"Obscurity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... list. It is a Mr. Tickle's set that has come to me, for his name is on the fly-leaf. But for me and this set of Bell, Mr. Tickle would seem to have sunk into obscurity. I proclaim him here, and if there be anywhere at this day younger Tickles, even down to the merest titillation, may they see these lines and thus take a ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... clouds were rent by incessant flashes, or rather streams, of lightning. At one time they were piled up high in the sky, at another they descended to the earth, filling the air with a baleful darkness, more impenetrable than the obscurity of midnight. Wherever the hurricane passed, whole tracts of forest were shivered and stripped of their leaves and branches; and trees of gigantic size, which resisted the blast, were torn up by the roots and hurled to a great distance. Groves were torn from the mountain-precipices, and vast ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... what next took place in the smoky obscurity above the fire, for the branch seemed to wave about more and more, and to lengthen; and then I made sure that it was the shadow I saw; but directly after, a thrill ran through me as I recalled that these creatures were fond of nestling high up in branches, ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... had not become so luminous to him as it had to the minister. A darkness, which the obscurity of the night faintly typified, closed round him, pierced by one ray only, and from this he tried to turn his face. It was the gleam that lights up every labyrinth where our feet wander and stumble, but it is not always easy to know it from those false lights of ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... astonishment of d'Artagnan, the shutter remained closed. Still more, the light which had shone for an instant disappeared, and all was again in obscurity. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... him; then, to Edgar's astonishment, he lashed the frantic horses with the whip, and, plunging forward, they swept madly through the opening in the fence, with the wagon jolting from rut to rut. A minute or two afterward they had vanished into the thick obscurity that veiled the waste of grass, and there was a dazzling flash and a stunning roll of thunder. George, flushed and breathless, looked around with ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... the same hour, came off from the adjacent continent. There was no moon, but the night could not be called dark. Myriads of stars gleamed out from the fathomless firmament, filling the atmosphere with a light that served to render objects sufficiently distinct, while it left them clad in a semi-obscurity that suited the witchery of the scene and the hour. Raoul felt the influence of all these circumstances in an unusual degree. It disposed him to more sobriety of thought than always attended his leisure moments, and he took a seat on the taffrail near ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... been an Athenian by birth, and of noble extraction. His extraordinary piety and learning, (it is added,) drew the admiration of the world upon him in such a manner, that it was impossible for him to enjoy, in his own country, that obscurity and retirement which was the chief object of his desires on earth." Having sailed for France, he spent many years in the wild deserts near the mouth of the Rhone, and afterwards in a forest in the diocese of Nismes. The Bollandists have shewn that this district ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... same sort of unsociable pegging away that you have. For want of it I shall never really be good. However, if you don't tell people I've said so they'll never know. Your conditions are far better than mine and far more respectable: you can do as many things as you like in patient obscurity while I'm pitchforked into the melee and into the most improbable fame—all on the back of a solitary cheval de bataille, a poor broken-winded screw. I read it clear that I shall be condemned for the greater part of the rest of my days—do ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... it in the whole town, talked of it and nothing else. As the cities of ancient times had loved their martyrs, the little village loved the unhappy Petter Nord; but no one liked to go into the graveyard and talk to him. He looked wilder each day. The obscurity of madness sank ever closer about him. "Why does she not try to get well?" they said of Edith. "It is unjust of her ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... to the amusements of our days of neglect and obscurity for consolation, have we?" and he took up one of the glass strips and held it against the light to inspect it. "Come, cheer up, old man; there's no use in losing your grip and going back to this child's play merely ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... muskets thundering together like cannon. Leaves and twigs and little boughs fell in showers before their bullets, but whether they struck any of the foe they did not know. The smoke soon rose in clouds and added to the dimness and obscurity ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Joseph and Madame Louis, one of whom was a Clary, the other a Beauharnais, bore that title, and burst out into complaints and reproaches. "Why," she asked of her all-powerful brother, "why condemn me and my sisters to obscurity, to contempt, while covering strangers with honors and dignities?" At first these words annoyed Napoleon. "In fact," he exclaimed, "judging from your pretensions, one would suppose that we inherited the crown from the late King our father." At the ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... within the villa, where the thick foliage of tree and vine brought a premature gloaming. Outside fell upon the sward the last rays of the setting sun. In the depths of the shadowy leaves the glow-worms displayed their phosphorescent beauty; the lampyrid beetles plied between gloom and obscurity, impatient for the mirror of night to flaunt therein their illumined finery. In the distance was heard the lusty song of the blowsy yokels, as they clumsily carted homeward the day's gathering. The erudite nightingale threw wide the throttle of his ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... blood temporarily, (the youngster's face is white as a lily;) Then before I depart I sweep my eyes o'er the scene, fain to absorb it all; Faces, varieties, postures, beyond description, most in obscurity, some of them dead; Surgeons operating, attendants holding lights, the smell of ether, the odour of blood; The crowd, O the crowd of the bloody forms of soldiers—the yard outside also filled; Some on the bare ground, some on planks or stretchers, some in the death- spasm sweating; ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... Rodolph for Emperor. At a more peaceful period the Germanic Union would have managed its own interests, and Rodolph, like so many others of his rank, might have hidden his deficiencies in a mysterious obscurity. But the urgent demand for the qualities in which he was most deficient revealed his incapacity. The position of Germany called for an emperor who, by his known energies, could give weight to his resolves; and the hereditary dominions of Rodolph, considerable ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... theology, especially the scholastic, has a kind of appetite for absurdity and contradiction. If that theology went not beyond reason and common sense, her doctrines would appear too easy and familiar. Amazement must of necessity be raised: Mystery affected: Darkness and obscurity sought after: And a foundation of merit afforded to the devout votaries, who desire an opportunity of subduing their rebellious reason by the belief of the most ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... inwardly distressed by the belief that his failure to get the magazines to accept his verse was due to his obscurity, while outwardly he was harassed to desperation by the junior editor of the rival paper who jeered daily at his poetical pretensions. So, to prove that editors would praise from a known source what they did not hesitate to condemn from one unknown, and to silence his nagging contemporary, ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... that, as twilight was setting in as Davies recrossed the ridge, everything beyond in the low grounds was in deep obscurity. The attack had probably begun about the time the young officer, with Murray, first crossed the ridge in obedience to the captain's orders to report to him in person. Less than an hour, Devers thought, elapsed before he could again have come within sight ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... give you a sense of exuberant greatness. You may have to forgive a great writer his exuberance—you may even have to forgive him the trouble it costs to penetrate his exact thoughts, for the sake of steeping yourself in the rush and splendour of the style. But obscurity isn't a thing to aim at for anyone who is trying to write; it may be, in the case of a great writer, a sort of vociferousness which intoxicates you: and the man may convey a kind of inspiration by his very obscurities. But it must be an impulse which simply overpowers him—it mustn't be an effect ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... posterity. If you follow in the steps of that poor singer's selfishness, which caused the evils that now terrify us, you will bring back the scaffolds on which your fathers died for the faults of their fathers. To do good humbly, in obscurity, in country solitudes, as Rigou now does evil,—ah! that indeed is prayer in action and dear to God. If in every district three souls only would work for good, France, our country, might be saved from the abyss that yawns; into which we are rushing headlong, through ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... wealth, lands, horses, a proud spirit, and he is the owner of this Dahir, who is always first on the day of a race, whether he is resting or running—this Dahir, a steed whose feet even appear through the obscurity of night like burning brands." "Ayas," replied Hadifah, "do you think I would break my word? I will take the camels of Cais, and will not permit my name to be inscribed among the number of those who have been vanquished. Let things ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... States as a wonderful empire, which was "emerging," and "amid the silence of the earth daily adding to its power and pride."(741) Edward Everett, in an oration on the Pilgrim founders of this nation, said: "Did they look for a retired spot, inoffensive for its obscurity, and safe in its remoteness, where the little church of Leyden might enjoy the freedom of conscience? Behold the mighty regions over which, in peaceful conquest, ... they have borne the ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... ends here is difficult to interpret. In spite of obscurity it is easy to recognize the general resemblance to the discussion on the importance of subsidence given in the Origin, Ed. i. pp. 290 et seq., ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... feature of India. She is the ideal home-keeper and housekeeper. Usually, she is devoted to her husband, a passionate lover of her children, the conserver of society, the true devotee in religion. Her lord and husband has been taught, from time immemorial, to keep her in obscurity and to surround her with the screen of ignorance and narrow sympathies; but she has magnified the work assigned to her; her excellence has shown far beyond his; and, in her bondage, she has built her throne from which she has wielded ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... or of eternal predestination through all time, if there be such a thing as time at all? The question is idle; for as we have never yet solved it, I begin to think we never shall. The Almighty has willed this obscurity, and therefore it ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... history is for the most part veiled in the obscurity of traditional accounts of the past. Now and then it is brightened by the transient light of a missionary's pen only to relapse into the unfathomable darkness of the past. The few traditions that come down to us in Manbo legendary song and ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... been at all times, with the single exception above noted, a hustling, grabbing, self-seeking race. May the eyes of Germany soon be opened! Then, surely, it will be thrust back into the obscurity whence heaven can only have permitted it to escape for the flagellation of a world which was losing its ideals and needed bracing back with ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... is the City of Destruction in its gala dress, in its most seductive and sensual allurements. It is this world in miniature, with its various temptations. Hitherto we have observed the pilgrims by themselves, in loneliness, in obscurity, in the hidden life and experience of the people of God. The allegory thus far has been that of the soul, amidst its spiritual enemies, toiling towards Heaven; now there comes a scene more open, tangible, external; the allurements of the world are ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... conservative sentiment and allusion. His characters are of heroic cast. He deals superbly with the moral forces and destiny; though it may be that more philosophy has been found in him, especially by his German commentators, than is there, and that obscurity arising from his imperfect command of language has sometimes been mistaken for depth. His "Agamemnon" is generally deemed the masterpiece of Greek tragedy. His language is stately and swelling, in keeping with the heroic part of his ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... the first edition of the Pencillings Willis explains that the ephemeral nature and usual obscurity of periodical correspondence gave a sufficient warrant to his mind that his descriptions would die where they first saw the light, and that therefore he had indulged himself in a freedom of detail and topic only customary ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... nonjurors, Hickes and Wagstaffe, the former recommended by Sancroft, the latter recommended by Lloyd, the ejected Bishop of Norwich. [55] Such was the origin of a schismatical hierarchy, which, having, during a short time, excited alarm, soon sank into obscurity and contempt, but which, in obscurity and contempt, continued to drag on a languid existence during several generations. The little Church, without temples, revenues or dignities, was even more distracted by internal disputes than the great Church, which retained possession of cathedrals, tithes ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Amber's tentative hand, groping in obscurity, fell upon a slab of stone, smooth and slippery, but solid. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... during the night and separation was necessary immediately afterward, therefore from time to time, not only Zbyszko, but everybody was filled with sadness. The conversation was broken. From time to time, also the fire was quenched and plunged all heads in obscurity. Then the ksiondz Wyszoniek threw fresh logs on the charcoal and when something whined in the wood, as happens very often when the wood is fresh, ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... profound obscurity, Aramis seemed to feel a burning glance, like a hot iron, escape from his friend's eyes, ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... Electra can think of is to send to an old servant of her father's house—the same who, as Tutor, preserved the child Orestes on the fatal night—now an aged herdsman forced to hide himself in obscurity, and ask him to help them in this emergency. Exit Peasant to the fields to find the old Tutor; ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... obscurity, the windows closed, for fear of draughts; two candles, burning before an image of the Virgin of Antipolo, sent ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... When Knighthood was in Flower, was not chosen by Mr. Major, whose historical taste was satisfied with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. And who knows but that the author's title would have proved just the weight to sink a fine book into obscurity? Mr. John J. Curtis, of the Bowen-Merrill Company, suggested When Knighthood was in Flower, a phrase taken from Leigh Hunt's poem, the ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... shadowy and pensive, like complete vaulting. The "De Profundis," for instance, curves in on itself like those great groins which form the smoky skeleton of the bays; it is like them slow and dark, extends itself only in obscurity and moves only in the shadow of ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... respect to a knowledge of those incorporeal forms to which we ascended in the first part of this Introduction, and which in consequence of proceeding from wholes entirely exempt from body are participated by it, with much greater obscurity and imperfection? Here then is the great difference, and a mighty one it is, between the knowledge gained by the most elaborate experiments, and that acquired by scientific reasoning, founded on the spontaneous, unperverted, and self-luminous ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... and history is shrouded in obscurity. We know not whether she married a husband worthier of such a partner in those trying times, or whether she retired to brood alone over a sorrow with which shame for the object of her grief must have mingled. Whatever her lot may have been, her name deserves ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... every now and then the works on some high—lying sugar estate, and again rolled over them like the tide covering the shallows of the sea, while shouts of laughter, and the whooping of the negroes in the fields, rose from out the obscurity, blended with the signal cries of the sugar boilers to the stockholemen of "Fire, fire grand copper, grand copper," and the ca cawing, like so many rooks, of the children driving the mules and oxen in the mills, and the everlasting splashing and panting of the water—wheel of the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... formation, will appear increased. Conversely, if the problem be to make large numbers appear small, supposing you have ground at command adapted to concealment, the thing is simple: by leaving a portion of your men exposed and hiding away a portion in obscurity, you may effect your object. (4) But if the ground nowhere admits of cover, your best course is to form your files (5) into ranks one behind the other, and wheel them round so as to leave intervals between each file; the troopers nearest the enemy in each file will keep their lances erect, and ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon
... neither for their fine houses nor their rare wines, but for their humours, their goodness of heart, their capacities of making a joke and of seeing one, and for their abilities, unknown often as the woodland violet, but not the less sweet for obscurity. As a consequence, his acquaintance is miscellaneous, and he is often seen at other places than rich men's feasts. I do believe he is a gainer by reason of his vagrant ways. He comes in contact with the queer ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Dave's return last year to his parents. Lady Gwendolen was, or professed to be, greatly interested; reading the epistle carefully to herself while her cousin and Granny Marrable talked over its writer. But she was fain to ask for an occasional explanation of some obscurity in the text. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... an elevation of 2500 feet, a species of spruce-like pine appeared to thrive well. The path, which at times is not more than three feet wide, now winds along the sides of the mountain with many sharp turnings; heading numerous ravines, the frightful nature of which was partially concealed by the obscurity of the mist. ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... the stage unaltered. But it is easy to see a mercenary motive in such an artifice as this. Mr. Nahum Tate is not of a class of whom it can be safe to say that they are "well known:" they and their desperate tricks are essentially obscure, and good reason he has to exult in the felicity of such obscurity; for else this same vilest of travesties, Mr. Nahum's Lear, would consecrate his name to everlasting scorn. For himself, he belonged to the age of Dryden rather than of Pope: he "flourished," if we can use such a phrase of one who was always withering, about the ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... first, for Lalage is very pretty to look at and the night was not so dark when we sat down but that I could, had she been in any ordinary chair, have traced the outline of her figure. Later on, when our conversation reached its most interesting point, I was thankful to recollect that I also was in obscurity. I am not, owing to my training as a diplomatist, an easy man to startle, but Lalage gave me a severe shock. I prefer to keep my face in the shadow when I am moved to ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... and the change of the monsoons (according to general belief), can not be overlooked, even though the genetic connection of meteorological processes with those going on in the interior of our globe is still enveloped in obscurity. Numerical inquiries on the distribution of earthquakes throughout the course of the year, such as those of Von Hoff, Peter Merian, and Friedrich Hoffmann, bear testimony to their frequency at the periods of equinoxes. It is singular that Pliny, at the end of his fanciful theory of earthquakes, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... when the battle ceased, though the firing was heard at intervals over the field at a much later hour, as some straggling party of fugitives were overtaken by their pursuers. Yet many succeeded in escaping in the obscurity of night, while some, it is said, contrived to elude pursuit in a more singular way; tearing off the badges from the corpses of their enemies, they assumed them for themselves, and, mingling in the ranks as followers of Vaca de Castro, joined ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... the principle of rejecting plays which from time to time have been lifted up (so to speak) into the collected works of their respective authors, and to substitute for them plays which have either suffered unmerited obscurity in original and rare editions, or have lain so far scattered about in various other collections; and in the present instance that principle has ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... Dame Margaret said when they had left. "Before I saw him I own that I had no great faith in his countship. Any man away from his native country can assume a title without anyone questioning his right to use it, so long as he is content to live in obscurity, and to abstain from attracting the attention of those who would be likely to make inquiries. But I have no doubt that our friend is, as he represents himself, the Count of Montepone, and I believe ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... the Wrandall motor at his garden gate until a lusty voice brought him down from the clouds into the range of earthly sounds. Then he dashed out to the gate, bareheaded and coatless, forgetting that he had been sitting in the obscurity of trailing vines and purple blossoms the while he thought ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... "Seek not to proticipate." Such a list always contains food for the reflective mind, and some of the thoughts which it suggests may even lie too deep for tears. Why is my namesake picked out for knighthood, while I remain hidden in my native obscurity? Why is my rival made a C.B., while I "go forth Companionless" to meet the chances and the vexations of another year? But there is balm in Gilead. If I have fared badly, my friends have done little better. Like Mr. Squeers, when Bolder's father was two pound ten short, they ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Drouant had doubtless gone off in the cutter, it was impossible for me to return on board the Cultivateur. I directed my steps towards my lodgings, creeping along the walls, and taking advantage of the obscurity, when, on turning the corner of a street, I fell into the midst of a band of dockyard workmen, armed with axes, and about to proceed to the attack of the French vessels then in harbour. Here again I owed my preservation ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... herself incapable of ascending to his position in the world, and he had loved her well enough to sink into obscurity with her. Was history about to repeat itself in ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... other man. I cannot understand the actions of the woman whom I mentioned yesterday; I cannot tell whether she is living or dead. The man you love has been with her; he gave her something in a spoon which she was forced to take. Ah! I see! it was a medicine, a white powder—and now begins the obscurity. Further on, I see that he visited you; you ran to meet him and plied him with caresses. If he were your husband it would partly clear away the ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... window and sank down in her chair again, but in the encompassing and compassionate obscurity of the room. And this was the man she had loved and for whom she had wrecked her young life! Or WAS it love? and, if NOT, how was she better than he? Worse; for he was more loyal to that passion that had brought ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... mates—and saw a great deal of each other. Indeed, they lived together in Ninth Street, in a boarding-house, there, which had the honor of lodging and partially feeding several other young fellows of like kidney, who have since gone their several ways into fame or into obscurity. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and the perseverance of the first explorer of that grammatical labyrinth. Colebrooke's own Grammar of the Sanskrit language, founded on works of native grammarians, has sometimes been accused of obscurity, nor can it be denied that for those who wish to acquire the elements of the language, it is almost useless. But those who know the materials which Colebrooke worked up in his grammar, will readily give him credit for what ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... meet its doom on the jagged rocks beneath the dead calm of that glassy sea? So dense was the vapour that suddenly gathered over Earlscraig, till like an electric flash, a jet of flame sprang from a high casement and lit up the gathering obscurity. No horn blew, no bugle sounded, no tramp of horse or hurrying feet broke the silence; the house lay in profound rest, and the sleepers slept on, though truly that was no phantom glare, no marsh gleam, but the near presence of ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... which, from the heads of the animal being carved in relief around them, had become famous as the receptacles of secret accusations under the name of the Lion's Mouths. Something he dropped into the grinning aperture of the marble, though what, the distance and the obscurity of the gallery prevented Gino from perceiving; and then his form was seen gliding like a phantom down the flight of ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... unexpected likeness. We can no more take away the faculty of the imagination, than we can see all objects without light or shade. Some things must dazzle us by their preternatural light; others must hold us in suspense, and tempt our curiosity to explore their obscurity. Those who would dispel these various illusions, to give us their drab-coloured creation in their stead, are not very wise. Let the naturalist, if he will, catch the glow-worm, carry it home with him in a box, and find it next morning nothing ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... cause," she added, more haughtily. "Nothing can really hurt me in these obsolete aspersions and this vague scandal. The inquest acquitted me, and the world will be charitable to the mother of him who has wealth and rank and that vigorous genius which, if proved in obscurity, shall ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and glowed again. Then they saw through the gloom the figure of a woman approach, a diamond necklace around her neck. They saw the hands steal out and encircle her throat—and then more darkness, silence, obscurity. The mirror ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... material form into coloured mist and rising vapour. The Fair also was transformed, putting forward all its lights and becoming, after the glaring tawdiness of the day, a place of shadow and sudden circles of flame and dim obscurity. ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... candidate must be able to keep up with him; and to have a sponge stomach equal to the absorption of quarts, and even of gallons, is a piece of excellent good fortune for the man who is fool enough to want to go to Congress, instead of enjoying the delights of obscurity. Verily, he has his reward. He who suffers in the gin-mills of New York may recover himself in the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... of feature which we are accustomed to call patrician. She looked at once superb and secure, at once eager to contend and sure of the prize. It may have been that, as her name of Strozzi implied, she was a scion of that noble house, sunk by no faults of her own in servitude and obscurity; suffice it to say that she was strikingly handsome and perfectly aware of it. I was too much astonished to be angry with Scipione, as I might reasonably have been. Nor could I have had the heart, I acknowledge, to have dashed her natural pleasure at her success by any abrupt ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... before her eyes the greatness of his genius, was troubled by the humility and hesitation of his approach. It recalled to her the ways of his pathetic youth, his youth that obscurity made wild and shy ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... Like the two Dromios, they sometimes require a conjurer to tell which is which. If only Perfection, which is a generic term implying the summit of all things, be meant, there is surely nothing to be gained (if we except intended obscurity) by substituting a specific term which is limited to a few. We speak not here of allegorical or metaphorical propriety, which is not now the question, but of the literal and didactic; and we may add, that we have ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... have heard her mother's words She threw her arms around the empress, and, clinging convulsively to her, exclaimed, "Oh, do, not forsake me, my mother and my empress. That horrible woman, who was dragged from her obscurity to curse my brother's life; that tiresome, hideous Josepha—do not suffer her to wear your title and your crown. O God! O God! Must I live to see Maria Theresa humbled, while Josepha of Bavaria is the reigning ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... awakened Jean, "Chuga-lug, chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug-chug." There was not a great difference between the gobble of a wild turkey and that of a tame one. Jean got up, and taking his rifle went out into the gray obscurity of dawn to try to locate the turkeys. But it was too dark, and finally when daylight came they appeared to be gone. The mule had strayed, and, what with finding it and cooking breakfast and packing, Jean did not make a very early start. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... no attention to the state-rooms, or to the accommodations below. His whole care was bestowed on the ship. Apprehension of falling in with some British cruiser, kept his eyes wide open, and his gaze constantly sweeping the horizon, so far as the obscurity would allow. I was incessantly on the alert myself, stealing up from the cabin, as far as the companion-way, at least a dozen times in the course of the night, in the hope of finding him asleep; but, on each occasion, I saw him moving up and down the quarter-deck, in rapid motion, armed to the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... the terrors of thunderous artillery, from frigates, floating batteries and field-pieces, clouds of smoke came pouring out from Charlestown, which had been set on fire, enveloping the contestants, at first, in semi-obscurity. It was the intention of the British, in setting fire to Charlestown, to veil their movements as they marched up the hill; but this was frustrated by the rising wind, which carried the smoke aloft ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... cliffs like protecting bulwarks, and the trail wound around them on a higher plane. But this trail she dared not follow, there was not enough darkness on it. She crept along the base, the sense of danger coming to her with the increasing obscurity, until suddenly she stood before a cleft of almost inky hue. Here she remembered was the ascent to the estufa, here she had to perform the work, and here overpowered by emotion and excitement she dropped behind an angular ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... know the fact: Anne Dillon and her son. Four others might have knowledge of it; Judy, the Senator, Louis, and Monsignor. A fifth might be added, if the real Arthur Dillon were still living in obscurity, held there by the price paid him for following his own whim. Others would hardly be in the secret. The theory was charming in itself, and only a woman like Edith, whose fancy had always been sportive, would have dreamed it. The ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... they went. Some said that they had gone to Australia; some that they were in America; some that they were on the Continent. Others declared that they had hidden themselves in the wilderness of London, where they were living in great poverty and obscurity, ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... though we made some progress, the oasis was still in appearance as far off as when first seen. The sun was sinking rapidly— it reached the horizon—it disappeared; the short twilight changed into the obscurity of night; and the beacon by which we had hitherto directed our course was no longer to be seen. The stars, however, shone brightly forth; and I had marked one which appeared just above the clump of trees. By that we now steered, though, I had too soon ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... d'Artois had rushed precipitately from Brussels up to Ghent to warn His Majesty the King of France that all hope of saving his throne was now at an end, and that the wisest course to pursue was to return to England and resign himself once more to obscurity and exile. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... 1760, the country west of the Cumberland mountains was considered by the inhabitants of Carolina and Virginia, as involved in something of the same obscurity which lay over the American continent, after its first discovery by Columbus. Those who spread their sails to cross the sea, and find new skies, a new soil, and men in a new world, were not deemed more daring by their brethren at home, than the few hardy ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... stop so often," said Lady Brambledown. "Bless my soul, how the man does fidget!" This was not directed at Valentine (who, however, richly deserved it), but at the unhappy gardener, who had made a second attempt to escape to the sheltering obscurity of the doorway, and had ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... lady; "and how is that to be done unless I keep the footing which I have attained—with trouble enough, as I only know, and without any thanks to you, Mr. Smith. If I give up parties, I may fall at once into the obscurity for which you have such a taste. People of fortune and distinction can voluntarily withdraw for a while, and then reappear with as much success as ever, but that is not the case ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... of Light, and an element of Thought; disseminated and indivisible, dissolving all save that point without length, breadth, or thickness. The MYSELF; reducing everything to the Soul-atom; making everything blossom into God; entangling all activities, from the highest to the lowest, in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism; hanging the flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth; subordinating, perhaps, if only by the identity of the law, the eccentric evolutions of the comet in the firmament, to the whirlings of the infusoria in ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... more vivid, as if brilliant particles were interfused with the gloom. Now, also, the cloud began to roll away from the mountain, while, as it heavily withdrew, one object after another started out of its impenetrable obscurity into sight with precisely the effect of a new creation before the indistinctness of the old chaos had been completely swallowed up. As the process went on they saw the gleaming of water close at their feet, and found themselves on the very border of a mountain-lake, deep, bright, clear and calmly ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is beyond my reach—and yours. I told her to lose herself. I think she is clever enough to do so. The money I paid her was worth a few years spent in obscurity." ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... grateful recollection for the instruction he has afforded us, and for the candour with which he has recorded the difficulties that obstructed the progress of his inquiries, has employed this ideal system most extensively: but it is evident, that he felt the obscurity of his own definition. In his Introduction to the Essay, p. 5, 6th edition, he says, "Before I proceed on what I have thought on this subject, I must here in the entrance beg pardon of my reader, ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... the driver, as he cracked his whip and drove away, leaving Mr. Henley standing by the roadside listening to the retreating wheels of the coach. The forest was dense, and the moonlight, struggling through the tree-tops, fell upon the ground in patches, adding to the obscurity. Henley seated himself upon a fallen tree, to await the arrival of the cart. Although quite as courageous as the average of men, he could not help a slight feeling of apprehension concerning the outcome of his enterprise. Of course, he knew nothing about these people; but the girl ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... at him furtively over the top of her book in the semi-obscurity of the room, she could not think he was so ill. It was probably a disinclination to do anything more than anything else—a slackness of will-power that made him so apathetic also physically. If only she could rouse him. She proposed all ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... be said that in so far as man is concerned, heredity is the interpretation of genealogy, and eugenics the application of heredity. Genealogy should give its students a vision of the species as a great group of ever-changing, interrelated organisms, a great network originating in the obscurity of the past, stretching forward into the obscurity of the future, every individual in it organically related to every other, and all of them the heritors of the past ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... wonder then that the most energetic searching has been going on for a long time, not only in Italy but over the whole of Europe, with the hope that in some out of the way court or alley there may yet be reposing in obscurity some long forgotten, unrecognised work by an old master of the art of violin making. Should one be unearthed, if but a wreck of its former greatness or even a portion, this is not refused but eagerly grasped and placed—not yet in open daylight before the ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... extent an obscure author, it is clear that this was not due to his over-reaching himself in laborious efforts after wit. His obscurity is not that of a man straining after expression, but the obscurity of a man deliberately hiding something. Meredith believed in being as mysterious as an oracle. He assumed the Olympian manner, and objected ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... obscurity of the place began to weigh him down. This was relieved each day for a few moments by a thin shaft of light. Fandor was quick to account for ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... us was the Nile itself, now a mere brook, with scarcely water enough in it to turn a mill. I could not satiate myself with the sight, revolving in my mind all those classic prophecies that had given the Nile up to perpetual obscurity and concealment. I ran down the hill towards a little island of green sods, and I stood in rapture over the principal fountain of the Nile, which rises in the middle of it. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... though one less picturesque in blackguardism. One day early in June, when Orazio, having left Leoni's house, had returned to superintend the removal of certain property, he was set upon, and murderously assaulted by the perfidious host and his servants. The whole affair is wrapped in obscurity. It remains uncertain whether vengeance, or hunger after the arrears of Titian's pension, or both, were the motives which incited Leoni to attempt the crime. Titian's passionate reclamations, addressed immediately to Philip II., met with but partial success, since the sculptor, himself ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... fine saying of Hobbes that, 'words are the counters of the wise man, but the money of the fool'; he believed that most controversies might be resolved into verbal ambiguities; and his hatred of vagueness, grandiloquence, affected obscurity, and rhetorical exaggeration exercised a very useful influence over young men. He was also a most attentive and sagacious observer of human nature, and few modern writers have written so wisely ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... doing good and resisting evil. It would therefore be absurd to renounce my objects in order to obtain my seat. I deceive myself indeed most grossly if I had not much rather pass the remainder of my life hidden in the recesses of the deepest obscurity, feeding my mind even with the visions and imaginations of such things, than to be placed on the most splendid throne of the universe, tantalized with a denial of the practice of all which can make the greatest situation ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... name "Tacoma" was not offered up a sacrifice to such obscurity. Forgotten as he is now, Peter Rainier was, in his time, something of a figure. After some ransacking of libraries, I have found a page that gives us a glimpse of a certain hard-fought though unequal combat, in the year 1778, between ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... "offend not." Nevertheless he was no anarchist and no mystagogue; and even where he was defective, his defect has commonly been stated wrongly. The two chief charges against him were a contempt for form unworthy of an artist, and a poor pride in obscurity. The obscurity is true, though not, I think, the pride in it; but the truth about this charge rather rises out of the truth about the other. The other charge is not true. Browning cared very much for form; he cared very much for style. You may not happen to like his style; but he did. To ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... Pythagoras, and their studies; therefore, as he loved Socrates with his whole heart, and wished to attribute all great discoveries to him, he interwove the Socratic elegance and subtlety of eloquence with somewhat of the obscurity of Pythagoras, and with that notorious gravity ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... theatre or low-class music-hall, which nobody in her world or Mrs. Lee Carter's had ever heard of, was another pair of shoes. Yet strange to say, it was the last consideration that decided her to try. Even if admitted to the boards, she could make her failure in secure obscurity. It would simply be another girlish escapade, and she was ripe for mischief ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... with a most comic uncertainty in every step he took towards her. His claws felt the threads as he moved with anxious care; and it was clear he was ready at a moment's notice to jump away and flee for his life with headlong speed to his native obscurity if Eliza showed the slightest disposition, by gesture or movement, to turn and rend him. Now and again, as he approached, Eliza, half coquettish, moved her feet a short step, and seemed to debate within her own mind in which spirit she should meet his flattering advances—whether ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... seems smitten, Aholibah!" When Ambroise heard this awful phrase, his courage quite forsook him, and he withdrew into the obscurity of the hall. So white was he that the kindly Joseph asked solicitously if he were ill. Ambroise shook his head. The heat, he feebly explained, had made his head giddy. Better drink some iced mineral water, was suggested—the other man could look after ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... hours Zulime and I enjoyed the white light which beat upon two of the great personalities of that day—one the world's greatest piano player, the other the most powerful and the most popular man in all America—and when we retired to the obscurity of our hotel we were silent with satisfaction. For the moment it seemed that fortune was about to empty her golden horn at my feet. I was happily married, my latest book was a hit, and I had the friendship and the ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... sky gleamed like a miraculous lake suddenly discovered in the heart of the boundless waste, then vanished again. Suddenly, with a whisk of the immortal broom, the web was torn, the spider slain, the world clear once more—but, in the obscurity and dusk, 1907 had seen his ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... history of Prester John, or of the individuals bearing that appellation, appears involved in considerable confusion and obscurity. Most of our Encyclopaedias contain notices of this mysterious personage, especially Rees's, and Collier's Great Historical Dictionary. "The fame of Prester or Presbyter John," says Gibbon, "a khan, whose power was vainly magnified ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... spite of everything, poverty, dowdiness, obscurity, and nothingness, she was content to stay in abeyance at home for the time. True, she was filled with the same old, slow, dreadful craving of the Midlands: a craving insatiable and inexplicable. But the very craving kept her still. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... important consequences should follow. First, by taking away the right of primogeniture, perhaps in the very first generation, certainly in the second, the families of Papists, however respectable, and their fortunes, however considerable, would be wholly dissipated, and reduced to obscurity and indigence, without any possibility that they should repair them by their industry or abilities,—being, as we shall see anon, disabled from every species of permanent acquisition. Secondly, by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... First, one of its beauties is itself a drawback for this particular purpose; namely, the rather vague and abstract moral it conveys. Then, the main-spring of the plot, like that of Electra, lies in a dubious obscurity to which it is not necessary to direct the attention of young people. Mariucha, on the other hand, presents clean-cut, open problems of daily life, and they are also problems which any American can readily understand, not local Spanish anachronisms. I chose Mariucha believing it to be the best ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... the land now, though the cedars shielded the bit of hill-top well; and Wut- a-qut-o looked down upon them in all his gay Autumn attire. The sun was bright, but the air was clear and soft and free from mist and cloud and obscurity, as no sky is ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... flashed through the Doctor's mind as his eyes met hers, and he seemed to divine some strange under-reason lurking far down in her shrewd mind, almost to catch a glimpse of it ere it sank away into complete obscurity. ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... an ottoman. The ottoman was hollow and not very heavy, and never moved after the room was put in order every day. Till the room was put in order Daisy hid her Bible in a drawer; then took it out, and consigned it to the obscurity ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was landed at Dundee. It was especially rich in Greek MSS.; and Dr. Irvine, in his "Dissertation on the Literary History of Scotland," prefixed to his Lives of the Scottish Poets, says of these MSS. and library, "and the man who is so fortunate as to redeem them from obscurity, shall assuredly be thought to have merited well from the republic of letters." It is much to be feared, however, that as to the MSS. this good fortune awaits no man; for Sir Peter Young seems to have given them to his fifth son, Patrick ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... And finally, it would relieve my heart of a burden of gratitude to publish, once for all, the amount of my indebtedness to the devoted friends who took me by the hand when I walked in the paths of obscurity, and led me, by a pleasanter lane than I could have found by myself, to the open fields where obstacles thinned and opportunities crowded to meet me. Outside America I should hardly be believed if I told how simply, in my experience, Dover Street merged into ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... which signifies that in a country where there are three powers you may bet a thousand to one that a government clerk who has no influence but his own merits to advance him will remain in obscurity." ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... to Queen Christina of Sweden. This great woman was wise enough not to regard the crown of Sweden as a rare and precious gem; she chose a simple life of obscurity and poverty in beautiful Italy, rather than a throne in cold and unfruitful Sweden. This act alone establishes her superiority. Yes, sister, you are right. Christina was the greater woman, even because she scorned ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... service. The hour-hand on the dial has passed beyond four o'clock. The declining sun is hidden behind the steeple and throws its shadow straight across the street; so that my chamber is darkened as with a cloud. Around the church door all is solitude, and an impenetrable obscurity beyond the threshold. A commotion is heard. The seats are slammed down and the pew doors thrown back; a multitude of feet are trampling along the unseen aisles, and the congregation bursts suddenly through the portal. Foremost scampers a rabble of boys, behind whom moves a dense ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was a small cellar built beneath the level of the ground. An iron grating at the top of the wall admitted one blanched wink of light, but the place was bathed in obscurity. A wooden ladder led down to the cell from a hole in the ceiling, and this hole also gave a spark of brightness and some little air to the room. The walls were of stone covered with plaster, but the plaster had fallen ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... wearied, and their come and go remind one of the regular breathing of a slumbering child. For night has fallen, the tints of purple grow brown and fade away. The river goes to rest in the soft, vague shadow; scarcely, at long intervals, a remnant glimpse is reflected from a slanting wave; obscurity drowns everything in its vapory dust; the drowsy eye vainly searches in this mist some visible point, and distinguishes at last, like a dim star, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... upon earth the question was asked, 'Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? But it is said that the thirty years of Christ's obscurity was the foundation of his three years' manifestations. He was there, however, not alone, for he was under the fostering love and anxious solicitude of His heavenly Father. Nazareth ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... forced its way around the Southern flanks, and cut in on the rear, taking many prisoners. Then the horsemen appeared in a great mass on the Southern left, and had not time and chance intervened at the last moment Stonewall Jackson might have passed into obscurity. ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... anthropological hypothesis. Foreign influence seems to be more than usually excluded by insular conditions and the jealousy of the 'original inhabitants.' The evidence ought to make us reflect on the extreme obscurity ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... for what I condemned myself; and I found that the trite commonplace and the false wit charmed, while the truth fatigued, and the enthusiasm revolted. For men of that genius to which I make no pretension, who have dwelt apart in the obscurity of their own thoughts, gazing upon stars that shine not for the dull sleepers of the world, it must be a keen sting to find the product of their labour confounded with a class, and to be mingled up in men's judgment with ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an end, Josiah walked along Pall Mall meditating on things, and on the comparative obscurity of the work he had assigned to himself. Whilst others were soaring in high places, he was burrowing underground. Both were in search of knowledge. Both desired to benefit their fellow-men. But of the two Josiah felt that the aeronauts had the advantage ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... his countrymen. I., with an intellect adapted to the exploration of the mysteries of science, of which he gave good evidence, but lacking in all the elements of strength of character lead a life of uniform failure, obscurity and poverty, and yet I felt assured that a different education in youth which would have developed his manhood and ambition and would have carried him to eminence. J. is a man of superior intellect, benevolence and strength of character, but the organ of love is singularly defective ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... &c. &c. to persuade ourselves that it is best so. The Real Captain, unless it be some Captain of mechanical Industry hired by Mammon, where is he in these days? Most likely, in silence, in sad isolation somewhere, in remote obscurity; trying if, in an evil ungoverned time, he cannot at least govern himself. The Real Captain undiscoverable; the Phantasm Captain everywhere very conspicuous:—it is thought Phantasm Captains, aided by ballot-boxes, are the true method, after all. They are much ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... field-vole, and, by reason of its novelty as well as of its intrinsic impertinence, had sunk deep into his memory. He had felt at the time that "Wee sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie" was but a poor rejoinder. But he knew no Latin and chose what was next in obscurity. Besides, he was a young mouse then, and ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... that I found my line of conduct traced for me. The chief thing at present was to get something to eat. So we pushed ahead up the hill in the ever-deepening obscurity. We walked on in silence for what seemed an interminable distance. Once I fancied I had mistaken directions and was about to despair when the tramp of feet coming toward us revived hope. A second later a brawny arm ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... lovingly. They will slight you and even despise you, but their hearts will turn to you again and again, and yours will be the face that they will remember when they come to die, as that of the one person who loved them truly and unquestioningly. That will be your destiny; one of utter obscurity and nothingness upon earth. Yet each time, when you return hither, your work will be higher and holier, and nearer to the heart of God. And now I have said enough; for you have seen God, as I too saw Him long ago; and our hope ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... supposed gem's hiding-place? And how could it have been the replica instead of the real stone? The whole thing was fraught with many perplexities; something here, which I could not seize upon, flaunted itself in obscurity, and if I wanted to learn more from Burke it would not do for him to discover how far I was at sea. Was it possible that he still fostered a hope of getting his fingers upon the ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... are still deeper, one of them being six hundred feet beneath the ground; but as they are smaller in their openings, and as the shafts are not always perpendicular, the gaze is soon lost in the obscurity, which produces a dismal effect upon the spectator. The iron obtained from the Swedish mines is of excellent quality, and ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... to investigate you will discover a fearful amount of ignorance and indifference where you should find positive information, and the most discouraging obscurity or conflicting statements among those who profess to be ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... the obscurity of the fringe of woody shelter in which the camp was made—the last camp on the return journey from Seal Bay to the fort. The smell of cooked meat rose from the pan which Julyman held over the fire. Steve sat on a fallen log, smoking, ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... have placed in some passages a , which indicates corruption in the text or great uncertainty in the meaning. I could have made the language more easy and flowing, but I have preferred a ruder style as being better suited to express the character of the original; and sometimes the obscurity which may appear in the version is a fair copy of the obscurity of the Greek. If I should ever revise this version, I would gladly make use of any corrections which may be suggested. I have added an index of some of the Greek terms with the corresponding ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... is Semitic Opis. Among the cities of Sumer were Eridu, Ur, Lagash, Larsa, Erech, Shuruppak, and probably Nippur, which was situated on the "border". On the north Assyria was yet "in the making", and shrouded in obscurity. A vague but vast area above Hit on the Euphrates, and extending to the Syrian coast, was known as the "land of the Amorites". The fish-shaped Babylonian valley lying between the rivers, where walled towns were surrounded by green fields and ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... most distant ear had scarce the least doubt or difficulty in hearing what fell from the weakest utterance ... nor was the minutest motion of a feature, properly changing with the passion or humour it suited, ever lost, as they frequently must be, in the obscurity of too great a distance." The platform-stage, with which Shakespeare was familiar, suffered no curtailment in the English theatres till the eighteenth century, when the fore-edge of the boards was for the first time made to run level ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... have the same origin as the movement of John the Baptist, rather than an authentic descent from John. The true school of the latter, partly mixed with Christianity, became a small Christian heresy, and died out in obscurity. John had foreseen distinctly the destiny of the two schools. If he had yielded to a mean rivalry, he would to-day have been forgotten in the crowd of sectaries of his time. By his self-abnegation he has attained ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... winter, there's no resource left for a man but hopeless and shivering resignation, with their wide, windy chimneys, and their damp, crackling, hissing, sputtering, tantalizing fagots."—I confirmed my argument in favour of our metropolitan obscurity by another stroke of the poker against the largest fragment of the broken coal; and then, letting fall my weapon, and turning my back to the fire, I exclaimed, "Certainly—there's no kind of furniture like books:—nothing else can afford ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... partly, because, from its external littleness, it was, generally, very suitable for prefiguring the lowliness of the Messiah at the outset—a circumstance which is expressly pointed out by the prophet himself—and partly, because it was peculiar to the family of David during its obscurity; whilst Jerusalem, on the contrary, belonged to their regal condition,—and the Messiah [Pg 513] was to be born in the fallen tabernacle of David, to be a rod from the cut off stem of Jesse, Is. xi. 1. That ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... up over his head, there stretched a webbing of steel supports, crossing and recrossing until they joined the flat expanse of the roof. To human eyes the shadows there deepened into obscurity, but the infra-red from a network of steam pipes gave Jon ...
— The Velvet Glove • Harry Harrison
... States. This august body based its decision against Mrs. Bradwell on the ground of "no jurisdiction," declaring that the case rested with the Legislature of the State of Illinois. In language stripped of legal verbiage and obscurity, it decided that the civil rights of women could be extended and restricted at the caprice of any legislative body in the several States; that the methods for earning their daily bread, in the trades and professions, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Others, less friendly than he to the Gospel of Christ, had studied Hinduism, and had paraded it as a rival of Christianity; and in self-defence against this flank movement, the long-neglected work of Ziegenbalg was brought forth from obscurity and published. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... his trusty escort, who is double, and because sometimes through occasional impediments he finds himself defrauded of his strength, then, as one insane and furious, he squanders away the love of that which he cannot comprehend; whence, confused by the obscurity of the divinity, he sometimes abandons the work, and then again returns, to force himself with his will thither, where he cannot arrive with the intellect. It is true also that he commonly wanders, and transports himself, now into one, now into another ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... commerce. Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminately designated by all the following titles: The Whale; the Greenland Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; the True Whale; the Right whale. there is a deal of obscurity concerning the identity of the species thus multitudinously baptized. What then is the whale, which I include in the second species of my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetus of the English naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the English ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... difficult to understand, and his cryptic utterances earned for him the doubtful title of the Dark. But his champions have pointed out that his obscurity of diction was not the outcome of pride or intentional assumption of mystery, but of the genuine difficulty he found in giving expression to his novel thoughts. He waxes vehement in his struggles to subdue his language to his purposes, his vague intuitions, his ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... Leslie's stamp are perhaps the most evil-tongued of all. They rise from obscurity, and finding wealth at their command, imagine that they can command obeisance and popularity. Woe betide other women who arouse their jealousy, for they will scandalise and blight the reputation of the purest of their sex in the suburban belief that the invention ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... was perfectly natural in the mouth of a Hebrew familiar with the terrible sun of the Asiatic deserts, where neither tree nor cloud offers a shelter to the thirsty and fainting traveller. Precisely here lies much of the obscurity of which the expounders of Hebrew poetry complain. True, there are other difficulties of a formidable character. The theme is often vast, stretching into the distant and dimly-revealed future; the language rugged with abrupt ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... to rescue for a moment the account of Mr. Cecil's invention from the obscurity into which it has fallen—obscurity which the ingenuity of the ideas embodied in this machine does not merit. It is probable that in addition to the imperfections of his machinery, Mr. Cecil suffered from the difficulty of obtaining hydrogen at a sufficiently low price for use ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... of them as literally as possible from the original Marathi. But, owing to the difference between Marathi and English canons of taste, I have had in a very few places slightly to change the sense. In some places, owing to the obscurity of the original text, I have had to amplify the translation. In other places I have had to cut short the descriptions of Hindu rites and ceremonies so as to avoid wearying the ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... corrupt, I believe every reader will agree with the editors. I am not convinced that a line is lost, as Mr. Theobald conjectures, nor that the change of but to put, which Dr. Warburton has admitted after some other editor, will amend the fault. There was probably some original obscurity in the expression, which gave occasion to mistake in repetition or transcription. I therefore suspect that the authour ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... a conscious reason suddenly stopped the investigation of her feeling for Pleydon. Even in the privacy of her thoughts an added obscurity kept her from the customary clear reasoning. After dinner, out in the close gloom of the garden, she watched the flicker of the cigarettes. There was thunder, so distant and vague that for a long while Linda thought ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... occupied, they lived in the obscurity of an eternal twilight, and could travel only by guess-work. They had no guide save the sun, which in these shadows is never visible. Through the thick foliage overhead its disc could not be seen; nor aught that would enable them ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... rush upon the Bank of England; he could not know that the King of England had stored all his most precious possessions on board of yachts that waited for him at the Tower stairs, ready at a moment's notice to carry him off again into the decent obscurity of the electorship of Hanover. He could not know the exultation of the metropolitan Jacobites; he could not know the perturbation of the Hanoverian side; he could not know the curious apathy with which a large ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... marvels could be accomplished on the wages of a mill-girl. But I have seen great things in the same line done among the untidy girls of foreign parentage who work in the cotton and woollen factories of our city. These, however, have toiled on silently and in obscurity, with no poet to celebrate their doings, no newspaper to sound their praises, no magazine to trumpet forth their devotion, their virtue, or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... twenty-five dollars eagerly and vanished into obscurity. We passed to the wild side of the Fraser and entered upon a long and intimate study of the Blue Rat. He shucked out of the log stable a smooth, round, lithe-bodied little cayuse of a blue-gray color. He looked like a child's toy, but seemed sturdy and of good condition. His foretop ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... at a glance, and without hesitating, followed by the lad, he entered the enormous chasm in the midst of an increasing obscurity. ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... some clannishness based upon birth, for your true Filipino never repudiates his poor relations or apologizes for them. At every social function there is a crowd of them in all stages of modest apparel, and with manners born of social obscurity, asserting their right to be considered among the elect. I am inclined to think that Filipinos concern themselves with the present rather than the past, and that the parvenu finds it even easier to win his way with them than with us. Even under Spanish ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... Heaven, which he had set up on earth, becoming more and more a kingdom of this world. Later, when the Hundred Associates lost their charter and Canada became a Royal Province governed directly by the Crown, Maisonneuve was deprived of the government of Montreal and retired to die in obscurity in Paris. Louis d'Ailleboust, Governor of Montreal when Maisonneuve is absent, Governor at Quebec when state necessities drag him from religious devotion, moves also in the gay throng of the Fur Fair. In later days is a famous character at the Fur Fairs—La Motte Cadillac ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... been born with me in my soul, than anything I had seen before in nature or art. The actual outlines of the rest of the form were so indistinct, that the more than semi-opacity of the alabaster seemed insufficient to account for the fact; and I conjectured that a light robe added its obscurity. Numberless histories passed through my mind of change of substance from enchantment and other causes, and of imprisonments such as this before me. I thought of the Prince of the Enchanted City, half marble and half a man; of Ariel; of Niobe; of the Sleeping Beauty ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... and reached his destination in safety. He was received for all he claimed to be by his converts there, and the current of his fortunes as a religious leader was suddenly and entirely changed. He was no longer a madman and an impostor. He had come out of his former obscurity, and now all the details of his daily life ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... lovesick young barrister was thus pining in unwelcome obscurity, his old acquaintance, Jacques Rollet, had been acquiring an undesirable notoriety. There was nothing really bad in Jacques' disposition, but having been bred up a democrat, with a hatred of the nobility, he could not easily accommodate his rough humor to treat them with civility ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... folded. Some of the most imposing were said to commemorate some event of an historical character. But a telling display of family pride seemed to have been the prevailing motive. All the figures were more or less rude, and some were broadly grotesque, but there was never any feebleness or obscurity in the expression. On the contrary, every feature showed grave force and decision; while the childish audacity displayed in the designs, combined with manly strength in ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... stillness of a sepulchre. Thus he groped and wandered, until he became aware that the gloom of the corridor had gradually deepened, and that the tiny opening in the rock were now far less frequent than at the outset. Even to his eyes, by this time accustomed to obscurity, the darkness grew portentous, and at every step he stumbled against some unseen projection, or bruised his hands in vain efforts to discover a returning path. Too late he began to apprehend that he was nearly lost in ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... all his redundant flesh before me, his large mottled cheeks inflated with laughter, his full red lips pursed into a gay and mocking expression. To me he personified success, happiness, achievement—the other shining extreme from my own obscurity and commonness; but the effect upon poor little Miss Matoaca was quite the opposite, I judged the next minute, from the one that he had intended. I watched her fragile shoulders straighten and a glow rather than a flash of spirit ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow |
