"Intricate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... said, "let us begin." From one of his bags he took a pack of cards. He sat at the table and shuffled them. "There are many games of patience," he continued. "They are all founded on averages and thousands of combinations, so intricate that the law of recurrence can be determined only by months of figuring. However, one can learn a patience without bothering with the law of recurrence. I shall now teach ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... need of further proof. The intricate movements of a rotation such as I have described; the obstacle of hills and woods; the pitfalls of a road which moves on, moves back and returns after making a wide circuit: none of these is able to disconcert the Chalicodomae or prevent them from ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... Here he was told the legend, which all the natives believed, that whoever untied that knot was destined to become lord of all the world. Most historians say that as the knot was tied with a strap whose ends could not be found, and was very complicated and intricate, Alexander, despairing of untying it, drew his sword and cut through the knot, thus making many ends appear. But Aristobulus tells us that he easily undid it by pulling out of the pole the pin to which ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... contemplation of the phenomena of life, not devoting itself to any subject unless it be with an ulterior purpose, but seeing all things in their relation to itself, and subordinating them to its own boldly asserted ego, the Jewish race is not inclined to apply its powers to the solution of intricate philosophic problems, or to abstruse metaphysical speculations. It is, therefore, not a philosophic race, and its participation in the philosophic work of the world dates only from its contact with the Greeks." The same author, on the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... with that lightning-like rapidity of thought which came to him at such moments of peril, however intricate and vast the machinery, however carefully planned the line of impending campaign, the human element would be an essential part of it. And his last forlorn hope, his final fighting chance, lay in the fact that wherever the human element ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... readily as the pure. There is no standard of values; even taste is not yet formed, and eyes and ears hungrily reach out for anything to satisfy their voracious appetite. Each sensation which is reported to the mind through the senses and intricate nervous system, supplies an idea, embodying itself. It is with these that all the thinking of the child is done, these rouse his feelings and prompt his actions and, finally, mean character. Manifestly, then, his life can be ...
— The Unfolding Life • Antoinette Abernethy Lamoreaux
... one who looks into the complicated controversy between the representatives of the Ballantynes and Mr. Lockhart, concerning these matters, can be content with Mr. Lockhart's—no doubt perfectly sincere—judgment on the case. It is obvious that amidst these intricate accounts, he fell into one or two serious blunders—blunders very unjust to James Ballantyne. And without pretending to have myself formed any minute judgment on the details, I think the following points clear:—(1.) That James Ballantyne was very severely judged by Mr. Lockhart, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... delicate tracery, each different, each telling a story. The handles of the drawers, the arcades of the alcoves, the pillars of the pigeon-holes—all were of ivory, and all were carved with the fantastic art of the Mussulman. It was so beautiful and so intricate that for a time Dartmouth forgot the papers. He had seen it before, but it was a work of art which required minute observation and study of its details to be appreciated. After a time, however, he recurred to his quest and took the drawers out, one by one, laying them on the floor. ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... coming to feel the futility, the crass, absurd presumption of what he had come back to undertake. From the lucid quiet of his mountain haunts he had descended into a vale where antiquated cymbals clashed in wild discordance above the confusing clatter of an intricate machinery—machinery too complicated to be readjusted by a passing dreamer. In his years of solitude he had grown to believe that the teachers of the world were no longer dominated by that ancient superstition of a superhumanly malignant God. He ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... ideas is to present and interpret events in terms relative to spirit. Things have uses in respect to the will which are direct and obvious, while the inner machinery of these same things is intricate and obscure. We therefore conceive things roughly and superficially by their eventual practical functions and assign to them, in our game, some counterpart of the interest they affect in us. This counterpart, to our thinking, constitutes their inward character ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... ones; but the latter soon overtake and crush them, whilst they are themselves shivered by the collision. These medanos assume all sorts of extraordinary figures, and sometimes move along the plain in rows forming most intricate labyrinths, whereby what might otherwise be visible in the distance is withdrawn from the view of the traveller. A plain often appears to be covered with a row of medanos, and some days afterwards it is again restored to its level ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... found in the various slave codes that grew up in the Southern States. They were supposed to be done away with forever by the war amendments and Sumner's famous Bill of Rights but the problem is one far too subtle and intricate for regulation by statute, as the Supreme Court has discovered. Status based upon color still exists both North and South though ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... gain a correct knowledge of astral science we should study astrology in its universal application, side by side with its more intricate phase and the details, as manifested upon the individual ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... and Persia this Government restricted itself to consideration of the concrete questions which had up to then arisen, without setting forth the legal position in point of principle. In the Note of December 29, 1915, however, regarding the Ancona case it reserved the right to bring up the intricate questions of international law connected with the submarine warfare for discussion at a later date. In reverting now to this point, and taking up the question as to sinking of enemy ships, with which the memorandum is concerned, ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... unplumed for flying, and only gentle flax or fur blows out on the wind, instead of beating it, does the owner of four legs sit and sulk, like a man defrauded of his merits? He answers the question with a skip and jump; ere a man can look twice at him he has cut a caper, frolicked an intricate dance upon the grass, and brightened his eyes ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... your meaning, Perdita," I replied, "in powerful words, yet that meaning is selfish and unworthy of you. You have often agreed with me that there is but one solution to the intricate riddle of life; to improve ourselves, and contribute to the happiness of others: and now, in the very prime of life, you desert your principles, and shut yourself up in useless solitude. Will you think of Raymond less at Windsor, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... But a more intricate portion of the theory of Credit is its influence on prices; the chief cause of most of the mercantile phenomena which perplex observers. In a state of commerce in which much credit is habitually given, general prices at any moment depend much more upon the state of credit ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... the 21st we proceeded 60 miles, and anchored in 40 fathoms, at a place called Khofadan, in the dominions, of Mecca. The 22d the navigation being much encumbered with sand banks, so thick together and intricate that it was hardly possible to sail in the day, the Pacha ordered six gallies to lead-the way, and we came to a shelf or shoal called Turakh. The 23d we coasted along, still among shoals, the channel being so narrow ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... her intricate labyrinths and enchain the fancy by wandering in mazy circuits, and weaving her mystic web; but truth will stand in all its primitive lustre, when the foundations of this earth have passed away. Then let me record the truth ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... Ali, "some subjects, by impetuous application, omit vision of intricate detail. This is due to ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... Farquaharson himself. The Virginian's standards as to his bearing in the face of hostility were definite and could be summed up in the length of an epigram: Never to fail of courtesy, but never to surrender more than half of any roadway to aggression. Yet here was a situation of intricate bearings and a man whom he could not fight. A brain must be dealt with, too old for plasticity, like sculptor's clay hardened beyond amendment of form. A man whose fighting blood is hot, but whose spirit of sportsmanship is true, can sometimes maintain a difficult peace where another type ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... there was a throng before the door. The music had started up, and half a block away you could hear the dull "broom, broom" of a cello, with the squeaking of two fiddles which vied with each other in intricate and altitudinous gymnastics. Seeing the throng, Marija abandoned precipitately the debate concerning the ancestors of her coachman, and, springing from the moving carriage, plunged in and proceeded to clear a way to the hall. Once within, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... to disentangle a strangely intricate genealogy; but be was unable to find the right thread, and succeeded only in getting the different relationships more and more mixed up, like a skein of yarn. And at last he always ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... with the voice of a jackass to excite the feeblest interest in the mind of a man who has listened to the debates on Kansas? or what marvel is an amphibian with the bill of a duck to him who has gazed aghast at the intricate anatomy of the bill of English? It is true that the ignorant Antipodes, with a total disregard of all theories of projectiles, throw their boomerangs behind their backs in order to kill an animal that stands ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... Mourning Bride, a tragedy, so written as to show him sufficiently qualified for either kind of dramatic poetry. In this play, of which, when he afterwards revised it, he reduced the versification to greater regularity; there is more bustle than sentiment; the plot is busy and intricate, and the events take hold on the attention; but, except a very few passages, we are rather amused with noise and perplexed with stratagem, than entertained with any true delineation of natural characters. This, however, was received with ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... like huge tusks. This face seems to be human, for, although in some shields there is nothing to indicate this interpretation, in others the large face surmounts the highly conventionalised outline of a diminutive human body, the limbs of which are distorted and woven into a more or less intricate design. Each extremity of the outer surface is covered by a similarly conventionalised face-pattern on a smaller scale. On the inner side each longitudinal half is covered with an elaborate scroll-pattern, generally symmetrical in the two halves; the centre of this pattern is generally a human figure ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... East, From the Bohemian side of these Mountains there rise two Rivers: Elbe, tending for the West; Morawa for the South;—Morawa, crossing Moravia, gets into the Donau, and thence into the Black-Sea; while Elbe, after intricate adventures among the mountains, and then prosperously across the plains, is out, with its many ships, into the Atlantic. Two rivers, we say, from the Bohemian or steep side: and again, from the Silesian side, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the late Consul, who had now gone to Cilicia as Proconsul. Lentulus had befriended him, and he found it necessary to show his gratitude by a continued correspondence, and by a close attendance to the interests of the absent officer. These letters are full of details of Roman politics, too intricate for such a work as this—perhaps I might almost say too uninteresting, as they refer specially to Lentulus himself. In one of them he tells his friend that he has at last been able to secure the friendship of Pompey for him. It was, after all, but a show of friendship. He has supped with ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... it is not correctly traced, in consequence of the line of descent being carried back through Henry VII., instead of being carried through his wife, nee Elizabeth Plantagenet. It may not be uninteresting to state the royal pedigree, which is at times rather intricate, and full of sinuosities,—in part due to the occurrences of political revolutions, old English statesmen never having paid much regard to political legitimacy, which is a modern notion. Queen Victoria is the daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, who was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... sauntering on the terraces of Sans Souci, for a short time in the afternoon, or you might have met him elsewhere at an earlier hour, riding or driving in a rapid business manner on the open roads or through the scraggy woods and avenues of that intricate amphibious Potsdam region, a highly interesting lean little old man, of alert though slightly stooping figure; whose name among strangers was King FRIEDRICH THE SECOND, or Frederick the Great of Prussia, and at home among the common people, who much loved and esteemed him, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... deposition of the dying girl, the testimony of witnesses, the speech made by the count in his own defense, the arguments of counsel, etc., and, finally, the judgment of the pope. So wonderful are Browning's resources in casuistry, and so cunningly does he ravel the intricate motives at play in this tragedy and lay bare the secrets of the heart, that the interest increases at each repetition of the tale. He studied the Middle Age carefully, not for its picturesque externals, its feudalisms, chivalries, and the like; but because he found it a rich ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... youthful private who listened with eager ears to the words of the tall soldier and to the varied comments of his comrades. After receiving a fill of discussions concerning marches and attacks, he went to his hut and crawled through an intricate hole that served it as a door. He wished to be alone with some new thoughts that had lately ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... delight of some who know nothing of the experimental duties of housekeeping; but the recommendation of these is an offence which we have no stomach to answer for hereafter. Steep, winding, and complicated staircases might have given a new feature to one or another of the designs; dark closets, intricate passages, unique cubby-holes, and all sorts of inside gimcrackery might have amused our pencil; but we have avoided them, as well as everything which would stand in the way of the simplest, cheapest, and most direct mode of reaching the object in view: a convenient, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... speak of an idea or a subject seems to be fanciful or trifling, to speak of the views which it opens upon us to be childish extravagance; yet is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere sound, which ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... the neighbourhood had called, or, taking the lateness of the hour into consideration, that a motoring party had come, as they did sometimes—Sanstead House standing some miles from anywhere in the middle of an intricate system of by-roads—to inquire the way to Portsmouth or London. If my class had allowed me, I would have ignored the sound. But for them it supplied just that break in the monotony of things which they had needed. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... unforeseen accidents. The mere suspicion of his inconstancy raises his wife's jealousy to a fever heat. To expose her rival she pretends to yield to the persuasions of her wooer, the Baron D'Espernay, but as a result of a very intricate intrigue both Alovisa and the Baron perish accidentally on the swords of D'Elmont and ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... porcelain jars, trays, and vessels of silver and copper ware. Rich carpets were spread about the floor, and the draperies were elegant and costly, while two deep windows projecting over the court represented the best period of Arab architecture. Their intricate carven woodwork had once adorned the palace of a Grand Wazir. Agapoulos had bought them in Cairo and had had them fitted to his house in Chinatown. A smaller brass lamp of very delicate workmanship was suspended in each of ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... settled, however, after a vigorous discussion, in favor of the king, whose royal dignity the twelve judges were unanimously of opinion was entitled to precedency over that of the queen. To my great surprise, my brother Downright volunteered an argument on this intricate point, making an exceedingly clever speech in favor of the king's dignity, as was admitted by every one who heard it. It rested chiefly on the point that the ashes of the tail were, by the sentence, to be thrown into the culprit's face. It is true this might be done physically after decapitation, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... great, that disciples flocked to her from all parts. Among these was the great Synesius, who afterwards submitted his works to her censure. She was consulted by philosophers of the first rank on the most intricate points of learning, and of the Platonic philosophy in particular, in which she was remarkably well versed.[2] She was much respected and consulted by the governor, and often visited him. The mob, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... one hope for our distracted world of to-day lies in the strength and wisdom of the few, not in the organised unwisdom of the many. The masses of the people can never be safely trusted to solve for themselves the intricate problems of their own welfare. They need to be guided, disciplined, at times even driven, by those great leaders of men, who see more deeply than they see into the reality of things, and know much better than they can ever know what is good for them, and how that good is to be attained. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... heeding its steps and with the camera that fired the Heat-Ray now rigidly upheld, it reeled swiftly upon Shepperton. The living intelligence, the Martian within the hood, was slain and splashed to the four winds of heaven, and the Thing was now but a mere intricate device of metal whirling to destruction. It drove along in a straight line, incapable of guidance. It struck the tower of Shepperton Church, smashing it down as the impact of a battering ram might have done, swerved aside, blundered on and collapsed with ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... coveted her secret—whatever that was, more precious to her than jewels—harboured designs upon his own as well. It was his duty henceforth to go warily, overlooking no circumstance, however trifling and inconsiderable it might appear. The slenderest thread may lead to the heart of the most intricate maze—and the heart of this was become Lanyard's immediate goal, for there ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... he knew "all about" Coryndon; he knew at least, that the Government of India looked upon him as the best man they had to unravel the most intricate case that murder or forgery, coining or fraud of any sort, could tangle into mysterious knots. Coryndon had intuition and patience, and once he undertook a case he followed it through to the ultimate conclusion; and so it was that Coryndon stood alone, a department in himself, ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... intricate lanes till the sun was high and scorching, and Berenger felt how far he was from perfect recovery. At last, however, some little time past noon, the gendarmes halted at a stone fountain, outside a village, and disposing a sufficient guard around ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in Geneva, based on the diary of Razumov. It is a favourite device of Conrad's which might be described as, structurally progressing from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. His novel, Chance, is a specific instance of his intricate and elliptical method. Several personages of the story relate in almost fugal manner, the heroine appearing to us in flashes as if reflected by some revolving mirror. It is a difficult and elusive method, but it presents us with many facets of character and is swift and secular. If ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... that look of eternal youth which is sometimes granted to those whose thoughts have always been unselfish, kindly, and generous. Delia played on, halting a little over difficult passages, and as she played, the Professor's face changed with the music, showing sometimes an agony of anxiety during an intricate bit, and relaxing into a calm smile when she got to ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... involved are many in number, intricate and complicated in character, and enveloped in a mass of conflicting testimony requiring many days to hear it, is it not manifest that a jury,—not one of whom has taken a note during the trial, some of whose members have heard as though hearing not, and seen as though ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... few of its lines, he will (unless before accustomed to accurate mountain-drawing) be soon amazed by the complexity, endlessness, and harmony of the curvatures. He will find that there is not one line in all that rock which is not an infinite curve, and united in some intricate way with others, and suggesting others unseen; and if it were the reality, instead of my drawing, which he had to deal with, he would find the infinity, in a little while, altogether overwhelm him. But even in this imperfect sketch, as he traces the multitudinous ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... later, she was at the rectory, whither she had gone, at Mrs. Whittridge's request, to explain a new and intricate embroidery stitch. They were upstairs in that lady's charming little sitting-room, Phebe on a low stool by her friend's side, and Halloway had just come in from a round of parochial visits and ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... career; amid the strife and the worry, the turmoil, and the rancour, of the controversy in which he was so prominent; it was his habit to rise from his bed at three or four o'clock in the morning to endeavour to master this intricate task. In the failures of others who had essayed this gigantic work, he saw only incentives to fresh exertions. Nothing daunted him. Failing to find in ordinary type, as used by printers, the necessary symbols to embody his thoughts, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... intricate and rare Did I there strow; But all I could extort was, that he now Did there repair Such losses as befell him in this air, And would ere long Come forth ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... unconscious of each other, when he followed Hogarth to Norwich; and, as Margaret stepped upon the Thorpe platform there, a Jew, who was watching the arrival of every train, spied and shadowed her to the old Maid's Head, this intricate city being now crowded, the Assizes all in the air, mixed with the ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... old man had left him Gahan made his way across the roof to the high tower, which appeared to have been constructed of concrete and afterward elaborately carved, its entire surface being covered with intricate designs cut deep into the stone-like material of which it was composed. Though wrought ages since, it was but little weather-worn owing to the aridity of the Martian atmosphere, the infrequency of rains, ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Courts of the eighteenth century when life in each class was more highly concentrated than is possible now—when love was put to severer tests, hatred permitted a crueller play, politics asked a more intricate genius, and art controlled the kingdom ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... apprehensions were all disappointed. Judge Nelson had no sooner taken his seat on the bench of the Circuit Court in New York City,[115] than he perceived that the cases on the calendar, though few in number, were so complicated, and embraced so many intricate questions, that they must be mastered according to a method that his former experience did not furnish. He investigated every new question as it arose. He listened earnestly to the arguments of ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... ominous to would-be despots: Exemplum salutis publicae cives posuere. MCCCCXCV. It now stands near Cellini's "Perseus" under the Loggia de' Lanzi. For the pulpits of S. Lorenzo, Donatello made designs of intricate bronze bas-reliefs, which were afterwards completed by his pupil Bertoldo. These, though better known to travellers, are less excellent than the reliefs in bronze wrought by Donatello's own hand for ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... signature: these are placed before the notes as required. When the transitions are rapid,—as they are in this piece,—it renders the reading very difficult in securing correct intonation. But notwithstanding these frequent changes, and intricate skipping intervals, Miss Anna accomplished the difficulty with ease, and perfectly in tune. The rapid cadence on the dominant was ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... women Suspicion was her best witness Sweet treasure before which lies a dragon sleeping Telling her anything, she makes half a face in anticipation That which fine cookery does for the cementing of couples The intricate, which she takes for the infinite The social world he looked at did not show him heroes The alternative is, a garter and the bedpost The exhaustion ensuing we named tranquillity The mildness of assured dictatorship Their idol pitched before them on the floor They ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... men having no interest in the perplexity, but on the contrary an interest in unravelling it, would see such laws corrected. Intricate as they are, questions on those which are the most so are usually referred by the judges themselves to private arbitration; of which my plan, I conceive, has all the advantages, united to those of open and free ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... hundred years. Our manners and customs are so vastly different from those of our great-grandfathers that we should feel out of place indeed had we to go back, even for a short time, to their uncouth and imperfect ways. Their extraordinarily complex method of governing themselves, and their intricate political machinery would be very distressing to us, and are calculated to make one think that a keen pleasure in governing or in being overgoverned—not a special aptitude or genius for governing—must have been very common among them. From the alarming ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... for the victims of medieval cruelty. Always one was confronted by solid brick walls; and to turn back was to meet others seemingly risen to cut off all escape. For this passage follows the simple and yet intricate pattern of ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... that he had not Mr. Lincoln's capacity for so great and so peculiar a task; though a gentleman of proven patriotism, ability, of a kindly, genial nature, and with record of valuable public service. Hampered by his lack of political finesse and intricate knowledge of state-craft, and in view of the conditions of that time, and the people with whom he had to deal, it was obvious from the outset that the result of the controversy could hardly be otherwise than disastrous to him. Mr. Lincoln would ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... in lower brass), with an edge of grim defiance. In the lull we seem to catch a brief mystic play of the first motto of the symphony (in the horns) before the last joyous song of both melodies,—all with a power of intricate design and a dazzling brilliancy of harmony, ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... upon her, Emily Hastings was not more joyous, more full of pure delight, than when, in a gay and sparkling mood, she moved her father's wonder at what he thought light frivolity. But now it was all bitter: the labyrinth was dark as well as intricate, and the thorns tore her as she groped for ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... latter's rare critical ability regarding his own verse. Oriental languages were his special field, and a most astounding technical skill enabled him to reproduce in German the complex Oriental verse forms with their intricate rhyme schemes. Something of this technical skill is apparent in 45, the one well-nigh perfect poem of Rueckert. The third stanza is an adaptation from a children's rhyme. This the poet uses as the main ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... that till the spaces between the larger trees with a thick underbrush. The Coral Reef also has its underbrush of the lighter, branching, more brittle kinds, that fill its interstices and fringe the summit and the sides with their delicate, graceful forms. Such an intricate underbrush of Coral growth affords an excellent retreat for many animals that like its protection better than exposure to the open sea, just as many land-animals prefer the close and shaded woods to the open plain: a forest is not more thickly peopled with Birds, Squirrels, Martens, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... now, and slowly, almost insensibly, the glamour of play began to steal over Sylvia Bailey's senses. She began to understand the at once very simple and, to the uninitiated, intricate game of Baccarat—to long, as Anna Wolsky longed, for the fateful nine, eight, five, and four to be ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... indecision to faults of expression which mainly spring from the swiftness and discursiveness of a brilliant and athletic intellect. The alleged "obscurity" of the poem is in great part a real obscurity; the profiles are at times not merely intricate, but blurred. But he had written nothing yet, and he was to write little after, which surpasses the finest pages of Sordello in close-packed, if somewhat elusive, splendour; the soil, as he wrote of Italy, is full of loose fertility, ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... well, on many accounts, to be in contact with a mind so original and suggestive as Mrs. Johnson's. We loved to trace its intricate yet often transparent operations, and were perhaps too fond of explaining its peculiarities by facts of ancestry,—of finding hints of the Powwow or the Grand Custom in each grotesque development. We were conscious of something warmer in this old soul than in ourselves, and something ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... speechless—his hot blood thrilled with a half superstitious awe; so thoroughly had this obscure Lombard divined, detailed all the intricate meshes of that policy with which he himself had interwoven his pertinacious affection for the Flemish princess, that it seemed to him as if he listened to the echo of his own heart, or heard from a soothsayer the voice of his most ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... attendants, tool-grinders, wiremen. Last, a welcome was promised to men above average intelligence whose education at school had reached what is called the Fifth Standard. When an aeroplane glides down to earth as easily as a bird, and comes to rest, a chance onlooker would hardly guess what a world of intricate labour and pains has gone to the attainment of that beautiful simplicity. It is the workshop which gives safety in flight; and because the workshop needs highly skilled men, whose services are in demand, at high wages, for many other purposes, an air force ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... they awoke him at the time appointed. Their language would bear the ordinary tests of sanity, and was like that we see in daily newspapers; but the various knowledge brought in, the complicated scenes gone through, made the whole resemble intricate concerted music, from the imperfect study of which possibly came the power to fabricate them. That they were owing to some physical cause was shown by their keeping a sort of cadence with the pulse, and in the fact, that, though not disagreeable, they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... life civilisation bellows, howls, screeches, roars, thunders, rushes, whizzes and whirls. Here is a colony of white ants, whose activity is staggering, bewildering, stupefying. It seemed inconceivable that in that intricate, raging chaos, a single minute could pass without a collision, or a collapse, or a killing. How could one possibly pursue one's own affairs quietly amid that shrieking, that hammering, that ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... than she was aware, so interesting was the intricate work. She was presently startled by a sound in the corridor. Mr. Kauffman was coming back to his room, whistling an aria from "Die Walkure." Josie paused, motionless; ...
— Mary Louise and the Liberty Girls • Edith Van Dyne (AKA L. Frank Baum)
... occupation, but discussed it as a dance or trot; rather resembling a savage ceremony, in the occasionally shrill whoops, and brandishings of bread and butter, with which it was accompanied, as well as in the intricate filings off into the street and back again, and the hoppings up and down the door-steps, which were incidental to the performance. In the present instance, the contentions between these Tetterby children for ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... has undertaken in this crisis is worthy of a great people and springs from the large ideas habitual to Americans. The blockade of the whole Southern coast, with its vast shore line, and its intricate network of inlets, harbors, and rivers; the controlling of the mighty Mississippi from Cairo to the gulf; the campaigns in Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas; and the pending attacks on Charleston and Savannah—these gigantic ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sits a man weaving a web of wonderful colours; he throws the shuttles, carrying different coloured threads, across and across, without seeming to look at them, and all the time the web is growing into an intricate pattern under his fingers. So his father wove, and his grandfather and great-grandfather. All these crafts run in families. A little farther on is a potter spinning a wheel with his feet, while the soft lump of dull-coloured clay takes shape beneath ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... lips were parted, and the measured breath Was now heard there;—her dark and intricate eyes Orb within orb, deeper than sleep or death, Absorbed the glories of the burning skies, Which, mingling with her heart's deep ecstasies, 4265 Burst from her looks and gestures;—and a light Of liquid tenderness, like love, did rise From her whole frame, an atmosphere ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Obscure. Almost immediately afterwards you become acquainted with a young stranger, whose traits of character interest and perplex, attract yet revolt you. All this time you are engaged in a physiological work which severely tasks the brain, and in which you examine the intricate question ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to hail and warn him against moving about among those brittle glass things, but reflected that he, the new man, had done the reshifting under his, Blakely's, supervision, and knew just where each item was placed and how to find the passage way between them. It really was a trifle intricate. How could he have gone into the spare room at Captain Wren's, and there made his home as—she—Mrs. Plume had first suggested? There would not have been room for half his plunder, to say nothing of himself. "What on earth can Nixon ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... you will have them completed—all those intricate plans?" queried Mlle. de Longeon in a ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... with a nasturtium-vine, whose vivid flames seemed like some personal emanation, and whose odor, acrid and single, dispersed a character about her; and the only ornaments she condescended to assume were of Etruscan gold, severely simple in design, elaborately intricate in workmanship. It is evident she was a poet in costume, and had at last en regle acquired a manner. But thirteen years ago she apparelled herself otherwise, and thirteen years ago it was that Mr. Roger Raleigh fell in love with her. This ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... trust out of their hands; and then a cry would be industriously raised against the House of Commons, as depriving British subjects of their legal privileges. The restraint, being plain and simple, must be easily understood by those who would be brought with great difficulty to comprehend the intricate detail of matters of fact which rendered this suspension of the administration of India absolutely necessary on motives of justice, of policy, of public honor, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in with the schemes of militant statesmen, and further reacts on the freedom and personal fortunes of the common man, is an extensive and intricate topic, though not an obscure one; and it has already been spoken of above, perhaps as fully as ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... received my hurried note of last night. I thought you had entirely forgot my L20 amid the other weighty matters you had to settle for me. I am still preparing and covering the Civil Law with rapid strides, but to make one's self master of a subject so intricate in a fortnight is something of a consideration; however, I do not despair. I am doing my best, and if I do not use my utmost endeavour, after what has been done for me by others, I will allow you to call ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... maze of these rooms the two boys wandered. Sometimes the floor under their feet would flame in brilliant patterns from lighting below, patterns of barbaric clashing colours, of pastel delicacy, of sheer whiteness, or of subtle and intricate mosaic, surely from some mosque on the Adriatic Sea. Sometimes beneath layers of thick crystal he would see blue or green water swirling, inhabited by vivid fish and growths of rainbow foliage. Then they would be treading on furs of every texture and colour or along corridors ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... critics is prodigious: they clamber up to the judgment-seat, and, with scarce a hesitation, give their opinion upon works the most intricate or profound. Had Macaulay's History or Herschel's Astronomy been put before Pen at this period, he would have looked through the volumes, meditated his opinion over a cigar, and signified his august approval of either author, as if the critic ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... made nothing of Dresden, then. After such a June and July of it, since he left the Meissen Country; after all these intricate manoeuvrings, hot fierce marchings and superhuman exertions, here is he returning to Meissen Country poorer than if he had stayed. Fouquet lost, Glatz unrelieved—Nay, just before marching off, what is this new phenomenon? ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... their bits of crocheting and embroidery, each of which was marked with the name of the person who did it and the date when it was completed. Many of them were made of pretty silk thread in a very intricate pattern, though I admired their drawing and painting ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... government anywhere in continental Europe. Switzerland was remote and inaccessible; her beacon of democracy burned bright, but its rays scarcely shone beyond the mountain valleys. The Dutch republic, enervated by commercial success and under a constitution which by its intricate system of checks was a satire on organized liberty, had become a warning rather than ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... bodies than it is in others. In music only the simplest and plainest compositions are relished at first; use and practice extend our pleasure—teach us to relish finer melody, and by degrees enable us to enter into the intricate and compounded pleasure of harmony." Thus it is with connoisseurship in Violins. Custom and observation, springing from a natural disposition, make prominent features and minute points of difference before unseen, resulting in a ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... blank space in their charts, and had made many mistakes in detail, but they had caught the main features of the Old World with fair accuracy. Ptolemy, in trying to fill up what he did not know from his inner consciousness, evolved a parody of those features. His map, from its intricate falsehood, backed as it was by the greatest name in geographical science, paralysed all real enlargement of knowledge till men began to question, not only his facts, but his theories. And as all modern science, in fact, followed the progress of world-knowledge, or "geography," ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... imagine the telegrams and the questions which would have been addressed from Downing Street and the House of Commons to these Ministers on native matters, on the question of the administration of the Chinese Ordinance, on all the numerous intricate questions with which we are at the present moment involved in South Africa. And what would have been the position of these Ministers, faced with these embarrassments in a hostile Assembly in which they had few friends—what ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... arouse the apprehension of the sharks who live upon the carcass of the people, or of the people who permit the sharks to so live. There is nothing more absolutely certain than that the people—who submit to be robbed through the intricate and multifarious processes devised by the cupidity of individuals and of governments—when aroused to a full sense of the wrongs inflicted upon them, will strike down their oppressors in a rage of desperation born ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... difficulties, and silencing of doubts; for he indeed differs in practice from most of the counsellors we ever heard of: for, as these are apt to puzzle and perplex their clients by their answers, and make intricate what was plain before, on the contrary, the gentleman we are speaking of had a wonderful faculty of making the greatest difficulties plain and easy, and always answered every objection and scruple to the entire satisfaction ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... because they never stir from home without their poisoned arrows. A missionary had recently been forced to leave the island, after having been besieged by the natives for several days. But it would seem that they are not hostile unless one of their many intricate laws and customs is violated, which may happen easily enough to anyone unacquainted ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... domain of thought which Herbert Spencer disposed of as the Unknowable have been traversed and minutely described. Swedenborg's books are so learned that even Herbert Spencer could not read them: his scores are so intricate, his compositions so involved, that no man can ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... d'Arthur.' "The origin and relationship to one another of these branches of romance, whether in prose or in verse, are involved in great obscurity." He adds that it would almost seem as though several generations of scholars were required for the gigantic task of finding a sure pathway through this intricate maze. And M. Gaston Paris, one of the foremost of living Arthurian scholars, has written in his 'Romania': "Some time ago I undertook a methodical exploration in the grand poetical domain which is called ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... enormously complicated a complete language must be, with its long and arbitrary vocabulary, its intricate system of sounds; the many forms that single words may take, especially if they are verbs; the rules of grammar, the sentence structure, the idioms, slang and inflections. Heavens, what a genius for tongues these simians ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... to acknowledge receipt of your book on Gas, Gasoline and Oil Engines, by Hiscox, by registered mail. I am highly pleased with the book. It is the best on Oil Engines I have ever seen, is not intricate in the calculations, and the illustrations ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... there arose a long vista, where the ground ascended and an opening appeared through this marine "forest." On each side the involuted corals flung their twisted arms in more curious and intricate folds. The vegetation was denser, more luxuriant, and more varied. Beneath him was a growth of tender substance, hairy in texture, and of a delicate green color, which looked more like lawn grass of the upper world than ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... reserved for Mrs. Fernando, who not only tells her pupils what to do, but shows them how to do it. The gilding and colouring of the stamps was most elaborate; two monograms of the Queen's name and that of the Empress Eugenie being perfect marvels of artistic and intricate workmanship. Every process, from mixing the colours up to burnishing the gold, was gone through in detail by this practical lady and her intelligent pupils for my special edification, and I passed out a much wiser and certainly not a sadder ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... with sovereigns, eminent statesmen, and men of letters; endowed with a facile tongue, a fluent pen, and an eye and ear of singular acuteness and delicacy; distinguished for unflagging industry and singular aptitude for secret and intricate affairs;—he had by the exercise of these various qualities during a period of nearly twenty years at the court of Henry the Great been able to render inestimable services to the Republic which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... now how the abstractionist treats this rich and intricate vision that a certain state of things must be true. He accuses the believer of ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... advantage. In those days a writer of fiction expended much more care upon the actual mechanism of his plot than seems to be thought necessary nowadays. Even a man of the genius of Charles Dickens did not feel himself at liberty to work untrammelled by the exigencies of some intricate and harassing framework of invention on which he made it his business to hang all his splendours of description and his observation of human character. The power of the plot in English fiction found its culmination ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... can't be so intricate as all that. I have had some experience of this sort of thing. And, if ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... us of one that went for resolution in some intricate Questions to a Philosopher, of whom he could get no Answer; but in the Night the Philosopher comes to him, and resolves all his Doubts. Not long after, he demanded the reason why he could not answer him in ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... difficulty of the task. The mechanisms which control human behavior are, as might be expected, tremendously complicated, and the problem of analyzing them into their elementary forms and reducing their varied manifestations to precise and lucid formulas is both intricate and perplexing. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... performances. There he waited, listening, I suppose, to the stifled hum of the great audience; and no doubt he could distinguish the deep tones of the magician, causing the wonders that he wrought to appear more dark and intricate, by his mystic pretence of an explanation. Perhaps, too, in the intervals of the wild breezy music which accompanied the exhibition, he might hear the low voice of the Veiled Lady, conveying her sibylline ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... supervision and regulation of them in the interest of the public as will make it evident that there is no need for public ownership. The opponents of Government regulation dwell upon the difficulties to be encountered and the intricate and involved nature of the problem. Their contention is true. It is a complicated and delicate problem, and all kinds of difficulties are sure to arise in connection with any plan of solution, while no plan will bring all the benefits hoped for by its more optimistic adherents. Moreover, under ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... intervened between her open confession of a passion for Lord Frederick and this proposed plan of separation, the most intricate incoherence appeared in the character of Miss Milner—and in order to evade a marriage with him, and conceal, at the same time, the shameful propensity which lurked in her breast, she was once even on the point of declaring a passion ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... principles, much less precedents, by which it can be defined or adjusted. Nothing but the eminent dominion of Parliament over every British subject, in every concern, and in every circumstance in which he is placed, can adjust this new, intricate matter. Parliament may act wisely or unwisely, justly or unjustly; but Parliament alone ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... uncomprehended mental processes. Instant and practical help is what is craved; and just such help Christ ever gave when he came to manifest God's will and ways to men. By whose authority do some religious teachers now lead the suffering through such a round-about, intricate, or arid path of things to be done and doctrines to be accepted before ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... girls must have arrived at Molo's place by now. If only they know where they are! I have lookouts throughout the city with intricate and complete connecting equipment. ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... apologetic way, and thence crept into civil life the custom of raising the hand or nodding as one passed an acquaintance. The soldiers, however, kept their individual salute, and purposely made it intricate and difficult to learn in order that it could be acquired only by the constant training all real soldiers received. To this day armies have preserved their salute, and when correctly done it is at once recognized and ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... a truly humble man, kneeling before life, kneeling before the intricate wonder of life, came to him, but he was again afraid. When he saw Sue's figure, dressed in white, a dim, pale, flashing thing, coming down steps toward him, he wanted to run away, to ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... Somewhere upon these grounds the story was that Henry kept Rosamond in a concealed cottage. The entrance to the cottage was hidden in the depths of an almost impenetrable thicket, and could only be approached through a tortuous and intricate path, which led this way and that by an infinite number of turns, forming a sort of maze, made purposely to bewilder those attempting to pass in and out. Such a place was often made in those days in palace-grounds as a sort of ornament, or, rather, as an ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... pleasure whose only merit is the elegance of texture? I am tempted to mention Cicero; and since Mr. Anthony Trollope is dead, I will. It is a poor diet for the mind, a very colourless and toothless 'criticism of life'; but we enjoy the pleasure of a most intricate and dexterous pattern, every stitch a model at once of elegance and of good sense; and the two oranges, even if one of them be rotten, kept ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thorough-bred sailors; their hands are familiar with the tar-bucket; their fingers are cut across with the marks of the ropes they have been pulling and hauling; and their whole soul is wrapped up in the intricate science of cutting out sails, and of rigging masts and yards. Their dreams are of cringles and reef-tackles, of knots, splices, grummets, and dead-eyes. They can tell the length, to a fathom, of every rope in the ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... not allow him to be captured in London, it is most improbable that he would have permitted the unjust capital sentence to be carried out. The escape was probably collusive, and the sole result of these intricate iniquities was to create for the Government an enemy who would have been dangerous if he had been trusted by the extreme Presbyterians. In England no less than in Scotland the supreme and odious injustice of Argyll's trial excited general indignation. The Earl of Aberdeen (Gordon ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... were stories current of men who had ventured and had never come forth again. With some of the inhabitants, it was asserted, the attainment of an almost worthless trinket, or a single coin, or even a garment, was considered cheap as the price of murder; and so intricate were the streets, so honeycombed with secret hiding-places known only to the initiated, that attempts to enforce justice had almost invariably ended in failure. Naturally this squalid neighborhood materially swelled the yelling crowds who, in the name ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... the bushes and examined the body. It was one of the three nude natives that had rushed by us on the trail a few hours before, and he clasped in his right hand a long knife of New Zealand greenstone that had been inlaid with gold in an intricate design. We had never seen such a weapon. The crude knives that I had seen throughout the islands were not to be compared to the wonderfully polished blade that had been intended to free either Holman or myself from all earthly cares, while the metalwork showed a craftmanship ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... discretion absolute reliance could be placed. He must be highly skilled in police work, and have a reputation to enhance or lose as the result might decide. Suddenly a name occurred to him. A short time ago his friend the President had been telling him the inner story of a very intricate case which had involved a scandal of two Courts. Only the most meagre details had obviously been permitted to appear in the papers, but His Lordship had told him that it had been solved and settled almost entirely by the skill and diplomacy of ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... dismemberment of the empire was boldly encountered at its highest point of development by the energy of the common law of the land, as administered in the ordinary courts of justice. That law, itself certainly intricate and involved, had to deal with facts of almost unprecedented complication and difficulty; but after a long and desperate struggle, the law triumphed over every obstacle that could be opposed to it by tortuous and pertinacious ingenuity: the case was correctly charged before the jury; most clearly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various |
