"Enigma" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... looked puzzled. Had I not been present, he would have got at the answer to the enigma. I felt this, but my hand was still in Cousin Molly's, and I comprehended that she willed me to ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... before him will arise from the circumstance that the means by which such extraordinary experience was acquired are not included in the sphere of his knowledge, and that any attempt to explain them at present would only increase his incredulity. He would only see one enigma solved by another apparently more insoluble than itself. The Editor, therefore, would call especial attention to the practical value of the revelations here communicated, convinced as he is that they are so replete with instruction to terrestial ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... thought was futile. Warrington did not love her; and there was nothing to do but to follow out the course she had planned. She had come to him that night with a single purpose in mind: to plumb the very heart of this man who was an enigma to every woman he met. She had plumbed it. Warrington loved nobody but Warrington and pleasure. Oh, he was capable of the grand passion, she very well knew, but the woman to arouse it had not ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... religious enigma round which all these great men were grouped as in a ring, was individual and decidedly curious. He seems to have believed that a "Historic Church," that is, some established organisation with ceremonies and sacred books, etc., could be perpetually preserved ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... His attention was arrested by observing a kind of opening under a little arbor, thickly covered with a mat of vines. Thinking, perhaps, that it was the retreat of some animal, he thrust in his hand, and to his surprise drew forth a glass bottle, partly full of whisky. The enigma of his master's walks and inequalities of temper stood immediately deciphered. After the reflection of a moment, he carefully replaced the bottle in its position, and returned to his place in school. In the evening he communicated his discovery and the result of ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... professional pathway; in short, that he had come an ecclesiastical cropper. Just the form taken by that cropper, just when his relations with Saint Peter's would cease, just why and wherefore, just what would be the next page of Brenton's history: all this was still an enigma past all finding out. For that very reason, it added untold zest to all the cups of tea. Indeed, it had quite ousted the subject of Reed Opdyke from the public mind. Reed, in his own time, had been the one great theme. As the months ran ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... enlighten your understanding as by the smiting of a lucifer-match. Refrain, therefore, from running your eye impatiently along the page, as you are doing at this moment, in hopes of discovering, italicized, the secret of the enigma; for we have no intention of keeping you another moment ignorant that the monster-misery of literature is—guess! Which of you hath hit it? The monster-misery of literature is—THE ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... joy or in pain, in contentment or sick despair. Why am I at one with the Will of God when it gives me strength, and hope, and delight? Why am I so averse to it when it brings me languor, and sorrow, and despair? That I cannot tell; and that is the enigma which has confronted men from ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... advanced to show why the city should dominate the country, and therefore absorb its population; the question of rent plays an important part. It should be studied carefully. The law of rent, is an enigma to the poorer classes, upon whose necks its yoke presses as a grievous burden. They sweat and groan under the burden, but can discover no way of escape. They must be educated. They must know the cause, before they can learn to avoid ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... you a word of advice. Never try to get a detective to do anything for you unless you are willing to tell him all you know and all you suspect. It is generally hard enough to solve an enigma without having other mysteries attached ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... by the existence of the second constitutional factor of hysteria, namely, the enormous development of the sexual craving. But the psychological analysis will always reveal it and solves the very contradictory enigma of hysteria by proving the existence of the contrasting pair, an immense sexual desire and a very ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... book, drawn by the aptness of the text to my problem. Had Maupassant given me the key of the whole enigma? Was this astonishing genius, who had so wrought upon our imaginations, was he a criminal irresistibly driven to tell us the story of his evil life? Were the police of Europe and America even now scouring the surface of the globe ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... with a face which, while undeniably and excessively plain, was so beaming with good humour that it was difficult to remember her uncomeliness after the first coup d'oeil. Mr Welles accompanied her on the return visit. What had induced him to take up his quarters at the Bear, at Tewkesbury, was an enigma to the inhabitants of White-Ladies. Of course he could not live at the Maidens' Lodge, Madam being rigidly particular with respect to the intrusion of what Betty called "he creeturs" into that enchanted ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... from the first moment at which his name had been mentioned in the House of Commons. He was now in an agony of terror. The whole enigma of his life, an enigma of which many unsatisfactory and some absurd explanations have been propounded, is at once solved if we consider him as a man insatiably greedy of wealth and power, and yet nervously apprehensive of danger. He rushed ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... expectancy were not particularly noticeable in the years 1918 to 1922. The sombreness, the abruptness, the savage mood evident in the writings of such men as Barbusse and Siegfried Sassoon were abandoned. Confronted with the riddle of life, spared the enigma of death, the young men have felt nothing more befitting their age and generation than the ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... spring he sailed for Athens, and arrived at the island of Ios, now Ino, where he fell extremely ill, and died. It is said that his death arose from vexation, at not having been able to unravel an enigma proposed by ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... glowing breath impart Life to the flame long smouldering in her heart. It did become a something strange, and passing all desire As honey sweet, and quick as fire Did her sad soul illuminate With a new being; and, though late, She knew the word for her delight, The fair enigma she could guess. People and priest all vanish'd from her sight, She saw in all the church only one man aright— He whom she loved at last, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... secret held by an Egyptian word may be found in Greek, or the secret of a Greek word in Babylonian. Language is One. The Gods who made all these languages equally could use them all, and wind them all intricately in and out, for the building up of their divine enigma. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... simply represented cowering peasants, clustered under the shadow of the baron's castle for protection. It advanced slowly and reluctantly along the road of civic development, scourged forward by the whip of necessity. We have but to expand the powers of government to solve the enigma of the world. Man separated is man savage; man gregarious is man civilized. A higher development in society requires that this instrumentality of co-operation shall be heightened in its powers. There was a time when every man provided, at great cost, for the carriage of ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... once famed, Was good for the eyesight, and thus it was named. Now if you have guessed all these flowers that I prize, Please take my initials and finals likewise: The former you'll find to be hiding the latter; If you've solved the enigma you'll see 'tis a matter Perchance may provide you with just a lost link, And bring you a ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... should now take measures to procure a supply. Leaving me, therefore, in the charge of his comrade, in whom he appeared to have implicit confidence, he departed, assuring me, that in less than two hours we should make a good dinner. Where it was to come from was an enigma to me, though it was evident these beings had their secret friends ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... and that old rogue Fontenelle who ever got hold of my secret. Fontenelle was in the habit of dining frequently with me; one day, finding me in tears, he was so surprised, he who never wept himself, from philosophy, doubtless, that he tormented me for more than an hour for a solution of the enigma. He was almost like a woman; he drew from me, by his cat-like worrying, the history of my love. Would you believe it? I hoped to touch his heart, but it was like speaking to the deaf. After having listened to the end without saying a word, he muttered with ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... girl was, they say, a sous-entendu of nature: she could be a wife, she could not be a mother. These are the two mysteries we must respect, but which we must know to have been the secret of the entire life of Mme. Recamier—a mournful and eternal enigma which will never have its words divined,... All her looks produced an intoxication, but brought hope to no heart. The divine statue had not descended from its pedestal for anyone, as though such a performance would have been too divine for a mortal." Her beauty was so marked, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... shall we more say, save only to mention those whose early death as well as life was vicarious? What an enigma seems the career of those cut off while yet they stand upon life's threshold! How proud they made our hearts, standing forth all clothed with beauty, health and splendid promise! What a waste of power, what a robbery of love, seemed their early death! But slowly ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... be coming back. Ah, that was it! But where had he gone? Why should he rise up in the middle of the night, take the flock and dogs, and steal off in this noiseless fashion? The boy could not solve the enigma. ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... certainly an enigma. Iris wrinkled her pretty forehead in the effort to place him in a fitting category. His words and accent were those of an educated gentleman, yet his actions and manners were studiously uncouth when he thought she was observing him. The veneer of roughness puzzled her. That he was naturally ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... coquettish, affected, simple, languishing, accordingly as she feared she was too like her natural self—the Netta of the Farm was no more, and her representative was, to Owen at least, an anomaly. How she could have acquired such an amount of small talk, and such a mincing speech in nine months, was an enigma to him. London, Paris, the opera, the fashions, even the picture galleries, were alternately in her mouth; and she poured out tea and coffee, and laughed a silly laugh, much to her own satisfaction, and Owen's disgust, whilst all the men were looking ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... there was scarce one that could arrest him in his rush. His rush—as Strether vividly and amusedly figured it—continued to be all with Sarah, and contained perhaps moreover the word of the whole enigma, whipping up in its fine full-flavoured froth the very principle, for good or for ill, of his own, of Strether's destiny. It might after all, to the end, only be that they had united to save him, and indeed, so far as Waymarsh was concerned, ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... of urine is the key to the enigma. As it digs and advances the larva waters the powdery debris and converts it into a paste, which is immediately applied to the walls by the pressure of the abdomen. Aridity is followed by plasticity. The mud thus obtained penetrates the interstices of the rough soil; ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... the questions which were to follow the Child to his end, and survive him on earth—incomprehensible in his day, a dispute in this—an enigma to all who do not or cannot understand that every man is two in one—a deathless Soul and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... no enigma. He had a vacancy in his establishment—a very high situation, too, for those who like that sort of thing—the head of his table, his left hand when he drove in the Park, etc. To this he proposed to promote Mrs. Woffington. She was handsome and witty, and he ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... some somnambulist; and, in that case, it must have been some acquaintance who bad been in the house in his waking moments. But even this solution seemed unsatisfactory, and finally Kate and I gave up trying to solve the enigma, content to let it rest as the ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... Stoics, not applying dogmas to facts but facts to their own preconceived opinions, and forcing things to agree that do not by nature, have filled philosophy with many difficulties, the greatest of which is that all men but the perfect man are equally vicious, which has produced the enigma called progress, one little short of extreme folly, since it makes those who have not at once under its guidance given up all passions and disorders equally unfortunate as those who have not got rid of a single vile propensity. ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... immediately manifested throughout the whole nation; and such a mass of respectable talent was brought to light; that the long interval of a dull and deathlike silence, which preceded this period, presents indeed an enigma difficult to be solved. No small influence may be ascribed to Germany. The principles of the government were changed; the country, physically as well as morally exhausted, could recover but gradually; but all this could not create talents where there were none; nor could all external oppression ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... the standpoint of Japan, the Chinese was a kindred race. The baffling enigma of the Chinese character to the West was no baffling enigma to the Japanese. The Japanese understood as we could never school ourselves or hope to understand. Their mental processes were the same. The Japanese thought with the ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... could perceive, during the foregoing interview, that there was on the pedlar's countenance an expression of grave, hard, solemn irony, which it was difficult to notice, or having noticed it, to penetrate, or in any way analyse or understand. To him it was a complete enigma, the solution of which seized very strongly on his imagination, and set all his powers of reasoning and investigation to work. All admitted there was a mystery about Buck English; but Fergus felt a strong impression that there was one equally ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... her unconscious attempts to struggle against the facts, burning into her life the impression that would in the end either transform her into a woman of rare love and self-sacrifice for the world, or a miserable enigma to herself and ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... was, Fledra was an enigma to him. There was but one way to make her his woman,—his wife,—that was to force her confidence, and, once obtained, keep it. But his longing to caress her was stronger than his desire to conquer her,—the warmth ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... can interpret life, and the heart that aches and bleeds with the stigma Of pain, alone bears the likeness of Christ, and can comprehend its dark enigma. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... also an evil-smelling dark bottle in the Italian's inside coat-pocket, which was an enigma. It was not ginger pop or beer, or any kind of soda water; Black Bruin knew all of these drinks himself, and this drink ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... hereafter, if you should be so fortunate as to advance. They are unfolded in the higher Degrees. The lion [[Hebrew: אריה,ארי] Arai, Araiah, which also means the altar] still holds in his mouth the key of the enigma of the sphynx. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... betray itself to another, he veiled his earnest friendship under a guise of mere clerkly companionship, rarely giving way to those bursts of tender feeling, which rendered him, in Guly's young eyes, an absolute enigma. ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... belief in the guilt or innocence of the two noble brothers who perished in an August afternoon, was a party shibboleth in the Wars of the Saints against the Malignants, the strife of Cavaliers and Roundheads. The problem has ever since attracted the curious, as do the enigma of Perkin Warbeck, the true character of Richard III, the real face behind 'The Iron Mask,' the identity of the False Pucelle, and the innocence ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... tenth is in seed. My eleventh is in hunger, my twelfth is in need. My thirteenth is in silence, my fourteenth in death. My fifteenth is in living, my sixteenth in breath. You may spell out my name, you may have me in view, But I'm still an enigma to ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... be lived while we wait for the word that shall solve the enigma, and the happier, the nobler our life, the more vigorous shall it become, and we shall have the more courage, clear-sightedness, boldness to seek and desire the truth.... We should live as though we were always on the ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... charged with a part, have but one pre-occupation; they must search all round and upon every side, and grope for some central conception which is to explain and justify the most extreme details; until that is found, the politician is an enigma, or perhaps a quack, and the part a tissue of fustian sentiment and big words; but once that is found, all enters into a plan, a human nature appears, the politician or the stage-king is understood from point to point, from end to end. This is a degree of trouble which will be gladly ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... broken system which perplexes men's minds to the extent of making them forget the clearest notions, and to render uncertain the most palpable truths. By the aid of this systematic nonsense, all nature has become an inexplicable enigma for man; the visible world has disappeared to give place to invisible regions; reason is obliged to give place to imagination, which can lead us only to the land of chimeras ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... to the palace of 'La Reino Joanno.' Walls have been altered, gates have disappeared, but down those time-worn steps once paced the liege lady of Provence, the incomparable 'fair mischief' whose guilt ... must ever remain one of the enigmas of history." This "enigma" has strange analogies to one which has puzzled and impassioned the writers of many generations, the mystery of that other "fair mischief" of a later century, Mary Queen of Scots. Like Mary, Jeanne was accused of the murder ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... most singular epistle at least half a dozen times without gathering any additional light upon the obscure and mysterious hints which it contained, and I then turned to the remaining letters, thinking I might possibly find in them a solution to the enigma. And at the first reading I imagined I did find it; the conclusion at which I arrived being that my poor unfortunate father must have gone mad! I patiently went through the whole packet a second time, seeking in them some additional evidence of insanity; but no, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... is not always "light" at his evening-time; but this we know, that when the day of immortality breaks, the last vestige of earth's shadows will for ever flee away. To the closing hour of time, Providence may be to him a baffling enigma: but ere the first hour has struck on heaven's chronometer, all will be clear. My soul! "in God's light thou shalt see light;" the Book of His decrees is a sealed book now,—"A great deep" is all the explanation thou canst often ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... A third enigma—-why no "fountain of life''? The references to such a fountain in Proverbs (xiii. 14, &c.) prove that the idea was familiar,12 and in Rev. xxii. 1 we are told that the river of Paradise was a "river of water of life'' (see ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... night at his back, the sea at his feet, the opportunity by his side—still veiled. What do you say? Was it still veiled? I don't know. For me that white figure in the stillness of coast and sea seemed to stand at the heart of a vast enigma. The twilight was ebbing fast from the sky above his head, the strip of sand had sunk already under his feet, he himself appeared no bigger than a child—then only a speck, a tiny white speck, that seemed to catch all the light left in a darkened world. . ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... thee male, sir, which, in another folio, is, no salve, in the male, sir. What it can mean is not easily discovered: if mail for a packet or bag was a word then in use, no salve in the mail may mean, no salve in the mountebank's budget. Or shall we read, no enigma, no riddle, no l'envoy—in the vale, sir—O, sir. plantain. The matter is not great, but one would wish ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... adopted as the motto of a Greek society; the significance lay in this, that the motto contained an address—the address of their meeting-place, or at least, of their chief meeting-place. I was now confronted with the task of solving—and of solving quickly, without the loss of an hour—this enigma; and I confess that it was only by the most violent and extraordinary concentration of what I may call the dissecting faculty, that I was able to do so in good time. And yet there was no special difficulty in the matter. ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... would be empirical)—how it is conceivable that nature must regulate herself according to them, in other words, how the categories can determine a priori the synthesis of the manifold of nature, and yet not derive their origin from her. The following is the solution of this enigma. ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... as 1907 Galds was deeply interested in the life of this wretched Queen: "No hay drama ms intenso que el lento agonizar de aquella infeliz viuda, cuya psicologa es un profundo y tentador enigma. Quin lo descifrar?"[14] In his interpretation of her last moments, Galds has made the figure of the Queen vaguely symbolic of present-day Spain, like Laura of Alma y vida. But she embodies still more the soul of the aged author, blind, feeble, living in silence ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... probably be an unfathomable enigma had not Suetonius by chance given us the key to its solution: "Nam illud omnem fidem excesserit, quod nuptiis, quas Messalina cum adultero Silio fecerat, tabellas dotis et ipse consignaverit" ("For that which would pass all belief is ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... find his answer in the real sentiments of his heart if that heart has any sentiment. I have no doubt however that it contains the real creed of an Englishman, and that the word which he has let escape is the true word of the enigma. 'The moment I see such sentiments as yours prevail, and a disposition to give this country the preference, I will,' &c. All this I steadfastly believe. But the condition is impossible. Our interest calls for a perfect equality in our conduct towards these two nations; ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... of failure, but a problem was beginning to form in her mind, and with it a distinct terror of the solution, which sometimes found a shape in her dreams. In waking, voluntary moments she would see her problem only as an unanswerable enigma. ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... The enigma becomes still more puzzling when we discover that the ancients looked upon the Mysteries as something dangerous. The way leading to the secrets of existence passed through a world of terrors, and ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... bible-back, and lowered her head to the grizzled face, the man's large mouth covering the twitching lips of the girl. The shrouding red hair hid the squatter faces from the professor, and he turned his eyes away. He could not look upon them without distressing emotion. The strange maid was an enigma to him and he found himself wishing that he might guide her future. When Young glanced again, the fisherman had seated himself and had slipped Tessibel from his shoulders, gathering her closely into his great embrace—for she was the brawn of his brawn ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... He thought he could see the hopelessness of staying longer. "A woman's love," he said, gloomily, "is a wonderful thing. It clings through trouble and tragedy—never faltering." She looked at him, startled, trying to solve the enigma of this speech. He laughed, bitterly. "That's what makes a woman superior to mere man. Love exalts her. It makes a savage of a man. I suppose it is 'good-bye.'" He held out a hand to her and she took it, holding it ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... lady vainly sought some solution of the enigma—why she had been brought thither. She could not solve it; but she determined, if her capture had been made by any lawful authorities, to confess her guilt and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... together, as the case may be—for folly and philosophy not seldom form one Janus-head, and Minerva's bird seems sometimes not ill-fitted with the face of Momus—these and their thousand intermediates have tried in all ages to define that quaint enigma, Man: and I wot not that any pundit of literature hath better succeeded than the nameless, fameless man—or woman, was it?—or haply some innocent shrewd child—who whilom did enunciate that MAN IS A WRITING ANIMAL: true as arithmetic, clear as the sunbeam, rational as Euclid, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... case, which occupied Sylphide's vacant place, and which was unmistakably intended for her, she perceived the rich bracelet she had so much wished for, and beside it, the card of Madame de N., on which was written, in pencil, these words, which contained the key of the enigma, "Exchange is no robbery." ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... idea firmly into her mind, Beatrice Miller would never relinquish it until she had got her own way. Herbert, in the dingy solitude of his untempting chambers, might despair and look upon life and its aims as a hopeless enigma. Beatrice did not despair at all. She ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... the only clue which will enable justice to seize the murderer. Conscious of her innocence, she braves peril that would chill the blood of men, and extort almost any secret; and shall I tell you the reason? Shall I give you the key to an enigma ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the gutter-spouts broken. What fire from heaven could have fallen there? By what decree has salt been sown on this dwelling? Has God been mocked here? Or was France betrayed? These are the questions we ask ourselves. Reptiles crawl over it, but give no reply. This empty and deserted house is a vast enigma of which the answer is ...
— La Grande Breteche • Honore de Balzac
... an enigma to herself; while passages out of the Bible crowded on her memory to reproach ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was an enigma. In her own mind she liked him all the better because he had not fallen down and worshiped her at once. Most ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... The "German Enigma" of Monsieur Bourdon is mainly an objective, impartial, and impersonal study, and the author has been careful not to obtrude his own private views. It is only in the last chapter that he attempts to draw the ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... conveying the most fantastic thoughts in the most correct and natural language; the other in the most fantastic language conveying the most trivial thoughts. The latter is a riddle of words; the former an enigma of thoughts. The one reminds me of an odd passage in ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of Gold had married a daughter of the house of Fuller. It was not outside the reasonable that Ruth should have had possession of this old document, in which a Ruth of that far-distant day had accepted a member of his own household. She might have chosen to answer him by this clear enigma, but a sense of solemnity in the phrasing of the letter made him hope his guess untrue. Desperate mysteries ask naturally for desperate guesses, and Reuben guessed right and left, but the mystery remained as desperate as ever. ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... the long-boat. The spectacle of the girl struggling with the stuff she was jettisoning put new determination into him. Her amazing fortitude at the time when he had looked for hysterics and collapse gave him new light on the enigma of femininity. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... French enigma which you state is, that it is a war of bullying on both sides, the two parties being equally afraid of each other. In the meantime there certainly are some in France who wish the war, but very many more who fear it, and the ruin of their finances is approaching ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... with scraggly beards and skimpy rags of clothing, were setting upon an unclassifiable creature that snarled and fought back. It was erect and coarsely hairy—Parr saw that much before the enigma gave up the unequal fight and ran clumsily away into a mass of bright-flowered scrub. Execrations and a volley of sticks and stones speeded ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... then, Mr. Jeorling, for although this 'romance'—as you call it—appeared only last year, it is none the less a reality. Although eleven years have elapsed since the facts occurred, they are none the less true, and we still await the ' word J of an enigma which ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... she gazed adoringly at the golden braids crowning the small head. The color of her eyes was open to speculation; when they had changed from gray to green, from green to hazel, and from hazel to purple, Amarilly gave up the enigma. The color of her complexion changed, too, in ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... what now seemed blind and unwise submission to the major, Helen devoted herself to calming Amy, and when at last the poor, broken-hearted little soul fell asleep in her arms, she pondered half the night upon the still unsolved enigma of ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... be very neat and orderly. Then when the clock pointed the hour for his return, she would station herself at the gate, and William, as he kissed the moisture from her rosy cheek, thought her a perfect enigma to weep when he went away, and weep when he ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... than the hushed ardour of Somerset: she did not satisfy curiosity as Somerset satisfied it; she piqued it. Poor Somerset had reached a perfectly intelligible depth—one which had a single blissful way out of it, and nine calamitous ones; but Paula remained an enigma all through the scene. ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... vestiges of unknown races, predecessors of those found in actual possession, and who must long since have become gradually extinguished or been destroyed. The whole history of the aboriginal population of this country, however, is an enigma, and a grand one—will ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... a view of the duties and rights of citizens, as those of Machiavelli. Yet so it is. And even from The Prince itself we could select many passages in support of this remark. To a reader of our age and country this inconsistency is, at first, perfectly bewildering. The whole man seems to be an enigma, a grotesque assemblage of incongruous qualities, selfishness and generosity, cruelty and benevolence, craft and simplicity, abject villainy and romantic heroism. One sentence is such as a veteran diplomatist would scarcely write in cipher for ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... now past two o’clock and he should have been asleep and out of the way long ago. I crept to his room and threw open the door without, I must say, the slightest idea of finding him there. But Bates, the enigma, Bates, the incomparable cook, the perfect servant, sat at a table, the light of several candles falling on a book over which he was bent with that maddening gravity he had never yet in my presence ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... and forth with solemn earnestness, but respectfully requesting every one to comply with the cardinal's wishes and not approach the mysterious drapery, but await his own time for the solution of the enigma! A few steps led up to this closed and covered niche; these steps were strewed with roses, that was plainly seen; but, to what did these steps lead, and what was thus ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... nervousness, but not hiding the fact that it was concealed. Traill's heart warmed to her. He knew his sister through and through—guessed every thought that was taking shape in her mind. But Sally—even her presence there alone—was more or less of an enigma and, seeing her almost pathetic perturbation of manner, he paid all the attentions he roughly ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... enigma, out from his bed in the willows came Don Antonio de Chiquito, a meek and lowly burro, the only member of the Aurora's working force which did not outrank in social importance the man-of-all-work. Don Antonio was the pet of ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... gravely from one to the other of the two maidens, as if trying to guess this enigma; but when he saw their sweet, innocent faces gracefully animated by a frank, ingenuous laugh, he reflected that they would not be so gay if they had any serious matter for self-reproach, and he felt pleased at seeing them so merry in the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Pierre, you come in time from the land of the sphinx," interrupted Jeanne gravely, and glancing intently at Micheline. "There is here, I assure you, a difficult enigma to solve." ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... inarticulate cries. These men have not justified to us their confidence. It will be shared, not justified. They have divined what they cannot orderly publish, and their meaning will be by the same greatness divined again. The work of such men remains a haunting, commanding enigma to following ages. They do but repeat the promise and obscurity of Nature, for she herself has the same largeness, is such another raptus, proceeding to no end, but to a circle or complexity of ends. Men are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... that Hamlet was 'a fat man.' At first I was inclined to regard this as a joke of the majestic German. Later reflection induced me to examine this surmise in detail, and to conclude finally that the theory is true, and that the enigma of Hamlet's character can be solved ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... me! Ye venturers and adventurers, and whoever of you have embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas! Ye enigma-enjoyers! ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... nature—as exhibited in women any better than human nature—in men, or is more consistent in the production of one than of the other? Historically it would be interesting to trace the rise of this notion of woman as an enigma. The savage races do not appear to have it. A woman to the North American Indian is a simple affair, dealt with without circumlocution. In the Bible records there is not much mystery about her; there are many tributes to her noble qualities, and some pretty severe ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a few moments. The man had always been an enigma to her. She could not understand a nature that soared into the spiritual empyrean one moment, and in the next fell floundering into the bottomless pit of materialism. The undulating curve which marked the development of the Rincon mind was to her a ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... events had rather bewildered her. Her countenance was stamped with a wondering expression as though she were gazing at the upsetting of the most elemental physical laws. In reflective silence she was puzzling over the Marne enigma, unable to understand how it was that the Germans had not conquered the ground on which she was treading; and in order to explain this failure, she resorted to ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... The enigma of the people's patience under the stupendous burdens imposed on them by the fanatic piety of Shomu and his consort, Komyo, finds a solution in the co-operation of Gyogi, whose speech and presence exercised ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... low bow to the youth and to the old men, but the doctor tried the salute of the right hand upon the cheek, as he had seen the soldier do. In answer the youth simply looked toward the twelve, waving his hand towards us in a way which seemed to say to them, "Gentlemen, behold the enigma!" Then, beginning with the eldest, the twelve jabbered at us in turn, apparently in different tongues, some sibilant, some guttural, and others with the musical cadence of frequent vowel sounds. Needless to say, each ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... that Country. His Majesty, as natural, was much in Germany in those Years; scanning the phenomena; a long while not knowing what in the world to make of them. Bully Belleisle having stept into the ring, it is evident, clear as the sun, that one must act, and act at once; but it is a perfect sphinx-enigma to say How. Seldom was Sovereign or man so spurred, and goaded on, by the highest considerations; and then so held down, and chained to his place, by an imbroglio of counter-considerations and sphinx-riddles! Thrice over, at different dates (which shall be given), the first ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... what he is talking about or he is concealing something," remarked Craig, as we paced up and down the platform. "I am inclined to read the enigma in the ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... enigma remained. Very heroically a young man had done nothing. Hurrah and good-bye! The calciums of curiosity turned on an obscure fiddler who, after murdering another young man, had succeeded in bilking ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... anybody in elucidation of this enigma, the shepherd's wife once more called for a song. The same obstacles presented themselves as at the former time—one had no voice, another had forgotten the first verse. The stranger at the table, whose soul had now risen to a good working temperature, ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... sound of the Fountain of Youth whose waters tint the skin till the whole body glows softly like the petal of a rose—there, alas! in the new world already blooming, THE ETERNAL ENIGMA I beheld, in the flesh living; yet it faded even as I looked, although I swear it lived and breathed. This is ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... have ways known only to yourselves; all this may be so, but it seems an enigma to me. Have you any other proofs of your own character, Signor Tenente, than the commission you have shown me? for Sir Smees, as I have been taught to call the commander of the lugger, has one, too, that ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... returned the man with a smile, "at any question which aims at the investigation of that great enigma styled the human mind? I am fond of the study of character, and of those principles of good and evil which influence men. Under given circumstances and conditions, the commission of a certain sin is greatly more blameworthy than the commission of the same sin under different ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... a new religion that had already begun to work like leaven in the town. The revelation was deliciously intoxicating. She was converted, as by lightning. She yielded to the ecstasy of discipleship. Here—somehow, inexplicably, incomprehensively—here was the answer to the enigma of her long desire. And it was an answer original, strange, distinguished, unexpected, unique; yes, and divine! How lovely, how beatific, to be the master ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... nothing appeared beyond. To be separated from all; to look upon one's past as a dream; to become a stranger to one's self, wandering from city to city, from country to country, ever in a strange land and among strangers; to be attached to nothing; to see no definite future; to be an enigma to one's self; to find no light in any one to guide me, isolated from all except God—who will explain what all this means? where it will end? and how soon? As I become resigned to this state of things my health suffers less. Occasionally my interior ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... for it in the very act of making us what we are. Human nature is an insoluble enigma, if this world is its only field. Amidst all the waste, the mysterious waste, of creation, there is no more profligate expenditure of powers than that which is involved in giving a man such faculties and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... lot or part in her fate. The poetasters called her Charmante, Anwet, Chloe,—what not! Young Mr. Lee in many a slight and pleasing set of verses addressed her as Sylvia, but to the community at large she was Darden's Audrey, and an enigma greater than the Sphinx. Why would she not marry Mr. Marmaduke Haward of Fair View? Was the girl looking for a prince to come overseas for her? Or did she prefer to a dazzling marriage the excitement of the theatre, the adulation, furious ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... was extremely shaken up by this time and knew only one thing to do, and that was to escape. But I carried one as yet unsolved enigma with me. How came I to hear this man's cries in Mr. Adams's study, and yet find him on the second floor when I came to search the house? He had not time to mount the stairs while I was passing down ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... high priests at Jerusalem, and this, too, made the Jews smart uncomfortably. (12) The Persian king had wanted to mount the throne of Solomon besides, but herein he was thwarted, because its ingenious construction was an enigma to him. Egyptian artificers tried to fashion a throne after the model of Solomon's, but in vain. After two years' work they managed to produce a weak imitation of it, and upon this Ahasuerus sat during his ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... key to the enigma. She had heard from her old nurse how, years before, her uncle had been madly infatuated with Claude's mother, and how that noble lady had refused his hand, and had married instead the poor but handsome young Captain Maurice de Pontbriand. The bitter grudge which ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... first into the bedroom, partly because he deemed the bedroom might contain the solution of the enigma, and partly because his eye had fancied it saw a slight tremor in the portiere leading to the outer hall. So he stepped stoutly across the space which separated him from the bedroom door. But he had not reached the door before there was a loud, sharp explosion, and ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... into the functioning of the ductless glands and their secretions throws a new light on this problem. Not long ago these glands were a complete enigma, owing to the fact that they are not provided with excretory ducts. It has just recently been shown that these organs, such as the thyroid, the pituitary, the suprarenal, the parathyroid and the reproductive ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... or the formula of incantation that binds him, you can control the spirit, genie, afrite, or whatever the power may be. Solomon knew the names of all the spirits, and having their names, he held them subject to his will. So the universe has always appeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, of which the key must be sought in the shape of some illuminating or power-bringing word or name. That word names the universe's PRINCIPLE, and to possess it is, after a fashion, to possess the universe ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... urgent to marry her, since this was in his power to do, and by so doing he would have an opportunity of gratifying his desires. Miss Price told her, smiling, that, without going to the astrologer, nothing was more easy than to explain the enigma, as she herself had almost given her a solution of it in the narrative of the Duchess of ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... younger men who found themselves in the Parliament of 1900 Dilke was an enigma. We could all appreciate his immense store of knowledge, his untiring industry, his courtesy to younger men, and his striking personality. But what the real purpose was to which he was devoting these talents, what ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... there came to him strong and true the sense and the significance of all the enigma of growth. He seemed for one instant to touch the explanation of existence. Men were nothings, mere animalculae, mere ephemerides that fluttered and fell and were forgotten between dawn and dusk. Vanamee ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... but a gloom left her. She could not but believe that utterance. Whatever enigma might lie in the shadow on the blind, it was not ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... understanding must yield? If so, where is it? What is its name? If that God punishes us for not having blindly followed a faith that does not force itself irresistibly upon the intelligence which He gave us; if He chastises us for not having made, in the presence of the great enigma with which He confronts us, a choice which condemns the best and most divine part of that which He has placed in us, we have nothing left to reply: we are the dupes of a cruel and incomprehensible sport, we ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... he said somewhat vexedly. "However, the whole thing is an enigma and would puzzle the most sagacious head. That the physicial workings of the brain, in a site of trance, should arouse in me a passion of love for an imaginary being, and, at the same time, enable to write a poem such as must make the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... understood, but to get at those which were in their nature beyond him, did not promise much; yet when every obvious channel is blocked we grope towards the small and obscure. There was nothing else left to do; after that he would allow the enigma to drop into the abyss of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... was you who led me to understand the marvelous framework of ideas on which the great Italian poet built his poem, the only work which the moderns can place by that of Homer. Till I heard you, the Divine Comedy was to me a vast enigma to which none had found the clue—the commentators least of all. Thus, to understand Dante is to be as great as he; but every form of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Nicodemus, as to Dr. Blund, there was something singularly attractive about the thought of babyhood, the thought of pastlessness, the thought of beginning life all over again. But to the aged ruler, as to the aged doctor, it was an insoluble enigma, an ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... branches, behind which simple redoubts the Maroons lay concealed. A fight ensued, lasting forty minutes, during which nearly every soldier and ranger was wounded, but, to their great amazement, not one was killed. This was an enigma to them until after the skirmish, when the surgeon found that most of them had been struck, not by bullets, but by various substitutes, such as pebbles, coat-buttons, and bits of silver coin, which had penetrated only skin-deep. "We also observed that several of the poor rebel negroes, who had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... next day Walker made himself amends for Corey's reticence by talking a great deal. He talked about Lapham, who seemed to have, more than ever since his apparent difficulties began, the fascination of an enigma for his book-keeper, and he ended by asking, "Did you see that ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Villiers' disappearance, so he determined to go in search of evidence against Madame Midas, though for what reason he wanted evidence against her no one but himself—and perhaps Billy—knew. But then Slivers always was an enigma regarding his reasons for doing things, and even the Sphinx would have found him a ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... leaving the sky bluer, the atmosphere purer, and Nature more smiling than before. What use is there in reflecting on this storm that passes swift as a caprice, ephemeral as a fancy? Before we have discovered the secret of the meteorological enigma, the storm will ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... he intrusted his will 'to the priest who administered extreme unction to him, and requested him to give it to me. In it, without mentioning anybody, and without in the least lifting the veil, he at last explained the enigma, and cleared himself of those accusations the terrible burden of which he had borne until ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... or gracious a secretive person may be, we can never rid ourselves of the feeling that there is a motive behind his graciousness, and that he has an ulterior purpose in view. He is always more or less of an enigma, because he goes through life wearing a mask. He endeavors to hide every trait that is not favorable to himself. Never, if he can help it, do we get a glimpse of ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... said I. "He is a year old," rejoined the voice. "A year! How can that be?" "If you will not allow that he is only a year old, then you must admit that he is sixty-five, for he is certainly either one or the other." This enigma so perplexed me, that I begged my invisible informant for a solution of the difficulty, which was at once vouchsafed in the following terms:— "Here is the history of your patient. The youth who was the proficient ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... friend," said Clutterbuck, "shall we learn the method of making the best use of time? there, whether it be in the larger segments, or the petty subdivisions of our life, rests the great enigma of our being. Who is there that has ever exclaimed—(pardon my pedantry, I am for once driven into Greek)—Euzexa! to this most difficult ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... take the cigar from his own moustached lips and insert it in the urchin's mouth. The boy was the pet of the court, for the father was one of the valientes of the prison, and those who feared his prowess, and wished to pay their court to him, were always fondling the child. What an enigma is this world of ours! How dark and mysterious are the sources of what is called crime and virtue! If that infant wretch become eventually a murderer like his father, is he to blame? Fondled by robbers, already dressed as a robber, born of a robber, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... brass helmet bobs up and down and blots everything; and there is a sharp sound, and I feel the great crowd heave and swing, and hear it torn by a sharp shiver of pity, and the men whom I saw so near but a moment ago are at immeasurable distance, and have solved the great enigma,—and the lark has not yet finished his flight: you can see and hear him yonder in the fringe of ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... to Detroit. The sound of their drums was the first intimation we had of their approach, and our surprise was only equalled by our utter ignorance of the motive, until the arrival of the express at once explained the enigma. [Footnote: Fact.] In such a case, I maintain, we stand justified before God and man in availing ourselves ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... something of the trifler and a great deal of the egotist. His love of condensation is natural, for a fabulist should be short, trenchant, and almost proverbial in his style; but Phaedrus carries these to the point of obscurity and enigma. It seems as if at times he did not see his drift himself. To this fault is akin the constant moralising tone which reflects rather than paints, enforces rather than elicits its lesson. He is himself a small sage, and all his animals ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... forms—as the religion of measure (Chinese), of phantasy (Indian or Brahmanical), and of being in self (Buddhistic). In the Persian (Zoroastrian) religion of light, the Syrian religion of pain, and the Egyptian religion of enigma, is prepared the way for the transformation into the religion of freedom. The Greek solves the riddle of the Sphinx by apprehending himself ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... pleased; and this circumstance, coupled with his natural coolness and indifference for a union he had been taught to deem impolitic and dangerous to the interests of France, created in his virtuous mind that sort of disgust which remained so long an enigma to the Court and all the kingdom, excepting his royal aunts, who did the best they could to confirm it into so decided an aversion as might induce him to impel his grandfather to annul the marriage and send the Dauphine ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... the effect of making the most indolent man of letters of the eighteenth century get up betimes in the morning. Why Dr. Johnson needed to get up in order to read the Anatomy of Melancholy will always be an enigma to some. Perhaps he did not get up. Perhaps he merely sat up and reached for the book, which would have been placed conveniently near the bed. For the virtue of the act resided in the circumstance of his being awake and reading a good book two hours ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... behind, as he had on the wharf after the battle of the limes, coal, and potatoes. The lawyer said it must be an incantation, but that it was not Tahitian, for that language had no "d" in its alphabet. M. Lontane and all his squad were given peremptory orders to unriddle the enigma. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... seldom used by her except in jest. I threw a startled look at her and caught an inquisitive and apologetic look in return, such a strange and touching glance that I saw I had not yet understood her,—there was an enigma somewhere. When, bit by bit, she told me her life, I understood, or thought I understood, that strange childlike glance in this young woman steeped to her eyes in sin. No one had ever made love to her or spoken to her of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... almost unbelievable that after three whole days so little of the actual affair should be known. The sensation caused was a big one, but it remained in the nature of an enigma. Rumour in several quarters had it that Lady Clifford had simply committed suicide because of the desertion of her lover. The result of the inquest was not yet known. and the fact that the death was due to an accident was difficult for ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... obtained emotional effects by images which have no intellectual value, and which float in rhythms so as to act musically on the mind and arouse pure moods of feeling absolutely free of any other contents. Such poems must be an enigma to most men, but others are accessible to them, and derive from them an original and unique pleasure; they belong outside of the intellectual sphere. It is by virtue of this musical quality and immediacy ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... By all the powers of earth and heaven, there's no madness like dealing with an animated enigma! What is it you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... provinces, though the Empire had been more defeated it has been less disturbed. There is a greater clarity in that ancient air; and fewer clouds of real revolution and novelty have come between them and their ancient sun. This may seem an enigma and a paradox; seeing that here a foreign religion has successfully fought and ruled. But indeed the enigma is also the explanation. In the East the continuity of culture has only been interrupted by negative things that ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... forgery? Likely enough. But I think he lacks the cleverness requisite for a habitual criminal. Perhaps he is only a poor survivor, drifting about in lonely and distracted fashion while waiting for the inevitable end. Others may solve the enigma, but not I; for ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... all this, so much radiant joy over the disposal of a baby, had never entered into any previous negotiation, and Mr. Bingle was quite carried away by the novelty of the situation. Never before had the ceremony resolved itself into an enigma, a puzzle, so to speak, in which it was his privilege to make ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... too, includes much that is of the nature of self-revelation, to be gleaned from familiar letters, as well as from his own history of his time. Yet, after all that has been brought together, Knox remains to many observers a mere hard outline, while to others he is almost an enigma—a blur, bright or black, upon ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... impulse had gone and all the deliberation in the world was not active enough to replace it. Helen has her share, among other abstractions, but the breath has not returned into her body, she is glacial, a talking enigma, to whom Marlowe's Faustus would never have ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... at her, and the old curiosity took possession of him to understand this feminine enigma. Many a man before him has been the victim of a like desire, and lived to regret that he did not leave it ungratified. It is not well to try to lift the curtain of the unseen, it is not well to call to heaven ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... escape through walls of solid brick. I think Daddy Jacques did wrong to leave behind him the weapon with which the crime was committed and, as he occupied the attic immediately above Mademoiselle Stangerson's room, the builder's job ordered by the examining magistrate will give us the key of the enigma and it will not be long before we learn by what natural trap, or by what secret door, the old fellow was able to slip in and out, and return immediately to the laboratory to Monsieur Stangerson, without his absence being noticed. That, of course, ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... all manner of photographs made lurid by the glare of the stereopticon: photograph now of sunset cloud, now of lover's scene in the lane, now of a dyspeptic, long-haired, wrinkled old man. The writer Turgenef has thus been for years an enigma. Katkof, the pillar of Russian autocracy, claims him as his, and the revolutionists claim him as theirs; the realists point to him as one of the apostles of their new gospel, and the idealists point to him as the apostle of theirs. Now he defies public opinion by befriending an obnoxious ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... this malevolent thing. The perfect government of woman is a task to rend a man's heart, and we are compelled to remain in perfect submission to them; that is, I imagine, the best manner in which to solve the most agonising enigma of marriage. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac |
