"Conundrum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a great puzzle, truly an insoluble conundrum, to take back to bewilder his Martian friends. However, he was able to comprehend the remarks of Vigilantius, "who returned from a journey in Italy and the Holy Land disgusted with official Christianity. He protested vehemently against the ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... where he lived without looking at the door-plate. When it came time to be meek, there was no boy this side of the planet Mars who could be meeker, on shorter notice. So he said, "Yes, sir," with that subdued and well pleased alacrity of a boy who has just been asked to guess the answer to the conundrum, "Will you have another piece ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... as he is. You know what I am, my dear Mortimer. You know how dreadfully susceptible I am to boredom. You know that when I became enough of a man to find myself an embodied conundrum, I bored myself to the last degree by trying to find out what I meant. You know that at length I gave it up, and declined to guess any more. Then how can I possibly give you the answer that I have not discovered? ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... to very beautiful natural objects—they are not beautiful really and in themselves, because they are mere conceits; the analogies in them are fortuitous, depending not on the nature of the things themselves, but on the private fancy of the writer, having no more real and logical coherence than a conundrum or a pun; in plain English, untrue, only allowable to Juliets or Othellos; while their self-possession, almost their reason, is in temporary abeyance under the influence of joy or sorrow. Every one must feel the exquisite ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... chicks, this is not a conundrum. So you need not be chirping out, "On their feet, of course;" or some foolish answer of that kind. The real answer is, "Japan,"—at least, so I'm told, and there are such numbers of other queer things there, that I ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... and are more than surprised to see him with a party of strangers, heading upstream. Now, I wonder if they were sent out to look for a fellow of his description? Gee, but this is a conundrum, all right," whispered Cuthbert to his fellow paddler, at which ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... evenings. Then we could use them for social purposes during the Christmas party season. I do not know how it may be with others, but I have often found, when introduced to a lady, that I have said "Good evening," and then had absolutely nothing else to say. With the help of the conundrum book I would fill in any awkward pause by asking her who was the most amiable king in history. That would break the ice. Besides, if we kept the book reasonably clean, it might afterward make a very serviceable and acceptable present to Eliza's mother. I generally know pretty well what I ...
— Eliza • Barry Pain
... the brigand, in a tone of voice which seemed as though he was about to give it up as a hopeless conundrum. ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... between BACH'S music find a music-box is yet an unsettled conundrum. Such is likely to be the fate of the question raised with so much temper over the Passion Music of that great man by the English critics. Shame on all critics that condemn MOZART as a fogy and BACH as a nuisance. Of course it ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 9, May 28, 1870 • Various
... what Mr. Hilton Cubitt, of Riding Thorpe Manor, Norfolk, is very anxious to know. This little conundrum came by the first post, and he was to follow by the next train. There's a ring at the bell, Watson. I should not be very much surprised ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... unlike the miller of the old conundrum, men generally wear white hats to keep their heads cool; with which laudable endeavor why should the Stock Exchange wish to interfere? One never hears of a "corner" in hats. And then, too, was it the bulls or the bears who objected to them? ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... if he knew what it was, and he gave the right answer, and said he hadn't heard that conundrum ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... decisive is done about the Irish Church. I met the whole Dilly at dinner yesterday at Stafford House, and when I told Stanley and Graham that I understood Spring Rice made the difficulty, they both said that it must be what they called 'his conundrum,' which I had never heard of before; but it means his determination to apply the surplus to the purposes of general education, but not to go a jot further, and they suppose that this is not far enough for the others, and hence ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... phraseology current among her critics: Had she oughter?—from a moral point of view, now. From a moral point, then, let us seek from analogy some light on the question of what, from its actual, practical bearings, may be dignified by the name Conundrum. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... the road to the government house is the Gymkhana, and I venture to say that nobody who has not been in India can guess what that means. And if you want another conundrum, what is a chotohazree? It is customary for smart people to have their chotohazree at the Gymkhana, and I think that you would be pleased to join them after taking the beautiful drive which leads to the place. Nobody knows what the word was derived from, but it is used to describe a country ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... have a pretty wit. I can rhyme you extempore; I can convulse you with quip and conundrum;I have the lighter philosophies at my tongue's tip; I can be merry, wise, quaint, grim, and sardonic, one by one, or all at once; I have a pretty turn for anecdote; I know all the jests— ancient and ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... a able to guess a conundrum; b badgers; c in that field; d mortally offended; e my; h noticed by me; k properly trained in a Board-School; l rushing ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... some extraordinary weakness, either tactically or mentally, seemed to possess the bravest warriors in the face of this incomprehensible foe. Since the date of Majuba the ways of the Boers had become still more of a conundrum. They had kept up their habit of sharpshooting, and had acquired an insight into German tactics. For all that, on occasion certain of their old commanders resorted to the primitive tricks of the Zulus, and advanced in horn fashion, keeping one horn in ambush as long as possible, so as ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... OF PUTTING IT.—Mrs. R. thinks she has an excellent memory for riddles. She was delighted with that somewhat old conundrum about "What is more wonderful than JONAH in the whale?" to which the answer is, "Two men in a fly," and determined to puzzle her nephew with it the very next time she met him. "Such a capital riddle I've got for you, JOHN!" she exclaimed, "Let me see. Oh, yes—I remember—yes, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various
... could complete his statement of the case he was politely asked if he would care to inter his talents in the Canadian Senate, and he suavely answered that such a thing might be a good way to solve the conundrum, even though it would make a thoroughly stupid ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... getting near the boil.' Elise rose with a strange little laugh and looked at a yellow silk stocking which dangled over the side of a wicker table. As if trying to solve a conundrum, she glanced from it to the shapely form of the young woman at her toilet. 'When the war's over,' she said ruminatingly, 'and our men find what kind of girls they married ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... in the high collar, tempered by regret in the soft ruche.... She would have been a problem and a poem; while I, in my cheerful reds, my dazzling white, my decisive short skirts, my piquant shoes, my audacious apron, am a conundrum, a pleasantry, an epigram." This would be very pretty on the stage, but a waiting-maid who calls herself an "epigram" passes our imagination under any other circumstances. In fact, Miss Howard seems to us to be altogether ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... open-and-shut cinch that the answer to the conundrum lies in that silly old black bunch of feathers," declared the other, conviction in his voice. "I looked up all about ravens in our big 'cyclopaedia as soon as I got downstairs this morning; and the more I read, the stronger my mind got that Black Joe ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... that for complicated unconventionality and light-hearted independence, could, I should think, give points to anything yet discovered in the chronometrical line. As a mere time-piece, it leaves much to be desired; but, considered as a self-acting conundrum, it is full of interest ...
— Clocks - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome
... to overwhelm the Pelagians and Semipelagians with Scriptural proofs. But this polemical motive can hardly have induced him to becloud an obvious text and invent interpretations which never occurred to any other ecclesiastical writer before or after his time. The conundrum can only be solved by the assumption that Augustine believed in a plurality of literal senses in the Bible and held that over and above (or notwithstanding) the sensus obvius every exegete is free ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... have spared many of the details of the bath scene, which, for the rest, tallies exactly with Mr. Thackeray's account of the same process. This little man with all his long letters remains as much a conundrum to me as ever. Your account of the domestic joys at Hunsworth amused me much. The good folks seem very happy—long may they continue so! It somewhat cheers me to know that such happiness does exist on the earth. Return ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... not from sudden shame but from sheer despair. By and by Therese drifted in. It was then late and, I imagine, she was on her way to bed. She looked the picture of cheerful, rustic innocence and started propounding to me a conundrum ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... avoiding the nurses on the stairs, refraining from so much as a glance at the boiled milk preparations of the butler. "And you know," said Mrs. Barberry, recountant, "how these people have to be watched." To Mrs. Barberry she was really a conundrum, only to be solved on the theory of a perfectly preposterous delicacy. There was so little that was preposterous in Miss Livingstone's conduct as a rule that it is not quite fair to explain her attitude either by this exaggeration or by an equally hectic ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... To-day this sort of riddle survives in such a form as, "Why does a chicken cross the road?" to which most people give the answer, "To get to the other side;" though the correct reply is, "To worry the chauffeur." It has degenerated into the conundrum, which is usually based on a mere pun. For example, we have been asked from our infancy, "When is a door not a door?" and here again the answer usually furnished ("When it is a-jar") is not the correct one. It should be, "When it is a negress ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... wisdom provoked him. "Well, I've known him since we were boys at school together and I've never found him much of a conundrum. He's brilliant, and lazy, and kind. I think of all the men I've known he's the one who's most truly a gentleman; he's the one who has given most promise and who has fewest accomplishments to his credit. He may have puzzled you as his sister-in-law; but to me, a ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... no sense of humour—never had. I am entirely destitute of it myself. Even in Scotland, even here, this family failing has been remarked—been the subject, I may say, of unfavourable comment. The Perilous of the period lost his head because he did not see the point of a conundrum of Macbeth's. We felt, some time in the fifteenth century, that this peculiarity needed to be honourably accounted for, and the family developed that story of the Secret Chamber, and the Horror in the house. There is nothing in the chamber whatever,—neither a family idiot aged three hundred ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... from Tyler, Texas, propounding the following fateful conundrum: "Can Woman Hypnotize Man?" My correspondent adds that "by answering, the ICONOCLAST will confer a favor on the people of Tyler, decide a bet and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... lack of free trade in our country. The brick manufacturers must be protected, so a heavy tariff was placed on the foreign article. Our brick men, finding that they had a soft thing, tried to solve that conundrum which the Israelites gave up: "How do you make bricks without straw?" They made a patent brick, built the Howard Museum in Washington, (was it a museum or a college?) the thing tumbled down, and a Congressional ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... minutes this young man had been sitting bolt upright on a chair with his hands on his knees, so exactly in the manner of an end-man at a minstrel show that one would hardly have been surprised had he burst into song or asked a conundrum. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... when you place a boot-leg—or two of them—under your head, they collapse and make a headrest less than half an inch thick. Just why it never occurs to people that a stuffing of moss, leaves, or hemlock browse, would fill out the boot-leg and make a passable pillow, is another conundrum I cannot answer. But there is another and better way of making a pillow for camp use, which ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... and fidelity were required. His banishment had, perhaps, a good effect upon the unborn generation, whose parents had not then entered the matrimonial state. Whatever other purpose it subserved, except to show to other communities the "latest novelty" from California, is the unfathomable conundrum. John Crowe was a noisy, blatant, meddlesome fellow, the keeper of a livery stable on Kearny street, and a fierce denouncer of the Committee. There was nothing else to his discredit, so far as I could learn at the time. Reub. Maloney was a compound character—a good deal of a knave, ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... the review, and finished a good lot of it. Mr. Stewart left us, amply provided with the history of Abbotsford and its contents. It is a kind of Conundrum Castle to be sure, and I have great pleasure in it, for while it pleases a fantastic person in the style and manner of its architecture and decoration, it has all the comforts ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... I us'd, Incorporated in the ink and wax. Besides, he gave me nothing, but still fed me With hopes and blows: and that was the inducement To this conundrum. If it please your worship To call to memory, this mad beast once caus'd me To urge you to drown or hang yourself; I'll do the like to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... decent conundrum," retorted Jud, with dignity, for his father had served as a volunteer soldier in the war ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Ranks - or, Two Recruits in the United States Army • H. Irving Hancock
... present who could answer that conundrum, and after a fitting pause the chief was forced ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... "Well, the conundrum is solved, I reckon," he went on to say; "that is, if both of you agree with me that this chance is something like a gift dropped from the blue sky. We made up our minds a long time ago that it must be some sort of outing for us this summer, and the only thing that looked dubious was ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... third largest city of India, the heat began to oppress us. Up to this time India had been unexpectedly and refreshingly cool, at night even cold. But now it was unpleasantly warm. The heat reminded us of the conundrum: "Why is India, although so hot, the coldest country on the globe?" Answer: "Because the hottest thing in it is chilly" ("chili" is the peppery sauce which the natives mix with other spices to form "curry"). We have learned to like curry. I cannot ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... that you can watch him,—a matter of no small moment in the Philippines. In the next place, it enables you to give one of the young ladies a sheep's-eye in the mirror while the others present are left where Moses was in our much abused conundrum. ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... have been that this stout-hearted Slade lacked?—this bloody, desperate, kindly-mannered, urbane gentleman, who never hesitated to warn his most ruffianly enemies that he would kill them whenever or wherever he came across them next! I think it is a conundrum worth investigating. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The name of Polynices, one of OEdipus's sons, means in the original "much quarrelling." In the altercations between the two brothers, in AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, this conceit is employed; and it is remarkable, that so poor a conundrum could not be rejected by any of these three poets, so justly celebrated for their taste and simplicity. What could Shakspeare have done worse? Terence has his "inceptio est amentium, non amanthim." Many similar instances will occur to the learned. It is well known that Aristotle treats very seriously ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Jeffords, an' considers him a pleasin' conundrum. About tenth drink time he'd take a cha'r an' go camp by himse'f in a far corner, an' thar he'd warble hymns. Many a time as I files away my nosepaint in the Oriental ...
— How The Raven Died - 1902, From "Wolfville Nights" • Alfred Henry Lewis
... this congress, that the greatest study of womankind is woman! Indeed, from being a good deal overlooked in various ways, she has come to be almost the topic of the age, and strangely enough is she considered. According to the standpoint of the observer, woman is a riddle to be solved, a conundrum to be guessed, a puzzle to be interpreted, a mystery to be explained, a problem to be studied, a paradox to be reconciled. She is a toy or a drudge, a mistress or a servant, a queen or a slave, as circumstances ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Minotaur's labyrinth, when the passage knotted itself into a low-roofed room, open at both ends, save for bomb screens, with a trench leading dismally off from an opposite doorway. "When is a door not a door?" was a conundrum of my childhood, and I think the answer was: "When it's ajar." But nowadays there is a better replique: A door is not a door when it's a dug-out. It is then a hole, kept from falling in upon itself by a log of wood or anything handy. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... book complained bitterly of the "liberties" that Mr. Potter had taken with it. Those who had not read the book complained equally bitterly that Mr. Potter had not taken more of those "liberties" and made it better worth his while. To me, the book drama is a conundrum. It always has been, and now that it has nearly died out, I am still unable to solve it. When you read a book, you form mental pictures of its characters, and are generally discontented with those that confront you on the stage. And when you don't read a book, the play made ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... Before the conundrum was guessed, the volatile Van Dusen broke out into, "Here's a how d'e do!" One of the Ashley girls in the next wagon caught up the word with, "Here's a state of things!" and the two buckboards went rattling down the hill to Eagle ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... leisure a whole day, but couldn't make it out. I then showed it to the best experts in handwriting attached to the office, and called on outsiders to test their skill; but what the writing meant, if it was writing, was a conundrum that we all gave up. Finally, in desperation, it was suggested, as a last resort, to send it to Chappaqua, which happened to be its place of destination.' Such is the literal history of the reason of an earnestly written denunciation of the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... in the first person as in Stevenson's Pavilion on the Links, or in the third person as in Kipling's The Bridge Builders. Yet again it may be a conundrum as Stockton's famous ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... irrepressible fireworks, and Prince Paul had enough to do in facilitating conversation. There was no end to his politeness, but it was an impossible task for him now and then promptly to carry over a long sentence from German to Russian, and he would give it up like an invincible conundrum, with the patient smile and head-wag and hand-wave of an amiable Dundreary. Yet I began to surmise a mystery even in him. More than once he inadvertently betrayed a knowledge of Romany, though he invariably spoke of his friends around in a patronizing manner as "these gypsies." This was very odd, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... find out if he should divorce his wife. Fact. Solemn word. That's the sort of thing. . . He wouldn't have believed it. Would I? Squatted on the verandah chewing betel-nut, sighing and spitting all over the place for more than an hour, and as glum as an undertaker before he came out with that dashed conundrum. That's the kind of thing that isn't so funny as it looks. What was a fellow to say?—Good wife?—Yes. Good wife—old though. Started a confounded long story about some brass pots. Been living together for fifteen years—twenty years—could not tell. A long, long time. Good wife. Beat ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... Astounding development! Mysterious and hapless arrival, tremendous and mysterious passage, mysterious and alarming departure. No escaping it; no volition to enter it or to avoid it; no prospect of defeating it or solving it. Odd affair! Mysterious and baffling conundrum to be ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... the carefree heartiness of a boy. "I am going to make a riddle," he said. "Prepare yourself; this is the first conundrum of the new world. Why is it better to ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... did see so many Democrats in my life. Or was it Republicans? I forget. I had given 'em a good, hot, mixed Princeton paper,—dog, international law, society, industrial progress, footlight favorites, and the whole business; had Sermons from Many Lands, and a Conundrum Department, as well as a Household Corner—How to get Beautiful for the ladies, How to get Rich for the men, How to get Strong for the advertisers—why, if I do say it, I don't believe any one fellow ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... That is the standing conundrum with all the women. They will not accept Ethel Newcome even. Perhaps we shall have to admit that Thackeray ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... companions and shook his head as if the conundrum was beyond his guessing. Captain ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... northerly point of the Berlin Archipelago, he may be wrong in quite a variety of ways, but even if he answered correctly he would still know just as little about the matter, while if he were to give the only proper reply to so ridiculous a conundrum, he would tell his tormentor that he did not care a rap where it was, that he had not put it there, and that he would tell his mother if the man did not leave him alone. What has he got to do with Labrador, Terra del Fuego, or the Isles of Greece? Give him a fistful of facts ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... that once he jumped off a two-story stable; another time he gave an elephant a plug of tobacco, and retired without waiting for an answer; and still another time he pretended to be talking in his sleep, and got off a portion of every original conundrum in hearing of his father. He begs the curious not to pry into the result—as it was of no consequence to ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... that you say? They have been to the station? You ask if I have seen three suspicious people—a man, perhaps an old man, in a dark-blue, well-cut suit, wearing a Homberg hat and goggles, a girl, and a man of whose appearance you have no knowledge? Come now, that's a conundrum! I have seen many ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... slavery, with the full enjoyment of all their civil rights, without lifting themselves from their old inferiority. They do the hard work, in their own easy way, and possibly do not find life the burden they make it for the white man, whom here, as in our own country, they load up with the conundrum which their existence involves for him. They are not very gay, and do not rise to a joke with that flashing eagerness which they show for it at home. If you have them against a background of banana-stems, or low palms, or feathery canes, nothing could be more acceptably characteristic of the air ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... started a conundrum: "Why is Daniel Webster like Sisera? Because he was killed by a woman," and this had almost as great a run ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... conundrum which vexed my mind when the house surgeon at last announced, "These Moreau patients are well enough to leave hospital," though I had realized that for good or ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Accordingly on their next encounter Peter saw at a glance that he had now, in the interval, divined and that, to sound his note, he was only waiting till they should find themselves alone. This he had soon arranged and he then broke straight out. 'Do you know your conundrum has been keeping me awake? But in the watches of the night the answer came over me—so that, upon my honour, I quite laughed out. Had you been supposing I had to go to Paris to learn that? Even now, to see him still ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... thet Adam found it thus, Afore he hed to grapple With thet conundrum Satan rais'd About the blam'd old apple; He found Time sort ov smart tew pass Afore Eve took ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... wisdom by observation, I surveyed the Pretty Girl and her sister, who had by that time come on deck. They were surrounded by a group of audacious male creatures, who surrounded most on the side where the Pretty Girl sat. She did not look feeble. She was like the red, red rose. It was a conundrum to me why so much greater anxiety should be bestowed upon her health than upon her sister's. It needed some moral reflection to make it out; but I concluded that pretty girls were, by some law of nature, more subject ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... set me a conundrum—a mighty stiff one. It seems that Miss Betty Vivian has lost a parcel, and she be that fretted about it that she's nigh to death, and the little uns have promised to get it back for her; and, poor children! ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... and she objects to his being a hearse," laughed Sally. "He must be something between them. What," she inquired, with the air of propounding a conundrum, "is between a ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... of great natural ability. If you ask me, How pious is he? I treat it as a conundrum, and give it up. Personally he treated me with marked kindness throughout my ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Mark Twain." Everywhere, now, he was pointed out as a distinguished figure, and his quaint remarks were quoted. Few of these sayings are remembered to-day, though occasionally one is still unforgotten. At a party one night, being urged to make a conundrum, ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... as I do, there's only one answer to that conundrum," said I. "And you're right, too, theoretically, Morgan. My ancestors in Westford would have thought fifteen hundred downright comfort, and in admitting to you that five thousand in New York is genteel poverty, I merely reveal what ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... recurring accent at measured periods. In religion they insist upon immediate answers to the questions of creation and destiny. The alpha and omega of all things must be in the alphabet of their superstition. A religion that can not answer every question, and guess every conundrum, is in their estimation, worse than worthless. They desire a kind of theological dictionary—a religious ready reckoner, together with guide-boards at all crossings and turns. They mistake impudence for ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to propound a conundrum for you. Why did your greeting of the Brent girl remind me of that Louis Quinze tapestry for which you paid sixty thousand francs the last time you ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... old school part of Hermione which I have not forgotten, and then two scenes from Scribe's pretty piece of "les premieres Amours." He acts French capitally, and, moreover, bestowed upon me the two following ridiculous conundrum puns, for which I shall be ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... Ranunculus aquatilis of Gray) has its fine thread-like leaves entirely submerged; but the flowers, like a whale, as the old conundrum put it, come to the surface to blow. The latter are small, white, or only yellow at the base, where each petal bears a spot or little pit that serves as a pathfinder to the flies. When the water rises unusually high, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... what extent has Ibsen contributed to the Cause (if any) of Female Emancipation?' and being a total ignoramus up to date of the sheer existence of said hon'ble gentleman, I shall abstain from scratching my head over so Sphinxian a conundrum, and confine myself to knuckling to the obiter diction ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... says I. "Danny had the bracelets all out. The conundrum is, though, Why I should do the goat act, instead of lettin' you two mix it up? But that's what happened, and now I guess it's up to ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... harlequin and the tumblers, and met the world as an independent institution. Singers organized themselves into quartet bands; added a fiddle and tambourine to their instruments—perhaps we should say implements—of music; introduced the hoe-down and the conundrum to fill up the intervals of performance; rented halls, and, peregrinating from city to city and from town to town, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... living with my mind turned two ways. In the morasses of the Haanebeek flats, in the slimy support lines at Zonnebeke, in the tortured uplands about Flesquieres, and in many other odd places I kept worrying at my private conundrum. At night I would lie awake thinking of it, and many a toss I took into shell-holes and many a time I stepped off the duckboards, because my eyes were on a different landscape. Nobody ever chewed a few wretched clues into such a ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... conundrum, pure and simple!" the author protested. "It is a poor parody on the old End-man pleasantry, 'Would you rather be as foolish as you look, or look as foolish as you are?' ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... Lord Beaconsfield put his glass in his eye, fixed his gaze on Lord Odo, and then said, "There is much force in what you say. I will consider the point." And next day he opened the proceedings in English. Now the psychological conundrum is this—Did he swallow the flattery, and honestly believe that the object of Lord Odo's appeal was to secure the pleasure of hearing him speak English? Or did he see through the manoeuvre, and recognize a polite intimation ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... 'Conundrum?' commented Dave over my shoulder. Just then there was a sudden blare from the band, and a roar that almost startled my ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... 100 feet away and home again—that is, a distance of 200 feet. One correspondent asks whether they take exactly the same time in turning, to which I reply that they do. Another seems to suspect that it is really a conundrum, and that the answer is that 'the result of the race was a (matrimonial) tie.' But I had no such intention. The puzzle is an arithmetical one, as it ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... dollars for her. His father was not a rich man, and he was out of business himself. And he wanted Donald to keep still too. What motive had he for wishing his proposition to be kept in the dark? His object was not apparent, and Donald was obliged to give up the conundrum, though he had some painful doubts on the subject. As he thought of the matter, he turned to observe the position of the two boats to the southward of him. Directly ahead of Laud's craft was an island which he could not weather, and he was obliged to tack. He could not lay his ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... habitation may be so narrow as to prevent the act of turning round? Does this sea-snake match its wonderful nimbleness of body with an equally wonderful nimbleness of brain? I do not presume to theorise on such a conundrum of Nature, but mention an undoubted fact for others ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... the identity of Paulus was like all court secrets and most secrets of intriguing governments, no mystery at all to hundreds, but to thousands an insoluble conundrum. The official propagandists of the court news, absolutely in control of all the channels through which facts could reach the public, easily offset the constant leakage from the lips of slaves and gladiators by disseminating artfully concocted ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... your plan," cried Mr. Weston. "Agreed, agreed. I will do my best. I am making a conundrum. How will a ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... In "conundrum," Mrs. Osman was a beautiful nun; she is a charming creature, most winning countenance and manner, very desirous to improve herself, and with an understanding the extent and excellence of which I did not at ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... she was, Helen's mind was maturer than might have been supposed. And the problem which confronted her she saw very clearly, although she was unable to solve it. The problem was not new, indeed, it has been Despair's conundrum since the world began: Whose fault that my life has been as it is? In her despair, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... engaged in your grand Jenny Lind speculation, the following conundrum went the rounds of the ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... This was quite a conundrum, and for a little while the children were extremely puzzled over its solution; but ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... crude bud ever anticipated blooming out into a society blossom was a conundrum. Perhaps he had some secret method buried in the same box with his hoarded coin. His long evenings were passed reading the Family Herald and Weekly Star and the Ashcroft Journal by candle-light; for those were the only papers he would subscribe for. His bed ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... immediately began to speculate rapidly on his father's enigmatic remark. All the way up in the elevator he pondered over the conundrum; and all the evening he turned it over in his mind. At last, tired with the day's activities, he went to bed, hoping that dreams might furnish him with a solution of the riddle. But although he slept hard no dreams came and ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... the spectacle, and at the same time tormented by a constantly increasing feeling of anxiety. How was it all to end? and would not the city suffer heavily should the army be defeated? The questions were hard ones to answer; he could not give a satisfactory solution to the conundrum when so much depended on circumstances, but none the less he was beginning to feel very uneasy for his factory and house in the Rue Maqua, whence he had already taken the precaution to remove his securities and valuables and bury them in a place of safety. He dropped ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... The conundrum was unanswerable. Baxter did not attempt to answer it. But there remained at the back of his mind a quaint idea that he had caught sight, as he woke, of the Honorable Frederick Threepwood, his face warningly contorted, vanishing through the doorway. Yet what could the Honorable Freddie be ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... degree connected, he would be descried sloping past and going straight into the Council Chamber, as if he had bought the place. Then out would come one of the Secretary gang. The Foreign Minister had turned up, and was setting them an entirely unexpected conundrum inside; the best thing one could do was to clear out of that, as the point which one had been summoned to give one's views about had not now the slightest chance of coming before the Cabinet ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... the flying-man, still fierce to pursue the answer to the gigantic conundrum, "what is this God thinking of to let everybody believe like that that He's with them? Why does He let us all—all of us—shout out side by side, like idiots and brutes, 'God is with us!'—'No, not at all, you're wrong; God is ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... to me and Bill this afternoon: 'Boys, one riddle have I for you gehabt haben. A young man who cannot riddles antworten, he is not so good by business for ein family to provide—is not that—hein?' And he hands us a riddle—a conundrum, some calls it—and he chuckles interiorly and gives both of us till to-morrow morning to work out the answer to it. And he says whichever of us guesses the repartee end of it goes to his house o' Wednesday night to his daughter's birthday party. And it means Laura ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... can but enumerate their names, and I take this opportunity of saying that this is the last time I shall put on record the names of competitors who give no sort of clue to the process by which their answers were obtained. In guessing a conundrum, or in catching a flea, we do not expect the breathless victor to give us afterwards, in cold blood, a history of the mental or muscular efforts by which he achieved success; but a mathematical calculation ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... lady with her uncovered face is a conundrum and an object of intense curiosity, even in Teheran at the present day; and in provincial cities, the wife of the lone consul or telegraph employee finds it highly convenient to adopt the native costume, face-covering included, when venturing abroad. Here, in the capital, the wives ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... clay, sand, and loam in the desired proportions; and while some of them are better than others both soil and temperature are such that cotton can be grown in them. Given these two assets the rest of the conundrum is up ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... a smile: "Woman is the eternal conundrum to which the wise man always leaves her herself to supply the answer. Doubtless one of these days you'll do it. ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... you never noticed the difference, although you often looked. I used to wonder how you could look so intelligently and see so little"—and she glanced down at herself, so unmistakably a woman now that he knew. She had been like a conundrum, the answer to which you would never have guessed for yourself, but you see it at once when you hear it, and then it seems so simple. She was rather inclined to speak to the Tenor in a half pitying, patronizing way, as to a weak creature easily taken in; but he had recovered himself by this time, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Irenaeus was in earnest with 'Teitan'. His meaning evidently is:—if not 'Lateinos', which has a meaning, it is some one of the many names having the same numeral power, to which a meaning is to be found by the fulfillment of the prophecy. My own conviction is, that the whole is an ill-concerted conundrum, the secret of which died with the author. The general purpose only can be ascertained, namely, some test, partaking of religious obligation, of allegiance to the ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... had a feast. They exploited their humorous abilities, and all made merry, save one glum guest. At last, they insisted that this melancholy person should contribute to the entertainment. He consented, in response to much urging, to offer a conundrum: ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... uncertain flicker of the gas-lamps, pronounces itself to be ready made, and the typical shopwalker's silk hat worn slightly on one side. Whether this night bird goes through life on tiptoe, as many people do, or whether he only adopts that fashion on this particular occasion, is a conundrum, not without interest to students of character to whom a man's walk ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... can't get specially interested in post-pliocene things, when there's so much going on around us; and how you, with all those children to look after, and their clothes to make, can care for fossils and bones, and bits of rock and mineral, is a conundrum ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... quarter of London. During the twelve months that I kept my eye upon him, the condition of his apparel was unchanged. His coat never got old, nor did he ever have a new one. That man is at this moment an unpleasant puzzle to me—a conundrum without a solution. The income of this class of beggars, I was told, is considerable—much better than a clerk's in Lombard or ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in Nature's ears His last conundrum on the orbs and spheres; There Self-inspection sucks its little thumb, With "Whence am I?" and "Wherefore did I come?" Deluded infants! will they ever know Some doubts must darken o'er the world below, Though all the Platos of the nursery trail ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fortune which had thrown her, weak and ill, upon our hands, were responsible for everything. For how much more, how many other changes, she would be responsible the future only could answer. And the future would answer in its own good, or bad, time. My conundrum "What are we going to do with her?" was as much of a puzzle as ever. For my part I gave it up. Sufficient unto the day was the evil ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... answer me then. It couldn't be expected, perhaps; but I am still of the impression that this conundrum is gradually working towards a solution in the brain of the Commander-in-Chief. I hope it don't lay heavily there; I wouldn't do anything to distress him. If GOLDWIN SMITH were expounding political economy to him in one ear, and HORACE GREELEY talking agriculture in the other, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... to be a rather unanswerable kind of conundrum. We discussed the problem as we roamed the wood, and Dan and Peter almost quarrelled over it, Dan maintaining that the thing was impossible, and Peter being of the opinion that the mush was somehow "made thicker" in the process of being eaten, and so took up less room. ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... he began the study of philosophy, and that added to his woes. He had nerves to feel the Big Conundrum, but not the brains to solve it; small blame to him for that, since philosophers have cursed each other black in the face over it for the last five thousand years. But it worried him. The strange and sinister detail of the world, that had always been a horror to ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... Mr. Parkman, for instance, once gravely put it in "The North American Review,"—"The real issue is this: Is the object of government the good of the governed, or is it not?" Taken in a general sense, there is probably no disposition to discuss this conundrum, for the simple reason that nobody dissents from it. But the important point is: What does "the good of the governed" mean? Does it merely mean better street cleaning, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... next morning they prepared to start. Every detail of the outing was a facet reflecting a sparkle to Jude, and he did not venture to meditate on the life of inconsistency he was leading. His Sue's conduct was one lovely conundrum to him; he could say ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... ball as the "precious pearl," which, under the influence of Buddhism in China, was identified with "the pearl that grants all desires" and is under the special protection of the Naga, i.e., the dragon. Arising out of this de Visser puts the conundrum: "Was the ball originally also a pearl, not ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith |
