"Obscurity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consequence of this strange preparation, and not having any thing to ask of him but the only thing he had declared he would not grant, he only thanked him for the concern he was pleased to express, and said, that perhaps there might come a time in which the obscurity he was in at present would be enlightened; at least, cried he, I shall have the satisfaction of endeavouring to acquire by merit what I am ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... rule for the conduct of life, such as "Love thy neighbor," or "Do unto others," but rather in the barren, egg-dancing, acrobatically-balanced formula, "What is, is right." Those were the days when Hegel was supreme in philosophy because of his obscurity, as Browning is now supreme in poetry because of his; the shrivelled, evaporated, dead grain of wheat was prized all the more because it had been searched out with painful toil from the heap of chaff. ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... He again heard footsteps, but this time they were slower, more heavy. The white and black forms of two inquisitors appeared, emerging from the obscurity beyond. They were conversing in low tones, and seemed to be discussing some important subject, for ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes" given them as new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden; it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... damp and cold, but still living. It seems to grow warm at his touch. He pictures to himself with abominable clearness what the men have done. A feeling of strange strength circulates in his members. On his knees in front of the young girl, in the obscurity of the forest, he tries to bring her back to life, calling her sweet names, caressing her hair, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... growth. But the mountaineer is always a thinker; he has even in his poverty a hearty contempt for luxury, for material gain at the expense of personality. With his disposition to philosophy, fostered by solitude and isolation, he readily overleaps those gradations, and would step at once from obscurity to the position of a man of culture were the means ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... the nitrogen of plants, and the real cause of the value of nitrogenous fertilizers, are topics that have excited more discussion than any other points in Agricultural Chemistry. This is the result of two circumstances. One is the obscurity in which some parts of the subject have rested; the other is the immense practical and commercial importance of this element, as a characteristic and essential ingredient of the most precious fertilizers. It is a rule that the most valuable manures, commercially considered, are those ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson
... true origin of the art of paper-making, it is now lost in obscurity. It is almost certain that the earliest form of paper was the papyrus of the Egyptians and that they were the first to use it as a writing material. They manufactured it from the stem of the papyrus plant, from ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... Verloc and related directly or indirectly to her tragic suspicion that "life doesn't stand much looking into," are the outcome of that very necessity. Personally I have never had any doubt of the reality of Mrs. Verloc's story; but it had to be disengaged from its obscurity in that immense town, it had to be made credible, I don't mean so much as to her soul but as to her surroundings, not so much as to her psychology but as to her humanity. For the surroundings hints ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... used to oily words; I am used to speak what I think, of men, and to men. I am, perhaps, more of a come-by-chance than any of you ever saw; I have made my way to the place I now fill, without wealth, and against education; I was raised from obscurity, and placed in the high councils of the nation, by the kindness and liberality of the good people of my district—a people whom I will never be unfaithful to, here or elsewhere; I love them, and they have honored me; and according as God has given me judgment, ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... they must either penetrate the heart of the town, or follow the dark streets of the outskirts. In the latter case, their association would arouse surprise and comment, but in the throng, reasonable safety might be expected. Once in the station, they might hope to pass the hour of waiting in obscurity, since that was the last place that a ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... passed a cup of coffee she seemed to confer an honour; when she returned a receipted bill it was as if she repulsed an insult. People said that she had been born to greatness and that she had never adapted herself to the obscurity that had been thrust upon her—but they said it when her back was turned. To her face the subject was never broached, and her former prosperity was ignored along with her present poverty. Of her own sorrows she, herself, made no mention. When she spoke from the depths of her bitterness of ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... foolish excuses, as well as Dr. Tonge's prevaricating answers and mysterious statements, into consideration, the king was now convinced the "Narrative of a Horrid Plot" was an invention of a fanatic or a rogue. He was, therefore; desirous of letting the subject drop into obscurity; but Lord Danby, foreseeing in the sensation which its avowal would create, a welcome cloud to screen the defects of his policy, which parliament intended to denounce, urged his majesty to lay the matter before his privy council. This advice the king refused to accept, saying, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... presently it grew so dark that I could scarcely see where I was going, though I was able to guide myself in the path that stretched before me by means of the pale luminous rays that frequently pierced the deepening obscurity, and these rays I now noticed fell ever downwards in the form of a cross. As I went on I was pursued as it were by the sound of those delicate harmonies played on invisible, sweet strings; and after a while I perceived at the extreme end of the long, dim vista a door standing open, through ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... or mist, suspended in the atmosphere, becomes visible exactly as dust does in the air of a room. In the shadows, you not only cannot see the dust itself, because unillumined, but you can see other objects through the dust, without obscurity; the air being thus actually rendered more transparent by a deprivation of light. Where a sunbeam enters, every particle of dust becomes visible, and a palpable interruption to the sight; so that a transverse sunbeam ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... Providence for children and idiots," said Laura gently. We didn't ask her whether she meant us or Tony McGinnis or both. There are some things better left in obscurity. I'd have probably said something much sharper than that if anybody had made off with ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a large, dingy, dirty, water-stained and somewhat dilapidated hall to which the stone stair, ascending immediately from the door, led them; and it would have looked considerably worse but for the obscurity belonging to the nature of the entertainment, through which it took some pains to discover the twenty-five or thirty people that formed the company present. It was indeed a dim, but not therefore, a very religious light that pervaded rather than overcame the gloom, issuing ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the language in which he expressed it clear of ambiguities; and such earlier draughts of his system as are supposed still to be extant in MS., and a specimen of which M. Boehmer believes himself to have discovered, contribute only obscurity to what is in no need of additional difficulty. Of Spinoza's private history, on the contrary, rich as it must have been, and abundant traces of it as must be extant somewhere in his own and his friends' correspondence, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... so grave, when he opens his case, In obscurity finds it is hid, Till the bright glass of knowledge illumines his face, As he gives the three taps on ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... among California cattlemen. It must have paralyzed that flying personage, for I gained upon him shockingly. I could hear him pant, a queer, patient panting, a sigh rather, a gentle, lamenting sighing, and the white camisa flapped ghostily in the darkness. Suddenly he burst out of obscurity, past the plantation, into the glaring moonlight. And I—I stopped short, went down on my hands and knees, and crouched back into the shadow. For the man running was Miller; Miller, wild, sobbing, disheveled, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... looked towards the farther end of the room, which lay in obscurity; for it was a large room, lighted only by the four candles on the table ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... and the service of the dinner were equally superb. The broad table seemed small in the midst of the great mysterious chamber, of which the illumination was confined by shades to the centre. The glance wandering round the obscurity of the walls could rest on nothing that was not obviously in good taste and very costly. The three men-servants, moving soundless as phantoms, brought burdens from a hidden country behind a gigantic screen, and at intervals in the ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... obscure passage: but I think Theobald's interpretation right, namely, that "thirsty entrance" means the dry penetrability, or bibulous drought, of the soil. The obscurity of this passage ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... countries mixing their colors with as much filth as the police will allow. His keen thrusts at these incarnations of folly and obscenity in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and especially at those who seek to hide the poverty of their ideas in the obscurity of their phrases, encourage one to think that in the next generation the day of such pretenders will be done. His prophesying against "art for art's sake"; his denunciation of art which simply ministers ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... change! A cloud, which floated in the atmosphere, An inconsiderable and feathery speck Of no proportions, now augmented, wears A threatening aspect, ominously dark; Enveloping the heaven's canopy In lowering shadow and portentous gloom; In pall of ambient obscurity. The fork-ed lightnings ramify and play Upon a background of sepulchral black; The growling thunders rumble a reply Of detonation awful and profound, To every corruscation's vivid gleam; In deep crescendo and fortissimo, In quavering tremolo ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... is the child of Knowledge. When a mind is full, like a wholesome river, it is also clear. Confusion and obscurity are much oftener the results of ignorance than of inefficiency. Few are the men who cannot express their meaning, when the occasion demands the energy; as the lowest will defend their lives with acuteness, and sometimes even with eloquence. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the facts relating to Sir John Harding's illness remained, until lately, in more or less obscurity, and Mr. Mozley's was not the only erroneous version of them which got abroad. One such version having been mentioned, as if authentic, in a debate in the House of Commons on March 17, 1893, I wrote to the "Times" to correct it; and in confirmation of my statement the gentleman who had been Sir ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... watched the Whig party go to pieces. He saw a great part of its vote lodge temporarily among the Know-Nothings, but before the end of the year even they began to lose their prominence. In the autumn, from the obscurity of his provincial life, he saw, far off, Seward, the most astute politician of the day, join the new movement. In New York, the Republican state convention and the Whig state convention merged into one, ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... of America, particularly the celebrated Mr. Rittenhouse,) but from similar motives to those which induced the editors to give this calculation the preference,—the ardent desire of drawing modest merit from obscurity, and controverting the long-established illiberal prejudice ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... the tide, but the water being then ebbing, it was left behind. There were also some lighters lying over against the dock, and one of the lightermen walking then on board, saw them throw the pail into the dark; but by the obscurity of the night, the distance, and having no suspicion, they did not apprehend anything of the matter. Having thus done, they returned home again to Mrs. Hayes's where they arrived about twelve o'clock and being let in, found Mrs. Hayes had been very busily employed in washing ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... 'new woman' is the most ridiculous production of modern times, and destined to be the most ghastly failure of the century." Apart from the deprecation—perhaps well placed—which is contained in this presentment, it adds nothing but obscurity to the woman question. The grievance of the new woman is made up of those things which this typical characterization of the movement urges as reasons why she should be content. She is petted, and is permitted, or even required, to consume largely ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... basis, the mist of obscurity evolved by error deepens the false claim, and finally declares that God knows error and that error can improve 523:6 His creation. Although presenting the exact opposite of Truth, the lie claims to be truth. The crea- tions of matter arise from a mist or ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... on either hand, and Sir Guy deemed it wiser to move at a reasonable pace, for fear of attracting suspicion in a neighborhood already aroused by rumors of the man-hunt which had begun. They could count upon the obscurity ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... When wrecked in reputation, one might as well be wrecked in fortune, too. What would their future be, how could that proud, sensitive man her father bear this humiliation, this disgrace? To be condemned to a life of obscurity, social ostracism, and genteel poverty! Oh, the thought was unendurable! She herself could earn money, of course. If her literary work did not bring in enough, she could teach and what she earned would help ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... His Eminence, Monseigneur the Archbishop of Bourges, had converted to the Catholic faith a young person, the daughter of one of the citizen families, who were the first upholders of Calvinism, and who, thanks to their obscurity or to some compromise with Heaven, had escaped from the persecutions under Louis XIV. The Piedefers—a name that was obviously one of the quaint nicknames assumed by the champions of the Reformation—had set up as highly respectable cloth ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... to the bottom of the dingle. It was nearly involved in obscurity. To dissipate the feeling of melancholy which came over my mind, I resolved to kindle a fire; and having heaped dry sticks upon my hearth, and added a billet or two, I struck a light, and soon produced a blaze. Sitting down, I fixed my eyes upon the blaze, and soon fell into a ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... or variety in which far greater discrepancies are not to be founds, it is doubtful whether we can receive any thing as absolutely veritable history; and that the Book of Genesis, and Gospel of Luke, and History of Lingard, and History of Hume, are alike covered with a mist of sceptical obscurity." ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... out of the semi-obscurity of the side street into a brilliantly lighted thoroughfare and bowled down a broad and busy road. A drizzle of rain was falling and blurred the glass; but even had the windows been open, she could ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... embarrassed young consciousness, there had welled up the hesitating confession, "She—doesn't like me," she could not, of course, have found words in which to make the reasons for her knowledge clear, but they had for herself no obscurity. The fair being who, at rare intervals, fluttered on the threshold of her world had a way of looking at her with a shade of aloof distaste in her always ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... animal being carved in relief around them, had become famous as the receptacles of secret accusations under the name of the Lion's Mouths. Something he dropped into the grinning aperture of the marble, though what, the distance and the obscurity of the gallery prevented Gino from perceiving; and then his form was seen gliding like a phantom down ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... history does not determine; but it is very possible that they are, because they came, it is said, originally from the north of Ireland, and one of the sons is actually called Robin. Leaving this point, however, in the obscurity which involves the early history of the most ancient and illustrious families, we proceed to less disputable and perhaps more useful facts. It is well known, that is, by all his neighbours, that farmer Gray began life with no very encouraging prospects: he was the youngest of a large ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... all day long, roaming from bar to office, from one room to another, silently opening doors of unoccupied chambers to peer about in the dusty obscurity, then noiselessly closing them, he would slink away down the dim corridor to his late wife's room and sit there through the long sunny afternoon, his weak ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... meaning and beauty, while the youthful genius who had created it sank almost unnoticed into his grave; but they had not seen the advent of a work which almost in a day set the world on fire and raised an unknown musician from penury and obscurity to affluence and fame. In the face of such an experience it was scarcely to be wondered at that judgment was flung to the winds and that the most volatile of musical nations and the staidest alike hailed the young composer as the successor ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Ralph; then they surged up into his brain and flung him forward with half-raised arm. But he felt the grotesqueness of the gesture and his arm dropped back to his side. A series of unimportant and irrelevant things raced through his mind; then obscurity settled down on it. "THIS man...THIS man..." was the one fiery point in his darkened consciousness.... "What on earth are you talking ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... was nearer, more insistent; the closer it came the more completely was the real world obscured. This obscurity was now shutting oil from him everything; it was exactly as though his whole body bad been struck numb so that he might touch, might hold, but could feel nothing. Again it was as though he were confined in a damp, underground cell and the world above his head was crying out with life and ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... him who established rational government witnessed the death of him who perfected literature. In 1873, Martin Farquhar Tupper—next to Smith the most notable name in history—died of starvation in the streets of London. Like that of Smith, his origin is wrapped in profoundest obscurity. No less than seven British cities claimed the honour of his birth. Meagre indeed is our knowledge of this only bard whose works have descended to us through the changes of twenty centuries entire. ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... by the great thoroughfares, and by hidden streets of which Nancy had never heard, talking or silent as the mood dictated. Crewe had stories to tell of this and that thriving firm, of others struggling in obscurity or falling from high estate; to him the streets of London were so many chapters of romance, but a romance always of to-day, for he neither knew nor cared about historic associations. Vast sums sounded perpetually on his lips; he glowed with envious delight in telling of speculations ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... confinement.[382] It appears that a number of moths, especially the Sphingidae, when hatched in the autumn out of their proper season, {158} are completely barren; but this latter case is still involved in some obscurity.[383] ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... the megalithic monuments themselves we cannot expect to know very much, especially while their origin remains veiled in obscurity. Yet there are a few facts which stand out clearly. We even know something about their appearance, for the skulls found in the megalithic tombs have in many cases been subjected to careful examination and measurement. Into ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... among the birds of our woodlands in its personal interest for the historian. It is not, in fact, a British bird, save by acclimatisation, at all, and is generally regarded as a legacy of the Romans. The time and manner of its introduction into Britain are, it is true, veiled in obscurity. What we know, on authentic evidence, is that the bird was officially recognised in the reign of Harold, and that it had already come under the aegis of the game laws in that of Henry I, during the first year of which the Abbot of Amesbury held a licence to kill it, though how he contrived ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... permanently of their occupations, with nothing but starvation looking them in the face. Of course, nothing could be wider of the truth than this, but Kay had to flee his country, and died in poverty and obscurity in a foreign land. Still the shuttle continued to be used, for the makers of cloth had learned that increased production meant more work, and possibly greater profit, and though Kay disappeared, his works remained behind. The demand for weft grew more and more. It has been said that it is ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... of the primitive inhabitants of Chili, like that of all the nations and tribes of the aboriginal Americans, is involved in impenetrable obscurity. Many of the natives consider themselves as indigenous, while others derive their origin from a foreign stock, supposing their ancestors to have come from the north or from the west; but as they were utterly unacquainted with the art of writing, they ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... not, indeed, sir, universally and unvariably certain, that a man, raised from meanness and poverty, will be insolent and oppressive; nor do I doubt but there are many now languishing in obscurity, whose abilities might add new lustre to the highest honours, and whose integrity would very faithfully discharge the most important trust, and in their favour, wherever they can be discovered, some exceptions ought to be made; but ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... made in the craft are involved in some obscurity. He may have merely carried over from college days what he then had in hand. At all events his sister Elizabeth, from whom the information comes in respect to these details, remembered a little collection which ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... vast obscurity, with death threatening us if we took another step; and I could not help thinking how easy it was for a people of a low order of intellect, blindly superstitious, to make this solemn hall the home of their poor idol. It was a place ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... later part of their enormous subject is precious because it is inexhaustible. It is the best to know because it is the best known and the most explicit. Earlier scenes stand out from a background of obscurity. We soon reach the sphere of hopeless ignorance and unprofitable doubt. But hundreds and even thousands of the moderns have borne testimony against themselves, and may be studied in their private correspondence and sentenced on their own confession. Their deeds ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... no doubt, flicking him, he let go restraint, disobeyed his own orders, raised his head, and looking at her as in the enfolding obscurity she ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the obscurity grew less, and seemed to be slowly floating in the direction of the praus. Once there was the wave-like motion of the earth again, making them catch at each other to keep themselves from falling, and then the sun ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... Bedford was one of the first men of position in the country to come to the aid of Joseph Lancaster—a young Quaker philanthropist, who, in spite of poverty and obscurity, did more for the cause of popular education in England in the early years of the century than all the privileged people in the country.[10] Here a floating straw of reminiscence may be cited, ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... regent, and allowed the Inquisition and the edicts to fall almost entirely into disuse. This forbearance of the government, combined with the brilliant representations of the Gueux, lured from their obscurity the Protestants, who, however, had now grown too powerful to be any longer concealed. Hitherto they had contented themselves with secret assemblies by night; now they thought themselves numerous and formidable enough to venture to these meetings openly and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... footsteps deepened, merged into actual sound, drew nearer. Thorne, in the deep obscurity of the trees, listened, moving near to the dusky, trunk of an old magnolia; he was in no mood for passing civilities, and in this friendly country all wayfarers exchanged greetings. In the sound of the advancing ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... In resting his case on the Pyrenees, Mr. Lea shows his usual judgment. But his very confident note is a too easy and contemptuous way of settling a controversy which is still wearily extant from Spain to Silesia, in which some new fact comes to light every year, and drops into obscurity, riddled with the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... was a man whose life was one of meritorious achievement, every one knows. That he was a diligent and successful working geologist, scarcely needs saying. That with indomitable perseverance he struggled up from obscurity to a place in the world of literature and science, shows him to have been highly endowed in character and intelligence. And that he had a remarkable power of presenting his facts and arguments in an attractive form, a glance at any of his books will quickly ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... of their greatest need, they bring them forth, the base place having kept them more safe than the dainty chamber would have done. And so these two arbitresses of the world not seldom hide their most precious commodities in the obscurity of the crafts that are reputed most base, that thence being brought to light they may shine with a brighter splendour. Whereof how in a trifling matter Cisti, the baker, gave proof, restoring the eyes of the mind to Messer Geri Spina, whom the story of his wife, Madonna ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the tale, as when some beautiful temple or theatre is shut up. But now the informing of ourselves with the truth herself is a thing so delectable and lovely as if our very life and being were for the sake of knowing. And the darkest and grimmest things in death are its oblivion, ignorance, and obscurity. Whence, by Jove, it is that almost all mankind encounter with those that would destroy the sense of the departed, as placing the very whole of their life, being, and satisfaction solely in the sensible and knowing part of the mind. For even the things ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... and he had thought she was speaking of her poverty. It was a cruel vengeance, for, before he had read the letter through, he knew that if the story were correct, she could be his wife in name only—that they must part. Poverty, obscurity, seemed as nothing now—but crime? Oh, Heaven, that his name and race should be so dishonored! If he had known the real truth, he would have died rather than have uttered one ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... be combated until they are recognized, simply and frankly, and honestly discussed. It is a significant and even symbolic fact that the bacteria of disease rarely flourish when they are open to the free currents of pure air. Obscurity, disguise, concealment furnish the best conditions for their vigor and diffusion, and these favoring conditions we have for centuries past accorded to venereal diseases. It was not always so, as indeed ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and, on emerging from the waves, supported ourselves for some time by treading- water, while we held the two bundles above our heads. This we did in order to let our eyes become accustomed to the obscurity. Then, when we could see sufficiently, we swam to a shelving rock, and landed in safety. Having wrung the water from our trousers, and dried ourselves as well as we could under the circumstances, we proceeded to ignite the torch. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... brigades, under Kershaw and Wofford, advanced through the woods in the direction of the firing, but the retreat was so rapid, that they could only join in the pursuit. A dense fog settled over the field, increasing the obscurity, and rendering great caution necessary to avoid collision between our own troops. Their movements were ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... monarchy. The Old Men (as they were called) have a right to sit with the king in the Speak House and debate: and the king's chief superiority is a form of closure—'The Speaking is over.' After the long monocracy of Nakaeia and the changes of Nanteitei, the Old Men were doubtless grown impatient of obscurity, and they were beyond question jealous of the influence of Maka. Calumny, or rather caricature, was called in use; a spoken cartoon ran round society; Maka was reported to have said in church that the king was the ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this phrase is involved in some obscurity. Jacob, in his Law Dictionary, speaks of it as "from the French," and his definition is verbatim that given in The Termes of the Law (ed. 1598), with a very slight addition. Blackstone (book II cap. 12.) says, "which term I shall explain in the very words ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... caused by my present successes. I see that you despise everything that can make you worthy to reign after me. What you call inability, I call rebellion, for you cannot excuse yourself on the ground of the weakness of your mind and the state of your health. We have struggled from obscurity through the toil of war, which has taught other nations to know and respect us, and yet you will not even hear of military exercises. If you do not alter your conduct, know that I shall deprive you of my succession. I have not spared, and I shall not spare, my own life ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... of having misled Dr. Lightfoot on this point by any obscurity in the statement of my object, but, as he and other apologists have carefully ignored it, and systematically warped my argument, either by accident or design, I venture to quote a few sentences from Supernatural Religion, both to justify ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... south, and beheld the sea heaped up and covered with foam, like a huge watery ridge the height of the ships, rolling towards them. As this furious surge approached, rendered more terrible in appearance by the obscurity of night, he trembled for the safety of his vessels. His own ship was lifted up to such a height that he feared she would be overturned, while another was torn from her anchorage. The crews expected to be swallowed up, but the surge passed on and ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... former chapter, of the import of names, many examples are not needed to illustrate the import of propositions. When there is any obscurity, or difficulty, it does not lie in the meaning of the proposition, but in the meaning of the names which compose it; in the extremely complicated connotation of many words; the immense multitude and prolonged series of facts ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... shameless. Such strokes of policy have not wholly ceased to be recommended, but they have ceased to be practised, except occasionally through the medium of paper money, in which case the character of the transaction, from the greater obscurity of the subject is ...
— The Paper Moneys of Europe - Their Moral and Economic Significance • Francis W. Hirst
... have been laid open to his inquiries are the archives of the principal capitals of Europe, which have been thoroughly explored for the first time during that period. Numerous manuscripts of great value, for the most part unknown to the learned world, have been rescued from obscurity. At the side of the voluminous chronicles long since printed, a rich abundance of contemporary correspondence and hitherto inedited memoirs has accumulated, which afford a copious collection of life-like and trustworthy views of the past. The secrets of diplomacy have been revealed. The ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... Behind the victory of Louis Bonaparte could be seen something hateful, but something which was familiar—the Empire; behind the victory of the Left there was obscurity. We must bring in daylight behind us. That which causes the greatest uneasiness to people's imagination is the dictatorship of the Unknown. To convoke a new Assembly as soon as possible, to restore France at once into the hands of France, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... above the necessity of active employment, yet not in a condition to place their own children advantageously, if they happen to have families. Many of them are content to live unmarried. Some mend their broken fortunes by prudent alliances, and some leave a numerous progeny to pass into the obscurity from which their ancestors emerged; so that you may see on handcarts and cobblers' stalls names which, a few generations back, were upon parchments with broad seals, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... from my wife's mother, likely to do well. After dinner I to the office, where Mr. Prin come to meet about the Chest business; and till company come, did discourse with me a good while alone in the garden about the laws of England, telling me the many faults in them; and among others, their obscurity through multitude of long statutes, which he is about to abstract out of all of a sort; and as he lives, and Parliaments come, get them put into laws, and the other statutes repealed, and then it will be a short work to know the law, which appears a very noble ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... they prize renown and glory. All heroism is dear to them. Perhaps there is no one among them who would think it possible to pay too dearly for a brilliant action; and yet, let us say it with reverence, many of them devote to obscurity their most holy sacrifices, their most sublime virtues. But however exemplary these quiet virtues of the home life may be, neither the miseries of private life, nor the secret sorrows which must prey upon souls too ardent not to be frequently wounded, can diminish the wonderful ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... so that there seemed to be no way of gaining access to the rest of the world, unless by climbing above the clouds. By and by they partially dispersed, giving glimpses of the mountain ramparts through their obscurity, the separate clouds lying heavily upon the mountain's breast. In warm mornings, after rain, the mist breaks forth from the forests on the ascent of the mountains, like smoke,—the smoke of a volcano; then it soars up, and becomes a cloud in heaven. But these clouds to-day ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and, in short, there is not a step I take in the labyrinth of unpublished history that I do not stumble against some illustrious compatriot. It is my purpose to draw all these names out of the unjust obscurity and oblivion in which they have so long lain. How pure a joy, dear Pepe, to restore all their lustre to the glories, epic and literary, of one's native place! And how could a man better employ the scant intellect with which Heaven has endowed him, the fortune which he has inherited, and the brief ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... as Gibbon says of the Empress Theodora, that this passage could be left "veiled in the obscurity of a learned language"; but it may be noted that the locus classicus for the play on the word is the incident of the Megarian "mystery pigs" in Aristophanes' Acharnians, 728 ff. Cf. also Athenaeus, ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... could count, but when, a few years later, Miss Dix returned to England as a kind of angel of mercy, giving back much more than she had ever received, the Rathbone family must have been glad that they had befriended her in her obscurity and ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... lady possessed some secret intelligence in regard to the mysterious pageant of that night. However this might be, such knowledge has never become general. The actors in the scene have vanished into deeper obscurity than even that wild Indian band who scattered the cargoes of the tea ships on the waves, and gained a place in history, yet left no names. But superstition, among other legends of this mansion, repeats the wondrous tale, ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... was the disappointment of all his hopes. The bright dreams that he had entertained, the visions of gay things which he had suffered the enchanter Imagination to call forth from the former obscurity of his fate, were all dispelled by the words that he had just heard spoken; and everything dark, and painful and agonising, was spread out around him in its stead. He was as one who, having fallen asleep in a desert, has dreamt sweet dreams, and then suddenly wakes with ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... and latterly also Browning, with protests against his obscurity and his occasionally most unmusical English. The inspiration of his brave and optimistic philosophy she felt strongly. She was extremely fond of reading Dante, and she was better acquainted with German and Italian poetry than most cultivated women. But though she read much and often in ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... you ever question your spiritual state, doubting as to whether you are a child of God or not, wondering in the obscurity of your mind as to how you stand in the sight of God? I do not think any one need be in doubt as to this matter. Are you living a life of obedience to Christ? Let us see. You surely have been baptized. As baptism was his first public act, for you to ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... natural that, during their sojourn in Asia, they should have acquired some tastes and habits surprising, if not disgusting, to persons who never had quitted Europe. It was natural that, having enjoyed great consideration in the East, they should not be disposed to sink into obscurity at hom; and as they had money, and had not birth or high connection, it was natural that they should display a little obtrusively the single advantage which they possessed. Wherever they settled there ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... law, was suppressed for fear of the law of libel.[228] The Fragment was published anonymously, but Bentham had confided the secret to his father by way of suggesting some slight set-off against his apparent unwillingness to emerge from obscurity. The book was at first attributed to Lord Mansfield, Lord Camden, and to Dunning. It was pirated in Dublin; and most of the five hundred copies printed appear to have been sold, though without profit to the author. The father's indiscretion ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... of vehicles, that London began in earnest. Just pausing to observe which appeared the most crowded streets, and consequently the most to be avoided, he crossed into Saint John's Road, and was soon deep in the obscurity of the intricate and dirty ways, which, lying between Gray's Inn Lane and Smithfield, render that part of the town one of the lowest and worst that improvement has left in the ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... find for it, Herrera took the weapon. The rope was round his waist, and, with his hands upon the embrasure of the window, he only waited to spring out for a signal from the gipsy, who was watching, as well as the obscurity would permit, the movements of the soldier. The night was growing lighter, the wind had risen and swept away the mist from the fields, overhead the clouds had broken, and stars were visible, sparkling in their setting of dark ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... succeeded in compressing into a small compass all the leading events of history, without the slightest obscurity, or without sinking her book into ...
— The World's Fair • Anonymous
... had then deleted the three words, "years just six," and written "nine" above them. It looks as if he had meant at first to refer to the change in his fortunes, "just six" MONTHS before, and had afterwards thought it better to refrain. This would account for a certain obscurity of meaning. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... as this. Mr. Nahum Tate is not of a class of whom it can be safe to say that they are "well known:" they and their desperate tricks are essentially obscure, and good reason he has to exult in the felicity of such obscurity; for else this same vilest of travesties, Mr. Nahum's Lear, would consecrate his name to everlasting scorn. For himself, he belonged to the age of Dryden rather than of Pope: he "flourished," if we can use such a phrase of one who was always withering, about the era of the Revolution; and ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... capital are lost in the obscurity which covers all the germs of civilization. The more one comes to understand the case of the primitive man, the more wonderful it seems that man ever started on the road to civilization. Among the lower ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... in the world,—blessed with power, with a large income, with influence throughout all the world around him, courted, feted, feared and almost worshipped,—that he should desire to share her fortunes, her misfortunes, her struggles, her poverty and her obscurity, was not within the scope of her imagination. There was a homage in it, of which she did not believe any man to be capable,—and which to her would be the more wonderful as being paid to herself. She thought so badly of men and women generally, and of ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... man to pierce the obscurity by his intuition or by his research. Yet we must not be too critical of the want of proportion in his writing when we remember that he was a pioneer; for it was an original idea to piece together the stray fragments of history that referred to his people. It has been shown that in his ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... as if Nature were favouring him further, for the darkness came on like magic till there was quite obscurity enough to favour his designs, and, going straight to the window he thrust out ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... doubts, the misgivings which fluctuate in, and irritate the minds of a very large proportion of the Americans; and such is the decided conviction of a portion who retire into obscurity and are silent; and every year adds to the number of both these parties. They remind one of a husband who, having married for love, and supposed his wife to be perfection, gradually finds out that she is full of faults, and renders him anything but happy; but his pride will not ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... imagined yourself on the deck of a Mediterranean steamer, looking at a town in Algeria or Tunis. And beyond, under the low-hanging stars, was the Mexican desert—a blank page, with only here and there the obscurity of a garden, or a hacienda, or a mere speck which would be a lonely ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... The botanist can now conveniently watch the development of aquatic plants under conditions not unnatural, throughout the entire period of their existence, from their germination to the production of flowers and the perfection of seeds; and we are in hopes that much of the obscurity that invests many aquatic vegetables will in consequence be cleared up. The zoologist is perhaps even more indebted to the invention. The habits, not only of the fishes, but of the mollusca, can be accurately studied under natural conditions, and many important facts of their ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... Cadiz to produce an oratorio every year during Lent, the effect of the performance being not a little enhanced by the following circumstances. The walls, windows and pillars of the Church were hung with black cloth, and only one large lamp, hanging from the centre of the roof, broke the solemn obscurity. At mid-day the doors were closed and the ceremony began. After a short service the bishop ascended the pulpit, pronounced one of the Seven Words (or sentences) and delivered a discourse thereon. This ended, he left ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... haste, We now of winters sharpness 'gins to taste This moneth the Sun's in Sagitarius, So farre remote, his glances warm not us. Almost at shortest, is the shorten'd day, The Northern pole beholdeth not one ray, Nor Greenland, Groanland, Finland, Lapland, see No Sun, to lighten their obscurity; Poor wretches that in total darkness lye, With minds more dark then is the dark'ned Sky. Beaf, Brawn, and Pork are now in great request, And solid meats our stomacks can digest. This time warm cloaths, full diet, and good fires, Our pinched flesh, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... why the Cockpit at Whitehall has remained so long in obscurity (its history is here attempted for the first time) are obvious. Some scholars have confused it with the public playhouse of the same name, a confusion which persons in the days of Charles avoided by invariably saying "The Cockpit in Drury ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... voyages and travels, Leigh Hunt, with his happy appreciation of whatever is most quaint in description, most sympathetic in impression, has helped us to an arrangement, which, with a convenient modification of our own, we shall follow congenially. We shall seek for remoteness and obscurity of place,—marvellousness of hearsay,—surprising, but conceivable truth,—barbaric magnificence,— the grotesque and the fantastic,—strangeness of custom,—personal danger, courage, and suffering,—and their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... have given a very good guess at the reasons which led Anstice to shun notoriety and welcome the obscurity of Littlefield; but in the meantime Dr. Willows was left to wonder in vain; though his wonder was leavened with a genuine admiration for his colleague's skill, and a fervent gratitude for the other man's unwearying ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the rise now and a bitter wind met them in the face. There was not very much of it as yet, but all feeling seemed to die out of the lad's cheeks under it, and it brought a little doleful moaning out of the darkness. Behind them stars shone frostily in the soft indigo, but elsewhere a deepening obscurity was creeping up across the prairie, and sky and snow were blurred and merged one into ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... other single area in the city—should have been the home of the well-beloved William Dean Howells. One also likes to recall that Jenny Lind was married at number 20. Chestnut Street—which after a period of social obscurity is again coming into its own—possesses Julia Ward Howe's house at number 13, that of Motley the historian at 16, and of Parkman at 50. In this hasty map we have gone up and down the hill, but the cross-street, Charles, although not so attractive, is nevertheless as rich ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... see the stars at evening, sometimes because there are clouds intervening, but oftener because there are glimmerings of light; thus many truths escape us from the obscurity we stand in, and many more from the state of mind which induces us to sit down satisfied with our imaginations and of our knowledge unsuspicious. [This sentence is correctly balanced, except at ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... the Constitution of 1799 came into existence, and it was not his fault that it degenerated in the strong hands of Napoleon. He named the three Consuls, refusing to be one himself, and he passed into ceremonious obscurity as president of ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... us, all but Monsieur ——-, who, although recovered, cannot yet be moved. All money, plate, and jewels in our charge, are restored to their rightful owners; and the Spanish colours, which have never been hoisted, return to their former obscurity. I reopen the piano, uncover and tune the harp, and as we have been most entirely shut up during thirteen days of heavenly weather, feel rejoiced at the prospect of getting out again. As yet, I have not seen the state of things in the city, but the "Cosmopolite" ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... out from her. Nebulous obscurity occupies space. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of these in the dust which I sent him. On the other hand, he finds in it two species which hitherto he knows as living only in South America. The dust falls in such quantities as to dirty everything on board, and to hurt people's eyes; vessels even have run on shore owing to the obscurity of the atmosphere. It has often fallen on ships when several hundred, and even more than a thousand miles from the coast of Africa, and at points sixteen hundred miles distant in a north and south direction. In some ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... were enshrined in the heart of poor Mrs Leather, and not a few of these—painted by the hand of May—hung on the walls of their little sitting-room, but the word to which she turned her eyes in seasons of profoundest obscurity, and which served her as a sheet-anchor in the midst of the wildest storms, was, "Hope thou in God, for thou shalt yet praise Him." And alongside of that text, whenever she thought of it or chanced to look at it, there invariably flashed another: "Immanuel, ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... of wild turkeys awakened Jean, "Chuga-lug, chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug-chug." There was not a great difference between the gobble of a wild turkey and that of a tame one. Jean got up, and taking his rifle went out into the gray obscurity of dawn to try to locate the turkeys. But it was too dark, and finally when daylight came they appeared to be gone. The mule had strayed, and, what with finding it and cooking breakfast and packing, Jean did not make a very ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... open, simple, childlike. My interior resembles a drop of water, mingling and lost in the ocean, and no more discerning itself,—the sea not only surrounding, but absorbing it. In this divine immensity, the soul discerns and enjoys all objects in God. All is darkness and obscurity in respect to itself; all is light on the part of God. Thus, God is all to me. This has been my state more than thirty years, although in latter years I have realized greater depths in these experiences. Think of the bottomless sea; what is thrown therein, ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... later," continued the lady; "and how is that to be done unless I keep the footing which I have attained—with trouble enough, as I only know, and without any thanks to you, Mr. Smith. If I give up parties, I may fall at once into the obscurity for which you have such a taste. People of fortune and distinction can voluntarily withdraw for a while, and then reappear with as much success as ever, but that is not the case with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... a very recent date, in ignorance of the facts, and despite his notable services of twenty-four years to the colonies, left Ludlow to die in obscurity in Virginia or elsewhere, and some of the traditions, based on no record or other evidence, have been recently repeated. It is therefore proper to state here in few words who Ludlow was, what he did both in Massachusetts ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... Through the pale obscurity of a French night, cool, raw, moist, with a hint of spring in its freshness, a line of soldiers plodded along the lonely, melancholy lanes. Wan starlight showed in the rifts between the clouds. Neither ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... fringes of the town in the obscurity of approaching night; a thick tulle fog had blown down on the north wind. The little foot-hill city was all drowned in it; tree-tops, roofs, the gable ends of houses, the illuminated dial of the town clock on the city hall, sticking up from the blur like things seen in a ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... pretended to be rather an authority on motors for dirigibles, about which he read in Aeronautics at the Y. M. C. A. reading-room. It is true that at this time, early 1907, the Wrights were still working in obscurity, unknown even in their own Dayton, though they had a completely successful machine stowed away; and as yet Glenn Curtiss had merely developed a motor for Captain Baldwin's military dirigible. But Langley and Maxim had endeavored to launch ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the inside, and on the altar a candle was lighted, which burned dimly amid the surrounding darkness, and lengthened the shadow of the altar itself, and those of six or seven persons who stood on its upper steps, until they mingled in the obscurity which shrouded the lower end of the chapel. The faces of the men who sat on the altar steps were not distinctly visible, yet their prominent and more characteristic features were in sufficient relief, and I observed, that some ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... assuredly have complacent gullets and adaptable stomachs. Yet these robust eaters die of hunger or poison for no greater cause than a drop of syrup, the lightest diet imaginable, adapted to the weakness of extreme youth, and a delicacy to the adult! What a gulf of obscurity in the stomach ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... passed without accident, but in such profound obscurity, that it was necessary to ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... harm done, brother, I warrant you: since there is no harm done, anger costs a man nothing; and a tall man is never his own man till he be angry. To keep his valour in obscurity, is to keep himself as it were in a cloak bag. What's a musician, unless he play? What's a tall man unless he fight? For, indeed, all this my wise brother stands upon absolutely; and that made me fall in with ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... a windowless erection used for storage, and from the open door there floated into the obscurity a mist of yellow radiance, which at first Tess thought to be illuminated smoke. But on drawing nearer she perceived that it was a cloud of dust, lit by candles within the outhouse, whose beams upon the haze ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... pray; And all through the high Liturgy My spirit rejoiced without allay, Being, for once, borne clearly above All banks and bars of ignorance, By this bright spring-tide of pure love, And floated in a free expanse, Whence it could see from side to side, The obscurity from every part Winnow'd away and purified By the ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore |
