"Sphinx" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... often hears of a "humming-bird" going the rounds of the garden, but at this hour it is usually the sphinx-moth hovering above the flower-beds — the one other creature besides the bee for which the bird is ever mistaken. The postures and preferences of this beautiful large moth make the mistake ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... deities who performed special services to the greater gods, like the Horae; and monsters, offspring of gods, like the gorgons, chimera, the dragon of the Hesperides, the Lernaean hydra, the Nemean lion, Scylla and Charybdis, the centaurs, the sphinx, and others. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Idiot. "Take North America. What do we find? We find in the sands of the Sahara a great statue, which we call the Sphinx, and about which we know nothing, except that it is there and that it keeps its mouth shut. We find marvellous creations in engineering that to-day surpass anything that we can do. The Sphinx, when discovered, ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... accomplished scholar, and well-known enthusiast in bee-culture, Henry K. Oliver, Esq. "We add a few words respecting the enemies of bees. The mouse, the toad, the ant, the stouter spiders, the wasp, the death-head moth, (Sphinx atropos,) and all the varieties of gallinaceous birds, have, each and all, "a sweet tooth," and like, very well, a dinner of raw bee. But the ravages of all these are but a baby bite to the destruction caused by the bee-moth, (Tinea mellonella.) These nimble-footed ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... with a tongue prone to looseness of speech that required a constant curb. And to add confusion to confusion, there was the servant, an unceasing menace, that appeared noiselessly at his shoulder, a dire Sphinx that propounded puzzles and conundrums demanding instantaneous solution. He was oppressed throughout the meal by the thought of finger-bowls. Irrelevantly, insistently, scores of times, he wondered when they would come on and what they looked like. He had heard of such things, and now, sooner or ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... come in time from the land of the sphinx," interrupted Jeanne gravely, and glancing intently at Micheline. "There is here, I assure you, a difficult ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... Unconscious of all these inquiries and fictions, Maurice Kirkwood lived on in his inoffensive and unexplained solitude, and seemed likely to remain an unsolved enigma. The "Sachem" of the boating girls became the "Sphinx" of the village ramblers, and it was agreed on all hands that Egypt did not hold any hieroglyphics harder to make out than the meaning of this young ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... non-existent trouble. Dear, dear,' the doctor shook his head sadly, 'I shall never understand human nature; there is always an abyss below an abyss, and the firmest seeming ground is usually quagmire when you come to step on it. George Pendle is a riddle which would puzzle the Sphinx. Hum! hum! another fabulous beast. Well, well, I can only wait and watch until I discover the truth, and then—well, what then?—why, nothing!' And Graham, having talked himself into a cul-de-sac of thought, shook his head furiously ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... had been familiar with had never hesitated to vent their feelings under such circumstances. But from Douglas van Tuiver there came—not a word! He sat, perfectly straight, staring before him, like a sphinx; and Sylvia, after one or two swift glances at him, began to gossip cheerfully about her plans for the day-nursery ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... four Engravings: 1.—The Invitation, with the Emperor and the Empress, and the Buff-tip Moth writing the Cards.—2. The Dance, with the Sphinx Hippophaes, the Pease Blossom, the Mouse, the Seraph, Satellite, Magpie, Gold Spangle, Foresters, Cleap Wings, &c.—3. The Alarm.—4. The Death's Head Moth. These are beautifully lithographed by Gauci. Their colouring, after Nature, is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... if I had found one of the Egyptian pyramids out here on the American Desert, you would blame me for not handing out the Sphinx at the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... multitude more of odd cockneyfied deities, Shrined in such pomp that quite shocking to see it 'tis; Nor know I what better the Rector could do Than to shrine there his own beloved quadruped too; As most surely a tithe-pig, whate'er the world thinks, is A much fitter beast for a church than a Sphinx is. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... seen, that the soul would return, that the long-closed eyes would open again, and that the long-silent lips would speak to him. But no! For all the answer that he got he might as well have been looking upon the granite features of the Sphinx itself. He turned away again towards ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... more the tale of Troy, If earth Death's scroll must be! Nor mix with Laian rage the joy Which dawns upon the free: Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... men, women and children, into whose desolate lives would never come one touch of light or love. There is something to me unspeakably sad in the eager, gazing multitudes that crowd the streets on these grand gala days. There is ever a sphinx-like questioning look in their upturned faces that seems to say, 'Ah! must the many ever suffer that the few may shine?' As the sun went down on that 21st of June, what a contrast in the close of the day's festivities between the children of ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... tower of the lake-palace, a prey to intense speculations, which devoured themselves and changed from fire to smoke, while I recounted the adventures of our ship's voyage, and they behaved as if there were nothing to tell me in turn, each a sphinx holding the secret I thirsted for. I should not certainly have thirsted much if Janet had met me as far half-way as a delicate woman may advance. The mystery lay in her evident affection, her apparent freedom and unfathomable reserve, and her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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 for himself ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... learned to hold his tongue, he must be up to some dam' good thing," opined another; while a man with hooked features and of German extraction who was supposed to be agent for a Dutch crockery house—the famous "Sphinx" ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... almost overcome by the "Madam." For a moment, she quailed. She couldn't ask that masculine sphinx questions! Then the thought of her mother's pale, careworn face flashed across her mind, and all her courage came back with an inspiriting rush. She bent forward to look eagerly into Mr. Reefer's carved, granite face, and said ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... something very striking in a lonely central figure in a scene, the outline cuts so sharply against the horizon. Nan's eyes seemed riveted on it as she listened to Phillis's voice; it seemed to her as immovable as a Sphinx, its rigidity lending a sort of barrenness and forlornness to the landscape, a black edition of human nature set under a violet ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... his cell he pointed out with his finger the immense church of Notre-Dame, which, outlining against the starry sky the black silhouette of its two towers, its stone flanks, its monstrous haunches, seemed an enormous two-headed sphinx, seated in the middle of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Red Tabs' sphinx-like declaration was no riddle to me. I knew at once that Francis must be on secret service in the enemy's country and that country Germany. My brother's extraordinary knowledge of the Germans, their customs, life and dialects, rendered him ideally suitable for any ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... the coast lights were slipping past, making golden paths on the black water as our tug pulled us out to sea. The reservists down below were singing "Va fuori, o stranier!" I dropped my package overboard, watched it vanish, and turned to behold the sphinx-like Van Blarcom, sprung up as if by magic, regarding me placidly from the shelter ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... Jack! you are enough to startle the sphinx. Come out from under that table at once," ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... naked nature unashamed, And saw the Sphinx, now bestial, now divine, In change and re-change; he nor praised nor blamed, But drew her as he saw with fearless line. Did he good service? God must judge, not we! Manly he was, and generous and sincere; English in all, of genius blithely ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... heel, and made his way slowly around the corner of the passage into the other part of the building, and paused at the open doorway of the Honourable Hilary's outer office. By the street windows sat the Honourable Brush Bascom, sphinx-like, absorbing wisdom and clouds of cigar smoke which emanated ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Musk is the odor which not only in the animals to which it has given a name, but in many others, is a specifically sexual odor, chiefly emitted during the sexual season. The sexual odors, indeed, of most animals seem to be modifications of musk. The Sphinx moth has a musky odor which is confined to the male and is doubtless sexual. Some lizards have a musky odor which is heightened at the sexual season; crocodiles during the pairing season emit from their submaxillary ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... George Sand and Gustave Flaubert. He was an artist, and she in many respects was bourgeoise. He saw all things at their worst; she saw them better than they were. Flaubert wrote to her in surprise as follows: "In spite of your large sphinx eyes, you have seen the world ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... been for some time gathering in the corners of the room warned me that the hour had come for my trip back to Paris. Declining reluctantly an invitation to take potluck with my host, I was soon in the Avenue of the Sphinx again. As we strolled along, talking of the past and its charm, a couple of men passed us, carrying a piece of ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... good man; but he has not waked, And seen the Sphinx's stony eyes fixed on him. God veils it. He believes in Christ, he thinks; And so he does, as possible for him. How he will wonder when he looks for heaven! He thinks me an enthusiast, because I seek to know God, and to hear his voice Talk to my ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... stone, his forehead riven by one deep line, his straight firm mouth set close and hard. His servant, the only living being who had approached him, had set food by his side, which now and then he had mechanically taken. Changeless as a sphinx, he had sat there in darkness and in light, whilst sunlight had changed to moonlight, and the songs of the birds had given place to the low murmuring of frogs from a lake ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... out upon the river. At least three of them so gazed. Of the fourth all that remained were the lower limbs to the knees and the huge hands resting on the knees. At the feet of this one, ridiculously small, crouched a sphinx; yet this sphinx was taller ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... time his eyes had swept the links in vague hope, he could hardly believe their testimony when now at length he spied a form, which could only be hers, looking seaward from the slope, as still as a sphinx on Egyptian sands. ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... but methinks, The weighty and phlegmatic Sphinx Could trip as lightly— And yet she is a regular, Serene and well established ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... was under the rule of LAIUS and JOCASTA there appeared a strange and monstrous creature, "the riddling Sphinx," "the She-Wolf of the woven song," who in some unexplained way sang riddles of death and slew the people of Thebes. LAIUS went to ask aid of the oracle of Delphi, but was slain mysteriously on the road. Soon afterwards there came to Thebes a young Prince of Corinth, OEDIPUS, who had left ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... them, as the habit of turning up the tail by the harmless rove-beetles (Staphylindidae) no doubt leads other animals besides children to the belief that they can sting. The curious attitude assumed by sphinx caterpillars is probably a safeguard, as well as the blood-red tentacles which can suddenly be thrown out from the neck, by the caterpillars of all ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of this isle, Which way they lead the clueless wanderer To fields suburban, and the towers of men, I would confront the strangest things that haunt In horrid shades of brooding desolation: Griffin, or satyr, sphinx, or sybil ape, Or lop-eared demon from the dens of night, Let loose to caper out of Acheron. Ah me, my Theseus, wherefore art thou gone! Who left that crock of water at my side? Who stole my dog that loved no one ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... sealed with a sphinx, had no superscription, and was written in cyphers; this, however, did not discourage me, for I have some knowledge of this mode of writing. I copied it hastily, as there was every reason to expect that she would soon miss it and return in search of it. If she should not ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... civilization—will be the race which remains longest upon it. The negro was here before the Anglo-Saxon was evolved, and his thick lips and heavy-lidded eyes looked out from the inscrutable face of the Sphinx across the sands of Egypt while yet the ancestors of those who now oppress him were living in caves, practicing human sacrifice, and painting themselves with woad—and ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... that consciousness which he looks upon as open to the influx of the divine essence from which it came, and towards which all its upward tendencies lead, always aspiring, never resting; as he sings in "The Sphinx ":— ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sat stern, silent, and apparently quite unmoved. Indeed there was something almost sphinx-like about the set and expression of his handsome face. Moreover, I felt sure that Harut and Marut recognized the man's strength and determination and that he was one with whom they must reckon seriously. Beneath all their ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... erected upon its mound in the west, the quarter of the sun's setting; for the Sun-god of Heliopolis was primarily the setting sun, Tum-Ra, not Ra Harmachis, the rising sun, whose emblem is the Great Sphinx at Giza, which looks towards the east. The sacred emblem of the Heliopolitan Sun-god reminds us forcibly of the Semitic bethels or baetyli, the sacred stones of Palestine, and may give yet another hint of the Semitic ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... a continuation in an enlarged form of The Instructor. I had become the acting Editor of its predecessor, the New Series of The Instructor, working in concert with my Father, the proprietor. In this New Series there appeared from DE QUINCEY'S pen The Sphinx's Riddle, Judas Iscariot, the Series of Sketches from Childhood, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... could daunt the sleepless ken Of roseate Sphinx, and god of marble green, Which stood as guardians o'er the sacred ground. For a great port steered vessels huge and fleet, A giant city bathed her marble feet ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... a man trained as few men are trained to meet emergencies, to face crises with an impassiveness of countenance that would shame the Sphinx. He had lost thousands across the green cloth of gambling-tables without batting an eye. He had faced death and had killed men with a face absolutely devoid of expression, and upon numerous occasions his nerve—the consummate sang-froid of him—had alone ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... the matter of the outer cover for the next issue of The Aspirant, a henchman invaded his privacy. Sebastian looked over a pile of designs, and chose a flat but lurid young woman, in a sphinx-like attitude against a background of purple trees. Then came the more difficult question of an aphorism to be printed on the table against which the lurid young woman leaned. It was the habit of The Aspirant to convey, even on its outside, wisdom to the world, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Gaunt cypress-trees stand round the sun-bleached stone; Here doth the little night-owl make her throne, And the slight lizard show his jewelled head. And, where the chaliced poppies flame to red, In the still chamber of yon pyramid Surely some Old-World Sphinx lurks darkly hid, Grim warder of this ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... a promise from Hahmed that he would take her one moonlight night to the summit of the Great Pyramid, in spite of the strict rules against such nightly excursions, Jill sat very still and quite content upon her camel gazing at the Sphinx. She turned and looked in the direction where the great eyes were staring, and then turning once more towards the mystery of all ages, she urged her camel on until it stood close to the base, and then, dissatisfied, she urged it back until ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... beasts in Egypt is the camel. Riding a camel for the first time is quite an experience. The beast will lie down, but it is continually snarling and when it gets up you go through all kinds of motions. As I rode around the great pyramid and sphinx on one of these beasts the swing was not unlike that of a great rocking chair and while this ship of the desert did not seem to be going fast I noticed that the driver was running and the donkey alongside was on the gallop ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... did. You were all that could be expected of a girl. The Sphinx itself, could not have been more outwardly calm. I fancy Miss Watson went away in admiration of your self-control. If I remember, I was the only one who appeared ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... the landing outside the drawing-room, into a great gilded Venetian chair—of which at first, however, she but made, with her brooding face, a sort of throne of meditation. She would thus have recalled a little, with her so free orientalism of type, the immemorially speechless Sphinx about at last to become articulate. The Colonel, not unlike, on his side, some old pilgrim of the desert camping at the foot of that monument, went, by way of reconnoissance, into the drawing-room. He visited, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... that of the Sphinx; there was no mist in the depth of her gray eyes, not a cloud on the wide heaven of ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... matter was further gone into. The solicitor, by adroit questioning, drew from Jimmie various bits of information relating to the accused man's past life. His own opinion—he had read all the papers—Mr. Tenby held in reserve behind a sphinx-like countenance, nor did he vouchsafe it when it was finally settled that he should ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... things to come they were always prophesying; and it is this great hope that forms the germ of the Messianic expectation by which they reach forth to the glories of the latter day. This attitude of Israel, in all the generations, is the one striking feature of this history. No soulless sphinx facing a trackless desert with blind eyes—no impassive Buddha ensphered in placid silence—is the genius of this people, but some strong angel poised on mighty pinion above the highest peak of Pisgah, and scanning with swift glances the beauty of the promised land. Now any people of which this ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... this," said the sheriff, sharply, "and you don't think so, neither. You wouldn't take a big price for your two hundred acres here now." He watched the other's countenance sharply as he spoke, but the training of slavery made the face of the black Ajax simply Sphinx-like in its inscrutability. ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... however, of the present age of mechanical power is that it has largely destroyed the spirit of work. The great enigma which it propounds to us, and which, like the riddle of the Sphinx, we will solve ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... Seeing me standing there, some of them turned pale, others grew red with emotion. Some went by endeavouring to appear not to have seen me; others threw me appealing glances. Never, by the quiver of a lash, did I show that I recognised them. I stood and waited—like the Sphinx." ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... greatest rarity in Rome, column, or obelisk and the greatest antiquity surely, if 1630 years before the birth of Christ be its date; as that was but two centuries after the invention of letters by Memnon, and just about the time that Joseph the favourite of Pharaoh died. There is a sphinx upon it, however, mighty clearly expressed; and some one said, how strange it was, if the world was no older than we think it, that they should, in so early a stage of existence, represent, or even imagine to themselves a compound animal[AG]: though the chimaera came in play when the world ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... adhered together and amalgamated into a substance identical with the old Egyptian parchment, though much coarser and rougher in quality. The girls were delighted with it. They borrowed a book on Egypt from Mr. Greville's library, and copied little pictures of the Sphinx, scarabs, Ra, the Sun god, and other appropriate bits, painting them in bold colors on their pieces of parchment, and feeling as if they had gone back a few thousand years in history, and were dwellers in ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... tables and chairs and sofas. Everywhere one turned the feeling of martial grandeur was in the air. Ormolu mounts of bay wreaths, torches, eagles, military emblems and trophies, winged figures, the sphinx, the bee, and the initial N, were used on furniture; and these same motives were used in wall decoration. The furniture was left the natural color of the wood, and mahogany, rosewood, and ebony, ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... When her eyes were half-closed under their heavy lids, and her mouth wore what the girls called its "John Bull" expression, not even Miss Beasley herself could drag information out of Aveline. The Sphinx, as she was sometimes nicknamed, prided herself on her accomplishment, and took particular care to maintain her character. Raymonde had apportioned the bed on her right to Aveline, and that on her left to Fauvette Robinson, who occupied about an ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... a long and pliant proboscis for the purpose of acquiring this grateful food, as a variety of bees, moths, and butterflies: but the Sphinx Convolvuli, or unicorn moth, is furnished with the most remarkable proboscis in this climate. It carries it rolled up in concentric circles under its chin, and occasionally extends it to above three inches in length. This trunk consists of joints and ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... labelled with the name in Latin. There were cases filled with crimson tiger moths all aflame with color; cases devoted to the common yellow butterflies; symphonies in orange and pale yellow; cases of soft gray and dun-colored sphinx moths; and cases of grayish nettle-bed butterflies of ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... as the Sphinx did before the gates of Thebes. How can one be at the same time blessed ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... mountain, Chipirone, to which we have given the name of Mount Clarendon, now looms in sight, and further to the N.W. the southern end of the grand Milanje range rises in the form of an unfinished sphinx looking down on Lake Shirwa. The Ruo (16 degrees 31 minutes 0 seconds S.) is said to have its source in the Milanje mountains, and flows to the S.W., to join the Shire some distance above Tingane's. A short way beyond the Ruo lies the Elephant ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... subtleties, what unfailing revelations of beauty, and surely, too, of love, there were in Nature! And yet in Nature what terrible indifference there was: a powerful, an almost terrific inattention, like that of the sphinx that gazes at what men cannot see. Hermione moved away from the house. She walked to the brow of the island and sat down on the seat that Vere was fond of. Presently she would go to the bridge and look over into the Pool and listen for the voices of the fishermen. She sat there for some time ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... find an important element in the explanation of the sand drifts, which have half buried the Sphinx and so many other ancient monuments in that part of Egypt. These drifts, as I have said, are not wholly from the desert, but in largo proportion from the sea; and, as might be supposed from the distance they have travelled, they have been long in gathering. ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... with you," said H. H.; "am I not here? Then there is Archbold—he is always Johnny on the spot." Rockefeller smiled a sphinx-like smile, as near as he ever came to indulging in a laugh, and mosied out of the room. That night he went up to the Catskills. The next day a telegram came from Rockefeller addressed to "Johnny-on-the-Spot, Twenty-six Broadway." The message was carried directly ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... to an Acolyte making his bacca light, A fleet-footed youth who could run like a crack o' light. "Run, Abraham, run! Hunt him over the plain, And drive back the brute to the desert again. The Sphinx is a-watching, the Pyramids frown on you, From those granite tops forty cent'ries look down on you— Run, Abraham, run! I'll bet half-a-crown on you." So Abraham ran; like a man did he go for him, But the goat made it clear each time he drew ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... to tell us that, Sir Evelyn, for though he is supposed to be a Roman, he seems to have lived most of his life in your country. As silent as an owl and as inscrutable as a sphinx. Nobody in Rome knows certainly who his father was, nobody knows certainly who his mother was. Some say his father was an Englishman, some say a Jew, and some say his mother was a gipsy. A self-centred man, who never ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... fatally well to marble and stone, sir," said Hamilton, mischievously. "I fear your biographers will conceive themselves writing at the feet of a New World Sphinx, and that its frozen granite loneliness will petrify ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... follows? What is its future destined to be? Will it vanish away, will it pass into new phases, or will some form of it eventually receive the sanction of the nation? These are Sphinx questions, which one may be excused from endeavouring to answer, seeing that the strongest and most far-reaching heads are at this moment intent upon them—not, so far as can be seen, with any strikingly successful result. The ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... of God. It has the whole universe, sun, and stars, and all, backing it by God's appointment, to keep it where it is and what it is; and till (as Lord Bacon has it) I have discovered and obeyed the will of God revealed in that pebble, it is to me a riddle more insoluble than the Sphinx's, a fortress more impregnable than Sevastopol. I may crush it: but destroying is not conquering: but I cannot even mend the road with it prudently, until I have discovered whether Almighty God has made it fit to mend roads with. I may have the genius of a Plato ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... .. < chapter lxxx 2 THE NUT > If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist his brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to square. In the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet in length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull is as the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... claws. Rouge et noir, roulette, faro, keno, and stud-poker were going in full blast. The proprietor, his elegant diamonds flashing in the light, was seated on a raised platform from whence he could survey the entire company—his face, impassive as marble and unreadable as the sphinx, was turned toward the faro lay-out, which this evening appeared to be the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... characteristics of the great life-giver of Egypt—the Nile. The Mamelukes engaged his particular attention, though much of the information furnished him about them was erroneous. He plunged into antiquity, visited, measured, and described the Sphinx and the Pyramids—also with many errors. Christian tradition and pious legends have their place in his narrative, especially that of Matarieh—ubi Christus latuerat when carried by his parents into Egypt to escape the Herodian massacre ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... as we will presently see, it is its extreme antiquity which most excites the imagination, for, while the whole Bible history from Abraham to the Apostles covers a period of only 2,000 years, the known history of Egypt commenced as far back as 6,000 years ago! From the sphinx at Ghizeh, which is so ancient that no one knows its origin, to the great dam at Assuan, monument of its present day, each period of its history has left some record, some tomb or temple, which we may study, and it is this more than anything ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... pyramids, with their triangular sides of elevation and square bases, represented their Metaphysics, founded upon the knowledge of Nature. That knowledge of Nature had for its symbolic key the gigantic form of that huge Sphinx, which has hollowed its deep bed in the sand, while keeping watch at the feet of the Pyramids. The Seven grand monuments called the Wonders of the World, were the magnificent Commentaries on the Seven lines that composed ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Darkness, lends you her cloak! Out!" Kenkenes cried, striking at his pet. The wary animal eluded the blow and for a moment revolved about another sphinx, pursued by his master, and then fled like a phantom out of the court by the path he came. By this time the priest had emerged from his refuge and was attempting to prevent the young man's interference with the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... love! Yet she seemed so hideously unhappy as she stretched before him in her white robes of death. Why? What secret was this disclosed at the twelfth hour of life, on the very brink of the grave? Did death, then, hold the solution to the enigma of the conquering Sphinx! ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... as an enigma, a living Sphinx. Man is a hundred times more of an enigma and a Sphinx. A healthy woman that is not hysterical may be either good or bad, strong or weak, but she has more spiritual simplicity than man. Forever and all times the Ten Commandments are ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... out on the desert... and meet these cacti is like whispering into the ear of the Sphinx, and listening at her locked lips,... and to go out in April and see them suddenly abloom is as though the lips of the Sphinx should part and utter solemn words. A bunch of white flowers at the tip of the obelisk, flowers springing white and wonderful out of this ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... oval, containing the fair golden hair and large eyes, the pale, unfathomable sphinx, remounted to its nail, and the funeste and beautiful child seemed to smile down oracularly on ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... on the servant, and walked towards the light, while he tore open the envelope. It had the most minute sphinx in the corner, and the paper ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... is that other old Fable of the Sphinx, who sat by the wayside, propounding her riddle to the passengers, which if they could not answer she destroyed them! Such a Sphinx is this Life of ours, to all men and societies of men. Nature, like the Sphinx, is of womanly celestial loveliness and tenderness; the face ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... you run a ranch, and make quite big with it, yet you never eat off a china plate, or spread your table with anything better than a newspaper. True, Charlie, you've got me beaten to death. Why, how you manage to run a ranch and make it pay is a riddle that 'ud put the poor old Sphinx's nose ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... Strabo was right. There were two of Rhodopis. Everybody knows that. The Third Pyramid was built for the tomb of the first one, not for King Mycineris, I believe. Why shouldn't a woman have a Pyramid to herself? The Sphinx is a woman, as I will insist to my dying day, if it were my last word! I hope Lord Ernest won't ram down our throats any nonsense about that noble and graceful tribute to the Mystery of Womanhood being a stupid King Harmachis, or Horemkhu. I wouldn't believe it if I found a hundred nasty ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... rain-clouds.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} But the myth is yet in too early a state to allow of the definite designations which are brought before us in the conflicts of Zeus with Typhon and his monstrous progeny, of Apollon with the Python, of Bellerophon with Chimaira of Oidipous with the Sphinx, of Hercules with Cacus, of Sigurd with the dragon Fafnir; and thus not only is Vritra known by many names, but he is opposed sometimes by Indra, sometimes by Agni the fire-god, sometimes by Trita, Brihaspati, or other ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... placed me hors de combat, Lawless took possession of my poor writing-desk, and commenced tracing on the top thereof, with the red-hot poker, what he was pleased to term a "design from the antique," which consisted of a spirited outline of that riddle-loving female the Sphinx, as she appeared when dressed in top-boots and a wide-awake, and regaling herself with a choice cigar! He was giving the finishing touch to a large pair of moustaches, with which he had embellished her countenance, and which he declared was ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Stark and brilliant in the sunshine, Blank as the desert, Blank as the Sphinx, Winking golden eyes in the twinkles of light, Silent, immutable, vacuous infinity, Illimitable capacity for ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... the plateau (twelve hundred by sixteen hundred yards), and rode within the shadow of the pyramids, our feeling was deepened by the view of the barren waste stretched before us,—yellowish sand and piles of debris accentuating the solitude of the place, while the inscrutable Sphinx and other ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... heart can understand it, Though her tongue can ne'er explain: Let yon granite Sphinx demand it— ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... had the chance to look this sphinx in the eyes, and, for five minutes, to watch him like a wild animal, at the moment of his greatest achievement and most splendid action. One saw a quiet-featured, quiet-voiced man in a red flannel shirt; absolutely impervious; a type of which Adams knew nothing. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Marvellous Floatin' Goddess. Just about to commence! This way for the Mystic Gallery—three Illusions for threepence! Atalanta, the Silver Queen of the Moon; the Oriental Beauty in the Table of the Sphinx, and the Wonderful Galatea, or Pygmalion's Dream. Only threepence! This way for the Mystic Marvel o' She! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... a weapon into my heart, but I betrayed more self-command than I should have given myself credit for under such trying circumstances. As to Dick, he was as immovable and apparently as unconscious as the Egyptian Sphinx. ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... however, availed them naught; the old sailor keeping provokingly silent and being as mute as the Sphinx on the subject, in spite of their ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... was one of those beautiful, brilliant enigmas, who irresistibly allure everyone like a Sphinx, for she was young, charming, and singularly lovely, and understood how to heighten her charms not a little by carefully-chosen dresses. She was a great lady of the right stamp, and was very intellectual into the bargain, which is not the case with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... other mortals, to ridicule, and know very well how much easier it is to cannonade rebellious insurgents than to put down the general laugh, and that the point of a joke cannot be turned by the point of the bayonet. "Punch" was seized in Paris on account of the caricature of the "Sphinx," but after twenty-four hours' consideration the order of confiscation was rescinded, and the irreverent publication now lies upon the tables of the reading-rooms. So, iron power is not beyond the reach of the shafts of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... the Baronet, "but you are right to a letter; the Sphinx is a monster-man, and I, sure enough, am ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the room, Brande and his sister, who had joined him, met us. The fire had died out of his eyes. His voice had returned to its ordinary key. His demeanour was imperturbable, sphinx-like. I murmured some words about the eloquence of the lecture, but interrupted myself when I observed his complete indifference ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... are passing endless lorries and Red Cross waggons and troops and dug-out camps. As we get closer the signs of shelling get worse, and children are seen no longer. Old men, though, occasionally observed working in a field quite unperturbed. Rarely a French soldier or an interpreter with his sphinx badges. All this quite lost on Hunt, who has "quite got used to abroad, thank you, sir." He is eating chocolate or something, half a horse-length (the ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... Ancobra River the foreshore gradually bends for a few miles from a west-east to a north-south rhumb, and forms a bay within a bay. The larger is bounded north by Akromasi Point, the southern wall of the great stream; the bold foreland outlain with reefs and a rock like a headless sphinx, is known from afar, east and west, by its 'one tree,' a palm apparently double, the leader of a straggling row. On the south of the greater bay is Point Pepre, by the natives called Inkubun, or Cocoanut-Tree, from a neighbouring village; like the Akromasi foreland, it is black and menacing ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... line, the remembrance that his own race died with him was not likely to be banished. The Countess brought Elsa forward and in a whisper urged her to plead for her kinsman before his judge. The girl's eloquence brought tears to the eyes of Beatrix, but the Count's impassive face was sphinx-like in its settled gloom. Only once during the appeal did he speak, and that was when Elsa offered herself as a sacrifice to his ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... never see Those blood drops from the burning heart of June Glowing like thought upon the living tree Without a pity that they die so soon, Die into petals, like those roses old, Those women, who were summer in men's hearts Before the smile upon the Sphinx was cold Or sand had hid the Syrian and his arts. O myriad dust of beauty that lies thick Under our feet that not a single grain But stirred and moved in beauty and was quick For one brief moon and died nor lived again; But when the moon rose lay upon the grass ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... spirit; he had yet to learn its nature. He began to think with strange sadness over the hopes of the world, the young children. He saw them in his vision grow up, bear the burden in silence or ignorance; he saw how they joined in dragging onward that huge sphinx which men call civilization; there was no time for loitering amid the beautiful, for if one paused it was but to be trampled by the feet of the many who could not stay or rest, and the wheels of the image ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... the observer, continuing his study, would have forgotten the parcel, the white slaves, the gigantic negro, the self-willed hair and beard of pride—the face alone would have held him. The countenance of the Sphinx has no beauty now; and standing before it, we feel no stir of the admiration always a certificate that what we are beholding is charming out of the common lines; yet we are drawn to it irresistibly, and by a wish vague, foolish—so foolish we would hesitate long before ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... impediment and bar, brings on A season, in the which, one sent from God, (Five hundred, five, and ten, do mark him out) That 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 ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... not! You can still give yourself a counsel.' And Sugarman looked a conscious sphinx. 'You may ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... them, just where he had met Dromore that first fatal afternoon nine months ago; a man with a slight lurch in his walk and a tall, shining hat a little on one side. But thank Heaven!—it was not Dromore—only one somewhat like him, who in passing stared sphinx-like at Nell. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was a strange creature that figured in different old-world mythologies. Its form varied, but the monster which propounded the famous riddle was supposed to have the body of a lion, the head of a woman, bird's wings, and a serpent's tail. Well, this sphinx appeared once upon a time, near Thebes, in ancient Greece, and asked a riddle of every passer-by, whom it promptly slew if the correct answer were not forthcoming. This scourge at length drove the poor Thebans to despair, and they offered their kingdom and the hand of their Queen to whomsoever ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... hound me out of Denmark! This disgrace Of work, with hands or brain, no matter why, No matter how, in one who ought to dwell Fixed to the solid upper sphere, my friends, Would never be forgiven." Dancey stared In mute amazement, but that mask of gold Outstared him, sphinx-like, and inscrutable. ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... potatoes were looking fine, however, the elder made no response—unless a gout of tobacco smoke could be so counted. With eyes screwed up and mouth drawn down, he gazed off into space—a Highland sphinx, a Gaelic Rhadamanthus. ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... which nature reveals, and which alone reveals her, does but prepare you for the inaproachableness that shines out at you from the Indian's eyes. Seas are shallow and continents but a span compared with the breadths and depths which separate him from you. The sphinx will yield her mystery, but he will not unveil his; you may touch the poles of the planet, but you can never lay your hand on him. The same God that made you, made him also in His image; but if you try to bridge ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... loves the Sphinx and does not harm her. They say that he does not dare to harm the Sphinx. She has borne him many gods whom the ...
— Plays of Gods and Men • Lord Dunsany
... lips in secret rage. If she had felt that she was doing poorly with Captain Jack Benson, evidently she was now seated beside an absent-minded sphinx. ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... of the thing is nothing," said Dr. Bull with his sphinx-like smile, "it hardly seems ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... wise antiquity told the riddle of the Sphinx, if having ears to hear we would hear. "Our youth should be educated in a stricter rule from the first, for if education becomes lawless and the youths themselves become lawless, they can never grow up into well-conducted or meritorious citizens; ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... set sail from Spithead with four ships, having on board part of the 78th regiment, besides marines. The "Sphinx" was to join them at St. Helena. The land forces were commanded by Major-General Sir James Craig. Early in April Rear-Admiral Sir Keith Elphinstone sailed with a larger force, and a further expedition was in preparation under the command of Major-General Alured Clarke. The Cabinet expected little ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... marvellous charm and suavity, a finesse of expression never reached before and hardly ever equalled since. Contrast the head of the Christ at Milan, Leonardo's conception of divinity expressed in perfect humanity, with the subtle and sphinx-like ...
— Leonardo da Vinci • Maurice W. Brockwell
... took place in the middle of the road, and Almira reentered the room with the expression of one who had penetrated the inscrutable and solved the riddle of the Sphinx. She had been vouch-safed one of those gleams of light in darkness which ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... beginning to study. I confess to being one of those who believe that the human heart, even in the history of a race, may be worth infinitely more than the human intellect, and that it will sooner or later prove itself infinitely better able to answer all the cruel enigmas of the Sphinx of Life. I still believe that the old Japanese were nearer to the solution of those enigmas than are we, just because they recognized moral beauty as greater than intellectual beauty. And, by way of conclusion, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... NYMPHS! YOU from cliff to cliff attendant guide In headlong cataracts the impetuous tide; Or lead o'er wastes of Abyssinian sands The bright expanse to EGYPT'S shower-less lands. —Her long canals the sacred waters fill, 140 And edge with silver every peopled hill; Gigantic SPHINX in circling waves admire; And MEMNON bending o'er his broken lyre; O'er furrow'd glebes and green savannas sweep, And towns and temples laugh ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... enigmatic than was ever sphinx? And what lay beyond it? What did that smooth stone, whose wan deadness whispered of ages-old corridors of time opening out into alien, unimaginable vistas, hide? It had cost the world of science Throckmartin's great brain—as it had cost Throckmartin those he loved. It had drawn me ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... sciences. Even to antiquity everything Egyptian appeared venerable and mysterious, and the air of mystery is not yet removed from the country of the Nile. We have discovered the sources of the river and have learned to read the writing on Egyptian monuments; but the sphinx has other riddles than these—riddles not yet solved. Who are the Egyptians, and where did they come from? In ancient times they were thought to have descended from the interior of Africa; now the opinion gains ground that they were at a very early period connected with the ancestors ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... woman in Paris, or in the universe, who naturally pleased him most. He entertained for her, at once, the interest which attaches to forbidden fruit, to the attraction of strange beauty, and to the mystery of an impenetrable sphinx. She was, at this time, more goddess-like than ever. The immense fortune of her husband, and the adulation which it brought her, had placed her on a golden car. On this she seated herself with a gracious and native majesty, as if ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... said Henrietta, "they are bringing Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente and her sphinx butterfly ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... useless as to try to solve the enigma of the Sphinx. The dog's lips were sealed as tightly as the stone lips; the barrier between his brain and Donaldson's brain was as high as that between the man-chiseled image and the man who chiseled. He was only wasting his time on such a task, time that he should use in ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... horseback, all toiling up the steep ascent, perfect in miniature. In another was Napoleon, flag in hand, leading the charge across the bridge of Lodi. In still another was Napoleon in Egypt, before the Pyramids, seated, impassive, on his horse, gazing at the Sphinx, as if about to utter his immortal words to his soldiers: "Here, forty centuries look down upon us." These object lessons of the past are all gone now and the land used for more ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Holborn Hill, an undersized boy; and yet he winked the winks, and thought the thoughts, and did the deeds, and said the sayings of an ancient man. There was an old principle within him, and a young surface without. He became an inexplicable creature; a breeched and booted Sphinx. There was no course open to the barber, but to go distracted himself, or to take Bailey for granted; and he ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... You ought to have shown yourself as the happy bridegroom. They were all looking up here. I wonder why men are so shy. I'm glad I have my new frock on.... Fancy being married only a few hours ago! Tell me how you are feeling, can't you, Philip? You sit there looking like a sphinx. You are happy, ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... surrounded on a certain day in spring with a howling band of painted braves. Similar societies in other departments and classes soon followed, and we now have the "Griffins," another all-campus society; "Druids," senior literary; "Sphinx," junior literary; "Vulcans," senior engineering; "Triangle," junior engineering; "Archons," junior laws; "Galens," medical; "Alchemists," chemical students; "Craftsmen," Masonic students; "Quarterdeck," marine engineering; as well as several similar societies ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... parts of the world, and in all kinds of disguises. Now he is the most beautiful and noble of the Greek gods, Apollo; now he is Odin, with a single eye; now he is Hercules, the hero, with his twelve great labours for the good of men; now he is Oedipus, who met the Sphinx and solved her riddle. In the early times men saw how everything in the world about them drew its strength and beauty from the sun; how the sun warmed the earth and made the crops grow; how it brought gladness and hope and inspiration to ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... and bien, bien-aimee, I'll not run out of salutations for you this side of heaven—no—nor t'other. I adore the serene grace with which you ignore the ravishing Liane. Haven't you any curiosity at all, my Sphinx? No? Well, then, just to punish you, I'll tell you all about it. She's married to the best fellow in the world—a liaison officer working with our squadron—and she worships the ground that he walks on and the air that he occasionally ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... see the whole visible world on a march one needs to go to a really large desert. The Pyramids and the Sphinx have been partly buried, and parts of the valley of the Nile threatened, by hordes of sand hills marching in from the desert; cities have been buried and harbors filled up. Many of the harbors of the ancient civilizations are mere miasmatic marshes now. This ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... men and women are, but what they should be. Let Angelina be always spotless and Edwin always true. Let virtue ever triumph over villainy in the last chapter; and let us assume that the marriage service answers all the questions of the Sphinx. ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... water gliding down over them; here a long path, stretching down slopes and flights of steps, and arched over all the way with trellises and creepers; here a huge boulder, hewn, just as it lay, into the shape of a gigantic head and face, with mild, sphinx-like eyes, as if some buried Titan were struggling to free himself; here a fountain, so artfully formed of pipes set in circles, each set shooting the water higher than those outside, as to form a solid pyramid of glittering spray; here a lawn, seen through a break in the woods below us, with ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... pearls unobtrusive but wonderful, his smoothly brushed dark hair, his immaculate finger nails, his skilfully tied tie all indicative of his close touch with western civilization. There was nothing, in fact, except his sphinx-like expression, the slightly unusual shape of his brilliant eyes, and his queer air of personal detachment, to denote the Oriental. He drank water, he ate sparingly, he preserved an almost unbroken silence, yet ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... still gleamed steadily upon the rigid figure before the desk, with the white, drawn face and the awful look of horror in its staring eyes. In an agony he tried to call, but no sound escaped the lips, set in a sphinx-like silence. ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... saw the watch below of stokers and trimmers bobbing out of the forecastle doors like rabbits from a warren and making their way aft over the rusty deck to the mustering of the port doctor. They were Chinese, with expressionless, Sphinx-like faces, and they walked in peculiar shambling fashion, dragging their feet as if the clumsy brogans were too heavy ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... attitude of the caterpillars, resembling that of the Sphinx, has given this name to the tribe. The moths of the Sphinx have the peculiar power of erecting their wings, but even these cannot make them meet over the back as butterflies do. Their chief ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... baffle even the shrewdest Jew. They never talk. Their faces are always as expressionless as a graven image. While contemplating the most cruel murder they never show the least change in expression, nor do their eyes show the faintest shadow of an emotion. They are stolid, surly and Sphinx-like always. Wolf's partner was like his race, and not even by the droop of an eyelid did he betray the slowly gathering storm of hate and rage within. He brooded over the hurt he felt when Wolf had wanted to buy his sloop, and believing the Jew meant to rob him of her, he grew suspicious ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... and soul. They also agreed on a mode of proceeding. It is more than a year and a day since then. They settled that when the new moon had just disappeared, she was to betake herself by night to the marble sphinx in the desert, to remove the sand from the entrance with her foot, and then to follow one of the long passages which led to the centre of the great pyramids, where one of the most mighty monarchs of ancient times, surrounded by splendour ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... of dainty dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry which peopled the walls with ancient personages and with strange birds flying in the midst of a fairy forest; and she thought of delicious dishes served on marvelous plates, and of the whispered gallantries which you listen to with a sphinx-like smile, while you are eating the pink flesh of a trout or the wings of ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... patient pale king lipp'd the deafen'd air, O'er Cromwell's face approaching doom grew large In stony horror. Then 'twas calm and fix'd. Destruction's god, from his broad, wizard throne, Might on the front of coming whirlwinds, as They near'd his footstool, look unchang'd as he did: Sphinx-like! But, when the deed was done, The flash that left the swift-descending axe In triumph fiercely shot into his eyes, A moment welling quick successive fires, Like sudden birth of stars 'tween wintry clouds: Then came a look of ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... believe his story, he had passed the greater part of his life. It was in vain that the magistrate sought for some indication of weakness on his features, which in their mobility were more enigmatical than the lineaments of the Sphinx. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... cunningly avoiding it, and ever escaping its net. And we believe that the Absolute purposely causes this to be, that in the end Man may be compelled to look for the Spirit within himself—the only place where he can come in touch with it. This, we think, is the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx—"Look Within for that which ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... instant—and Hook Nose gazing and gazing—all the fine fighting curses of David on the infidel, that he had muttered sourly under breath all day, blowing away from him like sand from the face of a sphinx. ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... chamber are white, divided by red and yellow zones into compartments, in which are depicted the symbols of the principal deities—as the eagle and globe of Jove, the peacock of Juno, the lance, helmet and shield of Minerva, the panther of Bacchus, a Sphinx, having near it the mystical chest and sistrum of Isis, who was the Venus Physica of the Pompeians, the caduceus and other emblems of Mercury, etc. There are ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... to rise and hurl God's flame world-wide, As Lincoln hurled it, setting free a race From Sphinx-shaped wrong—a beast with human face? That shattered, how our land rose glorified And, from the stars last laggard, soared, their guide! Oh, who can take Promethean Lincoln's place, To bring light where-so-ever he can trace A Human, with his ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... by a nice story. "Many centuries ago, there reigned over Thebes, Laius and Iocasta. Laius was one day killed on the road as he was airing himself in his chariot. Shortly after, a terrible plague broke out in Thebes, and the Sphinx ravaged all the neighborhood. The Sphinx gave out that the plague would cease and his ravages be ended, when this riddle was solved:—'What animal walks on four feet in the morning, two at noon day, and three in the evening.' ...
— The Girl's Cabinet of Instructive and Moral Stories • Uncle Philip
... above all, the new First Lord, who is resolved that he will really build us a fleet, purge the dock-yards, and save us half a million a year at the same time? Phineas Finn was bent on unriddling the Irish sphinx. Surely something might be done to prove to his susceptible countrymen that at the present moment no curse could be laid upon them so heavy as that of having to rule themselves apart from England; and he thought that this might be the easier, as he became ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... outlived its faculties, and its creative power had failed, it sank into the ocean of the past—a sphinx, with her riddle guessed,—and mediaeval civilization arose, founded upon Christianity and Germanism. There are times in the world's history when change seems to be abrupt, the old to be swept away and all things made new at a stroke, as if by the world-consuming fire of the old Saga. But, in reality, ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese |
