"Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interest him in Miss Tancred was to set his intellect to work on her. She had doubtless observed his fin de siecle contempt for the obvious, his passion for the thing beyond his grasp, his worship of the far-fetched, the intangible, the obscure. Thus she thought to inflame his curiosity by hinting that Frida Tancred was incomprehensible, while she touched the very soul of desire by representing her as unattainable. All this was no doubt very clever of Mrs. Fazakerly; but ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... Charles, son of Charles, surnamed The Flying Hart,[1665] who was to be emperor. Of this prophecy we know nothing save that the escutcheon of King Charles VII was borne by two winged stags and that a letter to an Italian merchant, written in 1429, contains an obscure announcement of the coronation of the Dauphin ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... question. In France I had published a two-volume work, in quarto, entitled The Mysteries of the Great Ocean Depths. Well received in scholarly circles, this book had established me as a specialist in this pretty obscure field of natural history. My views were in demand. As long as I could deny the reality of the business, I confined myself to a flat "no comment." But soon, pinned to the wall, I had to explain myself ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... received this day was from O'Shea about Parnell's opinions on the Coercion Bill, but it is so obscure that I can make nothing of it. It was on a suggestion of Lefevre's with regard to bringing the Coercion Bill into force only by "proclamation." It shows, however, if O'Shea is to be believed, that Parnell was willing to accept a coercion measure of some kind, or, at all events, ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... Ephrem, and on statements by Greek writers who had no acquaintance with his works in their original form. His teaching had certain affinities with gnosticism. Thus he certainly denied the resurrection of the body; and so far as we can judge by the obscure quotations from his hymns furnished by St Ephrem he explained the origin of the world by a process of emanation from the supreme God whom he called "the Father of the living." On the other hand the dialogue known as the Book of the Laws of the Countries, which was written by a disciple ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... lover's horse was restrained at the door by the two attendants, who with unsuspected delicacy of feeling had taken this opportunity of withdrawing, the noble endurance which had hitherto upheld her melted away, and she became involved in very melancholy and obscure meditations until she observed that Ling also was quickly becoming affected ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... fir'd pines the scatt'ring sparkles fly; Fat vapors, mix'd with flames, involve the sky. What pow'r, O Muses, could avert the flame Which threaten'd, in the fleet, the Trojan name? Tell: for the fact, thro' length of time obscure, Is hard to faith; yet shall ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... with poetry which one finds among his general essays also bear witness to his discrimination and determined judgement. The essay on Jose-Maria de Heredia in First and Last is a remarkable example of these, a remarkable analysis of a poet who is, if not obscure, at least reticent and difficult to like, and in whom Mr. Belloc sees the recapturer of "the secure tradition of an older time." And this essay relates the spirit of a poet to the general conception of Europe and ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... time in mean expedients and tormenting suspense, living, for the greatest part, in the fear of prosecutions from his creditors, and, consequently, skulking in obscure parts of the town, of which he was no stranger to the remotest corners. But, wherever he came, his address secured him friends, whom his necessities soon alienated; so that he had, perhaps, a more numerous acquaintance than any man ever before attained, there being scarcely any person ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... nature of great events to obscure the great events that came before them. The Seven Years War in Europe is seen but dimly through revolutionary convulsions and Napoleonic tempests; and the same contest in America is half lost to sight behind the storm-cloud of the War of Independence. Few ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... literary England had quite recovered from its surfeit of Victorian priggishness and pre-Raphaelite delicacy, Kipling came along with high spirits and a great tide of life, sweeping all before him. An obscure Anglo-Indian journalist, the publication of his Barrack-room Ballads in 1892 brought him sudden notice. By 1895 he was internationally famous. Brushing over the pallid attempts to revive a pallid past, he rode triumphantly ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... that we sail through? What palpable obscure? What smoke and reek, as if the whole steaming world were revolving on its axis, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... about 360 A.D. The story of his conversion, and the joy which it caused in the Christian community, is told by St. Augustine[188]. He was a deep thinker of the speculative mystical type, but a clumsy and obscure writer, in spite of his rhetorical training. His importance lies in his position as the first Christian ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... refuge, then, behind duty that is obscure, difficult, contradictory. And these are certainly words to call up painful memories. To be a man of duty and to question one's route, grope in the dark, feel one's self torn between the contrary solicitations of ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... a people for whom I cannot but feel some share of affection. Let those who have been born in more favoured lands and who have profited by more enlightened systems, compassionate, but not despise their destitute and obscure situation. Children of the same omniscient paternal care, let them recollect that by the fortuitous advantage of birth alone they possess superiority: that untaught, unaccommodated man is the same ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... probably a Bundelkhand group; they will eat food cooked without water with Golapurab Banias, who are also found in Bundelkhand. They are mainly Hindus, with a small minority of Jains. The origin of the name is obscure; the suggestion that it comes from Nimar appears to be untenable, as there are very few Nemas in that District. They say that when Parasurama was slaying the Kshatriyas fourteen young Rajput princes, who at the time were studying religion with their family ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Greeley's old-time enemies had not disappeared. No one really liked him,[1261] while party managers, the shadow of whose ill-will never ceased to obscure his chances, shook their heads. Reasons given in 1868 were repeated with greater emphasis, and to prevent his nomination which now seemed imminent, influences that had suddenly made him strong were as quickly withdrawn. It was intimated that the President preferred Woodford, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... to the wall and said no more; but she had started a less pleasant train of thought. It was changed again by Temperance coming with lights. Though the tall brass lamps glittered like gold, their circle of light was small; the corners of the room were obscure. Mr. Park, entering, retreated into one, and mother was obliged to forego the pleasure of undressing Arthur; so she sent him off with Temperance and Charles, whose duty it was to rock the cradle as long as ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... ritual and art we might well despair. The Greeks are a people of such swift constructive imagination that they almost always obscure any problem of origins. So fair and magical are their cloud-capp'd towers that they distract our minds from the task of digging for foundations. There is scarcely a problem in the origins of Greek mythology and religion that has been solved ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... publicly promulgated in an obscure village in the State of New York have now spread over ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... agglutination, in which case one or more of the elements entering into combination to form the new word is somewhat changed—the elements are fused together. Yet this modification is not so great as to essentially obscure the primitive words, as in truthful, where we easily recognize the original words truth and full; and holiday, in which holy and ...
— On the Evolution of Language • John Wesley Powell
... accept of the high dignity offered him, but sent to let Pericles know their intentions, that he might return home and resume his lawful right. It was matter of great surprise and joy to Simonides, to kind that his son-in-law (the obscure knight) was the renowned prince of Tyre; yet again he regretted that he was not the private gentleman he supposed him to be, seeing that he must now part both with his admired son-in-law and his beloved daughter, whom he ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... medical missionary who was at work for some time on the west coast of Lake Nyassa gave me information regarding the depravity prevalent among the young boys in the Atonga tribe of a character not even to be described in obscure Latin. These statements might be applied with almost equal exactitude to boys and girls in many other parts of Africa. As regards the little girls, over nearly the whole of British Central Africa, chastity before puberty is an unknown condition.... Before a girl becomes a ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... will ask for whenever you may want it. Once more adieu: believe me could I hear you was returned to your friends, and enjoying that tranquillity of which I have robbed you, I should be as completely happy as even you, in your fondest hours, could wish me, but till then a gloom will obscure ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... way, gentlemen," said he, "it occurs to me that you have not yet thought of selecting a profession; your future career seems at present somewhat obscure." ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... only the English ferns, but the natural history of all our land species, are now well-nigh exhausted. Our home botanists and ornithologists are spending their time now, perforce, in verifying a few obscure species, and bemoaning themselves, like Alexander, that there are no more worlds left to conquer. For the geologist, indeed, and the entomologist, especially in the remoter districts, much remains to be done, but only at a heavy outlay of time, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... an obscure and unimportant person pitched himself among the rolling porpoises, from a ferry-boat, and an officious busy-body, not at once clearly apprehending that the matter was none of his immediate business, hied him down to the engineer ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... in my career? Who would have thought that I should be, that afternoon, listening to the despairing father vainly trying to explain how his daughter's assailant had been able to escape from him? Why bury ourselves with our work in obscure retreats in the depths of woods, if it may not protect us against those dangerous threats to life which meet us in ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... Garden, devoted to a thorough examination of this vast establishment, from its extensive catacombs to the leads which overlook the panorama of London; persuaded as we are that the public has but an obscure idea of the capital, labour, and ingenuity expended in the production of what is visible to the eye of the audience. Access to the stage during rehearsal is strictly confined to the performers, although that is the least part of the exhibition; but by special favour, we ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... seriousness, his simplicity, very unlike their own, and yet near enough to suggest a delicate flattery, was in his favor. So was his naive frankness in regard to his status in the family, shown in the few words of greeting with Sir Ashley, and in his later simple yet free admissions regarding his obscure youth, his former poverty, and his present wealth. He boasted of neither; he was disturbed by neither. Standing alone, a stranger, for the first time in an assemblage of distinguished and titled men and women, he betrayed no consciousness; ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... we open these cells every hour after sealing; can we tell anything about their progress by the appearance of these cocoons, or even tell when they are finished? The thickness of a dozen would not exceed common writing paper. When a subject is obscure, or difficult to ascertain, like this, why not tell us how they found out the particulars; and if they were guessed at, be honest, and say so? When the bee leaves the cell, a cocoon remains, and that is about ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... alphabetical dictionary of English words, with their equivalents in what may be called, without irreverence, Wilkinese. It was written at the request of the Royal Society, and, by its order, published in 1688. The meaning of the somewhat obscure title is explained by Wilkins in a very interesting preface. Character means language, or rather writing, and a universal character is the script of a language like that which was spoken before the confusion ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... of light, we demonstrate upon them up to a certain point; but there ever remains something which makes us confess that we do not yet comprehend the whole nature of light.) 'nor any principle such[115] as may give rise to a solution;' (Why should not evident principles be found mingled with obscure and confused knowledge?) 'and consequently the objections that reason has made will remain unanswered;' (By no means; the difficulty is rather on the side of the opposer. It is for him to seek an evident principle such as may give rise to some ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... that he found an arid pleasure in following up to the end the rigid lines of the doctrines of the church and penetrating into obscure silences only to hear and feel the more deeply his own condemnation. The sentence of saint James which says that he who offends against one commandment becomes guilty of all, had seemed to him first ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... others, whose garments bespoke direst poverty. There were women, too, whose costume emulated the classic drapery of the ancients, and who displayed, in their looped togas, no niggard share of their forms; while others, in shabby mourning, sat in obscure corners, not noticing the scene before them, nor noticed themselves. A strange equipage, with two horses extravagantly bedizened with rosettes and bouquets, stood at the door; and as I looked, a pale, haggard-looking man, whose foppery in dress contrasted oddly ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... Mongoloids had come, and were flourishing here. They were changed vastly from those ancestors of Asia whence they had sprung. An obscure story, this record of primitive America! The Mongoloids were soon so changed that one could fancy the blood of another people had mingled with them. Amerindians, we call them now. They were still very backward in development, yet made tremendous ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... shall be made attent or diligent to giue audience / yf the oratour make promyse y^t he will shew them new thynges / or els necessary or profita[-] ble / or yf he say y^t it is an harde mater that he hath in handelynge / or els obscure & nat easy to be vndersta[n]d / except ...
— The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke • Leonard Cox
... Obscure as were the directions which Hopperdown's niece had taken from his dying lips, one point at least was clear—the treasure-cave opened on the sea. This seemed an immense simplification of the problem, until you discovered that the great ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... the objections to revealed religion are equally valid against the constitution of nature; and second, to establish a conformity between the divine order in revelation and the order of nature; his style is far from interesting, and is often obscure (1692-1752). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... way out to telephone his friend of his detention, took a Westchester Avenue car at the nearest point, and in twenty minutes was at the library. He found an obscure corner and opened envelope ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... Agias, all amazement, "what is the matter? Your speech is as obscure as Cinna's[92] poem called 'Zmyrna,' which I've heard was ten years in being written, and must be very fine, because no one can understand it. No more can ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... a young man of obscure birth—wholly uneducated, and, generally speaking, a savage, though a harmless one," said the lady, returning to the charge. "Now, Redbud, you cannot fail to perceive that it is impossible for you to marry an Indian whom nobody ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... ancient conspirator. He had no wish to be stopped by an inquisitive friend; his destination demanded secrecy. Soon the lights and asphalt of the High Street gave place to dark, twisting paths and cobbled stones. These obscure and narrow ways were rather pathetic survivals of the old Pendragon. At night they had an almost sinister appearance; the lamps were at very long intervals and the old houses leaned over the road with a certain crazy picturesqueness ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... correct the rude tendencies of her nature. Had she been educated in her early days, this tendency to self-correction would have made her an ideal woman, but she owed nearly all her intellectual training to the sermons of the Rev. Jason Lee, which she had heard in some obscure corner of a room, or in Methodist chapel, ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... more vital historical interest. These southern marshes, bordering Bound Brook and stretching away to Bassing Beach, were visited by haymakers as were those to the north. But these haymakers did not come from the same township, nor were they under the same local government. The obscure little stream which to-day lies between Scituate Harbor and Cohasset marks the line of two conflicting grants—the Plymouth Colony ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... immersed in the water. The cause of this curious phenomenon is to be looked for in the laws of animal sensation and not from any properties of heat. When a person goes from clear day-light into an obscure room for a while it appears gloomy, which gloom however in a little time ceases, and the deficiency of light becomes no longer perceived. This is not solely owing to the enlargement of the iris of the eye, since that is performed in an instant, but to this law of sensation, that when ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... hall clock's muffled chime of twelve, the tiny splash of a fish, the sudden shaking of an aspen's leaves in the puffs of breeze that rose along the river, the distant rumble of a night train, and time and again the sounds which none can put a name to in the darkness, soft obscure expressions of uncatalogued emotions from man and beast, bird and machine, or, maybe, from departed Forsytes, Darties, Cardigans, taking night strolls back into a world which had once suited their embodied spirits. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the memorable ninth of August, as I was sitting in a cafe of the Palais Royal, listening to the mountain songs of a party of Swiss minstrels in front of the door, Mendoza, passing through the crowd, made me a signal; I immediately followed him to an obscure corner of one ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... over again next week, the mistakes of a censorship that was absolutely right as a military measure, but may have been unintelligently, not to say childishly, conducted—all these are beside the real question. They must not obscure the duty of restoring order in the regions where our troops have been assailed, ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... but not all the truth. Workhouses and lunatic asylums are thronged with men who believe in themselves. Of Francis it is far truer to say that the secret of his success was his profound belief in other people, and it is the lack of this that has commonly been the curse of these obscure Napoleons. Francis always assumed that everyone must be just as anxious about their common relative, the water-rat, as he was. He planned a visit to the Emperor to draw his attention to the needs of 'his little sisters the larks.' He used to talk to any thieves and robbers he met about ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... "Great West," or the valleys of the Mississippi and the Lakes, is a portion of our history hitherto very obscure. Those magnificent regions were revealed to the world through a series of daring enterprises, of which the motives and even the incidents have been but partially and superficially known. The chief actor in them wrote much, but printed ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... of my heart: On him who gains thy praise, Pointless must fall the Spectre's dart, Consumed in glory's blaze; But me she beckons from the earth, My name obscure, unmark'd my birth, My life a short and vulgar dream: Lost in the dull, ignoble crowd, My hopes recline within a shroud, My fate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... husband, dear lady, has robbed me of my joy in life, the only happiness I have known since I became a widower. Yes, if I had not been so unlucky as to come across that old rip, Josepha would still be mine; for I, you know, should never have placed her on the stage. She would have lived obscure, well conducted, and mine. Oh! if you could but have seen her eight years ago, slight and wiry, with the golden skin of an Andalusian, as they say, black hair as shiny as satin, an eye that flashed ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... chance to get near, so I bethought me of an alley which ran parallel to the street. There was an obscure hotel on the street, and I entered it through the rear entrance, and had no trouble in persuading the clerk to let me join some of the guests of the hotel who were watching the scene from the second ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... allowed him to live his philosophy—to work his poetry up into life, and then again to transmute life and love into art. Fate was kind: success came his way so slowly that he was never subjected to the fierce, dazzling searchlight of publicity; his recognition in youth was limited to a few obscure friends and neighbors. And when distance divided him from these, they forgot him; so there seems a hiatus in his history, when for a score of years literary England dimly remembered some one by the name of Browning, but could not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... woman, he consented to undertake the case and make his charges only sufficient to cover his expenses. It would be well here to give a brief sketch of Judge Bates, as many people wondered that such a distinguished statesman would take up the case of an obscure negro girl. ...
— From the Darkness Cometh the Light, or Struggles for Freedom • Lucy A. Delaney
... whatever he might choose to say, his auditors had no choice but to believe him; wrong looked like right, and right like wrong; for when it pleased him, he could make a kind of illuminated fog with his mere breath, and obscure the natural daylight with it. His tongue, indeed, was a magic instrument: sometimes it rumbled like the thunder; sometimes it warbled like the sweetest music. It was the blast of war—the song of peace; and it seemed ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... happy spring-tide, for the joyousness and glory of her youth. Little did Nea guess as she flitted, like a white butterfly, from one flower vase to another, that her spring-tide was already over, and that the cloud that was to obscure her life was dawning slowly ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... went, her father considered her for a moment, and wondered. Never before had he seen such a look in her eyes as that which she had turned on the queer, vivid stranger so busily engaged at the tray. Polly, and this obscure scientist! After the kind of men whom the girl had known, enslaved, and eluded! Absurd! Yet if it were to be—Mr. Brewster reviewed the events of the afternoon— well, it might ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... them, except at the Christmas season for greenery. Gathering this by deputy is poor business. It is all very well, if you can do no better, to engage Mr. Brown to engage some one else to bring in the needed spruce, fir, and hemlock with which to obscure the fresco deformities of St. Boniface's; but it is far better to hunt for them yourself. There is something intensely delightful in the changes of the search; for it begins dull enough. You start in the drear December weather, with a gray sky and leaden ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... expense of that one, and a responsive hooch to the wild, whirling dancers. As he advances, all the pretty girls draw themselves up to catch his eye, and to have the honour of his hand in the dance. He strolls about, peering gently, until, in some obscure corner, he espies a young, shy, modest damsel, the lowliest there, whom no one is noticing, a lowly worker in the back kitchen, or even in the fields. Her he selects—blushing with surprise and a tumult of nameless ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... voices seemed to enter Blanche Burke's soul, filling it with hunger never felt before. Day after day it moaned in her ears and wailed about the little cabin, rousing within her formless desires and bitter despairs. Obscure emotions, unused powers of reason and recollection came to her. She developed ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... quite abruptly, there was an obscure murmuring sound. It grew stronger, and stronger still. If Bell had been aloft, he would have seen the planes from The Master's hangars being rushed out of their shelters. One of the long row of buildings had caught. And the plateau of Cuyaba is very, very far from civilization. Tools, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... having succeeded so well thus far, we were very hopeful for the future. Heaven had kindly favored us. The temperature had been very mild all the time. There had been no wind, and scarcely a cloud to obscure the sky. As for shelter, we felt that we could manage in two days to enclose the cave; and as to the other trouble, although we were not very clear in our minds about it, yet we did not lose confidence that a ship would come along and take us off before winter ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... wrong side; but, contrary to all our expectations, and when we had hardly room to veer, the ship came about, and having filled on the starboard tack, we stood off N.E. Thus we were relieved from the apprehensions of being forced to anchor in a great depth, on a lee shore, and in a dark and obscure night. ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... indicator in the matter of establishing a diagnosis and giving the prognosis, especially in cases of somewhat unusual character. An animal may be slightly lame and the exhibition of lameness be such as to render the cause bafflingly obscure. Cases of this nature are sometimes quite difficult to classify and in occasional instances a positive diagnosis is impossible. Subjects of this kind may not be sufficiently inconvenienced to warrant their being taken out of service, yet a lame horse, ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... well worthy such a fire! Most bards are dupes to beauties they admire. Proud to be brief, for brevity must please, I grow obscure; the follower of ease Wants nerve and soul; the lover of sublime Swells to bombast; while he who dreads that crime, Too fearful of the whirlwind rising round, A wretched reptile, creeps along the ground. The bard, ambitious fancies who displays, And tortures one poor thought ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... seem that in Christ there was not the gift of prophecy. For prophecy implies a certain obscure and imperfect knowledge, according to Num. 12:6: "If there be among you a prophet of the Lord, I will appear to him in a vision, or I will speak to him in a dream." But Christ had full and unveiled knowledge, much more than Moses, of whom it is subjoined that "plainly and not by riddles ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... That this brilliant affair did not come off is owing to my own lack of enterprise; for I did not want to go across the continent, and I do not hanker after Zanzibar, but only to go puddling about obscure districts in West Africa after ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Quick-witted, endowed with remarkable energy and tact, and inspired by an ardent desire to acquire wealth for the sake of Dolores, he rendered them important services on more than one occasion by lending his obscure and modest name to conceal operations in which a well-known personage could ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... proved a very strong attraction to his pleasure- loving mind. This "Giostra," which the translators of Vasari seem to find so "obscure," [Footnote: Vasari's Lives, vol. ii. p. 470.] was no doubt one of those festivals revived by the Medici, in which mounted cavaliers ride with a lance at a suspended Saracen's head, striking it at full gallop. Desirous of ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... "is a dance. What the jolly, nice girl played is a little obscure, but I think it must have been tunes suitable to the performance of the two-step. 'Rec.' is a shortened form of recreation. Lalage is fond of these contractions. She writes ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... phraseology, such as, "the indefinite-past and present of the declarative mode."—Ib., p. 100. The critic who writes such stuff as this, may well be a misinterpreter of good common English. It is plain, that the two examples which he thus distorts, are neither obscure nor inelegant. But, in an alternative of single things, the article must be repeated, and a plural noun is improper; as, "But they do not receive the Nicene or the Athanasian creeds."—Adam's Religious ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... teacher," he began with extreme emotion, "your words are too obscure.... What is this suffering in store ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... duly observed every year on the 25th of July, the nature or function of the goddess Furrina was, as we learn from Cicero, a pure matter of conjecture, and Varro tells us that her name was known only to a few persons. Nor was it mere lapse of time which tended to obscure theology and exalt ceremonial: their relative position was the immediate and natural outcome of the underlying idea of the relation of god and man. Devotion, piety—in our sense of the term—and a feeling of the divine presence ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey
... from the absolute: To lift the fancy, and, where still the song Proclaimed a wild humanity, to sway Soothingly soft, and by fantastic wiles Persuade the passions to a milder clime! His was the song of chivalry, and wrought For like results upon society; Artful in high degree, with plan obscure, That mystified to lure, and, by its spells, Making the heart forgetful of itself To follow out and trace its labyrinths, In that forgetfulness made visible! Such were the uses of his Muse; to say How proper and how exquisite his lay, How quaintly rich his masking—with what art He fashioned ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... deal with the facts of our own day, with the facts of no other, and to make laws which square with those facts. It is best, indeed it is necessary, to begin with the tariff. I will urge nothing upon you now at the opening of your session which can obscure that first object or divert our energies from that clearly defined duty. At a later time I may take the liberty of calling your attention to reforms which should press close upon the heels of the tariff ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... with, let me describe myself. I am an ordinary quiet-living obscure person, neither exalted nor lowly, who, having tired of town, took a little place in the country and there settled down to a life of placidity, varied by such inroads upon ease as all back-to-the-landers know: now a raid on the chickens by a fox, whose humour it is not to devour but merely to decapitate; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... God, pointing out the only means of salvation, men placed themselves, through the Bible, in direct communication with the Deity, and, casting aside the authority of a church, acknowledged responsibility to Him alone. The difficulty of interpreting obscure portions of the Scriptures drove many to frenzy and despair. A hopeful or consoling passage was hailed with joy. "Happy are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." "Lo," wrote Tyndale, "here God hath made a covenant wyth us, to mercy full unto us, yf we wyll be mercy ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... the mind, with the more fixedness and intenseness to that kind of objects; which causes it to have a clearer view of them, and enables it more clearly to see their mutual relations, and occasions it to take more notice of them. The ideas themselves that otherwise are dim and obscure, are by this means imprest with the greater strength, and have a light cast upon them, so that the mind can better judge of them; as he that beholds the objects on the face of the earth, when the light of the sun is cast upon them, is under ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... Godoy, of obscure family, was originally a common soldier in the Guards. He became field-marshal, Duke of Alcudia, Grandee of Spain, Councillor of State, and Cavalier of the Golden Fleece. For his intervention in the Peace of Basilea ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... open to her. None the less, however, did she feel the burden of life's problems; the intercourse she had enjoyed with Colonel Keith had excited her for a time, but in the reaction, the old feelings returned painfully that the times were out of joint; the heavens above became obscure and misty as before, the dark places of the earth looked darker than ever, and those who lived at ease seemed to be employed either in sport upon the outside of the dungeon where the captives groaned, or ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gradual return to former conditions the feelings of age and experience grew dim and indefinite, his knowledge lessened, becoming obscure and confused, showing itself only in vague impressions and impulses, until at last it became quite the exception for the child-consciousness to be broken through by flashes of intuition and inspiration from the more deeply ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... may suffer to be a real hindrance to his children in their calling; it is, To seek the very best, and therefore the most expensive, situations which can be had in a town or city. Now, I do by no means intend to say, that in our trade, business, art, or profession, we should seek the most obscure, retired, out of the way place possible, and say, "God will provide, and I need not mind in what part of the town I carry on my calling." There are most assuredly certain things to be considered. The persons who are likely to buy the articles I sell, or employ me, are to ...
— The Life of Trust: Being a Narrative of the Lord's Dealings With George Mueller • George Mueller
... of youth, forgive, if I forget thee, While the world's tide is bearing me along; Other desires and other hopes beset me, Hopes which obscure, but cannot ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... the Bengal records, there are Clive's and Eyre Coote's military journals, the Logs of the British ships of war, and the journal of Surgeon Edward Ives of His Majesty's ship Kent. Thus this passage of arms, almost the only one in Bengal[18] in which the protagonists were Europeans, is no obscure event, but one in which almost every incident was seen and described from opposite points of view. This multiplicity of authorities makes it difficult to form a connected narrative, and, in respect to many incidents, I shall have to follow that account ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill
... old bookstores. There were many in London, moldy and musty, in obscure corners, some of them in cellars and in narrow passageways, just ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... similar things in the "Daily News," in Chicago, but they did not hold his attention. Now, these things were like grey clouds hovering along the horizon of a clear day. They threatened to cover and obscure his life with chilly greyness. He tried to shake them off, to forget and brace up. Sometimes he ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... one little soul who, with absolutely nothing to warrant the expectation, nothing reasonable on which to base joyous anticipation, had gone to bed thinking of Santa Claus and hoping that, amidst equally deserving hundreds of thousands of obscure children, this little mite in her cold, cheerless garret might not be overlooked by the generous dispenser of joy. With the sublime trust of childhood she had insisted upon hanging up her ragged stocking. ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the hands of the Thebans; and Menekleides persuaded them to put it up publicly and to write on it the name of Charon, in order to throw the glory of Pelopidas and Epameinondas into the shade; a silly exhibition of ill-feeling indeed, to compare one poor skirmish, in which Gerandas, an obscure Spartan, and some forty men fell, with the great and important ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... committed all three crimes; and before that extraordinary fact had had time to soak well into the public mind there took place yet another murder, and again the murderer had been to special pains to make it clear that some obscure and terrible lust for ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... which his lineage might be traced, is not mentioned, but Francisco Carli is named as of the same family, but without designating his relationship. Whether a myth or a reality, Fernando seems to have been an obscure person, at the best; not known to the political or literary history of the period, and not professing to occupy any position, by which he might be supposed to have any facility or advantage for obtaining official information ...
— The Voyage of Verrazzano • Henry C. Murphy
... long seconds after the young minister sat down, wavering a little as he walked to a chair at the rear. But through the representative citizenship of Worthington, in that place gathered, passed a quiver of sound, indeterminate, obscure, yet having all the passion of a quelled sob. Eyes furtively sought the face of Dr. Surtaine. But the master-quack remained frozen by the same bewilderment as his fellows. Perhaps alone in that crowd, Elias M. Pierce remained untouched emotionally. He rose, and his square ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... buried in howe, but Myrine was a warrior maiden of the Amazons. We know, then, minutely what the Homeric mode of burial was, with such variations as have been noted. We have burning and howe even in the case of an obscure oarsman like Elpenor. It is not probable, however, that every peaceful mechanic had a howe all to himself; he may have had a small family cairn; he may not have ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... He had been so uncompromising in his ugliness. The shock of her awakening had been rudely unexpected, and had bewildered her with its brutal significance. She was a prisoner in this Turkish house, in an obscure quarter of a half Oriental town, and night was imminent, a night which seemed to possess untold possibilities for evil. What was to happen? Why had not Captain Goritz returned? Enemy though she now knew him to be, even Goritz was a refuge in this ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... constitution, he could not be blinded, like Cleonice, into the belief that a law so fundamental in Sparta, and so general in all the primitive States of Greece, as that which forbade intermarriage with a foreigner, could be cancelled for the Regent of Sparta, and in favour of an obscure maiden of Byzantium. Every visit Pausanias paid to Cleonice but served, in his eyes, as a prelude to her ultimate dishonour. He lent himself, therefore, with all the zeal of his vivacious and ardent character, to the design of removing Pausanias himself ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... fair, delicate, gentle child. Twelve summers and winters had passed over her little head without a cloud to obscure the sunshine of her life save one—but that one was a terribly dark one, and its shadow lingered over her for many years. When Alice lost her mother, she lost the joy and delight of her existence; and although six years ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... mysteries, And some, even more obscure, profound, And wildering to the mind than these, Which—far as woman's thought could sound, Or a fallen, outlawed spirit reach— She dared to learn and I to teach. Till—filled with such unearthly lore, And mingling the pure light it brings With much that fancy had before Shed in false, tinted ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... he had been suddenly called to take a certain part, a sure presentiment told him that his own happy holiday was come to an end, and that the clouds and storm which he had always somehow foreboded, were about to break and obscure this brief pleasant period of sunshine. He rose at a very early hour, flung his windows open, looked out no doubt towards those other windows in the neighbouring hotel, where he may have fancied he saw a curtain stirring, drawn by a hand that every hour now he ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... able to give, either in "Deucalion," or in my "Elements of Drawing." I wish however that the second lecture had been made the beginning of the book; and would fain now cancel the first altogether, which I perceive to be both obscure and dull. It was meant for a metaphorical description of the pleasures and dangers in the kingdom of Mammon, or of worldly wealth; its waters mixed with blood, its fruits entangled in thickets of trouble, ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... system of ancient writing that has come down to us,—the old cuneiform syllabary of the Assyrians,—dictionaries, glossaries, and other works of a grammatical character have been preserved to the present day. Documents such as these are, of course, of material aid in regard to obscure texts, but in the case of the Egyptian writing the only surviving native word-list is the Sign Papyrus of Tanis,* which is, unfortunately, of the Roman Period, when the original meanings of the signs ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... the woman in their parlance replaced the letter 'r' by vowel sounds almost too obscure to be represented, except where it came last in a word before a word beginning with a vowel; there it was annexed to the vowel by a strong liaison, according to the custom universal ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... very pith of Paul's chief doctrine. The cause why it is well understood but by few is, not that it is so obscure and difficult, but because there is so little knowledge of faith left in the world; without which it is not possible to understand Paul, who everywhere treats of faith with such earnestness and force. I must, therefore, speak in such a manner that this text will appear plain; ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... delicate build, with a fair, almost colorless complexion. His movements, his language, his attire, indicated the gentleman—this I should have conceded him in my club at home, or in my own drawing-room, quite as readily as here, alone, in an obscure hotel in the State of Illinois. As we sat conversing, I was much surprised to find in him a considerable degree of culture. He seemed to possess that particular air which we are accustomed to think, and generally with reason, is not to be found apart ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... radical change in design is to be made, the new machine should be one that will be the most readily understood. Obscure parts or ...
— Industrial Progress and Human Economics • James Hartness
... conditions. The prophet remains on the banks of Chebar and in spirit is transported to Jerusalem and the temple. Much of the book is in character similar to Revelation and while the general subjects are very plain, much of the meaning of the symbols is obscure. There are, however, powerful addresses and eloquent predictions of Divine judgments on the nations. It was probably due to the services of Ezekiel that Israel's religion was preserved during ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... quoted to him a couple of lines out of Callimachus' Hymn to Apollo, which he had hurled at the head of Burke when the great Whig tribune threatened that he would get him (Sir William Jones) recalled if he continued to support Warren Hastings. The lines quoted from the obscure Greek poet he translated to the young civilian, Henry Strachey. "In reply, I reminded Burke," he said, "of the lines in the Hymn to Apollo: 'The Euphrates is a noble river, but it rolls down all the dead dogs of Babylon ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... solemn night moved on, a night of black vapours; the pageant of the Old Year's deathbed was unbrightened by so much as a single star. None of the hurrying passers-by perceived the weary woman where she slept in that obscure corner, and for a long while she rested there undisturbed. Suddenly a vivid glare of light dazzled her eyes; she started to her feet half asleep, but still instinctively retaining the infant in her close embrace. A dark form, buttoned ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... and weight which his lordship might have to his prejudice, by causing some strong masked men to kidnap him, in the Links of Leith, at his diversion on a Saturday afternoon, and transport him to some blind and obscure room in the country, where he was detained captive, without the benefit of daylight, a matter of three months (though otherwise civilly and well entertained); during which time his lady and children went in ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... and the ardent, generous-minded Mabel felt her blood thrill in her veins and her cheeks flush, as the canoe shot into the strength of the stream, to quit the spot. The darkness of the night had lessened, by the dispersion of the clouds; but the overhanging woods rendered the shore so obscure, that the boats floated down the current in a belt of gloom that effectually secured them from detection. Still, there was necessarily a strong feeling of insecurity in all on board them; and even Jasper, who by this time began to tremble, in behalf of the ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... of these dispatches small, wrapped them in thin gutta-percha, and, going to the most obscure shoemaker in the part of London which I knew, had the heel of one of my boots excavated and the packet deposited in the hole and covered over again by a stout heel-tap. My orders were to take at least six weeks for the journey, to go by a roundabout route, and travel as if for pleasure. From the ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... race. In the first the face is upturned, covered in shadow; in the second it is hid from view by the leaves of the forbidden tree, while in the third Eve turns her back and hides her weeping face with her arms. This habit of Watts to obscure the face is observed in "The Shuddering Angel," Judgment in "Time, Death, and Judgment," in "Love and Death," "Sic Transit," "Great Possessions," and some others. Often indeed a picture speaks as much of what is not seen ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... & had so hyghe walles that by the heyghte of them/ was contynuell derkenes environed & obscurete/ that none erthely man might beholde and see the ende of y'e hyghnes of the walle/ And therfore ysaye callid hit y'e montaigne obscure/ And saint Iherome sayth y't the mesure of the heyght of this walle was thre thousand paas/ whiche extendeth vnto y'e lengthe of thre myle lombardes/ hit is to wete that lombarde mylis and english myles ben of one lengthe And in one of the corners of this cyte was made ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... Pradt, who had as yet heard no distinct accounts of the progress of events, was unexpectedly visited by Caulaincourt, who abruptly informed him that the grand army was no more. The Abbe accompanied Caulaincourt to an obscure inn, where the Emperor, wrapped in a fur cloak, was walking up and down rapidly, beside a newly-lit fire. He was received with an air of gaiety, which for a moment disconcerted him; and proceeded to mention that the inhabitants of the Grand Duchy ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... RUPERT was my friend; "Only surviving son of"—so it ran— "Beloved husband" and the rest of it. But six months back I saw him full of life, Ardent for fighting; now he lies at ease In some obscure but splendid field of France, His strivings over and his conflicts done. He was a fellow of most joyous moods And quaint contrivings, ever on the point Of shaking fame and fortune by the hand But always baulked of meeting them at last. He could not ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... what every ambassador of Christ constantly experiences when in the thick of the Master's work. His are the joys of acquisition. His purse may be scanty, his teaching may be humble, and the field of his labor may be so obscure that no bulletins of his achievements are ever proclaimed to an admiring world. Difficulties may sadden and discouragement bring him to his knees; but I tell you that obscure, toiling man of God has a joy vouchsafed to him ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... mystic circles, the figure of a “horse rampant,” indicative of the reverence in which the horse was held by the Druids. {112a} Stukeley says, in his Diary, “a coign I got of Carausius found at Hornecastle. It had been silvered over. The legend of the reverse is obscure. It seems to be a figure, sitting on a coat of armour, or trophy, with a garland in her left hand, and (legend) Victorii Aug.” {112b} Silver coins of Vespasian, Lucius Septimius Severus, Alexander Severus, and Volusianus, a large brass coin of Trajan, middle brass ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... people at this time is contained by implication in the list of things which they are forbidden by law to do. So, the Lex Visigothorum is not only a tribute to the moral sense of its promulgators, but at the same time a storehouse of information with regard to a rather obscure period ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... form a covered protection to a similar arrangement below, and an indescribable building which was used by the monks as their store for winter provisions. The staircases were outside, as in Switzerland, and entered upon the open-air landings or balconies; these were obscure galleries, from which doors led to each separate apartment, occupied by the monks and fleas. The obscurity may appear strange, as the balconies were on the outside, but the eaves of the roof at an angle of about 48 degrees ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... christian world with darkness and superstition, some few, who plainly perceived the pernicious tendency of such errors, determined to show the light of the gospel in its real purity, and to disperse those clouds which artful priests had raised about it, in order to blind the people, and obscure its ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... public. Did I never get caught? That made it all the more lively and interesting. Denials, affidavits, elaborate explanations, two sides to any question; if it was too hot, I could change the name and shift the scene to a still more obscure town. Or it could be laid to the zeal of a local reporter, who could give the most ingenious reasons for his story. Once I worked one of those imaginary reporters up into such prominence for his clever astuteness that my boss was taken in, and asked ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... time, he christened it Theobroma Cacao, by which name it is called by botanists to this day. Theo-broma is Greek for "Food of the Gods." Why Linnaeus paid this extraordinary compliment to cacao is obscure, but it has been suggested that he was inordinately fond of the beverage prepared from it—the cup which both cheers and satisfies. It will be seen from the above that the species-name is cacao, ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... else it might be called, and continued talking for a long time. Pinzon listened to him with profound attention and without interrupting him, except to ask an occasional question for the purpose of obtaining further details or additional light upon some obscure point. When Pepe Rey ended, Pinzon looked grave. He stretched himself, yawning with the satisfaction of one who has not slept for three nights, and ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... strove to win some wretched consolation by waylaying him in his evening drives, or directing the telescope upon his balcony, which overlooked the lake, or upon the hillside, with its vineyards, where he lurked obscure" (Dowden's Life of Shelley, 1896, p. 309). It is possible, too, that now and again even Shelley's companionship was felt to be a strain upon nerves and temper. The escape from memory and remorse, which could not be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... to the poor, although, like your railroad-contract robber the poor Italian brigand has not the chance of having his name published in the newspapers, or read out from the pulpit, as a good, charitable, and humane gentleman. Of the two charities, I think that of the obscure brigand is ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... hope of being one day useful or eminent, ought not to mislead us too far from that study which is equally requisite to the great and mean, to the celebrated and obscure; the art of moderating the desires, of repressing the appetites, and of conciliating or retaining ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson |
