"Mysterious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... since then eloquently shown that the providential dispensation which consigns so large a portion of our people to the close confines of cities, like all the other arrangements of Providence, however mysterious, are full of goodness and mercy:—"Somehow or other, amid their crowding and confinement, the human mind finds its fullest, freest expansion. Unlike the dwarfed and dusty plants which stand around our suburban villas, languishing like exiles for the purer air and freer sunshine that kiss their fellows ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... all its great history behind it working quickly, ceaselessly, for its own purposes. Every part of the Cathedral life is brought in to effect this, the Bishop, the Dean, the Canons—down to the Verger's smallest child. All the town life also is brought in, from the Cathedral on the hill to the mysterious little riverside inn. Behind the town is seen the Glebeshire country, behind that, England; behind England, the world, all moving ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... a Dead Man's Chest, too—and if you open it you will find a ladder leading down into the mysterious depths unknown. If you are very adventurous you will climb down and bump your head against the cellar ceiling and inspect what is going to be a subterranean grotto as soon as it can be fitted up. You climb down ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... glory, looming gigantic in the mist, I saw the Sagamore, an awful apparition in his paint, turn to salute the rising sun. Then, the mysterious office of his priesthood done, he lifted his rifle, tossed the heavy piece lightly to his shoulder, and ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... was against him—and that, in especial, even if he should succeed in the combat, it would be at the risk of severe retaliation. It must be owned, too, that there was something about the Independent so dark and mysterious, so grim and grave, that the more open spirit of the keeper felt oppressed, and, if not overawed, at least kept in doubt concerning him; and he thought it wisest, as well as safest, for his master and ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... to meet again. Who shall count the faces that the exile has known, the voices that have been familiar in his ear, the hands that have pressed his? In every land and in every city, he has met and talked with a score, with scores, with hundreds of men and women all leading the more or less mysterious and uncertain life which has become his own by necessity or by choice. If he be an honest man and poor, a dozen trades have occupied his fingers in half a dozen capitals; if he be dishonest, a hundred forms and varieties of money-bringing dishonesty are sheathed ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... the mysterious envelope in his pocket, and it occurred to him that the contents might alter the whole situation, and make a trip to Dunwold unnecessary. He walked faster, impatient to reach the Albany and investigate ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... $——, or —— kopecks, and then lead on to other topics such as the comparative heights of mountain peaks, letting the consul gradually grasp the fact that we have been in Switzerland? Or should we call him up on the telephone and make a mysterious appointment with him, when we could blurt it ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... hot coffee, and Tom was shown how and why the mysterious bottle kept the drink hot. They only made that single halt (and only for a few minutes for the horses to drink) before reaching Pine Camp. They traveled through the snow-covered woods most of the way. There were few farms and no settlements ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... if the lady is English, the dark, mysterious, portentous Gaudissart advances like a romantic character out of ...
— Gaudissart II • Honore de Balzac
... of everything. The style and gentility of a ship and her crew depend upon the length and character of the voyage. An India or China voyage always is the thing, and a voyage to the Northwest coast (the Columbia River or Russian America) for furs is romantic and mysterious, and if it takes the ship round the world, by way of the Islands and China, it out-ranks them all. The grave, slab-sided mate of the schooner leaned over the rail, and spoke to the men in our boat: "Where are you from?'' Joe answered up quick, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... his manuscript upon the table, a gesture that caused the shoulders of Packer to move in a visible shudder, and the company, all eyes fixed upon the face of the star, suddenly wore the look of people watching a mysterious sealed packet from which a muffled ticking is heard. The bellowing and the sawing and the ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... The Song of Triumphant Love, The Dream, and the incomparable Phantoms, he showed that he could equal Edgar Poe, Hofmann, and Dostoevsky in the mastery of the fantastical, the horrible, the mysterious, and the incomprehensible, which live somewhere in human nerves, though not to ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... northern France, on Sicily and southern Italy, on the Balkan Peninsula, on Russia, on Greenland, and as far as North America. Then, passing to Africa and Asia, he would describe the life of the pack-saddle and the caravan, the long and mysterious inland routes from the Mediterranean to Nubia and Nigeria, or from Damascus with the pilgrims to Medina, and the still longer and more mysterious passage through the ancient oases of Turkestan, now buried in sand, along which, as recent discoveries have shown us, Greece and ...
— Progress and History • Various
... am master of my senses, I must bring forth what is in me. What would life be if all men in the world were like you?" These words might have been spoken by Bismarck. Every word, every act of his public career, gives us the impression of a man irresistibly driven on by some overwhelming, mysterious power. He was not an ambitious schemer, like Beaconsfield or Napoleon; he was not a moral enthusiast like Gladstone or Cavour. If he had consulted his private tastes and inclinations, he would never have wielded the destinies of an empire. Indeed, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... But grapevines are smitten by a mysterious disease called "cellular degeneration," and phylloxera; a black scale that injures orange and olive, and a white scale that is worse. Apples are not free from worms; the gopher is sure to go for every root it can find. There ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... have so far familiarized many readers with a certain fundamental trait of living things around, that they have ceased to perceive how marvellous a trait it is, and, until interpreted by the Theory of Evolution, how utterly mysterious. In past times, the conception of an ordinary plant or animal which prevailed, not throughout the world at large only but among the most instructed, was that it is a single continuous entity. One of these ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... portly Landlord cried; "Farewell!" the parting guests replied, But little thought that nevermore Their feet would pass that threshold o'er; That nevermore together there Would they assemble, free from care, To hear the oaks' mysterious roar, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... marvellous thy power, So lavishly outpouring all thy rotund gifts On mortal ways, in superhuman shifts That overtax the mind, and vex the soul of man, As would the details of some awful plan, Jocund, mysterious, complex, and yet withal Enmeshed with Joy and Sorrow, as a pall Envelops all the seas at eventide, and brings New meaning to the song the Robin sings When from her nest matutinal she squirms And hies her forth for adolescent ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... wont to say that some fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant's cheek, and left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would have risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought by this fairy sign manual varied exceedingly, according to the difference of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious persons—but ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... that Maria and her mother came to stay at the Hall. A rather mysterious letter from my aunt had led to the invitation. It was for the benefit of Maria's health. My father also invited Polly; she was a favourite with him. Leo and some other friends were expected for shooting. Our neighbours' houses as ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... recover. Like a veteran he grasped the Professor by the hand, and wished him many a happy return of the day, and George, though not so demonstrative, joined Harry in this wish and prayer. Just then one of George's cakes fell at his feet. He picked it up and Harry glanced at the Baby. The mysterious disappearance had been solved. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... of poetry to that exhibited in 'Jabberwocky.' Carroll, with a sense of mathematical neatness, makes his whole poem a mosaic of new and mysterious words. But Edward Lear, with more subtle and placid effrontery, is always introducing scraps of his own elvish dialect into the middle of simple and rational statements, until we are almost stunned into admitting that we know what they mean. There is a genial ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... says," howled another man. "Listen! It says: 'Volonsky and the mysterious Persian prince have disappeared. Broncov executed by heroic guards. All members of the once-feared Inner Council crushed almost beyond recognition when floor crashed upon them from the weight of the gold ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... for their continual theme the passing away of gods and men and cities before the mysterious power which is sometimes called by some great god's name but more often 'Time.' His travellers, who travel by so many rivers and deserts and listen to sounding names none heard before, come back with no tale that does not tell ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany
... with, on the face of it, there is no mystery here at all. It is not mysterious, it is not even odd, that a jailbird should take his gun to Pilgrim's Pond. Our people aren't like the English, who will forgive a man for being rich if he throws away money on hospitals or horses. Last-Trick Todd has made himself big by his own considerable abilities; ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Ellis glanced at each other, but with a different expression this time. The look meant that they had recognized in the intruder a flash of that mysterious sense vaguely known as "the newspaper instinct," with which a few are born, but which most men acquire by giving mortgages on the ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... necessary to combat the notion that there already exists, in nubibus, a complete system of prize law, which is in some mysterious way accessible to Judges, and reveals to them the rule applicable to each new case as it arises. This notion, so far as it is prevalent, seems to have arisen from a mistaken reading of certain dicta of Lord Stowell, in which that great Judge, in his finest eighteenth-century manner, ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... scenes between are shreds and patches, invented to give local color to the story. In the original form the picture of low life at dawn on Montmartre, in which charwomen, scavengers, ragpickers, street sweepers, milkwomen, policemen, and others figure, was enlivened by a mysterious personage called Le Noctambule, who proclaimed himself to be the soul of the city—the Pleasure of Paris. It was a part of the symbolism which we are asked also to find in the flitting visions of low life and the echoes of street ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... captain, whose duty in life is to instruct sixty men in the art of taking the life of as many other men as possible, may turn his head in the direction of a good-looking girl. And when for weeks a man rides at the side of one through pine forests as dim and mysterious as the aisles of a great cathedral, when he guides her across the wet marshes when the sun is setting crimson in the pools and the wind blows salt from the sea, when he loses them both by moonlight in wood-roads where the hoofs of the horses sink silently into dusty ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... not conceive of him as having the same struggles that we have in meeting trial, in enduring injury and wrong, in learning obedience, patience, meekness, submission, trust, and cheerfulness. We conceive of his friendships as somehow different from other men's. We feel that in some mysterious way his human life was supported and sustained by the deity that dwelt in him, and that he was exempt from all ordinary ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... pets, consisted of Mr. Coppin, a kindly and garrulous gentleman of sixty, Mrs. Coppin, a somewhat negative personality, most of whose life was devoted to cooking and washing up in her underground lair, Brothers Frank and Percy, gentleman of leisure, popularly supposed to be engaged in the mysterious occupation known as "lookin' about ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... interspersed with prairies— along which we went to the lake and fort of Winnepeg. Beyond that lake we knew there would be nothing but prairie, stretching far and wide, over which we must steer as though we were at sea, or else be guided by the mysterious instinct of some trapper. We met many Redskins in the woods, all busy hunting. Game was very abundant—waterfowl on the streams, flights of prairie hens (a sort of grouse), and herds of buck, which constantly crossed our line of march Here and there was a clearing or ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... a letter for Archer and withdrew. Recognising his wife's hand, the young man opened the envelope and read: "Won't you please come up town as early as you can? Granny had a slight stroke last night. In some mysterious way she found out before any one else this awful news about the bank. Uncle Lovell is away shooting, and the idea of the disgrace has made poor Papa so nervous that he has a temperature and can't leave his room. Mamma needs you dreadfully, and I do hope you can get away ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... whom he represented as an inveterate enemy of the conciliatory government to which France owed the Concordat. The Abbe Clerisse, who, from the construction of the house was obliged to use the rooms in common with Mme. de Combray, was not long in noticing the mysterious behaviour of the occupants. There were conferences conducted in whispers, visitors who arrived at night and left at dawn, secret comings and goings, in short, all the strange doings of a houseful of conspirators, so that the good cure one day took Lanoe aside and recommended ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... under the sun than the unknown force that impels the great majority to begin doing the same new thing at the same time. It must be a precious gift to feel instinctively what the right new thing is to do. A mysterious fiat goes forth and a million women simultaneously put on black straw hats surmounted by a cock in his pride. Another mysterious order goes forth and two million women simultaneously begin reading the latest ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... dusk, when Tony and Matty came to our house to render up the day's account to Jim, after they had settled business, Tony asked in a mysterious whisper, and half as if he ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... for very little congratulation that evening after Elections when he was formally sworn in to the Den as the "spider's" fag and was thoroughly frightened by the stories he heard and the still more alarming mysterious hints that were ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... themes. Pray, then, who did? Did von Wolzogen? Did Tappert? They worked directly under his direction, put forth the musical lures and decoys and the ignorant public was easily bamboozled. Simply mention the esoteric, the mysterious omens, signs, dark designs, and magical symbols, and you catch a certain class of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... back by severe gales and contrary winds until it seemed as though the spirit of the new ocean had arisen in wrath, forbidding his further progress. He was even driven south of the strait to Cape Horn, where he landed and looked from the southernmost pinnacle of the cape to the mysterious southern sea, declaring triumphantly that he had been farther south than any man in the world and had placed his foot on the extreme of the new continent. Then all at once the weather changed and Drake sailed rapidly ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... said a dozen voices at once, as I reached New Sallyport; but I was resolved that Point-street should have a look at me, as well as High-street; so I kept a profound and mysterious silence, and let the watermen follow me to Point, just like so many sucking fish after a shark. I had two or three offers for volunteers to serve with me as I went along; but they were not of the right sex, so ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... adopt. And yet, deep down in his heart he was conscious of so earnest a desire to be really one of them, this good-natured, good-hearted, gay-spirited little throng, with their delightful intimacies, their keen interest in each other's welfare, their potent, almost mysterious geniality, which seemed to draw the stranger of kindred tastes so closely under its influence. Philip, as he sat at the long table with a dozen or so other men, did his best that night to break through the fetters, tried hard to ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... us as we entered the house. She was a little, ugly woman, stone deaf, as I knew of old. Yet in some mysterious way she could make out her son's deep voice, when he shouted into her ear. He did not speak now, however, but made dumb signs as if to ask how all was going on. She answered by a silent nod, and beckoned me to follow her into an inner room, which ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... and abominate,—whether the tyrannical presumption of those dreaded sacerdotal mole-catchers, who, not being willing to contain and coop up themselves within the grates and trellises of their own mysterious temples, do deal in, meddle with, obtrude upon, and thrust their sickles into harvests of secular businesses quite contrary and diametrically opposite to the quality, state, and condition of their callings, professions, and vocations; ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... such a mysterious collector of alms; he often conversed apart with the Judge, and always after these talks tidings of some sort spread abroad in the neighbourhood. The bearing of the Bernardine betrayed the fact that this monk had not always worn a cowl, and had not ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... time he took a deep interest in the sick and the dying; and for several years after his conversion, having much time at his disposal, he would often visit as many as twenty families per day, for weeks together. When Cholera, that mysterious disease, with its sudden attacks, its racking cramps, its icy cold touch, and its almost resistless progress, swept through the town of Hull, in the year 1849, leaving one thousand eight hundred and sixty,—or one in forty of the entire population,—dead, our ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... body denied a burial. The same severe penalty was decreed against any native who received a letter speaking of political affairs and did not at once present it to the public tribunals. These rigid orders were probably caused by some mysterious movements of that period, which made him fear that Spain was laying plans to get possession of ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... her gayly about; and now they were meeting again for the fourth or fifth time in the centre of the barn, with all eyes upon them, and the music lingered while Nancy, holding out her pink petticoats, coyly revolved around him. Then began a mysterious turning and clasping of hands, and weaving of Nancy's pink frock and Evesham's dark blue coat and white breeches in and out of the line of figures, until they met at the door, and, taking each other by both hands, swept ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... arise, such as parting with servants, schools, the poor around us, and our dear home. These things overwhelm me; indeed, I think naturally I have a very acute sense of the sorrow. Then the bright side of the picture arises. I have found such help and strength in prayer to God, and highly mysterious as this dispensation may be in some points of view, yet I think I have frequently, if not generally, been able to say, "Not as I will, but as Thou wilt," and bow under it. All our children and children-in-law, my brothers and sisters, our many friends and ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... the negotiation made no way. It struck the observant tradesman that all was not right. Old Marguerite several times refused to admit him, declaring her master was asleep: there was something mysterious and forbidding in her manner that seemed to Monsieur Ramin very ominous. At length a sudden thought occurred to him: the housekeeper—wishing to become her master's heir—had heard his scheme and opposed it. On the very ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... to the task of disturbing his burly frame, and a foot thrust between door and jamb would have done the rest. As matters stood, however, he was obliged to abandon any present hope of an interview with the mysterious Miss Eileen Garth. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... him was to Newell rich in expression of things beautiful, things mysterious, things that struck in great measure awe and reverence into his soul. A man with so much light within could not fail to shine upon others. He had no heart for the city or the life of the city, and for him, too, the quest of money had no attraction. Even before he went to school at Phillips ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... was needed for a noble, useful, or benevolent purpose, he supplied it quietly and sometimes anonymously. He was, in short, the least communicative of men. He talked very little, and seemed all the more mysterious for his taciturn manner. His daily habits were quite open to observation; but whatever he did was so exactly the same thing that he had always done before, that the wits of ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... thus reminded of the osprey pool, remarked that he received a line that afternoon saying the mysterious builder of the corner in Northern Consolidated had been discovered in Robert Lance Bayard. The old gray buccaneer would at once learn the terms upon ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... boat from the city, in which there are representatives from the two hotels, hovers around us, and cards are thrown to us. The zealous agents wish to supply us immediately with tables, beds, and all other household appliances; but we decline their help until we arrive at the mysterious spot. At last we float off—two lighters full of infected, though respectable, material, towed by oarsmen of most scurvy appearance, but free from every suspicion ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... without injustice be affirmed, that the sincerest and strongest believers in this mysterious Deity, are often tormented by doubts, and, if candid, must own they believe in the existence of many things with a feeling much closer allied to certainty than they do in the reality of their 'Great First Cause, least understood.' ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... the chief obstacles in the path of progress. Mr. Banerjea's tales contain many references to magic—a pseudo-science which clings to the world's religions and social polity. It is doubtful whether the most civilised of us has quite shaken off the notion that mysterious virtues may be transmitted without the impetus of will-power. Latin races are haunted by dread of the Evil Eye; advertisements of palmists, astrologers and crystal-gazers fill columns of our newspapers. Rational education alone enables us to trace the sequence of cause and effect ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... I saw the sloop making a desperate effort to put to sea. Meanwhile the two accomplices were running like rabbits for the marsh. Close to the mysterious bundle their lantern lay smashed and burning luridly in its oil. The brigadier sprang past me swearing like a pirate, while his now thoroughly demoralized henchmen and myself stumbled on, firing at random with still a good hundred yards ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... which he could extort was, that in the excitement of the moment certain words, the meaning of which he did not in the least understand, had involuntarily escaped his lips, and that it was undoubtedly those mysterious words which had wrought the singular change in the priests' attitude toward them; of which change he had felt himself justified in taking the utmost advantage immediately that it became apparent. He added that, although ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... an unwonted stillness on the ships as they swung in towards the harbor mouth, for every man felt within him a vague unrest caused by one awful and mysterious peril, the torpedoes. For the forts, the gunboats, even the great ironclad, the men cared nothing—they had met such perils before—but lurking beneath the water was a horror not to be guarded against. They knew that these deadly mines were ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... lofty and sacred groves, wending our way over its well-worn stone steps and causeways, by its lotus-ponds and heavy-eaved shrines, there were no other visitors. A strangely solemn silence impressed us, until our very voices seemed to be echoed back with a mysterious significance. The shaded and pleasant paths are kept in perfect order, swept clear of every falling leaf or broken twig, showing that care and a sense of responsibility is not wanting. Although these temples are built of wood, so carefully ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... I watch those Gates, in truth or in dream, before my time? Oh! You can guess. That perchance I may behold those for whom my heart burns with a quenchless, eating fire. And once I beheld—not the mother but the child, my child, changed indeed, mysterious, wonderful, gleaming like a star, with eyes so deep that in their depths my ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... as a farce, you know, Bluebell, though any one would gladly snap you up for your music alone. But when this war is over, the mysterious husband will return, and you will pay me a visit in ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... at the Stores to order groceries, must you look as if you were going to elope?' she asked dryly. 'In an ordinary motorveil you have the air of hastening to some mysterious appointment.' ...
— Love's Shadow • Ada Leverson
... you say is true, and you have won to blessedness by mysterious ways, if it is true—however absurd—that you are a Saint, how comes it you house in your tomb with these phantoms which know not to praise God, and which pollute with their indecencies the temple of the Lord? ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... yet about certain things he was in the dark as much as ever. The mysterious Number Four—he had not asked the penitent for his name—had given him the names and addresses of fourteen men connected with the band of counterfeiters. Eleven of these individuals were makers of the bogus bank bills, and the other three operated ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... wakens Love. Come, let us our rights begin; 'Tis only daylight that makes sin, Which these dun shades will ne'er report. Hail, goddess of nocturnal sport, Dark-veiled Cotytto, to whom the secret flame Of midnight torches burns! mysterious dame, 130 That ne'er art called but when the dragon womb Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom, And makes one blot of all the air! Stay thy cloudy ebon chair, Wherein thou ridest with Hecat', and ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... Very different from the idols of the Psalmist are the gods of property: the former had hands and felt not; the latter, on the contrary, manus habent et palpabunt. The right of increase is conferred in a very mysterious and supernatural manner. The inauguration of a proprietor is accompanied by the awful ceremonies of an ancient initiation. First, comes the CONSECRATION of the article; a consecration which makes known to all that they must offer up a suitable ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... manner of discovery, and the fate of these wretches, is told, I think, by Forsyth, who can hardly be suspected of romance or exaggeration. I have him not with me to refer to; but I well remember the mysterious and shuddering dread with which I read the anecdote. I am glad no one else seems to recollect it. The inn at present contains many more than it can possibly accommodate. We have secured the best rooms, or rather the only rooms—and besides ourselves and other foreigners, there are numbers ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... with a gasping cry, and her eyes suddenly strained into the distance, as though a vision of some mysterious thing hung before her. The Duchess realised that that temptation, which has come to so many disillusioned mortals, to end it all, to find quiet somehow, somewhere out in the dark, was upon her. She became resourceful and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... this mysterious, overwhelmingly enormous work is nothing less than the piercing—not of a mountain or a group of mountains—but of that entire part of Switzerland which ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... impossible. Of Maria Macapa's past prior to the time of her appearance at the "flat" absolutely nothing could be learned. She suddenly appeared from the unknown, a strange woman of a mixed race, sane on all subjects but that of the famous service of gold plate; but unusual, complex, mysterious, even ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... the metal carrier that dropped from the tube on the desk of the man in charge of distributing the various pieces of copy to the compositors. This man put a mysterious-looking blue mark on the first page of Larry's story. This was to identify it later, and to make sure that all the succeeding pages would be ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... through the long winter with the mother, and helped her with the babies inside and the beasts outside, and was the cheer and comfort of the house, while the father was away in Winnipeg, brave little girl that she was. She is now twenty-four, and for the last nine years she has suffered from a mysterious and painful illness, and now for eighteen months she has lain upon her bed and she cannot rise. We all have in us the beast feeling that shrinks from the weak and wounded; but when I look at Katie there ...
— Beyond the Marshes • Ralph Connor
... among the ancient nations that the art of writing was known to the antediluvians. The Druids believed in books more ancient than the Flood. They styled them "the books of Pheryllt," and "the writings of Pridian or Hu." "Ceridwen consults them before she prepares the mysterious caldron which shadows out the awful catastrophe of the Deluge." (Faber's "Pagan Idolatry," vol. ii., pp. 150, 151.) In the first Avatar of Vishnu we are told that "the divine ordinances were stolen by the demon Haya-Griva. ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... is that the material immensity teaches me my God's infinity, and especially His inexhaustible patience with us sinners. It teaches us the unfathomed depths of His gracious heart, and the abysses of His mysterious providence, and the unbounded sweep of His long- suffering forgiveness. His forgiving forbearance reaches further than the limits of the heavens. Not till these can be measured will it be exhausted, and the seed of Israel cast off ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... speech could diversify the fourscore names of honey, the two hundred of a serpent, the five hundred of a lion, the thousand of a sword, at a time when this copious dictionary was intrusted to the memory of an illiterate people. The monuments of the Homerites were inscribed with an obsolete and mysterious character; but the Cufic letters, the groundwork of the present alphabet, were invented on the banks of the Euphrates; and the recent invention was taught at Mecca by a stranger who settled in that city after the birth of Mahomet. The arts of grammar, of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... third place, it was proposed to prevent children of sisters or of brothers from intermarrying, it is completely mysterious why children of brothers and sisters should not only not have been prevented in the same way, but absolutely be regarded as the proper mates for each other. Even if a single community reformed itself on these lines, it is hardly ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... with a short laugh, "it seems very dreadful and mysterious, doesn't it?—especially as Caw recovered the diamonds so speedily. I've thought it out, Lancaster, and I've struck only one reasonable conclusion. There was no fourth person present that night. Caw was fooling us all the time. The cupboard is really a passage to another ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... the pillars of Rabbinism, Asheri, Rashba, Isaac ben Sheshet, loomed up the philosophers, Gersonides (Ralbag), Kreskas, and Albo, and a long line of Kabbalists, beginning with Nachmanides and Moses de Leon, the compiler of the Zohar, and ending with the anonymous authors of the mysterious "Kana and Pelia." ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... were so filled by the mysterious letter which was pinned inside her dress, with wondering how she could safely deliver it without the knowledge of anyone, that she hardly thought of school. For the time she had ...
— Yankee Girl at Fort Sumter • Alice Turner Curtis
... now they were meeting again, for the fourth or fifth time, in the centre of the barn, with all eyes upon them, and the music lingered while Nancy, holding out her pink petticoats, coyly revolved around him. Then began a mysterious turning, and clasping of hands, and weaving of Nancy's pink frock and Evesham's dark blue coat and white breeches in and out of the line of figures, until they met at the door, and taking each other by both hands, swept with a joyous measure to the head of the barn. Dorothy gave a little ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... firm ground which occurs frequently in newly cleared land, and over which nothing but the most powerful sinews can make way. We had now left every one behind us, were struggling on through the dimness of a hazy day, sinking into twilight. Suddenly my mysterious rival turned his horse full upon me, and to my utter amazement discharged a pistol at my head. The discharge was so close that I escaped only by the swerving of my horse at the flash. I felt my face burn, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... is no trustworthy information as to the exact date at which Buddhism first reached China. It is related that the emperor Ming Ti (A.D. 58-76) had a dream in which a golden man appeared to him, and this mysterious visitant was interpreted by the emperor's brother to be none other than Sh[a]kyamuni Buddha, the far-famed divinity of the West. This shows that Buddhism must then have been known to the Chinese, at any rate by hearsay. The earliest ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... which the merciful God has given unto the sedulous and assiduous Endeavors of our honourable Rulers, to detect the abominable Witchcrafts which have been committed in the Country; humbly praying that the discovery of these mysterious and mischievous Wickednesses, may be perfected. III. We judge that in the prosecution of these, and all such Witchcrafts, there is need of a very critical and exquisite Caution, lest by too much Credulity for things received only upon the Devil's Authority, there be a Door opened for a long ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... nervous-looking Penyahbong, but friendly, as were the rest of them. I was then engaged in photographing and taking anthropometric measurements of the gently protesting natives, to whose primitive minds these operations appear weirdly mysterious. At first the kapala positively declined to take any part in this work, but finally reached the conclusion that he would be measured, but photographed he could not be, because his wife was pregnant. For that reason he also ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... mind is instructed by God in two ways: in one way by an express revelation, in another way by a most mysterious instinct to "which the human mind is subjected without knowing it," as Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. ii, 17). Accordingly the prophet has the greatest certitude about those things which he knows by an express revelation, and he has it for certain that they are revealed to him by God; wherefore ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... twilight had deepened. By and by it grew lighter and the north horizon took on a rosy flush that spread into a tremendous flare. The night was still, clear, crackly; it was surcharged with some static force, and so calm was the air, so deathlike the hush, that the empty valley rang like a bell. That mysterious illumination in the north grew more and more impressive; great ribbons, long pathways of quivering light, unrolled themselves and streamed across the sky; they flamed and flickered, they writhed and melted, disappearing, reappearing, rising, falling. It was as if the lid had been lifted from ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... natives here is Billibang, Goobang being considered but one of its tributaries. Its course completes the analogy between the rivers and plains on each side, and the supposed disappearance of the channel of the Lachlan seemed consequently as doubtful as the mysterious termination of the Macquarie. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... looked amused. A change indeed had come over Lady Fulkeward—a change, sudden, mysterious and amazing to many of her former distinguished friends with "pedigrees." In her husband's lifetime her hair had been a soft silver-gray; her face pale, refined and serious; her form full and matronly; her step sober and discreet; but two years after the death of ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... Ever since the mysterious fainting-fit Judith had watched him with tender anxiety, and it seemed to her that there was something strange in his manner that morning. She did not know what it was, but had she held any clew to his thoughts she would have perceived that Bertie was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... may be easily explained; and I doubt not but you will find, although it may at present appear a little mysterious, Sparkle will be fully able to shew cause and produce effect. He is however a man of honour and of property, and most likely we may by this time congratulate you upon the change of your Sister's name. What a blaze it ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of love, an inspired homage for genuine female worth, which was now revered as the acm of human excellence, and, maintained by religion itself under the image of a virgin mother, infused into all hearts a mysterious sense of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... three days, everything went on smoothly, and pretty much as usual. At the end of this brief interval, however, the attention of Mrs. Marston was recalled to the subject of her servant's mysterious anxiety to leave, and give up his situation. Merton again stood before her, and repeated the intimation he ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... he knew he was beloved of them all. More than they knew their respect for him was deepening into a kind of awe. They felt he had a power with him that they understood not. He was still the silent corporal. He talked not at all of his new-found experience, yet it shone in his face in a mysterious light. Even after he came from Wainwright with that stricken look, there was above it all a glory behind his eyes that not even that could change. For three days he went into the thick of the battle, ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... had remained a remote and semi-mysterious figure. She had been in some hearts and in many minds, but to most of them she was a name only. She had been the motive behind events she never heard of, the quiet center in a tornado of emotions that ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... ram knew all the time what ailed him, and that he butted him from the rock on purpose. I cannot explain it, but do know that "God moves in a mysterious way ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... House to-night. Everyone more, or less vaguely, conscious of it. Even without chancing to look up to Peers' Gallery, Members are inspired with sudden mysterious access of Moral Influence. OLD MORALITY himself, that overflowing reservoir of moral axioms, takes on an aggravated air of responsibility and respectability. Has had a great triumph which would inflate a man of less modest character. Last night, or ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 100. Feb. 28, 1891 • Various
... Ludgate, there was no hope for him; the proofs of his guilt were manifest and incontrovertible. The forged note, which his wife had taken from his desk and given to the milliner, was one which had not gone through certain mysterious preparations. It was a bungling forgery. The plate would doubtless have been retouched, had not this bill been prematurely circulated by Mrs. Ludgate: thus her vanity led to a discovery of her husband's guilt. All the associates in Lewis's iniquitous confederacy ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... way—there is a brown-green brook along a valley where a buggy was crawling down a lane among willow trees in a wealth of sunlight. And the dandelions are all out in those parts. Yes, it was a lovely morning. We found ourself pierced by the kind of mysterious placid melancholy that we only enjoy to the full in a Reading smoker, when, for some unknown reason, hymn tunes come humming into our head and we are alarmed to notice ourself falling in love with humanity as ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley |
