"Puzzle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... where busy till evening, and then with Balty to Sir G. Carteret's office, and there with Mr. Fenn despatched the business of Balty's L1500 he received for the contingencies of the fleete, whereof he received about L253 in pieces of eight at a goldsmith's there hard by, which did puzzle me and him to tell; for I could not tell the difference by sight, only by bigness, and that is not always discernible, between a whole and half-piece and quarterpiece. Having received this money ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... could be heard but the wind blowing through the trees, and the discordant noises of frogs and other denizens of the swamp. So dark was the night that we could hardly see fifty yards across the river. I suppose this was all in our favour; but how our guide knew the marks by which to steer was a puzzle to me, and as I never meant to profit by this experience I asked ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... Such are the short cuts of ignorance to be expected of ordinary carpenters and handy men. And when the old house is on the ground they will display exasperating unconcern regarding what goes where and how to put the structure back together. The most complicated jig-saw puzzle is simplicity itself compared with an Early American house taken apart without predetermined marking ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... they were about when they laid it down that if you have a mystery to solve, you must look for the woman. What they meant was, that, having found a woman, you may make any statements you please about her; the world will accept them unquestioningly and your puzzle will consequently ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... was a puzzle. He was almost deceived by this careless gaiety. Almost—because he did not fail to mark her eyes often fixed on nothing, and the film of light shining from her bedroom window late at night. What ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... mistaken, Jasper. I am not cunning. If people think I am, it is because, being made up of art themselves, simplicity of character is a puzzle to them. Your women are certainly ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the two contrasts which puzzle us at first in Milton, and which distinguish him from other poets in our remembrance afterwards. We have a superficial complexity in illustration and imagery and metaphor; and in contrast with it we observe a latent simplicity of idea, an almost rude strength of conception. The underlying thoughts ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... last scene—"and my poor fool is hanged"—caused the misapprehension until of late years[G] that Lear's court Fool was hanged—although why Edmund's creatures should have been at the trouble in the stress of their disaster to hang a Fool it would puzzle any ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... destruction of the ancient cloister a covered way of some kind was erected here. Marks can also be seen, in the masonry, which indicate that the building once had three gables. Two of the Norman buttresses of the south nave aisle have very curious terminations, which might well puzzle any observer. They are fireplaces for the use of plumbers. Passing through the Norman doorway at the north-western corner of the Laurel Court, we come into a narrow passage leading to ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... spikes. Beneath the bridge the river flowed maunderingly, blundering out unintelligible news of its parent bog and all the dreary places it had come through on its way to the strath of Glamerton, which nobody listened to but one glad-hearted, puzzle-brained girl, who stood looking down into it from the bridge when she ought to have been in bed and asleep. She was not far from Clippenstrae, but she could not go there so early, for her aunt would be frightened first and angry next. So she wandered ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... they had visited, and Sunny Boy had to see all the toys before he could settle down to choosing gifts for Ruth and Nelson. Finally, by Mother's advice, he settled on a quaint little painted music box for Ruth that played four different tunes, and a picture puzzle game for Nelson, who liked to put things together. These were sent home to the hotel so that Sunny Boy and Mother would not have to carry packages with them the rest of ...
— Sunny Boy in the Big City • Ramy Allison White
... force composed of a limited number of brush strokes! The Western critic, with his totally different literary conventions, has difficulty in bringing himself to regard Japanese verse as a literary form or in thinking of it otherwise than as an exercise in ingenuity, an Oriental puzzle; and this notion is heightened by the prevalence of the couplet-composing contests, which did much to heighten the artificiality ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... in St. Joseph's street above the Citadel," said Jeanne. "Oh, will you come? And perhaps you will not mind if I ask you some questions about the things that puzzle me," and an eager light ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... moment's pause—rather an awkward pause. Lescott's mind began piecing together fragments of conversation he had heard, until he had assembled a sort of mental jig-saw puzzle. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... Roman statues, representing the gods and athletes of ancient Greece and Rome, are a puzzle to many, owing to the diminutive and phimosed virile organ that the artists have attached to them. Galen represents that the disuse of the organ by the athletes was the cause of its undeveloped form, and that as the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... still more wonderful thing to the child, but how one could ever be written puzzled her beyond all. A composition on something she had seen or read was within the scope of her thought, but to tell about people and make them talk, and have pleasant and curious and sad and joyous happenings, did puzzle her greatly. ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... old house which had come to be his. How disappointed he had been by Geoff's selfish, discontented temper, and grumbling, worrying ways, and had been casting about how best to give him a lesson which should last, when Geoff solved the puzzle for him by going off ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... contrary within. For they are the first, that find their own griefs, though they be the last, that find their own faults. Certainly men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are in the puzzle of business, they have no time to tend their health, either of body or mind. Illi mors gravis incubat, qui notus nimis omnibus, ignotus moritur sibi. In place, there is license to do good, and evil; whereof the latter is a curse: for in evil, the best condition ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... an old tale, and when he was wrong, U used to set him right. V was a virtuoso. W warred against Warburton. X excelled in algebra. Y yearned for immortality in rhyme, and Z in his zeal was always in a puzzle." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... a puzzle," I admitted. "I suppose they might very well be father and daughter. It is certain that she is fresh from some convent boarding-school. I don't like the way she looks at the man, do you? ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the world, I wonder, did you all get that grand look of yours from?—I don't mean your good looks merely, but that look of distinction. Your father and mother have it too; but where did they get it from? You're a puzzle-family—all of you. But wouldn't you like a cup of tea? Come in," and she led the way indoors to a tiny, sweet-smelling boudoir on the left of the hall, of which a dainty glimpse, with its books and water-colours and bibelots, was to ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... thought, more mindful than others of the law which dooms all the works of men to decay, has caused a relation of the principal events of his reign to be engraved in those curious characters which have for centuries been a puzzle and an enigma. Many tombs also, besides the remains of the renowned or wealthy dead, for whom they have been erected at a cost as extravagant and with art as elaborate as the abodes of the living, contain the full description ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... events as being what they are through designed laws (whatever that expression means), but as not themselves specially ordained, or who, in another connection, believes in general, but not in particular Providence. We could sadly puzzle him with questions; but in return he might equally puzzle us. Then, to deny that anything was specially designed to be what it is, is one proposition; while to deny that the Designer supernaturally or immediately made it ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... could quite easily discern the upstanding wing of Friar's Park, actually the house and the park were some two miles distant. Where the park ended and the woods began it was impossible to determine, yet such was my curious mood that I lingered there endeavoring to puzzle out those details which were ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... "buzzer," are to be heard within the range of their pellucid course. They are consecrated to more lofty, if not to more useful purposes. But with the Clyde the case is different. It is almost a puzzle to say whether Glasgow excels more as the seat of a famous University or as the centre of a hundred busy, important, and prosperous industries. Certainly, the decadence of the one has not followed the development of the other. Learning and commerce ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... vacant—was again filled by the new scholar, the Mdlle. Henri so ostentatiously recommended to me by the directress. To-day I had on my spectacles; her appearance, therefore, was clear to me at the first glance; I had not to puzzle over it. She looked young; yet, had I been required to name her exact age, I should have been somewhat nonplussed; the slightness of her figure might have suited seventeen; a certain anxious and pre-occupied ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the North and South, matters of finance, tariffs, and internal improvements, involving the deepest problems of political economy, education, and constitutional law; and as time moves on, new questions will arise to puzzle the profoundest intellects; but the question of the ascendency of the people is settled beyond all human calculations. And it is in this matter especially that Jefferson left his mark on the institutions of his country,—as the champion of democracy, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... think we are safe here. They'll make for the camp as sure as fate. It will be their first idea. But this should puzzle 'em." ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... this natural function. We know what would occur. A considerable proportion of the community, more especially the more youthful members, possessed by an instinctive and legitimate curiosity, would concentrate their thoughts on the subject. They would have so many problems to puzzle over: How often ought I to eat? What ought I to eat? Is it wrong to eat fruit, which I like? Ought I to eat grass, which I don't like? Instinct notwithstanding, we may be quite sure that only a small minority would succeed ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... for I can't recollect it all myself, only the stupid and muddled part of it. But I have been trying to puzzle it out this morning, and that set me thinking about other things as well, till at last, all of a sudden, I got the ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... his deeds and of his strange gospel were floating through Cuckoo's mind as fragments of broken wood float by on a stream, fragments of broken wood that were part of a puzzle, that should be rescued by some strong hand from the stream, and fitted together into ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... thinking only of the Ayrshire poet, I said, "Burns is dead!" "Oh," he said, "there is a man here in San Francisco, whom I call Bobby Burns, and T thought that you were he." So the mystery was explained; and I could not but reflect that many other things which puzzle us are just as easy of solution when we have ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... rise by their industry to great wealth in the colony; to such the preference shown to the educated man always seems a puzzle. Their ideas of gentility consist in being the owners of fine clothes, fine houses, splendid furniture, expensive equipages, and plenty of money. They have all these, yet even the most ignorant feel that something else ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... feared nothing mortal. The mystery in part explained, he did not bother to puzzle out the remainder of it. Impossible as it seemed, his bag was carried by some living thing. All that remained for him was to capture the thing, and recover his bag. The weak light still turned ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... blow their shrill salute to the returning soldiers. The men square their shoulders and smile knowingly at one another; some of them look a little bored. Hicks slowly lights a cigarette and regards the end of it with an expression which will puzzle his friends when he ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... for it will cause the whole army of savages to rush to the protection of their women and children, thereby disconcerting their plans—supposing them to have any—and enabling us to attack them while assembled in force. It is the nature of savages to scatter, and so to puzzle trained forces; and no doubt those of His Majesty are well trained. But 'one touch of nature makes the whole world kin,' says a great authority; it is wonderful how useful a knowledge of various touches of nature is in the art ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... had better explain our use of the manual alphabet, which seems to puzzle people who do not know us. One who reads or talks to me spells with his hand, using the single-hand manual alphabet generally employed by the deaf. I place my hand on the hand of the speaker so lightly as not to impede its movements. The ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... was full of children, crowds of them, an intricate and ever shifting maze. For years he had known no dealings with the breed, and their movements now were so light and rapid that it rather bewildered him. They were in and out between the kitchen, corridor, and bedroom like bits of a fluid puzzle. One moment a child was beside him, and the next, just as he had a suitable sentence ready to discharge at it, the place was vacant. A minute later 'it' appeared through another door, carrying the samovar, or was on the roof outside struggling ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Helen, as she bent forward to kiss her. "And one last word, Katy. In this school, to which you and I belong, there is one great comfort, and that is that the Teacher is always at hand. He never goes away. If things puzzle us, there He is, close by, ready to explain and make all easy. Try to think of this, darling, and don't be afraid to ask Him for help if the lesson ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... had begun to clear. She remembered the heavy boxes she and Chess had seen brought ashore, and the Chinaman in the speed launch, and then the yellow-faced woman being taken on this very day toward the American shore. The whole puzzle began to fit together like a piece ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician. But do I see a handkerchief? ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to the assistance of a strange girl, whose real identity is a puzzle to all the Blythe girls. Who the girl really was comes as a ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... must have vexed the Senorita," she thought, "to make her speak like that to me." But the incident was not so easily dismissed from Margarita's thoughts. Many times in the day it recurred to her, still a bewilderment and a puzzle, as far from solution as ever. It was a tiny seed, whose name she did not dream of; but it was dropped in soil where it would grow some day,—forcing-house soil, and a bitter seed; and when it blossomed, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... to come in, you could eat all the mulberries you wanted, for nothing. There was a tame crow that my boy understood could talk if it liked; but it only ran after him, and tried to bite his legs. Besides this attraction, there was a labyrinth, or puzzle, as the boys called it, of paths that wound in and out among bushes, so that when you got inside you were lucky if you could find your way out. My boy, though he had hold of his brother's hand, did not expect to get out; he expected to perish in that ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... seated image, seventy-two more Buddhas sitting in those inner, upper circles, of Nirvana, facing a great dagaba, or final cupola, the exact function or purpose of which as key to the whole structure is still the puzzle of archaeologists. This final shrine is fifty feet in diameter, and either covered a relic of Buddha, or a central well where the ashes of priests and princes were deposited, or is a form surviving ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... vapor weighs less than the air by itself. One would think that by adding water vapor which, while light, still has weight, the total weight would be the sum of both. It really is so, notwithstanding the above figures, and the explanation of the puzzle is that there was an increase in pressure with expansion, so that the volume of the air and saturated vapor was greater than one cubic meter. Since then a cubic meter of air and saturated vapor weighs less ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... undoubtedly the province of every commander-in-chief. It is indeed true that Buonaparte, who was at Erfurth when the Emperor Alexander received his letter, made this the basis of a deceitful overture for peace, in order to gain time, and thereby puzzle the ministers a little; but this circumstance can never be held out as a reason for preventing a commander-in-chief at a great distance from home concluding an armistice, when he is confident it would be beneficial to the cause on which he ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... same old UFO jigsaw puzzle. By assuming the shape of one piece, a balloon launched from southwestern Ohio, the whole picture neatly falls together. It shows a huge balloon that Captain Thomas Mantell died trying to reach. He didn't know that he ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... puzzle for Kerry. Then—where was Kazmah? That Mrs. Irvin, probably in a drugged condition, lay somewhere in that mysterious inner room Kerry felt fairly sure. His maltreated skull was humming like a bee-hive and aching intensely, ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... take me in the right way, I am quiet enough, a child may guide me with a snaffle; but stick a sharp bit in my mouth, and tickle my sides with the rowels, and I rear up before, and lash out behind, so that it would puzzle half the rough-riders in the country to back me. I always mean to go ahead straight enough if I can see my way clearly before me, but it's awkward driving when one gets among women, with their feelings, and sympathies, and all that ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... brother," said Madame Tiphaine, "one might put up with him; he is not so aggressive. Give him a Chinese puzzle and he will stay in a corner quietly enough; it would take him a whole winter to find it out. But Mademoiselle Sylvie, with that voice like a hoarse hyena and those lobster-claws of hands! Don't ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... said lightly. But it was with a kind of startled puzzle too, as if she had sooner expected dynamite. "I can't think why; I mean, I wonder what's ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... so good as white man" (he shakes his head, philosophically). "White man sharp; puzzle nigger to find out what 'e don, know ven 'e mind t'." Thus saying, he takes a small hymn- book from his pocket, and, Franconia setting the light beside him, commences reading to ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... dear Cassall, you do not know what a devourer of money a vessel is. Every hour at sea means wear and tear somewhere, and if we are to make our ships quite safe we must be constantly renewing. It's the maintenance funds that puzzle us. If you give us a ship without a fund for renewals of gear, wages, and so on, it is exactly as though you graciously made a City clerk a present of a couple of Irish hunters, and requested him not to sell them. The vessel Fullerton has in his mind will need ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... they were in bed. "There is another secret somewhere, and I cannot puzzle it out. Mamma wants Mrs. Hardy to be fond of me, and Rock is likely to be my ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... shall be going to live with the R.F.C., so as to be able to snatch their photographs the instant they come in—puzzle them out—put them quickly on to a map—and send them off. Everyone then will know far more quickly what ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... when the limited capacity of a single mortal is taken in view. BOOTSBY stands round among every class of people, and especially of politicians and potationers. He stands round to talk, to hear, and especially to drink. The power of the man in this last matter is wonderful, and the puzzle is, that his standing (and perpendicularity) is not perceptibly affected. Of course there are times when BOOTSBY'S standing is not so good. In so slippery a place as Wall Street, it is found to be less certain; while in a crowd on Broadway, waiting for a bus, it ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... complacently and went on, with her old easy, don't-care swing, as she undoubtedly will, whithersoever her inclinations lead, to the end of her life. To crystallize such wayward, human atoms into proper forms, and make them useful, is a problem that would puzzle wiser heads ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... head sadly, "these women are indeed a puzzle. I fear much that Rosa's mind has changed since your departure. Absence, as the poets say, is love's worst bane. But let her go, Gulielmo; fairer charms than hers will soon ease ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... She saw a tall young man emerge from the tent, jump on a charger held by a soldier, and ride off at a fast pace toward the house of Las Flores, which stood in a large garden on the slope of a neighboring hill. His appearance seemed to puzzle her momentarily. His attire was that of Brazil, but neither his manner nor horsemanship was typical of the Brasileiro. In walking, he moved with an air of purposeful concentration that differed singularly from the languorous stroll of the average Brazilian officer, ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... clergyman and his wife, with a few others whom she had met in church circles, to dinner, and manifested such an interest in the sewing society that the principal ladies of the congregation called on her in succession; and although they never got beyond an interchange of formal visits, yet it served to puzzle the gossips in the streets, and one or two who had "forgotten" to call on Mrs. McClintock when she first came to the locality paid her a formal visit; their shaky position in society being secured ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... information out of the biblical commentators. Cocceius has told me the most; but he, and all of them, have a notable trick of passing siccissimis pedibus over the parts which puzzle ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... of you, Hunky, to take so much interest in me, and incur so much risk and trouble; but do you know," said Leather, with a look of surprise, not unmingled with amusement, "you are a puzzle to me, for I can't understand how you could tell Captain Wilmot such a heap o' lies—you that has got the name of bein' the truest-hearted scout on ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Castor and Pollux." In this mode of portrait-painting it would be absolutely necessary to go back to the old plan of putting the names underneath the personages; and even then, though you write under such, this is Castor, this Pollux, and this the sea-insurer, it will ever puzzle the whole ship's crew to conjecture how they came there together. Gerard admits we cannot paint what we have not seen, and by example rather condemns his own recommendations. Fewer have seen Castor and Pollux, than have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... there were human habitations to be found. Stalking along with giant strides on the highest part of some rising ground not very far off was a grotesque figure, clearly defined against the bright eastern sky, which would have been a puzzle to a stranger, but was a familiar sight to de Sigognac—a shepherd mounted on his high stilts, such as are to be met ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... dreams marched through my mind—dreams of Jim as he must have looked in khaki, dreams which made an air raid more or less seem unimportant. As the clocks of Nancy told the hours, I was in a mood for the first time since Gerbeviller to puzzle out the meaning ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... puzzle her a little, and though she certainly did not like him, there was a sort of strange attraction for her in his voice, appearance and manner. I wonder if men can know what there ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... we managed to puzzle and mystify the uninitiated, English and French alike. The intelligent reader, who sees it all in print, will not be so easily ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Beauchamp had to a certain extent restored himself to favour with his uncle Everard by offering a fair suggestion on the fatal field to account for the accident, after the latter had taken measurements and examined the place in perplexity. His elucidation of the puzzle was referred to by Lord Avonley at Romfrey, and finally accepted as possible and this from a wiseacre who went quacking about the county, expecting to upset the order of things in England! Such a mixing of sense and nonsense in a fellow's noddle was never before met with, Lord Avonley said. Cecil ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... work progressed and children stood and gazed in open-eyed wonder at the place where they were to gain a world of information. The work was finished; teachers came from foreign lands, masters of languages, teachers of science, and metaphysicians to puzzle the heads of the old and weary the brain of the young. Teachers of music with massive organs for the music rooms of the college arrived, teachers of piano and harp, all of which were a revelation to these simple people, who could not conceive of any sweeter music ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... wrong?—Oh, what a fool I am! The mother and daughter must have suspected that you would raise some obstacles in the way of this affair since they have kept it from you," said Madame Marneffe. "But if you did not live with the young man, my dear, all this is a greater puzzle to ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... said he, "you must alter the colour of your hair, then you must have a false nose, and put a spot on some part of your face, or a wart, or a few hairs." I laughed, and said, "Help me to contrive this for the next ball; I have not been to one for twenty years; but I am dying to puzzle somebody, and to tell him things which no one but I can tell him. I shall come home, and go to bed, in a quarter of an hour." "I must take the measure of your nose," said he; "or do you take it with wax, and I will have a nose made: you can get a flaxen or brown ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... of literary sport—in the concoction of a squib or the sketching of a caricature— Wake was always ready to take the work upon himself, and let who liked take the credit. He had a mania for verses and epigrams; he was reputed a bit of a conjuror, and no one ever brought a new puzzle to Grandcourt which Wake, of Railsford's, could not, sooner or later, ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... that; won't you? If I hadn't I'd been burning the midnight oil yet, I reckon. 'Taint safe to make me a present of a puzzle, because I'm just dead sure to nearly split my poor weak brain trying to figger it out. And Jack, I'll never be happy till I know what was in those boxes; and why did that sly little professor believe someone wanted to ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... him to suppose that," said Mrs Clagget; "though, to be sure, I do wish he would talk more about himself. I like a person to be communicative; those reticent people always puzzle me." ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... few on whom it had not a very sensible effect. I pick up the names of their acquaintance; amours and little squabbles are easily gleaned from among servants and neighbors; and, indeed, people themselves are the best intelligencers in the world for our purpose. They dare not puzzle us for their own sakes, for everyone is anxious to hear what he wishes to believe; and they who repeat it, to laugh at it when they have done, are generally more serious than their hearers are apt to ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... that the reef is continued, at the various heights where special kinds die out, by those that prosper at shallower depths; otherwise it would be impossible to understand how this variety of building material, as it were, is introduced wherever it is needed. This point, formerly a puzzle to naturalists, has become quite clear since it has been found that myriads of these little germs are poured into the water surrounding a reef. There they swim about till they find a genial spot on which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... on the whole, may puzzle his head over many paragraphs in the Notes, but he will hardly find explanations each time. What the reader has to remember is that the Notes are material used by C. in his creative activity and as such it throws a great deal ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... dilemma indeed, and the boy began to believe that he had gotten himself into an inextricable difficulty, for how to reach the steam man and renew the fire, under the circumstances, was a question which might well puzzle an older ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... way out of another contradictious puzzle, that which confronts my argument from the ears of an ass. It roams treeless deserts where no foe can approach unseen. Thistles make no sound. Why should it be adorned with ears which in their amplitude are scarcely surpassed by those of ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... of that," he said quickly, "but it is a great puzzle at present and I am thankful to say, I think it is quite safe to wait a year or two yet. You and I live so much apart from society that we idealize it a good deal, though you are a stray-away bit of it. We too ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... much concern about Monsieur Roquion and his bill; but we had unfortunately come to the end of our stock of wine and tea, and a few other luxuries, and where to obtain them except from Monsieur Roquion was a puzzle. The next morning we determined to try, so we went to his shop to order what we wanted; but he instantly met us with a hint that "Le petit compte must first ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... picked up the beads, and put them back into the drawer which she left upon the floor. Then she attacked Tom's image. It took her fully fifteen minutes merely to get the thing to pieces, for the true boy-fashion in which it was tied, pinned, sewed, and nailed together, would have been a puzzle to any feminine mind. She would have called Tom up to help her, but she was just a ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... it without their seeing you." Kristian put it down on the little bench underneath the elder; but when later on he crept past, to see if it had been taken, only the tail and the fins remained—the cat had eaten it up. Ditte scolded him well, and Kristian had to puzzle his ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... up-to-date Parisian style. Everybody lives in the Parisian way. Army officers, whose pay is infinitesimal, all live like Russian Grand Dukes. How they are able to manage this on the official Servian army salaries of 65 cents a day would naturally puzzle an outsider. The answer is, Russian gold. It buys anything and everything south of Budapest. It cannot buy in Montenegro where patriotism is supreme, nor can it buy what it wants among the Osmans. To be sure it can buy the ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... surprise, they found a party of apes and monkeys calmly trying the things on, and apparently enjoying themselves very much indeed. The snowshoes seemed to puzzle them considerably, however, and they were undecided whether to regard them as musical instruments or a ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... occupation arising from these causes may perhaps explain some peculiarities in this book which might otherwise puzzle my reader. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... of opening the British Museum to respectable people on Sunday, has lately been the subject of some discussion. I think it would puzzle the most austere of the Sunday legislators to assign any valid reason for opposing so sensible a proposition. The Museum contains rich specimens from all the vast museums and repositories of Nature, and rare ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... you please give you a sketch of my plan. On Monday, the day on which the examination subjects are given out, I shall begin. My first performance will be my verses and my declamation. I shall then translate the Greek and Latin. The first time of going over I shall mark the passages which puzzle me, and then return to them again. But I shall have also to rub up my Mathematics, (by the bye, I begin the second book of Euclid to-day,) and to study whatever History may be appointed for the examination. I shall ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... her that in her own mind during these few weeks a light had been steadily growing, illuminating many things she had been wont to puzzle over or habitually to pass by as teasing and obscure. She saw the whole world constructed on one purpose, that all living creatures should love and help one another to be happy. Even such a man as Rosewarne found ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... proof that fond passion can die, In this prosaic meeting we had! Now, ought we to laugh or to cry— Was it sorrowful, or was it sad? 'Tis a puzzle not worthy our time, So let's give ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Hamilton, xix. Leaves from the Diary of an Aged Spinster, vi. Leein' Jamie Murdieston, viii. Leveller, The, xvi. Linton Lairds, The; or, Exclusives and Inclusives, iv. Lord Durie and Christie's Will, ii. Lord Kames's Puzzle, xxiii, Lost Heir of the House of Elphinstone, xx. Lottery Hall, xiii. ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... Ned Ward, who informs us, in the "Delectable History of Whittington's College," that "When the prisoners are disposed to recreate themselves with walking, they go up into a spacious room, called the Stone Hall; where, when you see them taking a turn together, it would puzzle one to know which is the gentleman, which the mechanic, and which the beggar, for they are all suited in the same garb of squalid poverty, making a spectacle of more pity than executions; only to be out at the elbows is in fashion here, and a ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wastes themselves. Whence they came, where they went, and why, must long remain questions with many answers and therefore none at all. But he could tell her a few things of the ancient civilization . . . and a civilization it truly was . . . and of the signs left for posterity to puzzle over. ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... conceal from me his acquaintance with Rachel Leonard? Why had they both been so strangely moved at meeting? I longed to ask a question; but I could not find my voice. I longed for John to speak, and tell me something—anything at all that he liked; and were it the strangest puzzle that ever failed to be unriddled, I swore to my own heart that I ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... distinction of method in the web. Tight as the versifier may draw the knot of logic, yet for the ear he still leaves the tissue of the sentence floating somewhat loose. In prose, the sentence turns upon a pivot, nicely balanced, and fits into itself with an obtrusive neatness like a puzzle. The ear remarks and is singly gratified by this return and balance; while in verse it is all diverted to the measure. To find comparable passages is hard; for either the versifier is hugely the superior of the rival, or, if he be not, and still persist ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a very pretty name, and one of those which is [sic] supposed by novelists and young ladies to be aristocratic; why so is a puzzle; as its plain meaning is a tenant farmer and nothing more or less" (Two ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... let their fancy run. I'm livin' over all the things that happened that night—livin' them over to-day, when everything's so quiet about me here, so lonesome. I wanted to go over it all, bit by bit, and work it out in my head, just as you and I used to do the puzzle games we played in the sands. And maybe, when you're a long way off from things you once lived, you can see them and understand them better. Out here, where it's so lonely, and yet so good a place to live in, I seem to get the hang o' the world better, and why some things are, and other ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... indignantly, one day. "It is like a baby to have to run after a girl if you want a button sewn on," quoth Auntie. Geography was learned by painting skeleton maps—an exercise much delighted in by small fingers—and by putting together puzzle maps, in which countries in the map of a continent, or counties in the map of a country, were always cut out in their proper shapes. I liked big empires in those days; there was a solid satisfaction in putting down Russia, and seeing what a large ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... faith, thrusting his own, with its mysteries which puzzle even theologians, upon them, they will be but as whited sepulchres, or, at ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... has been styled "The Master of Mysteries," has here woven one of his most mystifying tales. It is like a Chinese puzzle in its ingenuity, and holds the reader breathless from the first line ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... puzzle some people to know how you got your commission, Harry. You're no fossil, of course, but you're no angel, either, and there are some things in your career that aren't exactly laid down in ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... is really moved to an effort of memory by this, and blubbers out something that proves in the end to resemble the family name, though for the present it is merely a puzzle of unintelligible sounds." ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... fine blazing fire, and plenty of hot tea, toast, and eggs, it was easy to remedy one class of these poor people's wants; but how to rig them out in dry clothes was a puzzle, till the captain bethought him of a resource which answered very well. He sent to several of the officers for their dressing-gowns; and these, together with supplies from his own wardrobe, made capital gowns and petticoats—at least, till the more fitting ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... say, and what they can't see, some men won't in the least give credit to. Neverthless, chief, that isn't quite as good reason as it mayat first seem. You believe in the Great Spirit, I know, and yet, I conclude, it would puzzle you to show where ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... drew Robin between his Knees, stroked his Haire, and askt what we were talking about. Robin sayd I had beene telling them a fairie Story; and Mr. Milton observed that was an infinite Improvement on the jangling, puzzle-headed Prating of Country Justices, and wished I woulde tell it agayn. But I was afrayd. But Robin had no Feares; soe tolde the Tale roundlie; onlie he forgot the End. Soe he found his Way backe to the Middle, and seemed likelie to make it last alle Night; onlie Mr. Milton sayd he seemed ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... figure; and we also see her feet and the lower part of her legs. Her humanity is not extinguished, her means of locomotion are visible;—but in looking at a lady nowadays, we see nothing of the kind; from the waist down, she is a puzzle of silk and conic sections, a marvellous machine that moves in a mysterious way. See, again, how beautiful in color this peasant's costume is. The gown of a rich red, not glaring, but yet positive and pure; the apron, blue; she is a brunette, and so has wisely chosen to have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... so tall. One imagined rightly that he was very strong, that he could be swift and purposeful in his movements, despite an apparent deliberation. His face was boyishly expressive. He had a way of smiling at trifles. And one did not have to puzzle over his nationality. He was English. His accent and certain intonations ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was my fault, and the cause of my failure. I could not give myself up to finance, nor puzzle through the intricacies of commerce: even the common parliamentary drudgeries of constant attendance and late hours were insupportable to me; and so after two or three "splendid orations," as my friends termed them, I was satisfied ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... humbly asked for absolution, and offered him the book at an immense loss on the sale price. 'If you were,' replied the doctor, 'to bring the book at my door for nothing, I would take it with a pair of tongs and drop it into the gutter.' It was a puzzle to everyone what the little doctor did with all his purchases, which were limited chiefly to classical books. At his death, however, it transpired that he bought for the various Universities of the United Kingdom. The doctor's son, a poor curate, entered his late father's library for the ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... he, "a philosopher ought to understand the management of books better than a skipper; but when a book is glued hard and fast like that, it may puzzle even a philosopher ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... He was a continual puzzle to her, this man. There was no servility about him, but she had a feeling that he, too, was in some fashion under Mercer's heel. He made himself exceedingly useful to her in his silent, unobtrusive way; but he seldom spoke on his own initiative, and it was some time before she felt herself to ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... puzzle, and for some minutes I could make nothing of it. Then I remembered my telegram. According to William it had been referred back to the post office. But William on his own admission had but retailed pantry gossip caught up from Mr. Horrex (presumably the butler). Had the telegram ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... our Puzzle this month is based, though the two classical dangers will be now only two little children who will try to seize on the argosies which their brothers and sisters ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... in a sort of a puzzle. You said a little while ago, or you spoke as if you thought, that all those grand old Roman emperors were not after all great men. Then, if they were not great, what's a fellow to try for? If a common fellow does his best, he will not get to the hundredth or the thousandth part ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... head sadly, 'I shall never understand human nature; there is always an abyss below an abyss, and the firmest seeming ground is usually quagmire when you come to step on it. George Pendle is a riddle which would puzzle the Sphinx. Hum! hum! another fabulous beast. Well, well, I can only wait and watch until I discover the truth, and then—well, what then?—why, nothing!' And Graham, having talked himself into a ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... delightful to every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for every purpose of the poet, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... an Aboriginal," he said; "and to tell you the truth, your origin has been the great puzzle of my life, sir." ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... all around his room again, as if trying to solve the puzzle. But he could not guess what had happened. He remembered how he and Sue had gotten up in the middle of the night, and how they had crept inside the tent. Then Splash had come; and how funny it was when Sue thought their dog was a bear. Then they ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-A-While • Laura Lee Hope
... appearance of humility, Dennis asked leave to venture on a guess. The perforated paper looked, as he thought, like a Puzzle. "If we wait for a day or two," he suggested, "the Key to it may possibly ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... the "blind" man's solution next month. Meantime, here is a puzzle for your merry crowd. You shall have an answer in that same postscript; but I should like to have the Little Schoolma'am and the rest work it ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... had seemed so real, it could not be a dream, he thought; a desire to throw light upon the puzzle excited him; he managed to reach the door, opened it after many efforts, and stood on the threshold of his salon. There they were—his dear pictures, his statues, his Florentine bronzes, his porcelain; the sight of them revived him. The old collector walked in his dressing-gown ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... there, they must be badly scared. The light of the lantern, striking among all these trunks and forked branches and twisted rope-ends of lianas, made the whole place, or all that you could see of it, a kind of a puzzle of turning shadows. They came to meet you, solid and quick like giants, and then span off and vanished; they hove up over your head like clubs, and flew away into the night like birds. The floor of the bush glimmered ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... children that are not only picture books but play books. Beautifully printed in four colors. Books that children can cut out, paint or puzzle over. More entertaining than ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... explore every hut upon the moor until I lighted upon the right one. If this man were inside it I should find out from his own lips, at the point of my revolver if necessary, who he was and why he had dogged us so long. He might slip away from us in the crowd of Regent Street, but it would puzzle him to do so upon the lonely moor. On the other hand, if I should find the hut and its tenant should not be within it I must remain there, however long the vigil, until he returned. Holmes had missed him in London. It would indeed be a triumph for me if I could run him to earth where ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... imposed upon so easily. The ensuing week the brother came, and he proved to be the very pawnbroker to whom Manon formerly offered the stolen box: he knew her immediately; it was in vain that she attempted to puzzle him, and to persuade him that she was not the same person. The man was clear and firm. Sister Frances could scarcely believe what she heard. Struck with horror, the children shrunk back from Manon, and stood in silence. Mad. de Fleury immediately wrote to the lady who had ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... management of the garrison, which they suspected to be a nursery for a popish army, and seemed disinclined to maintain it any longer. The king consequently, in 1683, sent Lord Dartmouth to bring home the troops, and destroy the works; which he performed so effectually, that it would puzzle all our engineers to restore the harbour. It were idle to speculate on the benefits which might have accrued to England, by its preservation and retention; Tangier fell into the hands of the Moors, its importance having ceased, with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... evidence of a warm and almost West Indian climate among the low basking islets of our northern carboniferous seas. Or take once more the oolitic epoch in England, lithographed on its own mud, with its puzzle-monkeys and its sago-palms, its crocodiles and its deinosaurs, its winged pterodactyls and its whale-like lizards. All these huge creatures and these broad-leaved trees plainly indicate the existence of a temperature over the whole of Northern ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... was feverish with the desire to go farther. It was the exciting finish to a long race; the last move in a puzzle which had challenged men ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett |
