"Bewilder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his hand, its skill to try, Amid the chords bewilder'd laid, And back recoil'd, he knew not why, E'en at ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... unnatural under the circumstances. The truth is, the general effect of the schoolroom, with its scores of young girls, all their eyes naturally centring on him with fixed or furtive glances, was enough to bewilder and confuse a young man like Master Langdon, though he was not destitute of self-possession, as ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... other hand, Mr. Hastings believed that Dr. Arnold had saved the life of his son. He knew that life was in a very feeble, dangerous state even now, and he actually feared that Dr. Armitage occasionally drank brandy enough to bewilder his brain, and at such times perhaps was hardly to be trusted, and yet he could ...
— Three People • Pansy
... trouble, is "Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy," the most amusing and instructive medley of quotations and classical anecdotes I ever perused. But a superficial reader must take care, or his intricacies will bewilder him. If, however, he has patience to go through his volumes, he will be more improved for literary conversation than by the perusal of any twenty other works with which I am acquainted,—at ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... all notices and impressions from the outward world, to be thought upon, to be made subjects of patient reflection, to be brought by our own intellect and activity into their true connection with all our other thoughts. A great idea, without reflection, may dazzle and bewilder, may destroy the balance and proportion of the mind, and impel to dangerous excess. It is to awaken the free, earnest exertion of our powers, to rouse us from passiveness to activity and life, that inward inspirations, and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... themselves of the image of our working on schedule time or on guarantee of a maximum delivery; we are dependent on the humors of battle, on incalculable rushes and lapses, on violent outbreaks of energy which rage and pass and are expressly designed to bewilder. It is not for the poor wounded to oblige us by making us showy, but for us to let them count on our open arms and open lap as troubled children count on those of their mother. It is now to be said, moreover, that our opportunity of service threatens ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... thickly veiled. Turn round three times, and you don't know which trench to return to. It is an awkward predicament, and many a time I went blindly forward praying that it was in the right direction. The German's horn-rimmed glasses but bewilder him the more, and we have had several of them walk into our arms without intention, though they soon found that thereby they had bettered themselves. There was one young Bavarian officer who made this miscalculation. I saw him ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... me that the making of such holy things is one of the most blessed of good works.—Dear uncle," she said, after a pause, "they say that this deep gorge is haunted by evil spirits, who often waylay and bewilder the unwary, especially in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... quatrains, but he did mean to try to be civil. He then joined the party at breakfast; he admitted that he had slept ill, but, when asked by Blake, disclaimed having seen Eachain of the Hairy Arm, and did not bore or bewilder the ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... very tedious and wearisome to me: my head ached, and the glitter of lights and the sound of many voices seemed to bewilder me. Lesbia came up after dinner to ask if I were not well, I was so pale and quiet. We sat out on the balcony together in the starlight for a little while, until Mrs. Fullerton called Lesbia in. I would gladly have remained there alone, drinking in the freshness of ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... floating in the air are quite enough to bewilder one, to steep him in delicious reveries, to transport him to ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the scene of the robbery both men had dismounted and had examined the ground thoroughly. What they saw tended still more to bewilder them. Neither of them was a tenderfoot, and the little table at the summit of the long hill told a very tangled tale to those who had eyes to read. Obvious tracks took them at once to the spot where the bandit had stood in the bushes, but there was something ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... forget to wear all the Gardiner diamonds to-night, my dear," were the lady-mother's parting words. "Every one is expecting to see them on you. They are famous. You will create a sensation in them; you will bewilder, dazzle, and ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... figures utterly bewilder the visitor, who in courtesy runs his eye from top to bottom of the long columns—farming accounts are really the most complicated that can be imagined—so he, meantime, while turning over the pages, mentally absorbs the personality of the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... words from his serpent-like tongue As fairly bewilder both old men and young; He can make some believe that's black which is white, And others believe it is ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... parties still flourish? and do you continue to bewilder your company with your thousand faces running down through all the keys of idiotism (like Lloyd over his perpetual harpsicord), from the smile and the glimmer of half-sense and quarter-sense to the grin and hanging lip of Betty Foy's own Johnny? And does the face-dissolving ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... Adjective to help him to express his opinions: but, for all that, he is a great man. If you call him "the heroic defender of the national honour" one day, and "a brutal and licentious soldiery" the next, you naturally bewilder him, and he looks upon you with suspicion. There is nobody to speak for Thomas except people who have theories to work off on him, and nobody understands Thomas except Thomas, and he does not always know what ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... glare of false science betray'd, That leads, to bewilder; and dazzles, to blind; My thoughts want to roam, from shade onward to shade, Destruction before me, and sorrow behind. 'O! pity, great father of light!' then I cry'd, 'Thy creature, who fain would not wander from thee; Lo! humbled in dust, I relinquish my pride: From ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... stays long. Cities bewilder her with their crowded indifference—men hurrying hither and thither like ants in an ant-hill, heedless of the wide sky above, heedless of each other, heedless of everything except each the small burden he carries on his back. Always she turns ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... enough to follow without an effort. Children possess an unestimated sensibility to whatever is deep or high, in imagination or feeling, so long as it is simple, likewise. It is only the artificial and the complex that bewilder them. ...
— The Gorgon's Head - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you are,' said her mother. 'Why won't it do to continue as you are? No sooner have I learnt up your schemes, and got enough used to 'em to see something in 'em, than you must needs bewilder me again by starting some fresh one, so that my mind ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... making out the meaning of the whole, or of any part of it. All ambiguity being as great a fault of stile in such compositions, as in writing. It is even harder to be repaired; for a false expression in the motions, gestures, or looks, may confuse and bewilder the spectator so as that he will not easily recover the clue or thread of the ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... our father oft has told us: The ways of Heav'n are dark and intricate, Puzzled in mazes, and perplex'd with errors; Our understanding traces them in vain, Lost and bewilder'd in the fruitless search; Nor sees with how much art the windings run, Nor where ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... and illustrates it by pronouns. But what do they mean by "their substantives," or "their nouns?" As applicable to pronouns, the phrase should mean nouns antecedent; as applicable to adjectives, it should mean nouns subsequent. Both these rules are therefore false, and fit only to bewilder; and the examples to both are totally inapplicable. Murray's was once essentially right, but he afterwards corrupted it, and a multitude of his admirers have since copied the perversion. It formerly ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... came up from their part of the town to fetch me a ride, which was a great kindness on their part, and an honor, pleasure, and profit to me. God bless you, dear. I feel, as Margery says, "in a kind of bewilder," but ever yours, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... you bewilder me," exclaimed Dan. "Why should you go; why should we not all join forces, hunt for the treasure together, if there is a treasure; ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... Entertainment of his Guest, and think himself happy in such an Occasion of approving his Generosity and Respect: He would the next Morning abandon his Spade, and chearfully trot ten Miles to shew such bewilder'd Gentleman the right Road. He is naturally civil, generous, and hospitable, (for scarce a Night passeth that poor Travellers are not entertained in his Cottage,) extremely respectful to his Superiors, and to his Lord and ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... "You bewilder me a little," she said. "You make me feel as if I were in a high wind. You did when we were at school, I remember. Well, don't bother to thank me for having got up this party." She added this a ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... dreamlike and mysterious impression left by a ballad of Coleridge's or a story of Tieck's, but rather, as in Shelley's case, from the dizzy splendour and excitement of the diction. His verse, like Shelley's, is full of foam and flame, and the result upon the reader is to bewilder and exhaust. He does not describe in pictures, like Rossetti and Morris, but by metaphors, comparisons, and hyperboles. Take the following very typical passage—the portrait of Iseult ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... had gathered in the drawing-room early before the arrival of the three guests. Each maid sat in a large chair and gazed about her from side to side. The riot of color, the scarlets and oranges, the tawny browns, pale pinks and delicate yellows seemed to bewilder them. ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... lecture intended for beginners the teacher should seek to arouse in his hearers an interest in the subject and the desire to plunge more deeply into it. He should not bewilder the student with too many details and digressions but present the broad outlines of the field, placing before him the essentials and leaving him to fill in the minutiae by a study of the books ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... bewilder the spectator hopelessly unless he has been warned against it or is naturally free from it. In the old-fashioned orders of creation, the supernatural personages are invariably conceived as greater than man, for good ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... gained to it, another scheme was added to the first. This was to profit by the disorder in which the Spanish Low Countries were thrown, and to make them revolt against the Imperialists at the very moment when the affair of Scotland would bewilder the allies, and deprive them of all support from England. Bergheyck, a man well acquainted with the state of those countries, was consulted, and thought the scheme good. He and the Duc de Vendome conferred upon it ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... anthropology is to realize its programme. Hitherto, the trouble with anthropologists has been to see the wood for the trees. Even whilst attending mainly to the peoples of rude culture, they have heaped together facts enough to bewilder both themselves and their readers. The time has come to do some sorting; or rather the sorting is doing itself. All manner of groups of special students, interested in some particular side of human history, come now-a-days to the anthropologist, asking leave to borrow from his stock of facts the ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... it utters! The official acclaim of every group or authority in the State again swell the one great, constant, triumphant adulatory hymn which, with its insistence, unanimity and violent sonorities, tends to bewilder all minds, deaden consciences and pervert ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... only of the wonderful feats of Elizabeth Okey. Jane was not quite so clever; but she nevertheless managed to bewilder the learned men almost as much as her sister. A magnetised sovereign having been placed on the floor, Jane, then in the state of delirium, was directed to stoop and pick it up. She stooped, and having raised it about three inches, was fixed in a sound sleep in that constrained position. Dr. Elliotson ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... observed, the Austrians gave themselves infinite trouble and encountered grave risks in order to compass a junction of forces which they might quietly have effected at the outset. Despite all Bonaparte's lessons, the Aulic Council still clung to its old plan of enveloping the foe and seeking to bewilder them by attacks delivered from different sides. Possibly also they were emboldened by the comparative smallness of Bonaparte's numbers to ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... clouds already closing in upon me, The voyage balk'd, the course disputed, lost, I yield my ships to Thee My hands, my limbs grow nerveless, My brain feels rack'd, bewilder'd; Let the old timbers part, I will not part, I will cling fast to Thee, O God, though the waves buffet me, Thee, Thee ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... bringing with it a quality of eternal childhood, of quaint, half-forgotten dreams—his face was very expressive. So much so, that Sheila, embarrassed, went back almost abruptly to Jim. Her smile was left to bewilder Dickie. He began to describe it to himself. And this was the first time a woman had stirred that mysterious ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... his is as tender as a baby's, and he is snuffed out by a blow that would hardly bewilder for a moment any other forest animal, unless it be the skunk, another sluggish non-combatant of our woodlands. Immunity from foes, from effort, from struggle is always purchased with ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... follows: "What is this that you do, men of Sparta! Do you not know that the Senate always treats those who appear before it in a kindly and reasonable manner, but the people are always full of pride and ambition? If you say that you have plenary powers, they will bewilder you by their violence and force great concessions from you. So come, cease this folly, if you wish to negotiate with the Athenians in a moderate way, and not to be forced into conceding points against your will. Discuss all the points at issue, but do not say that you have full power ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... farther end of the causeway, I found my men couched, like black statues, behind the slight earthwork there constructed. I expected that my proposed immersion would rather bewilder them, but knew that they would say nothing, as usual. As for the lieutenant on that post, he was a steady, matter-of-fact, perfectly disciplined Englishman, who wore a Crimean medal, and never asked a superfluous ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... which in some respects is distinctive. To place such a school in this or that category would of course do violence to the classification, while to form a new class only serves to further complicate and bewilder. Again, various of the institutions mentioned may offer such a differentiated schedule or be made up of so many parallel departments as to entitle them to admission into two or more ...
— The Condition and Tendencies of Technical Education in Germany • Arthur Henry Chamberlain
... raised his head; his dreadful eyes Glared, and he shook on high his menacing spear, And shouted: Rustum!—Sohrab heard that shout, And shrank amazed; back he recoil'd one step, And scann'd with blinking eyes the advancing form; And then he stood bewilder'd; and he dropp'd His covering shield, and the spear pierced his side. He reel'd, and staggering back, sank to the ground; And then the gloom dispersed, and the wind fell, And the bright sun broke forth, and melted all The ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... it is that each should guard his lips, chasten his pen, and aspire to simplicity of speech. No more perversion of sense, circumlocution, reticence, tergiversation! these things serve only to complicate and bewilder. Be men; speak the speech of honor. An hour of plain-dealing does more for the salvation of the ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... the settlers, from behind their intrenchments, were prompt in returning the fire of their assailants. The effect upon persons who had never been brought in collision with Indians would have been to bewilder and terrify them. It is very probable that such was one of the principal objects of the Apaches in making their attack as they did; but it failed utterly in that respect. Carefully avoiding any exposure of themselves, they popped away right and left, the reports ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... to learn many things, and then, after having begun them, abandoned them. Thus, in arithmetic, during the few months that he studied it, he made so much progress, that, by continually suggesting doubts and difficulties to the master who was teaching him, he would very often bewilder him. He gave some little attention to music, and quickly resolved to learn to play the lyre, as one who had by nature a spirit most lofty and full of refinement: wherefore he sang divinely to that instrument, improvising upon it. Nevertheless, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... was requested by a brother clergyman to go with him to visit the prisoner. They found him quite stupid—unmovable by all that could be urged, or rather perhaps the style of the address, as it was described to me, was fitted to confound and bewilder the man rather than enlighten him. In the midst of all this Mr. Carleton came in—he was just then on the wing for America, and he had heard of the poor creature's condition in a visit to his father. He came,—my informant said,—like a being of a different ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... have time allowed it to assume the proportions and the dignity of revolution, in other words, of a rebellion too powerful to be crushed. The secret friends of the Secession treason in the Free States have done their best to bewilder the public mind and to give factitious prestige to a conspiracy against free government and civilization by talking about the right of revolution, as if it were some acknowledged principle of the Law of Nations. There ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... Mrs. Danvers feebly, feeling quite unequal to cope with the gravity of the situation, "I wish you both would not quarrel like this, Hilary; you talk so fast that you bewilder me. Now, Miss Carson, it is your turn to speak. I am quite sure that you can explain everything if you will. You are too young, and—and far too nice a girl to be a burglar, and if you will only tell ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... wings, or else a balloon!" cried Servadac, as he gazed around him; and then, looking down to the rock upon which they were standing, he added, "We seem to have been transplanted to a soil strange enough in its chemical character to bewilder the savants at ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... in luxuriant bloom, and a thousand other evergreens, on shore, vie with voluptuous aquatic flowers to bewilder and delight the astonished traveller, accustomed hitherto only to the more unassuming productions of the sober north. Everything here was new, strange, and solemn. The gigantic trees, encircled by enormous ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... with all this confounded nonsense!" exclaimed Henry passionately. "Do you imagine I will allow Lady Juliana to stand here all day, to answer all the absurd questions that come into the heads of three old women? You stupefy and bewilder her with your eternal tattling and roundabout harangues." And he paced the room in a paroxysm of rage, while his wife suspended her dancing, and stood in ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... 21, 23.] Since he did not put his faith in God a whit more, he set himself eagerly to contend against the Apostles, in order that he himself might seem to be a wonderful being, and studied with still greater zeal the whole range of magic art, that he might the better bewilder the multitude of men. Such was his procedure in the reign of Claudius Caesar, by whom also he is said to have been honored with a statue on account of his magic. This man, then, was glorified by many as a god, and he taught that it was he himself who appeared among the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... of an hour, his alert eyes missed few features of the abounding life of the Great White Way. As it happened, a stranger in New York could not have entered the city's main thoroughfare at any point better calculated to bewilder and astound than the very corner where Curtis had picked up the cab. On both sides, from the level of the street to a height often measurable in hundreds of feet, nearly every building blazed with electric signs. Many of the devices seemed to be alive. Horses galloped, either in Roman stadium ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... I shall find Her among my girl-friends: among their rustling garments I shall hear Her garments rustle; and from among the laughing eyes with which they bewilder me, I shall no doubt be ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... side, shall be among that flock, whom He who is at once Lamb and Shepherd, our Brother and our Lord, our Sacrifice and King, 'shall feed and lead by living fountains of waters,' in the sweet pastures of the upper world, where there are no ravening wolves, nor false guides to terrify and bewilder His flock any ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... of nature especially haunted him. He never heard the wind now without thinking of lost whispers from the voice of God that had strayed down upon the world to sweeten and bewilder the hearts of men—whispers a-search for listeners simple enough to understand. And when their walks took them as far as the sea, the dirge of the waves troubled his soul with a kind of distressing ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... set at nought the word of God, and think only of their own temporal interests; ay, and who learned Gitano—their own Gitano—from the lips of the London Caloro, and also songs in the said Gitano, very fit to dumbfounder your semi-Buddhist priests when they attempt to bewilder people's minds with their school-logic and pseudo-ecclesiastical nonsense, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... in everything he did or said. He is one to astonish drawing-rooms and bewilder promenades by the taste and elegance of his dress. Upon that altar, doubtless, he sacrificed his principles; but the sacrifice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... him, in expounding which he likened the colonies to Ireland, and to Scotland before the union. Many sentences to the same purport occur in his writings; for example: "These writers against the colonies all bewilder themselves by supposing the colonies within the realm, which is not the case, nor ever was." "If an Englishman goes into a foreign country, he is subject to the laws and government he finds there. If he finds no government or laws there, he is subject there to none, till he and his companions, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... Reader, you, John Murray, Have published "Anjou's Margaret,"[66] Which won't be sold off in a hurry (At least, it has not been as yet); And then, still further to bewilder him, Without remorse, you set up "Ilderim;"[67] So mind you don't get into debt,— Because—as how—if you should fail, These books would be but baddish bail. And mind you do not let escape These ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... in relation to the limited and imperfect knowledge of man. But the misery is, that men write about freewill without a single meditation on will absolutely; on the idea [Greek: katt' exochaen] without any idea; and so bewilder themselves in the jungle of alien conceptions; and to understand the truth they ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... religion, in its ultimate phase, would be simply the eloquence of physics. It would not, in that case, be a moral inspiration at all, except as contemplation and the sense of one's nothingness might occasionally silence the passions and for a moment bewilder the mind. On recovering from this impression, however, men would find themselves enriched with no self-knowledge, armed with no precepts, and stimulated by no ideal. They would be reduced to enacting their incidental impulses, as the animals are, quite as if they had never perceived ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... face, I say, Though my eyes you dazzle blind Greater dazzled is my mind. So, my Autumn, let me kneel At your feet and worship you! Be my sweetheart; let me feel Your caress; and tell me too Why your smiles bewilder me— Glancing into laughter, then Trancing into calm again, Till your meaning drowning lies In the dim depths of your eyes. Let me see the things you see Down the depths of mystery! Blow aside the hazy veil From the daylight ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... the outset $400 or $500, and last for an indefinite period. If this is true, it is unquestionably the greatest discovery of modern times, and will produce a change in affairs of all sorts so profound and extensive as to surpass and bewilder the mind which seeks to imagine it. When with a pail of water you can without expense light and heat your house; when coal mines are useless, and steamships draw their fuel from the waves they traverse; then the comforts and luxuries of life, and the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... march from the beginning,' and he has many flattering things to say about her teacher. I think he is inclined to exaggerate; at all events, his language is too glowing, and simple facts are set forth in such a manner that they bewilder one. Doubtless the work of the past few months does seem like a triumphal march to him; but then people seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... system of conventions and discussions in which every resolution is subject to criticism, changes could be more readily effected. But as their meetings are now conducted, a motion to amend a resolution would throw the platform into the wildest confusion and hopelessly bewilder the chairman. We saw this experiment made at the great demonstration in St. James' Hall the night before Mr. Mason's bill was to be acted on in the House of Commons. For its effect on their champions some were desirous that a resolution should be ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... we took up our station in the main street to see it pass, when he squeezed himself into a front place, elaborately renovated; threw back his little coat, to show a broad-barred velvet waistcoat, sprinkled all over with stars; then adjusted himself and his cane so as utterly to bewilder and transfix the Friar, when ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... is another possibility which observation has never detected and which science is powerless to disprove. Can we be sure that no malign spiritual influences hinder and bewilder? We cannot be sure. The common belief of nearly all peoples ought not to be rudely brushed aside. No one willingly believes in lies nor clings to them when he knows that they are lies. Superstitions always have some element of ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... from the fleshless and skeleton perfection of the problemed forms, which start at your slightest touch from the formal squares of the chess board,—forms which confuse me with their complexity, bewilder me in the mazes of their ceaseless combinations, dazzle me with their chill erudition, and appal me with want of life,—and smile acceptance on the glowing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... youth its nurture owes, Was care for due refection and repose Bestow'd the stranger-guest? Or waits he grieved, His age not honour'd, nor his wants relieved? Promiscuous grace on all the queen confers (In woes bewilder'd, oft the wisest errs). The wordy vagrant to the dole aspires, And modest worth ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... Committee. I was not long in it, before I began to wish for a hole to creep out at! I could not find words to satisfy either the Committee or myself. I was subjected to the cross-examination of eight or ten barristers, purposely, as far as possible, to bewilder me. Some member of the Committee asked if I was a foreigner, and another hinted that I was mad. But I put up with every rebuff, and went on with my plans, determined not ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... Perceptive once, he's Apperceptive now! Here sits Mentality (that erst was Mind), By correlated Entities defin'd: Here Monads lone Duality express In bright Immediacy of Consciousness: O who shall say what Obstacles deter The Youth who'd fain commence Philosopher! The painful Public with bewilder'd Brain For Metaphysic pants, but pants in vain: Too hard the Names, too weighty far the Load: Language forbids, and Br-dl-y blocks the Road. From Themes like these I willingly depart, And pass (discursive) to the Realms of Art. Ye Muses ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... edify or bewilder; I build because I am a builder. Crescent and street and square I build, Plaster and paint and carve and gild. Around the city see them stand, These triumphs of my shaping hand, With bulging walls, with sinking floors, With shut, impracticable doors, Fickle and frail in every part, ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that sort was always happening—something in each country to bewilder her afresh, and to make it necessary for her husband to remind her of the proprieties. In France, a cousin of van Tuiver's had married a marquis, and they had visited the chateau. The family was Catholic, of the very oldest and strictest, and the brother-in-law, a prelate of high degree, ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... that it would be better to make a wide circuit and avoid the place, and to march directly upon Valencia and give battle to the Duke of Arcos under its walls. Peterborough, however, simply told them to wait and see what would come of it, and in the mean time he continued to bewilder his foes by ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... twenty pounds for the letters of Mrs. Matthew Haygarth. It appears to me that G. must be looking for an heir on the Haygarth side of the house; and if so, rely upon it he has his reasons. Don't bewilder yourself by trying to theorize, but get to the bottom of ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... himself even more than usually Sibylline: fragments of all sorts; scraps of regular Memoir, College-Exercises, Programs, Professional Testimoniums, Milkscores, torn Billets, sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast; all blown together as if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the sane Historian. To combine any picture of these University, and the subsequent, years; much more, to decipher therein any illustrative primordial elements of the Clothes-Philosophy, becomes such a problem ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Deane—and often have I thought of you, Elizabeth!" he answered; "and it was in consequence of the ring you gave me that I discovered your name. But sit down, and I will tell you by degrees what has occurred. If I was to give the history all at once, I have so many things to say that I should bewilder you. But I also want to learn about you—how you came here, and your adventures; for it seems strange that you have been brought out to this lonely island, to ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... his destiny," bent on confirming his judgment by the blindness of their worship. His rank and fame, the glittering splendour of his verse, the romance of his travels, his picturesque melancholy and affectation of mysterious secrets, combined with the magic of his presence to bewitch and bewilder them. The dissenting malcontents, condemned as prudes and blues, had their revenge. Generally, we may say that women who had not written books adored Byron; women who had written or were writing books distrusted, disliked, and made him a moral to adorn ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... search of a footstool, to make me hold her fan, to overwhelm me with questions and bewilder me with a thousand coquetries, were the immediate proceedings of Madame de Marignan. A consummate tactician, she succeeded, before a quarter of an hour had gone by, in putting me at my ease, and in drawing from me everything that I had to tell—all ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... she cried, lifting her hand to stop his passionate pleading. "You bewilder me; you take my breath away! Give me time; let me think; my head ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... were on a voyage, would you bewilder yourself by considering whether the rudder is to be drawn inwards or outwards, or do you leave that to the pilot, ...
— Alcibiades I • (may be spurious) Plato
... her letter. Jeff rubbed his fingers before he touched the delicate and perfumed missive. Its delicacy seemed to bewilder him. He said: in a rough but kindly way: "Hope to die if I don't," and passed it on to Gaspe Toujours, who did not find it necessary to speak. His comrade had answered for him. Late Carscallen held it inquisitively for a moment, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the Himalayas. To describe them all would bewilder the reader; I will, therefore, content myself with brief descriptions of four species, each of which is to be seen daily in every hill station of ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... bewilder me thus, Miriam!" exclaimed Hilda, who had not forborne to express, by look and gesture, the anguish which this interview inflicted on her. "If I were one of God's angels, with a nature incapable of stain, and garments that never could be spotted, I would keep ever at your side, and ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... such words, they bewilder me; I have been culpable in trying to serve you, without calculating the extent of what I was doing. I love you in reality, as a tender friend; and as a friend, I am grateful for your delicate attentions—but, alas!—alas! you will never find ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Berline. Huge leathern vehicle;—huge Argosy, let us say, or Acapulco-ship; with its heavy stern-boat of Chaise-and-pair; with its three yellow Pilot-boats of mounted Bodyguard Couriers, rocking aimless round it and ahead of it, to bewilder, not to guide! It lumbers along, lurchingly with stress, at a snail's pace; noted of all the world. The Bodyguard Couriers, in their yellow liveries, go prancing and clattering; loyal but stupid; unacquainted with all things. ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Some maintained that they were dissolved in vats of hydrofluoric acid. Others argued that they were encased in cement, then taken out to sea in speedboats on moonless nights and jettisoned. The favorite rumor was that the entire firm was a decoy to bewilder agents of foreign powers and pre-empt their espionage efforts. There was neither proof of this nor evidence to ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... British institutions that it is hard to make clear what it means. Civilisation is a word which, with us, is often misused and often misunderstood. Sometimes we lightly identify it with motor cars and gramophones and other Western contrivances with which individual traders and travellers dazzle and bewilder the untutored savage. Yet we are seldom tempted to identify it, like the Germans, with anything narrowly national; and in our serious moments we recognise that it is too universal a force to be the appanage of either nations or individuals. For to us, ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... and daring designs for shop fronts, the infinite arts employed to "set off" goods, and the surprising, never-ceasing varieties of art-manufacture—whether in chocolate or the popular Algerian onyx—bewilder strangers. Does successful Mr. Brown, who, having doffed the apron of trade, considers it due to himself to become—so far as money can operate the strange transformation—a fine fleur; does he desire also to make of plain, homely Mrs. ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... the hermit said: "You could never win the spell. One has to stand in the water to win it. And it weaves a net of magic to bewilder the man who is repeating the words, so that he cannot win it. For as he mumbles it, he seems to lead another life, first a baby, then a boy, then a youth, then a husband, then a father. And he falsely imagines that such and such people are his friends, ...
— Twenty-two Goblins • Unknown
... know what she was about? had she netted beforehand all the meshes of this web she was throwing over him? the admirable mixture of frankness and subtlety, nature and art—must it not have been planned and calculated beforehand, to bewilder and mislead?—It may well be doubted. No preconceived and elaborated programme can come up to the inspiration of the moment, which is genius. Such felicitous wording of subject-matter so objectionable: such an unassailable presentation ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... and thornless paths I went; 5 And, when the darker day of life began, And I did roam, a thought-bewilder'd man! Thy kindred Lays an ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of the day I was in some such state of dreamy beatitude as a Turk is said to enjoy when under the influence of opium. It must be already manifest how prone I was to bewilder myself with picturings of the fancy, so as to confound them with existing realities. In the present instance, Sophy and Glencoe had contributed to promote the transient delusion. Sophy, dear girl, had as usual joined with me in ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... same riotous license in the realm of tonal noise,—cacophony, that is, where the aim is not to enchant, but to frighten, bewilder, or amaze; to give some special foil to sudden beauty; or, last of all, for graphic touch of story, we have another striking element of Strauss's art. The anticipation of a Beethoven in the drum of the Scherzo of the Fifth Symphony, or the rhythmic whims of a Schumann in his Romantic ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... visits the moist shaw, The honeysuckle, 'sdaining to be crost In urgence of sweet life by sleet or frost, 'Voids the time's law With still increase Of leaflet new, and little, wandering spray; Often, in sheltering brakes, As one from rest disturb'd in the first hour, Primrose or violet bewilder'd wakes, And deems 'tis time to flower; Though not a whisper of her voice he hear, The buried bulb does know The signals of the year, And hails far Summer with his lifted spear. The gorse-field dark, by sudden, gold caprice, Turns, here and there, into a Jason's ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... most intricate, complex and detailed idea of reward for good, and punishment for evil (even when called "the operation of natural law") possible to the mind of man. In its entirety, and carried to its last refinement of interpretation and analysis, it has a tendency to bewilder and terrify, for the chance of escape from its entangling machinery seems so slight. But still, the same authorities inform us that every soul will surmount these obstacles, and everyone will Attain—so there is no need to be frightened, ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... impression made on my mind at the time, and still remaining. If not strictly accurate in circumstance, it is so in substance. This doctrine was so completely refuted by Roane, that if he can be answered, I surrender human reason as a vain and useless faculty, given to bewilder, and not to guide us. And I mention this particular case as one only of several, because it gave occasion to that thorough examination of the constitutional limits between the General and State jurisdictions, which you have asked for. There were two other writers in the same paper, under ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... whole audience burst into tears at a single tone of her voice. Her natural conception was so fine, that the merest commonplace often received a living spirit from her lips. I have seen a single glance from her powerful eye hush an audience—I have seen her acting sometimes even startle and bewilder the actors beside her. There is perhaps a genius for every art, and hers was the genius of the stage—a faculty of instant communication between the speaker and the hearer, some unaccountable sympathy, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... clever spouter, he'll sure turn out, or An 'out-an'-outer' to be let alone; Don't hope to hinder him, or to bewilder him, Sure he's a pilgrim ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... impetuous fashion: "I say, Ingram, don't be a fool! Of course you must call her Sheila—unless when there are people here, and then you must please yourself. Why, the poor girl has enough of strange things and names about her already. I don't know how she keeps her head. It would bewilder me, I know; but I can see that, after she has stood at the window for a time, and begun to get dazed by all the wonderful sights and sounds outside, she suddenly withdraws and fixes all her attention on some little domestic duty, just as if she were hanging on to the practical things ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... of a brave Espagne. But laughing imps, with flying feet, venture singly into these realms of the Unknown. Bright streameth the light there from carbuncles and glowing rubies; but of the melodies that there bewilder them, no returning voice ever speaketh, for are they not Eleusinian mysteries? But when thou meetest, O brother, sailing down the stream under gay flags and rounding sails, some Hogarth or some Sterne, who playeth rouge et noir with keen old Pharaohs, and battledore with Charlie ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in a certain way, and in strong hopes that, at all events, such a muddle would be established as to bewilder the jury, Mr. Jos. Larkin, with still an awful foreboding weighing at his heart, knocked at the vicar's door, and was shown into the study. A solitary candle being placed, to make things bright and pleasant for the visitor, who did not look so ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... shipwreck on the infinite sea of printer's ink, and his rescue as of one escaping by mercy from a region where there was water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink. Let us confess that books by their very multitude bewilder, and that careless and purposeless reading destroys the mind. Let us admit, too, that books no more mean ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... particular profession or business, but having a strong constitution, good common sense, and a determination to bear up against every hardship, so that in the end it leads him to independence. Let us follow him through the difficulties that bewilder the stranger in Melbourne during the first few days of ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... sweet cup First may I pour the clearest of the wine— For her—for her—ah, yes! for her supreme, I struggle onward through this blinding light, E'en at whose dazzling threshold I might stand, Pale, trembling, like a terror-smitten soul, Waiting bewilder'd at the gate of heaven. Yet once again let me the plan review, Searching within my soul of souls each part, That doubt or danger, lurking there, may thus By ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... I do!" exclaimed Ruth. "Mr Bellingham, you should help me, and instead of that you only bewilder me." ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... dissimilar in their natures, found themselves launched upon a growing intimacy. To Lockwood, heavy spoken, delicate sensed, naive despite the shrewdness of his forty-five years, Erik Dorn appealed as some exotic mechanical contrivance might for a day fascinate and bewilder the intelligence of a rustic. And the other, in the midst of magnificent bombinations that amazed his friend, thought, "If I only had this man's simplicity. If on top of my ability to unravel mysteries into words I could feel ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Ireland, at least to those prehistoric Aryan tribes of which the Irish were a branch. Its basis is the art of weaving, and in some respects resembles the matting of Polynesia much more closely that the vine-stems of Sicily or the arabesques of Byzantium. Spirals occur that bewilder the eye, yet are so faultlessly perfect that only the magnifying-glass brings out the incredible accuracy of the drawing. Among them are mythological and allegorical beasts, snakes, and lizards—thought to represent demons, ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... terrible hunts are lost somewhere in him and he shuffles along, his sloping forehead in a pucker of thought as if he were trying to remember. But no memories come. Instead a bewilderment. The swarming streets bewilder him. The towering buildings, the noises of traffic and people dull his eyes and bring his shoulders together like the ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... while the doomed vessel drifted on with her to the shore? Did all the error and sorrow of her life pass distinctly before her? Or did the roar of the surf lull her into quiet, like the unconscious kindness of wild creatures that toss and bewilder their prey into unconsciousness ere they harm it? None can tell. Death answers no questions; ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the door, round the house, and re-entering by a back door, apparently with no other end in view than to bewilder him, Andrew went into a dark room, opened some sort of door—to enter which the trooper had to stoop low—and conducted him down ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... excellent! We will so bewilder them with balls that they shall not know whence the salutes are coming. I have more than once shot away a cherry from the mouth. Only let them come on (SCHUFTERLE is pulling SCHWEITZER; the latter takes the captain aside, and entreats him in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... in saying all this, I am saying nothing against the deep piety and earnestness which were characteristics of this second phase of the Movement, in which I had taken so prominent a part. What I have been observing is, that this phase had a tendency to bewilder and to upset me; and, that, instead of saying so, as I ought to have done, perhaps from a sort of laziness I gave answers at random, which have led to my ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... twenty-two by turnpike from Georgetown. By moving in this direction, and striking a blow at this point, he hoped to induce the impression that he was aiming at Cincinnati, and at the same time thoroughly bewilder the officer in command at Lexington regarding his real intentions. When he reached Cynthiana he would be master of three or four routes, by either of which he could leave Kentucky, completely eluding his pursuers, and he did not doubt that he could defeat ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... colonel and his officers ran into their room, and hastily seizing such weapons as came first to their hands, followed after. To describe Archie's feelings, as he lay there behind that bush and listened to the sounds of pursuit, were impossible. The noise the rebels made seemed to bewilder him completely, for he lay on the ground several moments, it seemed to him, without the power to move ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... me—some new capacities opened—some deeper yearnings quickened into life. I am still Jessie Loring, though not the Jessie Loring of yesterday. Have I completed a cycle of being? Am I entering upon another and higher sphere of existence? How the questions bewilder me! Clouds and darkness seem gathering around me, and my heart springs upward, half in ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... unbridled, if you will, but indubitably exuberant and vivid. These works have a necessity. These harmonies have color. This music is patently speech. But the later compositions of Schoenberg withhold themselves, refuse our contact. They baffle with their apparently wilful ugliness, and bewilder with their geometric cruelty and coldness. One gets no intimation that in fashioning them the composer has liberated himself. On the contrary, they seem icy and brain-spun. They are like men formed not out of flesh ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... sighs, and grief-wrung tears, Shame-blushes at betrayed distress, Dissembled smiles, and jealous fears, Are aught but real happiness: Then will I mourn what now I brave, And suffer Celia's quirks to be (Like a poor fate-bewilder'd slave,) The rulers of ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... with such power To charm and bewilder as this we are quaffing; Its magic began when, in Autumn's rich hour, A harvest of gold in the fields it stood laughing. There having, by Nature's enchantment, been filled With the balm and the bloom of her kindliest weather, This wonderful juice ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... state, even, as Pennsylvania or New York is, into counties, and try to lead them to amuse themselves by putting together so large a number, many of which must inevitably very closely resemble each other, and it is ten to one but you bewilder, and even perplex and discourage them. The same results would follow from cutting up even the whole of a large county, or a small state, into towns. I have usually begun with little children, by requiring them to put together the eight counties of the small state of Connecticut. In this case ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... "I know I bewilder you, dear man," she said. "But this is the point: I don't want to be protected. I mean I don't want to be made dependent; I don't want my interpretations of life at second-hand. I object to having life filter through anybody ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... painful this interest is to the good, wise judge upon the bench. I admit its painful nature, and the judge's goodness and wisdom to the fullest extent—but I submit that his prominent share in the excitement of such a trial, and the dread mystery involved, has a tendency to bewilder and confuse the judge upon the general subject of that penalty. I know the solemn pause before the verdict, the bush and stifling of the fever in the court, the solitary figure brought back to the bar, ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... we cannot see them; and then we should sustain our lively expectations with a deep and faithful confidence, assured that we are being tenderly and wisely led, and that the things which the Father shows us by the way, if they bewilder, and disappoint, and even terrify us, have yet some great and wonderful meaning, if we can but interpret them rightly. Nay, that the very delaying of these secrets to draw near to our souls, holds within it a strong and temperate ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson |
