"Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Nazarene came and seized his seat beneath the sun, The votary of the Riddle-god, whose one is three and three ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... something; and the poet was moved with a deep sense of pathos that she should have died before she had spent her money. That seemed to him a dark and pitiable mystery; and he looked from the coins in his hand to the dead woman, and back again to the coins, shaking his head over the riddle of man's life. Henry V. of England, dying at Vincennes just after he had conquered France, and this poor jade cut off by a cold draught in a great man's doorway, before she had time to spend her couple of whites—it seemed a ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... dog-kennels; you cannot imagine how irksome the repetition of that jest became. The vast drifting indifference in between my meetings impressed me more and more. I realised the vagueness of my own plans as I had never done before I brought them to the test of this experience. I was perplexed by the riddle of just how far I was, in any sense of the word, taking hold at all, how far I wasn't myself flowing ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... be a simple and convenient solution of the riddle if the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type, to the realization of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But there ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... height of monistic knowledge there open up before our joyously quickened spirit of research and discovery new and surprising prospects, which promise to bring us still nearer to the solution of the one great riddle of the world. What is the relation of this light mobile cosmic ether to the heavy inert "mass," to the ponderable matter which we chemically investigate, and which we can only think of as constituted of atoms? Our modern ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... at their heads. 'See that you stow that main-topsail in a brace of shakes! And you lubbers below, wake up there!' he exclaimed over the fore-hatch, firing a shot down below as he spoke. 'Wake up there and on deck; or, I'll riddle every mother's son of you before I count ten. You, Black Harry, I know you've set this pretty little scheme going! Up with you, or by the Lord Harry, your namesake, I'll put a ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... riddle which I could not solve. Was it good? Was it bad? I could not say. Some roast monkey took away all desire to make a steady diet of this animal, and the great monkey who roamed about among us at large and playfully pushed his head into my glass when I wished to drink cured ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... exclaimed the king. "Then, though I understand you not, we shall hear a solution of the mystery which has been puzzling us. Sit down, young sir; fill yourself a flagon of wine, and expound this riddle to us." ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... to send back and bid fifty of the vassals to come up hither at once, with bows and arrows. They can so riddle those bushes that the defenders will be unable to occupy ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... were not particularly noticeable in the years 1918 to 1922. The sombreness, the abruptness, the savage mood evident in the writings of such men as Barbusse and Siegfried Sassoon were abandoned. Confronted with the riddle of life, spared the enigma of death, the young men have felt nothing more befitting their age and ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... riddle will do. Yes, there are precedents for that. A riddle would be quite in accordance with Court etiquette. Ask him a riddle if ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... though intended to make clear, too often entangle the ground unnecessarily, and keep the mind upon the stretch to remember, when it should only feel. We think this a fault with Mr Fuseli; it often renders him obscure, and involves his style of aphorisms in the mystery of a riddle. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... life of her she could not tell what lay at the bottom of the business. The strange conflicts and discrepancies between Glen's very own letters made the riddle utterly obscure. She felt that Searle was fashioning falsehoods in every direction. That he had not visited Glen at all was her fixed conviction. A sudden distrust, almost a loathing for this heavy-browed man, was settling down upon ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the attack upon Lossing at the bridge, in which we both saw the hand of Voisin. Mrs. Camp, too, added her quota to the solution of this riddle when she recognised in Voisin the swindler of the Turkish Bazaar, and identified the hand of Voisin as the hand which had held out the Spurious bank-notes to Camp; and, finally, there came his second attempt to destroy Lossing in the ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... brother and a boy. Devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold and silver and of precious stones. Now, my friends, why do I say he is devoid of these possessions? Why? Why is he?" Mr. Chadband states the question as if he were propounding an entirely new riddle of much ingenuity and merit to Mr. Snagsby and entreating him not ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... what I may perhaps call specialist fatigue and impatience. It is very easy for writers like myself to deal in the broad generalities of Socialism and urge their adoption as general principles; it is altogether another affair with a man who sets himself to work out the riddle of the complications of actuality in order to modify them in the direction of Socialism. He finds himself in a jungle of difficulties that strain his intellectual power to the utmost. He emerges at last with conclusions, and they are rarely the obvious conclusions, as to what needs to be done. ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... happened to him? After weeks of a growing madness he had finally lost his self-command, had spoken passionately, as only love speaks, to a married woman, who had no thought for any man in the world but her husband, a woman who had immediately—so he had always read the riddle of Maxwell's behaviour—reported every incident of his conversation with her to the husband, and had then tried her best, with an exquisite kindness and compunction, to undo the mischief her own charm had caused. For that effort, in the first instance, George, under the shock of his act ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I've solved the riddle," cried Scraps, dancing with glee. "Those fence-boards are made of wood, and if the Woozy stands close to the fence and lets his eyes flash fire, they might set fire to the fence and burn it up. Then he could walk away ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... find no answer to this riddle, Don," he said. "Listen! Perhaps you can help me. A few days ago I received word from Crescent Ranch that Johnson, our manager, had been thrown from his horse while out on the range and so badly hurt that he will never again be able to continue his work with us. They have taken him to the ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... securely sleep, His sheep and neat, the black the white doth keep, For now those crowns are both in one combined, Those former borders, that each one confine, Appears to me (as I do understand) To be almost the centre of the land, This was a blessed heaven expounded riddle, To thrust great kingdoms skirts into the middle. Long may the instrumental cause survive. From him and his, succession still derive True heirs unto his virtues, and his throne, That these two kingdoms ever may be one; ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... made up a splendid riddle, and, after he had told it to all the gnomes, he hurried up to propound it ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... "London" on the title-page. And there was a copy of D'Alembert in French, and I wondered what a great man I would be, if by foreign travel I should ever be able to read straight along without stopping, out of that book, which now was a riddle to every one in the house but my father, whom I so much liked to hear talk French, as he sometimes did to a servant ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... modest lips to speak it, And silly doves are better mates than we? And yet our love is Jesus' due,—and all things Which share with Him divided empery Are snares and idols—'To love, to cherish, and to obey!' . . . . . O deadly riddle! Rent and twofold life! O cruel troth! To keep thee or to break thee Alike seems ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... scientists meant to spend the entire summer trying to solve this riddle for all time, concentrating on it to the exclusion of everything else. They drove west in a station wagon stuffed with equipment and tracking ...
— The Hohokam Dig • Theodore Pratt
... with the creeping advance of the moon shadows. From time to time strange sounds floated through the air. The broad expanse of sea horizon seemed lost in immensity. In the sky overhead not a cloud was visible. I felt as if I were lying on the earth's extreme edge, gazing into infinite space, that riddle that haunts the soul. The majestic beauty of the night intoxicated me, while my whole being seemed absorbed in the harmony of its colors, its ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... aesthetic test as any other. She had not yet the power or the knowledge to dress effectively, but she was already learning intuitively such things as harmony and colour-values. She gave an eye to neatness and cleanliness, and knew how to riddle the costumes of girls of her own class, beginning with May Pearcey. She also was becoming aware of all Miss Jubb's deficiencies. Higher than her own class she could not well go, because she never had opportunities for seeing ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... Ottilie are nothing but excuse after excuse—attempts at explaining how it can be that a girl in other respects growing up so lovely seems coming to nothing, and shows neither capacity nor accomplishment. This, and the little she has to say besides, is no riddle to me, because I can see in this dear child the same character as that of her mother, who was my own dearest friend; who grew up with myself, and whose daughter, I am certain, if I had the care of her education, would form into ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... life women had been to him the most delectable of riddles, and his expressed desire to marry and settle down was perhaps only another statement of the fact that he longed to solve one example of the riddle, one form in which it was presented to him. He felt now that he wished he had married years ago, that he had already become quiet and domesticated. There was a time for youth's fiery passions, its ecstatic uncontent, and there was ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... sign me on a master who had solved MERCATOR'S riddle, A nigger cook with earrings who neither chewed nor drank, Who wore a red bandanna and was handy on the fiddle, I would take a piping bos'un and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... of Cato's Letters, enabled him to announce, in the very spirit and all but the very words of Diderot and Rousseau, of whom he had never heard, that "the design of Christianity was not to make good riddle-solvers or good mystery-mongers, but good men, good magistrates, and good subjects." And so he renounced the ministry in favor of "that science by which mankind raise themselves from the forlorn, helpless state, in which nature leaves them, to the full enjoyment ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... design, his appetite conformed to potent and permanent forces; and, wherein it did not, he was, in spite of Wolsey's remark, content to forgo its gratification. It was not he, but the Reformation, which put the kingdoms of Europe to the hazard. The Sphinx propounded her riddle to all nations alike, and all were required to answer. Should they cleave to the old, or should they embrace the new? Some pressed forward, others held back, and some, to their own confusion, replied in dubious tones. Surrounded by faint hearts and fearful minds, Henry VIII. neither ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... gate, ye see. Squire Thorncliff borrowed ten punds o' me to gang to York Races—deil a boddle wad he pay me back again, and spake o' raddling my banes, as he ca'd it, when I asked him but for my ain back again;—now I think it will riddle him or he gets his horse ower the Border again—unless he pays me plack and bawbee, he sall never see a hair o' her tail. I ken a canny chield at Loughmaben, a bit writer lad, that will put me in the ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... For these two years I have watched you with my thousands of hired eyes—you cannot realize how closely! Because I was deeply interested. You are a riddle to me. You have the emotions of a woman, and ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... what the bowstring is to the shaft, Speeding my purpose aloft and aflame and afar, Through the thick of the fight, in your eyes' steady light my soul hath seen splendor, and laughed. Now, however I tend betwixt foeman and friend through the riddle of Life to Death's light at the end, I ride ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... which culminated in the destruction of the temple of Dagon, when "the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life." So his yielding to the pleadings of his wife when she betrayed the answer to his riddle and his succumbing to the wheedling arts of Delilah when he betrayed the secret of his strength (acts incompatible with the character of an ordinary strong and wise man) were of the type essential to the machinery of the ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Ryan, who was calling too, "and bedad it's one great differ there is, be all accounts, between that place and this. For here if a misfort'nit body does aught amiss, the first notion the rest of us have, God forgive us, is to be axin' what worser he was manin', like as if it was some manner of riddle, that there's bound to be an answer to, if ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... what she herself knows of it is but a part of what it really is. Complete frankness seems to be impossible to her, and complete self-knowledge seems to be forbidden her. If she is a sphinx to us, it is because she is a riddle of doubtful meaning even to herself. She has no need of perfidy, for she is mystery itself. A woman is something fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical, and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal of prudence exercised with regard ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... scenic weakness—never attain to the proper mountain spirit. There is a further point, however, in which they also recall Derbyshire, but in which they are far preeminent. This is the vast agglomeration of caves and vertical potholes—like those in Craven, but here called etonnoirs—that riddle the rolling wolds in all directions. Chief among these is the mammoth cave of Han, the mere perambulation of which is said to occupy more than two hours. I have never penetrated myself into its sombre and dank recesses, ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... oracle that he should kill his father, and marry his mother, the son forsook Corinth, and made his abode at Thebes. Meeting Laius in a narrow pass, and provoked by his attendants, he slew them and him. At Thebes there was a female monster, the Sphinx, who propounded a riddle, and each day devoured a man until it should be solved. Oedipus won the prize which the Queen Jocaste had offered; namely, the crown and her own hand to whomsoever should free the city. When his two sons and daughters had grown up, a pestilence broke out; and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... baffled in even guessing at this riddle, as they were a third time, when one Prosper B. Shaw came with the story that while rowing down in the drainage canal, he had come upon, floating gently along, dissevered at the ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... It is the vital riddle of our time. I look out upon the windy Channel and think of all those millions just over there, who seem to get busier and keener every hour. I could imagine the day of reckoning coming like a swarm ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... fiery red. There was obviously no answer to such a remark, which seemed the quintessence of rudeness. But Mrs. Grainger continued to smile, and to stare at her with the air of trying to solve a riddle. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... brings no kind of stigma— Dance we to another tune! String the lyre and fill the cup, Lest on sorrow we should sup. Hop and skip to Fancy's fiddle, Hands across and down the middle— Life's perhaps the only riddle That we shrink from ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... speaking in the same low tone. "Generally they're said to be statues of the Goddess Pasht or Sehket—but it's a riddle why the Amen-hotep person who built this temple to the goddess Mut should have put Sehket here. Sehket is in the trinity of Memphis—and Mut in that of Thebes. And so some people say that this is not Pasht at all, but Mut herself, who was sometimes represented as lion-headed. Between ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... owned it did. It seemed to hold for the three the sum of human perfectibility. Jeffrey was The Prisoner, and therefore they loved him. He gave up trying to find out more; it seemed to him he could guess the riddle better if he had a word or two of Andrea's language to help him, and he asked summarily if they couldn't have some lessons together. Wouldn't Andrea come up to the house and talk Italian? Andrea blossomed out in gleam of teeth and incredible shininess of eyes. ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... and Riddle were in General Porter's staff; their bravery was conspicuous, and no officers of their grade ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... determined to go in search of evidence against Madame Midas, though for what reason he wanted evidence against her no one but himself—and perhaps Billy—knew. But then Slivers always was an enigma regarding his reasons for doing things, and even the Sphinx would have found him a difficult riddle to solve. ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... "You have guessed my riddle, Amy," replied her aunt, smiling. "I called there this morning while you were all out—while George was amusing himself by falling into the pond—and heard the whole history from the sick woman's lips. I felt so deeply interested in it, that ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... uneasy—and cocked my head, in bewilderment and alarm. 'Twas a glance that searched me deep. What was this? And why the warning? There was more than warning. 'Twas pain I found in Judith's great, blue eyes. What had grieved her? 'Twas reproach, too—and a flash of doubt. I could not read the riddle of it. Indeed, my heart began to beat in sheer fright, for the reproach and doubt vanished, even as I stared, and I confronted a sparkling anger. But presently, as often happened with that maid, tears ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... both stoure and stiff, Is all a good friar can needs desire To shrive a proud sheriffe. And thou, fine fellowe, who hast tasted so Of the forester's greenwood game, Wilt be in no haste thy time to waste In seeking more taste of the same: Or this can I read thee, and riddle thee well, Thou hadst better by far be the devil in hell, Than ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... up at him in credulous surprise. But he was too ill and weak to ask the meaning of this riddle. Montague Nevitt! What on earth could Waring mean by that? How on earth could Montague Nevitt have influenced and directed him in assaulting and murdering ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... riddle. But there were other riddles which he could not answer and which he gave over. Why had the horses been left where they would be found so readily? Why that careless beacon smoke where no man could fail ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... must solve the riddle of this new Sphinx, or be devoured. Though Mr. Lincoln's policy in this critical affair has not been such as to satisfy those who demand an heroic treatment for even the most trifling occasion, and who will not cut ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the mission of Jesus: whether, in short, we may not throw the gospels into the waste-paper basket, or put them away on the fiction shelf of our libraries. I venture to reply that we shall be, on the contrary, in the position of the man in Bunyan's riddle who found that "the more he threw away, the more he had. "We get rid, to begin with, of the idolatrous or iconographic worship of Christ. By this I mean literally that worship which is given to pictures and statues of him, and to finished ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... night of All-hallow-even last, shee was accompanied as well with the persons aforesaid, as also with a great many other witches, to the number of two-hundredth; and that all they together went to sea, each one in a riddle or sive, and went into the same very substantially, with flaggons of wine, making merrie, and drinking by the way, in the same riddle or sives, to the Kirk of North Barrick in Lowthian; and that after {278} they had landed, tooke handes ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... to procure them. It was more than an ordinary man was qualified to cope with, to make his observations, write his letters, and look after their transmission, without having to attend to his nag, and do an odd turn of cooking at a pinch. The riddle was how to get the horse—a sound hardy animal that would not call for elaborate grooming, or refuse a feed of barley. Horse-flesh was at a premium, but he thought I might be able to have what I wanted at Bayonne, on payment ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... at the hour of midnight and in the light of the full moon, the lady swore "to take no rest on a night when the moon was full until she had gone to bed with her bridegroom." That is the kernel of the entire myth, the nave and yet apparently conclusive folk interpretation of the riddle of moon walking, at least in its ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... that gate is open let no one bar the one you guard. While the flag flies over the public school, keep it aloft over Ellis Island and have no misgivings. The school has the answer to your riddle. ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... a lot about 'em. I was one myself once, though not long—not so long as my clothes. They were very long, I recollect, and always in my way when I wanted to kick. Why do babies have such yards of unnecessary clothing? It is not a riddle. I really want to know. I never could understand it. Is it that the parents are ashamed of the size of the child and wish to make believe that it is longer than it actually is? I asked a nurse once why it was. ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... replied Dantes eagerly; "I would beg of you, who see so completely to the depths of things, and to whom the greatest mystery seems but an easy riddle, to explain to me how it was that I underwent no second examination, was never brought to trial, and, above all, was condemned without ever having ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... RIDDLE. A question-mark gone mad. A foolish member of the Interrogation family whose most fiendish offspring is "How ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... happy. The strange thing is that we cannot learn not to be afraid, even though all the darkest and saddest of our experiences have left us unscathed; and if we could but find a reason for the mingling of fear with our lives, we should have gone far towards solving the riddle ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... conceive what possible object the Japanese could have in drawing across the land, with so much trouble, boats of no inconsiderable size. We concluded, at last, that they must have seen our vessel, and feared lest they should lose their prize. But the solution of the riddle was soon apparent, for when they had got the boats up to the top of the hill, they allowed them to slide down the other side by the force of their own gravity, and then launched them on a small stream, which, after having ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... riddle areded of the wild-man and the mighty giant that haunted these passes. We have played together or now, in days long past, he and I; and ever he came to his above. He was a wise man and a prudent that ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... sure the trade had found an answer to the riddle; and the answer was that, on close inspection, Neave had found the collection less impeccable than he had supposed. It was a preposterous answer—but then there was no other. Neave, by this time, was pretty ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... the omens said to him: 'Whatever it is which you have in mind, Vespasian, whether it is to build a house or to enlarge your estate, or to increase the number of your slaves, there is granted to you a great habitation, vast acres, and a multitude of men.' Rumour had immediately seized on this riddle and now began to solve it. Nothing was more talked of, especially in Vespasian's presence: such conversation ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... riddles," she whispered to Nancy Glover, who sat on the bench beside her. "I can make up riddles just as easy! There's something in this room, in Miss Parker's watch-pocket, goes tick—tick. Now guess that:—that's a riddle." ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... endeavor to read the riddle rightly. On scientific contemplation it at once becomes apparent that the symptoms as defined by Kuhnemann—and indeed all other observers—are confined to the regions traversed by the Vagus (wandering) or Pneumogastric nerve—a nerve of comprehensive ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... nearly everybody who sets himself down to think seriously about the riddle of the Universe there very soon occurs the question whether Materialism may not contain the solution of all difficulties. I think, therefore, our present investigation had better begin with an enquiry whether Materialism can possibly be true. I say ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... side, and who besides possessing a scholarly acquaintance with the Gallic mythology, proved to be not unfamiliar with our own. 'Sir,' he said, 'I see this picture puzzles you: let me solve the riddle. We Gauls connect eloquence not with Hermes, as you do, but with the mightier Heracles. Nor need it surprise you to see him represented as an old man. It is the prerogative of eloquence, that it reaches perfection in old age; at least if we may believe ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... this that he had had them! His love and hers—this had been his shield through all. What he saw in her grave face, her mournful eyes uplifted to his own—this was the solution of the riddle of his life, the reason for his moods of melancholy, the answer to a thousand unspoken prayers. He felt his heart thrill strong and full, felt his blood spring in strong current through his veins, until they strained, ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... stage a comedy, borrowed from a Spanish plot, which was refused by the players, and was, therefore, given by him to Mr. Bullock, who, having more interest, made some slight alterations, and brought it upon the stage, under the title of Woman's a Riddle[57], but allowed the unhappy author no ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... ill with Monsieur's character that not even his worst detractor could accept it. For he was known to all as a hotspur—a man who acted quickly and seldom counted the cost. Therefore his present conduct was a riddle, nor could any of the emissaries from King or League, who came from time to time to enlist his aid and went away without it, read the answer. The puzzle was too deep for them. Yet it was only this: to Monsieur, honour was more ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... wise—which God knows we are not— (Notice I call on God!) we'd plumb this riddle Not in the world we see, but in ourselves. These brains of ours—these delicate spinal clusters— Have limits: why not learn them, learn their cravings? Which of the two minds, yours or mine, is sound? Yours, ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... But he is the oldest available repository of the family secrets. His master has told him to be explicit with me. By questioning him, I may solve the riddle presented by Mr. Ooma. Does the name ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... But what kind of love was this, which had no respect to persons? I knew I could claim no exclusive right to the least corner of her heart, and yet she said: "All my heart is yours. What more can you ask?" I was not able to solve the riddle of her mysterious nature, but as I heard her tuneful voice and watched her beautiful face as she talked with Antonia, the very picture of innocent happiness, I realized with great intensity that I loved her more than ever. And I resolved to be patient, and try to lead her gradually into the way of ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... Alexander one of the most interesting as he is one of the most important figures in the history of the 19th century. Autocrat and "Jacobin,'' man of the world and mystic, he was to his contemporaries a riddle which each read according to his own temperament. Napoleon thought him a "shifty Byzantine,'' and called him the Talma of the North, as ready to play any conspicuous part. To Metternich he was a madman to be humoured. Castlereagh, writing of him to Lord Liverpool, gives him credit for "grand ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... up their hands in despair long years ago and found the figure of the unending wheel to symbolize all processes and procedures: a world, a universe, without termini. Sometimes I think them right, but then again my western mind will not have it that the riddle of the Sphinx may not be solved. Our assurance meets every challenge; mystery may make us humble; we may be baffled; but we do not despair because we know we are Gods to whom all doors must open eventually. That seems to be the real underlying strength ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... puzzle the readers of our day, are also considered by some as his: one of the riddles is said to contain a charade on his name, but there are doubts; ample discussions have taken place, and authorities disagree: "The eighty-sixth riddle, which concerns a wolf and a sheep, was related," said Dietrich, "to Cynewulf;" but Professor Morley considers that this same riddle "means the overcoming of the Devil by the hand of God." Stopford Brooke, "Early English Literature," chap. xxii. Many ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... sparks, in those Voltaire Letters, chaotic as they are; small sparks, elucidative, confirmatory of your dull History Books, and adding traits, here and there, to the Image you have formed from them. Yielding you a poor momentary comfort; like reading some riddle of no use; like light got incidentally, by rubbing dark upon dark (say Voltaire flint upon Dryasdust gritstone), in those labyrinthic catacombs, if you are doomed to travel there. A mere weariness, otherwise, to the outside reader, hurrying ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... mean a passive patience. He meant that the method of social reconstruction was still a riddle, that no effectual rearrangement was possible until this riddle in all its tangled aspects was solved. 'I tried to talk to those discontented men,' he wrote, 'but it was hard for them to see things as I saw them. When I talked of patience and the larger scheme, they answered, "But then ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... lifted frightened eyes and stared at the lilac bush outside the window, the water spout where Billy often shinned up and down, the old apple tree that he would climb before he was large enough to be trusted, and then she read the letter again. But it meant nothing to her. It seemed a horrible riddle. She took a pencil and a scrap of paper and quickly transcribed the mysterious words, omitting not even the punctuation, and then hurriedly returned the letter to its envelope, clapped the flap down and held it tight. When it was dry ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... is a most pig-headed sot! (aloud) Young man, you cannot know the risk you run. Th' alternative's in earnest—not in fun. Dame Turandot will spin you a tough riddle, That's not to be "got thro' like any fiddle." Not such as this, which any child might guess— (Though the Emperor could not, I must confess;) "What gives a cold, cures a cold, and pays the doctor's bill?" Not short ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... mystery! We can't take this obstinate fellow by surprise, that's clear. He'll give us the word of the riddle when we have guessed it; not before. He is as strong as we, my darling; he only needs a little practice. But look you—if he has found something which has escaped us, he must have previous information, ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... is a simplification of life's struggle; its problems are abbreviations of the infinitely complicated phenomena of man's actions and volitions. But from this very fact—that it is the reflection, so to speak, of a simpler world, a more rapid solution of the riddle of life—art derives its greatness and indispensability. No one who suffers from life can do without this reflection, just as no one can exist without sleep. The more difficult the science of natural laws becomes, the more fervently we yearn for the image ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... life of her Lord for the solution of this riddle. Last week[1] He was going to His Death. He was losing, little by little, all that bound Him to Life. The multitudes that had followed Him hitherto were leaving Him by units and groups, they who might have formed His armies to seat ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... Woman prepared her morning meal. "Who am I?" had become the obsessing riddle of her life. She was no longer a young woman, being in her fifty-third year. In the eyes of the white man's law, it was required of her to give proof of her membership in the Sioux tribe. The unwritten law of heart prompted her naturally to say, ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... they hit or did not; while most spectators had the good will to hope that they did. How he would have lived if Daniel and St. John had dreamed no dreams, one cannot conjecture. As it was, they provided the doctor with endless openings for his fancy. Since no one could solve the riddle of their prophecies, it was certain that no one could disprove his solutions. Yet these came so often to their own disproof by lapse of time, that I can only think that the good doctor hoped to die before his critical periods came, or was so ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... continued with his mysterious smile, proud at being an unsolvable riddle: "It is like speaking of birds who do not fly, to talk of ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... part is in Fairfield County and part is in Chester County. In dat corner I first see de light of day; 'twas on de 29th of February, 1852. Though I is eighty-five years old, I's had only twenty-one birthdays. I ketches a heap of folks wid dat riddle. They ask me: 'How old is you Uncle John?' I say: 'I is had twenty-one birthdays and won't have another till 1940. Now figure it out yourself, sir, if you is so curious to know my age!' One time a smart aleck, jack-leg, Methodist preacher, of my race, come to my house ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... next riddle wasn't of the simple kind—or else I'm even a bigger ass than I endeavour to look! What was ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... Manik brings us to 1 Been instead of 1 Men; 26 more to 1 Cauac, a day not found in either column as given in the original. Taking the second column and counting 26 days from 1 Ymix, we reach 1 Manik, instead of 1 Been. This gives us the key to the series and solves the riddle. We must commence with 1 Ymix, then take 1 Manik, then 1 Been, and so on, going alternately ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... also because she had glared at him critically, mercilessly, with her great eyes in dark hollows, never smiling kindly, as other people did, but seeming to search for some fault in him. Now, suddenly, he understood this gloomy riddle ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... I mean is," persists the fool, "that the king can't make such another as you are, any more than all the king's horses and all the king's men can put Humty-dumty together again, which is an ancient riddle, and full of marrow. And soe he'll find, if ever he lifts thy head off from thy shoulders, which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... formula we face the capital problem in which psychology and metaphysics meet, that of liberty. The solution given by Mr Bergson marks one of the culminating points of his philosophy. It is from this summit that he finds light thrown on the riddle of inner being. And it is the centre where all the ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... to have visited Solomon, "to prove him with hard questions," by which have generally been understood enigmatical puzzles. Some of these are to be found in sacred writ, of which the riddle which Samson proposed to the young men of Timnath, is a very ancient and curious specimen. It appears from the writings of the ancients, that the Greeks and all the Eastern nations, were singularly attached to enigmas. Plutarch, in his Feast of the Seven Sages, introduces the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... the unsolvable riddle of the strange constellations; and went to his cabin, to dream of the green star Meristem where he had first plotted known coordinates for a previously unknown world, and to wander in baffling nightmares where he fed jagged, star-colored ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... had gone differently these past months,—no, from his birth and from hers, too,—if every circumstance of society had not conspired to put them apart, who knows! They might have solved a riddle or two together and been happy. But it was all foolish speculation now, and it was well that their differences should be emphasized at this last chance meeting; that she should be hostile to him. He summed the matter up thus, and, as if answering ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... own inclination in the matter, I think I should have elected to call this particular adventure "The Riddle of the Amazing Demi-God," but as it is set down under the above title in the private note-book of Superintendent Narkom—to which volume I am under obligation for the details regarding the life and work of this most marvellous man—it follows that I must adhere closely to the recorded facts ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... filled with these unpleasant thoughts, Grayson sat at his desk in the office of the ranch trying to unravel the riddle of a balance sheet which would not balance. Mixed with the blue of the smoke from his briar was the deeper azure of a spirited monologue ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a riddle," said Mrs. Bertram, with a smile. "I won't ask who the person is, the question is whether you like that person or yourself ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... captains, upheld the wide renown of the Spanish infantry. But neither the abilities nor the auspicious fortunes of Charles were inherited with this vast dominion by Philip. It is almost a mystery the crumbling away during his reign of such wealth and such strength. To read the riddle, we must know Philip. The biography which we shall now hurriedly sketch, of one of his most eminent favourites and ministers, who was, also, one of the most remarkable men that ever lived, enables us to see ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... a riddle, Mr McKay. I suppose you consider a man with ten thousand a year rich, and a man with two ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... special catagory of the damned. Almost instantly she had recognized the fallacy of such a statement. These women could not be bad, else the hotel would not have permitted them to enter! Still, the scene presented a riddle: to give immunity to the black women who went about all but naked and to damn the white ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... and God be with him! as surely He will be, if the simple, faithful prayers of fair, sad Hepsy Ann are heard. Thus will he, thus only can any, solve that sphinx-riddle of life which is propounded to each passer to-day, as of old in fable-lands,—failing to read which, he dies the death of rusting discontent,—solving whose mysteries, he has revealed to him the deep secret of his life, and sees and knows what best he may do here ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... human entity, and this part is the physical body. In order to throw light upon its conception of this physical body, occult science at first directs attention to a phenomenon which confronts all observers of life like a great riddle,—the phenomenon of death,—and in connection with it, points to so-called inanimate nature, the mineral kingdom. We are thus referred to facts, which it devolves on occult science to explain, and to which an important part of this work must be devoted. But to begin with, only a few points will ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... John Thorndyke looked at it in bewilderment; that it was connected with the secret he felt certain, but alone it was absolutely useless. Doubtless his brother had intended to give him the key of the riddle, when he had so desperately striven to speak. After in vain thinking the ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... unintelligible? When ready caution guards the lit'rate realm, Never shall foreign floods these isles o'erwhelm: Orthography the mother-tongue shall give, Ever, as every where, with Truth to live; Truth, Reason, Beauty shall o'erspread the nation; Shall solve the RIDDLE, with one contemplation. ...
— A Minniature ov Inglish Orthoggraphy • James Elphinston
... His ruminations were a riddle. I asked him anxiously, whether, in any part of the world, Savannah, Surat, or Archangel, he had ever a wife to think of; or children, that he carried so lengthy a phiz. Nowhere neither. Therefore, as by his own confession he had nothing to think of but himself, and there was ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... foul one, and th' accomplice of her guilt, The giant, both shall slay. And if perchance My saying, dark as Themis or as Sphinx, Fail to persuade thee, (since like them it foils The intellect with blindness) yet ere long Events shall be the Naiads, that will solve This knotty riddle, and no damage light On flock or field. Take heed; and as these words By me are utter'd, teach them even so To those who live that life, which is a race To death: and when thou writ'st them, keep in mind Not to conceal how thou hast seen the plant, That twice hath now been ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... dreamed, this bird could say. Then down he shot, bounced airily along The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain: How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon trim Shakespeare, ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Trade had such a record. Sir George knew exactly what it all meant. He was used to analytical surveys. But one fails to remember that at any period he issued from his office, the trade centre of the Dominion, any statements that shewed him to be more than a puzzled commentator on the riddle of trade, usually between speeches and journeys. Sir George never did have executive patience for the mastery of detail. In this case he did not even convince the people that he had sized up the great general outlines, so ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... however, showed great unwillingness to allow me to get to the bottom of the sack, but this just made me curious to ascertain what precious thing was concealed there. I was urgent, and went through the bag half with violence, until at last, in the bottom, I got a solution of the riddle—a loaded revolver. Several of the natives had also breechloaders. The oldest age with stone implements, and the most recent period with breechloaders, thus here reach hands one to ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... all the force and courage of his genius a line of conduct which made him, next to Alexander, the most famous man in Greece. To be really without fear or desire would mean death, and to die is not to solve the riddle of living. ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... but scarcely any one takes the trouble to compare them with others elsewhere, in or out of America, which would be, however, the only means to attain the object they seem desirous of, or to unravel their historical riddle. Some writers speak of them as if they were only a few mounds and graves, scarcely worthy of notice; yet they are such mounds as are found yet in the Trojan plains, sung by Homer, dating at least three thousand years ago, and even by many deemed earlier than the Trojan ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque
... 'hasty-pudding,'—that is, Scotch oatmeal which had been ground over again, so as to be nearly as fine as flour;... or 'lumpy,'—that is, boiled quickly and not thoroughly stirred; or else in one of the three kinds of cake which they call 'fermented,' viz., 'riddle cake,' 'held-on cake,' or 'turn-down cake,' which is made from oatcake batter poured on the 'bak' ston'' from the ladle, and then spread with the back of the ladle. It does not rise like an oatcake. Or of a fourth ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... edges touched softly with silver light, which whirled once over my canoe and looked down into it. Then he vanished; and from far over on the edge of the waiting woods, where the mystery was deepest, came a cry, a challenge, a riddle, the night's wild question which no man has ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... world that he could not, now, call upon it for Joyce's protection. St. Ange was impossible as a working basis—his thoughts flew to Filmer. Yes; as soon as Joyce could explain, he would go for Filmer and together they would solve this riddle for the poor, battered soul, shrinking ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... of warfare in the American wilderness, he was surprised on the Monongahela by a small force of Indians and French under the Canadian Beaujeu, who were concealed in ravines, from which they were able in perfect security to prevent the advance of the English, and literally riddle them with bullets until they fled in dismay and confusion, leaving behind them a great store of munitions and provisions besides a large sum of money in specie. Braddock died from the wounds he received, and the ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... from me. My interviewing days are over. I believe if I keep on getting better at the rate I've been going the last week, I shall be able to write a play this summer, besides doing my work for the Abstract. If I could do that, and it succeeded, the riddle would be ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... insisted on Boehmer widening his horizon on Schubert and Mendelssohn. And there were also several others, who, having been dragged forward by Schwarz, from inefficient beginnings, now left him, to write their acquired skill to Schrievers' credit. Furst was the greatest riddle of all. It was he who, on subsequent concert-tours, was to have extended the fame of the Conservatorium; he was the show pupil of the institution, and, in the coming PRUFUNGEN, was to have distinguished himself, and his master with him, by playing ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... which have remained perhaps a mystery for hundreds of years. I can conceive, even, that this might be of importance in settling the heirships of estates; but which now, only the two insulated parts of the story being known, remain a riddle, although the solution of it is actually in the world, if only these two parts could be united across the sea, like the wires of ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... answered Ali Partab, with the air of a man who knew all of the secret details but would not admit it. Jaimihr began to think that he had lit at random on the answer to the riddle. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... This was the girl! Here, miraculously at hand, was the girl whom Dan Anderson had known back in the East, the girl who had sent him West, perhaps the same girl to whom her father had referred! If so, there was certainly a solution for the riddle of Heart's Desire. Piqued as he was, his heart exulted. For the time his own jealousy must be suppressed. His accounting with Dan Anderson on this phase of the matter would come later; meanwhile he must handle the situation carefully—literally ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... instinct born of centuried servitude. How her husband ever fascinated so fascinatingly elusive a creature is a mystery to all who know him and a miracle to all who know her; but who has ever guessed the riddle of a woman's heart? Surely no man yet known to the world, except possibly Balzac, and he only occasionally by some sort of electric, psychological accident. The true story of Mrs. Blaine's infelicities has been carefully hidden from the public, although some superserviceable, would-be friends have ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... of serious education began. The terrible experiences he had been through had aroused new strength in him. He had endured, with princely pride, all the terrors of death and of the most terrible humiliation. He had reflected in the solitude of his prison on the greatest riddle of life—on death and what is beyond. He had realized that there was nothing left for him but submission, patience, and quiet waiting. But bitter, heart-rending misfortune is a school which develops not only the good—it fosters ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... coming bleak winter in his fireless attic in an Edinburgh wynd. He talked to Marcella, dogmatically, prodigiously, unanswerably. On her legends and fairy-tales and poetry he poured contempt. He read the "Riddle of the Universe" and the "Kritic of Pure Reason," orating them to Marcella as they worked together in the harvest field. She did not even understand their terminology. He had a quite unreasoning belief in the stolidly utilitarian ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... panic. Two carriages were present on the battlefield; one contained Senators Wade, Chandler, and Brown, Sergeant-at-arms of the Senate, and Major Eaton; in the other was Tom Brown, of Cleveland, Blake, Morris, and Riddle, of the House. Near the extemporized hospital, Ashley's Black Horse sweeping down on the recruits caused the panic. One of the gentlemen present thus described the scene. (The description can be met with in Coxe's Three ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... anecdotes about our being lost through inability to riddle out our name on the part of the police, I must relate an instance where the post-office displayed remarkable powers of divination. One day I received an official notification from the post-office that there was a misdirected parcel for me from Moscow, lying in the proper office,— would I please ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... extremely not unmindful of the widowed proprietor, and of all the possible changes of ownership looming ahead. Mr. Brumley, reading it in the Londonward train, was greatly reminded of the Hostels. That was a riddle he didn't begin to solve. Of course, it was imperative the Hostels should continue—imperative. Now they might run them together, openly, side by side. But then, with such temptations to hitherto inconceivable vulgarities. And again, insidiously, those visions ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... vicious affectation of poetry: their poetry is sinking below the flatness and insipidity of prose. The tragic, epic, and lyric muses, were silent and inglorious: the bards of Constantinople seldom rose above a riddle or epigram, a panegyric or tale; they forgot even the rules of prosody; and with the melody of Homer yet sounding in their ears, they confound all measure of feet and syllables in the impotent strains which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... the thin ice of destiny with the same glorified contempt which lured him to the poetical depths of life... And again Monet was at his side... vague, mysterious, impalpable, the essence of things unseen but hoped for, the solved riddle made spirit, the vast patience of eternity realized. And still Storch's restless eyes were fixed ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie |
