"Mystery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the matter?" I whispered back impatiently. I do not relish mystery and I detest being ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... upon its walls in the repose of a thousand years, the rude and gaudy mosaics, and above all the captured horses of Corinth which start from out the sombre mass in the glory of Grecian art, received from the solemn and appropriate light, a character of melancholy and mystery, that well comported with the thick recollections which crowd the mind as the eye gazes at this rare relic ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... clear up this mystery. It is certain that I sent the old woman Lu to you with your little slipper. ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... step off the ship in this strange valley and promptly drop dead? How could a well-equipped corps of tough spacemen become a field of rotting skeletons in this quiet world of peace and contentment? It was a mystery Peter and Sherri had to solve. If they could ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... sources of his good humour to be precisely that his success was independent of that. He had none the less become in a manner the fashion; the critics at least had put on a spurt and caught up with him. We had found out at last how clever he was, and he had had to make the best of the loss of his mystery. I was strongly tempted, as I walked beside him, to let him know how much of that unveiling was my act; and there was a moment when I probably should have done so had not one of the ladies of our party, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... of some clue to this mystery, I carefully inspected the other maps in this collection. In a map of the eastern hemisphere I soon observed the outlines of islands, which, though on a scale greatly diminished, were plainly similar to that of the land ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... printing was done at enormous cost; scientific communication had little or no facility; the Church persecuted science and all research which was based on the analysis of natural phenomena. Persecution begat mystery. So, to the people as well as to the nobles, physician and alchemist, mathematician and astronomer, astrologer and necromancer were six attributes, all meeting in the single person of the physician. In those days a superior physician ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... auditorium and made them one and very intimate, was dispelled. John watched her as she moved about the stage, and wondered why it was that the audience had suddenly become a little fidgetty. His eyes were full of astonishment. He gazed at Mrs. Cream as if he were trying to understand some ineluctable mystery.... He remembered how enthralled he had been by the acting of the girl who had played Juliet. He had been caught up and transported from the theatre to the very streets of Verona. He had felt that he was one of the crowd that followed the Montagues or ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... she leaned against her chair-back and closed her eyes. Continuous and assiduous attention from Mrs. Hilbrough was more than she had expected; and now that the messenger was proven to be Millard's own man, she doubted whether there were not some mystery about the matter, the more that the flowers ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... "nor can I solve the riddle of life. That is the great mystery. Death is simple. We know why we die but we don't know ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... the disappearance of the locket was a mystery. In Mrs. Barbara's mind there was no doubt that Ah Lon had taken the coveted picture and concealed it in safe hiding. Jinty almost thought so too, and a gloom crept over Old Studley. "I dursn't tell the master, he's that wrapped up in the ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... suppressed amazement at each other's presence there. Darton's eyes, too, fell continually on the gown worn by Helena as if this were an added riddle to his perplexity; though to Sally it was the one feature in the case which was no mystery. He seemed to feel that fate had impishly changed his vis-a-vis in the lover's jig he was about to foot; that while the gown had been expected to enclose a Sally, a Helena's face looked out from the bodice; that some long-lost hand met ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the cattle which had sunk into the marshes near the lake, and were unable to extricate themselves. In every part of the world where I have since been, I have heard similar legends, and have in most instances been able to discover a very probable explanation of the mystery. ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... greater. And to tempt him there was this new mystery, this knowledge that he could not miss. It had been vaguely present in his mind when he faced the crowd at Martindale, he remembered now. And the same merciless coldness had been in his hand when he pressed his gun into ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... to be an ordinary tourist," Theo said, with just the right air of mystery, "but if she liked, she could travel as a personage. She has her own reasons for coming to America, just as I have mine, though hers are different. Don't you think she ought to see Shasta, and the McCloud River, if her impressions are ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... place, at length, to which former intimations had pointed, and recognize the connexion which they themselves have with their ancient forerunners[175]." ... It is as if for four hundred years and upwards, a mighty mystery,—described in many a dark place of Prophecy, exhibited by many a perplexing type, foreshadowed by many a Divine narrative,—had waited for solution. The world is big with expectation. The long-expected time at last arrives. Up springs ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... time it had seemed that this desired condition would never be obtained. Coombe had felt the breath of a mystery. It was supposed to know everything and suspected that it knew nothing—a state of things aggravating to any well ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... acquire glory in combat: but there was no wailing in the camp of our foes; their arrows were not felt, their shouts were not heard. Yet they fell not by the hands of their foes; but perished, we know not where or how. At length, the sun shone on the mystery, and the parted clouds ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... wondering. There had been a note of reservation in his manner when she had spoken of Goldbanks. Was there after all some mystery about him or his occupation, something he did not want them to know? Her interest was ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... of mind of primitive peoples, the flood that submerged all but the strongest swimmers. The savage spent his days suspecting and exorcising evil. The echo in the cliff is an enemy, the wind in the grass an approaching sickness, the new-born child clad in mystery and defilement. But it wasn't for us to laugh at the savage for, so to speak, not having found his earth-legs, since our quite recent ancestors had held comets and eclipses to be menacing gestures of the stars. Some primitive suspicions were reasonable, ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... queens which are said to germinate eggs in distinct series? It is all out of the usual line. Other animals or insects usually produce the sexes promiscuously. As we are ignorant of causes deciding sex in any case, we must acknowledge mystery to belong to both sides of the question here. The stumbling-block of more than two sexes, which seems so necessary to make plain, is no greater here than with some species of ants, that have, as we are told, king, queen, soldier ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... the young lady who, as it will be remembered, was found six months later alive and married in New York. My friend was in excellent spirits over the success which had attended a succession of difficult and important cases, so that I was able to induce him to discuss the details of the Baskerville mystery. I had waited patiently for the opportunity, for I was aware that he would never permit cases to overlap, and that his clear and logical mind would not be drawn from its present work to dwell upon memories of the past. Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... decided step as an adherent of the cause of the Stuarts. We cannot doubt that James Stuart knew to the full the part that Bolingbroke had played. He knew that he owed Bolingbroke no favor, and that he could have no confidence in him. Still, it remains to the present hour a mystery why James should then, and in that manner, have got rid of Bolingbroke forever. Bolingbroke himself does not appear to have known the cause of his dismissal. It may be that James had grown tired of the whole fruitless struggle, and was glad ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... whole, though it is not without many defects." That these reviews appeared in May and October 1768 is compelling evidence for dating the pamphlet, in spite of Mr. Griffin, 1768. Walpole once more proves himself a reliable source. Why the publication was delayed for over a year will probably remain a mystery. ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... have become of the pretty precious boy?" asked Fabens, as a tear rolled over each cheek. "Can he be alive? I often think of the little fawn, and mother's dying words. O, the terrible mystery! Will it never be solved on earth?—The Lord's ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... a curious thing, but Emma—isn't her name Emma?—always has to work like a slave when you go out. I don't know why there should be so much more to do: you don't help her to clean the kettles or the steps in the general way, do you? It's a mystery. Anyhow, Lydia has to see after my tea, and then I have buttered toast or muffins and rashers of bacon. Lydia's attentions are just a trifle greasy perhaps, now I come to think of it. But she toasts muffins very well, does that young woman, and makes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... took on shapes strange and fantastic; the road became a gleaming causeway whereon I walked, godlike, master of my destiny. Beyond meadow and cornfield to right and left gloomed woods, remote and full of mystery, in whose enchanted twilight elves and fairies might have danced or slender dryads peeped and sported. Thus walked I in an ecstasy, scanning with eager eyes the novel beauties around me, my mind full of the poetic imaginations conjured up by ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... wandered to this remote place. A vague sentiment of awe caused the hunters involuntarily to lower their voices before the supernatural charm of this austere landscape. Those hills, enveloped in mist—even when the plains shone with the blazing rays of the sun—seemed to hide some impenetrable mystery. It might be fancied that the invisible guardians of the treasures, the lords of the mountains according to Indian superstition, were hidden under this veil ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... circumstance which caused a wound on the back part of his jaw to be visible, and one-half of the left-hand little finger had been shot off in defence of his church and country, according to his own account. This was a subject however, upon which he always affected a good deal of mystery when conversing with the people, or we should say, he took care to throw out such oracular insinuations of what he had suffered in their defence, as, according to their opinion, almost constituted him ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... cleared away several dogs, and made room for us to lie down—a more tolerable position, in our case; though how a whole family, with innumerable dogs, stow themselves in the compass of a circle eight feet in diameter, still remains a mystery. ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... riveted by the chic, black-clad figure of her employer, standing in the centre of the pale grey carpet, minus her voluminous, inky veil which, during the early half of the day, had transformed her into a creature of mystery. Her mourning was exceedingly elegant and smart. Esther, gazing fascinated, wondered in spite of herself how long before Sir Charles's death it had been planned. She had never been able to rid her memory ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... from him to us, inquiringly. I recollected that my editor had mentioned a daughter who might prove to be an interesting and important figure in the mystery. She spoke in an overwrought, agitated tone. ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... was the Tower. It was suffused with the loveliest glow of gold, ivory, and delicate green, all blending. The lights revealed and interpreted the architecture softening the colors and adding the subtle charm of mystery. A hundred beautiful hues were reflected in the waters of the fountains. The floral effects made by submerged lights in the basin were exquisite, and the witchery ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... afterward, and in the great still joy that had come to him, Sanford Hantee chose to reflect upon the mystery of pain he had known on the lonely out-journey—the spiritless incapacity to cope with life—the loss even of his mastercraft with animals. He would look toward Carlin in such moments and then look away, ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... So the mystery was wholly cleared up at last, and when ex-Private Hinkey departed to begin his term of imprisonment the Army was well rid of one who was in no sense fit to be the comrade of any honest man wearing Uncle ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... quickly on assets, or buying to hold as an investment, was gambling pure and simple, and these men were gamblers. He was nothing more than a gambler's agent. It was not troubling him any just at this moment, but it was not at all a mystery now, what he was. As in the case of Waterman & Company, he sized up these men shrewdly, judging some to be weak, some foolish, some clever, some slow, but in the main all small-minded or deficient because they were agents, tools, ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... organism on fire was supposed to be especially beneficial. One taste of the plant gives a realizing sense of its value as an emetic. How the red man enjoyed smoking and chewing the bitter leaves, except for the drowsiness that followed, is a mystery. ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... held her course for the open sea, while behind her in the gathering dusk the coast grew hazy—faded out—was gone. The two boys, sitting late into the first watch, shivered with that fine ecstasy of adventure that can come only in the shadowy mystery of star-lit decks and the long, whispering ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... use. The whole country about Stonehenge is dotted with groups of sepulchral barrows, and at the western end of the Cursus is a cluster of them more prominent than the others, and known as the "Seven Burrows." Stonehenge itself inspires with mystery and awe, the blocks being gray with lichens and worn by centuries of storms. Reference to them is found in the earliest chronicles of Britain, and countless legends are told of their origin and history, they usually being traced to mythical hands. ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... therefore, take our old friend the fox for our first lesson. This is the animal sure to be selected by all learners, and the reason is not far to seek—it being of a manageable size, not too large nor too small; an animal, moreover, of a picturesque habit of body, and about whose death more or less of mystery hangs—this mystery so dear to the imagination of the youthful amateur! In some places the death of the vulpine robber of hen roosts is hailed with delight, and people are to be found even —oh, horror!—willing to grasp in friendship the hand of ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... at least, the right of the elect to employ the sword against the worldly authorities, "the godless," "the enemies of the saints." It was predicted, he maintained, that a two-edged sword should be given into the hands of the saints to destroy the "mystery of iniquity," the existing principalities and powers, and the time was now at hand when this prophecy should be fulfilled. The new movement in the North-west, in the lower Rhenish districts, and the adjacent Westphalia sprang up ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... physical aspect of either path. The journey had become interminable. The unspeakable monotony, whose only variant was peril, had smothered the spark of hope and interest. The allurement of mystery had wholly ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... professional beggars were fitted with all the appliances of imposture; where there was an agency for the hire of children to be carried about by forlorn widows and deserted wives, to move the compassion of street-giving benevolence; where young pickpockets were trained in the art and mystery which was to conduct them in due course to an expensive voyage for the good of their country to ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... could not bear it. Nor could she bear that Monty should cry, as he was doing in that dreadful, quiet way. Boys shouldn't cry—it meant something terrible when they did. Besides, why should he now, anyway? The knowledge of his father's death was nothing new; and here was all the mystery explained, and the suspicion which had clouded ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... a bed, and the usual instruments of a lady's toilet; but Lady Selina does not choose to have it shown, and it has become invested, in the eyes of the visitors, with no ordinary mystery. Many a petitionary whisper is addressed to the housekeeper on the subject, but in vain; and, consequently, the public too ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... hand as though he wanted something. Mr Springett without a word passed him one of Dan's broad chisels. 'Ah! Wood-carving, for example. If you can cut wood and have a fair draft of what ye mean to do, a' Heaven's name take chisel and maul and let drive at it, say I! You'll soon find all the mystery, forsooth, of wood-carving under your proper hand!' Whack, came the mallet on the chisel, and a sliver of wood curled up in front of it. Mr Springett watched like an ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... Prussians as to leave them powerless—if these two "if's" had become realities, Napoleon must have driven Wellington back on Brussels. Then the Belgians would have joined him, and the Austrians would have forsaken the Allies, Metternich wishing well to Bonaparte for the sake of his wife and child. The mystery of his escape from Elba, which the English fleet might easily have prevented, remains still to be explained: for the Vienna Congress was riddled with intrigue. [Footnote: Sir Charles Dilke discussed the whole question of Napoleon's escape from Elba in an article in the Quarterly ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... might be but dimly conscious of the meaning in the eyes that met hers; her own drooped, half troubled, half confused, before them. But to Helen, who knew what love's signals were, there was no mystery whatever in the ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... mounted sappers, who so boldly penetrated into the heart of the enemy's line to destroy the railway north of Bloemfontein. A night-attack must of necessity always be a delicate operation. Shrouded in the mystery of darkness, men know that their safety and the success of the enterprise is dependent upon the sagacity and coolness of one or, at the most, two men. They must be momentarily prepared to meet the unexpected. The smallest failure or miscarriage—the merest ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... listening to conscience, by a single and quiet inclination of the mind. We must submit ourselves to God. We must bring our wills under His. Here and now we can do this by resolution and effort, in the strength of His Spirit, which is nearer us than we know. The thing is no mystery, and not at all vague. The mistake people make about it is to seek for it in some artificial and conventional form. We have it travestied to-day under many forms—under the form of throwing open the heart to excitement in an atmosphere removed from real life as far as possible: ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... certainly enough imagination to make her cherish a mystery. She wondered greatly what it all meant. Never in anything else had she been inquisitive or prying where the man was concerned; but she felt that this letter had the heart of a story, and she had made up fifty stories which ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was brought before a Court of Love by a baron and lady of Champagne, whether love is compatible with marriage. "No," said the baron, "I admire and respect the sweet intimacy of married couples, but I cannot call it love. Love desires obstacles, mystery, stolen favors. Now husbands and wives boldly avow their relationship; they possess each other without contradiction and without reserve. It cannot then be love that they experience." And after mature deliberation the ladies of the Court of Love adopted the baron's conclusions (E. de la Bedolliere, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a great mystery. Before very long it always develops a spirit which is something more than the sum of the individual spirits which compose it. And no man can quite say how it comes into existence. It may be a greater spirit than that of any individual. ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... him labouring his breath, and felt the heat come up from his body like the sun in the dog- days from a paved courtyard. I was too uncomfortable, too perturbed, too much enraged over the fact to spend much thought on what the fact might mean. Was I taken for a soldier? Then why such a mystery about it? I had seen men crimped in the open piazza, out of wine-shops, from the steps of churches. What then was my fate? I ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... in fact a girl who couldn't grow up, because whenever she visited a little mystery island in the Outer Hebrides "they" who lived in a "lovely, lovely, lovely" vague world beyond these voices would call her vaguely (to Mr. NORMAN O'NEILL'S charming music), and she would as vaguely return with no memory of what had passed and no change in her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... or any other gentleman could be. However, his uneasiness made him write to the Count what he had advised, who returned for answer, that such a step was both unnecessary and impolitic, as it would only strengthen suspicions by giving every thing an air of mystery, while there was not the least occasion ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. I • Various
... together, to take an exact account of it, staying a fortnight at a time, I found out the entire work by degrees. The second time I was here, an avenue was a new amusement; the third year another. So that at length I discovered the mystery of it, properly speaking, which was, that the whole figure represented a snake transmitted through a circle. This is an hieroglyphic or symbol of ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... grandfather, who had known the whole story, often mentioned these matters to his grandson. The Popess Juana had loved no other than Jaime's father. General Ortega was a deluded person whom Dona Juana received with extraordinary show of mystery, gowned in white, in a darkened salon, talking in a sweet voice which seemed to come from beyond the tomb, as if she were an angel of the past, concerning the necessity of turning Spain back to its ancient customs, sweeping away the liberals, and reestablishing the government of ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... of the ship's company had been injured by the blast, the origin of which remained for ever a total mystery to all but one—the sailor who knew that Paulvitch had been aboard the Kincaid and in his cabin the previous night. He guessed the truth; but discretion sealed his lips. It would, doubtless, fare none too well for the man who had permitted ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to produce the vast quantities of foods that are now dependent upon such insect life. It is true that they take their toll of the food that they are instrumental in sometimes producing but when one attempts to unravel the mystery of balance of nature one is confronted by the big question of how far to go in the eradication of both animals and insect pests. Before man's interference the wild crops were plentiful and balances were kept in harmony ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... established in France, although not in any other country. But it is not quite certain whether we actually possess anything earlier than the twelfth century, even in French, and it is exceedingly doubtful whether what we have in any other vernacular is older than the fourteenth. The three oldest mystery plays wherein any modern language makes its appearance are those of The Ten Virgins,[151] mainly in Latin, but partly in a dialect which is neither quite French nor quite Provencal; the Mystery of Daniel, partly Latin and partly French; ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... didn't really oppose him before that time. Now, I want to know what this is." Her voice hardened. "I'm tired of being treated like a schoolgirl; I'm twenty-four, and old enough to think for myself, and I demand to know what mystery has forced a black ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... underlying jocularity in this remark of Mrs Brand, for she was a strange and incomprehensible mixture of shrewdness and innocence; but no one took much trouble to find out, for she was so lovable that people accepted her just as she was, contented to let any small amount of mystery that seemed to be in her ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... me, father," I retorted, "what is the signal. You needn't make such a blooming mystery of it, like that chap we saw ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... through the peep-hole, was baffled, too. She was an interested party in what seemed a death-struggle—was not one of the fighters her Joe?—but the audience understood and she did not. The Game had not unveiled to her. The lure of it was beyond her. It was greater mystery than ever. She could not comprehend its power. What delight could there be for Joe in that brutal surging and straining of bodies, those fierce clutches, fiercer blows, and terrible hurts? Surely, she, Genevieve, ...
— The Game • Jack London
... himself to love liberty; but he serves it, and that is enough for me. I shall be there to defend him." Thus, three of Robespierre's subsequent victims combined that night, and unknown to him, for the safety of the man by whom they were eventually to die. Destiny is a mystery whence spring the most remarkable coincidences, and which tend no less to offer snares to men through their virtues than their crimes. Death is everywhere: but, whatever the fate may be, virtue alone never repents. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... him to see those accounts, which he came so many miles on purpose to settle. Perceiving him begin to waken to the suspicion that she had some interest in suppressing the accounts, and hearing him, in an altered tone, ask, "Madam, is there any mystery in these accounts, that I must not see them?" she instantly rang the bell, and answered, "Oh, none; none in the world; only we thought—that is, I feared it might fatigue you too much, my dear friend, just the day before your journey, and I was unwilling to lose so many hours of your good company; ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... the rest shall bear this burden? Or, to ask another question, where is the sense of it? Does the poet mean, that He, that kill'd the deer, shall be sung home, and the rest shall bear the deer on their backs? This is laying a burden on the poet, that we mist help him to throw off. In short, the mystery of the whole is, that a marginal note is wisely thrust into the text: the song being design'd to be sung by a single voice, and the stanzas to close with a burden to be sung by the whole company.] This note I have given as a specimen of Mr. Theobald's jocularity, and the eloquence ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... on the 19th, whence they crossed to Panama and were compelled to wait there two days for the Columbia to bear them south, to Peru. One of the passengers from New York, was a curious and erratic character, who was the possessor of a weighty secret. After much mystery, he decided to make Boyton his confidant, and he solemnly revealed to him the matter that was bearing on his brain. It was to the effect that a great treasure was buried on a distant island and he was about fitting out an expedition to go in search of it. A female relative, who was a clairvoyant, ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... arm's length of that little gipsy, I shall intercept her, even at the risk of receiving such a spiritual-shock as that which struck Mrs. Alicia Dubarry to the ground," said Lyon, facetiously; for he might well make a jest of this lighter affair of the chapel mystery to veil the deep anxiety he felt in the heavy matter ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... know better to-day the value of Coronado's great discoveries. He had solved the age-long mystery of the Seven Cities, and explored the southwest of the United States of our day. The rich region now included in the great states of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas had been seen, and ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... remembering exactly what she looked like when she was kissing a rose with a certain knight in armour in a square garden, since for some perverse reason it was this picture that remained so painfully clear to his mind. Then he drifted off into speculations upon the general mystery of things of a sort that were common with him, and in these became ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... in many other places. It is, therefore, no longer necessary to say that golf is not a highly developed and scientific sort of hockey, or bandy-ball. Still, there be some to whom the processes of the sport are a mystery, and who would be at a loss to discriminate a niblick from a bunker-iron. The thoroughly equipped golf- player needs an immense variety of weapons, or implements, which are carried for him by his caddie—a youth or old man, who is, as it were, his ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... the poor brute asks for no reason why his master went, why he has come again, why he should be loved, or why presently while lying at his feet you forget him and begin to grunt and dream of the chase—all that is an utter mystery, utterly unconsidered. Such experience has variety, scenery, and a certain vital rhythm; its story might be told in dithyrambic verse. It moves wholly by inspiration; every event is providential, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... missionary; though it was only the duties of one whom he saw to be needed, without an appointment, that he undertook. How he found time, or strength, with his feeble constitution, for preaching to prisoners and paupers, and visits to the destitute and dying, is a mystery to one less diligent in filling up little interstices ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... and faith give to the mind a power which it is utterly incapable of possessing without them. I believe in the mind, children. I believe that in some day to come it will reach those heights where it will unlock the mystery of life itself to us. I have seen many strange things in my forty-odd years in the wilderness, and not the least of these have been the achievements of the primitive mind. And it seems to me, Roger, ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... manufacture of the Mormon Bible; but beyond this, nothing. His library was small: he left no manuscripts, and refused persistently to have a picture of himself taken. It can only be said that he was a compound of ability, versatility, honesty, duplicity, and mystery." ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... river's song. Folded hands lie in my lap, for the time forgot. My heart and I lie small upon the earth like a grain of throbbing sand. Drifting clouds and tinkling waters, together with the warmth of a genial summer day, bespeak with eloquence the loving Mystery round about us. During the idle while I sat upon the sunny river brink, I grew somewhat, though my response be not so clearly manifest as in the green grass fringing the edge of the ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... the sobbing heard behind doors, and that wild run of the girl who tried to get away from the place by actually scaling a back fence, and who was recognized as the demure little Sarah, all this furnished plenty of material for a mystery story. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... receipts and issues of the revenue, together with two reports from the commissioners of accounts concerning sums issued for secret services, and to members of parliament. This was a discovery of the most scandalous practices in the mystery of corruption, equally exercised on the individuals of both parties, in occasional bounties, grants, places, pensions, equivalents, and additional salaries. The malcontents therefore justly observed, the house ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... then it may prove the key to all the mystery. What made their intimacy so difficult to understand was that I knew the captain's dislike of Eric had in no way diminished. He spoke of him as savagely ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... over his head, and the forest-bound sheet of water lay embedded between its mountains, as calm and melancholy as if never troubled by the winds, or brightened by a noonday sun. Once more the loon raised his tremulous cry, near the foot of the lake, and the mystery of the alarm was explained. Deerslayer adjusted his hard pillow, stretched his form in the bottom of the canoe, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... drunk with glory, "The victory is perfect—no other will venture against me—knight-errantry is dead." Now imagine my astonishment—and everybody else's, too—to hear the peculiar bugle-call which announces that another competitor is about to enter the lists! There was a mystery here; I couldn't account for this thing. Next, I noticed Merlin gliding away from me; and then I noticed that my lasso was gone! The old sleight-of-hand expert had stolen it, sure, and slipped ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sirr; vara true, and sae I doot I will never attain the height o' profeeciency ye hae reached. An' at this vara moment, sir," continued Groove, with delicious solemnity and mystery, "ye see before ye, sir, a man wha is in maist dismal want—o' ten shellen!" (A pause.) "If your superior talent has put ye in possession of that sum, ye would obleege me infinitely by a temporary ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... rose as he saw all the well-known items following each other; and when his last new acquisition, the latest addition to his wardrobe, lay solemnly smoothed down upon the top, Freddy's patience could bear no more. Bursting into a long howl of affliction, he called aloud upon Nettie to explain that mystery. Was he going to be sent away? Was some mysterious executioner, black man, or other horrid vision of fate, coming for the victim? Freddy's appeal roused from her work the abdicated family sovereign. "If I'm to be sent away, I shan't go!" cried ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... grievances? Was there any political significance in that strange mingling of curses and blessings? That his temper was not of martyr firmness was evident enough from the sudden change in the current of his thoughts brought about by the tingling of the horsewhip. All else was mystery. But the commonest knowledge of the English and colonial history of those days was sufficient to stimulate conjecture on these points. At the date of the incident recorded James II had been on the throne more than a year, and for a long time both as duke and king had been ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various
... fancy that in going down stream the shores would show to better advantage, if possible, than in the ascent. From Coblentz to Mayence the river is narrower than before; and every rock more precipitous than its neighbor, has a castle. How some of these towers were built, or could be got at, seems a mystery. I had no idea of the number of these robbers' nests, for such they were. Much as I love the Hudson, yet I cannot help saying that the Rhine is the river of the world, so far as I have seen the watery highways. Frankfort ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... I show the great mystery to thee, for the Lord shall make it fair. Ye minds shall soon depart from the earth, to join ...
— The Secret of the Creation • Howard D. Pollyen
... Grail, as Wagner uses it, has in it the usual accompaniments of mediaeval tradition,—something of paganism and magic. But these pagan elements are only contrasts to the purity and splendor of the simple Christian truth portrayed. The drama suggests the early miracle and mystery plays of the Christian Church; but more nearly, perhaps, it reminds one of those great religious dramas, scenic and musical, which were given at night at Eleusis, near Athens, in the temple of the Mysteries, before the initiated ones among the Greeks ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel
... her lost fawn were with me. As yet she knew not what had happened. The bear had frightened her into extra care of the one fawn of whom she was sure. The other had simply vanished into the silence and mystery ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... already surrounded with myth and mystery, Hereward flashed into the fens and out again, like the lightning brand, destroying as he passed. And the hearts of all the French were turned to water; and the land had peace from its tyrants for ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... of the type and time of Elizabeth would feel fundamentally, and even fiercely, that priests should be celibate, while racking and rending anybody caught talking to the only celibate priests. This mystery, which may be very variously explained, covered the Church of England, and in a great degree the people of England. Whether it be called the Catholic continuity of Anglicanism or merely the slow extirpation of Catholicism, there ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... of troopers detailed for special service, and that his command, with small knowledge of the country, fell into an ambush from which not more than two or three extricated themselves. Beyond this all was mystery, for those who survived that desperate skirmish could say nothing of the fate of their companions. The loss of his son gave Mr. Eustis additional interest in his daughter, if that were possible; and the common sorrow of the two so strengthened and sweetened their lives that their affection ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... brown, melancholy eyes upon Zenobia—only upon Zenobia!—she evidently saw nothing else in the room save that bright, fair, rosy, beautiful woman. It was the strangest look I ever witnessed; long a mystery to me, and forever a memory. Once she seemed about to move forward and greet her,—I know not with what warmth or with what words,—but, finally, instead of doing so, she dropped down upon her knees, clasped her hands, and gazed piteously into Zenobia's face. Meeting no ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Once more they had had their hour together and she had wasted it. As in her girlhood, her eyes had made promises which her lips were afraid to keep. She was still afraid of life, of its ruthlessness, its danger and mystery. She was still the petted little girl who cannot be left alone in the dark...His memory flew back to their youthful story, and long-forgotten details took shape before him. How frail and faint the picture was! ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... than, standing on the pavement outside the Stock Exchange, he would have experienced greeting his brother jobbers after a settling day that had transferred a fortune from their hands into his. Sennett, in particular, he liked and encouraged. Our whole social system, always a mystery to the philosopher, owes its existence to the fact that few men and women possess sufficient intelligence to be interesting to themselves. Blake liked company, but not much company liked Blake. Young Sennett, however, could ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... the first moment in which she feels intensely all the weight and meaning and mystery ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... interlude takes us for a little while to the Paris cafe where Danton, Robespierre, and Marat sit in angry counsel, even while we are on the sea with the royalist Marquis and Halmalo, the reader is subtly haunted by the great Vendean woods, their profundity, their mystery, their tragic and ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... die, and presently get into orchestras of one kind or another, and so leave the ranks of daily labour and join the great clan or caste of musicians, who are a race or family apart, and carry on their mystery from father to son. ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... that some mystery lay beneath it all, and vowed that she would fathom it to its nethermost depths. What was it that had taken place at Champdoce? Had the Duke, contrary to Daumon's prognostications, recovered? Had he discovered his son' insidious attack upon his life, and only pardoned it upon a ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... means simply "a revealed secret." In other words, "mystery," which we derive from the Greek word quoted, means neither more nor less than a secret revealed and explained to us. A man of mature years and finished education knows that which no school-boy can comprehend. To the elder a secret has been revealed. He is in possession of the mystery. To the younger ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield
... Caroline—came to me here in a hospital and I put him on my table alongside my tiny bust of Lincoln, which is the sacred place. I wish indeed those eyes could see within this shell of mine and tell what it is that twists my heart, physically turns it on its axis, so that its polarity is changed. From mystery to mystery we have traveled the past year, Anne, with her unfaltering trust, and I, a doubting Thomas. We came here for an operation, but the doctors somewhat doubt its wisdom at all, certainly not now, when pneumonia might befall. So after ten hard days of closest examination I go forth ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... "That is about what I expected. Nancy is in close confinement, charged with the most serious offense possible in war times. I doubt if I, her legal representative, am allowed to see her until this mystery is ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... office of art to educate the perception of beauty. We are immersed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision. It needs, by the exhibition of single traits, to assist and lead the dormant taste. We carve and paint, or we behold what is carved and painted, as students of the mystery of Form. The virtue of art lies in detachment, in sequestering one object from the embarrassing variety. Until one thing comes out from the connection of things, there can be enjoyment, contemplation, but no thought. Our ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... view is that of the philosopher and religionist, who ponder the tie that binds "soul" and body in an effort to solve the riddle of "creation" and pierce the mystery ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... beyond him. No formula could ever frame and hold for him that vision of his calling which had come to him four years ago on Harcombe Hill. He had conceived and sung of Nature, not as the indomitable parent by turns tyrannous and kind, but as the virgin mystery, the shy and tender bride that waits in golden abysmal secrecy for the embrace of spirit, herself athirst for the passionate immortal hour. He foresaw the supreme and indestructible union. He saw ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... typified the firm immovable bond of marriage between the two; their unity could not be broken. Mark the words of Ulysses: "Woman, thou hast spoken a painful word," when she commanded the bed to be removed; "who hath displaced my bed?" In it there was built "a great sign" or mystery; "now I do not know if my bed be firm in position, or whether some other man has moved it elsewhere, cutting the trunk of the olive tree up by the roots." Such is his intense feeling about that marriage bed, deeply symbolic, truly "a sign," as ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... suppose I'm not up to your standards of honour, but if a person makes a mystery, why shouldn't the others try to find it out? That's what it's for! And there's nothing else ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... have played such tricks with proper names as to make them often unintelligible; thus we find La Rochefoucauld figuring as Ruchfucove; and in an old treatise on the mystery of Freemasonry by John Leland, Pythagoras is described as Peter Gower the Grecian. This of course is an Anglicisation of the French Pythagore (pronounced like Peter Gore). Our versions of Eastern names are so different from the originals that when ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... odd," said Gus, for the nth time sniffing the "tainted breeze." Curiosity piqued the fisher to trace the mystery. He reconnoitred carefully, and presently fancied he could hear the faint murmur of voices. This proceeded from the boat-house, wherein Hill moored the moat punt. "I'll just make a reconnaissance in ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... little while they yielded to the glamour of the divine knowledge that amidst the chaos of eternity each soul had found its mate. There was no need for words. Love, tremendous in its power, unfathomable in its mystery, had cast its spell over them. They were garbed in light, throned in a palace built by fairy hands. On all sides squatted the ghouls of privation, misery, danger, even grim death; but they heeded not the Inferno; they had created a Paradise ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... crossed the trails of these wanderers swarming out of the thickets, sometimes by twos and threes, and again in straggling, endless lines converging upon the vast open barrens where the caribou gathered to select their mates for another year. Where they all came from was a mystery that filled the cubs' heads with constant wonder. During the summer you see little of them,—here a cow with her fawn hiding deep in the cover, there a big stag standing out like a watchman on the mountain top; but when the early autumn comes they are everywhere, crossing ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... there should be no delay. I've a child's eagerness now to push the black curtains aside and see what lies beyond. I've often dreamed and wondered. In a few minutes I shall know. I hear it calling me, that unknown world of silence, beauty and mystery. Let us make haste." ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... upon the list of the city corporations, under the name and style of "the Wardens and Commonalty of the mystery of Fishmongers of the city of London." It is a livery company, and very rich, governed by a prime and five other wardens, and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... plata doble, and so to be continued, as long as the house should be used by me, upon merchant security: such a dearth there is really of accommodations of this nature for the present, and for a long time hath been; yet there want not descants, that there is some great mystery of state in the matter, which doubtless will fly as far as Paris, if not ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... stalking off, for a moment, returned with a long pipe and a brass chafing-dish: he blew the coal for the pipe, which he motioned me to smoke, and left me there with a respectful bow. This delay, this mystery of servants, that outer court with the camels, gazelles, and other beautiful-eyed things, affected me prodigiously all the time he was staying away; and while I was examining the strange apartment and its contents, my respect and awe for the owner ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... around their mother and Apollonie, who were clearing up the mystery for them. The mother had barely been able to check their violent outbreak, but could not quite quench all enthusiasm. When they heard that Leonore had come to introduce them to her uncle, they were a little scared, but Leonore understood their hesitation ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... dialectics, often are to common people, no one of us can get along without the far-flashing beams of light it sends over the world's perspectives. These illuminations at least, and the contrast-effects of darkness and mystery that accompany them, give to what it says an interest that is much ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... mystery to me where he gets so much money," said Dick to Captain Blossom one day, "Is ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... here, as well as everywhere else, are unavoidable, and the natural consequences of corruption, and might be promulgated, therefore, without attaching any reproach to our rulers; but they are so accustomed to the mystery adherent to tyranny, that even the most unimportant lawsuit, uninteresting intrigue, elopement, or divorce, are never allowed to be mentioned in our journals, without a previous permission from the prefect of police, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... spoke, the orchestra, which was a good one, and perhaps the most satisfactory feature in the performance, broke into some weird Mendelssohnian music, and when the note of plaintiveness and mystery had been well established, the curtain rose upon the great armoury of the castle, a dim indistinguishable light shining upon its fretted roof and masses of faintly gleaming steel. The scene which followed, in which the Countess Hilda, disguised as the traditional phantom of the ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and ancestry were shrouded in mystery; even his age was a matter of pure conjecture. Although he was of the Maltese race, I have reason to suppose that he was American by birth as he certainly was in sympathy. Calvin was given to me eight years ago by Mrs. Stowe, but she knew nothing of his age or ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... dropped back from Henry's side, but was following closely behind him. He was deeply impressed by a situation so extraordinary for one of his type. The thunder, the lightning, the darkness and the danger contained for him all the elements of awe and mystery. ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that had for so long echoed through the factory ceased queries concerning the noise and the mission of the carpenters died away. Even Peter himself forgot about the great mystery, for the ball season was now on and in addition to its engrossing interests he and Nat were transferred to Factory 3 where they became much absorbed in the tanning of cowhides. Here again the preparation ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... eyes of a girl. Simultaneously there came another discovery which completely upset all her calculations and to which she had not fully adjusted herself even up to the time of the critic's visit to Adoree. One great mystery she had solved; another, the deepest mystery of a woman's life, had begun to unfold, and as yet she could scarcely give ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... which a piece of English coal was burning slowly, rose to his feet, amazed at the unusual sight; but he was too lazy for a frolic at that hour, and after a soft "wuf-wuf" he lay down and went to sleep again. The library was dimly lighted, and wore an air of wonder and mystery to the now excited children. Rique, the canary, was curled into a little round yellow ball, and paid no attention to his visitors. Lorito, who was perched in a big gilded cage in the corner, had his beak buried in his ...
— Harper's Young People, November 4, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... evil—in the unmerited sufferings of innocence—in the disproportion of penalties to desert—in the seeming blindness with which justice, in attempting to assert itself, overwhelms innocent and guilty in a common ruin—Shakespeare is true to real experience. The mystery of life he leaves as he finds it; and, in his most tremendous positions, he is addressing rather the intellectual emotions than the understanding,—knowing well that the understanding in such things is at fault, and the sage ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... marriage of the distinguished foreigner (sub rosa, of course), and to our childish vision pictured a wonderful career for this New York girl. The marriage, however, soon terminated unfortunately, and to the day of his death Tasistro's origin remained a mystery. He was an intellectual man of fine presence and skilled in a number of foreign languages. He claimed he was a graduate of Dublin College. Many years later, after I had become more familiar with title-bearing foreigners, Tasistro again crossed my path in Washington, where he was ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... Ferdinand de The Gondreville Mystery The Thirteen A Bachelor's Establishment Scenes from a ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... quite right about French women. They are like French dishes, uncommonly well cooked and sent up, but what the dickens they are made of is a mystery. Not but what all womenkind are mysteries, but there are mysteries of godliness and mysteries ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... darkness, and were able to distinguish the outlines of the tall pines and telegraph posts. From time to time the sound of whistles reached them from the station and the telegraph wires hummed plaintively. From the copse itself there came no sound, and there was a feeling of pride, strength, and mystery in its silence, and on the right it seemed that the tops of the pines were almost touching the sky. The friends found their path and walked along it. There it was quite dark, and it was only from the long strip of sky dotted with stars, and from the firmly trodden earth under their ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... slowly, "not alone by her wondrous beauty and grace of manner, but even more by her intelligence and intellectual ability, her natural refinement and delicacy, which, considering her surroundings, seemed to me simply inexplicable. From the very first, she has been to me a mystery, and as I become better acquainted with her, the mystery, instead of being lessened, is ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... Because of this mystery, upon which he merrily insisted, she affected a fear that he would some day desert her. "You don' tell me where you lif, I t'ink you goin' ran away of me, Toby. I vake opp some day; git a ledder dod you gone back home by 'Talian lady dod's ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... medicine-man). Last year some relatives of these Ibans moved to this village, and for three months the knowledge of the part played by the porcupines was hidden from them as a mysterious secret. At the end of that time this precious mystery was disclosed to the new-comers, and the porcupines were feasted with every variety of cooked rice, some of it being made into a rude image of a porcupine, and with rice-spirit and cakes of sugar and rice-flour, salt and dried fish, oil, betel-nut, ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... scenting a mystery, looked up curiously Commines made haste to cover his slip, "Or rather, how did you know ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... we would watch for everything that might improve and instruct us; if the arrangements of our daily life were so disposed as to be a constant school for our minds! but oftenest we take no heed of them. Man is an eternal mystery to himself; his own person is a house into which he never enters, and of which he studies the outside alone. Each of us need have continually before him the famous inscription which once instructed Socrates, and which was engraved on the walls ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... communicated to others. If any person makes a gift of the whole earth with all her treasures, unto one conversant with truth, the latter would still regard the gift of this knowledge to be very much superior to that gift. I shall now discourse to thee on a subject that is a greater mystery than this, a subject that is connected with the Soul, that transcends the ordinary understandings of human beings, that has been beheld by the foremost of Rishis, that has been treated in the Upanishads, and that forms the topic of thy inquiry. Tell ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... felt when we heard that they had been barbarously murdered in their bedroom. The eldest son and daughter had been at a ball somewhere near, and on coming home they found that one of the men-servants had dashed out the brains of both their parents with a poker. The motive remains a mystery to this day, for ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... more kept me company. He sat on a twig just across the brook, cocking his head at me, and saucily wagging his tail. Occasionally he would dart off among the trees crying shrilly; but his curiosity would always get the better of him and back he would come again to try to solve the mystery of this rival whistling, which I'm sure was as shrill and as harsh ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... mixed all the babies up, just as you would mix up a delicious fruit salad. We took from the mind all question of mystery and surprise by quickly and honestly answering his question. Thus, his first knowledge of his origin, if he is able to recall it, will ever be associated with ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... the lunar hemispheres in union inseverable? Or cans't thou have been some errant bolide, which missing its way, butted blindly against the lunar face, and there stuck fast, like a Minie ball mashed against a cast-iron target? Alas! nobody knows. Not even Barbican is able to penetrate thy mystery. But one thing I know. Thy dazzling glare so sore my eyes hath made that longer on thy light to gaze I do not dare. Captain, have you any ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... of Charles II." Clarke's "Life of James II." "Vindication of the English Catholics." "The Tryals, Conviction and Sentence of Titus Oates." "A Modest Vindication of Oates." "Tracts on the Popish Plot." Macpherson's "Original Papers." A. Marvell's "Account of Popery." "An Exact Discovery of the Mystery of Iniquity as Practised among the Jesuits." Smith's "Streets of London." "London Cries." Seymour's "Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster." Stow's "Survey of London and Westminster." "Angliae Metropolis." Dr. Laune's "Present State of London, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... labourers, brickmakers, and such like. Mr Crawley had now passed some ten years of his life at Hogglestock; and during those years he had worked very hard to do his duty, struggling to teach the people around him perhaps too much of the mystery, but something also of the comfort, of religion. That he had became popular in his parish cannot be said of him. He was not a man to make himself popular in any position. I have said that he was moody and disappointed. He was even worse than this; he ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... deep shelves, its pools, and its overhanging and hazelly banks concealed. They remitted further search till the stream should become pure; and old man taking old man aside, began to whisper about the mystery of the youth's disappearance; old women laid their lips to the ears of their coevals, and talked of Elphin Irving's fairy parentage, and his having been dropped by an unearthly hand into a Christian cradle. The young men and maids conversed on ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Perhaps the most powerful character in George Meredith's "Evan Harrington" is the great Mel, whose death is announced in the very first sentence of the novel. Hawthorne, in "The Marble Faun," never clears away the mystery of Miriam's shadowy pursuer, nor tells us what became of Hilda when she disappeared for a time from the sight and ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... God, happily delivered.[196] Although, as yet, he knew but little of experimental religion. And, says he, "The world thought I had religion: but to know the hidden things of godliness was yet a mystery to me. I did not know any thing as yet of the new birth, or what it was spiritually to take the kingdom of heaven by violence, &c." Which serves to shew, that one may do and suffer many things for Christ and religion, and yet at the same ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... a general anticipation of a coming time when the mystery of God's providence will be cleared up, and His righteousness displayed in the final judgment to be then passed on the evil and on the good. What the human race are led to anticipate, as likely to occur hereafter, from the many unsettled questions here between man and his brother, and ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... he was about to tell me remained for the present a mystery; for, just then, the squalls ceasing and the wind shifting to the northward of west, the captain ordered the lee braces to be slacked off, and we hauled round more to starboard, still keeping on the same tack, though. Our course now was pretty nearly south-west ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... at the breakfast table looking over this note, "how long do you mean to sit the picture of The Delicate Embarrassment? To relieve you as far as in me lies, let me assure you that I shall not ask to see this note of Mrs. Beaumont's, which as usual seems to contain some mighty mystery." ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... their way. At Carsphairn they were deserted by Captain Gray, who, doubtless in a fit of oblivion, neglected to leave behind him the coffer containing Sir James's money. Who he was is a mystery, unsolved by any historian; his papers were evidently forgeries—that, and his final flight, appear to indicate that he was an agent of the Royalists, for either the King or the Duke of York was heard to say, "That, if he might have his wish, he would have them all turn rebels ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before. 'Surely,' said I, 'surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see then what thereat is, and this mystery explore— Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore; 'Tis ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... few lessons from my teacher of rhetoric hard by the Forum—I will give you a letter to him when you become wise enough to accept a suggestion which I am reminded to make you—a little practise of the art of mystery, and Delphi will receive you as Apollo himself. At the sound of your solemn voice, the Pythia will come down to you with her crown. Seriously, O my friend, in what am I not the Messala I went away? I once heard the greatest logician in the world. His subject was Disputation. One saying I remember—'Understand ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the whole assemblage sings appropriate songs in its praise; and this is kept up until the decoction has been strained to its dregs. But here, as the using it as a beverage is an illicit process, a great mystery attends it. It is said that awa drinking is again on the increase, and with the illicit distillation of unwholesome spirits, and the illicit sale of imported spirits and the opium smoking, the consumption of stimulants and narcotics on the islands ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird |
