"Mystery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... middle of September, I observed a north canoe paddling in for the landing-place, having a gentleman passenger on board, who immediately on landing ordered his servant to carry his baggage up to the Fort. On his entering the house, the apparent mystery was soon unfolded. Mr. Siviright handed me a letter from Mr. Thane, conveying the agreeable Intelligence of my being superseded by the bearer,—commanding me to obey him as my bourgeois, and to conduct myself in such a manner as to give Mr. S. every satisfaction. The latter injunction ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... the line, where the days and nights are of equal length, certain seasons of the year are so excessively hot that the blood of the inhabitants would putrify, if it were not for the salt, and they would all die. They have no art or mystery in its use; but every one dissolves a small piece every day in a porringer of water, and drinks it off, which in their opinion ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... timidly unbuttoned the shirt of the dead robber and pulled out the charm. The mystery was explained. Fixed firmly in the center of the Anting-Anting was a silver bullet. There was but one explanation. The Macabebes had melted a statue of the Virgin and used it to make bullets to fire at Manuelito. Against such bullets the charm was useless, but against ordinary lead it never ...
— Philippine Folklore Stories • John Maurice Miller
... from the very first I declined having anything to do with this matter. It is now all over, and we can never, by our conjectures, unravel the mystery; let ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... should seem to be attributing too miraculous powers of intuition to Lord Emsworth's secretary, it should be explained that the mystery which hung about that curio had exercised his mind not a little since his employer had given it to him to place in the museum. He knew Lord Emsworth's power of forgetting and he did not believe his account of the transaction. Scarab maniacs like Mr. Peters did not give away ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... would not be coming up. Perhaps I had better go back to try and find my way to the street door, as I had intended, lest that somebody should consider that I am intruding; however, having got thus far, I will try and solve the mystery." He, therefore, again descended step by step. He found himself in a small vaulted chamber, in the centre of which was a table covered with retorts, jars, glasses of all shapes and sizes, and other chemical apparatus, while at a chair was seated a tall, grey-headed old gentleman, stirring ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... desire for a little information relative to your noble husband's cigars, Your Ladyship. It would greatly assist me in clearing up the mystery of the robbery. Never mind the disguise. I've ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... of aristocratic refinement, the grace and natural delicacy of virginal souls, in general eluded Balzac's observation. He found it hard to imagine a lady; still harder—though he tried and half succeeded—to conceive the mystery of a young girl's mind, in which the airs of morning are nimble and sweet. The gross bourgeois world, which he detested, and a world yet humbler were his special sphere. He studied its various elements in their environment; ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... face had grown fuller, that he was in good spirits, and did all his work cheerily. Instead of seeing him grow thinner day by day, as she had expected, he constantly gained flesh. She soon discovered that Tellerchen must be at the bottom of the mystery, for she perceived that the boy took much better care of him than of the other cattle. How should she manage to find out what he did and ate in the woods? She secretly sent her daughter after him, and ordered her ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... you can absolutely count on meeting set-backs. Be sure that you are not deceiving yourself at any time about actual conditions. The man who starts out simply with the idea of getting rich won't succeed; you must have a larger ambition. There is no mystery in business success. The great industrial leaders have told again and again the plain and obvious fact that there can be no permanent success without fair dealing that leads to wide-spread confidence in the man himself, and that is the real capital we all ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller
... me that we were all to leave India forever, and at once." And so, gently soothing the unhappy girl, orphaned in her heart, Justine Delande escaped to the first essay of her life in high decorative art. "There is some strange mystery of the past in all this! He has a heart of flint, this old tyrant!" murmured Justine, as with fingers trembling in haste she completed a toilet, which later caused even old Hugh Johnstone to growl "By Gad! This Swiss woman's not half bad looking!" ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... d' The Commission in Lunacy A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Letters of Two Brides The Gondreville Mystery The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter ...
— Another Study of Woman • Honore de Balzac
... as persevering as any others when there is a mystery to be discovered, and so Lili-Tsee set herself to discover this mystery. She hunted day after day to see if she could find some trace of anything in that little room which was at all unusual, but she found nothing. One day, however, she happened to come in suddenly ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... wasn't fair. Ram Juna is really very celestial in a ponderous kind of way, isn't he? When he talked the simple old truths I liked him, but not in the esoteric explanations and profounder mysteries. I have chased Mystery for more years than I shall own, and, so far as I can see, whenever you open the door on her secret chamber, she shuts a door on the other side and is gone into a further holy of holies. I've come to disbelieve in those who tell me that they ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... asked you here, as I wished—with a great many other whys and wherefores, which will keep cold. In short, you must excuse all my seeming omissions and commissions, and grant me more remission than St. Athanasius will to yourself, if you lop off a single shred of mystery from his pious puzzle. It is my creed (and it may be St. Athanasius's too) that your article on T * * will get somebody killed, and that, on the Saints, get him d——d afterwards, which will be quite enow for one number. Oons, Tom! you must not meddle just now with the incomprehensible; ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... dined with Horne Tooke. He is a clear-headed old man, as every man must needs be who attends to the real import of words, but there is a sort of charlatanry in his manner that did not please me. He makes such a mystery out of plain and palpable things, and never tells you any thing without first exciting, and detaining your curiosity. But it were a bad heart that could not pardon worse faults than these in the author of 'The Diversions ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... meaning of that mystery which appears so prominently in the lives of great sceptics, which appears with especial prominence in the life of Charles II. I mean their constant oscillation between atheism and Roman Catholicism. Roman ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... elephants, previously ordered, would all be in readiness for us on the following day. The journey from Fyzabad to Pegnugger was not a long one, and we set out in the cool of the evening, sending our servants along in that "happy-go-lucky" fashion which characterises Indian life. It has always been a mystery to me how native servants manage always to turn up at the right moment. You say to your man, "Go there and wait for me," and you arrive and find him waiting; though how he transferred himself thither, with ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... in religious sentiment is no more to be expected, than a sameness of face. If the human judgment varies in almost every subject of plain knowledge, how can it be fixed in this, composed of mystery? ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... I do see. My thoughts will be taken up with the future or the past, with what is to come or what has been. Of the present there is necessarily no image. Sentiment is nothing, till you have arrived at a mystery and a veil, something that is seen obscurely, that is just hinted at in the distance, that has neither certain outline nor colour, but that is left for the mind to fill up according to its pleasure and in the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... asseveration our host would have plunged at this declaration, remains, like the tale of Cambuscan bold, veiled in deep mystery; for as he started from the log on which he had been reposing while in the act of unsplicing his bamboo fishing pole, the elder of the Teachmans thrust his head out of the cabin nearest to us—"Come, boys, to breakfast! "—and at the first word of his welcome voice, Tom made, as he would have ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... itself first, how this spontaneous generation of language came to pass, is a mystery; even as every act of creation is of necessity such; and as a mystery all the deepest inquirers into the subject are content to leave it. Yet we may perhaps a little help ourselves to the realizing of what the process was, and what it was not, if we liken it to the growth of a tree springing ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... the pioneer was free, to explore new regions and to report what they find; for like the pioneers they have the ideal of investigation, they seek new horizons. They are not tied to past knowledge; they recognize the fact that the universe still abounds in mystery, that science and society have not crystallized, but are still growing and need their pioneer trail-makers. New and beneficent discoveries in nature, new and beneficial discoveries in the processes and directions of the growth of society, ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... and throwing himself into the arms of mother church. Vanity is the failing of Porthos, who shines more by his imposing appearance, brilliant attire, and bull-dog courage, than by any qualities of the head. To Athos, who is the most interesting of the three, a certain mystery is attached, which, however, is seen through early in the book. He is a man of high birth, princely manners, and chivalrous feeling, but whose stormy life has cast a strong tinge of melancholy over his character, and who now finds his sole consolation in the wine-cup. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... been trained in this manner, subtraction will be quite easy; care, however, should be taken to give them a clear notion of the mystery of borrowing and paying, which is ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... contained the name of the Pharaoh, and a prayer on his behalf: "Osiris, King of the two Egypts, Menkauri, living eternally, given birth to by heaven, conceived by Nuit, flesh of Sibii, thy mother Nuit has spread herself out over thee in her name of 'Mystery of the Heavens,' and she has granted that thou shouldest be a god, and that thou shouldest repulse thine enemies, O King of the two Egypts, Menkauri, living eternally." The Arabs opened the mummy to see if it contained any precious jewels, but found within it only some leaves of gold, probably ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the newspapers had declared to be more interesting than any novel. She had roused herself to be interested in the visit, to talk, to ask questions, to look about her, as they drove into the east, instead of gazing inwards with that introspective glance which had given her eyes of late the beauty of mystery, making them larger and darker than they had been ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... there were reported to yield it in abundance, but somehow it seemed to be hatched in them. The laboratory in London was its unfailing source. The ocean never yielded it until it had been bottled. At last, one day on board the 'Challenger,' an accident revealed the mystery. One of Mr. Murray's assistants poured a large quantity of spirits of wine into a bottle containing some pure sea-water, when lo! the wonderful protoplasm Bathybius appeared! It was the chemical precipitate of sulphate of lime produced by the mixture of alcohol and sea-water! ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... understand, that the ask in which he was engaged was to be kept most strictly secret, while the hardened slave was astonished to find that the attentions paid to the sick were to be rendered with yet more mystery than the bloody offices of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... they love one another. And whatever quarrels there may be between them they ought not to call in their own mother to judge between them and tell tales of one another. They are their own judges. Love is a holy mystery and ought to be hidden from all other eyes, whatever happens. That makes it holier and better. They respect one another more, and much is built on respect. And if once there has been love, if they have been married for love, why should love pass away? Surely one can keep it! ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... moved slowly and spread out like a platform. They sat on a flat boulder to watch the changing beauty of the colors. Their daily forays for shellfish had deepened their love of the sea—its ways of mystery that were ever bringing to their attention some new loveliness of form and tint. Now, before their incredulous eyes there appeared rising from the cloud bank the illusion of graciously rounded domes, spires, minarets, and the next instant they were gazing on a city of enchantment softly reflected ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... exchanged glances in surprise. Here was a little scrub of a bookseller putting the essence of the art and mystery of bill-discounting ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... PRAYER BOOK of CHARLEMAGNE?"—was my first solicitation to Mons. Barbier. "Gently,"—said my guide. "You are almost asking to partake of forbidden fruit. But I suppose you must not be disappointed." This was only sharpening the edge of my curiosity—for "wherefore this mystery, good M. Barbier?" "That you may know another time. The book is here: and you shall immediately inspect it."—was his reply. M. Barbier unlocked the recess in which it is religiously preserved; took off the crimson velvet in which it ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... the right key. It is the same with nature and with all the great arts; for Truth is one; and if you are quite ignorant of her in her highest and grandest revelations, you cannot by possibility understand the more subordinate and initiative. Some dim sense of the hidden mystery, some vague appreciation of the outward beauty of the language without getting at its expressed meaning, or but very partially, just so far as you have the key; that is all ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... half-drooped lashes,—how different they were from Imogen's, as different as dusk from daylight. And they were not really sad, not really sleepy, eyes; that was the surprise of them when, after the downcast mystery, they raised to one suddenly their penetrating intelligence. The poetry of their aspect was constantly contradicted by the prose of their glance. But she did more than turn her own poetry into prose, so he told himself; she turned other people's into prose, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... take enough exercise. I go for an immense walk directly after dinner every day, a real quick hot one through the Thiergarten. The weather is fine, and Berlin I suppose is at its best, but I don't think it looks very nice after London. There's no mystery about it, no atmosphere; it just blares away at you. It has everything in it that a city ought to have,—public buildings, statues, fountains, parks, broad streets; and it is about as comforting and lovable as the latest thing in workhouses. It looks disinfected; ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... of life, nay, with all life's real powers, that she seems the real, vital, living one, and Faustus yonder, thing as he is of the present, little better than a spectre. Yet Helena has been ages before Faust ever was; nay, by an awful mystery like those which involve the birth of Pagan gods, she whom he has evoked to be the mother of his only son has given, centuries before, somewhat of her life to make this self-same Faust. A strange mystery of Fate's necromancy this, and with strange anomalies. For opposite this living, decrepit ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... this mystery, or rather, perhaps, by very reason of this mystery, the fame of Nyssia had not been slow to spread throughout all Lydia, and become popular there to such a degree that it had reached even Candaules, ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... prudence and ability, were quite unable to restrain the prodigal wastefulness of the prince. The entry of the queen, Isabeau de Baviere, whom he had married three years before, was made the occasion of extravagant processions, pomps, diversions, and mystery-plays in Paris, as was the marriage of his brother, the Duc d'Orleans, with the beautiful Valentine Visconti, and the conferring of the order of knighthood on the children of the Duc d'Anjou. When, finally, worn out with dissipation, with the license of unlimited power from the age of twelve, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... thing, the real mystery about the exodus, is that in all the Southland there has not been a single meeting or promoter to start the migration. Just simultaneously all over the South about a year ago, the negro began to ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... deny the truth of this, and she tried to find in it a motive sufficient for their silence. But there was one method so direct, so simple, and in her opinion so eligible of knowing the real state of the affair, and of instantly removing all mystery, that she could not help suggesting ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... so much the girth of the tree as its whole bearing that impresses a beholder; and I do not think either of us will forget its effect in the gloom and silence and mystery of the gathering night. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... been educed from 'Childe Roland,' to cite but one instance, to start a School of Philosophy with: though it so happens that the poem is an imaginative fantasy, written in one day. Worse still, it was not inspired by the mystery of existence, but by 'a red horse with a glaring eye standing behind a dun one on a piece of tapestry that used to hang in the poet's drawing-room.'[28] Of all his faults, however, the worst is that jugglery, that ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... beside the enchanted Nile and wondered at the mystery of the Sphinx; I felt the lure, the wanderlust of the mysterious arid plains and laid my body down on the desert sand to sleep, a weapon by my side; I arose to greet the rising sun and, with "Allah" on my tongue, bowed my head in solemn worship ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... a glorious night later on; evening, full of dewy scents, of lengthening shadows, of soft, unaccountable noises, of mystery and magic; and, over all, a rising moon, big and yellow. Thus, as he went, Barnabas kept his eyes bent thitherward, and his step was light and his heart sang within him for gladness, it was in the very air, and in the whole fair world was no space for care or sorrow, for ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... know so strong, his appetite for definiteness so profound, that I feel that Carlyle's terror was like that of a mite in an enormous cheese, longing to explore it all, lost in the high-flavoured dusk, and conscious of a scale of mystery so vast that it humiliated a brain that wanted to know the truth about everything. In these sad hours—and they were numerous and protracted—he felt like a knight worn out by conflict, under a listless enchantment which ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... bestrode a certain iron lion, the same strange to him and guarding the portals of a public building. Being thus happily placed, he drew two huge American six-shooters, whereof his possession was wrapped in mystery even to himself, and blazed vacuously, yet ferociously, at the moon. Spoken to by the constabulary who came flying to the spot, Richard ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... them. Aunt Corinne would have flown with screams, but her nephew hushed her up and put her valiantly on a very high stump behind himself. The dog took no trouble to trace them. He was too comfortable before the brands, too mud-splashed and stiff from a long day's journey, to care about chasing any mystery of the wood to its hole. But this warned them not to venture too near other fires where other possible ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of Rossetti' throws light upon many events in Rossetti's life over which there hung a veil of mystery.... A book that ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... returned to No. 7, full of grief, and weighed down with the sense of desolation and mystery, the other boys were silent from sympathy in his sorrow. Duncan and Llewellyn both knew and loved Russell themselves, and they were awestruck to hear of his death; they asked some of the particulars, but ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... to Cecilia a mystery which had long perplext her; for the speeches of young Delvile when he had surprised her in that situation were now fully explained. In seeing her come out of the surgeon's house, he had naturally concluded she had only entered it to ask news of his patient, Mr. Belfield; her protestations of merely ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... impressive, whether we regard the record with complacency as a noble testimony to the aspiring genius of man, who claims to outlive the sun and the stars, or whether we view it with pity as a melancholy monument of fruitless labour and barren ingenuity expended in prying into that great mystery of which fools profess their knowledge and ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... after "the unattained and dim,"—these anxious endeavors, especially of late years, by naturalists and philosophers of various schools and different tendencies, to penetrate what one of them calls "the mystery of mysteries," the origin of species? To this, in general, sufficient answer may be found in the activity of the human intellect, "the delirious yet divine desire to know," stimulated as it has been by its own success in unveiling the laws and processes of inorganic Nature,—in the fact ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... controlled by any public official independent of the Government. Vast sums are squandered, while the Secret Service Fund is a dark mystery to everybody. But, essential as the power to control taxation and expenditure is to a free people, there are other matters of the gravest importance which are equally precious. The Legislature in this country is the supreme power, apparently uncontrolled by any fixed Constitution. The chance ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... which attracts the mind and gives rise to manifold contemplation; so the ancient tragedy leads us forward to the highest reflections involved in the very sphere of things it sets before us—reflections on the nature and the inexplicable mystery of man's being. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... and still no light was thrown upon the mystery. About a fortnight after the catastrophe, however, information was brought to the neighborhood that the corpse of a woman, answering to the description of Marian, had been washed ashore some miles ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... laughed, 'a baby could unriddle it.' She looked at him for a moment to enjoy her triumph of mystery. 'Husband mine, a pig thus stuffed is good eating for Cleves men. I have not kept a hostel for twelve years for envoys and secretaries without learning what each eats with pleasure. And long have I thought that if I wed a man it should be such a man as could thrive ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... exploded before him. He started back as though he had received an electric shock. A perfect battery of howls was leveled against him, and for a moment his ears were stunned with the deafening uproar. He determined, however, to solve the mystery. Giving the structure a push that brought it tumbling to the ground, he sprung back and held his rifle prepared for any foe, were he a four-footed or a two-footed one. Instead of either, what was his amazement to see a negro, as black as midnight, emerge ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... with maidenhood what few children have, more or less of the varied forms of imagination, which once had rather amused or puzzled her in John Penhallow. Her uncle, who thought slowly unless in danger, rode on with his mind upon a small order for rails and was far from feeling the mystery of the autumn days. The girl beside him was reading into the slow rocking to and fro of the falling leaves some reluctance to become forever a ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... condition of the whole race so fearfully yet exactly described in the apostle's words, 'Having no hope and without God in this world'; all this is a vision to dizzy and appall, and inflicts upon the mind a sense of profound mystery which is absolutely beyond human solution." To have one's doubts, one's misgivings, one's own blank confusion portrayed with such appreciation and in such vivid detail by another—how could it fail to powerfully affect ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... France, whatever it lost in method or in majesty, it gained in fantasy: literally Flamboyant, it breathed away its strength into the air; but there is not more difference between the commonest doggrel that ever broke prose into unintelligibility, and the burning mystery of Coleridge, or spirituality of Elizabeth Barrett, than there is between the dissolute dulness of English Flamboyant, and the flaming undulations of the wreathed lines of delicate stone, that confuse themselves with the clouds of every morning ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... He had studied these and knew them by heart; he was a direct and diligent talker. He never talked of himself, and beyond the statement that he had acquired his knowledge from reading, and not at school, his personality was a mystery. He left the house at six in the morning and returned at the same hour in the evening. His hands were hardened from some sort of toil-mechanical labor, his companion thought, but he never knew. He would have liked to know, and he watched for some ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... son aboard the prince; told him I heard them talk of a fardel and I know not what; but he at that time over-fond of the shepherd's daughter,— so he then took her to be,—who began to be much sea-sick, and himself little better, extremity of weather continuing, this mystery remained undiscover'd. But 'tis all one to me; for had I been the finder-out of this secret, it would not have relish'd among my other discredits. Here come those I have done good to against my will, and already appearing in the ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is unremembered, and our infancy remembered but in fragments; we live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being! Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance to ourselves, and this is much. For what are we? Whence do we come? and whither do we go? Is birth the commencement, is death the conclusion of our being? What ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... or mechanic—this story has special charm, perhaps, but to every reader its mystery and ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... hope in me, That, when no star from out the darkness bore Gives promise of the coming of the morn, When all life seems a pathless mystery Through which tear-blinded eyes no way can see; When illness comes, and life grows most forlorn, Still dares to laugh the last dread threat to scorn, And proudly cries, Death is not, shall not be? I wonder at myself! Tell me, O Death, If that thou rul'st the earth, if ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... In like manner, the true theory of action is the key to the intellectual world, by which its difficulties are to be laid open and its enigmas solved. Not possessing this key, it was as impossible for Plato, or for any other philosopher, to penetrate the mystery of sin's existence, as it would have been, without a knowledge of the laws of motion, to comprehend the stupendous problem of the ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... objects was the result of sex in the animate subject: that primitive men saw the moon as a most conspicuous object, whose spots at periods had the semblance of a man's face, whose waxing and waning increased their wonder: whose coming and going amid the still and solemn night added to the mystery: until from being viewed as a man, it was feared, especially when apparently angry in a mist or an eclipse, and so reverenced and worshipped as the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... perhaps in the waters of the western Atlantic. A very considerable amount of exceedingly valuable property has thus mysteriously disappeared, and strong representations have been made to Whitehall that vigorous measures should be taken to solve the mystery, with the result that I have been ordered to investigate. These orders arrived about a week ago, but up to the present I have been quite unable to obey them, for the very good and sufficient reason that every ship at my disposal is needed for work even more important than ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... year 1836 was about the pivotal date. And it only marks the invention of the silk hat! But that year the plow began to take the place of the steel trap in the way of making a living in the West. That was the year, I might say, when the mystery and romance of the unknown West found their end, and the day began of what we call business ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... has regulated that movement, and that the immediate effect of cheap bread would be a reduction of the workman's wages. We cannot, therefore, admit that any pressure from without has wrought this change of opinion, about which there seems to be a mystery which may never be properly explained. Perhaps it is best that it should remain so. Enough are already implicated in this question, on one side or the other. The facts and the arguments are before us, and we have ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... safety was not a question of grave concern. The mystery of Watson's death yet remained, and until that was solved Helen was still in danger of arrest. His mind at last settled to the task of discovering and punishing the raiders. Who was Watson's assassin? What fierce desire for revenge had prompted that ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... dear Ellis, must for their own sakes, as well as for yours, insist on your taking notice of what that fellow says, both of you and to you. We must bring him to an explanation, and clear up the mystery. We are certain, as I have often assured you, that his treatment of you is undeserved; and why should he go on insinuating all sorts of things against you, and ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... "No, no; not a Ganymede—an oracle, my Judah. A few lessons from my teacher of rhetoric hard by the Forum—I will give you a letter to him when you become wise enough to accept a suggestion which I am reminded to make you—a little practise of the art of mystery, and Delphi will receive you as Apollo himself. At the sound of your solemn voice, the Pythia will come down to you with her crown. Seriously, O my friend, in what am I not the Messala I went away? I once heard the greatest logician in the world. His subject was Disputation. One saying I ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... these heroic souls and the soul of Captain Nemo? From this collection of portraits could I finally unravel the mystery of his existence? Was he a fighter for oppressed peoples, a liberator of enslaved races? Had he figured in the recent political or social upheavals of this century? Was he a hero of that dreadful civil war in America, a war lamentable ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... way of his own, nothing more, and the nation to which he had always denied artistic perceptions, the nation which he had always fiercely accused of sentimentality, was thus solemnizing his committal to the earth! Divine mystery of art! The large magnificence of England smote him! He had not suspected his ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... the real character of his relations with Liubka was a mystery to none of his comrades; but he still continued in their presence to act out the comedy of friendly and brotherly relations with the girl. For some reason he could not, or did not want to, realize that it would have ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and more, as I waited for the Perfect Fool at the door of my carriage in the harbour station at Calais. He was truly an impossible man, that small-eyed, short-haired, stooping mystery I had met at Cowes a month before, and formed so strange a friendship with. To-day he would do this, to-morrow he would not; to-day he had a theory that the world was egg-shaped, to-morrow he believed it to be round; in one moment he was hot upon a journey to St. Petersburg, in ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... aren't empty. Dreams are as near the truth as we can come. What greater truth can you ever have than this? For as men and women dream, they drop one by one the veils between them and the mystery. But when they meet they are shrouded in the veils again, and though they long to strip them off, they cannot. And each sees of each but dimly the truth which in their dreams was as clear as light. Oh, child, it's not our ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle closer round the fire, informed them that she had provided her grave-clothes some years before—a nice linen shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff, and everything of a finer sort than ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... The mystery lay on a plate in the middle of the table. In colour it resembled scrambled eggs, except that it was tinted a more brownish, or coppery, gold—rather like a first-class Yorkshire pudding. He suspected for an instant that it might be a Yorkshire pudding according to the new-fangled ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... of his guests especially, while the older refused him not their ears, to tales of the castle and the convent, about which, as in most Catholic families of distinction, and among religious institutions, there hung a cloud of mystery, which the young votaries of worldly enjoyments ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... pondered. He had seen that frown on his father's face many times before, and it had always puzzled him. Sometimes it would come while you watched, and you couldn't think what made it come. Or it would go away in the strangest manner, without anything having happened at all. It was a great mystery. ...
— Everychild - A Story Which The Old May Interpret to the Young and Which the Young May Interpret to the Old • Louis Dodge
... speak like that,' I entreated him, pained. 'You are the greatest artist in the world, and I am nobody—nobody at all. I do not know why I am here. I cannot imagine what you have seen in me. Everything is a mystery. All I feel is that I am in your presence, and that I am not worthy to be. No matter how long I live, I shall never experience again the joy that I have now. But if you talk about thanking me, I must run away, because I cannot stand it—and—and—you haven't played for ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... The mystery of woods by moonlight thrilled the little minister. His eyes rested on the shining roots, and he remembered what had been told him of the legend of Caddam, how once on a time it was a mighty wood, and a maiden most beautiful stood on its confines, panting and afraid, for a wicked man pursued ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... affirmed to be the skeletons of St. Mark and St. James, and other ancient worthies. The apotheosis of the old Roman times was replaced by canonization; tutelary saints succeed to local mythological divinities. Then came the mystery of transubstantiation, or the conversion of bread and wine by the priest into the flesh and blood of Christ. As centuries passed, the paganization became more and more complete. Festivals sacred to ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... see all of this so clearly as I now do, but I very soon found that, as in after years it was said that Comteism was Catholicism without Christianity, so the Carlyle-Emersonian Transcendentalism was Mysticism without mystery. Nor did I reflect that it was a calling people from the nightmared slumber of frozen orthodoxy or bigotry to come and see a marvellous new thing. And when they came, they found out that this marvellous thing was that they had ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... in yonder urn. A few unwholesome dews on a summer night were mightier than all his science. For a time I struggled not with despair; but youth is buoyant, and habit is strong. Again I pored over the mystic scroll—again I called on the spirits with spell and with sign. Many a mystery was revealed, many a wonder grew familiar; but still death remained at the end of all things, as before. One night I was on the terrace of my tower. Above me was the deep, blue sky, with its stars—worlds filled, perchance, with the intelligence which I sought. On the desert below was the phantasm ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 580, Supplemental Number • Various
... of natural evolution given by Darwinism and the principles of Weismann, Mendel, and De Vries, still fails to solve the mystery completely, and appeal has been made to other agencies, even to teleology and to "unknown" and "unknowable" causes as well as to circumstantial factors. A combination of Lamarckian and Darwinian factors has been proposed by Osborn, ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... the window). I don't think Prince Paul's nature is such a mystery. He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone, or experiencing a ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... country), and when I have further added that the two cuts, in the form of a T, on the left arm of the dead man, signified the Italian word "Traditore," and showed that justice had been done by the Brotherhood on a traitor, I have contributed all that I know towards elucidating the mystery of ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... destruction. Meanwhile, the question of Rome entered on a new phase. The Cabinets of Turin and Paris concluded an agreement in regard to the Roman State on 15th September, 1864. The text of this notorious agreement was known to Europe, whilst its meaning remained a mystery. The ministry of Napoleon III. made it appear in France as a guarantee for the safety of the Pope. The Piedmontese government flattered the revolutionary element of Italy, by representing that it did not in the least change their programme, the keynote of which was ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... generally to go by myself to King's College, and I sometimes hired the chorister boys to sing in my rooms. Nevertheless I am so utterly destitute of an ear, that I cannot perceive a discord, or keep time and hum a tune correctly; and it is a mystery how I could possibly have derived pleasure ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... mystery to me is," he said, "that you exist down here and live to tell the tale—or at least that you earn enough crumbs to feed ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Bayonne (during the "veiled period"), and later in Russia, beside the Bosphorus, and finally in the South of Ireland. Than Baron Taylor there was no one for whom Borrow entertained "a greater esteem and regard . . . There is a mystery about him which, wherever he goes, serves not a little to increase the sensation naturally created by his appearance and manner." {189a} Borrow was much attracted to this mysterious personage, about whom nothing could ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... other hand, is supposed to have feared that he would burn it himself, and the ducal praises with it. The papers, at all events, apparently including the only fair copy of the poem, were constantly withheld; and Tasso, in a new fit of despair, again quitted Ferrara. This mystery of the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... of Epistles—Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians—are steeped in ideas which belong to Greek philosophy and the Greek mystery-religions. It would be impossible to translate them into any Eastern language. The Rabbinical disputes with the Jews about justification and election have disappeared; the danger ahead is now from theosophy and the barbarised Platonism which was afterwards ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... the poor girls never sleep for long periods without the aid of strong narcotics, and then only but fitfully; and it is from this constant suffering that the peculiar sullen or stolid look so often seen on the woman's face is derived. The origin of this custom is involved in mystery to the Westerns. Some say that the strong-minded among the ladies wanted to interfere in politics, and that there is a general liking for visiting, chattering, and gossip (and China women can chatter and gossip), both and all of which inclinations their lords ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... The mystery of love, the immolation of the Holy Victim, was about to begin. The server took the Missal and bore it to the left, or Gospel-side, of the altar, taking care not to touch the pages of the book. Each time he passed before the tabernacle ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... Illustrious what we name space—sphere of unnumbered spirits; Illustrious the mystery of motion, in all beings, even the tiniest insect; Illustrious the attribute of speech—the senses—the body; Illustrious the passing light! Illustrious the pale reflection on the new moon in the western sky! Illustrious whatever I see, or hear, or ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... had lowered. There was mystery in his manner. He sat back in his chair, picked up his pipe, replaced it in his mouth unlighted, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... Lord Hollingford, the wise and learned Lord Hollingford, strangely stupid in understanding the mystery of 'Cross hands and back again, down the middle and up again.' He was constantly getting hold of the wrong hands, and as constantly stopping when he had returned to his place, quite unaware that the duties of society ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... himself it seemed a matter of indifference what became of him, and a hopeless mystery why he had been brought into the world. He had no friend. The consumption in the family was the boy's only hope. His mother had died of it, and his brother Robert, who had been kind to him, and taught him to ride. It was already showing itself in Hurrell. His ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... down some little conceits and notions of mine, in musique, which do mightily encourage me to spend some more thoughts about it; for I fancy, upon good reason, that I am in the right way of unfolding the mystery of this ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... "It seems a mystery to me that General Bezan, honored by the queen, with a purse well filled with gold, and promoted beyond all precedent in his profession, should not rather smile than frown; but perhaps there is ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray |
