"Oracular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... has ever read Little Dorrit, whatever else in the novel may slip the memory, fails to recall the oracular utterance of Mr. F.'s aunt that "There's milestones on the Dover road". To the opening of A Tale of Two Cities the colour and atmosphere of the time in which it is set, and of the drama which is to be developed, are given at once by the alarm of the passengers of the Dover coach as they walk ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... rated his great abilities at their full value. His laboriousness had the appearance of something stupendous, when there were many literary but few very learned men. His vigour of intellect imposed upon the multitude an opinion of his wisdom, from the solemn air and oracular tone in which he uniformly addressed them. He would have been of less consequence in the days of Elizabeth ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... shrine II 2 Of Earth, I'll seek, for light divine, Nor visit Abae's mystic fane Nor travel o'er the well-trod plain Where thousands throng to famed Olympia's town, Unless, with manifest accord, The event fulfil the oracular word. Zeus, Lord of all! if to eternity Thou would'st confirm thy kingdom's large renown, Let not their vauntings high Evade the sovereign look of the everlasting eye! They make as though the ancient warning slept By Laius erst with fear ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... the city was thronged with strangers. A multitude of people had assembled and were clamoring for the death of this man. On our arrival he was brought forth. He proved to be that Prophet of Nazareth whose oracular wisdom and wonder-working power had been everywhere noised abroad. I ...
— The Centurion's Story • David James Burrell
... the time," he writes in "The Editor's Table" of Appleton's Journal for October, 1880, "when the theatre had a pit, where critics and wiseacres were wont to assemble and utter oracular things about the plays and the performers. The actors were in those days afraid of the Pit, especially at the Park, of the fourth bench from the orchestra, where the magnates of the pen sat watchful, and where old Nestors of the drama delivered their verdicts in terms that no one dared to gainsay. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... too)—Ver. 5. The "cortina" or oracular shrine was surrounded with laurels; which were said to quiver while the oracles were being pronounced. This is probably the most beautiful portion of these newly-discovered poems. Still, it cannot with propriety ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... whose origin, growth, and extinguishment in blood have now been traced, has been the cause of we know not how many oracular warnings from the lips of those who have not been distinguished by any hearty attachment to the rights of the black. "See now," they say, "what is the peril of emancipating these blacks." "Behold what comes of educating this people up to the capacity of mischief." "Acknowledge now ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... that theme) Fame here reports that num'rous suitors haunt 270 Thy palace for thy mother's sake, and there Much evil perpetrate in thy despight. But say, endur'st thou willing their controul Imperious, or because the people, sway'd By some response oracular, incline Against thee? But who knows? the time may come When to his home restored, either alone, Or aided by the force of all the Greeks, Ulysses may avenge the wrong; at least, Should Pallas azure-eyed thee ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... of jealousy, my dear sir, against young members of ability," said Mr. Botcher, in his most oracular and impressive tones. "The competition amongst those—er—who have served the party is very keen for the positions you desired. I personally happen to know that the general had you on the Judiciary and Appropriations, and that some of your—er—well-wishers persuaded him ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,— "They enslave their children's children who make compromise with ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... then we encountered a sentence, like Prof. Owen's "axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things," which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such oracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet deprecating, the coming time of trouble, we still hoped that, with some repairs and makeshifts, the ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... with budding horticultural ambitions, and Jobbing Gardener, "highly recommended" for skill and low charges. The latter is a grizzled personage, very bowed as to back, and baggy as to breeches, but in his manner combining oracular "knowingness" and deferential plausibility in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 8, 1890 • Various
... weights," sets up a Saloon upon it, and realizes the first month; while our Missionary, who collected two hundred blankets last August, and at that time saved a like number of little negroes in the West Indies from freezing, has received nothing but the yellow fever. The Hon. Oracular M. Matterson becomes able to withstand any quantity of late nights and bad brandy, is elected to Congress, and lobbies through contracts by which he realizes some 50,000 dollars; while private individuals ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... oracular friend who talked in the style of an oration) was with us this evening at the tea-table, and we were mentioning the fact that about thirty colleges last summer in the United States contested for the championship ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... works of genius and religion. "A man," said Oliver Cromwell,[716] "never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going." Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason they ask the aid of wild passions, as in the gaming and war, ape in some manner these flames ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and cruelty that, whilst he was once gone on a visit of pleasure to a castle at a distance from the city, his royal seat was usurped by a certain sorceress. Whereupon, having consulted a wooden statue which used to give oracular responses, it answered that he would recover his dominions when the sorceress should lose her sight. But seeing that the sorceress, besides being well guarded, knew at a glance the people whom he sent to annoy her, ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... the oracular oaks of Dodona which was, of course, in Epirus, but the Ancients believed, no doubt erroneously, that there was another Dodona in Thessaly. See the article "Dodona" in Smith's 'Dict. of Greek and ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... variety in the different classes of men to be found in picture galleries. First in importance stand the artists, oftentimes oracular personages, dangerous of approach by outsiders having opinions (such must generally expect a direct snubbing, polite indifference, or silent scorn), knowing much but not everything, no single one infallible, highly ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... defined as the brooding soul of the world, cannot fail of its oracular promise as to Woman. "The mothers," "The mother of all things," are expressions of thought which lead the mind towards this side of universal growth. Whenever a mystical whisper was heard, from Behmen down to St. Simon, sprang up the thought, that, if it be true, ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... world, was unsought for: that constituted its virtue and its divinity; and to arrange means wilfully for catching at such casual words, would have defeated the purpose. A well-known variety of augury, conducted upon this principle, lay in the "Sortes Biblicae," where the Bible was the oracular book consulted, and far more extensively at a later period in the "Sortes Virgilianae," [2] where the Aeneid was ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... only in the silly heads of the inventors of the story, and the ghost is, we suppose, the apparition of Old Sarum. By the way, there is a celebrated fortune-teller, or prophetess, now in London, making much noise. We conclude the discomfited Tories will next publish her oracular discourses. She is just arrived in time to predict the passing of the Reform Bill, without any fear of being ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it is certain that he was deeply in love; and that might be sufficient to account for the marriage. It is equally certain, however, upon the concurring evidence of independent writers, that this connection had an oracular sanction—not to say, suggestion; a circumstance which was long remembered, and was afterwards noticed by ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... oracular utterance, the official turned on his heel and departed, to my intense relief. I was fairly overcome with dread and mortification, and my eyes fell under the ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... understand, that his name was Elshender the Recluse; but his popular epithet soon came to be Canny Elshie, or the Wise Wight of Mucklestane-Moor. Some extended their queries beyond their bodily complaints, and requested advice upon other matters, which he delivered with an oracular shrewdness that greatly confirmed the opinion of his possessing preternatural skill. The querists usually left some offering upon a stone, at a distance from his dwelling; if it was money, or any article which did ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... very incongruous with the Devil's Temper, or with the Nature of his Business, to shift hands; possibly he found that he had tried the World with Oracular Cheats; that Men began to be forfeited with them, and grew sick of the Frauds which were so frequently detected; that it was time to take new Measures, and contrive some new Trick to Bite the World, that he might not be ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Such was the oracular reply of the Salernitan sages to Robert, Duke of Normandy, and no one can dispute the sound common sense of the prescription given, nor doubt that it is applicable to half the patients who to-day throng the consulting rooms of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... say," replied the young man, tugging at his great coat with more vehemence than was necessary, but affording relief to hide this oracular reply. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... pass him by or slide off from his skin like drops of water. Almost every man of the three hundred East Cherokees who served in the rebellion had this or a similar ceremony performed before setting out—many of them also consulting the oracular ul[^u][n]s[^u][']t[)i] stone at the same time—and it is but fair to state that not more than two or three of the entire number were wounded ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... affectation of superiority an essential quality in art; for just as the cock in Mrs. Poyser's apothegm believed that the sun got up to hear him crow, so to the poet of the Legende and the Contemplations it must have seemed as if the human race existed but to consider the use he made of his 'oracular tongue.' How tremendous his utterances sometimes were—informed with what majesty yet with what brilliance—is one of the things that every schoolboy knows. One no more needs to insist upon the merits of his best manner than to emphasise the faults of his worst. ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... I can suggest no better explanation of this oracular epigram than that the tailor's bill is an ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... replying at all gave a quiet dignity to his tone, and an involuntary sigh that accompanied his words was not lost upon Miss Joliffe. To her this speech seemed oracular and ominous; there was a sepulchral mystery in so vague an expression. He might have to take a holiday. What could this mean? Was this poor young man completely broken by the loss of his friend Mr Sharnall, or was he conscious of the seeds ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... The oracular sentence was hailed with a ringing cheer. Still, it is unlucky the British seaman is so enamoured of theological terms; for he ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... almost more simple than that of the dalesmen their neighbours. "It is my opinion," ran one of his oracular sayings to Sir George Beaumont, "that a man of letters, and indeed all public men of every pursuit, should be severely frugal." Means were found for supporting the modest home out of two or three small windfalls bequeathed by friends or relatives, and by the time ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... undefined rights, and in search of evidence, without a legal adviser of some sort? Mr. Mervyn, of course, had his, and paid for the luxury according to custom. And every now and then off went a despatch from the Tiled House to the oracular London attorney; sometimes it was a budget of evidence, and sometimes only a string of queries. To-night, to the awful diapason of the storm—he was penning one of these—the fruit of a tedious study of many papers and letters, ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a Christian, could not, according to the testimony of Schoolcraft, be made to waver in his belief, that he was visited by spirits in the exhibitions connected with the tight-wound pyramidal, oracular lodge; but he believed they were evil spirits. No cross-questioning could bring out any other testimony. He avowed that, aside from his incantations, he had no part in the shaking of the lodge, never touching the poles at any time, and that the drumming, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... fide questions, but in most cases they are answered in a style too palpably oracular. If the questioners are genuine and want help they get precious little. If it is merely a game, it seems rather a flat one. But the popularity of ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... or permanent. Pride and cruelty will meet with a severe, though it may be a late retribution; and, according to the Hebrew proverb, "When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses comes." The result of past events is oracular of the future: "In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen." Why, then, exert our ingenuity and labour in adding to our ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... Jews had vanished. Instead, the center of the stage was again occupied by the old red-tape activities, by discussions about the Jewish question—endless no less than fruitless—in the recesses of bureaucratic committees and sub-committees, by oracular animadversions of governors and governors-general upon the conduct of the Jews, and so on. Theory-mongering of the reactionary variety was again at a premium. Once more the authorities debated the question whether the Jews were to be regarded as useful or harmful to the State, ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... desires, and actions. We may think that we should like to find ourselves always in the same surroundings as our ancestors, so that we might be guided at every touch and turn by the experience of our race, and be saved from all self-communing or interpretation of oracular responses uttered by the facts around us. Yet the facts will change their utterances in spite of us; and we, too, change with age and ages in spite of ourselves, so as to see the facts around us as perhaps even more changed than they actually are. It has been said, ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... the tokens of disease and health; these last, too, being sent not only to men, but to sheep also, and other cattle. Also that it is they who are concerned with purifications and expiations and all kinds of divination and oracular predictions, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... stranger still in Apollo punishing the present inhabitants of Pheneus, by damming up the channel dug to carry off their water,[842] and so flooding the whole of their district, because a thousand years ago, they say, Hercules carried off to Pheneus the oracular tripod? and in telling the Sybarites that the only end of their troubles would be propitiating by their ruin on three occasions the wrath of Leucadian Hera? And indeed it is no long time since the Locrians have ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... him to remain, at any rate until the heat of noon has passed; he would like to have a little more conversation before they go. Socrates, who has risen, recognizes the oracular sign which forbids him to depart until he has done penance. His conscious has been awakened, and like Stesichorus when he had reviled the lovely Helen he will sing a palinode for having blasphemed the majesty of love. His palinode takes the ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... half-truthfulness. Yet if while the great moralist is indulging in these vivacities, he can be imagined as receiving a message from Mr. Boswell or Mrs. Thrale flashed through the depths of the ocean, we can suppose he might be tempted to indulge in another oracular utterance, something like this:—-A wise man recognizes the convenience of a general statement, but he bows to the authority of a particular fact. He who would bound the possibilities of human knowledge by the limitations of present acquirements would take the dimensions ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... agreeable tho' rather like all other belles of France who have fallen in my way, somewhat a la languissante. But I am all this while forgetting the star of the evening, the Baroness herself. She sat in a line with about six ladies, before whom were arranged as many gentlemen, all listening to the oracular tongue of their ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... Marguerite, fair and tall I grew In velvet meadows, 'mid the flowers a star. They sought me for my beauty near and far; My dawn, I thought, should be for ever new. But now an all unwished-for gift I rue, A fatal ray of knowledge shed to mar My radiant star-crown grown oracular, For I must speak and give an answer true. An end of silence and of quiet days, The Lover with two words my counsel prays; And when my secret from my heart is reft, When all my silver petals scattered lie, I am the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Signals (always a well-informed and oracular body), who said they supposed he knew there would be very little opportunity for ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... spied his master, Messer Simone. He had now disarmed, and sat, very big with meat and drink and very red of face, talking loudly to a company of obsequious gentlemen who thought, or seemed to think, his utterances oracular. A good way off, at the head of his own table, sat Messer Folco, grave and gray and smiling, his one thought seeming to be that those that came under his roof should be happy in their own way, so long as that way accorded with the decorum expected of Florentine citizens. ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the Corinthian Gulf was Mount Hel'icon, sacred to Apollo and the Muses. Its slopes and valleys were renowned for their fertility; it had its sacred grove, and near it was the famous fountain of Aganip'pe, which was believed to inspire with oracular powers those who drank of its waters. Nearer the summit was the fountain Hippocre'ne, which is said to have burst forth when the winged horse Peg'asus, the favorite of the Muses, struck the ground with his hoofs, and which Venus, accompanied by her constant attendants, the doves, delighted to ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... here, a little question there, Harry Luttrell was manoeuvred towards the centre of the maze. Suddenly he stopped with a finger on the lips. A voice reached to them from the innermost recess—a voice which intoned, a voice which was oracular. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... prevented my being employed. Indeed, in the case of the public bodies, with all of which he had authority either as an official or as an honorary adviser, he had directly vetoed my appointment by the oracular announcement that, after ample inquiry among medical friends in London, he had satisfied himself that I was not a suitable person ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... will appear the mystery connected with the exhibition. This may be performed whenever circumstances demand such proof, but the tests are made before the candidate with a twofold purpose: first, to impress him with the supernatural powers of the Mid[-e] themselves; and second, in an oracular manner, to ascertain if Kitshi Manid[-o] is pleased with the contemplated ceremony and the ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... to introduce our subject with such very general and undeniable observations, had not experience taught us that the best way of introducing any subject is by a string of platitudes, delivered after an oracular fashion. They arouse attention, without exhausting it, and afford the pleasant sensation of thinking, without any of the trouble of thought. But, the subject once introduced, it becomes necessary to proceed ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... all was complete, and Joseph snapped his fingers with delight, when the corpulent dame waddled up asthmatically, and announced with a wheeze that her mission was prosperous. If there had ever been doubt, there was now no more. The oracular "fetiche" had announced that the delivery of the bride to her lord might take place "on the tenth day ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... you can utter with a solemn gesture 30 Oracular sentences of deep no-meaning, Wear a quaint garment, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... under the mental desolations of the Third Degree, and I feel sure that none but the membership of that Degree can discover meanings in it. When you read it you seem to be listening to a lively and aggressive and oracular speech delivered in an unknown tongue, a speech whose spirit you get but not the particulars; or, to change the figure, you seem to be listening to a vigorous instrument which is making a noise it thinks is a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have supposed that the style of Johnson, perhaps without conscious intent, was founded upon that of Browne. A tone of oracular authority, an academic Latinism sometimes disregarding the limitations of the unlearned reader, an elaborate balancing of antitheses in the same period,—these are qualities which the two writers have in common. But the resemblance, such as it is, is skin-deep. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... all His offspring. Even if they had not been, should we grudge that some of the children's meat should be given unto dogs? Shall we deny to these "unconscious prophecies of heathendom" their oracular significance? Shall we be jealous of the ethical loftiness of a Plato or an Aurelius? Shall we be loth to admit that some power of the Spirit of Christ, even mid the dark wanderings of Seneca's life, kept him still conscious of a nobler ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... protection of Mr. Micklewham, who was at that time on his legs to return home. "Oh! Mr. Snodgrass," said the lady, looking slyly, as she adjusted her cloak, at him and Miss Isabella, "there will be marrying and giving in marriage till the day of judgment." And with these oracular words she took ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... into her eyes for a long space of time, and took from her again an equally searching regard; then, turning to her father-in-law and the company at large, she said, "This is begun, and will be done. He is like his father before him." To that oracular utterance old King, catching probably but the last sentence, replied, "And he couldn't do better, my child." He meant no more than a testimony to his daughter-in-law. Mrs. King's observations, coupled with that, nevertheless, went far to give ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... the paroxysm passed for the words and acts of the indwelling deity. Shrill cries of "Koi au! Koi au!" "It is I! It is I!" filled the air, proclaiming the actual presence of the powerful spirit in the vessel of flesh and blood. In giving the oracular response the priest's eyes protruded from their sockets and rolled as in a frenzy: his voice rose into a squeak: his face was pallid, his lips livid, his breathing depressed, his whole appearance that of a furious madman. At last sweat burst from every ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... home I learned that the man whom I had found in the street was himself again, and was as conscious as he was ever likely to be. Burning with curiosity to learn the nature of the connection which existed between Paul and him, and what was the meaning of his oracular apostrophes, I merely paused to remove my hat ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... sits most lightly on that sense, I know not what to call it; but it reckons With me ofttimes for pain, and sometimes pleasure; A spirit which seems placed about my heart To count its throbs, not quicken them, and ask Questions which mortal never dared to ask me, 530 Nor Baal, though an oracular deity—[q] Albeit his marble face majestical Frowns as the shadows of the evening dim His brows to changed expression, till at times I think the statue looks in act to speak. Away with these vain thoughts, I will be joyous— And here comes Joy's ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Morton, you are quite oracular. How got you that fancy of priests?—by observation in ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which he repeated this oracular statement continued to amuse Ringfield, a son of the people, his friends of the people, but it did not amuse the third person who heard it, the lady who, advancing into the dark stuffy room, received a pleased glance from the minister and a half-fearful, half-defiant ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... expressive features of the host warned the markers that nothing must be chalked down that did not come up to his idea of singing. Had the destinies of empires hung upon his nod he could scarcely have looked more oracular. But Walworth could afford to take matters easily now. For the last five minutes the Bermondsey bird did most of the music; still it was a hopeless case. Success was not on the cards. By-and-by, time was again called. Babel recommenced, and ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... said Aglootook, endeavouring to look oracular, as he came up at that moment with Anteek. "We must go far away in that direction," he added, pointing to the right, and looking at his leader with the aspect as well as the wisdom ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... "The Captain," said the oracular old lady, who was rapidly driving John mad, "commands a twenty-sixth part of the British army, and he says that he comes here to farm with Uncle Silas Croft. He says," she went on, with withering contempt, "that he comes here to farm when ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... world, That thou canst hear, and hearing, hold thy way! A voice oracular hath peal'd to-day, To-day ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the brilliants Rachel in honest amazement raised her eyes to her cousin's face. The same pale smile was there; the look was oracular and painful. Had she overheard a part of that unworthy talk of Wylder's at the dinner-table, the day before, and mistaken Rachel's share in ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... city interests. At the time when the Homeric Hymn to the Delphinian Apollo was composed (probably in the seventh century B.C.), the Pythian festival had as yet acquired little eminence. The rich and holy temple of Apollo was then purely oracular, established for the purpose of communicating to pious inquirers "the counsels of the Immortals." Multitudes of visitors came to consult it, as well as to sacrifice victims and to deposit costly offerings; but while the god delighted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... have fought, in the same conflict, by the side of the oppressed, without catching a portion of that enthusiasm for liberty, which such an alliance was calculated to inspire. Accordingly, while the voice of philosophy was heard along the neighboring shores, speaking aloud those oracular warnings, which preceded the death of the Great Pan of Despotism, the courtiers and lawyers of England were, with an emulous spirit of servility, advising and sanctioning such strides of power, as would not have been unworthy of the most dark and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... For he can prophesy With a wink of his eye, Peep with security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humor proclivity For a nativity. With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he Makes a reduction on taking a quantity! Oh! If any one anything lacks, He'll find it all ready in stacks, If he'll only look in On the resident Djinn, Number seventy, ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... by personal acquaintance with a Minister, obtained more or less full knowledge of what the Queen's Speech would contain. But he was bound in honour to preserve his informant from possibly inconvenient consequences of his garrulity, and so the oracular style was adopted. When other papers, put on the track, obtained information in the same way they adopted the same quaint practice, till now it has become deeply ingrained in journalism. To-day, whilst there is no secret of the sources of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... "New York Tribune", Horace Greeley. His presence there calls for some explanation. Perhaps the most singular figure of the time, he was one of the most irresponsible and yet, through his paper, one of the most influential. He had a trick of phrase which, somehow, made him appear oracular to the plain people, especially in the rural districts—the very people on whom Lincoln relied for a large part of his support. Greeley knew his power, and his mind was not large enough to carry the knowledge ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... Son) or his Messenger (Andaman, Noongaburrah, Kurnai, Kamilaroi, and other Australian tribes). He reports to the somewhat otiose primal Being about men's conduct, and he sometimes superintends the Mysteries. I am disposed to regard the prophetic and oracular Apollo (who, as the Hymn to Hermes tells us, alone knows the will of Father Zeus) as the Greek modification of this personage in savage theology. Where this Son is found in Australia, I by no means regard him as a savage refraction from Christian teaching ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... have seemed so insensible to a compliment so personal? nor were we relieved from our embarrassment till a dark-whiskered man, in sporting costume, (who had brought every thing appertaining thereto to table except his gun, which was in a corner,) gave out, in a somewhat oracular manner, his opinion, that there were no sporting dogs out of England; whistling, as he spoke to Foxe, and to Miss Dashe, to rise and show their noses above the table! The countess next spoke tenderly of English soap, and almost sighed over the soft whiteness of her hands, which she indulgently ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... in the stern, it would be absolutely impossible to make the vessel steer." It may not be obvious to every one how our naval philosopher derived his conclusion from his premises; but his hearers doubtless readily acquiesced in the oracular proposition, and were much amused at the idea of undertaking to steer a vessel when the power ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... may be rather more plausible than Aubrey's tale of Ralegh's reply to the King's boast that he could have won the succession by force: 'Would God,' cried Ralegh, 'that had been put to the trial!' 'Why?' asked James. 'Because,' was the oracular answer—'never,' says Aubrey, 'forgotten or forgiven'—'your Majesty would then have known your friends from your foes.' It is much easier to agree with the apparent meaning of Aubrey's interrupted general reflection on the first meeting of King and subject: 'Sir Walter Ralegh ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... nineteenth century as well as in the dark ages, in London as well as in the ends of the earth, men of all colours and clans are found turning their faces heavenward to read their duty and destiny in the oracular face of the moon. Many consult their almanacks more than their Bibles, and follow the lunar phases as their sole interpretation of the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... to the suggestions which the moon makes for one month, commonly in vain, will it not be very different from anything in literature or religion? But why not study this Sanscrit? What if one moon has come and gone, with its world of poetry, its weird teachings, its oracular suggestions,—so divine a creature freighted with hints for me, and I have not used her,—one moon ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... of his Italian works. They are curiously oracular, like the whisperings of those fabled Dodonian oaks of his fatherland; they heave with a darkly-virile mysticism. He shares Blake's ruggedness, his torrential and confused utterance, his benevolence, his flashes of luminous ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... and at times painful. But her moral and intellectual courage impelled her at times almost to the verge of audacity, and was held under restraint only by conscience and good sense. Humor and wit can hardly be said to have been marked traits in her mentality. There was something delphic and oracular often in her familiar conversation. Sentimentalism had no place in her nature, her reading or literary work. A soul full of healthy and noble sentiment left ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... by the sudden anger that swept over his father, replacing the oracular banter with which he had begun his discourse on the decadence of ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... delightful to think, that the beloved apostle was born a Plato. To him was left the almost oracular utterance of the mysteries of the Christian religion while to St. Paul was committed the task of explanation, defence, and assertion of all the doctrines, and especially of those metaphysical ones touching the will ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... his assistant in full pursuit. But it quickly distanced them with its long, tireless gallop, and they were obliged to return to the forge, lost in wonder and conjecture. For the blacksmith had recognized it as a stranger to the locality, and as a man of oracular pretension had a startling theory to account for its presence. This he confided to the editor of the local paper, and the next issue contained an editorial paragraph: "Our presage of a severe winter in the higher Sierras, and consequent spring floods in the valleys, has been ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... hard-trotting hackney; in Hoole's versions of the Italian Poets, you have nymphs nailed up in timber; while, on the other hand, in Coleridge's "Wallenstein," you have the "nobler change," spoken of by Addison, of—shall we say?-a cold and stately holly-tree turned into a murmuring and oracular oak. ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... From this town it is that the insults to our flag, and the attempts at poisoning, wholesale and retail, have collectively emanated; and all under the original impulse of Yeh. Surely, in speculating on the conduct of the war, either as probable or as reasonable, the old oracular sentence of Cato the Elder and of the Roman senate (Delenda est Carthago) begins to murmur in our ears—not in this stern form, but in some modification, better suited to a merciful religion and to our western ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... resumed the production of his oracular works,—"prophetic books," he called them. These he illustrated with his own peculiar and beautiful designs, "all sanded over with a sort of golden mist." Among much that is incoherent and incomprehensible may be found passages of great force, tenderness, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... Romans were content to use the Sibylline books and their own system of divination. His remark is made a propos of the Oracle in Libya, which was formerly in great repute, but was almost extinct in his time. He is undoubtedly correct as to the fact, but the decline of the oracular system cannot be explained by the indifference of the Romans. Plutarch, in a monograph on the discontinuance of the oracles, furnishes us with more detailed information. From this it appears that not only the Oracle of Ammon but also the numerous oracles ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... subject and condemn the possessive instinct or the instinct to possess property with an unwavering voice. As eternal aspects of the complex vision, both conscience and the aesthetic sense, when their power is exercised in harmony with all the other aspects of the soul, indicate with an oracular clearness that the possessive instinct is not ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... play is exquisitely respondent to its title, and even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter's tale; yet it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years voluntary concealment. This might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle, as ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... that night, my grandmother said "You must go to Picault's ball, my dear;" and my grave, oracular father added: "Yes, you shall go among our people now. I am about ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... however by no means to be concluded that he would not have written, and written extensively, if he had attained the ordinary age of man, but he whose sentiments are considered as oracular, whose company is incessantly sought by the wise and honourable, and who never speaks but to obtain immediate applause, often sacrifices the future to the present, and evaporates his distinguished talents in the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... field of literature all who stood in the way of the interests of their own clique. They have never allowed their own profound ignorance of anything (Greek for instance) to throw even an air of hesitation into their oracular decision on the matter. They set an example of profligate contempt for truth, of which the success was in proportion to the effrontery; and when their prosperity had filled the market with competitors, they cried out against their ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... great ignorant folk who came to visit his temple of science, and to inspect its curiosities, felt themselves insulted—not always without reason. He kept a tame maniac in the house, named Lep, and he used to regard the sayings of this personage as oracular, presaging future events, and far better worth listening to than ordinary conversation. Consequently he used to have him at his banquets and feed him himself; and whenever Lep opened his mouth to speak, every one else was peremptorily ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... treatment. He had not the faintest hope of saving the patient, but he gave her the full benefit of his science. A man could scarcely come so far and do less. When he went out into the hall and met the Captain, who was waiting anxiously for his verdict, he began in the usual oracular strain; but Captain Winstanley cut ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... stood in the midst of human affairs," said the chair, with a very oracular enunciation, "I have constantly observed that Justice, Truth, and Love are the chief ingredients ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of essential worldly wisdom, to be bracketed with Browning's equally oracular "The Statue and the Bust," fable and poem ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the mellifluous Teutonic verse will sound when adapted to another tongue. And, first of all—for we yearn to know it—tell us how thy inspiration came? A plain answer, of course, we cannot expect—that were impossible from a German; but such explanation as we can draw from metaphor and oracular response, seems to be conveyed in that favourite and elaborate preface to the poems, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... delivered himself of an oracular phrase. No doubt he had been meditating it during the supper. Addressing ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... Tredegar arrived, and the three dined together, the two women bending meekly to his discourse, which was never more oracular and authoritative than when delivered to the gentler sex alone. Amherst's absence, in particular, seemed to loose the thin current of Mr. Tredegar's eloquence. He was never quite at ease in the presence of an independent ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... ugly clamoring Nor the dumb stillness of the other homes About and opposite. For in our home Rare birds sing forth uncommon melodies; And in our home-yard a young offshoot grows, Sprung from Dodona's tree oracular! And in the garden of our home, full thick, The ironworts and snakeroots blossom on; And in our home the magic mirror shines Reflecting always in its gleaming glass The visage of the ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... like nations, wax and wane,' I said, 'they become atrophied, if not extinct.' The port was magnificent—of the year '64—and I felt oracular. 'Hence the use of bastards. Robert the Devil from the top of his tower falls in love with the laundrywoman bleaching linen on the green, and in natural course William the Conqueror sees ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... want of money, and on looking into his affairs declared to himself that he had certainly impoverished himself by his devotion to Lord Silverbridge's interests. At breakfast on the following morning he endeavoured to bring his friend back to the subject. But the Captain was cross, rather than oracular. "Everybody," he said, "ought to know his own business. He wasn't going to meddle or make. What he had said had been taken amiss." This was hard upon Tifto, who had taken ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... ventriloquism,[Footnote: I am not referring to German infidels. Very pious commentators have connected her with the engastrimuthoi (εγγαστριμυθοι) or ventriloquists.] causing these phantoms to deliver oracular answers upon great political questions. Oh, that one had lived in the times of those New-England wretches that desolated whole districts and terrified vast provinces by their judicial murders of witches, under plea of a bibliolatrous warrant; ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... third and worst, a Church gone dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here meant Chapterhouses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let him,' says the oracular Professor, 'read on, light ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... been recorded. Enough that half an hour later Mr. Weaver appeared in the courtyard with traces of tears on his foolish face, a broken falsetto voice, and other evidence of mental and moral disturbance. His cordiality and oracular predisposition remained sufficiently to enable him to suggest the magical words "Blue Grass" mysteriously to Concha, with an indication of his hand to the erect figure of her pale mistress in the doorway, who waved to him a ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... Emperor Louis Napoleon, and the Pope were shown landing on British shores in very sorry plight. And in due time England was to see—at least, as far as the two monarchs were concerned—the realisation of the oracular couplet combined:— ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann |
