"Intricacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... elected, 2 against his second choice, and if he likes he may indulge in marking a third, or even a further choice. He may, if he thinks fit, number off the whole list of candidates. That is all he will have to do. That is the stupendous intricacy of the method that flattens out the minds of Lord Harcourt and Sir Thomas Whittaker. And as for the working of it, if you must go into that, all that happens is that if your first choice gets more votes than he needs for his return, he takes only the fraction of your vote ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... interesting to make Mr. Cleveland's speech the text of some examination into the ex-President's peculiarities of style. It was Clevelandesque to the core. All his protuberant characteristics are there: the leviathanic egotism, the profound and tenebrous ponderosity, the labored intricacy of the commonplace, the pedagogic moralizing, the oracular inconsequence. How absurdly obvious it all is now, and how inexplicable that the glamour of high place should ever have clothed such matter as his with the seeming of philosophy and statesmanship! 'Tis the very frippery and trumpery ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... example may suffice to illustrate the intricacy of the legislation passed in pursuance of this policy. It describes a change of detailed policy in support and regulation of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... bobbin. The mechanism by means of which this desirable and necessary speed is given to the bobbin constitutes one of the most elegant groups of mechanical parts which obtains in textile machinery. Some idea of the intricacy of the mechanism, as well as its value and importance to the industry, may be gathered from the fact that a considerable number of textile and mechanical experts struggled with the problem for years; indeed 50 years elapsed before ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... palpable description; and the difficulties and embarrassments of the characters, of a nature to be easily comprehended and entered into by readers of all descriptions. Now, the leading incidents in this poem are of a very narrow and peculiar character, and are woven together into a petty intricacy and entanglement which puzzles the reader instead of interesting him, and fatigues instead of exciting his curiosity. The unaccountable conduct of Constance, in first ruining De Wilton in order to forward Marmion's suit with Clara, and then trying to poison ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... which will be agreeable to your own heart's desire and contentment. You know how by the advice and counsel and prediction of fools, many kings, princes, states, and commonwealths have been preserved, several battles gained, and divers doubts of a most perplexed intricacy resolved. I am not so diffident of your memory as to hold it needful to refresh it with a quotation of examples, nor do I so far undervalue your judgment but that I think it will acquiesce in the reason ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... because she had become possessor of his property: her patrons stand[29] and boldly plead the cause of the guiltless woman. The judges then besought the Emperor Augustus that he would aid them in the discharge of their oath, as the intricacy of the case had embarrassed them. After he had dispelled the clouds raised by calumny, and had discovered a sure source of truth[30]: "Let the Freedman," said he, "the cause of the mischief, suffer punishment; but as ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... Norman predilection for law and chicanery, and a respect amounting to veneration for written documents, red tape, and sealing-wax. Master Pothier's acuteness in picking holes in the actes of a rival notary was only surpassed by the elaborate intricacy of his own, which he boasted, not without reason, would puzzle the Parliament of Paris, and confound the ingenuity of the sharpest advocates of Rouen. Master Pothier's actes were as full of embryo disputes as a fig is ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... which, even in the Tabagie, Friedrich Wilhelm does not forget. At the time he was concocting those Instructions for his little Prince's Schoolmasters, and smoking meditative under the stars, with Magdeburg "RITTER-DIENST" and much else of his own to think of,—there is an extraneous Political Intricacy, making noise enough in the world, much in his thoughts withal, and no doubt occasionally murmured of amid the tobacco-clouds. The Business of the Heidelberg Protestants; which is just coming to a height in those Autumn months ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... behind. By noon the fifty thousand dollars had been distributed to the Indians; by one o'clock every cent of it was put up on the race in equal bets. Who was to be stake holder? How much was each stake to be held or awarded? These were problems of some intricacy in view of the fact that the Indians could not read a word or trust any white man except the Indian Agent and Father Cyprian, the Jesuit missionary, both of whom declined to have any hand or part in ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... unfinished romance first appeared, in the form of an octavo charmingly printed in gothic type, at Ferrara in 1554, though it must have been written at least thirty years earlier. It differs considerably from its model, the verse being purely incidental, and the intricacy of the story anticipating later examples, as does likewise the admixture of chivalric adventure. It is, indeed, to a large extent what might have arisen spontaneously through the elaboration of the pastoral element occasionally to be met with in the old ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... advantage which the eloquence of the Athenian assembly has over that of the English senate. It is this—the public business of Athens was as yet simple and unencumbered by details; the dignity of the occasion was scenically sustained. But, in England, the vast intricacy and complex interweaving of property, of commerce, of commercial interests, of details infinite in number, and infinite in littleness, break down and fritter away into fractions and petty minutiae, the whole huge labyrinth of our public affairs. It is scarcely necessary to explain ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... cracked on the steam, carried her handsomely over, and then began to work her warily into the next system of shoal marks; the same patient, heedful use of leads and engines followed, the boat slipped through without touching bottom, and entered upon the third and last intricacy of the crossing; imperceptibly she moved through the gloom, crept by inches into her marks, drifted tediously till the shoalest water was cried, and then, under a tremendous head of steam, went swinging over the reef and away into deep ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... death or good or ill. Of that Being, whether it is simple or complex or divine, we know nothing; to us it is no more than the limit of understanding, the unknown beyond. It may be of practically limitless intricacy and possibility. The new religion does not pretend that the God of its life is that Being, or that he has any relation of control or association with that Being. It does not even assert that God knows all or much more than we do ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... with a wish for vengeance, since it was not usual for ships of the force of the Proserpine to turn aside to molest the poor fishermen and coasters. A few execrations followed, quite as a matter of course, but the intricacy of the channel and the necessity of having all his eyes about him soon drove every other thought from the mind of the dashing privateersman but such as were connected with the care and safety of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... uninitiated mind it would have seemed marvelous and beautiful in its combination of simplicity and intricacy, to have noted the delicate tactics with which Bertie conducted himself between his two claimants—bending to his Countess with a reverent devotion that assuaged whatever of incensed perception of her unacknowledged rival might be silently lurking in her proud heart; wheeling up to the ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... amounting almost to awe, for the men who alone understood and were able to expound the interminable complexity of the rights of property, and the relations of commercial and personal dependence involved in your system. What, indeed, could possibly give a more powerful impression of the intricacy and artificiality of that system than the fact that it was necessary to set apart from other pursuits the cream of the intellect of every generation, in order to provide a body of pundits able to make it even vaguely intelligible to those whose fates it determined. The treatises ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... Decadence of the Romans," which made the fame and fortune of Couture, the painter. It represents an orgie in the court of a temple, during the last days of Rome. A swarm of revellers occupy the middle of the picture, wreathed in elaborate intricacy of luxurious posture, men and women intermingled; their faces, in which the old Roman fire scarcely flickers, brutalized with excess of every kind; their heads of dishevelled hair bound with coronals ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... of these gentlemen displayed in dress, bearing and manner alike, less emphasis and more intricacy. Some affected a classical simplicity of robing and subtlety of fold, after the fashion of the First French Empire, and flashed conquering arms and shoulders as Graham passed. Others had closely-fitting dresses without seam or belt at the waist, sometimes ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... of the districts is now less known, and the revenue less understood, than in the year 1774. Since the natives have had the disposal of accounts, since they have been introduced as agents and trusted with authority, intricacy and confusion have taken place. The records and accounts which have been compiled are numerous, yet, when any particular account is wanted, it cannot be found. It is the business of all, from the ryots to the dewan, to conceal and deceive. The simplest matters of fact are designedly covered ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... ever been to the Cluny, the museum? There you will see Persian carpets of the most exquisite hue and of a pattern the beautiful intricacy of which delights and amazes the eye. In them you will see the mystery and the sensual beauty of the East, the roses of Hafiz and the wine-cup of Omar; but presently you will see more. You were asking just now what was the meaning of life. Go and look ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... appeared above us. The path now lay over masses of rough lava; so much so, that at times it became necessary to dismount and actually drag our jaded animals over the rugged precipices which obstructed our progress: the intricacy of the path required us to follow one another very closely, that we might not lose the track, which became so tortuous in its course, as would puzzle any one but a muleteer accustomed to the road to find the clue of this volcanic labyrinth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... contests of his successors, the intricacy and confusion are still continued, but materials are more plentiful, more accurate, ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... wren who favored me with what I thought the most bewitching bit of vocalism to which I had ever listened. He was in the bushes close at my side, in the Franconia Notch, and delivered his whole song, with all its customary length, intricacy, and speed, in a tone—a whisper, I may almost say—that ran along the very edge of silence. The unexpected proximity of a stranger may have had something to do with his conduct, as it often appears to have with the thrasher's; but, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... move. Each mirror moved on its own axis and she watched with fatal curiosity. For now a bright light was cast from behind her on the revolving mirrors and they formed a scintillating kaleidoscope that was bewildering in its intricacy. ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... and prepared a memoir wherein all the most serious grievances of the Upper Canadian people were set forth in detail. In this document the writer adopted a discursive and rhetorical style which, as the Colonial Secretary justly remarked, were "singularly ill adapted to bring questions of so much intricacy and importance to a definite issue." The facts were nevertheless pretty comprehensively embodied, and were generally speaking of such a character as to tell their own story. The perusal of the memoir seems to have produced an ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... imperfection. I am, however, far from intending to insinuate, that feelings of this nature will prevail on your Lordship to consider real blemishes merely as the effects of an inadvertency, which is excusable in proportion to the intricacy of a subject. I have been induced to throw together the preceding remarks, with an intention to rescue Lyric Poetry from the contempt in which it has been unjustly held by Authors of unquestioned penetration, to prove that it is naturally susceptible of the highest poetic ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... must be understood, gives no adequate idea of the local intricacy of the system, while at the same time it is precisely this intricacy, both vertical and horizontal, that increases the cost and difficulty of making roads, and that has served in the past to keep the inhabitants of ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... many thousands of those who annually leave London on voyages, short and long—of profit and pleasure—have very little idea of the intricacy of the channels through which they pass, and the number of obstructions which, in the shape of sandbanks, intersect the mouth of the Thames at its junction with the ocean. Without pilots, and an elaborate well-considered system of lights, buoys, and beacons, a vessel would be about as likely ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... curious results, but they can hardly, perhaps, be made, because the children would be not only slow to perceive but slow to announce the perception; so the moment would go by, and the game be lost. Not even amateur conjuring does so baffle the slow turning of a child's mind as does a little intricacy of grammar. ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... distinct recollection of frequently compressing my lips, putting my forefinger to the side of my nose, and making use of other gesticulations and grimaces common to men who, at ease in their arm-chairs, meditate upon matters of intricacy or importance. Having, as I thought, sufficiently collected my ideas, I now, with great caution and deliberation, put my hands behind my back, and unfastened the large iron buckle which belonged to the waistband of my ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... prove of some interest to an Intelligent, a Sympathetic, and a Benevolent Public. He will simply allude, in conclusion, to the performances of the Mysterious Foundling, as exhibiting perfection hitherto unparalleled in the Art of Legerdemain, with wonders of untraceable intricacy on the cards, originally the result of abstruse calculations made by that renowned Algebraist, Mohammed Engedi, extending over a period of ten years, dating from the year 1215 of the Arab Chronology. ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the opening of this century it was thought that a successful reaping machine had been invented, and a reward had been voted by Parliament to its author. The machine was employed here and abroad, but from its intricacy, fell into disuse. Another has been lately devised in one of our Colonies, which cuts off the heads of the corn, but leaves the straw standing, a fatal defect in an old settled country, where the growth ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... cottages, and, I think, for palaces of magnificence,—only enlarging, not altering, its proportions, and adding ornaments, and not principles. Nothing can be more grand than its simplicity and usefulness. Simple, without intricacy, it seems to be the spontaneous expression of humanity, congenial to the wants of man. No other formed house can ever please me so well, nor shall I ever be persuaded, I believe, that it can be improved, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... whatever rate I purchased it. Usually, indeed, my feats and Singleton's were only obtaining the best information and communicating the most speedy instructions to Mr. Wentworth's vessels, which were made to move from port to port with a rapidity and intricacy of movement which none besides us two understood in the least. It was in that expedition that I travelled almost alone across the continent. I was, I think, the first white man who ever passed through the mountain path of Xamaulipas, now so famous in all the Chilian picturesque ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... hurt. Our affairs are strictly our own affairs and yet—we stumble over Aunt Caroline and leave her indignant and disappointed and probably blaming Providence for the whole affair. It is just a curious instance of the intricacy of human relationships—you're not ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the science which manages pedestrian animals into two corresponding parts, and define them; for if you try to invent names for them, you will find the intricacy too great. ...
— Statesman • Plato
... I steered the car out of Cadiz. In all directions they branched off from one another, interlacing, overlapping with the intricacy of a puzzle. The houses were high, too, and there was not a window with glittering balcony of glass and iron, where dark-eyed women did not lean between heaven and earth, to smile down upon our humming motor. It was all very quaint ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... quote you a sentence from Wilkie. "All the powers of art are here united to make a perfect work. Here the simplicity of the drawing of the Virgin and Child is shown in contrast with the foreshortening of the group of angels—the strongest unity of effect with the most perfect system of intricacy. The emitting the light from the body of the child, though a supernatural illusion, is eminently successful. The matchless beauty of the Virgin and Child, the group of angels overhead, the daybreak in the sky, and the whole arrangement of light and shadow, give it a right to be considered, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... side, slightly averting her head, as though in painful expectation of the coming sentence. The saints and martyrs who surround Christ and His Mother, while forming one of the chief planes in the composition, are arranged in four unequal groups of subtle and surprising intricacy. All bear the emblems of their cruel deaths, and shake them in the sight of Christ as though appealing to His judgment-seat. It has been charitably suggested that they intend to supplicate for mercy. I cannot, however, resist the impression that they ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... a person simple in the main. The colors she had selected to wear accorded with the rest, showing little intricacy of taste. The two silks composing her dress were respectively the blue of a summer morning and the pink of a rose. From cushioned and dimpled shoulders the bodice tapered to as fine a waist as a Paris dressmaker had found possible to bring about in a woman who, despite a veritable ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... only an easy chapter in acoustics. But in studying it on the side of the emotions, in studying the laws of counterpoint and of musical form, which are governed by the effect upon the ear and the heart, we find intricacy and difficulties, increased beyond our power ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... half-spoken, makes an effect of overwhelming pathos. Of a different order is Siegmund's refusal to go to Valhalla: it verges on the melodramatic, and the emotion expressed justifies the means. It may be remarked that though the instrumental writing is symphonic, there is none of the contrapuntal intricacy of Tristan: the pictorial requirement warranted a freer use of chords in the accompanying parts, both—if a paradoxical phrase may be pardoned—for the abstract colour of the chords and for the instrumental tone colour which the use of chords ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... a man's far wider scope of observation and experience—knew things that made him shudder. It seemed to Kenyon, looking through the darkly colored medium of his fears, that all modes of crime were crowded into the close intricacy of Roman streets, and that there was no redeeming element, such as exists in ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... neither be few nor simple. It is true, that the very principle may be destroyed, by multiplying to excess the means of securing it. Never did a minister depart more from the author's ideas of simplicity, or more embarrass the trade of America with the multiplicity and intricacy of regulations and ordinances, than his boasted minister of 1764. That minister seemed to be possessed with something, hardly short of a rage, for regulation and restriction. He had so multiplied bonds, certificates, affidavits, warrants, sufferances, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... is plain that the writer was contemporary with the events he describes, and although his perfect ingenuousness ceaselessly connects his narrative with history, in no case has he been proved to be in error. The intricacy of the connexions between this record and the Pauline Letters will be best estimated from a study of Paley's Horae Paulinae. We know nothing definite as to the place where the Acts was written, nor the sources whence ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... with him in the wilderness, (Matt 4), and in heaven, (Rev 14), but also from the practice of Satan's emissaries here; for what his angels do, that doth he. Now there is here nothing more apparent than that the instruments of Satan do plead against the church, from the pretended intricacy, ambiguity, and difficulty of the promise; whence I gather, so doth Satan before the tribunal of God; but there we have one to match him; "we have an Advocate with the Father," that knows law and judgment better than Satan, and statute and commandment better ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... allowed to touch. Yet had she been shut up alone with the machine, as she was now shut up to revise her own conduct within herself, she would, by sheer force of determined intelligence, have mastered its intricacy to a large degree without asking aid. And so with this strong idea that she must learn how to act differently to this young man; dim, indeed, as was her idea of what was lacking, or what was to be gained, she strove with it in ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... of it not because its lack of simplicity makes it intricate and elaborate, for "reality" is intricate and elaborate; but because its inability to find expression for its intricacy in any concrete symbol is a proof that it is too simple. For the remote conclusions of a purely logical and rationalistic philosophy are made to appear much less simple than they really are by reason of their use ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... intolerable time, and prevent crews from getting to sea in favourable weather, is sometimes fortified by the assertion that the people of Shetland are singularly defective in arithmetic. Even if we assume this statement to be correct, there is so little intricacy in a calculation of the price of 18 cwt. of fish at 6s. 6d. per cwt., and dividing the sum among five or six men, that a very low arithmetical faculty would not be severely taxed in checking it. There is little ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... explore the secrets of all creation even to the most distant star: they must read the laws of the universe, which science laboriously spells out here below: they must range from science to art, and from facts to possibilities, till even their pure intellect is baffled by the vast intricacy of things that might be and are not: but yet they are not satisfied. A point of convergency is wanted for all these vistas of being, whence they may go forth, and whither they may return and meet: otherwise the soul is distracted ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... and the advantage of his own fortunes, that he did not put forth this medicine in pill- boxes or bottles, and then, as it were, by some captivating title, inveigle the public into his spider's web, and suck out its gold substance, and himself wax fat as he sat in the central intricacy. ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... being the master of various unconnected countries, he may keep them all in order by employing a military force which to each of them is foreign. This maxim, too, however formerly plausible, will not now hold water. This scheme is full of intricacy, and may cause him everywhere to lose the hearts of his people. These counsellors forget that a corrupted army was the very cause of the ruin of his brother-in-law, and that he is himself far from secure ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of this monastery was well adapted to the founder's views, and to suggest the name it originally received of La Trappe, from the intricacy of the road which descends to it, and the difficulty of access or egress, which exists even to this day, though the woods have been very much thinned since the revolution. Perhaps there never was any thing in the whole universe better calculated to inspire religious awe than the first ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... "This must be seen to, indeed! this shall be barred to-morrow in the morning!" In this preoccupation I believe he took leave of me without observing it; our things were handed out; we heard the window shut behind us; and became instantly lost in a horrid intricacy of blackness and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inhabitants danced before their houses; and at one we saw the figure which is said to have been first used by the youths and virgins of Delos, at the happy return of Theseus from the expedition of the Cretan Labyrinth. It has now lost much of that intricacy which was supposed to allude to the windings of the habitation of the Minotaur," &c. &c. This is rather too much for even the inflexible gravity of our censorial muscles. When the author talks, with all the reality (if we may use the expression) of a Lempriere, on the stories of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... to spin round on her toes. Ada's only talent lay in her feet, and, conscious of her skill, she danced before the hunchback with the lightness of a feather, revolving smoothly on one spot, reversing, advancing and retreating in a straight line, displaying every intricacy of the waltz. The sight was too much for Jonah, and, dropping the mouth-organ, he seized her in ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... them, but in every other part the sea was quite open. Resuming our voyage after noon we proceeded along the coast which is fringed by islands, and at five P.M. entered another bay where we were for some time involved in our late difficulties by the intricacy of the passages, but we cleared them in the afternoon and encamped near the northern entrance of the bay at a spot which had recently been visited by a small party of Esquimaux, as the remains of some eggs containing young were lying beside some half-burnt firewood. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... the case—that ambiguity runs through him in everything. Burke has found an admirable word for it in the Persian tongue, for which we have no translation, but it means an intricacy involved so deep as to be ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... cases of a certain kind. Therefore it is best in all cases to give the patient water." Philotas having propounded his argument in this way, challenged the physician to point out the fallacy of it; and while the physician sat perplexed and puzzled in his attempts to unravel the intricacy of it, the company enjoyed a temporary respite from his ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... quality of brooding tenderness prevailed over the tragic passion elsewhere characteristic of Catholic devotion. Intricacy was substituted for dignity and poetry for rhetoric; the basilica became an abbey and the hermitage a school. The feudal ages were a wonderful seed-time in a world all gaunt with ruins. Horrors were there mingled with delicacies and confusion with idyllic peace. It was here a poet's ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... far as the extreme intricacy of the subject permits, the circumstances favourable and unfavourable for the production of new species through natural selection. I conclude that for terrestrial productions a large continental area, which has undergone many oscillations of level, will have been the ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... simple, and custom was held sacred. Under the new, and much more complicated order, written law was one of the most important requirements; and special organs became necessary to administer it. In the measure that the legal relations and legal conditions gained in intricacy, a special class of people gathered shape, who made the study of the law their special vocation, and who finally had a special interest in rendering the law ever more complicated. Then arose the men learned in the laws, the jurists, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... stove. There was a carpet on the floor, originally of rich texture, but so worn and faded in these latter years that its once brilliant figure had quite vanished into one indistinguishable hue. In the way of furniture, there were two tables: one, constructed with perplexing intricacy and exhibiting as many feet as a centipede; the other, most delicately wrought, with four long and slender legs, so apparently frail that it was almost incredible what a length of time the ancient tea-table ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the ground that neither of us knew the mountain, and threatening clouds were gathering all around. When, at last, I proposed to go by myself, they became menacingly obstructive, and declared that I should certainly not be allowed to face the intricacy of the mountain in a fog. Besides, as the maire put it, he was sure of the way to the third glaciere; and if I were to go up alone to look for the second, I should lose a certainty for a chance, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... hopeless than the external half-arch propping the side of a pier, or the chimney-like weight of stones pressing it down from above; but a courageous acceptance of these necessities, and a submissive study of their form, revealed a new and strange effect: the bewildering and stimulating intricacy of masses suspended in mid-air; the profusion of line, variety of surface, and picturesqueness of light and shade. It needed but a little applied ornament judiciously distributed; a moulding in the arches; a florid canopy and statue amid the buttresses; a few ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... The intricacy of the next facsimile, No. 7, is an ugly but a very active piece of movement. This group of curves is equal to about a two-feet length of pen-stroke, a fact which indicates an extraordinary amount of personal energy. Dickens was then writing his "Sketches by Boz," and this ungraceful ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... had to learn. There was no trouble about anything he wanted done by others; he simply commanded, and that was the end of it. But the mass of knowledge about the Terranovans and their world before he came appalled him not only by its sheer bulk but by its intricacy, the unexplained gaps, the contradictions. For a long time after the founding of New Washington—later New Jerusalem—he was still bothered a little by doubt. He wanted to learn all that there was to learn about the Terranovans, so that finally he would understand them completely ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... simple purposes apart from the use of the dynamo, a ready application of this form of wind-engine with a minimum of intricacy or expense may be worked out by setting the lower bearing in a round tank of water kept in circular motion by a set of small paddles working horizontally. Into the water a vertically-working paddle-wheel dips, ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... impression that they are inspired by race hatred. They believe that an Irish legislature would be controlled by a majority, representatives mainly of small farmers, men who had no knowledge of affairs, or of the peculiar needs of Ulster industry, or the intricacy of the problems involved in carrying on an international trade; that the religious ideas of the majority would be so favored in education and government that the favoritism would amount to religious oppression. They are also convinced ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... believe that the terrors that Carlyle had to face were the terrors of a swift, clear-sighted, feverishly active, intuitive brain, prevented by mortal weakness and frailty from dealing as he desired with the dazzling immensity and intricacy of the world's life ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... so well framed, the intricacy so artful, and the disentanglement so easy, the suspense so affecting, and the passionate parts so properly interposed, that I have no ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Secretary for Foreign Tongues on March 15, 1649. He removed from High Holborn to Spring Gardens to be near the scene of his labours, and was soon afterwards provided with an official residence in Whitehall Palace, a huge intricacy of passages and chambers, of which but a fragment now remains. His first performance was in some measure a false start; for the epistle offering amity to the Senate of Hamburg, clothed in his best Latin, was so unamiably regarded by that body that ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... force of this latter consideration is so enormous, that no one who has not studied human anatomy can be in a position to appreciate it. For without special study it is impossible to form any adequate idea of the intricacy of structure which is presented by the human form. Yet it is found that this enormously intricate organization is repeated in all its details in the bodies of the higher apes. There is no bone, muscle, nerve, or vessel of any importance ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... made us think of the islands of the blessed in the Vision of Mirza—a resemblance more striking from the long tract of mist which rested on the top of the steeps of Morven. The view was endless, and though not so wide, had something of the intricacy of the islands and water of Loch Lomond as we saw them from Inch-ta-vanach; and yet how different! At Loch Lomond we could never forget that it was an inland lake of fresh water, nor here that it was the sea itself, though among multitudes of hills. Immediately below ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... struggled and died among their feet. We made a singular picture: the hovering and diving birds; the bodies of the dead discolouring the rice with blood; the scuppers vomiting breadstuff; the men, frenzied by the gold hunt, toiling, slaying, and shouting aloud: over all, the lofty intricacy of rigging and the radiant heaven of the Pacific. Every man there toiled in the immediate hope of fifty dollars; and I, of fifty thousand. Small wonder if we waded ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... those cameos which in the Virgin of the Balances hang all round the girdle of Saint Michael, and of bright variegated stones, such as the agates in the Saint Anne, and in a hieratic preciseness and grace, as of a sanctuary swept and [103] garnished. Amid all the cunning and intricacy of his Lombard manner this never left him. Much of it there must have been in that lost picture of Paradise, which he prepared as a cartoon for tapestry, to be woven in the looms of Flanders. It was the perfection of the older Florentine style ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... of his own life, or the conduct of the world around him, unworthy his attention; yet, among the sons of learning, many seem to have thought of every thing rather than of themselves, and to have observed every thing but what passes before their eyes: many who toil through the intricacy of complicated systems, are insuperably embarrassed with the least perplexity in common affairs; many who compare the actions, and ascertain the characters of ancient heroes, let their own days glide away without examination, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... nearly exhausted the day. The intermingling mists of the season and the heavy smoke of the town were now shrouding the streets in a dense obscurity. There were no gas lights then. Profoundly ignorant of the intricacy of the streets of the metropolis, I was completely at the mercy of the hackney-coachmen, and they made me buy it extremely dear. Merely from habit, I again repaired to the White Horse, and concluded my nineteenth natal day in ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... kinds or forms of detraction, is the attributing of any man's conduct to corrupt or unworthy motives. A man's real motives are known only to God and to himself; indeed, very often to God alone, as from the deceitfulness and intricacy of the human heart, a man himself is sometimes ignorant as to what his real motives actually are. Certainly it is rash and presumptuous for any other man to pretend to decide upon them, and most uncharitable and unjust to pronounce them to be corrupt, when they are capable of a favourable ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens
... jealousy. Its headwaters approached those of the Canadian river Chaudiere, the mouth of which is near Quebec; and by ascending the former stream and crossing to the headwaters of the latter, through an intricacy of forests, hills, ponds, and marshes, it was possible for a small band of hardy men, unencumbered by cannon, to reach the Canadian capital,—as was done long after by the followers of Benedict Arnold. Hence it was thought a matter of the last importance ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... fervid and impassioned, was in all his compositions, except Don Juan, eagerly fixed on the catastrophe. He ever held the goal full in view, and drove to it in the most immediate manner. By this straightforward simplicity all the interest which intricacy excites was of necessity disregarded. He is therefore not treated justly when it is supposed that he might have done better had he shown more art: the wonder is, that he should have produced such magnificent ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... of Caleb (1 Chron. iv. 17) with Jether (cp. JETHRO) and Heber (cp. KENITES). In view of the confusion of the traditions and the difficulty of interpreting the details sketched above, the recovery of the historical Aaron is a work of peculiar intricacy. He may well have been the traditional head of the priesthood, and R. H. Kennett has argued in favour of the view that he was the founder of the cult at Bethel (Journ. of Theol. Stud., 1905, pp. 161 sqq.), corresponding to the Mosaite founder of Dan ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... remember that picturesque region in my boyish days. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the local habits and recollections of the first settlers may have had some influence on the physical character of the streets and houses in the New-England metropolis; at any rate, here is a similar intricacy of bewildering lanes, and numbers of old peaked and projecting-storied dwellings, such as I used to see there. It is singular what a home-feeling and sense of kindred I derived from this hereditary connection and fancied ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... that with many of us the recommendation of our own favorite pursuits is rooted more in conceit of ourselves, than affection towards others, so that sometimes in our very pointing of the way, we had rather that the intricacy of it should be admired than unfolded, whence a natural distrust of such recommendation may well have place in the minds of those who have not yet perceived any value in the thing praised, and because also, men in the present century understand the word Useful ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... dealing, as usual, through a third person, would not sell her for one and a quarter; he wanted one and a half. Besides, another Party was trying to get her; and now ensued a negotiation which for intricacy and mystery surpassed all the others. It was conducted in my friend's interest by one who had the difficult task of keeping the owner's imagination in check and his demands within bounds, for it soon appeared that ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... name of Fergus Hume means mystery and excitement, and his detective stories show that he is a past-master in the art of creating thrills and unusual situations, of baffling and elusive intricacy. Lovers of mystery stories welcome each announcement of a new book by this author, who is widely known on both ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... not fairly comprehending what she said. He sat down again upon the stone, and leaned his head upon his hands. In truth he felt dazed and helpless, as if he had reached suddenly the mouth of many roads and knew not which to take. The intricacy of the situation was fairly paralyzing to an order of mind like his, which was wont to grasp, though shrewdly enough, only the straight course of cause and effect. He revolved dizzily in his mind ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... F. AUSTIN in the Sketch.—"His 'Paris' is certainly an admirable example of what a purely aesthetic handbook should be, for it is clearly arranged, and written with that ease and intricacy which are borne of ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... square. Externally this church is uninteresting,[31] but its interior is of surpassing beauty, and can be better described in the eloquent language of Gilbert Scott[32] than in any other: "Simple as is the primary ideal, the actual effect is one of great intricacy, and of continuous gradation of parts, from the small arcades up to the stupendous dome, which hangs with little apparent support like a vast bubble over the centre, or as Procopius, who witnessed its erection, described ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... precepts of morality from tiring the ear and the mind, it was necessary to make the stories in which they are introduced in some measure dramatic; to keep alive hope and fear and curiosity, by some degree of intricacy. At the same time, care has been taken to avoid inflaming the imagination, or exciting a restless spirit of adventure, by exhibiting false views of life, and creating hopes which, in the ordinary course ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... housekeeper, poultry-woman, and laundress. Vassily Ivanovitch walked up and down during the whole of dinner, and with a perfectly happy, positively beatific countenance, talked about the serious anxiety he felt at Napoleon's policy, and the intricacy of the Italian question. Arina Vlasyevna took no notice of Arkady. She did not press him to eat; leaning her round face, to which the full cherry-coloured lips and the little moles on the cheeks and over the eyebrows gave a very simple good-natured expression, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... has already taken place, and she has to console herself with the hand of the Indian Prince, who has fallen in love with her. Even this skeleton will show that the novelty and unity of design which counted for so much in 'The Beggar's Opera' are changed for intricacy of plot. There is no cohesion in the story: there is no reason why the catastrophe should be brought about in one way rather than another; what interest there is turns on an improbable story rather than on the development of character. Evidently Gay reckoned largely on the opportunities ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... morning, after an unenthusiastic breakfast, they found themselves standing in the antiseptic-white chamber, before the looming, impersonal intricacy ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... silver-point, of an orange-tree in mingled fruit and bloom—an exquisite piece of work, of a Japanese truth, intricacy, and perfection. Fenwick looked at it in silence. These silver-point drawings of Welby's were already famous. In the preceding May there had been an exhibition of them at an artistic club. At the top of the drawing was an inscription in ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... blue of sapphires, the atmosphere of scented chambers, the mystic persons who seem ever about secret, religious rites, combined in his cunning phrases to create, as it were, a pattern on her soul of morbid and mysterious intricacy. Those pictures were filled with a strange sense of sin, and the mind that contemplated them was burdened with the decadence of Rome and with the passionate vice of the Renaissance; and it was tortured, too, by all the introspection of ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... exactly what its name implies. The lap is actually raked by a fine-tooth comb with needle-like teeth of steel ranging from 16 to 90 per inch. This involves breaking the lap again and the intricacy of the comber rests in the mechanism which it employs ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... a fine big glittering tobacco tin. Others had invented elaborate topiary designs in their hair, shaving their heads so as to leave strange tufts, patches, crescents on the most unexpected places. Of the intricacy of these designs they seemed absurdly proud. Various sorts of treasure trove hung from them-a bunch of keys to which there were no locks, discarded hunting knives, tips of antelope horns, discharged brass cartridges, a hundred and one valueless trifles plucked ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... the delight of Uncle Geoffrey's heart. It was somewhat narrow, to match the house; but in the center of the lawn, there was a glorious mulberry tree, the joy of us children. Behind was a wonderful intricacy of slim, oddly-shaped flower-beds, intersected by miniature walks, where two people could with difficulty walk abreast; and beyond this lay a tolerable kitchen garden, where Deborah grew cabbages and all sorts of homely herbs, ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... as well to remark that in each case the several factors operate with different degrees of intensity. It is often extremely difficult to disentangle them; and the more complex the society is in which a crime takes place, the greater is the combination and intricacy of the causes leading ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison
... almost proverbial. There are other pressing and exhausting pursuits, which wear away the spirit by the ceaseless care which they impose, or perplex and bewilder the intellect by the multiplicity and intricacy of their details; but the business of teaching, by a pre-eminence not very enviable, stands, almost by common consent, at the head ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... China. Kwei-li's patriotism and hatred of the foreigner grows out of the fact that, as wife of the governor of one of the chief provinces, she had been from the beginning en rapport with the intrigues, the gossip, and the rumours of a revolution which, for intricacy of plot and hidden motive, is incomparable with any previous national change on record. Her attitude toward education as seen in her relationship with her son educated in England and America reveals the attitude of the average Chinese father ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... interference of Germany on the one hand and Russia on the other, and to involve England in embarrassing questions. The attempt of the German democracies, triumphant in 1848, to fuse the powers of Germany into a whole, a new Germanic empire, also involved questions of great intricacy, and which, however England might desire to keep aloof, tended to affect treaties in which she was concerned. The union of all Germany as one authority would introduce a new element into European relations, disturbing the balance ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... to the representations of the king's ambassadors, and should give them such answer as comported with the dignity and interest of the Roman people. At the head of the embassy were Menippus and Hegesianax; the former of whom said, that "he could not conceive what intricacy there was in the business of their embassy, as they came simply to ask friendship, and conclude an alliance. Now, there were three kinds of treaties, by which kings and states formed friendships with each other: one, when ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... nerves, like a great electrical system by which messages are conveyed from the brain to all parts of the body. He has power to reason and to plan and carry out these plans. Truly no machine can be compared to man for intricacy of construction and harmony of action. Who, then, is the Creator of this wonderful thing? We must conclude that there was a great First Cause who made and put into action all things visible in the universe, as well as things to us invisible. ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... was never planned and carried out by a woman, I'll swear to that. There is a woman concerned in it, for at every point we come upon evidence of her voice issuing the mysterious instructions; but she is not alone in the matter. Already the intricacy of the thing points to a criminal of genius. When we know the whole truth, if we ever do, that the crime was planned by a man of amazing, if perverted, intellect, will be put beyond ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... the circularity of her course. Her flight from home is direct and precipitate; but on her way back, when she has gained a little time for consideration and stratagem, she describes a curious labyrinth of short turnings and windings as if to perplex the dogs by the intricacy of ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... principles of whose government were based upon more or less mature judgment and experience at the beginning of this nation; and when we take into also account the wide difference in ethnic types of the two races that are here brought together, the problem becomes one of the gravest intricacy that has ever taxed human wisdom and human patience for solution. This situation makes it necessary for the Negro as a race to grasp firmly ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Tiffauges' waistcoat was remarkable, or by what queer cut or precious material his trousers had won the approbation of a man as expert in such matters as he who had spoken to him. He went straight to the point indicated by the young man, saw the person he was seeking dancing an ete, which seemed, by the intricacy of its weaving, if I may be pardoned for this technical term, to have issued from the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... complexity; complexness &c adj.; complexus^; complication, implication; intricacy, intrication^; perplexity; network, labyrinth; wilderness, jungle; involution, raveling, entanglement; coil &c (convolution) 248; sleave^, tangled skein, knot, Gordian knot, wheels within wheels; kink, gnarl, knarl^; webwork^. [complexity if a task or action] difficulty ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... earliest existing Irish MSS. were written, we find not only a style of writing (or indeed two) distinctive, national, and of a high type of excellence, but also a school of illumination which, in the combined lines of mechanical accuracy and intricacy, of fertile invention of form and figure and of striking arrangements of colour, has never been surpassed. And this is in the seventh century—the nadir of ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... construction. Two towers, each at a guess, 150 feet high, with a wing between them, bristle with bamboo scaffolding so warped and twisted out of the perpendicular that the uprights are like old fishing rods. The extraordinary intricacy is quite fascinating, but at present it partially prevents one seeing the general proportions and effect of the building. As we see it, in the afternoon, the great mass of building is grey against the western light; thousands of men, women, boys, and children are scattered over its face ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... was too good to be true, and, even when Mr. Piper started to answer it, was struck chilly with a hopeless fear that it might be police. But Fate had obviously got a trifle bored of her sport with them, or very possibly tired out by the intricacy of her previous combinations—for it was only the taxi after all and Mr. Piper was at ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... of the country, very small, consisting of a single stone of great thickness, and turning on its own pivots from one side. Its key is always in possession of the eldest of the Jews resident at Hamadan. Within the tomb are two sarcophagi, made of a very dark wood, carved with great intricacy of pattern and richness of twisted ornament, with a line of inscription in Hebrew,' &c.—Sir R. K. Porter's Travels in Persia, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... make the goods we need. Private ownership of land, tools, and raw materials may at one stage of economic development be a method of stimulating production and one which does not greatly interfere with equitable distribution. When, however, the intricacy and length of technical production increased, the ownership of these things becomes a monopoly, which easily makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. Today, therefore, we are challenging this ownership; we are demanding general consent as to what materials ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of the machine—its engines—are the crux of man's mechanical wisdom and skill. Their marvelous reliability and intricacy are almost as awesome as the human anatomy. When both engines are going well, and synchronized to the same speed, the roar of the exhausts develops into one long-sustained and not inharmonious boom-m-m-m-m! It is a song of pleasant melody to the pilot, whose ear is ever pricked ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... away on his heels; but she soon pulled up, realizing that a polecat may be slow in the books, but not so slow in real life, with her to assist speed. Anyway, she seemed slower; and, in any case, she could not hope to follow him in the intricacy of holes and cover he was sure to take to, like a fish to water. Moreover, she was spitting up blood, result of friend polecat's neat and natty strangle-hold on her throat, and felt more in need of the egg—which she had won, at any ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... embarrassment of the eye, and cannot for an instant be separately regarded as works of accomplished art. Even the later and more imitative examples profess little more than picturesque vigor or ingenious intricacy. The oak leaves and acorns of the Beauvais moldings are superbly wreathed, but rigidly repeated in a constant pattern; the stems are without character, and the acorns huge, straight, blunt, and unsightly. Round the southern door ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... esquire a match for an emperor's daughter, and the suit did not prosper. Political reasons may have interfered. Suffolk, too, is accused by the Venetian ambassador of having already had three wives.[187] This seems to be an exaggeration, but the intricacy (p. 081) of the Duke's marital relationships, and the facility with which he renounced them might well have served as a precedent to his ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... with some little hesitation and difficulty, but still acquired in a time seldom longer, as I am informed, than ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. For an art which has to be acquired at all, there seems here, as in the case of eating, to be a disproportion between, on the one hand, the intricacy of the process performed, and on the other, the shortness of the time taken to acquire the practice, and the ease and unconsciousness with which its exercise is continued ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... the second, an amphibrachys; the third, a trochee; and the fourth an amphimacer; and yet our schoolboy, with no other liberty but that of inflicting pain, had triumphantly scanned it as five iambs. Perceive, now, this fresh richness of intricacy in the web; this fourth orange, hitherto unremarked, but still kept flying with the others. What had seemed to be one thing it now appears is two; and, like some puzzle in arithmetic, the verse is made at the same time to read in fives ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fantastic speculation, shaped by argument, faultlessly cast in logical moulds. Too faultlessly methought, for looking at the mere heaps of architectural rubbish, let alone the earth, the various vegetations which have accumulated upon it, I had a sense of the infinite intricacy of all reality, and of the partiality and insufficiency of the paths which our reason (or our fancy in the garb of reason) cuts into it. Rituals and laws whose meaning had become mere shibboleths two thousand years ago, ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... the earth around the sun, it had been customary to intercalate a month, every second year, of twenty-two and twenty-three days alternately, and one day had also been added to make a fortunate number. This made the adaptation of the nominal year to the actual a matter of great intricacy, the duty being intrusted to the chief pontiffs. These officers were often corrupted, and managed to effect political ends from time to time by the addition or omission of the intercalary days and months. ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... idea of sublimity; with which is often confounded the terrific, and the melancholic: what is now termed picturesque includes objects, which are principally neither sublime nor beautiful, but which by their variety and intricacy joined with a due degree of regularity or uniformity convey to the mind an agreeable sentiment of novelty. Many other agreeable sentiments may be excited by visible objects, thus to the sublime and beautiful may be added the terrific, tragic, melancholic, artless, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... he always looked at her hair first. It had a peculiarly pleasing effect on him. He had been observant enough to know that she had rearranged it since breakfast, and the smooth coils twisted in mysterious intricacy at the crown of her head were like softly glowing velvet. The ridiculous thought came to him that he would like to see them tumbling down about her. They must be even more beautiful when freed ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... believe this, and especially when I think of the numerous instances in which I have seen university-scholars unable to write English, with any tolerable degree of correctness. In this book, the principles are so clearly explained, that the disgust arising from intricacy is avoided; and it is this disgust, that is the great and mortal enemy ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... so frequent, and their changes for special occasions were so many, that they created some confusion and intricacy in the old Services. We may, however, recognise the beauty and worshipfulness of the plan. In the Visitation of the Sick, the words O Saviour of the world &c. as used with Psalm lxxi. are a survival of it. The verse ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... to come upon some lawyer's deed which dealt with matters of such unspeakable intricacy, that it baffled his imagination to conceive how it could ever have been drafted, and if in spite of this he were to find the intricacy of the provisions to be made, exceeded only by the ease and simplicity with which the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... name to it, never appears: a story, of which the basis and starting-point is whimsically withheld for disclosure in the last book, which was never written. If Ariosto's jumps and transitions are more audacious, Spenser's intricacy is more puzzling. Adventures begin which have no finish. Actors in them drop from the clouds, claim an interest, and we ask in vain what has become of them. A vein of what are manifestly contemporary allusions breaks across the moral ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... Exquisite intricacy! Wilfrid worked through all the intervolutions, and nearly forgot his wretchedness in admiration of his sister's mental endowments. He was the more willing to magnify them, inasmuch as he thereby strengthened his hope that liberty ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... must be bribed by Marco for the purpose. At every juncture Marco must be consulted, and acquainted with every step of progress; and no doubt the Biondina has some lively Moretta for her friend, to whom she confides her part of the love-affair in all its intricacy. ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... "Why cannot I read Sordello?" we can only answer:—Admitted a leading idea, not only metaphysical but subtle and complicated to the highest degree; how work out this idea, unless through the finest intricacy of shades of mental development? Admitted a philosophic comprehensiveness of historical estimate and a minuteness of familiarity with details, with the added assumption, besides, of speaking with the very voice of the times; how present this position, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various |
