"Cryptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he might have seen the sudden lighting of Rosamund's eyes, the sudden clutch at her bosom, which would have announced to him that his utterances were none so cryptic but that she ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... before he reached the rock he'd placed as a marker. He did cryptic things, facing away from Jill. From time to time there was a golden glitter in the air ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... before. In his former letter Li Ho had indeed intimated that a return was not desirable, but it had been an intimation based on general principles only. This was different. This had all the marks of urgent warning. "No more safe being married as per inclosed." This cryptic remark might mean that further enlightenment was to ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... I marveled at these cryptic utterances. They shadowed a modern Black Art, of which I had had no conception—a recrudescence in other language of the age-old dualism of good and evil. It was a ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... priest; that it was there still; and that he was quite prepared to reveal the hiding-place to his English friends, feeling assured that they would use it in the manner which had been intended when it was first concealed. This again was a distinctly cryptic remark, of which neither of the Englishmen could possibly guess the meaning; but Stukely replied that Vilcamapata might rest assured that they would employ it wisely and well; and with that answer the Peruvian seemed perfectly satisfied. But when he was asked to describe the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... turned, raced, and checked the combination, caressing it, humouring it, wheedling it, inexorably questioning it in the dumb language his fingers spoke so deftly. And in his ear the click and whir and thump of shifting wards and tumblers murmured articulate response in the terms of their cryptic code. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... would say nothing to further illuminate his cryptic remark, and Haynerd soon switched to the grim topic of the industrial ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... or madness. "Let us bless heaven that the patriarch of the Gnosis has selected the former." It is possibly showing gratitude for small mercies, because our friend has saved his reason, but is blood-guilty in the matter of common sense. Meanwhile, the widowed Gnosis illuminates its Ichabod in the cryptic quartiers of ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... cryptic, and, while the voices of the children and the soft mandatory protests of the Asiatic maids drew nearer from the beach, Martha Scandwell felt herself vibrant and tremulous with sudden resolve of daring. She waved ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... is only a statue. To himself he is still a king—or at least a man who was once a king and, having done no wrong, ought not now to be insulted. If he had in his composition one marble grain of humour, he might... but no, a joke against oneself is always cryptic. Fat men are not always the best drivers of fat oxen; and cryptic statues cannot be depended ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... This was wholly cryptic to Sylvia, but she was glad that Mrs. Owen was not disappointed. As they loitered in a long shady lane Mrs. Owen made it possible for Sylvia to talk of herself. Sally Owen was a wise woman, who was considered a little rough and peculiar by some of her townspeople, chiefly those later comers who ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... and repeated currying with the dandy brush had made Chum's grand coat stand out in shimmering fluffiness. A course of carefully-conducted circular promenades on the end of a chain had taught the dog to walk gaily and unrestrainedly in leash. And any of several cryptic words, relating to hypothetical rats, and so forth, were quite enough ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... conflict find him leaving the actual handling of the troops to Hunter-Weston as I am bound to do. Old Oyama cooled his brain during the battle of the Shaho by shooting pigeons sitting on Chinese chimneys. King Richard before Bosworth saw ghosts. My own dark hours pass more easily as I make my cryptic jottings in pedlar's French. The detachment of the writer comes over me; calms down the tumult of the mind and paves a path towards the refuge of sleep. No order is to be issued until I get reports ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... telephone exchange. As they came to the door he stepped quickly before her and pressed her gently back as he closed it. She heard him moving to and fro, and knew his burdens—the poor, little burdens he bore. When she entered, he was alone in the room. The grim switchboard flashed its metallic face in cryptic, sphinx-like immobility. She seated herself on a stool and donned the bright earpiece. She looked at the mouthpiece. She had never looked at one so closely before. It was wide and black, pimpled with usage; inert; dead; almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves. It looked—she beat back the thought—but ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... is, all right, dad!" was his cryptic statement. "I guess we never made no mistake in ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... passed from his lips with a faint, far echo which he found vaguely but unidentifiably familiar. But into the group around the long table the utterance fell with cryptic, crucial solemnity. Only Mr. Green, stubbornly contentious to the last, and thinking anxiously of both horns of the dilemma at once, found ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... second match, which occasions so many burned fingers, and such picturesque language. And again, there is the desire to compress a telegraphic message into the minimum sixpennyworth, and so send an ambiguous and cryptic sentence, when sevenpence would have made it as clear as light. We all tend to ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... to whom we had applied Our shopman's test of age and worth, Was elemental when he died, As he was ancient at his birth: The saddest among kings of earth, Bowed with a galling crown, this man Met rancor with a cryptic mirth, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... against oak, France and a sabre, The outcry of old beauty Whored by pimping merchants To submission before wine and chatter. Silly rich peasants stamp the carpets of men, Dead men who dreamed fragrance and light Into their woof, their lives; The rug of an honest bear Under the feet of a cryptic slave Who speaks always of baubles, Forgetting state, multitude, work, and state, Champing and mouthing of hats, Making ratful squeak ...
— War is Kind • Stephen Crane
... ... after all and all ... From what alembic issues forth the Spring, What cryptic finger, moving by a wall, Leaves tulip writs in tulip colouring; I shall have knowledge of the tug and grip Of tender roots where they are thrust and curled, And what frail doors are opened to let slip The hidden spear ...
— Ships in Harbour • David Morton
... marked their lighter moments, and flashes of elephantine jocularity enlivened the proceedings of the Club. I picked up some useful items of knowledge from them, for I regret to admit that up to that time I had no idea what a bill of lading was, or a ship's manifest; after a while, even such cryptic expressions, too, as f.o.b. and c.i.f. ceased to have any mysteries for me. Let the inexperienced beware of "Swedish Punch," a sickly, highly-scented preparation of arrack. I do not speak from personal experience, for I detest the sweet, cloying stuff; but it occasionally fell to my lot to guide ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... I had done— he would clap his hands over new lights and see them blown out by the wind of the turned page. He was like nothing, I told him, but the maniacs who embrace some bedlamitical theory of the cryptic character of Shakespeare. To this he replied that if we had had Shakespeare's own word for his being cryptic he would at once have accepted it. The case there was altogether different—we had nothing but the word of Mr. Snooks. I returned that I was stupefied ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... the little nuisance, as she now approached the door of our cabin; and he brushed past me and started not aft but toward the bows. "An' there you are!" he shouted over his shoulder in cryptic speech, whether to me or to his Auntie Helen I could ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... return of Mr. Fitzroy with his aunt. She had had an unhappy five minutes with Mrs. Shaw, who had been saying cryptic but unpleasant things and calling her "Mildred"; whereas she did not so much as know Mrs. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Sporting Page, he would come across a cryptic Reference to MacFearson of Drumtochtie being 3 up and 2 to play on Hargis of Sunset Ho, whereupon he would experience a sense of annoyance and do a ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... French archives is, that bound up with despatches received are the outlines of those sent, and generally not merely a sketch, but the first draft with all annotations and corrections, these quite often in Napoleon's almost cryptic but still decipherable handwriting. Much of course is in cipher, but the key is available and sometimes the official decipherment. The archives of St. Petersburg are also available for properly accredited searchers; Tratchefski has gone a considerable distance in publishing the decisive ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... n. Amiga equivalent of 'panic' in UNIX (sometimes just called a 'guru' or 'guru event'). When the system crashes, a cryptic message "GURU MEDITATION XXXXXXXX.YYYYYYYY" appears, indicating what the problem was. An Amiga guru can figure things out from the numbers. Generally a {guru} event must be followed ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... amazement at this cryptic utterance. "That sure beats me. I always said I got out of my depth with women, and you've got me out of my depth now. Why you want me to lose everything, seeing as you ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... tradition from the overburdening names and dates: those scratches he was pointing out on the walls were supposed to be a cryptic message from some refugees in need of provisions. It was not a ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... falls victim in practice to the fascinations of the dream-book cipher method which he has condemned. The adjective Freudian is now justly a by-word, among psychopathologists, for a stereotyped habit of reducing each item of a dream to some cryptic allusion or roundabout reference to the primitive demands of the infantile and sexual life. Freud's fertility in such interpretations has led one of our best-known experimental psychologists to say, in mingled admiration and impatience: ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... on the Drama." This cryptic passage refers, I imagine, to a translation by John Black, afterwards the editor of the Morning Chronicle, of August Von Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, 2 ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... was a cryptic reference to Shakespeare's secret belief in his theory. Many of the things we love most are round. Is not money, according to the proverb, made round that it may go round, and are not the men most in demand described as 'all-round men'? Nor are all-round women without their ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... he cried. "That was not the exact reason. No, my dear Miss Maxwell, I begin to exercise a new-born discretion. I shall not elucidate that cryptic remark until after New Year's Day. But I don't mind telling you why I have hit on a definite date. If all goes well with us—and we have had so many escapes that Providence may well send us a few more—the Kansas should steam out of our little bay of Good Hope about that period. Then ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... caught that note and it piqued his curiosity, so with mountain secretiveness he became cryptic in his response. "Wa'al, mebby we hain't tellin' all we knows—jest yit. Mebby we're kinderly bidin' our time for a ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... Then bitter anomalies annul her choir Of puissant and subtle instincts, rended through By gorgeous dualisms of vain-desire. For Love outrages Art's clear disciplines, And Art lures Love to guilt of cryptic treason: The spirit of imagination pines, Captive in webs of exquisite unreason. Alas for this translated soul of hers, The rose's, ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... with due humility. "If you think I'm fit to hear why you left that cryptic message, I'd ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... cryptic writing and symbolism of that wondrous tomb of that wondrous woman is full of guiding light; and the key of the many mysteries lies in that most wondrous Jewel which she held in her dead hand over the dead heart, which she ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... found—nay, not a tithe of that he found. For, listening with a kindlier heart—even he, hurt by her neglect, had judged her for a while too harshly—he discerned that at her wildest and loudest, in the act of bandying cryptic jests with the buckeens, and uttering much that was thoughtless—Flavia did not suffer one light or unmaidenly word to ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... But the cryptic threat contained in the last words was never carried out. The dinner was perfect, and Owen was back in his old position as something between a brother and a lover, full of admiring great laughs for Sandy and boyish confidences. There was not a cloud on the evening for ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... find a machine that hasn't got 'T-C.R.' lettered on it somewhere, you let us know about it," was his rather cryptic reply. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... for Jefferson Creede! Deep and devious as was his knowledge of men in the rough, the ways of a woman in love were as cryptic to him as the poems of Browning. The first day that Miss Kitty rode forth to be a cowboy it was the rodeo boss, indulgent, but aware of the tenderfoot's ability to make trouble, who soberly assigned his fair disciple to guard a pass over which no ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... of Father Brown at the corner of the road, with some random apologies for any rudeness they might have shown. Both their faces were tragic, but also cryptic. ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... because farmers, naturally, compare notes, and everyone thinks himself entitled to the top price no matter how inferior or badly washed his wool may be. The Bradford stapler has the northern method of speech, which sounds unfamiliar in the midland and southern counties, but it is not so cryptic as that of the Scottish wool trade. The following colloquy is reported as having passed between two Scots over ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... following morning Duperre and Rayne were closeted together, while afterwards I drove Duperre into York, where from the telegraph office in the railway station he sent several cryptic messages abroad, of course posing to the telegraph clerk as a passing railway passenger. Rayne never sent important telegrams from the village post-office at Overstow, or even from Thirsk. They were all dispatched from places where, ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... the words had been an affirmation and not a question. It seemed clear that for some cryptic reason I ought to have been an artist. Accordingly, I ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... my goo' flien'," chanted each of these apparitions; and each, after a long, slow discourse that ended more darkly than it began, retired with fatuous nods and smirks of satisfaction, leaving Rudolph dismayed by a sense of cryptic negotiation in which he had been ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... bated breath. The conspirators had as yet no intimation of his intentions: Governor Claiborne was torn by suspicion of this would-be savior, for at the very time he was reading Wilkinson's gasconade he received a cryptic letter from Andrew Jackson which ran, "keep a watchful eye on our General and beware of an attack as well from your own country as Spain!" If Claiborne could not trust "our General," ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... about the middle of the seventh week, one of Willie Kerr's cryptic messages lay beside Mrs. Heth's breakfast plate on a ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... were many: episodes from profane and sacred histories; simulacra of the great saints. A war between giants and pygmies was shown with all its accompanying horrors. The firmament dripped crimson. The four cryptic creatures of Ezekiel's vision came out of the north, a great cloud of "infolding fire" and the colour was amber. A cyclopean and dazzling staircase thronged by moving angelic shapes, harping mute harps, stretched from sea to sky, melting into the milky way like the tail of ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... killing a cat than by choking it with cream," was his cryptic remark. "What would you say if I told you that in an hour's time we, will have every drop of water out of the yacht, and that following that we will have her ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... recovered from his surprise, followed his aged guide to a distant part of the forest. Then the hermit bade him farewell and left him to ponder on the cryptic saying: "Here ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... precautions he takes to keep them intensely private. "Why he went and had all his special numbers here changed once just because I found out one of them by mistake and called him up on it for a joke—the cryptic old person!" Peter had said ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... a secret code, But who would guess at guile in that? Unless he used the cryptic mode He couldn't be a diplomat; He wished (we thought) to be discreet, Telling his friends how frail and fair is The exotic feminine you meet In bounteous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... I can only announce the project as a stimulus to unemployed aspirants, and as a hint to fortunate collectors, to prepare for an exhibition of their cryptic treasures.—On a future occasion I shall describe the plan of construction which seems more eligible—shall briefly notice the scattered materials which it may be expedient to consult, whether in public depositories, or in private hands—and shall make an appeal to those whose assistance may ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... that the world should set the highest possible valuation upon us. It is only when we are underrated that we object. So this dear, deluded old gentleman, having failed to secure a 'rune' in Java, brought back something equally cryptic—a woman? Was the lady of his choice a native or merely ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the completest defensive armor, but with no aggressive quality. His was a nature of utter sincerity, and what had seemed to me, reading his poetry before knowing him, to be more or less an affectation of obscurity, a cultivation of the cryptic sense, I found to be the pure expression of his individuality. He made short cuts to the heart of his theme, perhaps more unconscious than uncaring that his line of approach could not be followed by his general readers, as a mathematician leaves a large hiatus in his demonstration, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... de Kercadiou was alone, purple in the face, puzzling out that last cryptic utterance, and not at all happy in his mind, either on the score of his godson or of M. de La Tour d'Azyr. He was disposed to be angry with them both. He found these headstrong, wilful men who relentlessly followed their own impulses very disturbing and irritating. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... mystified by Merkle's cryptic message, for she could imagine no possible way in which she or the writer himself could be connected discreditably with Jarvis Hammon's affair. She gained some light, however, when that evening she read the note ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... Cryptic, too, it was not. The very passages quoted in Hermathena to support this opinion, so far from doing so prove actually the reverse. When Cuculain came down into Meath on his first [Note: Vol. I., page 155.] foray, he found, on the lawn of the Dun of the sons of Nectan, a pillar stone ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... figger it out that way and mebbe not so far wrong," said the cryptic Mr. Searle. "But if you think you'd like to buy or rent her place I'm fully empowered to act. Got the keys right here and a car standing outside—take you right on out there in a jiffy ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... there is such a thing as art—something that is created by and appeals to peculiar faculties, something rare and personal, something not to be had simply by taking thought and pains, something as utterly unlike honest craftsmanship as it is unlike the cryptic mutterings of boozy mountebanks: subject, however, to this assumption, his theories are severely practical. They have to do solely with the art of painting; they are born of his own experience; and he ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... Emperor was making the round of his outposts, a somewhat cryptic despatch from Grouchy reached headquarters. The Marshal reported from Gembloux, at 10 p.m. of the 17th, that part of the Prussians had retired towards Wavre, seemingly with a view to joining Wellington; that their centre, led by Bluecher, had ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... admired, as a stroke of wit, the way Hansch takes to indicate Kepler's birthplace. Disdaining to use any but mathematical symbols for so great a mathematician, he writes that he was born on the 21st of December, 1571, in longitude 29 7', latitude 48 54'! It may be worth mentioning, that on this cryptic spot stood the little town of Weil in the Duchy of Wrtemberg. His birth was cast at a time when his parents were reduced to great poverty, and he received very little early schooling. He was, however, sent to Tbingen, and here he pursued the scholastic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... engineer examined to see its exact place upon the clearly-defined line, afterwards noting it in his book in cryptic figures, and then carefully switching off again, ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... the bleakest I've seen yet, an' I've been to Brighton and Blackpool. Travelled quite a lot, I 'ave, Miss. The lydy who read me 'and said I would, for me teeth are so wide apart." Which cryptic saying puzzled Pamela until Priorsford was reached, when ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... in the mood of the early Allegro; a wistful melody of the clarinet plays more slowly between cryptic reminders of the first theme of the symphony. In sudden Allegro risoluto over rumbling bass of strings, a mystic call of horns, harking far back, spreads its echoing ripples all about till it rises in united tones, with a clear, descending answer, much ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... puzzled, as he gazed at the face still moist with its recent tears and now rather cryptic in its expression, "are your laws of judgment different for me than ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... the world for something hard And dreamless; what their fingers grasp and hold, They hold. While I am even now a-quiver With all this moment brings; no youthful monarch Were more intoxicated, when the breezes Should waft to him that cryptic word "possession." [He nears the window.] Ah, lovely stars, are ye out there as ever? From out of this unstable mortal body To look upon your courses in your whirling Eternal orbits—that has been the food That bore with ease my years, until I thought ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... "Cryptic, but with quite a nice sort of sound about it," she observed, smiling. "Tell me honestly, though, aren't you surprised to find me living ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... launce) a silverling. The "coasting reader" is the courteous reader when walking along the coast, and what he sees are silver fish and gold fish, adoring the Lord by the beauty of their scales. The Song to David is cryptic to a very high degree, but I think there are no lines in it which patient reflection will not solve. On every page are stanzas the verbal splendour of which no lover of poetry will question, and lines which will always, to me at least, retain an echo of that gusto with which ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... to High Street to take his bus his mind was divided between two exultant convictions. He felt that he had not only found Treffinger's greatest picture, but that, in James, he had discovered a kind of cryptic index to the painter's personality—a clue which, if tactfully ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... tray, and sat down again. She wondered drowsily how long Herr Van de Greutz's visitor would stay. He was a German, a very great scientist; the chemist looked upon him as a friend and an equal, a brother in arms; they talked together freely in the cryptic language of science, and in German, which is the tongue best fitted to help out the other. Julia heard them when she went to and from with the dishes at dinner time. She did not understand chemistry, a fact she much regretted; ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... at the other. No reek of alcohol met his nostrils, as with the boatswain, but, none the less Little Billy's cryptic jargon confirmed his suspicions. Also drunk, he reflected. The revered and gentle old mate of the brig Cohasset would have cause for grief when his two prodigals ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... diversities of methods vulgar and received: as that of resolution or analysis, of constitution or systasis, of concealment or cryptic, &c., which I do allow well of, though I have stood upon those which are least handled and observed. All which I have remembered to this purpose, because I would erect and constitute one general inquiry (which seems to me deficient) ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... Other evidence accumulated. Cryptic remarks of Doble made during the day. His anxiety to see Steelman immediately. A certain manner of ill-repressed triumph whenever he mentioned Sanders or Crawford. These bolstered Shorty's growing opinion ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... that fortuitous and attractive order. The back of every volume had to be read, though the light was bad. On one wall between the windows a specimen chart was framed. Maps are good; but how much better are charts, especially when you cannot read them except by guessing at their cryptic lettering! About the coast line the fathom marks cluster thickly, and venture to sea in lines which attenuate, or become sparse clusters, till the chart is blank, being beyond soundings. At the capes are red dots, with arcs on the seaward side to show at what distance mariners pick up the ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... was in behalf of the more cryptic, symbolic, hectic, toxic works of the ultra-modern French school, which have been so brilliantly illuminated by their protagonists that thousands of women in the larger cities recognize a master's voice whenever one of his themes is played upon ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... aggressive gospel which bases the claims of Aryan, i.e., Hindu, supremacy on the Vedas as the one ultimate source of human and Divine wisdom. The exalted character of Vedantic philosophy has been as widely recognized among European students as the subtle beauty of many of the Upanishads, in which the cryptic teachings of the Vedas have been developed along different and often conflicting lines of thought to suit the eclecticism of the Hindu mind. But the Arya-Samaj has not been content to assert the ethical perfection of the Vedas. In its zeal to proclaim the immanent superiority of Aryan ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... little, crosseyed commercial traveler; she was a pretty, little creature who looked as innocent and was as merry as a child; we all vied in paying her attentions and waiting on her like slaves, the husband always smiling a cryptic smile. After they had left it was hinted they were not married at all; the oldest hands had been taken in.... One afternoon I met Dolly, the commercial traveler's wife, and she stopped and spoke to me. I remembered what I had heard and ventured on some ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... attrition. The downway must have been easy work, but the ascent was different, and when the monster came to view in the upper world, it would be fresh from contact with the white clay. Hence the name, which has no cryptic significance, but only fact. Now, if that surmise be true—and I do not see why not—there must be a deposit of valuable ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... her reunion with her offspring, and excused herself in cryptic language for the lateness of her return, Nettie restored the baby to the crib and shyly invited Miss Bart to the rocking-chair ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... up a pale-green booklet from the desk and opened it before her. She saw the cryptic characters for the first time. And she saw them with his glowing eyes. In their mysterious strokes and curves and dots she saw romance, and the key of the future; she saw the philosopher's stone. She saw a new religion that had ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... observed, "that is impossible to a man who tries to be one," and then, oblivious of any construction she might choose to put upon this cryptic utterance, he strolled moodily on, in ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Color of daylight. Phosphorescent glow. Catching fireflies. Scaling the heights. The spot where the Walter note was found. A skull with mysterious characters on it. The mark on the skull and the mark in the message. The star. Cryptic signs. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... entertainment, and slips of paper pasted beneath them testified in the great man's own handwriting that he was yours sincerely or affectionately or for ever. The father and daughter would have been quite content, apparently, to eat their dinner in silence, or with a few cryptic remarks expressed in a shorthand which could not be understood by the servants. But silence depressed Mrs. Hilbery, and far from minding the presence of maids, she would often address herself to them, and was never altogether unconscious of their approval or disapproval of ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Fairy returned, and the twins, their eyes bright with the unholy light of mischief, never looked at her. They sometimes looked heavenward with a sublime contentment that drove Connie nearly frantic. Occasionally they uttered cryptic words about the morrow,—and the older members of the family smiled pleasantly, but Connie shuddered. She remembered ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... long messages, many of them in cipher, piqued her curiosity. No member of the Washington diplomatic circle who came to the Springs,—not even the shrewd and secretive Russian Ambassador,—received longer or more cryptic cables. With the social diversions of the Springs and the necessity for making a show of having some legitimate business in America, Jules Chauvenet was pretty well occupied; and now the presence of John Armitage in Virginia added ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... studied the reports on the social setup and not one word of them made sense. They were a solid maze of unknown symbols and cryptic charts. "Please continue, Doctor," he insisted. "The societics reports are valueless so far. There are factors missing. You are the only one I have talked to so far who can give me any intelligent reports ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... evidently made by thrusting a pin in from the side which bore the illustrations. The perforations were liberally scattered. Most, though not all of them, transfixed certain letters. Accepting this as indicative, Bertram had copied out all the letters thus distinguished, with the following cryptic result: ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... leap over that fence, I'd break my neck. Yet did you ever see anything so graceful as those two girls and that magnificent dog when they went over? I tell you, girls, we've got something worth while in this school now, believe me. And just you wait!" and with this cryptic ending Juno jockeyed ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... far-shining mysteries, and so amidst party strife the building word was lost. Many a man, no doubt, who called himself a "Gnostic" was but a sorry rogue; many another was but a student of the letter, not of the life; many another was but a spiritual swashbuckler, pompous in his demeanour and cryptic in his utterance; some, led by an abhorrent fantasy, may have wandered along the path that goes to the Venus-berg and have striven to lisp a formula that would transform the earth into Gehenna rather than into Heaven. But, beside this mass of ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh
... so that the mothers may not be hampered in their duties at the farm; they have only to carry the babies there in the morning, and fetch them away again in the evening, and can feel that they are safe and well looked after. But many of them, for some reason too cryptic to fathom, prefer to lock them up in their room, exposed to all the perils that surround an inquiring child just able to walk, and last winter one little creature was burnt to death, sacrificed to her mother's ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... is, perhaps, the inevitable effect of twenty cigarettes a day," was her cryptic comment. "Nevertheless, it does ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... a fascinating and cryptic utterance. We all tried it on varying notes of exultation. It put zest into what otherwise would have been a dragging day. By tea-time our ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... has a very pleasant time of it. Once he has mastered the mysteries of the Semaphore and Morse codes, the most laborious part of his education is over. Henceforth he spends his days upon some sheltered hillside, in company with one or two congenial spirits, flapping cryptic messages out of a blue-and-white flag at a ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... to-morrow, sorr, and I'll be able to get yiz some claning matherials,' to which his weary master replied, 'I don't care a damn whether I'm clean or whether I'm dirty.' In answer his man made the following cryptic remark: ''Tis no use talking like that, sorr. Lord Roberts says the war is over, and we'll begin ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... finger her gloves. They had been cleaned and the cryptic marks of the shopkeeper were visible along the inner side of the wrist hem. This was, to the woman, the first subterfuge of decaying smartness. When a woman began to send her gloves to the laundry ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... Beyond the sunlight and the storm, Appears that lightning-laden form, That toothful smile, that cryptic face. ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... in his Survey of Cornwall of 1602 gives a by no means nice phrase (which he spells all anyhow and translates wrong), Mollath Dew en dha ’las! The curse of God in thy belly! Another serio-comic but rather cryptic expletive, peculiar to Camborne, or at any rate to the Drama of St. Meriasek, is Mollath Dew en gegin! God’s curse in the kitchen! It does not seem to mean anything in particular, except perhaps that one’s food may not agree with one, though it makes ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... Cryptic words which, suddenly, for Beautrelet, shone bright with clearness! Was this not an exact statement of the reasons that determined Francis I. to create a town on this spot and was not the fate of the Havre-de-Grace linked with the very secret of ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc |
