"Mystery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I know not. In the dark mystery that shrouds her fate— In the dread agony of this suspense, Where I can grasp at naught of certainty— One single ray of comfort beams upon me. From out the ruins of the tyrant's power Alone can she be rescued from the grave. Their strongholds must be levell'd, every ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... before you, madam, a man utterly weary of the week-end riverside hotels of the Euphrates, the minstrels and pierrots on the sands of the Persian Gulf, the toboggans and funiculars of the Hindoo Koosh. Can you wonder that I turn, with a hungry heart, to the mystery and beauty of these haunted islands, thronged with spectres from a magic past, made holy by the footsteps of the wise men of the West. Consider this island on which we stand, the last foothold of man on this side of the Atlantic: this Ireland, described by the earliest bards ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Doctor George G. Proctor, that he was a practising physician some place in the Middle West and that he was visiting Coach Robey. But that was unsatisfactory data and some enterprising youth hunted back in the football records and, lo, the mystery was explained. Eight years before "Gus" Proctor had played tackle on the Princeton eleven and in his junior and senior years had been honoured with a position on the All-American Team. Subsequently he had coached at a college in Ohio and had put said ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... achieved so great a triumph as her last ball was allowed to be, it was quite inexplicable. It was talked of, canvassed over, and commented upon, at the band stand, race course, conversaziones, and mess room, for several days, and, in fact, until the mystery was cleared up ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... paper back into my bosom, I sat for some time pondering upon its contents. Part was clear enough—the remaining part full of mystery. ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... chatter commonplaces or he feels a gene! See, I will take you where I have been into this infinite sky and air"—she let her hand fall on his arm and thrilled him—"look up at Pilatus. Do you see his head so snowy, and all the delicate shadows upon him, and his look of mystery? And those dark pines—and the great chasms, and the wild anger the giants were in when they hurled these huge rocks about? I have been with them, and you and I seem such little people, Paul. We cannot throw great rocks about—we are only two small ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... seen in Fayal and in the West Indies, as we heard once, are only got up to mislead suspicion. You know papa's great dislike—nay, I may call it weakness—is being talked about and discussed. And he thought the best way was to say nothing about the peculiarity or mystery attending my marriage, but merely say I was a widow. Somebody in Barton said Charles died of a fever, and as nobody contradicted it, so it has gone; but, Aunt Marian, it is often my hope, and even belief, that I shall ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... decisive step, the step across the Workhouse threshold, must be taken with none to witness. If they could not pass out of their small world by the more reputable mode of dying, they would at least depart with this amount of mystery. They had left the village in Farmer Lear's cart, and Farmer Lear had left them in the high road; and after that, nothing ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "Perhaps the whole mystery is as simple as this," said her son's voice "as simple as this: that as there are tones of music too fine to be registered by the human ear, so there may be vibrations of light not to be seen by the human eye; form and color as well as sounds; just beyond earthly perception, and yet ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... said, as she seated herself, with something more of composure in her manner. "There was never any money in my father's house. I wondered at first where it could all go; I watched and reflected, and used all means of finding out the mystery. At last I knew it—my father drank; in the privacy of his room, when no eye was on him, he drank, drank. He paid strict enough attention to my education. I read with him much; he had stores of books. I read the Bible with him, too; often he spent long evenings ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... whom thou wast sent for ease, being by name Legality, is the son of the bond woman which now is, and is in bondage with her children (Gal. 4:21-27); and is, in a mystery, this mount Sinai, which thou hast feared will fall on thy head. Now, if she, with her children, are in bondage, how canst thou expect by them to be made free? This Legality, therefore, is not able to set ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... success, what is? It would be not uninteresting to trace this current of success to its source, and to lay bare all the springs of the machinery which sustains her artificial character as an authoress. The details of course form the mystery of her craft, but the general causes are apparent enough. First and foremost, her magnificent house and luxurious dinners; then the alliance offensive and defensive which she has contrived (principally ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... things were to be managed with the secrecy and mystery so dear to the heart of Philip. The marquis was instructed to go first to the castle of Antwerp, as if upon financial business, and there begin his operations. Should he find at last all his private negotiations and coaxings of no avail, he was then to make use of his secret letters from the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... prodigious hair spread like wild-fire among the populace of the district; and so the exhumation of Crepereia Tryphaena was accomplished with unexpected solemnity, and its remembrance will last for many years in the popular traditions of the new quarter of the Prati di Castello. The mystery of the hair is easily explained. Together with the spring-water, germs or seeds of an aquatic plant had entered the sarcophagus, settled on the convex surface of the skull, and developed into long glossy threads ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... up that creek Lum himself lived in a log cabin, and he lived alone. This in itself was as rare as a miracle in the hills, and the reason, while clear, was still a mystery: Lum had never been known to look twice at the same woman. He was big, kind, taciturn, ox-eyed, calm. He was so good-natured that anybody could banter him, but nobody ever carried it too far except a bully from an adjoining county one court day. Lum ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... child?' said the old warrior, in vain endeavouring to penetrate the mystery of the hut's contents, and dropping his figurative language under the influence of excitement—'say, Son of the Evening Light, ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... a pity you an' men like you can't see the truth. That's the mystery to me—why any one who had spent half a lifetime an' prospered here in our happy an' beautiful country could ever hate it. I never will understand that. But I do understand that America will never harbor such men for long. You have your reasons, I reckon. ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... on leaving the land is still a mystery. Although they are never seen, it is conjectured that they spend the winter at sea. Their natural enemy in the waters round Macquarie Island is the sea-leopard, and the stomachs of all specimens of this animal taken by us during the penguin ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... left Rome, by way of Orvieto and Chiusi. They crossed that dead, mystic Campagna that flows, like a sea, all around Rome—a sea of silence and mystery; with its splendid ruins of the old aqueducts and tombs, its vast stretches of space that were all aglow, in those June days, with scarlet poppies. They stopped one night at Viterbo, the little city made famous since those days by Richard Bagot's tragic novel, "Temptation," and ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... letter first, the last four or five sentences would have meant little for me. As it was, I would have given a month out of my future for the gift of an astral body which could go this minute to the ball at the Ghezireh Palace. I was lost in the mystery of ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... him, said it was a strange affair, a riddle I could not read, a mystery which time must elucidate, for it baffled all conjecture. He did little more than echo me, and I pretended I would have ridden half over the world to recover his sister, had there been but the least clue; but there was not, and I found myself obliged to sit ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... to the artist, was a part of his son's fleet; what brought it there was a mystery ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... alone on a haunted shore, With curious words of deathless lore On its massive gate impearled; And its carefully guarded mystic key Locks in its silent mystery From the seeking eyes of ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... general sense of well-being, and of contented life under pleasant conditions. But it is aroused just as strongly by prospects that are inimical to life and comfort, lashing storms, inaccessible peaks, desolate moors, wild sunsets, foaming seas. It is a sense of wonder, of mystery; it arouses a strange and yearning desire for we know not what; very often a rich melancholy attends it, which is yet not painful or sorrowful, but heightens and intensifies the significance, the value of life. I do not know how to interpret it, but ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... able to suffer almost indefinitely, our physical strength is strictly limited. Thus he fell asleep, dreaming even in his sleep that he was hard at work, and just about to discover the means by which he could penetrate the mystery of Miss Brandon. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... manifesto of 1890—the whole aim and effort of the Church was to exalt and sanctify and make pure the practice of plural marriage by means of the community's respect and the reverences of religion. The doctrine of polygamy was taught as a revealed mystery of faith. It was accepted as a sacrament ordained by God for the salvation of mankind. The most important families in the Church dignified it by their participation, and were in turn dignified by the Church's approval and by the wealth and power ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... enemy you have on this island is now dead. I can assure you I have until now been much puzzled to account for the lack of living things on this luxuriant and lonely island, save birds. The sight of this anaconda has solved the mystery; he has depopulated it (if I may so say) of every creeping or four-footed thing. Nay, I am also certain it has destroyed its own kind too. By what means it became of so monstrous a size I know not; but, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... spiritual and sacred union, my child," he said, "a type of the holy mystery of Christ's relation ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... element of fantasy in connection with the man who gave "Pekin" as his address. There was no explaining the conceit; it was just one of those whimsies which are alike plausible yet enigmatical. Had Curtis described himself as being of London, or Paris, or even of Yokohama, no sense of mystery would have attached itself to his personality. But, to the world at large, Pekin represents the unknown, and therefore the incongruous. It is the Forbidden City, the inner shrine of the East, the symbolic rallying-point ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Nirvana, no cause by which Nirvana is produced can be declared. The path that leads to Nirvana may be pointed out, but not any cause for its production. Why? because that which constitutes Nirvana is beyond all computation,—a mystery, not to be understood.... It cannot be said that it is produced, nor that it is not produced; that it is past or future or present. Nor can it be said that it is the seeing of the eye, or the hearing of the ear, or the smelling ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... remarkable relic of prehistoric man to be found in Britain. Nearly everyone is familiar with pictures of this solitary circle of stones standing on an eminence of Salisbury Plain, but one who has not stood in the shadow of these gigantic monoliths can have no idea of their rugged grandeur. Their mystery is deeper than that of Egypt's sphynx, for we know something of early Egyptian history, but the very memory of the men who reared the stones on Salisbury Plain is forgotten. Who they were, why they built this strange temple, ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... be looking up into a sunny sky. He heard the wind and the sound of a horse cropping grass, and the voice of the girl penetratingly sweet as that of a young mother calling her baby back to life, and slowly his benumbed brain began to resolve the mystery. ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... for community of worship is the chief misery of man, of all humanity from the beginning of time." We recognise Nietzsche in Dostoievsky's "the old morality of the old slave man," and a genuine poet in "the secret of the earth mingles with the mystery of the stars." His naive conception of eternity as "a chamber something like a bathhouse, long neglected, and with spider's webs in its corners" reminds us of Nietzsche when he describes his doctrine of the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... one of the settlements, nearer to the region of civilised life. There was a murmur of mystery about the second widowhood of Hickman Holt, which only became hushed on his "moving" further west—to the wild forest where we now find him. Here no one knows aught of his past life or history—one only excepted—and that is the man who is to-day ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... before the text the Apostle Paul has been speaking of what he calls a mystery—that is, a revealed secret. And the secret was this, that the Gentiles would be "fellow-heirs and of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ by the gospel." It had been kept secret from the former ages and generations; it was a secret which ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... was a great mystery to the gossips of Sandy Cove; for there are gossips even in the most distant isles of the sea! Some men (we refer, of course, to white men) thought that she must have been the wife of an admiral at least, and had fallen into distressed circumstances, and gone ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... the citizens who had not been either directly concerned in the conspiracy, or privy to it. With one accord, therefore, they preferred exile to trusting to the tender mercies of their judges. In this way, says the Curate of Los Palacios, by the mystery of our Lord, was the ancient city of Guadix brought again within the Christian fold; the mosques converted into Christian temples, filled with the harmonies of Catholic worship, and the pleasant places, which for nearly eight centuries had been ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... Anyway, the mystery was not very comforting. The column were forbidden to talk; they rode on, northward, through the long grass of the rich bottoms; the two scouts led, Scout Gruard every now and again halting, to scan about from ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... Commissioner Hawks rose and began to stride restlessly back and forth across the spacious office. He stopped in front of the window and stared out over the exposition grounds, watching the thousands of holiday visitors streaming in and out of the buildings, all unaware of the strange mystery in the sky above them. Hawks' attention was drawn to the giant solar beacon, a huge light that flashed straight out into space, changing color every second and sending out the message: "Quis separabit homo"—Who shall ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... costume is a jelabea,[150] and a belt, without shoes or head dress; their country is said to abound in gold. It is "a consummation devoutly to be wished," that our knowledge of Africa should increase so as to enable us to unravel the mystery of these doubtful reports, to ascertain the degree of credit that is due to these mysterious traditions. These desiderata, however, can hardly 201 be expected, whilst the present injudicious plans for the discovery of Africa ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... Pondering upon the mystery as I walked up and down beneath the flaring lights, on the windy platform at Bletchley, waiting, after a day at Stratford, for a belated train to London, I reflected that genius has no pedigree nor prescription, and that at last the greatest ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... Yesterday we had a pleasant dinnette. In the evening Lady Glyn arrived bien triste, and Mrs Beaumont all magnificence for Lady Castlereagh's. We were much surprised to find Count Holmar [2] in town, but we have had the mystery explained. He took the Princes back to their own country, and then came back here on account of his love for Miss Gifford, Lady Lansdowne's daughter by her first husband. [3] She is pretty and clever, without much fortune, but Lord Lansdowne has taken a fancy to ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... or was crazy," said Mollie, with relief. Then she suddenly turned and started off into the woods. "I'm going all alone to find out what that was," she told her stupefied chums. "I've got to clear up the mystery before I'm an ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... accept the news I bring. I come to make a solemn mystery clear, One that affects you deeply; for I sing Of a most ancient king Nine hundred years ago in fair Kashmir, Who yearned towards a bride, and—hear, oh hear, Lord of the reboant nose and classic hunch— "Married a princess of the House ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... to let Yorkburg know who its friend is. I don't doubt she meant well. To do things as nobody else does them is to her irresistible. But how a woman of her sense and understanding of human nature could fail to see the complications of a situation in which secrecy and mystery were elemental parts ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... boasted of the possession of "plenty of all such reading as was never read," and scandalised his visitor by quoting from Markham's Book of Armorie a passage applying the technicalities of heraldry and genealogy to the most sacred mystery of Christianity. One who has not tried it may form an estimate of this kind of pursuit from Charles Lamb's Specimens of the Writings of Fuller. No doubt, as thus transplanted, these have not the same fresh relish which they ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... shallows a child could wade through, among bristling needles of rocks no one had ever guessed at; and rise in a morning to the tops of the spruce scrub on its banks,—a sweet spread of water with not a rock to be seen. What hidden spring fed it was a mystery. But in the bitterest winter it was never cold enough to freeze, further than to form surging masses of frazil ice that would neither let a canoe push through them, nor yet support the weight of a man. Winter or summer, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... precautions of the parties, and they were honest in taking them, our little village had its inklings of what was going on. There were certain signs of commotion and explosion which made themselves understood. Our little maid, Susan Hinkley, was the first, very innocently, to furnish a clue to the mystery. She had complained to her mother that Cousin William had not shot the little guns for her ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... switch the impulses evoked by sense stimuli on to one or other tract of the axons, or axis cylinder processes, which form the association pathways? Such a hypothesis is no explanation; it simply puts back the whole question a step further, and leaves it wrapped in mystery. It cannot be fatigue that produces the hypothetical interruptions of the dendritic synapses and then induces sleep, for sleep can follow after fatigue of a very limited kind. A man may sleep equally well after a day spent in scientific research as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898 • Various
... mother-in-law all her attendants, and to commit her to the custody of Lord John Pelham in the castle of Pevensey.[126] She was charged with having entertained malicious and treasonable designs against the life of the King, her son-in-law. The Chronicle of London, (1419,) throwing[127] an air of mystery and superstition over the whole affair, asserts that Queen Joanna excited her confessor, one friar Randolf,[128] a master in (p. 127) divinity, to destroy the King; "but, as God would, his falseness was at last espied:" "wherefore," as the Chronicle adds, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... Marie Baumer and Martin Berkeley. This new play was produced by D. A. Doran with International Productions, Inc., on Broadway in the fall of 1936, featuring Frankie Thomas. An entirely new twist is here given to the murder mystery, in that the authors have placed the burden of discovery upon three children whose intelligence and innocence are brought to bear on an adult problem. A most ingenious mystery play worked out, however, in terms of modern ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... rooms are not only beautiful in the highest degree, but have been shown in several French memoirs to obey laws of transcendental geometry, and also to obey physical laws of startling intricacy. These lovely forms of almighty nature wear the grandeur of mystery, of floral beauty, and of science (immanent science) not always fathomable.[6] They are anything but capricious. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like them; and yet, simply because the sad hand of mortality is upon them, because ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... angels. But still the reader ought to have been better made to feel this preparation towards a change of mood. As to the publishing arrangement, I leave them to Cornhill. There is, undoubtedly, a certain force in what you say about the inexpediency of affecting a mystery which cannot be sustained; so you must act as you think is for the best. I submit, also, to the advertisements in large letters, but under protest, and with a kind of ostrich-longing for concealment. Most of the third volume is given ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... is his sense of the supernatural, of the fantastic other-world that lies on the edges of our consciousness. The Listeners (1912) is a book that, like all the best of De la Mare, is full of half-heard whispers; moonlight and mystery seem soaked in the lines, and a cool wind from Nowhere blows over them. That most magical of modern verses, "The Listeners," and the brief music of "An Epitaph" are two fine examples among many. In the first ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... surely have been better not to have considered it (i.e., the trinity) as a mystery, and with Cl. Kleckermann to have investigated by the aid of philosophy according to the teaching of true logic what it might be, before they determined what it was; just so would it have been better ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... silent, anxious, the guests remained with hearts scarce beating. I trembled, my eyes in mist. We were like the dead of the churchyard about some funeral feast, full of terror and mystery. ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... same, as she grew older, her fancy played about this unknown father, as the fancy of young girls always plays about a mystery. Had he committed some crime? Had he disgraced himself and his family that his name might not be breathed in Lady Alice's ear? But she could not believe that her good, beautiful mother would ever have loved and married a wicked man!—such was the phrase that she, in her girlish ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... orphan, the enfranchisement of the slave,—this religion brought also the news of the eternal, hopeless, living torture of the great majority of mankind, past and present. Tender spirits, like those of Dante, carried this awful mystery as a secret and unexplained anguish; saints wrestled with God and wept over it; but still the awful fact remained, spite of Church and sacrament, that the gospel was in effect, to the majority of the human race, not the glad tidings of salvation, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... the footsteps retreated and the savage, repressed sounds died away into a distant murmur, leaned against the damp wall of his prison, and fought with a fresh perplexity. The new-comer into that gloomy house of wickedness and mystery was a woman! He had heard the sweep of heavy skirts as his door was approached, and that one shrill, hardly-stifled cry had surely been in a woman's voice! Then the pale thread of light was withdrawn, ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... boys" puzzled me. They had little or no money, and chickens were always high-priced. I had often noticed that the men in the wards were busy preparing fish-hooks, and yet, though they often "went fishing," they brought no fish to be cooked. One day the mystery was fully solved. An irate old lady called upon Dr. McAllister, holding at the end of a string a fine, large chicken, and vociferously proclaiming her wrongs. "I knowed I'd ketch 'em: I knowed it. Jes' look a-here," and she drew ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... brother, grasping her arm, 'you couldn't have forgotten the medicine.' The poor child only sobbed the harder, and Harry, turning to the table, pointed to the little packet, thus explaining the mystery! ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... not for me, who have none, to judge. They learnt history and reading and writing, and something of the English tongue, but I need scarcely say that I would not suffer him to teach them to pry into the mystery of God's stars, as he wished to do, for I hold that such lore is impious and akin to witchcraft of which I have seen enough from Sihamba ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... we have learned that God is not a Father who answers prayers and works miracles and holds out his arms at the goal. We have come shuddering to the awful mystery of being; strange and terrible words have been spoken—words never to be forgotten—"phenomenon," and "thing-in-itself"; not knowing what these words mean, you are ignorant and recreant to the truth; knowing what they mean, you tug no more ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... weary of the persistent tone of mystery in which her visitor spoke. 'If you want my interest with any friend of mine,' she said, 'why can't you tell ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... mountains and the valleys, are a class of local deities, each one of whom reigns over a certain district. To them is assigned the ownership of the mountains and the deep forest and all lonely patches and uncommon places that give an impression of mystery and solitude. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... egg. Every morning and every evening she visited the nest, felt the egg to ascertain its temperature, and added or removed a blanket according to circumstances. How the good woman knew the proper temperature is a mystery which no one could explain, but certain it is that she succeeded, for in a few days the little one became so lively in its prison as to suggest the idea that it wanted out. Mrs Marais then listened ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... high up over Eastbourne. One such had hung above her as she drove with Mrs. Ormonde up Beachy Head. At this moment the sea was singing; this breeze, which swept the path of May, made foam flash upon the pebbled shore. Sky and water met on that line of mystery; far away and beyond ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... at a time. All his thoughts about some men gradually became prayers. He could not teach us everything that prayer meant to him; he could not teach us to pray as he prayed. Yet through him one or two at least of his undergraduate friends saw a little further into the eternal mystery of prayer. And men must sometimes—with all reverence be it said—have experienced in his presence the same kind of a feeling of some great unseen influence at work as that which the disciples must have experienced ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... for the fray, now found themselves suddenly faced with the prospect of still more training and when as yet they had not the haziest notion of the type of ship that was to be given them for mounts. One rumor had it that they were to get American ships powered by a much-talked-of mystery motor. Very well, but where were those ships? Another rumor, equally persistent, was to the effect that they were to draw French Spads. Very well again, but where were the Spads? Still other rumors included Camels, Sopwiths, Nieuports and Pups. One rumor, uglier and more maddening ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... might be wherever there is a couple that believe through grace. Wherefore that husband that carrieth it undiscreetly towards his wife, he doth not only behave himself contrary to the rule, but also maketh his wife lose the benefit of such an ordinance, and crosseth the mystery of his relation. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... made his 'little tin soldiers' fancy that he did not see their antics. The only hitch in his 'knavish piece of work' arose when, too assured, he placed upon the boards a real live judge, who refused to take the bench in the manager's sham Court of Justice. In every other respect the mystery play was a complete success; everybody was puzzled, players, spectators, and the gentlemen of the press; not one even guessed at the true meaning of the performance; though a few 'men of wicked spirits' would try to peep behind the curtain. But they never found him out; they all ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... mystery, so, of course, there were all sorts of yarns about him. He was supposed to be a Scotchman from London, and some said that he had got into trouble in his young days and had had to clear out of the old country; or, at least, that he had been a ne'e-er-do-well and had been sent out to Australia ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... realize that vision, however slight, was greatly to be desired. I could distinguish light from darkness, and this enabled me to locate doors and windows; but color, with its varying shades, was then, and is now, a mystery profound. But in my desire to see, to be just like other children, I resolved to learn all I could about color, and so I memorized the list of colors, which ones harmonized, which were most pleasing to the eye, which were bright, which produced a sombre impression. ...
— Five Lectures on Blindness • Kate M. Foley
... the sleeping girl. Who was she? How could she sleep calmly after that night's deed? The mystery seemed unfathomable; the girl alone in the city, the robbers, the dog, the dead man, and the one who had ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... decisive as that which rewarded the research of the poor washerman's son. I seem now as if I could trace the boy, in the struggling grey of the morning, down the gentle slope, till he reached the tank, found the spot where the idol had been cast into it, and, daring to break its head, laid bare all the mystery of the tears. That, too, was a step preparing him for the great change when he was to turn to One who is not the work of men's hands, but is the Maker of the mighty and the weak. And the same influences which prepared Chickka, and which eventually changed ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... journal, two months later, made more extended reference to this variety and while its bona-fides as a "split" is established its use as a half stamp is as much a mystery as ever. We cannot do better than ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... were. This life's a mystery. The value of a thought cannot be told; But it is clearly worth a thousand lives Like many men's. And yet men love to live As if mere life were worth their living for. What but perdition will it be to most? Life's more than breath and the quick round of blood; It is a great spirit and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... man would never have solved the mystery of the arrival of the big consignment of the weed had it not been accompanied by a letter from the two boys in which all was ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... the Light in my own conscience, to hear what the Lord would say: and the word of the Lord came unto me, and said, "Put up thy sword into thy scabbard.... Knowest thou not that if I need I could have twelve legions of Angels from my Father": which Word enlightened my heart, and discovered the mystery of iniquity, and that the Kingdom of Christ was within, and was spiritual, and my weapons against them must be spiritual, the Power ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... sleep till morning. Half sleeping and half waking I lay there, dreamily watching that army of shadows gliding stealthily by. Shadows they seemed as they moved hurriedly along under the gloom of the overhanging trees, as noiseless almost as an army of spirits from Homer's nether world. The mystery of this secret night march served to quicken imagination, and I could see this same column grimly marshaling in "battle's magnificently stern array" in the dim light of the coming morning, ready to burst upon some exposed point of the ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... book you will like The Great Attempt (MURRAY), for Mr. FREDERICK ARTHUR'S story is quite good of its kind. But what sort of a book is it? Well, on page 31 one character says to another character, "Now listen. Thou knowest that there is some mystery regarding the heir to the estate. He is said to be in hiding abroad. The truth is that they have cheated him out of his inheritance and he can't do anything until he finds his papers." And yet it is not entirely that sort of book, for Mr. ARTHUR is evidently ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... tomb; and if the ax effects a clearing in the primeval forest, it will nowhere ring upon the foundations of an old world palace. Africa is poorer in record history than can be imagined. 'Black Africa' is a continent which has no mystery, nor history!" ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... some mystery beneath,' said Genevieve, turning to Sophy, who exclaimed abruptly, 'Oh! is ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I love you." And she would smile, her white face and eyes that were constant as the stars. Constant, eternal. Love that was no mystery but a caress of sea nights. Forgive him. And her sorrow would heal under his fingers. It would end all right. The two years—the halloo of strange sterile things—buried under the smile of her eyes ... deep, sorrowful, beautiful. Words to be. "Anna we will grow old ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... mystery was this. The three mischievous laddies—the apprentices—after getting their daily work over, of making pills and potions for his Majesty's unfortunate subjects, took to the trick of mounting a human skull, like that, upon springs, so that it could open ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... burnt, and one by one the members of the projected syndicate were assassinated by a mysterious person who called himself "X Esquire." Who was he? And what was his purpose? Mr. Charteris shows himself in this story to be one of the real brand of mystery novelists. ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... said the professor, "I will be able to go out, walk along the ocean bed, and investigate the mystery. Do you ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... door, a rag-or-anything-else-gatherer going about with a donkey, and a parcel of dirty children tumbling about on the green, being all that remained on the scene. All the able-bodied men had followed the hounds. Why the hounds had ever climbed the long hill seemed a mystery, seeing that they returned ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... little details. Leslie's charming silk negligee and her frilly little nightgown with its lace and floating ribbons came in for a large amount of contempt, and it was some time before the good ladies arrived at Julia Cloud's room and found the open telegram on her bureau that gave the key to the mystery of the two visitors. ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... the inhabitants of the Necropolis had collected on either side of the lines of sphinxes, between which the princess drove up to the Sanctuary. But none asked what these songs of lamentation might signify, for about this sacred place lamentation and mystery for ever lingered. "Hail to the child of Rameses!"—"All hail to the daughter of the Sun!" rang from a thousand throats; and the assembled multitude bowed almost to the earth at the approach of the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gives them license to dissent! Human laws affecting religion can never be the standard of morality; to read the Bible is considered to be sin in Tuscany, and righteousness in Britain. The release of this great and pious man from his tedious imprisonment, has been hitherto involved in a cloud of mystery, which it will be our happiness to disperse, while we record that event in a clear, indisputable narrative of facts. His earlier biographer, Mr. Doe, not having access to archives which the lapse of time has now rendered available, attributed his release to the influence of Bishop Barlow, by the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... that consciousness represents a specialized and individualized form of the infinite Energy; that it is dissolved by death; and that its elements then return to the source of all being. As for our mental attitude toward the infinite Mystery, his advice is plain. We must resign ourselves to the eternal law, and endeavor to vanquish our ancient inheritance of superstitious terrors, remembering that, "merciless as is the Cosmic process worked out by an Unknown Power, yet vengeance is nowhere to ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... Marquise d' The Commission in Lunacy A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Letters of Two Brides The Gondreville Mystery The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter of ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... existence, oppressed me. If I could bear the sight of it, it was only because I hoped; I thought that we should soon find the road which makes life happier, more agreeable to every one. How, where, in what manner? What a mystery! But the future beauty of life was in the ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... has been involved in the most gratuitous mystery. Some authors have even supposed that, as the individual has a definite length of life, so have species a definite duration. No one can have marvelled more than I have done at the extinction of species. When I found in La Plata the tooth of a horse embedded ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... twelve instances, and in two it failed from non-appearance of the seven banners in the first instance. The apparent frankness of the operator was not the least surprising part of the affair. He made no mystery, said he possessed this power by inheritance, as a family gift; yet that he could teach it, and was willing to do so, for no enormous sum—nay, one which seemed very moderate. I think two gentlemen embraced the offer. One of them is dead and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... was singular, and his manners corresponded with both. He called himself Baron von Bulow, and I saw him afterwards, in the autumn of 1797, at Paris, with the same accoutrements and the same jargon, assuming an air of diplomatic mystery, even while displaying before me, in a coffee-house, his letters and instructions from his principal. As might be expected, he had the adroitness to get himself shut up in the Temple, where, I have been told, the generosity of your Sir Sidney Smith ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... addressed to a social equal, apparently to a man younger than herself, and for whom—supposing him to have been a tutor, secretary, or something of the kind—she must have felt a special sympathy. Her mention of "the papers" and "your secret" must refer to circumstances which would explain the mystery. "So long as you choose to WEAR it," she had written: then it was certainly a secret connected ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... fact to be understood, but I shrunk from giving him occasion for accusing me of an eavesdropping of which I was innocent. Besides, I had no wish to encounter Clara before I understood her game, which I need not say was a mystery to me. What end could she have in such duplicity? I had had unpleasant suspicions of the truth of her nature before, but could never ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... mystery. He was insoluble. Dressed in a pair of baggy Turkish pants, with a red sash round his middle, knotted loosely over a woollen jersey that had wide horizontal black and yellow strips, with a grey woollen shawl over the lot, and a new tarboosh a size or ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... and as it was the only solution of the mystery, he accepted it as the real one, and returned to the letter, learning that the bracelet was purchased, that it could not be told from the lost one, that she was sporting it on Broadway every day, that she did not go to the prince's ball just for the doctor's meanness in not procuring ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... President Johnson. He had begun life at an early age as a clerk on a trading-boat on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, driving sharp bargains with the plantation darkies on the banks, in the exchange of cheap jewelry and gay calicoes for cotton and eggs. Next he undertook to learn the art and mystery of printing, studying law meanwhile, and finally located at Toledo as the editor of a Democratic paper. He was not a success as an editor, and went from the sanctum into a drug-store, where he put up prescriptions "at all hours of the night." Joining ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... light, and I was quite mystified. About a fortnight afterwards Madame d'Albret called upon me and announced her intended marriage to Monsieur de G—, and requested me to make her wedding dresses. Here the whole mystery was out, but why, because she marries Monsieur de G—, you should lose her protection, and why Monsieur de G—should be so inveterate against you, is more than I can tell. I have now, my dear mademoiselle, given you a detail of all I know, and shall be most happy to hear from ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... passed out of Holmes's expressive face, and I knew that with the mystery all the charm of the case had departed. There still remained an arrest to be effected, but what were these commonplace rogues that he should soil his hands with them? An abstruse and learned specialist who finds that he has been called in for a case of measles would experience something ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... today were withered because they had forgotten to eat their bread. The hunger of the pagans was a healthier thing than the jaded sterility of the modern world. Our Lady was ready to give that world the Bread of Life once more. And as he meditated on the mystery of the Virgin Birth he saw God making purity creative. She alone who overcame all heresies could overcome the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... flattery to all who tremble, and the people are always trembling. A real prophet of demagogueism, inspired by insanity, he gave his nightly dreams to daily conspiracies. The Seid of the people, he interested it by his self-devotion to its interests. He affected mystery like all oracles. He lived in obscurity, and only went out at night; he only communicated with his fellows with the most sinistrous precautions. A subterranean cell was his residence, and there he took refuge ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... member of a large family, but it is concerned not so much with childish doings as with the love affairs of older members of the family. Chief among them is that of Laddie and the Princess, an English girl who has come to live in the neighborhood and about whose family there hangs a mystery. ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... sour, dour sort of body, anything but friendly or hospitable,—the pair of them were discovered comfortably installed beneath the Pendarves' roof, as snug as if they had lived there all their lives and never meant to go away! The thing was a mystery; it went near to being a scandal. For a final touch, Crump assured me that these precious gentry were all but nameless; no one had ever heard the woman called anything, and the man's name ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... lady, if you will allow me to say so that you are making a needless mystery of the matter, and further, that you are embarking upon what will certainly prove to be a wild-goose chase. We had news of your father not long before his sad death, and he was ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... prompts the selection of gifts—since selected they all are by some one—is for the most part a mystery. I never but once heard any reasonable solution, and that was volunteered by an old lady who had been listening in silence to a conversation on the engrossing subject of Christmas presents. It was a conversation at once animated and depressing. The time was ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... the test of solitude, excepting only the thought that finds its origin in hopeless self-reproach. The soft mystery of twilight, the solemn silence of the slowly-coming night, daunted Catherine in that lonely place. She rose to return to light and human beings. As she set her face toward the house, a discovery confronted her. She ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... exhausted his credit, and was soon overwhelmed with debt. Among the companions of his dissipation was a young man whose abundant means filled him with admiration and envy; he lived like a prince and had not a single creditor. One day he asked his friend to explain the mystery of the fact that, without possessing any fortune, he could gratify all his tastes and fancies, whilst he himself, with certain resources, was compelled to submit to privations, still ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of, and, if there at all, it must be pitch-dark and hard to breathe in. And yet the noise I now heard, if it came from anywhere, came from below. I looked about carefully, hoping for a crack in the floor through which to solve the mystery. But crack there was none. Only as I looked further I saw that the reams of paper, which lay usually near the press, were moved somewhat to one side. Now, as my master was always particular that the paper should lie always in the same place, it seemed strange ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... the little people, who had on one occasion actually written them a letter, although as the characters employed were unknown to any person in the village, the object of their communication by this means seems somewhat of a mystery. Another and a more practical instance of their patronage was then related, for the favoured landlord assured us that on one occasion, when he and his wife descended downstairs in the morning, they found the house cleared, the hearth ready swept, and all the contents of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... ignorant, than as some of us, to be so sore vexed about unprofitable toys: stultus labor est ineptiarum, to build a house without pins, make a rope of sand, to what end? cui bono? He studies on, but as the boy told St. Austin, when I have laved the sea dry, thou shalt understand the mystery of the Trinity. He makes observations, keeps times and seasons; and as [2365]Conradus the emperor would not touch his new bride, till an astrologer had told him a masculine hour, but with what success? He travels into Europe, Africa, Asia, searcheth every creek, sea, city, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... slept on, the sun sank, and night fell upon the earth. And so the morning and evening made the first day of the new existence, which was about to be developed, through all the various phases which compose that strange and touching mystery—a ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... writing to his wife. But Browning has as many soul-sides as humanity. Hence it has been truly called a new life, like conversion, or marriage, or the mystery of a great sorrow,—a change and a bracing change in our outlook on the whole world, to discover Browning. The college should be our Browning, revealing the motive power of every life, the poetry of good and bad. It is ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... book—so suggestive of mystery and romance—excited the strongest curiosity. Apart from this, however, the reading public of 1843 were not unnaturally startled by a book which seemed to profess to be a good, serious, missionary work, but for which it ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... stood waiting for the signal. He looked over the sea at the Craglevin, which had settled a little at the stern, and was rolling heavily; but she was still a magnificent battleship, with the red cross of England floating over her. He could not help the thought that if this motor mystery should amount to nothing, there was no reason why the Craglevin should not be towed into port, and be made again the grand warship that ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... through which certain breeds have passed. Selection, whether methodical or unconscious, always tending towards an extreme point, together with the neglect and slow extinction of the intermediate and less-valued forms, is the key which unlocks the mystery how man has ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... "The fate of the ring. It has never been stolen: if it had, I would have restored it to you. Fear nothing; your household is trustworthy and virtuous. I know where the ring is; but I should deceive you if I bade you hope ever to find it again. This is a great mystery, and the happy consummation surpasses even my hopes. Adieu. The matter has turned out just as you see. You were born under a lucky star. Happy is the man whose household is trustworthy, and who, when his faith is tried, finds a faithful counselor. I forbid you, henceforth and forever, to distrust ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... in practice it may be considerably shortened. In many cases it is the shortest method known for factorizing large numbers, and I have always held the opinion that Fermat used it in performing a certain feat in factorizing that is historical and wrapped in mystery. ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... enigmatic way his thoughts had kept themselves away from Gorringe ever since Sunday evening. Now they concentrated with furious energy and swiftness upon him. Theron seemed able in a flash of time to coordinate many recollections of Gorringe—the early liking Alice had professed for him, the mystery of those purchased plants in her garden, the story of the girl he had lost in church, his offer to lend him money, the way in which he had sat beside Alice at the love-feast and followed her to the altar-rail in the evening. These raced abreast through the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... paid, and smiled as he shut his empty purse. His mother sighed in amiable pensiveness, saying, "This is a mystery to me, my son." ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... he said, high and clear. "If a mystery is to be played, surely it were better to put it off till ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... full length, and firmly clenched in his hand was a piece of fancy soap. A bullet had entered his forehead, the blood from the wound was trickling down his face, but the hue of health was still on his cheek. How he came to be there is to me a mystery, as that part of the line was forced by colored troops. Swinging by the right flank we kept our way along the Boydton road. A Confederate light battery in position alongside of a cottage, which stood in a hollow, shelled the column as it advanced, and so accurate had ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... to circulate for then they are not, as a body, amused; and when they are not amused, you know, they are not inclined to be harmless; and in this state they are vipers; and where is society then? And yet you cannot do without them!—which is the revolting mystery. I need not say that I am not responsible for these critical remarks. Such tenderness to the sex comes only ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... only an entering-wedge, intended by insidious degrees to pry open the heart of the girl and learn the mystery of her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... colorist, but above all he aims at effect. History wants no illusions; it should illuminate and instruct, not merely give descriptions and narratives which impress us. Tacitus did not sufficiently develop the causes and inner springs of events. He did not sufficiently study the mystery of facts and thoughts, did not sufficiently investigate and scrutinize their connection, to give posterity a just and impartial opinion. History, as I understand it, should know how to catch men and peoples as they would appear in the midst ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... and palaces from his little cottage on the banks of the Ayr. You know the meaning of the word "gentleman." It means a gentle man—a man who does things gently with love. And that is the whole art and mystery of it. The gentle man can not in the nature of things do an ungentle and ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle soul, the inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature can not do anything else. "Love doth not behave ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... aptitude for the things of the spirit enabled him intuitively to realise this, to understand it, to use it. And there was no mystery, no secret, no subterfuge on the part of Jesus as to the source of his power. In clear and unmistakable words he made it known—and why should he not? It was the truth, the truth of this inner kingdom that would make men free that he came to reveal. "The words that I speak unto ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... by this holiest mystery The inward parts are cleansed from stain, And, taming all the unbridled lusts, Our sinful flesh we thus restrain, Lest gluttony and drunkenness Should choke the soul and cloud ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... distinction. This has arisen from those who follow it as a trade, maintaining a mysterious secrecy about their processes. No manufacture can ever become great or important to the community that is carried on under a veil of mystery. ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... "Not a mystery," he corrected, "just a heap of tricks; funny ones, sad ones, sensible ones, and crazy ones—and of all the crazy ones this is the worst. But, what's the use? If there's a God, as you believe, it doesn't do any good to argue with Him, and if it's as I think and there's no God, there's no ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... individuality which emanates from the fusion of the parent nuclei. This is the incalculable and intangible Holy Ghost each time—each individual his own Holy Ghost. When, at the moment of conception, the two parent nuclei fuse to form a new unit of life, then takes place the great mystery of creation. A new individual appears—not the result of the fusion merely. Something more. The quality of individuality cannot be derived. The new individual, in his singleness of self, is a perfectly new whole. ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... light of love, Shall I be mute, ere thou be spoken of? 280 Thy kindred influence to my heart of hearts Did also find its way. Thus fear relaxed Her over-weening grasp; thus thoughts and things In the self-haunting spirit learned to take More rational proportions; mystery, 285 The incumbent mystery of sense and soul, Of life and death, time and eternity, Admitted more habitually a mild Interposition—a serene delight In closelier gathering cares, such as become 290 A human creature, howsoe'er endowed, Poet, or destined for a humbler name; And ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... idea did not enter their minds that it was not true in every detail, for they knew that what Teeny-bits Holbrook said could be relied upon to the minutest detail. For half an hour they sat talking it over, suggesting possible motives and trying to fathom the meaning of the mystery. Two things Teeny-bits did not mention: the incident of finding Snubby Turner breaking into Campbell's room and the accusatory letter that had led to the discovery of the stolen loot. Those things, ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... lay our finger on the mainspring one day and the mystery will disappear. But as for Brynhild—I gave her the best education possible and yet she has never understood the conception of a universe moving on mathematical laws to which we must submit in body and mind. She has the oddest ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... are in yonder urn. A few unwholesome dews on a summer night were mightier than all his science. For a time I struggled not with despair; but youth is buoyant, and habit is strong. Again I pored over the mystic scroll—again I called on the spirits with spell and with sign. Many a mystery was revealed, many a wonder grew familiar; but still death remained at the end of all things, as before. One night I was on the terrace of my tower. Above me was the deep, blue sky, with its stars—worlds filled, perchance, with the intelligence which I sought. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... fades and revives, gathers to a point, seems as if it would go out in a moment, again recovers its strength, nay becomes brighter than before: it continues to shine with an endurance, which in its apparent weakness is a mystery; it protracts its existence so long, clinging to the power which supports it, that the observer, who had lain down in his bed so easy-minded, becomes sad and melancholy; his sympathies are touched; it is to him an intimation and an ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... weekly bill. Naturally, Mrs Caffyn's affection moved a response from Madge, and Mrs Caffyn by degrees heard the greater part of her history; but why she had separated herself from her lover without any apparent reason remained a mystery, and all the greater was the mystery because Mrs Caffyn believed that there were no other facts to be known than those she knew. She longed to bring about a reconciliation. It was dreadful to her that ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... was, Rhoda listened with savage contempt of his idle talk. Her brain was beating at the mystery and misery wherein Dahlia lay engulfed. She had no understanding for Robert's sentimentality, or her father's requisition. Some answer had to be given, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was as much of a mystery to Eleanor as the dinner had been. Not because it looked so homelike; though in the early morning the doors and windows were all open and the sunlight streaming through on Mrs. Caxton's china cups and silver spoons. It all looked foreign enough yet, among those palm-fern pillars, and on the ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... "There's considerable mystery to all this," said Captain Toby to the boys after Captain Simms had left them to write some letters which, he said, he wished to send ashore by the hotel ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... deeply interesting. I now saw that never before had I really been in earnest about anything, that on winning her I had staked myself, and that myself was a wholly different person from what I had been imagining. In a word, I sat face to face with that unfathomable mystery of sex-affinity that every man laughs at and mocks another man for believing in, until he has himself felt it drawing him against will, against reason, and sense, and interest, over the brink of destruction yawning before his eyes—drawing him as the magnet-mountain drew Sindbad ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... influenced not only the ancient world, but also the literature and poetry of the Middle Ages and of modern times. It forms a contrast to the philosophy of the Greeks, and to that of Europeans of a later age. When the latter have tried to explain the great mystery of God and man, they have invariably failed. In the beautiful writings of the Greeks, wherein we find the height of artistic expression and polish, there is a subsequent gradual decline; but such is not the case in the Old Testament. In every age fresh beauty and hidden ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... his majesty for more information, till at length the truth seemed to be smothered under such an enormous burden of papers, as the efforts of a whole session could not have properly removed. Indeed, many discerning persons without doors began to despair of seeing the mystery unfolded, as soon as the inquiry was undertaken by a committee of the whole house. They observed, that an affair of such a dark, intricate, and suspicious nature, ought to have been referred to a select and secret committee, chosen by ballot, empowered to send for persons, papers, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... a sense of awe in her soul when she bends over her own infant child; but in the case of Mary we may be sure that the awe was unusual, because of the mystery of the child's birth. In the annunciation the angel had said to her, "That which is to be born shall be called holy, the Son of God." Then the night of her child's birth there was a wondrous vision of angels, and the shepherds who beheld it hastened into the town; and ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... right-hand side of the Boulevard des Italiens and the Boulevard des Capucines, and heinously wrong to walk on the left; while, on the contrary, no self-respecting Parisian would allow himself to be seen on the right-hand pavement of the Boulevard de la Madeleine. Indeed, these things are a mystery, and the wise seek only to obey, and not to ask ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... none of them was in actual possession of a bishop's see: the Queen declared every defect, whether as to the statutes of the realm or church-usages, since time and circumstances demanded it, to be nullified or supplied. It was enough that, generally speaking, the mystery of the episcopal succession went on without interruption. What was less essential she supplied by the prerogative of the crown, as her grandfather had done once before. The archbishop consecrated was Dr. Parker, formerly chaplain to Anne Boleyn: a thoroughly worthy man, the father of ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... things therein, that time shall be no more; but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, in the time when he is about to sound his trumpet, also [kai, merely indicating the apodosis] the mystery of God is finished (etelesthe, aor. ind.), according to the gospel He made known to His servants the prophets." The soundings of the seven trumpets are significant of progressive steps in the general ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... "There is some mystery in it," said Tom, "which time alone can unravel; but however, we will not be deprived of our intended ramble." At this moment they entered Piccadilly, and were crossing the road in their way to St. James's Street, when Dashall nodded to a gentleman passing by on the opposite ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... said the Padre, straight, "And thou shalt know whose mercy bore These aching limbs to your heathen door, And purged my soul of its gross estate. Drink in His name, and thou shalt see The hidden depths of this mystery. Drink!" and he held the cup. One blow From the heathen dashed to the ground below The sacred cup that the Padre bore, And the thirsty soil drank the precious store Of sacramental and holy wine, That emblem and consecrated sign And blessed ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte |
