"Oracular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... set himself to imitate his man. He placed himself on a chair, his head fixed, his hat coming over his eyebrows, his eyes half-shut, his arms hanging down, moving his jaw up and down like an automaton:] Gloomy, obscure, oracular as destiny itself—such ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... with what a round And series of rich pangs fled forth each note Oracular, that I had found, had found (Head waters of old Nile held less remote) Golden Dorado, dearest, most renowned; But when as 't were a sigh did overfloat, Shaping 'how long, not long shall this endure, Au jour le jour' ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... roaring lion," on the Sunday after every 17th of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hilltops rising toward the sky, had ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... contents straggling over the sides. The beds were not made, and a strong odor of valerian and camphor flooded the air. On a couch lay Mrs. Fridolin, her face covered with a handkerchief, while near hovered Miss Bredd in her most brilliant and oracular attitude. She was speaking too loudly as he entered: "There is no use of worrying yourself sick about Meg, Mrs. Fridolin. She's gone for a time—that's all. When she finds out what an idiotically useless sacrifice she has made for art and is a failure as Isolde—she ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... was with a great share of that fortitude which is distinguished by the appellation of effrontery, her face exhibited some signs of shame and confusion at the receipt of this oracular interrogation, by which she was convinced of his extraordinary intelligence; and, accosting him in a very serious tone, "Doctor," said she, "I perceive you are a person of great abilities in the art you ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... to do things by halves, and it was a point of honour with him to know something of every thing. It is true he no more could tell where Apsley House is, or whether it was a tavern or a gaol, than he knew half the other things on which he delivered oracular opinions; but when it became necessary to speak, he was not apt to balk conversation from any ignorance, real or affected. The opinion he had just given, it is true, had a little surpassed Miss Ring's hopes; ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... Steinthal startles and rebuffs a commonsense inquirer with a reply from a wholly different and unexpected point of view; as when you ask a physician, 'Well, Doctor, how does your patient promise this morning?' and he answers, with a wise look and an oracular shake of the head, 'It is not given to humanity to look into futurity.' The effect is not destitute of the element of ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... we can do nothing?" she said, reflectively, and leant forward on her chair towards him, as if struck by his oracular wisdom. ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... Orpheus was reckoned in the number of Heroes or Demigods; and we are informed by Philostratus that his head was preserved at Lesbos, where it gave oracular responses. Orpheus is not mentioned by Homer or Hesiod. The learned scholar Lobeck, in his Aglaophamus, has entered very deeply into an investigation of the real nature of the discoveries and institutions ascribed ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... mildly amused but not a bit surprised that we did not discover their distinctive Open-Sesames. There was a sprinkling of manifest seers and prophetesses in shapeless garments, far too many, I thought, for really easy social intercourse, and any conversation at any moment was liable to become oracular. One was in a state of tension from first to last; the most innocent remark seemed capable of exploding resentment, and replies came out at the most unexpected angles. We Young Liberals went about puzzled but polite to the gathering ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... burlesque melancholy, "I can see no halting-place between the unbeliever's arithmetic and the papal Pater noster. Pshaw! let us drink. Trinq was, I believe, the oracular answer of the dive bouteille and the ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... suppose, like nations, wax and wane,' I said, 'they become atrophied, if not extinct.' The port was magnificent—of the year '64—and I felt oracular. 'Hence the use of bastards. Robert the Devil from the top of his tower falls in love with the laundrywoman bleaching linen on the green, and in natural course William the Conqueror ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... those of house-furniture, he is insatiable in his bibliomaniacal appetites. "Long experience has made him sage:" and it is not therefore without just reason that his opinions are courted, and considered as almost oracular. You will find that he will take his old station, commanding the right or left wing of the auctioneer; and that he will enliven, by the gaiety and shrewdness of his remarks, the circle that more immediately surrounds him. Some there are who will not bid 'till ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... play is exquisitely respondent to its title, and even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter's tale; yet it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years voluntary concealment. This might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... fails, and fairies send him to sleep, dancing around him with a song and pinching his unresisting body black and blue. A chance visit of Cynthia and her train fortunately arouses him, but Endymion still sleeps his forty years of manhood away undisturbed. At last Eumenides returns with his oracular clue and persuades Cynthia to attempt the cure. Very graciously the queen kisses the pale forehead. At once consciousness returns, and as a white-haired old man the once handsome young courtier arises. He ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... I to the brightness, which erewhile To me had spoken, and my will declar'd, As Beatrice will'd, explicitly. Nor with oracular response obscure, Such, as or ere the Lamb of God was slain, Beguil'd the credulous nations; but, in terms Precise and unambiguous lore, replied The spirit of paternal love, enshrin'd, Yet in his smile apparent; and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... If you are not, I appreciate even more your discretion. But you will still let me observe that for a young gentleman of personal attractions to walk half naked through an inquisitive nation, and to give oracular replies to questions put him by officials (to say the least of it) is to excite remark. I have some recommendations to make, which I hope you'll pardon—as first, stockings; second, a pair of stout walking-shoes; third, a hat; fourthly, some apparent calling beside that of penitent. Penitence ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... but looked deeply into her eyes for a long space of time, and took from her again an equally searching regard; then, turning to her father-in-law and the company at large, she said, "This is begun, and will be done. He is like his father before him." To that oracular utterance old King, catching probably but the last sentence, replied, "And he couldn't do better, my child." He meant no more than a testimony to his daughter-in-law. Mrs. King's observations, coupled with ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... to be anything else. It is wiser to admit that perhaps the author was not very clear himself, or possibly enjoyed that ambiguous attitude which might be interpreted according to the taste of his readers and the development of events. A man who deals in oracular utterances acquires instinctively a mode of speech which may shift its colour with every change of light. The texture of Disraeli's writings is so ingeniously shot with irony and serious sentiment that each tint may predominate by turns. It is impossible to suppose that the weaver of so cunning ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... we are today by the Greeks who lived before the Christian era. The Greeks built combination temples and sanitaria, to which the afflicted resorted. The priests were in charge and these ancient heathens were great rogues. By fooling the people they got big fees out of them. Their oracular sayings and miracles were adroitly presented. They did not teach that overeating is the chief cause of disease, for this did not suit the mystic times. The people liked oracular prescriptions, and they got them. The law of supply and demand worked ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... head; but this state of mind is not among the Mafulu in any way a necessary, or indeed a usual, qualification for a sorcerer or magic man of any sort. The person appealed to will perhaps tell them who has done the deed, or will make some oracular statement which will lead to his identification. The culprit identified by him will in any case be a member of another clan, and most probably of another community. When he has been discovered, there will probably be a fight, in which ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... mysteriously wrapped up, and with so many seals on it to secure secrecy, that I had to tear the paper before I could unfold it. And when I came to the writing I could hardly understand the meaning, it was so involved and oracular. I made out, however, that I was to go to Miss Pole's at eleven o'clock; the number ELEVEN being written in full length as well as in numerals, and A.M. twice dashed under, as if I were very likely ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... its religious reality in Rome, he was ten thousand times more impressed by its scientific courage here in Lourdes. For here religion seemed to have stepped down into an arena hitherto (as he fancied) restricted to the play of physical forces. She had laid aside her oracular claims, her comparatively unsupported assertions of her own divinity; had flung off her robes of state and authority and was competing here on equal terms with the masters of natural law—more, she was accepted by them as their mistress. For there seemed nothing from which ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... visit. During his sickness, his mother, a woman of color, sent for a diviner in order to ascertain what ought to be done. The diviner, after throwing his dice, worked himself into the state of ecstasy in which they pretend to be in communication with the Barimo. He then gave the oracular response that the child was being killed by the spirit of a Portuguese trader who once lived at Cassange. The case was this: on the death of the trader, the other Portuguese merchants in the village came together, and sold the goods ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... accepted—the statement of that very astute Brahmin, Sir Dinkur Rao, himself the minister of an important native State, that "the natives prefer a bad native Government to our best patent institutions." These, and similar oracular statements, have now become the commonplaces of all who deal with questions affecting India. That there is much truth in them cannot be gainsaid, but they are still often too much ignored by one section of the British ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... colossal sounding statue, which, according to Herodotus, Strabo, and Pausanias, uttered a joyful sound when the sun rose, and a mournful one when it set. It is also related that it shed tears, and gave out oracular responses in seven verses, and that these sounds were heard till the fourth century after Christ. These phenomena, attested by many ancient and modern writers, are variously accounted for by the learned, as priestcraft, ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... was always a good listener. He preferred to hear what other men said, to weigh their words, rather than pour out his own ideas. Lawanne sometimes liked to talk at great length, to assume the oracular vein, to analyze actions and situations, to put his finger on a particular motive and trace its origin, its most remote causation. Mills seldom talked. It was strange to hear him speak as he did ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... has not the ugly clamoring Nor the dumb stillness of the other homes About and opposite. For in our home Rare birds sing forth uncommon melodies; And in our home-yard a young offshoot grows, Sprung from Dodona's tree oracular! And in the garden of our home, full thick, The ironworts and snakeroots blossom on; And in our home the magic mirror shines Reflecting always in its gleaming glass The ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... diffusion of the knowledge they had thus gratuitously received. To make this bountiful communication, they adjourned from the church in the Old Jewry to the London Tavern, where the same Dr. Price, in whom the fumes of his oracular tripod were not entirely evaporated, moved and carried the resolution, or address of congratulation, transmitted by Lord Stanhope to the National ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... but one day of the Anthesteria, and, though the worship of the departed may have been the older portion of the celebration, it was later overshadowed by the festivities in honor of the wine-god. As the text of his argument in his oration against Midias, Demosthenes cites four oracular utterances, two from Dodona, the others probably from Delphi. In the first the god calls upon the children of Erechtheus, as many as inhabit the city of Pandion, to be mindful of Bacchus, all together throughout the wide streets to return ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... non sequitur, nucleus, nugatory, obdurate, objurgation, obligatory, obloquy, obsequious, obsession, obsolete, obstreperous, obtrusive, obtuse, obverse, obviate, occult, octogenarian, officious, olfactory, oleaginous, oligarchy, ominous, onomatopceia, opacity, opaque, opprobrious, oracular, orthodox, oscillate, osculate, ostensible, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... with a bridling smile, but that was so very full of defiance, that there is no knowing how long Captain Cuttle might have stood entranced in its contemplation, if Florence in her anxiety had not again proposed their immediately resorting to the oracular Bunsby. Thus reminded of his duty, Captain Cuttle Put on the glazed hat firmly, took up another knobby stick, with which he had supplied the place of that one given to Walter, and offering his arm to Florence, prepared to cut his ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... you, and you have won friends whom I should be proud to show you, and honorable women not a few. And cannot you renew and confirm your suggestion touching your appearance in this continent? Ah, if I could give your intimation the binding force of an oracular word!—in a few months, please God, at most, I shall have wife, house, and home wherewith and wherein to return your former hospitality. And if I could draw my prophet and his prophetess to brighten and immortalize my lodge, and make it the window through which for a summer you should look out on ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of Leotychides; and although Agesilaus was a man of great distinction, and had the powerful assistance of Lysander, yet his claims to the crown were seriously damaged by one Diopeithes, a man deep read in oracular lore, who quoted the following prophecy in reference to ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... of anything in this world, my tear," remarked old Duncan, becoming oracular in tone. "How do you know he ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... rode on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem becomes the Old Testament, the foal the New Testament, and the two apostles who went to loose them the moral and mystical senses; blind Bartimeus throwing off his coat while hastening to Jesus, opens a whole treasury of oracular meanings. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... With this oracular utterance, the official turned on his heel and departed, to my intense relief. I was fairly overcome with dread and mortification, and my eyes fell under the interested ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... said Aglootook, endeavouring to look oracular, as he came up at that moment with Anteek. "We must go far away in that direction," he added, pointing to the right, and looking at his leader with the aspect as well as the wisdom of ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... into relation with the divine benevolence, and the reward of release from labour is proportionally higher than a holiday with the "belle Aurore." Victory and then domestic love is the human interpretation of Pan's oracular promise; but the gifts of the gods are better than our hopes and it proves to be victory ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... tell me you understand that oracular sentence of his—'Suspect the very last person on whom suspicion could ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... age. In the nineteenth century as well as in the dark ages, in London as well as in the ends of the earth, men of all colours and clans are found turning their faces heavenward to read their duty and destiny in the oracular face of the moon. Many consult their almanacks more than their Bibles, and follow the lunar phases as their sole interpretation of the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... fierce first assault at the wall, was at his breast, he made no effort to oppose its threatening point, when a grape-shot, swifter than the blade, fairly struck the gunner. With blood streaming from his shoulder, he swayed from side to side, passing his hand before his eyes as one who questions oracular evidence, and then sank to the earth with an arm thrown over the tube of copper. Above his bronzed face the light curls waved like those of a Viking; though his clothes were dyed with the sanguinary hue and his chest rose ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... continued, "you couldn't expect a poor ould crathur o' sixty to travel at this rate, at all at all; except for raisons, your Reverence:"—looking towards me quite confidently and knowingly. This was still more oracular, and I felt very odd under it; my character for devotion was at stake, and I feared that the old lady was drawing me into a kind of vicious circle. "Your Reverence knows, that for the likes o' me, that can hardly move to the market of a Saturday, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... no more attention to him, and took M. Gueshoff and M. Danoff apart, who again insisted on convoking the Chamber, and assured him that M. Radoslavoff's government would be in a minority. They also referred to the Premier's oracular utterances. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... her babes with the most doating loquacity. And she does this with so grave a face that it is impossible to forbear laughing, when you hear her. She is so serious, so solemn, so convinced that every thing she utters is oracular, and so irascible if she does but so much as smell a doubt concerning the beauty and perfection of her brats, that there is no scene in the world which tickles my imagination so irresistibly as to watch her maternal ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Governor Wiseman (our oracular friend who talked in the style of an oration) was with us this evening at the tea-table, and we were mentioning the fact that about thirty colleges last summer in the United States contested for the championship in boat-racing. About ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... of broken fortunes, undefined rights, and in search of evidence, without a legal adviser of some sort? Mr. Mervyn, of course, had his, and paid for the luxury according to custom. And every now and then off went a despatch from the Tiled House to the oracular London attorney; sometimes it was a budget of evidence, and sometimes only a string of queries. To-night, to the awful diapason of the storm—he was penning one of these—the fruit of a tedious study of many papers and letters, tied up in bundles by his desk, all of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... ventured to introduce our subject with such very general and undeniable observations, had not experience taught us that the best way of introducing any subject is by a string of platitudes, delivered after an oracular fashion. They arouse attention, without exhausting it, and afford the pleasant sensation of thinking, without any of the trouble of thought. But, the subject once introduced, it becomes necessary to proceed ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... places), borne in a little ship, with the partner of his couch, {first} rested; they adored the Corycian Nymphs,[56] and the Deities of the mountain, and the prophetic Themis,[57] who at that time used to give out oracular responses. No man was there more upright than he, nor a greater lover of justice, nor was any woman more regardful of the Deities ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... given to love once only, and all such scorn to set a second, lesser, lower idol, where formerly they bowed in worship. Even false gods hold sway long after their images are defiled, their temples overthrown, and as the Dodonian Groves still whisper of the old oracular days, to modern travellers, so a woman's idolatry leaves her no shrine, no libation, no reverence for new divinities; mutilated though she acknowledges her Hermae, no fresh image can profane their ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... intellectual tendencies of his generation, so that on the most difficult of contemporary questions this opinion is worth quoting, although the ritualistic leanings of the present day hardly operate to support it. But here, as in his published works, his religious utterances are somewhat ambiguous and oracular; and one welcomes the marking of a definite epoch in Church history when he writes emphatically that 'the Broad Church among the clergy may be said to ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... the number, there was but one, an Irishman, named O'Ready, who seemed to question the utility of all their toil. He shook his head with an oracular gravity. He is an old- ish man, not less than sixty, with his hair and beard bleached with the storms of many travels. As I was making my way toward the poop, he came up ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... for autographs first began to pour in upon me, I gladly took a sheet of Delarue's creamiest note-paper and wrote thereon an oracular sentence from one of my most popular papers. After a while my replies degenerated to "Sincerely, Your Friend, Dionysius Green," and finally, (daily blessings come at last to be disregarded,) no application was favored, which did not enclose a postage-stamp. When some school-boy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... the production of his oracular works,—"prophetic books," he called them. These he illustrated with his own peculiar and beautiful designs, "all sanded over with a sort of golden mist." Among much that is incoherent and incomprehensible may be found passages of great force, tenderness, and beauty. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... This oracular utterance was confidentially delivered from the leathern chair at the writing-table, in an inner recess of Rachel's sumptuous sitting-room. The chair had been wheeled aloof from the table, on which were Steel's hat and gloves, and such a sheaf of book-stall ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... pictures were drawn of the boundless wealth and luxury of his court, and of his admirable piety and wisdom. About him there was assembled a host of jurists, linguists, and poets. Three hundred scholars traveled at his expense through different lands. Righteous judgments were ascribed to him, and oracular sayings. He was made the ideal ruler of Oriental fancy. His real character fell much below the later popular conception. He behaved like an Eastern despot towards all his kindred who stood in his way. The Persian family of Barmecides he exterminated, when his passionate attachment ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... rejects Jesus as an authoritative teacher, distinctly denies that the acceptance of Jesus in this character is any condition of salvation and of the divine favour, and treats of my "demand of an oracular Christ," as inconsistent with my own principles. But this is mere misconception of what I have said. I find Jesus himself to set up oracular claims. I find an assumption of pre-eminence and unapproachable moral wisdom to pervade every discourse from end to end of the gospels. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... and entered a sumptuous and crowded saloon, in which the entrance of Count Mirabel and his friends made no little sensation. Mr. Bond Sharpe glided along, dropping oracular sentences, without condescending to stop to speak to those whom he addressed. Charley Doricourt and Mr. Blandford walked away together, towards a further apartment. Lord Castlefyshe and Lord Catchimwhocan were soon busied ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Amnitae[176] in an island near the mouth of the Loire, on which no male person might ever set foot; and of another island at the extreme point of Gaul, already known as Uxisana (Ushant), where nine virgin sorceresses kept alight the undying fire on their sacred hearth and gave oracular responses. These cults clearly represented a much older worship than Druidism, though the latter may very probably have taken them under its shadow (as in India so many aboriginal rites are recognized and adopted by modern Brahmanism). And ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... "Caparra, that oracular speech of yours is due to my excellent shaving," said Nello. "You could never have made it with that dark rust on your chin. Ecco, Messer Domenico, I am ready for you now. By the way, my bel erudito," continued Nello, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... not only possessed a fund of good, common sense, but who stated further, that he was a man of great influence not only among the soldiers in the fort, but among many of his countrymen both in town and out of it. Tom spoke very slowly and always in an oracular manner; nor were his movements behind his bar of a very demonstrative character; as no press of custom, whatever, seemed to possess the power of accelerating his motions or inducing him to exceed the steady ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... as fearful of Eyes-in-the-hands as he was of his tribal god; many were impressed by the propaganda of Sakamata and Yabolo and the impunity with which Yabolo and Sakamata and company had quietly gone over to the enemy. Meanwhile Bakahenzie squatted in oracular silence, murmuring incantations that were prayers to the Unmentionable One interlarded with promises of the things he would accomplish for the said Deity, with solemnity and sincerity, for he felt that the result ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... see her simple old husband shuffling away his papers, and puzzling over cyphers and perpetually leaving the key of them lying about, and betraying again and again when he least intended it, by his mysterious becks and nods and glances and oracular sayings, that some scheme was afoot. She could have helped him considerably if he had allowed her; but he had an idea that the capacities of ladies in general went no further than their harps, their embroidery and their devotions; and besides, he was ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... Take a woman's head, stuff it with a smattering of philosophy and literature chopped small, and with false notions of society baked hard, let it hang over a desk a few hours every day, and serve up hot in feeble English when not required. You will rarely meet with a lady novelist of the oracular class who is diffident of her ability to decide on theological questions—who has any suspicion that she is not capable of discriminating with the nicest accuracy between the good and evil in all church parties—who does not see precisely how it is that men ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... asking him what he made it, the feeble voice of the first-mate giving him in return the Greenwich time as certified by the chronometer; when after a longish calculation and measuring of distances on the chart, with a pair of compasses and the parallel ruler, Captain Snaggs gave his decision in an oracular manner, with much wagging ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... I have said before, is rather oracular enunciation than doctrine; i.e. it is not doctrine elaborately drawn out and explained and guarded, but simply laid down as by the authority ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... at hand. The virtuoso showed me the chisel of Phidias, Claude's palette, and the brush of Apelles, observing that he intended to bestow the former either on Greenough, Crawford, or Powers, and the two latter upon Washington Allston. There was a small vase of oracular gas from Delphos, which I trust will be submitted to the scientific analysis of Professor Silliman. I was deeply moved on beholding a vial of the tears into which Niobe was dissolved; nor less so on learning that a shapeless fragment of salt was a relic of that victim of ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... wealth of the establishment. The attendant shows, in the stonework close to the well, the end of a tube coming from the upper part of the cathedral; and through this tube pious monks in the middle ages no doubt spoke oracular words calculated to enhance the authority of the saint presiding over the place. It was the same sort of thing which one sees in the Temple of Isis at Pompeii, and the zeal which created it was no doubt the same that to-day originates the sacred fire which always comes ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... education; he had read much, but his reading had been almost wholly superficial; he possessed, upon an infinite variety of subjects, that little knowledge which is a dangerous thing. There was consequently no topic of conversation upon which he had not something oracular to say; he was wont to maintain his own opinion with a very considerable amount of heat, and so obstinate was he that it was quite impossible to convince him that he was ever in the wrong. He was essentially ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... tone of mild interest. He was a man with heavy waxen eyelids and high-arched eyebrows, looking exactly the same under all circumstances. This immovability of face, and the habit of taking a pinch of snuff before he gave an answer, made him trebly oracular to ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Avernus live in underground dwellings, communicating with each other by subterranean passages, through which they led those who wished to consult the oracle hidden in the bowels of the earth." "Not far from the lake of Avernus," says Maximus of Tyre, "was an oracular cave, which took its name from the calling up of the dead. Those who came to consult the oracle, after repeating the sacred formula and offering libations and slaying victims, called upon the spirit of the friend or relation they wished to consult. Then it appeared, ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... Michael Malcolm, of Loch Ore, an eccentric baronet, pronounced this oracular couplet in his old age, when troubled with the talk of the French Revolution. As a picture of meditative serenity and neutrality, it seems worthy of ...
— The Proverbs of Scotland • Alexander Hislop
... thirty-three pounds of wheat or ninety-nine pounds of potatoes will produce 4,400 pounds of plantains or bananas. The cultivation of the various varieties in India, China, and the Malay Archipelago dates, says De Candolle, 'from an epoch impossible to realise.' Its diffusion, as that great but very oracular authority remarks, may go back to a period 'contemporary with or even anterior to that of the human races.' What this remarkably illogical sentence may mean I am at a loss to comprehend; perhaps M. de Candolle supposes that the banana was originally cultivated by pre-human gorillas; ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... connected with the exhibition. This may be performed whenever circumstances demand such proof, but the tests are made before the candidate with a twofold purpose: first, to impress him with the supernatural powers of the Mid[-e] themselves; and second, in an oracular manner, to ascertain if Kitshi Manid[-o] is pleased with the contemplated ceremony and the ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... Possil, his seat in Scotland. As men who had achieved scientific or literary distinction inspired me with far greater awe than those of the highest rank - of whom from my childhood I had seen abundance - Alison's celebrity, his courteous manner, his oracular speech, his voluminous works, and his voluminous dimensions, filled me with too much diffidence and respect to admit of any freedom of approach. One listened to him, as he held forth of an evening when surrounded by his family, with ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... which plays in the part of the temple of Aphrodite devoted to the mysteries, Ariofarno carries out his plan of vengeance against Hero. Professing to have received an oracular command to that effect, he restores a service in an ancient town by the sea and to it consecrates Hero, who is powerless to resist his will. The duty of the priestess is to give warning of approaching storms, so that by priestly rites the angry waters may be ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Present what is small and what is great. Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din. List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,— 'They enslave their children's children who make ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... it; This man, though poor, more cheerful than the rich Receives me; to his kindness thanks are due. More would it joy me if thy brother, blest Himself, could lead me to his prosperous house: Yet haply he may come; th' oracular voice Of Phoebus firmly will be ratified: Lightly of human prophecies ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... letter, sir, double postage," they thought it almost uncanny; and Hector's shilling was requited by something so like a real ship letter, that they had some idea that the real post had somehow transported itself thither. The interior was decidedly oracular, consisting of this one line, "I counsel you to persevere in your ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... oracular descant for the lady of the house, the rest of the company were all eager to have their fortunes told likewise, but she put them off till the next Friday, when they promised to have silver coin ready for crossing ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... wind in breaking forth deals with his face as it does with that of the sea, first blackening, then wrinkling, and at last bursting it into a foam. It is in this guise the sacred AEolist delivers his oracular belches to his panting disciples, of whom some are greedily gaping after the sanctified breath, others are all the while hymning out the praises of the winds, and gently wafted to and fro by their own humming, do thus represent the soft breezes of ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... dwelleth he?' 'Ah, that I know not,' spake the little voice, 'Yet keep thy courage, seek thou out the stork, The ancient stork that saw from earliest days, Sitting in primal contemplation lost, Sphinx-like, seraphic, and oracular, Watching the strange ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... But it quickly distanced them with its long, tireless gallop, and they were obliged to return to the forge, lost in wonder and conjecture. For the blacksmith had recognized it as a stranger to the locality, and as a man of oracular pretension had a startling theory to account for its presence. This he confided to the editor of the local paper, and the next issue contained an editorial paragraph: "Our presage of a severe winter in the higher Sierras, and consequent ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... public within the walls of Paris has been kept in profound ignorance of what has been passing outside. General Trochu has once or twice each day published a despatch saying that everything is happening as he anticipated, and the majority of those who read these oracular utterances religiously believe in them as though they had never been deceived. On the Boulevards there are crowds who question any soldier who is seen passing. "Tout va bien" is the only answer which they ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... their difficulties as if the limitless resources of Providence were at his command. "So-and-So said this-and-that!" Don Ramon would stop in his tracks, think a moment, and finally say, in an enigmatic oracular voice: "Very well, tell him to put this in his pipe and smoke it!" Whereupon the henchman, mouth agape, would rush back to the session like a racehorse. His companions would gather about him eager to know the reply that don Ramon's wisdom had deigned to suggest; and a quarrel would start then, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... phantasmagoria presents itself before him, which he describes in a few satirical touches, yet without expressing his opinion openly: he tells the people enough to set them all thinking and guessing; but in order to hurt nobody, he wraps his witty oracular judgments in a transparent veil, or rather in a lurid thundercloud, shooting forth bright sparks of wit, that they may fall in the powder-magazine of the ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... beauty, it is certain that he was deeply in love; and that might be sufficient to account for the marriage. It is equally certain, however, upon the concurring evidence of independent writers, that this connection had an oracular sanction—not to say, suggestion; a circumstance which was long remembered, and was afterwards noticed by the Christian ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... not an uncommon feature of your complaint," said the specialist. An oracular shake of the head conveyed ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... sent to consult the Delphic oracle, had got for his pains a very unsatisfactory reply, foreshadowing evils but not actually defining them. Lady Bellamy was in some way connected with the idea of an oracle in his mind. She looked oracular. Her dark face and inscrutable eyes, the stamp of power upon her brow, all suggested that she was a mistress of the black arts. Her words, too, were mysterious, and fraught with bitter wisdom and a deep knowledge distilled from ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... This oracular observation, which, from the relative forms of the two parties, descended as it were from above, was replied to by the captain with a ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... his throat, and rising slowly with all the dignity he could muster, looked gravely over his glasses at Houston in exact imitation of Mr. Blaisdell, and in an oracular ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... he became a Christian, could not, according to the testimony of Schoolcraft, be made to waver in his belief, that he was visited by spirits in the exhibitions connected with the tight-wound pyramidal, oracular lodge; but he believed they were evil spirits. No cross-questioning could bring out any other testimony. He avowed that, aside from his incantations, he had no part in the shaking of the lodge, never touching the poles at any time, and that the drumming, rattling, singing, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... their schools the sort of teaching that obtains in his classes, and their schools will suffer accordingly. His sort of teaching proclaims him either more or less than a human being in the estimation of normal people. Such a teacher drones forth weary platitudes as if his utterances were oracular. The only prerequisite for a position in some schools of education seems to be a degree of a certain altitude without any reference to ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... all the young and ardent men of his time,—and among others, the subject of the present article. Carlyle, however, does not seem to have profited much by the spoken discourses of the master; and in his "Life of Sterling" he gives an exceedingly graphic, cynical, and amusing account of the oracular meetings at Highgate, where the philosopher sat in his great easy-chair, surrounded by his disciples and devotees, uttering, amid floods of unintelligible, mystic eloquence, those radiant thoughts and startling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... of jealousy, my dear sir, against young members of ability," said Mr. Botcher, in his most oracular and impressive tones. "The competition amongst those—er—who have served the party is very keen for the positions you desired. I personally happen to know that the general had you on the Judiciary and Appropriations, and that some of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... expression 'the oracles,' [Greek: ta logia]) became afterwards extended, it was not then at all applied to doings as well as sayings," and that "there is no linguistic precedent for straining the expression, used at that period, to mean anything beyond a collection of sayings of Jesus, which were oracular or Divine." [124:4] To this Dr. Lightfoot replies that if the objection has any force it involves one or both of the two assumptions: "first, that books which were regarded as Scripture could not at this ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... way out of most things. But it costs something." Mrs. Bogardus was so concise in her speech as at times to be almost oracular. ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... have stood in the midst of human affairs," said the chair, with a very oracular enunciation, "I have constantly observed that Justice, Truth, and Love are the chief ingredients of ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... card on a chair, begged her to make use of him, et cetera; he then, recalling the oracular prescription, said, "Do me the favor to apply to me for any little sum you have a use for, and, in return, I will beg of you (if it does not bore you too much) to make me acquainted with any little troubles you may have encountered in the course of ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... being the Sibyl of Cumae, who offered King Tarquin of Rome nine books for sale, which he refused on account of the exorbitant sum asked for them, and again refused after she had burnt three of them, and in the end paid what was originally asked for the three remaining, which he found to contain oracular utterances bearing on the worship of the gods and the policy of Rome. These, after being entrusted to keepers, were afterwards burned, and the contents replaced by a commission appointed to collect them in the countries around, to share the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... from the oracular platform and go down through my own chosen underbrush for haphazard adventure. I renounce the platform. Whatever it may be that I find, pawpaw or may-apple or spray of willow, if you do not want it, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... Storm is abroad in the mountains! He fills The crouch'd hollows and all the oracular hills With dread voices of power. A roused million or more Of wild echoes reluctantly rise from their hoar Immemorial ambush, and roll in the wake Of the cloud, whose reflection leaves vivid the lake. And the wind, that wild robber, for plunder descends ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... after perusing the Cogitata et Visa, one of the most precious of those scattered leaves out of which the great oracular volume was afterward made up, acknowledged that "in all proposals and plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master workman"; and that "it could not be gainsaid but all the treatise over did abound ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... been fatal to betray alarm, or to attempt flight. As accident had thus brought him, as it might be on a visit, to the spot, he at once determined to give his arrival the character of a friendly call, and the better to support the pretension, to blend with it, if possible, a little of the oracular, or "medicine" manner, in order to impose on the imaginations of the superstitious beings into whose power he ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... took on the sway of elemental integrity and candor. Absolutely honest, this man was unafraid and unashamed, for Nature has neither apprehension, shame nor vainglory. In "Leaves of Grass" Whitman speaks as all men have ever spoken who believe in God and in themselves—oracular, without apology or abasement—fearlessly. He tells of the powers and mysteries that pervade and guide all life, all death, all purpose. His work is masculine, as the sun is masculine; for the Prophetic Voice is as surely masculine ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... moralist is indulging in these vivacities, he can be imagined as receiving a message from Mr. Boswell or Mrs. Thrale flashed through the depths of the ocean, we can suppose he might be tempted to indulge in another oracular utterance, something like this:—-A wise man recognizes the convenience of a general statement, but he bows to the authority of a particular fact. He who would bound the possibilities of human knowledge by the limitations of present acquirements would take the dimensions ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... come more decided condemnations of the course of Austria than from the Russian capital. The language of the St. Petersburg journals touching the Treaties of Vienna has been absolutely contemptuous; and that language is all the more oracular and significant because we know that the editors of those journals must have been inspired by the government. It has been justly regarded as expressing the views of the Czar, and of the statesmen who compose his cabinet. Though not disposed for war, and probably sincerely desirous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Holmes, was an illustration of his way of thinking. 'He would lose his place just as his mind would drop its thought and pick up another, twentieth cousin or no relation at all to it.' The same manner, whether we liken it to mosaic or to kaleidoscope, marks his writing. It makes him hard to follow, oracular, and enigmatical. 'Can you tell me,' asked one of his neighbour, while Emerson was lecturing, 'what connection there is between that last sentence and the one that went before, and what connection it all has with Plato?' 'None, my friend, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... He did not carry the analysis any farther, however; he did not ask why Helen was not intolerant, nor ask whether even intolerance may not sometimes be more tolerable than indifference. And in spite of his unpleasant irritation at finding this "average" woman not overawed by his oracular utterances, nor easily beaten in a controversy, Albert had a respect for her deeper than ever. There was something in her anger at Westcott that for a moment had seemed finer than anything he had seen in the self-possessed Miss Minorkey. But then she was so weak as to allow her intellectual ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... see," said he, assuming an oracular tone of voice, "throwing a wine-glass, with or without wine, in a man's face is merely, as you may observe, a mark of denial and displeasure at some observation he may have made,—not in any wise intended to injure him, further than in the wound to his honor at being ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... These oracular verses, pronounced by Bampfylde with all the enthusiasm of one who was inspired, had the desired effect upon our wise man; and he left the presence of the king of the gipsies with a prodigiously high opinion ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... between Copenhagen and the British fleet might ultimately have been, is therefore altogether uncertain. THE BOMBARDMENT OF COPENHAGEN BY NELSON, as it is generally styled, is therefore, like most other oracular phrases of the day, a mere combination of words, without the ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... Lake—not one word about a migration to the metropolis of the Mormons. Su-wa-nee's speech, on the other hand, clearly alluded to this place as the goal of the squatter's journey! How her information could have been obtained, or whence derived, was a mystery; and, though loth to regard it as oracular, I could not divest myself of a certain degree of conviction that her words were true. The mind, ever prone to give assent to information conveyed by hints and innuendos, too often magnifies this gipsy knowledge; and dwells ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... thought was broken into by a sudden exclamation from farther back in the wagon. A large black face appeared at the aperture under the front wagon bow, and the owner of it spoke with a certain oracular vigour. ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... minutes later, he held out his hand to me, and we entered into a conversation which lasted until Griffiths gave me a hint that Turner had business to transact which I must leave him to. He gave me a hearty handshake, and in his oracular way said, "Hmph—(nod) if you come to England again—hmph (nod)—hmph (nod)," and another hand-shake with more cordiality and a nod for good-by. I never saw a keener eye than his, and the way that he held himself up, so straight that he seemed almost to lean backwards, with his forehead thrown ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... not discouraging, to witness travellers, who have rushed through India in a winter tour, publish volumes of their misconceptions and ill-digested theories about the people with an oracular emphasis which is equalled only ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... been predetermined, and this is further confirmed by numerous statements, publicly made by Volksraad members, and also by President Steyn's famous and now historic message to President Krueger some short time before, in the laconic and oracular words, "We ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... me Of the long plunge and welter of the sea; Likewise you are Oracular Of its low melody. You voice its laughing moods, Its lyric interludes, Its secrecies, its sorceries, its mysteries, Its tragic histories. Aye, all that it has breathed, may breathe, shall breathe, You ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... friendship, I repeat, there are very necessary demands upon your patience, your charity, and your constancy. "The only way to have a friend is to be one," issues from the oracular lips of the Concord seer. "Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them, or bear with them," is an appeal which has been handed down the ages from the wisdom of that great ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... neither sees nor thinks," was Malcolm Sage's oracular retort, and he went over to the window and ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... civilization, and I reflected upon the subject. Being in a great assembly, once or twice, listening to abolitionist orators, lay and clerical, and hearing their vile assaults on personal character, their vulgar and reckless ridicule of fifteen States of our Union, their affected, oracular way of saying the most trite things as though they were aphorisms, but reminding me of the piles of short stuff which you see round a saw-mill, and hearing the great throng applaud and shout, I asked myself whether we have really made any decided advances ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... they will have one when they are ill. If that is all, I do not think there is anything in it. I should not like to work even if I were a man, but a woman——! that gets no money, that is mal vu. If that is all! Work," she said, with a little oracular air, "takes up all your time, and the money that one can earn is so small. A girl avoids saying much to men who are like this. She knows how little they can have to offer her; and to work herself, why, it is impossible. What time would ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... yeoman was not quite so natural as he may have been at an earlier period. The simplicity of his character has probably suffered by his detecting the impression he makes on those around him. There is a circle, I suppose, who look up to him as an oracle, and so he inevitably assumes the oracular manner, and speaks as if truth and wisdom were attiring themselves by his voice. Mr. Emerson has risked the doing him much mischief by putting him in print,—a trial few persons can sustain without losing their unconsciousness. But, after all, a man gifted ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... an unwavering voice. As eternal aspects of the complex vision, both conscience and the aesthetic sense, when their power is exercised in harmony with all the other aspects of the soul, indicate with an oracular clearness that the possessive instinct ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... the influence which the work of Marco Polo had over the mind of Columbus, gives it particular interest and importance. It was evidently an oracular work with him. He frequently quotes it, and on his voyages, supposing himself to be on the Asiatic coast, he is continually endeavoring to discover the islands and main-lands described in it, and ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... not intend," said Mr. Milburgh in his best oracular manner, "describing all the events which preceded the death of the late Thornton Lyne. Nor will I go to any length to deal with his well-known and even notorious character. He was not a good employer; he was suspicious, ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... eclipse total. May this also prove but a trial and a shadow of affliction! which affliction, may it prove to you, mighty incorporations, what, sometimes, it is to us, poor, frail homunculi—a process of purification, a solemn and oracular warning! And, when that cloud is overpast, then, rise, ancient powers, wiser and better—ready, like the lampudephoroi of old, to enter upon a second stadium, and to transmit the sacred torch through a second period of twice [Footnote: Oxford ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... all afore you,' said the farmer,—leaving the lover to draw what lesson he might from this oracular proposition. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... precipitate eloquence produced an unusual language [in the theater]: and the sentiments [of the chorus, then] expert in teaching useful things and prescient of futurity, differ hardly from the oracular Delphi. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... only stand, like the High Priest of the Delphic oracle, before the gates of his inner life, to note down such fragmentary utterances as 'foamed up from the depths of that divine chaos.' for the benefit of inquiring minds with a preference for the oracular. He added that cosmos was a condition of grovelling minds, and that while the thoughts, faculties, and emotions of an ordinary member of society might fitly be summed up in the epithet 'microcosm.' his own nature could be appropriately described only by that of 'microchaos.' In which opinion ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... of this very event. Instantly the lights went out and a panic ensued, everyone getting into the street somehow or other. I found myself there side by side with my neighbor, who informed me in an oracular manner that he had expected this ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... his little circle of the "great unwashed," is very oracular, and his infallibility a dogma with his followers and readers. How much he himself and his vulgar trash of prose run mad, stand in need of that wholesome reform which some of his English brother-firebrands have been taught ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... there were in circulation a number of forged Sibylline oracles; some of these were the product of the Jewish Therapeutae, others of Christians. In his hatred of Christianity, the Emperor Julian ordered search to be made for these fictitious oracular books, that they might be destroyed. In 363 the Temple of the Palatine Apollo caught fire and was destroyed. The Christians charged Julian with having caused the fire so as to get rid of the Sibylline ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... resumed Vladimir, "never contradicts his own character? In Russia the duties of my position oblige me to be reserved, secret, enveloped in mystery from head to foot, a great pontiff of science, speaking but in brief sentences and in an oracular tone; but here I am not obliged to play my role, and by a natural reaction, finding myself alone in the woods with a man of sense and heart, my tongue unloosens like a magpie's. Let us see; if I tell you my history do you promise to ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... voluntary proposal, but they had not the desired effect. Abolitionist enthusiasm was rare among the great nobles, and those who really wished to see serfage abolished considered the Imperial utterance too vague and oracular to justify them in taking the initiative. As no further steps were taken for some time, the excitement caused by the incident soon subsided, and many people assumed that the consideration of the problem had been indefinitely postponed. "The Government," ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... impetuous eagerness, so creditable to her heart, he replies with the oracular solemnity by which caution can ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... for some time, gazing with gloomy eyes into the fire. Finally he said, speaking in an oracular manner, yet brokenly as he always did, for the English tongue was hard to him: "Jonas Harding not friend to Injin; Injin not friend to him. You friend to Crow Wing. You fight Crow Wing; fight 'um fair; when foot well we fight ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... Sloan tells us, also, that the Indians employ tobacco in all their enchantments, sorceries, and fortune-tellings; that their priests intoxicate themselves with the fumes, and in their ecstacies give forth ambiguous and oracular responses.[22] ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... black hat of ordinary wear, a great golden crown sparkling with diamonds and rubies. The many clergy stood about him in the little temple, or beyond the door, for there was not room for all, with them some hundred monks, and the multifarious populace. The service was read in hollow, oracular tones, and every now and then a storm of glorious bass voices broke forth in response. Evidently the Ikon of the Virgin named Izbavelnitsa was being thanked for her protection of the Tsar in a storm. So much ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... newes-monger; and his owne genius is his intelligencer. His mint goes weekely, and he coines monie by it. Howsoeuer, the more intelligent merchants doe jeere him, the vulgar doe admire him, holding his novels oracular: and these are usually sent for tokens or intermissiue curtsies betwixt city and countrey. Hee holds most constantly one forme or method of discourse. He retaines some militarie words of art, which hee shootes at randome; no matter where they hitt, they cannot wound any. He ever leaves some passages ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... foreign diplomats the speedy reunion and restoration of the Union as it was, notwithstanding the Proclamation, still considered by the Secretary of State as being a waste of paper. How far the foreign diplomats believe the like oracular decisions, is another question; certain it is that they ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... can prophesy With a wink of his eye, Peep with security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humor proclivity For a nativity. With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he Makes a reduction on taking a quantity! Oh! If any one anything lacks, He'll find it all ready in stacks, If he'll only look in On the resident Djinn, ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... at all gave a quiet dignity to his tone, and an involuntary sigh that accompanied his words was not lost upon Miss Joliffe. To her this speech seemed oracular and ominous; there was a sepulchral mystery in so vague an expression. He might have to take a holiday. What could this mean? Was this poor young man completely broken by the loss of his friend Mr Sharnall, or was he conscious of the seeds of some fell disease ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... think I stand in great awe of Sister Jane; and so I do, for though she is two years younger than I, unmarried, and, candidly, not a bit wiser, she is one of those oracular persons who, unlike Mr. Toots, not only fancy that what they say and do is of the utmost consequence, but contrive to make other people ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... them all pieces of wood inscribed with letters of the earliest style leaped from the rock. The place where this phenomenon occurred was thus proved divine, the cult of Fortuna Primigenia was established beyond peradventure, and her oracular replies to those who sought her shrine were transmitted by means of these lettered blocks.[103] This story accounts for a cave in which the lots (sortes) were to ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... of Nicomachus, who was of the school of Secundus, the doctor of the new Pythagoreans? Not feel the presence in Sicca of Polemo, the most celebrated, the most intolerable of men? That, however, is not his title, but the 'godlike,' or the 'oracular,' or the 'portentous,' or something else as impressive. Every one goes to him. He is the rage. I should not have a chance of success if I could not say that I had attended his lectures; though I'd be bound our little Firmian here would deliver as good. He's the very cariophyllus of human ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... dubious; indecisive; unsettled, undecided, undetermined; in suspense, open to discussion; controvertible; in question &c (inquiry) 461. vague; indeterminate, indefinite; ambiguous, equivocal; undefined, undefinable; confused &c (indistinct) 447; mystic, oracular; dazed. perplexing &c v.; enigmatic, paradoxical, apocryphal, problematical, hypothetical; experimental &c 463. unpredictable, unforeseeable (unknowable) 519. fallible, questionable, precarious, slippery, ticklish, debatable, disputable; unreliable, untrustworthy. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... reads a hymn, and, in connection with it, begins an address in a very oracular style, and with very solemn pauses. A hint is given him not to proceed. They sing. Mr. Hatfield delivers an appropriate address. A coloured minister prays, sometimes using the first person singular, and sometimes the first person plural; ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... remaining chapters might indifferently be reversed or transposed. The obscure passages is often affected, brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio; the desire of expressing perhaps a common idea with sententious and oracular brevity: alas! how fatal has been the imitation of Montesquieu! But this obscurity sometimes proceeds from a mixture of light and darkness in the author's mind; from a partial ray which strikes upon an angle, instead of spreading itself over the surface of an ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... and of everybody connected with them, broad arguments can no doubt be found in the files of the journal made famous by the pencil of Nast. But a convention may not deem itself a chartered libertine of oracular and pedantic conceits." ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... sentiments in a quietly oracular manner, Bounce again patted March on the head, as if he had been a large baby or a favourite dog, and, rising up, proceeded to kindle a small fire, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... have scarce known again; a sprightly young fellow, with whom I have spent many a jolly hour; but being just dubbed a graduate in physic, he has gained such an entire conquest over the risible muscles, that he hardly vouchsafes at any time to smile. I have heard him harangue, with all the oracular importance of a veteran, on the possibility of Canning's subsisting for a whole month on a few bits of bread; and he is now preparing a treatise, in which he will set forth a new and infallible method to prevent the spreading ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... mystified at this oracular information, and gazed rather curiously at Dahlia as she came near, before he dropped his eyes ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... tyranny of art. And if he now were to see some beautiful pale slave bound in these iron chains, and being exhibited for the amusement of an idle world, what would the fierce blood of the Macleods say to that debasement? He began to dislike this old man, with his cruel theories and his oracular speech. But he forbore to have further or any argument with him; for he remembered what the Highlanders call "the advice of the bell of Scoon"—"The thing that concerns you ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black |
