and then as suddenly dropped out of sight. In fact, that was now my view of the land, figures emerging from dark obscure multitudes up into a ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... the East. We shall thus prepare the way for our proper subject, while at the same time we shall link on the history of the Fourth to that of the First Monarchy, and obtain a second line of continuous narrative, connecting the brilliant era of Cyaxares and Nebuchadnezzar with the obscure period of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... doubtful whether Art. 24 of that Treaty is in force. It was certainly left untouched by the Treaty of Berlin, but the language of the relevant article (3) of the definitive Treaty of Peace of 1879 is somewhat obscure, nor is much light to be gained upon the point from the protocol of the 14th seance of the Congress of Berlin, at which Art. 24 came up ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... enter in this place into the details of the various hypotheses, or to thoroughly discuss them, we shall be content to make known a few facts that have been recently observed, and that will throw a little light upon certain still obscure points regarding the formation ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... are learned works written in Latin, full of quotations in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and moreover confused and obscure in exposition, as is often the case with Dutch writings of that time. But a clever Frenchman, Fontenelle, took upon himself the task of rendering his work on the oracles into French in a popular and attractive form. His book called forth an answering ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... immortals, Faust, Coster, and Gutenberg, invented the Book, craftsmen as obscure as many a great artist of those times appropriated paper to the uses of typography. In the fifteenth century, that naive and vigorous age, names were given to the various formats as well as to the different sizes of type, names that bear ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... paper and possibly may interfere with some types of document examinations. In this connection, they are likely to prevent restoration of the specimen to a legible condition. Powders will not develop as many latent impressions as chemicals on paper or cardboard. In some cases they will obscure latent impressions ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... eye-witness, "slowly and deliberately arose. A slight tall figure, stern and pale, very quiet and grave, he stood before us and spoke those tremendous words. . . . He was not ashamed to have a monkey for an ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth." Another story indicates the temper of that time. Carlyle, whose writing had strongly influenced Huxley, and whom Huxley had come to know, could not forgive him for his attitude toward ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... oracle, and he gave responses in the chair of criticism. He listened to the complaints, the schemes, and the hopes and fears of a crowd of inferior writers, "who," he said, in the words of Roger Ascham, "lived, men knew not how, and died obscure, men marked not when." He believed, that he could give a better history of Grub Street than any man living. His house was filled with a succession of visitors till four or five in the evening. During the whole time he presided at his tea-table.' In The ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... asylum of the imperial outcasts; and there they might have vegetated in oblivion, or dropped into unhonoured graves without leaving a single representative, had not a monumental inscription revealed the fact, that a descendant of the Caesars had found a retreat and a tomb in an obscure parish in England. In the small church of Landulph, in Cornwall, the following inscription upon a small metal tablet, fixed in the wall, removes all doubt as to the identity and royal pedigree of the person whose memory it records. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... pleasure in the intuition of life, the artist will try to reveal the hidden unities that so delight the mind to discover. He will aim to penetrate beneath the surface of experience observed by common perception, to its more obscure logic underneath. In this way he will go beyond what the mere mechanism of imitation requires. The poet, for example, manifests latent emotional harmonies among the most widely sundered things. The subtle novelist shows how single elements of character, apparently isolated acts or trivial incidents, ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... as the train flashed by? What tragedy or comedy was he playing on his rural stage? Hadria sat down and shut her eyes, dazzled by the complex mystery and miracle of life, and almost horrified at the overwhelming thought of the millions of these obscure human lives burning themselves out, everywhere, at every instant, like so many ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... the chief woman in the cult is still somewhat obscure. Professor Pearson sees in her the Mother-Goddess worshipped chiefly by women. This is very probable, but at the time when the cult is recorded the worship of the male deity appears to have superseded that of the ...
— The Witch-cult in Western Europe - A Study in Anthropology • Margaret Alice Murray
... heart of Italy. Since the public and important events escape the diligence of the historian, he may amuse himself with contemplating, for a moment, the influence of the arms of Alaric on the fortunes of two obscure individuals, a presbyter of Aquileia and a husbandman of Verona. The learned Rufinus, who was summoned by his enemies to appear before a Roman synod, [28] wisely preferred the dangers of a besieged city; and the Barbarians, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... now, my friends, I shall not deal with obscure newspapers or obscure men. What a private citizen like Allen G. Thurman may have said in 1861 is ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... admitted, however, that this purely subjective view of philosophy, with its implied demand for a precise subjective colouring of the words, leaves some part of our philosophical motive-force unsatisfied and troubled by an obscure distress. No two minds can interchange ideas without some kind of appeal, often so faint and unconscious as to be quite unrecognized, to an invisible audience of hidden attendants upon the argument, who are tacitly assumed in some mysterious way to be the arbiters. These invisible companions ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... of what is a common feature in the newspaper world now—the syndicate. We became the old original first Newspaper Syndicate on the planet; it was on a small scale, but that is usual with untried new enterprises. We had twelve journals on our list; they were all weeklies, all obscure and poor, and all scattered far away among the back settlements. It was a proud thing for those little newspapers to have a Washington correspondence, and a fortunate thing for us that they felt in that way about it. Each of the ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... belonged to a common friend of us both. He thinks it worth..." "He asks ten louis d'or for it, and he shall have them with all my heart." "Sir, I know he will never part with it even for that large sum." I smiled, as he pronounced the word "large." "Do me the honour, Sir, of visiting my obscure dwelling, in the country—a short league from hence. My abode is humble: in the midst of an orchard, which my father planted: but I possess a few books, some of them curious, and should like to read double the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... we cannot do better than to tell the stories of these queens, Fredegonde and Brunehild by name, whose rivalry and enmity, with their consequences, throw a striking light on the history of those obscure times. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... and rapidity of communication between different parts of the world seems to have brought the whole globe into a very small focus, for obscure places, which would be unknown, one would think, beyond their own immediate neighbourhoods, are frequently well within the cognisance of persons living in far-distant quarters. An instance of this is given by the postmaster of Epworth, a village ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... his "Character of Mrs. Johnson" Swift says, "She was never known to cry out, or discover any fear, in a coach." The passage in the text is obscure. Apparently Esther Johnson had boasted of saving money by walking, instead of riding, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... harder stuff, even getting close enough to learn that he had visited America before, and possessed knowledge of its shores and currents. Ay, and he spoke English well, with never pause for a word, even to terms of seamanship a bit obscure. ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... half of the fifteenth century was an obscure personage named Gonzalo Pizarro. He was a gentleman whose lineage was ancient, whose circumstances were narrow and whose morals were loose. By profession he was a soldier who had gained some experience ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... along let us see what has happened in France, and clear up the points in the conversation between Bonaparte and his aide-de-camp which must be obscure to the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... people, depopulated Africa and most of Asia, and wrecked Europe, leaving only America comparatively safe to take over. An obscure scientist in one of the laboratories run by the Medical Lobby found a cure before the first waves of the epidemic hit America. Rutherford Ryan, then head of the Lobby, made sure that Medical Lobby got all ...
— Badge of Infamy • Lester del Rey
... or not, the early history of the Sacro Monte is undoubtedly obscure, and the reader will probably have ere this perceived that the accounts given by Fassola and Torrotti stand in some need of reconstruction. The resemblance between Varallo and Jerusalem is too far fetched to have had any bona fide effect upon a man ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... contradicted, indeed, by every convention of the neighborhood in which she had been reared, made Tillie feel that in yielding her lips to this man for whom she did not care, and whom, if she could hold out against him, she did not intend to marry, she was desecrating her womanhood. Vague and obscure as her feeling was, it was strong enough to ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... mother brought them into the thickest and most obscure part of the forest, when, stealing away into a by-path, they there left them. Little Thumb was not very uneasy at it, for he thought he could easily find the way again by means of his bread, which he had scattered ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... of this passage is obscure. Many explanations have been attempted, none of which, to my mind, ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... eloquent and obscure you are, my dear," she answered. "You speak like a sibyl. But one thing I see, and that is that you are not so perfectly happy as you would have us believe, seeing that you feel the need of consolations. Then, why do you wish me to follow ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... uniformly applied to Sumatra. The single circumstance indeed of the latter being intersected by the equator (as Taprobane was said to be) is sufficient to justify the doubts of those who were disinclined to apply it to the former; and whether in fact the obscure and contradictory descriptions given by Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Pliny, and Ptolemy, belonged to any actual place, however imperfectly known; or whether, observing that a number of rare and valuable commodities were brought from an island or islands in the supposed extremity ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... acquaintance, and mounting on a camel, offered to guide us on our way during the night. It is no easy matter at any time, even for the Arabs, to find the way in a direct line across the boundless Desert; and when clouds obscure the stars, it is almost impossible without a compass. The old recluse, on seeing white strangers, cast a look of disgust and disdain at us, expressing his surprise that any true believers should allow infidel Nazarenes to ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... human life could be long supported in such gloomy habitations. But we have the best authority for believing that some of the early Christians remained for a considerable time in these asylums. [351:1] Wells of water have been found in their obscure recesses; fonts for baptism have also been discovered; and it is beyond doubt that the disciples met here for religious exercises. As early as the second century these vaults became the great cemetery of the Church. Many of the memorials of the dead which ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... you, my lady lass, either the why or the wherefore," he replied. "I know that rich men do not marry poor and obscure girls; and if they do, there is sure to be something wrong with the marriage. We will not talk about it, only if he seems to admire you at all, do you keep out ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... acquisition of which experience is such an obvious necessity, that whenever we see the acquisition we assume the experience, gradate away imperceptibly into actions which seem, according to all reasonable analogy, to necessitate experience—of which, however, the time and place are so obscure, that they are not now commonly supposed to have any connection with ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... were permitted to deposit the bonds of their Christian debtors in a chamber of the abbey. The Hebrew word for 'bond' being 'star,' the chamber was so named. The reason for the name in time became obscure. A subsequent custodian, having his own conception, had stars painted on the dome ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... than known to, his ministers, talent as a very able writer, deep knowledge of national eras, of history, and diplomacy, gave Favier a credit with the administration, and an influence over affairs very much beyond his obscure position and dubious character; he was, in some sort, the minister of the intrigues of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... which I returned home, was one of marked and decisive influence upon history, and in a way a turning-point in my own obscure career. As in February I witnessed the splendors of the papal city under its old regime, so in April and May I saw imperial Paris brilliant under the emperor. In the one case as in the other I was unconscious ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... flattery which the young artist's attention conveyed, and scarcely needed the entreaties of Trevethick to persuade him to throw off his native reticence. What he forgot, and had mentioned in former narrations, the landlord supplemented; and when "Sol" became technical and obscure the other performed the part of chorus or explainer. If the former had been some gifted animal, and the latter its proprietor, he could not have taken a greater pride in the exhibition of its talent than did the landlord in these narrations. Now he ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... country life with such social improvements as will provide an effective compensation for a necessarily modest standard of comfort. But the citizens of the United States may be pardoned for being physiocrats. The statistical proof, annually furnished, of the growing agricultural wealth, is apt to obscure other essentials of progress. The astronomical proportions of the figures stagger the imagination, and engender the kind of pride a man feels when he is first told the number of red corpuscles luxuriating in his blood. ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... is thy soul like mountain tide, That, swelled by winter storm and shower, Rolls down in turbulence of power, A torrent fierce and wide; Reft of these aids, a rill obscure, Shrinking unnoticed, mean and poor, Whose channel shows displayed The wrecks of its impetuous course, But not one symptom of the force By which ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... comfortable, as a head-rest, than the hollow between the upper and lower bulges of the Mycenzean huge shield. The Zulu wooden head-rest is of the same character. Thus this passage in Book X. does not prove that small circular shields were known to Homer, nor does X. 5 13. 526-530, an obscure text in which it is uncertain whether Diomede and Odysseus ride or drive the horses of Rhesus. They could ride, as every one must see, even though equipped with great body-covering shields. True, the shielded hero could neither put his shield at his ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... action of stimulus, and that the various activities, such as the "ascent of sap" and "growth" are in reality different reactions to the stimulating action of energy supplied by the environment. In this way, Dr. Bose showed that several obscure phenomena, in the life-processes of the plant, can be very satisfactorily explained by ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... hard face of earth the sun's bright hue Not yet its veil obscure and dark did rend; The Lycaonian offspring scarcely through The furrows of the sky his plough did send. ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... when it was first presented might come clear to you the fifth or sixth time around. Cavender suspected, however, that as far as he was concerned much of the theory of Total Insight was doomed to remain forever obscure. ...
— Ham Sandwich • James H. Schmitz
... purifications. Read Mark 7:1-23. Jesus was so indifferent about the religious ablutions that he was brought to book for it by the pious. He replied that these regulations were not part of the divine law, but later accretions the product of theological casuistry, and that they tended to obscure the real divine duties. He cited a flagrant case. By eternal and divine law a man owes love and support to his parents. But the scribes held that if a man vowed to give money to the temple, this obligation, ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... viz., pronunciation, grammar, prosody, explanation of obscure terms, religious rites, astronomy. These are considered appendants of the Vedas. The ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... gave answer, insisting that the King of Portugal had moved first in this matter, and therefore should be the plaintiff. As to the rest he said that the suit was obscure, vague, and general, insufficient to form a case on possession, and to pass a sure sentence upon it, let them specify wherein they thought the treaty was not observed, and let them attempt the fitting remedy and interdict, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... be a tale of delusion and superstition, or something more than that, it is, at all events, not without a legend for its foundation. There is some obscure and dark rumour of secrets strangely obtained and enviously betrayed by a rival sister, ending in deprivation of reason and death; and that the betrayer still walks by times in the deserted Hall which ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... is somewhat lengthy and a little obscure, so weighty with meaning is it, we have been anxious to quote it, first, because it is an official document, and because it came from the very pen of him whose life we are studying; and, secondly, because it shows that at this period serious reading, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... As you turn over the pages, Saint Teresa now and then bends over and sorrows and compassionates us; he remains impenetrable, buried in his internal abyss, occupied, above all things, in describing the sufferings of the soul which, after having crucified its desires, passes through the 'Night obscure,' that is to say, through the renunciation of all which comes from the ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... thought of any profession or business; the younger sons generally became soldiers, and being always a venturesome race, and having nothing particular to make them value their existence, were no less generally killed off betimes. The family became thoroughly obscure, slipped out of place in the county, seldom rose to be even justices of the peace, never contrived to marry heiresses again, but only the daughters of some neighbouring parson or squire as poor as themselves, but always of gentle blood. Oh, they were as proud as Spaniards in that respect! So ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of this classing is to make the study of their natural history more easy and simple. But you are right, brother, in the present case; it appears quite useless, and only renders the thing more complex, and obscure. Where there are many varieties or species of a family or order of animals, and where these species differ widely from each other in appearance and habits, then such minute classifications become necessary to assist one's memory; ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... of the intervening neutral Power that Austria-Hungary was, of course, ready to put an end to further bloodshed, and did not look for any gains from the peace, because, as stated several times, we were engaged in a war of defence only. But I drew attention to the rather obscure sense of the application, not being able to understand whether the State applying to us wished for peace with us only, or with the entire group of Powers, and I was constrained to emphasise the fact that we did ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... are finished—say five years—for Miss Varley tells me you are quite up with the girls of your age in your studies, they will have a substantial country home which you will enjoy immensely between times. You will find that a country home, however humble, is not sordid like an obscure home in the city. So next week, Amarilly, or as soon as Mrs. Meredith can fit you out properly, you will be packed off to an ultra- smart school. There will be one term this year, but I think you should remain through the summer vacation ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... Nescience?—Let it then be said that what is contradictory to non-knowledge is the clear presentation of the nature of the inner Self, and that (while there is consciousness of ajnana) we have only an obscure presentation of the nature of the Self; things being thus, there is no contradiction between the cognition of the substrate and object of Nescience on the one side, and the consciousness of ajnana on the other.—Well, we reply, all this holds good on our side also. Even if ajnana means antecedent ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... meaning is here obscure; perhaps the word less is omitted, and the bargain was for a measure an eighth part less than ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... Tales" tell, who are better known to the outer world than Cinderella—the despised and flouted younger sister, who long sits unnoticed beside the hearth, then furtively visits the glittering halls of the great and gay, and at last is transferred from her obscure nook to the place of honor justly due to her tardily acknowledged merits. Somewhat like the fortunes of Cinderella have been those of the popular tale itself. Long did it dwell beside the hearths of the ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... his blood was shed before the world was, according to that scripture (Rev 13:8). "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," in my book, page 3 [141]. Secondly, he saith, that I cry aloud against Christ within, in page 24. Of his book. And again he saith, "That all my work is an obscure shooting against the manifestation of Christ within." Where he speaks very falsely of me, for I confess and own God's Christ within as well as without, as appears in my book, page 206. towards the end [173]. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... southwards in a slow, slow train, third class, where sorrow at any rate does not wear a mask. Great grief is democratic, levelling—not downwards but upwards. It strips away the inessential, and makes brothers. It is impatient with all the unavailing inventions which obscure the ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... stories in height, the lower story having been formerly used by the Free Grace Believers as a place wherein to celebrate certain obscure mysteries appertaining to their belief. The upper story, devoted to the more ordinary worship of their Sunday meetings, was reached by a tall, steep flight of steps that led from the ground to a covered ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... nations. Scarcely an hour of the day goes by, but the narrow waters dividing the port from the ocean are churned by the propellers of great ships. The imagination sets itself a task in trying to realize those few days in May, 1802, when Flinders called it a "useful but obscure port" and when the only keels that lay within the bay were those of one small sloop at anchor near the entrance, and one tiny boat in which her captain was rowing over the surface and making a map of the outline. And if it is difficult for us to recapture that ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... was the design had in view in placing it in that obscure and unfrequented place? As this query suggested itself to her mind, a man passed along on the bank of the stream! and in a few minutes another in the opposite direction; and in the last one she recognized one of her captors! She at once comprehended the design of the apparatus; ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... before us appeared more intricate and obscure than common; the forests did not, as usual, consist of lofty trees, which afford a tolerably clear prospect between their trunks, but were composed of creeping bushes and impervious thickets. The army marched as usual, with the vain ostentation of military discipline, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... whole of this story (which is apparently intended as an example of the flowery style (el bediya) of Arab prose) is terribly corrupt and obscure, and in the absence of a parallel version, with which to collate it, it is impossible to be sure that the exact sense ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... the moon obscure. The dead-asleep town stood up motionless before the madly-living breakers. It seemed as if a horrible fight was in progress; loud rage and dumb treachery face to face in the semi-darkness; and between the livelong combatants, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... seems, to judge from reports, to have gone a little way south in the thicker timber, and then to have turned north again in the direction of Blaauwildebeestefontein. After that his movements are obscure. He was seen on the Klein Labongo, but the sight of the post at Blaauwildebeestefontein must have convinced him that a korhaan could not escape that way. The next we heard of him was that he had joined ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... the extracts from Murray's log published by Labilliere in the Early History of Victoria have ever before been published. In transcription I have somewhat modernized the spelling where old or incorrect forms tended to obscure the sense, and omitted repetitions, as it would have been impossible to include within the limits of one volume the whole of the contents of the logbooks. The story of the Lady Nelson as told by Grant has in places ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... what he had feared for years had happened. Quintana had found him, — Quintana, after all these years, had discovered the identity and dwelling place of the obscure American soldier who had robbed him in the wash-room of a Paris cafe. And Quintana was now in America, here in this very wilderness, tracking the man who had ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... conversationalist, when the mood is upon him. I have not taken very kindly to the man. Among other things, he disapproves of flint-collecting; he asks, rather scornfully, "whether one can sell such stones." And yet, for some obscure reason, he has singled me out among the men as the object of his favourable notice, affecting rather a distant manner towards the rest of us; the ladies, however, are charmed by his courtly graces. He wears profuse ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... of honour: he has deposited it safely where misfortune can not tarnish it; where malice can not blast it. Favoured of heaven, he departed without exhibiting the weakness of humanity; magnanimous in death, the darkness of the grave could not obscure his brightness. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... unjust in the way He will punish. Many who are thus disturbed lose sight of the fact that God is just; that whatever God does in regard to the lost, one thing is certain,—He will do no injustice. With my loved ones, with your loved ones, with the most obscure, worthless creature, with the most refined, delicate nature, with the most cruel, debased creature that ever lived, God will do no wrong. Many have turned away to infidelity, not on account of the Bible's complete teaching as ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin
... Well, there are dreams and dreams, Are those of BURNS much worse than those of WEMYSS? Are WESTMINSTER's vain visions, though mature The dreamer, less absurd or more obscure Than those of some "young man" who dares to hope That he with crowded London's ills can cope? "Behold this dreamer cometh!" So of old The sons of JACOB, envious, scornful, cold, And fearful for their privilege of birth And of possession, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... opera I have ever written follow it to destruction. I would bite out my tongue, and spit it in Hasse's face, sooner than go before him with a mouth full of flattering lies, to befool him with praise of that patchwork he has made, and calls AN OPERA! When I was obscure and unknown, I scorned these tricks of trade; and think you that to-day I would stoop to such baseness? Eight years ago, in Rome, a cabal was formed to cause the failure of my 'Trionfo de Camillo,' Cardinal ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... disappeared, there is no such thing as ever finding him again! A 'copy of the complaint' is 'served' in the same way; or, the 'summons' is published once a week for a month in the smallest type of the smallest obscure weekly paper to be found. This latter device, however, is adopted only when the plaintiff (having some moral scruples about too much perjury at once) charges 'desertion,' and desires to appear quite ignorant of unnatural defendant's present place of abode. If, for any particular ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... nothing. Joost, he was told, was somewhere in the bulb gardens, where, seemed unknown; Mevrouw was at the house of the notary. Who the notary was, and where he lived, and why she had gone there were alike as obscure to this inquirer as was Julia's probable destination. He felt that she might have set out to find any one of these three people, or she might be lying in wait, like a foolish child, till he had gone. He went down the drive; outside the gate he saw some idlers who had been there when ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... detective. "I thank you once more that you have come to us. I appreciate it greatly that a stranger to our part of the country, like yourself, should give his time and strength to this problem of our obscure ...
— The Case of The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study • Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner
... these obscure mountain-hamlets have ever seen a Fankwae; many, doubtless, have never even heard of the existence of such queer beings. They gather in a crowd about me when I stay to seek refreshments; the general query of "What is he? what is he?" passed from one ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... cited by my author, just before the conclusion of his work, and one of them in particular from a learned divine of the church of England,[3] though they slur over the mention of his miracles, in obscure and general terms, yet are full of veneration for his person. Farther than this I think it needless to prepossess a reader; let him judge sincerely, according to the merits of the cause, and the sanctity of his life, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
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