"Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strange,—and I would as soon think of dropping a riddle in the reader's way, which is not my interest to do, as set him upon guessing how it could come to pass, that an event of this kind, so many years after it had happened, should be reserved for the interruption of the peace and unity, which otherwise so cordially subsisted, between my father and ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... bisexuality, but admit that it probably helps to account for homosexuality. In this way the idea may be said to have passed into current thought. We cannot assert that it constitutes an adequate explanation of homosexuality, but it enables us in some degree to understand what for many is a mysterious riddle, and it furnishes a useful basis for the classification not only of homosexuality, but of the other mixed or intermediate sexual anomalies in the same group. The chief of these intermediate sexual anomalies are: (1) physical hermaphroditism in its various stages; (2) gynandromorphism, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... relentless exercises of force majeure, were a physical impossibility. One feels him at last to be authentically no more than a helpless instrument (or victim) of that inchoate flow of forces which he himself is so fond of depicting as at once the answer to the riddle of life, and a riddle ten ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... before she answered him. She had no wish to see any one to-night; it seemed to her that the immense riddle was answered; the problem had been solved; she held in her hands for one brief moment the globe which we spend our lives in trying to shape, round, whole, and entire from the confusion of chaos. To see Mary was to risk the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... grew out of the former, is one which does not find acceptance among the majority of the students of the subject. The problem whether a correct understanding of mediaeval economic life can be best attained by first studying the teaching or the practice is possibly no more soluble than the old riddle of the hen and the egg; but it may at least be argued that there is a good deal to be said on both sides. The supporters of the view that practice moulded theory are by no means unopposed. There is no doubt that in many respects the exigencies ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... 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 ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... dying: So soon to exhange the imprisoning womb For darker closets of the tomb! She did but ope an eye, and put A clear beam forth, then straight up shut For the long dark: ne'er more to see Through glasses of mortality. Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below? Shall we say, that Nature blind Check'd her hand, and changed her mind, Just when she had exactly wrought A finish'd pattern without fault? Could ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... do you do with your time?" she broke in quickly. "Whom have you met? Is the riddle of existence easier for you in New York than at ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... he continued, "in order to solve the riddle of a crime, the detective's first task is to study the scene topographically. Plans and elevations of a room or house are made. The position of each object is painstakingly noted. In addition, the all-seeing eye of the camera is ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... only true and eternal realities; who, tormented alike by the awfulness of the infinite unknown, and by the petty cares and low passions of the finite mortal life which they knew but too well, had determined to renounce the latter, that they might give themselves up to solving the riddle of the former; and be at peace; and free, at least, from the tyranny of their own selves. Eight hundred years before St. Antony fled into the desert, that young Hindoo rajah, whom men call Buddha ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... Life and Being, Thou wouldst see through Birth and Death. Thou wouldst solve the eternal Riddle, Thou, a ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... Mark stared hard at the very dull photograph of a cliff and a plain and not even a single person or donkey in it, and gave up the riddle. Mother certainly had spoken to them in that hide-it-away-from-the-children voice, and ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... in M, and the ablative in U, did imply some unspeakable mystery, viz., that in words of those initial letters Christ was the summus, or beginning, the medius, or middle, and the ultimus, or end of all things. There was yet a more abstruse riddle to be explained, which was by dividing the word JESUS into two parts, and separating the S in the middle from the two extreme syllables, making a kind of pentameter, the word consisting of five letters: and this intermedial S ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... Trautmann. Wyatt (Boston, 1912, Belles Lettres edition) used as a basis for these translations. His numbering is always one lower than the other editions, since he rejects one riddle. ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... a riddle to him, but you would never have guessed it from his tone. As for me, I began to have an inkling. Ben Gunn's last words came back to my mind. I began to suppose that he had paid the buccaneers a visit ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... canal, ever and anon we see some empty returning boat (called "light boat" in the technical canal phrase) rounding a curve before us, It comes nearer: the horses walk the same tow-path: how are the boats to pass without confusion? Ah, the riddle is solved. Our captain (who holds the helm while the boy, his assistant, is down in the cabin preparing supper) calls out suddenly, at the last moment, "Whoa!" The well-trained horses instantly stop; the momentum ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... was thus trying to decide, the small guide continued to ply him with questions, until he came to the conclusion that the best plan would be to give a portion of the story, otherwise, in case he met the men, Jim might ask them to solve the riddle. ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... text, if we consider the sad and solemn conception of man's life that underlies it; the enigmatical and obstinate hope which it holds out in the teeth of all experience—'A man shall be a refuge'; and the solution of the riddle ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... bell-glass over the young woman who is to be the subject of one of its fatal experiments. The element by which only the heart lives is sucked out of her crystalline prison. Watch her through its transparent walls;—her bosom is heaving; but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle, compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the "Book of Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that frightened her most. How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... He stopped at last, and the large dews rolled down his forehead. "Sidney!" said he, "there is a mystery here that I comprehend not. But my mind now is very confused. If she loves you—if!—is it possible for a woman to love two? Well, well, I go to solve the riddle: ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there arrive, astonished and astonishing, no fewer than a hundred and fifty human figures (one half MORE than were promised), probably from seven to eight feet high; the tallest the Czar could riddle out from his Dominions: what a windfall to the Potsdam Guard and its Colonel-King! And all succeeding Autumns the like, so long as Friedrich Wilhelm lived; every Autumn, out of Russia a hundred of the tallest mortals living. Invaluable,—to a "man of genius" ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... destroy man's dearest faith and hope. This is the teaching of Lucretius, yet on this road he marches with a step so firm and buoyant, an eye so awake to all beauty and grandeur, a spirit so elate, that as we read we catch the energy and elation. The reading of the riddle is this: the religion against which Lucretius made his attack was not the soaring idealism of Plato, nor the inspiring and consolatory faith of Christianity, but an outworn mythology in which this world was ruled ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... known as Inverted Conundrums, and played as follows. One person gave the answer to a riddle, and mentioned one word to be used in the question. The rest then had to write down what they thought the question would be. The deafness of dear Violet ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... the riddle that plagued Boris Godunov what time—in the winter of 1604—he sent his armies to meet the invader. He sent them because, crippled now by gout, even the satisfaction of leading them was denied him. He was forced to stay at home in the gloomy apartments of the ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... man laughs at a woman for no apparent reason it is because he is amused at her being afraid of him when he is so much more afraid of her, or puzzled by him when she is such an incomparable riddle herself, or caring for him when he knows he is not worth ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... he said, smiling benignantly upon her. "You cannot annoy me this morning. I am myself again," and Dick's eyes turned sharply upon him. "All my old powers of observation have returned, my old interest in the great dark riddle of human life has re-awakened. The brain, the sedulous, active brain, resumes its work to-day asking questions, probing problems. I rose early, Margaret," he flourished his hands like one making a speech, "and walking in the fields amongst the cows a most curious speculation forced ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... ill luck. The significance of his daughter's name, Marina, is intensified for us when we realize that in this play the sea is not only her birthplace, but is the {198} symbol throughout of Fortune and Romance. From the polluted coast of Antioch, where Pericles reads the vile King his riddle and escapes, past Tarsus, where he assists Creon, the governor of a helpless city, to Pentapolis, where, shipwrecked and a stranger, he wins the tournament and the hand of the Princess Thaisa, the waves of chance carry the Prince. They overwhelm ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... antiquity. Deeper even than the depths of Egypt must we sound if we are to discover the secret of Carnac. What mean these stones? What means faith? What signifies belief? What is the answer to the Riddle of Man? In the words of Cayot Delandre, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... had a son, and his name was Sym; And his eyes were wide as the eyes of Truth; And there came to the wondering mind of him Long thoughts of the riddle that vexes youth. And, "Father," he said, "in the mart's loud din Is there aught of pleasure? Do some find joy?" But his father tilted the beardless chin, And looked in the ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... Monte Carlo the bodies of suicides were thrust into the holes that riddle the limestone rock and gave it the name of Les Spelunges. But the conditions became insanitary, and Italian workmen were employed to get them out, and carry them away to sea ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... Perry, too, whom he had spoken to on the subject, did not at present recollect any thing of the riddle kind; but he had desired Perry to be upon the watch, and as he went about so much, something, he thought, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... is said to be the finding of a happiness that is not enjoyed at the expense of others, and surely this class have solved that Sphinx's riddle, for they float through their days in a dream of complacency disturbed neither by corroding doubt ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... piped up Greg Holmes, "I'm not going to bother my head, to-night, as to why we came here. I'm going to get a ten hour nap, and in the morning I'll try to solve the riddle for you, Dick, of ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... queer way fer a man to act?" broke in Somers. "A bullet hit Slater, cut him down the back as he was lyin' flat. Reckon it wasn't bad. But it hurt him so thet he jumped right up an' staggered around. He made a target big as a tree. An' mebbe them Isbels didn't riddle him!" ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... that fades? Are we to regard the Creator's work as like that of a child, who builds houses out of blocks, just for the pleasure of knocking them down? For aught that science can tell us, it may be so, but I can see no good reason for believing any such thing. On such a view the riddle of the universe becomes a riddle without a meaning. Why, then, are we any more called upon to throw away our belief in the permanence of the spiritual element in Man than we are called upon to throw away our belief in the constancy of Nature? When questioned ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... princess is said 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 ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... morality of your principles. Sir, if you can but use the tomahawk skilfully, your fortune is certain. 'Sic itur ad astra.' Read Blackwood's Noctea Ambrosiance. Take the town by surprise, folly by the ears; 'the glory, jest, and riddle of the world' is man; use your knowledge of this ancient volume rightly, and you may soon mount the car of fortune, and drive at random wherever your fancy dictates. Bear in mind the Greek proverb, 'Mega biblion, mega kakon.' In your ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... explained Thrush, "and go on so dividing them until you come down to the indivisible unit which is the answer to the riddle. Animal or Vegetable? Vegetable or Mineral? Northern or Southern Hemisphere? Ah! I thought your childhood was not so very ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... there had been epochs of my life when I too might have asked of this prophet the master word that should solve me the riddle of the universe; but now, being happy, I felt as if there were no question to be put, and therefore admired Emerson as a poet of deep beauty and austere tenderness, but sought nothing from him as ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... Mediaeval, or pre-Raffaelle art is seen in his youthful timid darings, his unripe fancies oscillating between earth and heaven; there where we expect truth, we see conceit; there where we want little, much is given—now a blank eyed riddle,—dark with excess of self,—now a giant thought—vast but repulsive,—and now angel visitors startling us with wisdom and touches of heavenly beauty. Every where is seen exactness; but it is the exactness of hesitation, and not of knowledge—the line of doubt, and not of power: all the promises ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... I can get away with it," the lame man said, much pleased. "Now, you see why I want to go to Washington with Braceway. It's merely to keep my hold on this case. If you say I'm entitled to the credit for reading the riddle, I'm going to see that I ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... beginning of their hoard, showed them no purpose beyond it. Marner wanted the heaps of ten to grow into a square, and then into a larger square; and every added guinea, while it was itself a satisfaction, bred a new desire. In this strange world, made a hopeless riddle to him, he might, if he had had a less intense nature, have sat weaving, weaving—looking towards the end of his pattern, or towards the end of his web, till he forgot the riddle, and everything else but his immediate sensations; but the money had come ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... not how shall this riddle find its reading; It will solve itself full soon without thine aid. Say not love hath turned his back, and left thee bleeding— Whom hath love deserted, hast thou ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... they passed through the door beneath. What a surprise it would be to Tony and Franz to have the stones come clattering down upon them; and what sport it would be to watch them as they tried to solve the riddle as to ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... saw him coming. He had more than half expected to be interfered with in his designs; but it would please him first of all to riddle this ambitious young airman, and his Nieuport, and then to accomplish his ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... they are to the common grammars, which he ridicules. Surely, such expressions as, "Harris's Hermes, Philips's Poems, Prince's Bay, Prince's Island, Fox's Journal, King James's edict, a justice's warrant, Sphinx's riddle, the lynx's beam, the lass's beauty," have authority enough to refute the cavil of this writer; who, being himself wrong, falsely charges the older grammarians, that," their theories vary from the principles of the language correctly ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... course, is the same as a Fellowship anywhere else. He went into residence at his new home in January, 1871, and remained there for thirteen years, a "don," indeed, by office, but so undonnish in character, ways, and words, that he became the subject of a eulogistic riddle: "When is a don not a don? When he is ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... another effort to force open the door. His resolution was not entirely the result of curiosity, for he had taken such a sudden and strong liking for the girl that he disliked the thought of leaving her; and yet the riddle of her environment was such that he conceived it to be no more than a proper regard for his own safety to take such a precaution while visiting her. Having reached this determination, he cast about for the means ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... riddle. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you what it was. I cannot tell any one what it was. I undertook to find the answer. From France the riddle took me far away to another country—and there, after a year's work, I found half the answer. The other ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... had taken off his hat before the might of death, and made a perfunctory sign of the cross. He looked up and down the lofty wall, as if it could give him the word of that riddle. Twice his spurs clashed softly, and, with one hand grasping the rope, he stooped low in ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... commentary on Lichtenberg's prophecy. But whether the end be seventy years hence, or seven hundred—be the close of the mortal history of humanity as far distant in the future as its shadowy beginnings seem now to lie behind us—this only we may foretell with confidence—that the riddle of man's nature will remain unsolved. There will be that in him yet which physical laws will fail to explain—that something, whatever it be, in himself and in the world, which science cannot fathom, and ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... "Ah! Monsieur, you tink to be varry conning; mais you not so conning as Kookoo, no;" and the inquisitive little man would shake his head and smile, and shake his head again, as a man has a perfect right to do under the conviction that he has been for twenty years baffled by a riddle and is learning to read it at last; he had guessed what was in 'Sieur George's head, he would by and by guess what was ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... must solve the whole riddle," he replied; "the secret of the Leavenworth murder hangs upon it." Then, with a lingering look towards the mass of burned paper, "Who knows but what that was ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... effects of the resolution was entirely to change the coloring of all testimony throughout the vast Republic of Leaplow) made his report on the subject-matter of the resolution. This person was a Tangent, who had a besetting wish to become a Riddle, although the leaning of our house was decidedly Horizontal; and, as a matter of course, he took the Riddle side of this question. The report, itself, required seven hours in the reading, commencing with the subject ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... does, possibly. She is a living riddle. She must needs follow out every idea that comes into her head. Fortunately, most of them don't last long; but this one may last long enough to give the prince a chill. If that were to happen, I ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... remember both men, although I wish that we might have inflicted greater damage upon their village. The report is that only two scalps were taken, but that may mean very little. The attacks which Colonel Bird, with his five hundred Indians and Canadians, made upon Riddle's Station and the little station upon the Licking River, seem to me to show that the Indians are not ready ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... 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
... worried, for eight years she had given her life utterly and entirely to Oliver and the children—and the result was that he was happier with Abby—with Abby whom he didn't even admire—than he was with the wife whom he both respected and loved! The riddle not only puzzled, it enraged her. Though she was too simple to seek a psychological answer, the very fact that it existed became an immediate power in her life. She forgot the lateness of the evening, she forgot the children who ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... to the Indians, as to slavery, as to religious freedom, were all in consonance with their professions. Yet I never expected we should get a vote from them, and in this I was neither deceived nor disappointed. There is no riddle in this, to those who do not suffer themselves to be duped by the professions of religious sectaries. The theory of American Quakerism is a very obvious one. The mother society is in England. Its members are English by birth and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... road or ready way to virtue; it is not an easy point of art to disentangle ourselves from this riddle or web of sin. To perfect virtue, as to religion, there is required a panoplia, or complete armour; that whilst we lie at close ward against one vice, we lie not open to the assault of another. There go so many circumstances ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... certain she was not tricky. And, besides, if she were in sympathy with her parent, why had she given me the hint which put me on the trail of the Development Company? Why had she given me the hint at all? That was the real riddle, and I had not, as yet, hit upon a plausible answer. Those I had hit upon were ridiculous and impossible, and I put them from my mind. But she was ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... there is hardly a single leading feature of Egyptian civilisation which is not discussed. The Nile is the life of the land; being anxious to solve the riddle of its annual rise, Herodotus dismisses as unreasonable the theory that the water is produced by the melting snow, for the earth becomes hotter as we proceed further south, and there cannot be snow where there is intense heat. The sun is deflected from its course in winter, which ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... anything in Melchior's conduct which could be considered as criminal. On the contrary, he was kind, generous, and upright in his private dealings, and in many points, proved that he had a good heart. He was a riddle of inconsistency it was certain; professionally he would cheat anybody, and disregard all truth and honesty; but, in his private character, he was scrupulously honest, and, with the exception of the assertion relative to Fleta's birth and parentage, he had ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... pressing request of Lord Ashburton, who had desired that an American should propose the health of Mr. Paxton, the designer of the Crystal Palace, and Mr. Riddle, our Commissioner, had designated me for the service; so I spoke about five minutes, and my remarks were most kindly received by the entire company; yet The Times of to-day, in its report of the festival, suppresses ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... death, that unexpected and shameful death; it was only the cross, which was usually reserved for the canaille only—it was only this appalling paradox which brought the disciples face to face with the real riddle: "Who was it? what was it?"—The feeling of dismay, of profound affront and injury; the suspicion that such a death might involve a refutation of their cause; the terrible question, "Why just in this way?"—this state of mind is only ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... little Tiny, Let's hear what you have to tell Learned of the years you've scampered Over the hill and dell— What! Only a bark for answer? Now, Tiny, that isn't the thing Will help unravel the riddle Of wonderful, wonderful Spring. ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... noise of protest. He gazed into the darkness of the landing, and presently, by the light from the bedroom, could distinguish the vague boundaries of it. The chair, invisible, was on the left. He opened the door wider to the nocturnal riddle of the house. His hand clasped the notes in his pocket. No sound! He listened for the ticking of the lobby clock and could not catch it. He listened more intently. It was impossible that he should not hear the ticking ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... said that the facts of life seem often to us, and are felt often by some of us, to shatter it to atoms; to riddle it through and through with shot. But, if we bring the Pattern-life to bear upon the illumination of all life, and if we learn the lessons of the Cradle and the Cross, and rise to the view of human life which emerges from the example of Jesus Christ, then we get back the old conviction, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... A riddle is it still unto me, this dream; the meaning is hidden in it and encaged, and doth not yet fly above ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... three great national ideals might not thrive and develop, that men of different races might not strive together for their race ideals as well, perhaps even better, than in isolation. Here, it seems to me, is the reading of the riddle that puzzles so many of us. We are Americans, not only by birth and by citizenship, but by our political ideals, our language, our religion. Farther than that, our Americanism does not go. At that ...
— The Conservation of Races - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 2 • W. E. Burghardt Du Bois
... philosophic, psychologic, biologic systems that have waxed and waned, dazzled and deluded, from the first utterances of Gotama, to the very latest of the advanced Evolutionists, is there any other than the Christian solution of the triple-headed riddle—Whence? Wherefore? Whither?—that will deliver us from the devouring Sphinx Despair, or yield us even shadowy consolation when the pinions of gentle yet inexorable death poise over our household darling, and we stand ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... particularly struck by the subdued richness and power that characterises the picture as a whole. Look at this flag with the winged lions, how they flutter in the breeze as if they swayed the world. O beautiful Venice!" He began to recite Turandot's[3] riddle of Lion of the Adriatic, "Dimmi, qual sia quella terribil fera," &c. He had hardly come to the end when a sonorous masculine voice broke in with Calaf's[4] solution, "Tu quadrupede fera," &c. Unobserved by the friends, a man of tall and noble appearance, his grey mantle ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... altogether passive in it. Which I think is a little more than the truth,—and only a little, as perhaps may appear by and by. Beyond dispute, these Polish events did at last grow interesting enough to Prussia and its King;—and it will be our task, sufficient in this place, to extricate and riddle out what few of these had any cardinal or notable quality, and put them down (dated, if possible, and in intelligible form), as pertinent to throwing light on this distressing matter, with careful exclusion of the immense mass which ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "but I always wished I could be like my uncle. I remember hearing mamma read a bit of one of the letters of condolence which said 'His was one of the most beautiful lives I have ever known,' and I never forgot it. It stayed in my mind like a riddle, till I gradually found out that the beauty was in the good he ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the riddle!" said Tabaret to the magistrate. "It is all clear now, and as plain as noon-day. Lecoq, my lad, put ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... fear is taken from us we are 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 of ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... cannibals of the Solomon Group and thereabout, landing at places where no other recruiter would get out of his boat, and taking a box of trade goods with him, sit calmly down on the beach surrounded by savages who might without a moment's warning riddle him with spears or club him from behind. But Proctor knew no fear, although his armed boat's crew and the crew of the covering boat would call to him to get aboard again and shove off. Other labour ships there were cruising on the same ground ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... must he do? As he tramped about the wet fields and plantations with a keeper and a few beaters after some scattered pheasants, he was really, poor fellow! arguing out the riddle of his life. What would Herbert French advise him to do?—supposing he could put the question plainly to him, which of course was not possible. He meant honestly and sincerely to keep straight; to do his duty by Daphne and the child. But he was no plaster saint, and he could ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... form half woman and half lion, she crouched always by a precipice near the highway, and put the same mysterious question to every passer-by. None had ever been able to answer, and none had ever lived to warn men of the riddle; for the Sphinx fell upon every one as he failed, and hurled him down the abyss, to be ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... offers advice to persons interested in recovering missing objects of any sort. Whether you have lost your wife, or lost your cigar-case, Old Sharon is equally useful to you. He has an inbred capacity for reading the riddle the right way in cases of mystery, great or small. In short, he possesses exactly that analytical faculty to which I alluded just now. I have his address at my office, if you think it worth while ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... complication. He saw that until further investigation disproved it there could be but one solution of this intricate riddle. Billy Cass, the maker of the bet, was a race track frequenter; David Cass was not. They must be separate personalities; but they resembled each other; they were of the same name—they might be brothers. Billy Cass had been in possession of the stolen note; ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... appearing. Only the Pole Star remained fixed and stable, and it became, not unnaturally, a light of assurance and the footstool of the Most High.[12] Whatever its meaning, the Swastika shows us the efforts of the early man to read the riddle of things, and his intuition of a love at the ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... unfoldment, etc. What is known as "Bhakti Yoga" deals with the Love of the Absolute—God. What is known as "Gnani Yoga" deals with the scientific and intellectual knowing of the great questions regarding Life and what lies back of Life—the Riddle ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... matter, O Augeas' child, Thine own unaided wit hath ruled aright. But all that monster's history, how it fell, Fain would I tell thee who hast ears to hear, Save only whence it came: for none of all The Argive host could read that riddle right. Some god, we dimly guessed, our niggard vows Resenting, had upon Phoroneus' realm Let loose this very scourge of humankind. On peopled Pisa plunging like a flood The brute ran riot: notably it cost Its neighbours of Bembina woes untold. And here Eurystheus bade me try my first Passage ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... recognition which startled me. For she had understood me—understood me almost better than I had understood myself. It seemed to me that while I had labored to interpret, partially, a psychological riddle, she, coming after, had comprehended its bearings better than I had, though confining herself strictly to my own words and emphasis. The scene ended (and it ended rather suddenly), she dropped her eyes, and moved her hand nervously to and fro ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... himself in cold blood is a hard thing, especially if the stripes fall upon an ill-nourished and worse-fed body. Let my lady Dulcinea have patience, and when she is least expecting it, she will see me made a riddle of with whipping, and 'until death it's all life;' I mean that I have still life in me, and the desire to make ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... so far coincide with the interests and prejudices of the politically effective portion of his people, that they were willing to condone a violence and tyranny, the brunt of which fell after all on the few? Such is the riddle which propounds itself to every student of Tudor history. It cannot be answered by paeans in honour of Henry's intensity of will and force of character, nor by invectives against his vices and lamentations over the woes of his victims. The miraculous ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... the meaning of it all?" I was pondering. Is there any more explanation to the riddle of life than to Alice in Wonderland? Are we not all a lot of "slithy toves, that gyre and gimble in the wabe"—or worse? Must we who love living only regard it as ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... speak of the causes and results of Pessimism. It can touch the practical side of the riddle of life by asking certain questions, the answers to which lie within the province of human experience. ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... thinking it over; puzzling again over the mystery of their suspicion of him. He tried to recall some careless act, some imprudent question, an ill-considered remark. He was giving up the riddle again when that trained memory of his flashed before him a picture that, trivial as it was in itself, yet was as enlightening as the white paper of the cigarette ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... 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 them ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... the wicked; but, indeed, He received it with a rich, since God's providence was watching over the dead body of His Servant. [Hebrew: vitN], in so far as it refers to the first clause, receives its limitation by the second. Before their fulfilment, the words had the character of a holy riddle; but the fulfilment has solved this riddle. The designation of Joseph of Arimathea as [Greek: anthropos plousios] in Matt. xxvi. 57, is equivalent to an express quotation. Although it was by a ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... however observe that the Metaphors are not [so] thick sown in Milton which always savours too much of Wit; that they never clash with one another, which, as Aristotle observes, turns a Sentence into a kind of an Enigma or Riddle; [6] and that he seldom has recourse to them where the proper and natural Words will ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... love-child within her from out the sight of honest folks; she told her the man had turned his back forever, that only the ashy road of the ruined remained for her to tread. And that was how the great news that Nature had looked upon her for a mother came to Joan Tregenza. Here was the riddle of the mysterious voice unraveled; here was the secret of her physical sorrows made clear. She looked wildly from one to the other—from the man to the woman; then she tottered a step away, clutching her money and her little picture ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... at the way in which the farmer's daughter had solved the riddle that he immediately married her and made her his Queen. And they lived very happily together though no children came to them. The King depended upon her for advice in all his affairs and would often have her seated by him when he was giving ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... us in the 'Riddle of the Ivy,' he happened to be leaving Battersea, and being asked where he was going, calmly replied to 'Battersea.' Which is really to say that we find our way to Brixton more eagerly by way of Singapore than ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... own against wild beasts, and especially against the ape-men who would regard them as intruders, and wage a merciless war upon them with a cunning which the larger beasts would lack. Hence the fact that their numbers appear to be limited. Well, gentlemen, have I read you the riddle aright, or is there any ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... days which followed he had, in the stress of range work, little time for thought of the riddle which had been set for him to solve, and when he had time after the day's work he was tired and ready for sleep. He was working short handed now for the very simple and not uncommon reason that he was spending no dollar which ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... huge hopper and between its upper and nether millstones, are they to come out grist for the nation, or mere chaff, doomed like the Indian to ultimate extinction in the raging fires of racial and industrial rivalry and progress? Sphinx's riddle, say you, which yet awaits its Oedipus? Perhaps, though an examination of the past may show us that the riddle is not awaiting its Oedipus so much as his answer, which he has been writing slowly, word by word, and inexorably, ...
— Modern Industrialism and the Negroes of the United States - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 12 • Archibald H. Grimke
... without a moment's hesitation. Lord Loring's check, in Father Benwell's pocket, representing such a liberal subscription that my lord was reluctant to mention it to my lady—there was the reading of the riddle, as plain as the sun at noonday! Would it be desirable to enlighten Lady Loring as she had already enlightened Stella? Mrs. Eyrecourt decided in the negative. As Roman Catholics, and as old friends of Romayne, the Lorings naturally rejoiced ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... call her back, and I could not hope that she would return. Philosopher that I was I could not explain the sinking and the fear that took possession of me. The philosopher did not know himself. All his thought and all his reasoning could not solve the simple riddle the quick intuition of ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... 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 on the lande and daunced this reill or short daunce, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various
... the strange tastes of those who desired for some reason the temporary company of these unfortunate females, so unpleasing to the eye, to the ear, to the mind, to the smell; desired it so much that they would pay money for it. Why? Against that riddle the non-comprehension of her sex beat itself, baffled. She might put it the other way round, try to imagine herself desiring, paying for, the temporary attentions of some dirty, common, vapid, and patchouli-scented man—and still she ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... this? a riddle? how? the King, the Contract? The mischiefe I divine which, proving true, Shall kindle fires in Spaine to melt his Crowne Even from his head: here's the decree of fate,— A blacke deed must ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... of acostar. Adan, m., Adam. adelantarse, to go ahead, go in advance. adelante, forward; en —, henceforth. ademas, moreover, besides. adentro, within; para sus —s, to himself. iadios! good-by! adivinanza, f., riddle. adivinar, to guess; suspect. admirarse, to be surprised. adonde, where, whither. adorable, adorable, adored. adormecer, to go to sleep. adornar, to adorn. adorno, m., ornament. adulto, -a, m. and f., adult, grown-up. adversidad, f., adversity, misfortune. ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... the less imperfect years, When human frailty shall have died, When the vexed riddle of the spheres, Interpreted and glorified, Shall be as nothing to the tide Of light in which Thy hidden ways Will be revealed: I may abide Thy meanest instrument of praise, And from the broad calm ocean of Thy truth And wisdom drinking, ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... Church cut off the extremities and one-sidedness in empiricism and supernaturalism, in rationalism and mysticism, in optimism and pessimism. All these systems represented the human effort to solve the riddle of our life without taking any notice of the Church and her wisdom. And all failed to become the universally accepted truth, but all of them helped the Church unconsciously to her own orientation and strength. The Church collided with any extreme philosophy. Her wisdom ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... Majesty, was clangorous with note of preparation for imminent War. Probably Queen Sophie never had a more agitated Summer than this of 1729. We are now arrived at that thrice-famous Quarrel, or almost Duel, of Friedrich Wilhelm and his Britannic Brother-in-law little George II.; and must try to riddle from those distracted Paper-masses some notice of it, not wholly unintelligible to the reader. It is loudly talked of, loudly, but alas also loosely to a degree, in all manner of dull Books; and is at once thrice-famous and extremely obscure. The fact is, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... manage 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 ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... later ages surrounded and transfigured by an aureole of awe and mystery, lit up by some of the most brilliant rays of Grecian literature and art? If we follow the indications given by our oldest literary authority on the subject, the author of the Homeric hymn to Demeter, the riddle is not hard to read; the figures of the two goddesses, the mother and the daughter, resolve themselves into personifications of the corn. At least this appears to be fairly certain for the daughter ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the artist at all; but, on the other hand, you will find but few of the great artists of the ages who have not been thrilled and haunted with the deep desire to help others, to increase their peace and joy, to interpret the riddle of the world, to give a motive for living a fuller life than the life of the drudge and the raker of ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... it was a joke, was it? And suppose the neighbors fire their pistols at me and riddle ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... the establishment of the Kit-Cat club has never been decided, the consensus of opinion fixes the year somewhere about 1700. More debatable, however, is the question of its peculiar title. The most recent efforts to solve that riddle leave it where the contemporary ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... Oracle in turn I leaned the Secret of my Love to learn. The Answering Riddle came: "She loves you, yes, In just Proportion to the Sum ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... and in the name of One Whom mayhap ye will know one day. He died that ye should live! Bear that in mind and ponder on it. Mayhap ye will find the solution to that riddle. That such as you should live in eternity, therefore did He die.... When ye have understood this and can explain the value of your lives as compared with His, come and tell it to the praefect of Rome and he will shower on you wealth beyond ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... catechised on this subject; and how can I prompt her? Lake Leman, I know, and Lemon Lake (in a punch bowl) I have swum in, though those lymphs be long since dry. But Maggiore may be in the moon. Unsphinx this riddle for me, for my shelves have no gazetteer. And mayest thou never murder thy father-in-law in the Trivia of Lincoln's Inn New Square Passage, where Searl Street and the Street of Portugal embrace, nor afterwards make absurd proposals to the Widow M. But I know you abhor any such ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... about," said Nyoda, "don't you know that wild ducks are game birds? It's a bit out of season and you mustn't shoot any more, but I must congratulate you on your aim." Sahwah was a living riddle to her. Fearless as an Indian in the woods and possessing the skill with a rifle to bring down a bird on the wing, she was so tender-hearted that she could not bear to think of having killed any living thing! Nyoda bade her cheer up and pluck the fowl for roasting, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... heard that you were drowned, but am deeply thankful that you are saved. Why did you pass a night at sea in this weather? Is it a riddle? Grieved to say my father not so well. Best love, and please keep on ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... John was the riddle that I could not read. Among my last actions of this day was one that had been almost my earliest, and bedtime found me staring at his letter, as I stood, half undressed, by my table. The calm ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... that I should so long have announced my lord Egremont to you for a master, without his announcing himself to you.—it was no fault of mine; every thing here is a riddle or an absurdity. Instead of coming forth secretary of state, he went out of town, declaring he knew nothing of the matter. On that, it was affirmed that he had refused the seals. The truth is, they have never been offered to him in form. He had been ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... fidgeted. Twenty times he tried to solve, in his own mind, the riddle of why Dalzell should be away, and where he was. But ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... strangely enough the weak inference was correct, and the well-grounded one fallacious. If you would interpret the riddle of human motives, put no confidence in logic. The principles of logic are founded on the psychology of Anyone. And Anyone is a mechanical waxwork, an intellectual abstraction, a thing without a ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... wise men in Chiltistan, and they found the riddle easy to read. The melons were the infidels which would be cut to pieces, even as a knife cuts a melon. The grain was the army ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... examined all Air Force saucer reports made in the last three years. For the past year, I have taken part in a special investigation of the flying-saucer riddle. ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... guessing or surmising, For all our several and joint devising Has left us finally where I must leave you. But now I think it is your part to do Yourself some guessing. I hoped you might bring A fresh mind to the riddle's ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... know 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 ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... but I zaid five poun'. The wager was laid, but the money not down. Zinging right fol de ree, fol de riddle lee While I am a-zinging I'd five ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... 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 is the food ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... Fervlans. "The imprisoned marquis will not reveal the destination of the fugitives; but we have learned, through your clever little daughter, that they have gone to a country where there is order, but where there are no police. That, methinks, is not a very difficult riddle to solve. You need only journey from place to place until you find such a country. The fugitives will be certain to betray themselves by their secrecy, and I have not the least doubt but your search will be rewarded ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... In all my experience at sea, I don't remember anything like it. What trick the Chilian barque— if she be Chilian—is up to, I can't guess; not for the life of me. It cannot be a case of piracy. The craft has no guns; and if she had, she appears without men to handle them. It's a riddle all round; to get the reading of which, we'll have to send a ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... the milky way, and that around every one numerous planets revolved. This earth was but a small planet, and its sun a third-rate sun. On this speck of earth a being had awakened to a consciousness of the glittering riddle above his head, but he would die in the same ignorance of its meaning as a rabbit. The secret of the celestial plan she would never know. One day she would slip out of consciousness of it; life would never beckon her again; but the vast plan which she now perceived would continue to revolve, progressing ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... seems—but he was determined to have her, for there was not another female for him in the whole wide world—they all think that for the time being—and of course he married her. Then he made a seven-day feast, and unfortunately he amused the company with a riddle. Of course his wife was dying to know the answer, and her people threatened her if she did not find it out, and altogether it was a lively discussion, and she made his life a burden and a delusion and she wept ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... was the leading Whig paper of western Pennsylvania, Robert M. Riddle, its editor and proprietor. His mother was a member of our church, and I thought somewhere in his veins must stir anti-slavery blood. So I wrote a letter to the Journal, which appeared with an editorial ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... makes up for size in quality," declared the detective, while Jack blushed. "He is the youngster who solved the 'ghost' riddle and spoiled this same gang's ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... queer look in her eyes. "Well, cousin, I don't want to see much of him. He's a good-looking chap, too, though rather too finicking for my taste. I like a man who looks as if he could knock another man down. Besides, he looks at me as if I was a riddle, and he wanted to ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... with his refining art and has spoiled them. The playwright has striven to transfer from the field to the stage a cotton-picking scene and has made a travesty of it. To transfer the passions of man and to music-riddle them is an art with stiff-jointed rules, but the charm of a cotton-picking scene is an essence, and is breathed but cannot be caught. Here seems to lie a sentiment that no other labor invites, and though old with a thousand endearments, it is ever an opera rehearsed ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... at last, my darling one, Flushed and tired with thy play, From morning dawn until setting sun Hast thou been at sport away; And thy steps are weary—hot thy brow, Yet thine eyes with joy are bright,— Ah! I read the riddle, show me now The treasures thou ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
... was surely coming to an end. When the news was confirmed, and events which no one believed could ever happen had apparently occurred and seemed likely to be permanent, I gave the whole thing up like a riddle which it was beneath me to unravel, and turned away in disgust from the contemplation of this puzzling world. As a playful reminiscence of our hopes of the year 1852, I suggested to Uhlig that in our correspondence during that year we should ignore ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Vi. "Who cares anything about your old riddle? Br-r-r! it's cold in this room. Maybe we'll all get the croup if we can't ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... vulgar Images, such as are immediately fetch'd from Nature, and rang'd thro' the Circle of the Sciences to fetch their Ideas from thence. But as the Resemblances of such Ideas to the Subject must necessarily lie very much out of the common Way, and every Piece of Wit appear a Riddle to the Vulgar; This, that should have taught them the forced, quaint, unnatural Tract they were in (and induce them to follow a more natural One), was the very Thing that kept them attach'd to it. The ostentatious Affectation of abstruse Learning, ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... willing, in an earlier youth, to read this riddle in somewhat crude solutions. I think we have each of us arrived, and in a final manner, at the sounder conclusion that historical accident is principally to blame. The chance concurrence of this defeat with that dynastic influence, the slip by which the common sense of political simplicity ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... wherever he went, but they were the miseries of strangers. He could not forget Irene and the riddle of duty that was hers. He avoided the spot where she was closeted with grief, and worked remote in the glimmer from bonfires lighted ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Science will solve the riddle by casting aside the works and improvements of a thousand years,—the "wave line," the spar, the sail, and all,—and with them the men of the sea. It may be that "Leviathans" will march unheedingly through the mountain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... do not believe that the theory of evolution would have made its way so easily and so quickly after Darwin took up the cudgels in favour of it if he had not been able to support it by a principle which was capable of solving, in a simple manner, the greatest riddle that living nature presents to us,—I mean the purposiveness of every living form relative to the conditions of its life and its ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... importuned by the rival suitors. She appeared before them one day with a basket filled with plums in her hand; and said she would give her hand in marriage to whoever of them should guess the following arithmetical riddle. She said: "One of you shall take half the plums that are in this basket, and one over: another shall take half of what remains, and one over: the third shall take half of what still remains and three over, and then all the plums will have been taken. Now ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... Still, the riddle remained; and when O'Brien threw himself on a garden seat beside Dr. Simon, that keenly scientific person at once resumed it. He did not get much talk out of O'Brien, whose thoughts ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... professed moralists and philosophers did much to help me out of the dilemma; but the riddle which history presented I found solved in the pages of Shakspeare. There the crooked appeared straight; the inaccessible, easy; the incomprehensible, plain. All I sought, I found there; his characters combine history and real life; they are complete ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... ingenious a series of books for little folks as has ever appeared since "Alice in Wonderland." The idea of the Riddle books is a little group of children—three girls and three boys decide to form a riddle club. Each book is full of the adventures and doings of these six youngsters, but as an added attraction each book is filled with a lot of the ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... and made a face as if this were the first time she had ever given him the riddle to guess; as a matter of fact, however, she had given it to him very often, and had used it many times to cheer ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... to-day, or even of the whole nineteenth century, but with his mind educated to the strange conditions of earlier civilisation. For in these conditions will be found the root of the widespread mischief—the answer to many a riddle which superficial observers have been unable to comprehend. The racial hatred between Boer and Briton is not a thing of new growth; it has expanded with the expansion of the Boer settlers themselves. In fact, on the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... the driver, and Bob had solved the riddle. He then told Mr. Waterman how he had tried to think what "Gi-may" meant, thinking at first that it meant something like "Allons" but that he had found out it was ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... of this mental attitude was the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church and the older scholasticism, pronouncing the illimitable power of human perception; the world's profoundest depths had been fathomed, its riddle finally solved; there was consequently no room for philosophy, the endless meditation on the meaning of the world and the destiny of man. Science had but one task: to bring logical proof of the ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... into our hands some time or other, and he knows what we'll do with him if he should. Though he has made some clever escapes, I'll admit, that may not always be his fortune. The pitcher may go to the well once too often. He's a cunning rascal—no doubt knows this riddle—and therefore I begin to fear he has taken himself off,—at least for a long while. He may return again, but how the deuce are we to sustain this constant espionage? It would weary down the devil! It will become as tiresome as the siege ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... curiosity. How Miserrimus Dexter could help him, in that or in any other way, was a riddle ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... from the exciting brain-work, he would cry out to himself, "Her last hope shall not be disappointed!" Then he stretched his limbs, and a new impulse of energy flashed into his brain, and on and on he went, working restlessly till the iron riddle solved itself harmoniously, till each lever was transformed into a muscle, each tube into an artery, contrived on the wisest plans, like a human body by the spirit of ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... of the Macquarie was now, to a certain extent, cleared up, but there still remained another riddle to solve in the course and outlet of the Darling. Sturt, the discoverer of this river, was destined to find the answer to this problem ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc |
