"Enigma" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than you can serve up your Horace; if in fine, jingles and alliterations, wise and otherwise, have stayed with you, while solid and serviceable information has faded away, you may be certain that here is the key to the enigma of memory. ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... confess that his faculty of obtaining favours of all sorts, was of a most extraordinary character; and he certainly never lost any chance of preferment for want of asking. In this respect, Jason was always a moral enigma, to me; there being an absolute absence, in his mind, of everything like a perception of the fitness of things, so far as the claims and rights of persons were connected with rank, education, birth, and experience. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... card-players, but he did not go home earlier than usual. Some time later he received a packet addressed to him; in it was the ring he had given the princess. She had drawn lines in the shape of a cross over the sphinx and sent him word that the solution of the enigma—was ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... provinces, though the Empire had been more defeated it has been less disturbed. There is a greater clarity in that ancient air; and fewer clouds of real revolution and novelty have come between them and their ancient sun. This may seem an enigma and a paradox; seeing that here a foreign religion has successfully fought and ruled. But indeed the enigma is also the explanation. In the East the continuity of culture has only been interrupted by negative things that Islam has done. In the West it has been interrupted by positive ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... my own for a short space, and the two have now branched off, nor in all likelihood will ever meet again. My life has been a quiet one, and has not lain much in the way of extraordinary men, but I doubt if many such as Simon Colliver exist. He is a perfect enigma to me. That such a man, with such attainments (for besides his wonderful conversation and power of singing, he has an amazing knowledge of foreign tongues), that such a man, I say, should be a mere attorney's clerk is little short of marvellous. But as regards ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he commissioned me to find a governess for her. He intended to have her brought up in —-shire, I believe. Here she comes, with her 'bonne,' as she calls her nurse." The enigma then was explained: this affable and kind little widow was no great dame; but a dependant like myself. I did not like her the worse for that; on the contrary, I felt better pleased than ever. The equality between her and me was real; not the mere result of condescension on her part: so much the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... and slang of Ghibelline freemasonry. When Italians write thus, they degrade the greatest name of their country to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. It is to solve the enigma of Dante's works by imagining for him a character in which it is hard to say which predominates, the pedant, mountebank, or infidel. After that we may read Voltaire's sneers with patience, and even enter ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... incoherent; but their significance slowly dawned upon him. To Miss Merriman the conversation was somewhat of an enigma, and she stood aside, regarding Rose with an expression half bewildered, half frightened. Had this strange child summoned so famous a physician, whose moments, even, were golden, to the heart of the Cumberlands on her own initiative and on the strength ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... Mrs. Irwin to appeal to him was still an enigma, for his relations to the beautiful young wife had until then not been of a confidential nature. He had met her on several occasions in big society functions, at the officers' polo-parties, and at similar gatherings, and ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... proved, while some of them tell us that the whole immensity is a desert of alternate fire and darkness, with no spark of finite intellect except in our tiny earth, some of us, at least, cannot help feeling that the notion of a personal divine worker calling this huge enigma out of blank eternal nothing, is enormously and utterly incongruous both ...
— Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - Religions Ancient And Modern • J. Allanson Picton
... no doubt,' I answered; 'but I should hesitate before saying unaccountable. Now, there is that River Hall place up the river. There must be some rational way of explaining the appearances in that house, though no one has yet found any clue to that enigma.' ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... and solemn manner. It was the angel GABRIEL [4] one, as we may infer, of the highest order of those intelligences that "circle the throne rejoicing;" and the same glorious spirit who so many ages before had been sent to Daniel, to specify, in a prophetic enigma, the time of "MESSIAH THE PRINCE," which he now came to announce ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... would be equally enabled to draw from materialism, advantages which the dogma of spirituality can never supply, of which it even precludes the idea. Man will ever remain a mystery, to those who shall obstinately persist in viewing him with eyes prepossessed by metaphysics; he will always be an enigma to those who shall pertinaciously attribute his actions to a principle, of which it is impossible to form to themselves any distinct idea. When man shall be seriously inclined to understand himself, let him sedulously endeavour to discover the matter ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... they could not make an unseemly fable out of a poetical phrase. Not till after the meaning was forgotten could the myth arise. But the myth existed already in the Veda! And the unseemliness is precisely what we have to account for; that is our enigma. ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... identical with his, almost been tempted to believe ourself to be the victim of some occult power, or at least of some optical illusion, the true cause of which remained a mystery to us. Finally, after many fruitless attempts to find a key to the enigma that engaged our attention, the light finally dawned upon us, and then shone straight in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... unaccountable feeling, which sometimes forbids a generous sentiment to betray itself to another, he veiled his earnest friendship under a guise of mere clerkly companionship, rarely giving way to those bursts of tender feeling, which rendered him, in Guly's young eyes, an absolute enigma. ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... lifted his head again he wiped his face with his handkerchief. He had made out the enigma: "Against death ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... shop. He had seen a great poet prostituting his muse to journalism, humiliating Art, as woman was humiliated and prostituted in those shameless galleries without, and the provincial took a terrible lesson to heart. Money! That was the key to every enigma. Lucien realized the fact that he was unknown and alone, and that the fragile clue of an uncertain friendship was his sole guide to success and fortune. He blamed the kind and loyal little circle for painting the world for him in false colors, for preventing ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... man would probably not give a straw for an answer to it. What he wants to know, what we all want to know, is whether death is the end of all things for the individual, whether our conscious personality perishes with the body or survives it for a time or for eternity. That is the enigma propounded to every human being who has been born into the world: that is the door at which so many enquirers have knocked in vain. Stated in this limited form the problem has indeed been of universal interest: there is no race of men known to us which has not pondered the mystery and arrived at ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... Enigma, rather difficult, and meant for experienced puzzle-workers. The answer is the first line of a ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... wisdom. Certainly, one can get at the substance of things. True, there is enough mystery and perplexity about the system of the world, and at times all life looms up a terrible enigma, so increasing in difficulty of solution that Death's key to knowledge seems the one thing to be desired. But it is well for a man not to lose himself in labyrinths of conjecture, but to resolutely put ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... Seasons come, the Seasons go, With store of good and ill; Do all men find you cold as snow, And unresponsive still? O beautiful enigma, say, Will love's sublime persistence Solve for you, in the usual ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... Bacchus; and perhaps there were good mythological reasons why the god of wine, together with so large a portion of our solar system, should be done in copper by Jacob Jongeling, to honour the triumph of Alexander, although the key to the enigma has been lost. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... is there any now, who, so far as French war stories and personal anecdotes of the period from Marengo to Waterloo are concerned, would have been in any sense of the word qualified to enter into competition with him. Where he got all his material is an enigma to me. The only explanation I can offer is that he had in his memory a pigeonhole, into which fell naturally everything he found that appealed to his passion, in his constant reading of ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... enigma," commenced the professor as he pointed his bony finger toward me, "and declare him to be the strangest problem of my life. How, and whence, and why he came to us are all ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... for Athens, and arrived at the island of Ios, now Ino, where he fell extremely ill, and died. It is said that his death arose from vexation, at not having been able to unravel an enigma ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... wonder how God should allow such things to be. If we remember the aspect which the Revolution wore in the eyes of those who seeing it yet did not understand, we can imagine what dimensions this eternal enigma must have assumed in their sight. It was inevitable that the first problem to press on men with resistless urgency should be the ancient question of the method of the Creator's temporal government. What is the law of the distribution of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... is watching him; she turns at last toward the door, hesitates, and then walks slowly out. When she has gone he takes up the torn leaf from the calendar, and holds it in his hands, looking at it with the air of a man confronted by an unsolvable enigma. ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... of all, from the standpoint of Japan, the Chinese was a kindred race. The baffling enigma of the Chinese character to the West was no baffling enigma to the Japanese. The Japanese understood as we could never school ourselves or hope to understand. Their mental processes were the same. The Japanese thought with the same ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... is a great mind fascinated with the insoluble enigma of human motives, it is a mind profoundly in sympathy with those who are puzzling hopelessly over the riddle or are struggling hopelessly in its toils. She is "on a level and in the press with them as they struggle ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... because the gods loved him. But when we question those wonderful mute features and beg them for their secret, they return no answer. There is not even a smile upon the parted lips. So profound is the mystery, so insoluble the enigma, that from its most importunate interrogation we derive nothing but an attitude of deeper reverence. This in itself, however, is worth the pains ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... his seventy-fifth year, and having succeeded in his policy, is now considered the head of a clique, the man of intrigue, past his work, etc., etc.—in fact hated! and this throughout the country. I cannot explain the enigma except by supposing that people had before joined in a cry which they thought was popular without themselves believing what they said and wrote, and that they now do the same; that the Radicals used his name to destroy other statesmen and politicians, and are destroying him now ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... have anything to tell thee, I firmly believe that thy spirit is fixed upon me as upon so many enigmas of nature. In fact, I believe that every human being is such an enigma, and that the mission of love between friends is to solve that enigma so that each shall learn to know his deeper nature through and in his friend. Yes, dearest, it makes me happy that my life is gradually developing through thee, and for that reason ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... was turned briefly toward me—or Maillot—then the man bowed without a word, and followed Stodger. He paused an instant at the door, and looked across his shoulder at Maillot; enigma that he was, I nevertheless again caught a triumphant gleam in the tawny eyes. ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... Don Cornelio, can you give me the solution of an enigma which has puzzled me for two days, and which I have been unable to ask any one else, for the reason that I have not met with a soul since I entered this accursed country. How do you explain this complete ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... appears to be commanding Death to extinguish the lamp of Life. The sun may mean the brighter life beyond. The building to the right is an enigma. ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... take her as she is." So, too, with Felsenburgh. "It is not for us to discriminate: His personality is of a kind that does not admit it. He is complete and sufficing for those who trust Him and are willing to suffer; an hostile and hateful enigma to those who are not. We must prepare ourselves for the logical outcome of this doctrine. Sentimentality must not be permitted to ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... the enigma of this interview as she had accepted the wonder of the girl's sudden appearance and the other, incidents of this extraordinary night. She did not undertake to imagine what the drawing on the menu meant, the words about ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... his desk trying to puzzle out the enigma of the night. The more he thought upon it, the further he seemed from any solution. There was the perplexing behaviour of Mrs. Oliver herself. She had been troubled, greatly troubled, to find her window unbolted on two successive ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... face, but with profound perturbations of the soul. For he saw himself sinking deeper and deeper into this miry difficulty, and how he was to extricate himself without dragging his friends down, was still a terrible enigma. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... supposed the cloister door too thick to permit of speech in the ordinary tone passing through it. It did, notwithstanding; what he said outside to the governor reaching the Irishman's ear, and giving him a yet closer clue to that hitherto enigma—the why he and Cris Rock had been cast into a common gaol, among the veriest ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... "An enigma, so far as I am concerned," says he. "Listen: 'John Wesley Pedders, in 1894 cashier of the Merchants' Exchange Bank, at Tullington, Connecticut.' Ever hear of such a ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... Negro population, Africa in contemporary opinion offers no historical enigma which calls for a solution, because from all the information supplied by our explorers and ethnologists, the history of civilization proper in the continent begins, as far as concerns its inhabitants, only with the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... the Cataract. Why their observations of the moon led them astray. Distinguishing fixed stars. How Angel fought the savages. Individuality. The chief an enigma. How he used the grindstone. His interest in machinery. The yardstick of the heavens to measure degrees. The Constellation Orion. The new calf. Milk and butter. The mysterious visit of the chief to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... undeniably and excessively plain, was so beaming with good humour that it was difficult to remember her uncomeliness after the first coup d'oeil. Mr Welles accompanied her on the return visit. What had induced him to take up his quarters at the Bear, at Tewkesbury, was an enigma to the inhabitants of White-Ladies. Of course he could not live at the Maidens' Lodge, Madam being rigidly particular with respect to the intrusion of what Betty called "he creeturs" into that enchanted valley, and not tolerating the ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... prestige. National life, in order to maintain its integrity, must move upon a plane of intense feeling. It must have objectives, but these objectives are not necessarily of value in themselves. This is the delusion and enigma of history. Peoples enact dramas in their own subjective lives, and these things they do have reference to the desires for inner experiences. We may say that nations, like individuals, crave for luxuries of the emotional life, but to think of these experiences as merely ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... the following from a friend in the quaint spirit in which it is written, and understand not by bad company aught that is evil—for if we read the word of the enigma, the 'bad' among her 'friends of the future' is indeed goodness-that saving salt which is often found among many who are too hastily banned as lost in the world. So, we pray ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... outside world and the newspapers spoke most learnedly of a money panic—a pressure in business, and the disturbances in the New York gold-room. But to the initiated, there was an easier solution of the enigma. The pale spectre of Death looked down upon them all, and pointed with its bony finger to the fiery tomb of the whole race, already looming up in the distance before them. Day after day, I could see the dreadful ravages of this secret horror; doubly ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... of course," Violet continued. "My dear Peter, you may be an enigma to other people. To me you have the most expressive countenance I ever saw. You have had a cable which you have just transcribed. If I had been a few minutes later, I think you would have torn up the result. As it is, I think I have come just in ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... overthrown by Proserpina, for neglecting of her holy day. She appeared in a vision to Aristagoras in the night, Cras inquit tybicinem Lybicum cum tybicine pontico committam ("tomorrow I will cause a contest between a Libyan and a Pontic minstrel"), and the day following this enigma was understood; for with a great south wind which came from Libya, she quite overwhelmed Mithridates' army. What prodigies and miracles, dreams, visions, predictions, apparitions, oracles, have been of old at Delphos, Dodona, Trophonius' den, at Thebes, and Lebaudia, of Jupiter Ammon in Egypt, Amphiaraus ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... criminology has sought an answer to the enigma of the criminal. The writings of the European criminologists run the gamut of explanation from Lombroso, who explained crime as an inborn tendency of the criminal, to Tarde, who defines the criminal as ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... true poetic taste for the pleasure of his friends, or the entertainment of an occasional audience. Then his book appears, entitled not Miscellaneous Poems, but Asleep in the Sanctum, by A. A. Hopkins. Sometimes, not satisfied with one enigma, another is added. Here we have The Great Iron Wheel; or, Republicanism Backwards and Christianity Reversed, by J. R. Graves. These titles are neither new nor scarce, nor limited to any particular class of books. Every case, almost every shelf, in every ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... scraggly beards and skimpy rags of clothing, were setting upon an unclassifiable creature that snarled and fought back. It was erect and coarsely hairy—Parr saw that much before the enigma gave up the unequal fight and ran clumsily away into a mass of bright-flowered scrub. Execrations and a volley of sticks and stones speeded ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... efforts and hurried back to the long-boat. The spectacle of the girl struggling with the stuff she was jettisoning put new determination into him. Her amazing fortitude at the time when he had looked for hysterics and collapse gave him new light on the enigma of femininity. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... inquiries as to the progress of his intimacy with young Nason, all of which led Page to wonder what his object was and why it concerned him. At last, one day just at closing time, and after he had told the office boy he might go, Frye let a little light into that enigma. ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... yesterday seemed already to have cooled; we were quite forgotten. At length we obtained from the boat, sent off to us at break of day with provisions, an explanation of this enigma. The inhabitants of Tahaiti were celebrating the Sunday, on which account they did not leave their houses, where they lay on their bellies reading the Bible and howling aloud; laying aside every species of occupation, they devoted, as they said, the whole day to prayer. According to our reckoning, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... conversations which exercise the intelligence without engrossing the mind, and suffer us to feel, even while conversing, the presence of the one secret and continuous thought concealed in the inmost recesses of our hearts. It was an enigma of which we sought the answer without any great desire to find it. After having read, examined, and noted all that constituted the science at that time, I fancied I could discern a few theoretical principles true in their generality, doubtful in their application, ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... asked the question, and I wish you would answer it. I've been driving myself wild over it for the past few days, but I don't seem to get to the solution. Can't your Familiar," pointing downward, "help you guess the enigma, Miriam?" ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... intelligent people should be allured into the belief that an author's stereotyped autograph displayed upon a front page gives any added value to a set of subscription books, will to me, I fear, forever remain a disentangled enigma. I was once applied to by an agent representing a $6000 "Autograph Edition" of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Having never seen Rousseau's autograph, I asked that it be shown me. "Oh," said the agent, "Rousseau himself don't sign the ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... enigma. Leave our house, just when you are betrothed to its inmate! Is that the natural conduct of ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and she stopped in her thoughts as if a light had flashed suddenly before her eyes. Here, at last, was the explanation of happiness, she felt, and yet she felt also, that it presented itself to her mind in an enigma which she could not solve—for Adams, she recognised, had mastered, not escaped, his personality. The poison of bitterness was gone, but the effectiveness of power was still as great; and his temperament, in passing through the fiery waters of experience, ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... strange life this is! what puppets we are! How terrible an enigma is Fate! I never set my foot without my door, but what the fearful darkness that broods over the next moment rushes upon me. How awful an event may hang over our hearts! The sword is always ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... both for the reason that the passage is as representative as any we could properly offer of the quality of Rabelais, and also for the reason that the key of interpretation is here placed in the hand of the reader, for unlocking the enigma of this remarkable book. The extraordinary horse-play of pleasantry, which makes Rabelais unreadable for the general public of to-day, begins so promptly, affecting the very prologue, that we could not present even that ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... Roderick Deal's eyes began to feed upon some enigma in Skag's own; he endured it a moment ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... enough. But I think he lacks the cleverness requisite for a habitual criminal. Perhaps he is only a poor survivor, drifting about in lonely and distracted fashion while waiting for the inevitable end. Others may solve the enigma, but not I; for ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... succeed in forming an imperfect and broken system which perplexes men's minds to the extent of making them forget the clearest notions, and to render uncertain the most palpable truths. By the aid of this systematic nonsense, all nature has become an inexplicable enigma for man; the visible world has disappeared to give place to invisible regions; reason is obliged to give place to imagination, which can lead us only to the land of chimeras which she ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... tortured dialect of the Eastenders of the Isle of Wight. The longer I talked with her the more hopeful I became of finding here, among her people, some records, or traditions, which might assist in clearing up the historic enigma of the past two centuries. I asked her if we were far from the city of London, but she did not know what I meant. When I tried to explain, describing mighty buildings of stone and brick, broad avenues, parks, palaces, and countless people, she but shook ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and Homer! Who knows, or can figure what the Man Shakespeare was, by the first, by the twentieth perusal of his works? He is a Voice coming to us from the Land of Melody: his old brick dwelling- place, in the mere earthly burgh of Stratford-on-Avon, offers us the most inexplicable enigma. And what is Homer in the /Ilias/? He is THE WITNESS; he has seen, and he reveals it; we hear and believe, but do not behold him. Now compare, with these two Poets, any other two; not of equal genius, for there are none such, but of equal ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... is the key to the enigma. As it digs and advances the larva waters the powdery debris and converts it into a paste, which is immediately applied to the walls by the pressure of the abdomen. Aridity is followed by plasticity. The mud thus obtained penetrates ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... cropper. Just the form taken by that cropper, just when his relations with Saint Peter's would cease, just why and wherefore, just what would be the next page of Brenton's history: all this was still an enigma past all finding out. For that very reason, it added untold zest to all the cups of tea. Indeed, it had quite ousted the subject of Reed Opdyke from the public mind. Reed, in his own time, had been the one great theme. As the months ran on, though, he presented very little variety ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the poor, as he confesses, endure, to an error in legislation rather than to a law of physiology. Turn the question as we may, disguise it as we may, we shall find that it at last resolves itself into the same great enigma,—the origin of physical and moral evil: an enigma which the highest human intellects have given up in despair, but which Mr Sadler thinks himself ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... recollect that when I say I think it is either Mr. Darwin's hypothesis or nothing; that either we must take his view, or look upon the whole of organic nature as an enigma, the meaning of which is wholly hidden from us; you must understand that I mean that I accept it provisionally, in exactly the same way as I accept any other hypothesis. Men of science do not pledge themselves to creeds; they are bound by articles of no sort; ...
— A Critical Examination Of The Position Of Mr. Darwin's Work, "On The Origin Of Species," In Relation To The Complete Theory Of The Causes Of The Phenomena Of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... beginning to turn green! How does that affect two quiet nomads in Elam—especially when one of them is a Swiss and one a Brazilian?" He laughed, and lighted a cigar the other offered him. "My dear Ganz, it is an enigma to me how a man who can listen to such a fountain, and admire such stars, can perpetually sigh after the absurdities of Europe! Which reminds me that I met ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... value could be expressed in intelligible terms. But as a party liability, or asset,—many a good Republican wishes he knew which,—he remains an enigma. There is not one of the array of elders of either political persuasion who, while laughing at his satirical sword-play, does not watch him covertly out of the corner of the eye, trembling at the potential ruin they consider him ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... morn, it may be visible far over the plains on which he bestowed a happier futurity!" This writer also drew a comparison between Napoleon and Charlemagne, in which he designated the latter a barbarous despot and the former the new savior of the world. He says, "Napoleon first solved the enigma of equality and liberty—his chief aim was the prevention of despotism—his chief desire, to eternalize the dominion of virtue." In the course of 1808, it was said in the essay, "On the Regeneration of Germany," that the Germans were still children whom it was solely possible for the French ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... the Indian myths and legends without perceiving the governing motives of his reasons, hopes, wishes, and fears, the principles of his actions, and his general belief in life, death, and immortality. He is no longer an enigma. They completely unmask the man. They lay open his most secret theories of the phenomena of spirit life; of necromancy, witchcraft, and demonology; and, in a special manner, of the deep and wide-spread ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... saw anything unusual in his wife's action he made no mention of it when I went into his study at nine o'clock. And it was so much of an enigma to me that I was not ready to venture a question ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... of endurance is a world where Siegfried is false to all his vows, where Siegfried and Bruennhilde are no longer each to the other "for ever and ever, his only and his all!" Heartbreak much more than resentment stamps Bruennhilde's cry: "Where is my wisdom against this enigma? Where are my runes? Oh, lamentation! All my wisdom I bestowed on him. In his power he holds the bondmaid, in thongs the captive, whom, wailing over her wrong, the rich one joyously makes gift of to another! Where shall I find a sword with which ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... only clue which will enable justice to seize the murderer. Conscious of her innocence, she braves peril that would chill the blood of men, and extort almost any secret; and shall I tell you the reason? Shall I give you the key to an enigma ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... raised a storm over his ashes, which Browne would have enjoyed partaking in, the word spagyricus being an enigma to scholars. Mr Firth of Norwich (whose translation seems the best) thus ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... Mrs Wilfer's shoulders and gloves, as who should say, 'An Enigma!' and then she marched at the head of the procession to the family keeping-room, where ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... umbrella. In the haze and wet of the shivering October night the clock of Bleakridge Church glowed like a fiery disc suspended in the sky, and, mysteriously hanging there, without visible means of support, it seemed to him somehow to symbolize the enigma of the universe and intensify his inward gloom. Never before had he had such feelings to such a degree. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that never before had the enigma of the universe occurred to him. The side gates clicked as he stood hesitant under the shelter of the wall, and a figure emerged ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... the theory that there was a Toltec nation preceding the advent of the Aztec, which, when broken up and driven out of Mexico, proceeded southward, where probably colonies from the main stock had already been planted, we may be able to solve the enigma. ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas
... crouching in a ditch was inconceivable, to say the least of it; so fair and gracious a person would scarcely descend to such undignified manoeuvres, worthy only of a hoydenish peasant girl. And yet, what could possibly have become of her? The enigma was quite unsolvable. ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... attention through a modern translation by Christopher Isherwood and Swami Prabhavananda. This Krishna of the Gita is clearly quite different in character from the Krishna of the milkmaids and, without some effort at reconciliation, the two must obviously present a baffling enigma. Indeed so great is the contrast that many Englishmen, entranced by the lover, might be astonished to hear of a more didactic role, while those who value the Gita might easily be disturbed on finding its author so daringly ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... natural self—the Netta of the Farm was no more, and her representative was, to Owen at least, an anomaly. How she could have acquired such an amount of small talk, and such a mincing speech in nine months, was an enigma to him. London, Paris, the opera, the fashions, even the picture galleries, were alternately in her mouth; and she poured out tea and coffee, and laughed a silly laugh, much to her own satisfaction, and Owen's disgust, whilst all the men were looking ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... stood there, calm and impassive as Fate, and, without knowing it, represented Fate in her most inexorable mood; for had he betaken himself elsewhere, the shrewdest brains of Scotland Yard might have been defeated by the enigma they were asked to solve before ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... seeming enigma of Rufino Valdez travelling in the company of the Tovas Indians, and on friendly terms with their young chief—for he is so—it will be necessary to turn back upon time, and give some further account of the vaqueano himself, and ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... lurid by the glare of the stereopticon: photograph now of sunset cloud, now of lover's scene in the lane, now of a dyspeptic, long-haired, wrinkled old man. The writer Turgenef has thus been for years an enigma. Katkof, the pillar of Russian autocracy, claims him as his, and the revolutionists claim him as theirs; the realists point to him as one of the apostles of their new gospel, and the idealists point to him as the apostle of theirs. Now he defies public opinion ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... love of heaven, sir, say nothing to him!" she uttered, and disappeared within an inner door. The sight of Roy, entering, explained the enigma; she must have seen him from the window. Roy took off his cap by ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... stories, of which The Goldbug is one, in which an impenetrable enigma is first presented, to be solved afterwards as by a talisman; but, then, a lesson in cryptography ensues, wherein the talisman is explained away, and the miraculous gives place to the reasoning faculties of ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... from another world upon the business of this one; that I am among you, but not of you; that your motives and aims to me are utterly unintelligible; that you can give no account of them to which I can attach any sense; that I have no clue to the enigma you seem so lightly to solve by your religion, your philosophy, your science; that your hopes are not mine, your ambitions not mine, your principles not mine; that I am shipwrecked, and see around me none but are shipwrecked ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... Pauline theology is an attempt to reconcile the facts of Christianity and especially that great stumbling-block to the Jews, the death of the Messiah, with the requirements of Jewish thought. Instead of seeing in the death of Christ, as the older apostles at first did, a perplexing enigma, St. Paul saw in it the principal manifestation of the compassion of the Saviour, and the great purpose for which he had come into the world. He concentrated attention on Christ's death and made the cross rather ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... experimenting with clays in the hope of discovering how the Chinese made their porcelain. This was no unusual thing, for chemists of most of the other countries were working feverishly in their laboratories at the same enigma." ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... able to laugh at the efforts made by its masters to bring it into submission, is truly one of the most amazing spectacles which we have witnessed since the war broke out. General von Bissing has declared that the Belgians are an enigma to him. No wonder. They are an enigma to themselves. I am not going to explain the miracle. I will only attempt to show how ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... the Secretary glanced about almost uneasily at the crowding apparatus that was such an enigma to one untrained in science. Then his ...
— The Radiant Shell • Paul Ernst
... perfect in their simplicity, and so was her air of unconcern and indifference. "The enigma" her friends often called her. She seemed so frank and simple, and no one ever got beyond the wall of what she was really thinking—what did she do with her life? It seemed ridiculous that any one so rich and attractive and young should care to pass long periods of time ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... fashion, I know," he said, "to regard woman as an enigma. Now, without professing any unusual acuteness, I believe that this is a mistake. Woman is an enigma certainly, because she is human, but that ends it. Her conditions have tended to cultivate in ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... civilized legislation. And yet everything went on in the valley with a harmony and smoothness unparalleled, I will venture to assert, in the most select, refined, and pious associations of mortals in Christendom. How are we to explain this enigma? These islanders were heathens! savages! ay, cannibals! and how came they without the aid of established law, to exhibit, in so eminent a degree, that social order which is the greatest blessing and highest pride of the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... A third enigma—-why no "fountain of life''? The references to such a fountain in Proverbs (xiii. 14, &c.) prove that the idea was familiar,12 and in Rev. xxii. 1 we are told that the river of Paradise was a "river of water ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the whole pensive, exquisite personality which expressed itself in that manner of gentle self-effacement—these things spoke to Susan's heart, through the softness of the dusk, with all the touching appeal of the past. It was as if the inscrutable enigma of time waited there, shrouded in mystery, for a solution which would make clear the meaning of the blighted promises of life. She saw herself and Virginia on that May afternoon twenty-five years ago, standing with eager hearts on the edge of the ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... ballast, and such like, for the repairs of the harbour; they does all the rough and dirty jobs as is to be done about the works and place—indeed, we calls 'em the Port Admiral's skippers." I now fully understood the import of the term Portsmouth Greys, which had before been an enigma to 183me; and comprehended that the unhappy ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... expand by persecuting as much as others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of self-interest and you may read the enigma of most social matters. ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... were very dignified in him to listen to this discussion, which seemed pregnant with terrible disclosures. But, in addition to his fatigue, an unconquerable curiosity glued him to his place. It seemed to him that the engrossing enigma by which he had been so long puzzled and disturbed, to which his mind still held by the end of its veil of mystery, was about to speak at last, to reveal itself, to disclose the woman, sorrowful or perverse, hidden beneath the shell of the worldly artist. So he remained perfectly still, holding ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... as skilful, or an ear as fine, tracked or waited on it. It gave to the work of the artist, nature's own style;—it gave to works which had the earnest of life and death in them the sport of the 'enigma.' ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... any further upon the subject Graye led her upstairs and got her to lie down. Then he went to the window and stared out of it up the lane, vainly endeavouring to come to some conclusion upon the fantastic enigma that confronted him. Cytherea's new view seemed incredible, yet it had such a hold upon her that it would be necessary to clear it away by positive proof before contemplation of her fear should have preyed too deeply ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... the table, and yet show it in nothing but the superintensity of her Satanic propensities. She was so malignant, and seemed to bear to all God's creatures so general a malevolence, that her consistent and superlative wickedness cowed and paralysed them. The enigma grew more horrible every day and night, and they felt, or fancied, a sort of influence stealing over them which benumbed their faculty of resistance, and altogether ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... dream as he has lived. No one has ever extracted out of a destiny more than he has. The preposterous and the commonplace are equally familiar to him. He has shone, he has suffered, he has dragged along a humdrum existence: nothing has escaped him.... He is an enigma, a riddle that ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... Dodd, "not to see that, if he could explain at all, he would explain, not go advertising an enigma after acting a mystification. And to think of my innocent dove putting in that she had something for him from his sister; a mighty temptation for ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... Diaz goes more into detail than Cortez, he now and then drops an expression that furnishes a clew to many an enigma otherwise unexplainable. In speaking of the avarice of the officers, he lets fall the following confession of ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... not faint or go mad on the instant. Some wonderful instinct must have sustained me; for, absolutely, in place of loosening my hold on the terrible Enigma, I seemed to gain an additional strength in my moment of horror, and tightened my grasp with such wonderful force that I felt the ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... suffered eclipse—had become a somewhat heavy, apathetic, pseudo-cynical youth, displaying his mother's inertia without her good temper, too slack to keep up his cricket, too slack to work for the honor schools, at no time without friends, but an enigma to most of them, and, apparently, something of a ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... slave." She felt quite sure that nobler-minded, braver-hearted men than those who used these words had never lived, yet she could not understand the thing of which they spoke so positively and so passionately. She did not question the wisdom or the patriotism of the Fathers who had propounded this enigma. She thought they did the best they knew, and knew the best that was at that time to ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... an unfathomable enigma had not Suetonius by chance given us the key to its solution: "Nam illud omnem fidem excesserit, quod nuptiis, quas Messalina cum adultero Silio fecerat, tabellas dotis et ipse consignaverit" ("For that which would pass all belief is the fact ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... circumstance, coupled with his natural coolness and indifference for a union he had been taught to deem impolitic and dangerous to the interests of France, created in his virtuous mind that sort of disgust which remained so long an enigma to the Court and all the kingdom, excepting his royal aunts, who did the best they could to confirm it into so decided an aversion as might induce him to impel his grandfather to annul the marriage and send the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... the old stories would wake up and get a fresh currency, until some new circumstance gave rise to a new hypothesis. Unconscious of all these inquiries and fictions, Maurice Kirkwood lived on in his inoffensive and unexplained solitude, and seemed likely to remain an unsolved enigma. The "Sachem" of the boating girls became the "Sphinx" of the village ramblers, and it was agreed on all hands that Egypt did not hold any hieroglyphics harder to make out than the meaning of this young man's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... it. The old man certainly behaved to her as a father to his daughter, and Francesca treated him with a deeply felt gratitude which roused her instinctive nobleness. The situation and the woman were to Rodolphe an impenetrable enigma, of which the solution attracted ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... is a singular charm in this mixture of abstract thoughts and emotions, this contrast between the beauties of Nature and the unrest of a heart tormented by the enigma of existence and seeking to find rest in faith.... It was not the poetry of Homer, it was another poetry.... It was in the new form of contemplative poetry, in this sadness of man about himself, in these impulses towards ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the dull enigma, We shall guess it all too soon; Failure brings no kind of stigma— Dance ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... together, a shapeless and unconnected system is formed, perplexing mankind, by obliterating from their minds, the most clear ideas and rendering uncertain truths most evident. By reason of this systematic confusion, nature is an enigma; the visible world has disappeared, to give place to regions invisible; reason is compelled to yield to imagination, who leads to the ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... there and looked at her, and the old curiosity took possession of him to understand this feminine enigma. Many a man before him has been the victim of a like desire, and lived to regret that he did not leave it ungratified. It is not well to try to lift the curtain of the unseen, it is not well to call to heaven to show ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... he was at the helm, Dick Sand did not cease to devour the chart with his eyes. But he interrogated it in vain; it could not give him the solution of an enigma which, in the situation in which Negoro had placed him, was incomprehensible for him, as it would have been for any ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... These songs mark the greatness and the waning of the heroic world In the Nibelungen-lied the final event is a great calamity that is akin to a half historical event of the North. Odin descends to the nether world to consult Hela; but she, like the sphinx of Thebes, will not reply save in an enigma, which enigma is to entail terrible tragedies, and lead to destruction the young hero who is the prey of ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... or some other reason for which Raoul could not account, she kept her eyes constantly cast down; intimidated, dazzled, and with impeded respiration, she withdrew herself as much as possible aside, unaffected even by the nudges Montalais gave her with her elbow. The whole scene was a perfect enigma for Raoul, the key to which he would have given anything to obtain. But no one was there who could assist him, not even Malicorne; who, a little uneasy at finding himself in the presence of so many persons ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... China—among the people, but not of them—and the more superficial the acquaintance, the more emphatically is the statement made, that the ordinary Chinaman, be he prince or peasant, offers to the Western observer an insoluble puzzle in every department of his life. He is, in fact, a standing enigma; a human being, it may be granted, but one who can no more be classed than his unique monosyllabic language, which still stands isolated ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... reduced to a state of subordination and slavery, but the Turks were not civilized. They adopted what was luxurious and effeminate of Grecian manners, yet still retained their former ignorance and ferocity. Amongst modern nations, the Turkish government is, in form, a monster, and its existence an enigma; yet it extended its sway over all that was most valuable or most splendid in the ancient world. Greece, Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, the three Arabias, and countries then but little known, are subject to a brutish people, who do not even condescend to mix with ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... refer you to the sage himself, who, from his point of view—that painting may fairly deal with a chapter of history—is perfectly right. The prevailing strain of the story is the strength of weakness—ex dulci fortitudo, to invert the old enigma. "O God, O my God, hear me also, a widow. Break down their stateliness by the hand of a woman!" It is the refrain that runs through the whole history of Israel, that reasonable complacency of a little people ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... can interpret life, and the heart that aches and bleeds with the stigma Of pain, alone bears the likeness of Christ, and can comprehend its dark enigma. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... letters to the magistrates and everywhere these words, repeated so often, were only received with a painful incredulity. The fact was that, besides the singular character which Peytel's appearance, attitude, and talk had worn ever since the event, there was in his narrative an inexplicable enigma; its contradictions and impossibilities were such, that calm persons were revolted at it, and that even friendship itself ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a study. For a moment the drift of the question was an enigma to him: then realizing that an important theological discussion had been interrupted by a trivial baseball question, he gathered up his papers and stamped violently out of the office. Doctor Patton made no comment, but, with a smile, he ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... emotions of fear that had sprung up in her own and cousin's heart by the sudden transformation of a supposed harmless beaver into a fierce and threatening savage, he had no difficulty in solving the enigma. ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... cultivated women. They know how to render themselves impenetrable; and if they desire to be perfidious, they wear a mask which few eyes can see through, while at the same time a certain sameness of purpose models their character in similar moulds. Their nature is an enigma: but solve it, and you have solved the race. They are inordinately vain: they buy looking-glasses; they will pass hours at their toilet, in which their wives must act as femmes de chambre; they will spend all their ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... who rubbed his eyes sleepily, as if newly awakened. Then the first guard drew bolts from a stout door and pulled it open, revealing a dark chasm like the entrance to a cell. Both Wilhelm and the Emperor viewed this black enigma with deep suspicion, but their guide with his lantern plunged into it and they followed, after which the door was closed ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... who now began to understand the enigma of the dead lying in their wooden coffins: "perhaps ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... charged with a part, have but one pre-occupation; they must search all round and upon every side, and grope for some central conception which is to explain and justify the most extreme details; until that is found, the politician is an enigma, or perhaps a quack, and the part a tissue of fustian sentiment and big words; but once that is found, all enters into a plan, a human nature appears, the politician or the stage-king is understood from point to point, from end ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... multitude of writers; such habits of diligence and productiveness were immediately manifested throughout the whole nation; and such a mass of respectable talent was brought to light; that the long interval of a dull and deathlike silence, which preceded this period, presents indeed an enigma difficult to be solved. No small influence may be ascribed to Germany. The principles of the government were changed; the country, physically as well as morally exhausted, could recover but gradually; but all ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... is recalled to what desperate straits the colonial leaders were put in securing immigrants,—slavery, indentured servitude, and kidnapping being the fruits of their necessities. The answer to the enigma is to be found partly in European conditions and partly in the cheapness of transportation after the opening of the era of steam navigation. Shrewd observers of the course of events had long foreseen that a flood of cheap labor was bound to come when the way was made easy. Some, among them ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... whose unrevealing eyes seemed to have looked out over the desert for centuries, until its infinite heart was as an open page to her, and she repressed in the scarlet curves of her mouth its eternal, secret enigma. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... demon of mischief. At present she is altogether undeveloped. She is two and twenty in years, but a child, or rather a piquant, amusing young girl, in manner, and perhaps in disposition. She is an enigma of which I should be sorry to have to undertake the solution. As she seems, I like her immensely, but when I try to fathom what she really is, she ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... easy about the second. Do you not consider such cases as all the orchids next thing to a demonstration against Heer's view of species arising suddenly by monstrosities?—it is impossible to imagine so many co-adaptations being formed all by a chance blow. Of course creationists would cut the enigma. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... others, who came to peruse these lines, would not be able to fathom them, and he also went on consequently to indite another stanza, in imitation of the "Parasitic Plant," which he inscribed at the close of the enigma; and when he had read it over a second time, he felt his heart so free of all concern that forthwith he got into his bed, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... of blanched faces were turned to him as though he must be solver of the enigma. He could not be unconscious of this mute eye-questioning, and it disturbed his resolute air of composure. He hesitated, glanced towards his mother, the house-mistress, then back at the frightened folk, and gravely, before them all, made ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... my promised wife, Mr. Medler," returned Gilbert, "and now stands to me in the place of a beloved and only sister. For me the mystery of her fate is an all-absorbing question, an enigma to the solution of which I mean to devote the rest of ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... had taken an idea firmly into her mind, Beatrice Miller would never relinquish it until she had got her own way. Herbert, in the dingy solitude of his untempting chambers, might despair and look upon life and its aims as a hopeless enigma. Beatrice did not despair at all. She only bided ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... thoughts ended in utter absurdity. He felt that he had run up against some vast power. The schooner Minnie B, the tug Vulcan, were but trifling units in the enigma of this deserted, weed-clogged sea. It must be some power whose ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... bullets were found in the room but from their appearance it seemed as if they had struck nothing, evidently the bullets would have been changed in shape if they had impinged upon any hard substance. But then this was another enigma. How did the bullets come back? No man could have put the bullets there from before, (for they were still hot when discovered) or could have guessed the bore of the revolver that ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... our system. The attempts which had been made to deprive him of the honour of some of his discoveries, combined, probably, with a desire to repeat his observations with better telescopes, led him to announce his discoveries under the veil of an enigma, and to invite astronomers to declare, within a given time, if they had observed any ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... the children, this competent official was at the same time something of an enigma to the elders. His appearance, to begin with, was questionable, and visitors, being shown round the garden, had been known to remark upon it derogatively sometimes. It was both in his favour and against ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... TREIZE has put us out of the region of such doubt. Like a doctor who has long been hesitating how to classify an epidemic malady, we have come at last upon a case so well marked that our uncertainty is at an end. It is a novel built upon "a sort of enigma," which was at that date laid before revolutionary France, and which is presented by Hugo to Tellmarch, to Lantenac, to Gauvain, and very terribly to Cimourdain, each of whom gives his own solution of the question, clement or stern, according to the temper of his spirit. ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... another science was laid, called Archaeology, or the science of Human Antiquities. These two sister sciences are the keys by whose aid we have not only acquired much information of a past that seemed a hopeless enigma—but, as Columbus on the waste of waters could perceive traces of land as yet invisible, so can the present seekers after knowledge trace the signs of a satisfactory solution of many of the great questions relating to the origin and ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... added Porphyry, Proclus, and Jamblichus, who professedly treat of Egyptian learning. The Isis and Osiris of Plutarch may be admitted with proper circumspection. It may be said, that the whole is still an enigma: and I must confess that it is: but we receive it more copiously exemplified; and more clearly defined; and it must necessarily be more genuine, by being nearer the fountain head: so that by comparing, and adjusting the various parts, we are more likely to arrive at a solution of the ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant |
