"Baffling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... formation of our Federal Union would doubtless have been effectively hindered, if not, indeed, altogether prevented. To the grand triumph the varied talents of Franklin, Adams, and Jay alike contributed. To the latter is due the credit of detecting and baffling the sinister designs of France; but without the tact of Franklin this probably could not have been accomplished without offending France in such wise as to spoil everything. It is, however, to the rare discernment ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... dignity of its purpose; it had set out to heal. St. Moritz, on the contrary, set out to avoid healing. It was haunted by crown princes and millionaire Jews, ladies with incredible ear-rings and priceless furs; sharp, little, baffling trans-atlantic children thronged its narrow streets, and passed away from it as casually as a company ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... imitation. Intimacy with Dyan and his mother had made that quite clear. Each must honestly will to understand the other; each holding fast the essence of individuality, while respecting in the other precisely those baffling qualities that strengthen their union and make it vital to the welfare of both. Instinctively he pictured them as man and woman; and on general lines the analogy seemed to hold good. He had yet to discover that analogies are often deceptive things; peculiarly so, in ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... eight o'clock, and he promised to take her home about nine. Besides, something in his manner was baffling her, and she wanted ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... was so stooped, that the young man's first thought was to wonder how tall he would really be if he could stand erect. His long, thin face, seamed and lined, was striking in its grotesque ugliness. From under his craggy, scowling brows, his sharp green-gray eyes peered with a curious expression of baffling, quizzing, half pathetic, and wholly cynical, interrogation. He was smoking a straight, much-used brier pipe. At his feet, lay ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... mistake. He beckoned to Big Bob Jeffries to try for goal. It was an oblique slant, and only a clever kicker could succeed, with that baffling wind against him. Big Bob looked once in the direction of the grandstand as if to draw inspiration. Most people believed he must know some girl, whose encouragement he sought; but Mollie and Lucy and Adelaide did not venture to take ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... A baffling element in viewing the art of Franck is his remoteness of spirit, the strangeness of his temper. He lacked the joyous spring that is a dominant note in the classic period. Nor on the other hand did his music breathe the pessimism and naturalism ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... Cautiously he began to ask what means I should have taken, supposing my jailers had locked me up, in order to set the dungeon doors open and effect my flight. I then, who wanted to display the sharpness of my own wits to so ingenious a man, replied that I was quite sure of being able to open the most baffling locks and bars, far more those of our prison, to do which would be the same to me as eating a bit of new cheese. In order then to gain my secret, the friar now made light of these assertions, averring that persons who have gained some credit by their abilities, are wont to talk ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... at night In the pale moonlight, 'Mid sunshine and storm on they sail'd; Baffling winds and still calms Caused our friends no alarms, For Faith ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... effect in class almost like the distinction of race. These women spoke a baffling language; their psychology was hard for me. If there was something hid up amongst them that ought to be uncovered by diplomacy and delicate indirection, it would take a smarter man than the one who stood in my ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... read the book. Never shall I forget the effect it produced on me. I seemed to be holding communion with Satan himself, robed as an angel of light, the transparent drapery revealing his hideous form but baffling my endeavors to rend it away. Such sophistry, such impudence of unsupported assertion, such distortion of truth and gilding of gross falsehood, I never met with. I tried in vain to find an answer to things that I saw and felt to be antiscriptural ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... father; the fiery beard, the derby hat with its dents, the chaps, the bicycle, and golf bag. In this scene she seemed to demand the actor's intentions toward the daughter, and again overwhelmed him with confusion, as Parmalee had been overwhelmed when she revealed her true self under the baffling disguise. The wager of a kiss was prettily paid. This much of the drama he knew. And there was an affecting final scene on ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... riding in the cutter's wake, carried on a desultory. Jerky conversation anent the many baffling aspects of the case in hand. Gully's name came up. His strange personality was discussed by them from every angle; impartially ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... even to the seamen; while the anguish of Monsieur de Fontanges, expressed with all the theatrical violence characteristic of his nation, was a source of continual reminiscence and regret. They had been four days on their voyage, making little progress with the light and baffling winds, when they were shrouded in one of those thick fogs which prevail in the latitude of the Cape de Verds, and which was rendered more disagreeable ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... it having been the scene of frequent British operations in previous wars. Owing to this, "the Maria, because of her distant situation (from which the Inflexible and Carleton had chased by signal) when the rebels were first discovered, and baffling winds, could not get into close action."[13] For the same reason the Inflexible could not support the Carleton. The Americans, in the aggregate distinctly inferior, were thus permitted a concentration of superior force upon part ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... the message. It was typewritten on absolutely plain paper and unsigned, further baffling his curiosity. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... mysterious event been straightened out from the tangled skein, when another, even more baffling, crowded on its ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... stream, and join itself to the above-mentioned mud-bank. The whole course of this most noble river is full of shoals, banks, mud, and sand-bars, and the navigation, which is difficult to those who know it well, is utterly baffling to the inexperienced. The fact is, that the two elements are so fused hereabouts, that there are hardly such things as earth or water proper; that which styles itself the former, is a fat, muddy, slimy ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... the vessel rounded the Land's End. After that it became baffling and fickle, and it was more than three weeks after the date of her sailing from Glasgow that the vessel entered the mouth of the Thames. By this time Ronald's boyish spirits had allayed all suspicion on the part of his guards. He joked with the sailors, ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... and which, even in the days of their greatest poverty, her father had never allowed her to part with. What strange hours it had often measured for her. Age-long hours of grief, weary days of illness and pain, times of eager expectation, times of sickening anxiety, times of mental conflict, of baffling questions and perplexities. How the hands seemed to creep on this afternoon, at times almost to ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... communion with the minds attending her. The "feel" of an audience,—that indescribable sense of the composite human soul waiting on the initiative of your own, the emotional currents interplaying along a medium so delicate that it takes the baffling torture of an obstruction to reveal its existence,—cannot be taught. But it can and does develop with use. And a realisation of the immense latent power of strong desire and resolution vitalises and disembarrasses ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... take down and dust the loose sheets of my coming book or polish the gilding of my former one. It is in my fidelity to these baffling hopes—hopes fed with so many withered (or at least torn and blotted) leaves—rather than in any resemblance authenticable by a looking-glass, that I show my identity with the old ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... previous course, and lay still in the black shadow of a spruce. It was evident that somebody was following his trail, and the pursuer, passing his hiding-place, followed it straight on. Geoffrey's was a curious character, and the very original cure for a disappointment in love, that of baffling a game watcher while his faithless mistress escaped, brought him relief; it left no time ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... thou too feel this strange divorce Of will from power? The spell of night and wind, Baffling desire and dream, dost thou too find? Not distance parts us, Dear; but this dim force, Intangible, holds us helpless, hushed with pain, Dumb with the dark, blind with the ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... very fact militates against him. Collingwood had no dramatic instinct, and in the great issues of life he never played to the gallery; he has not even attached to his memory, as has Nelson, the glamour of a baffling and arresting intrigue. And there remains eternally to his disfavour that he did not die at the psychological moment. Whether he was, as some recent researches might lead us to believe, a greater strategist than Nelson, as he ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... Kennedy, following our first intimacy of college days, I had learned that his success as a scientific detective was the result wholly of his thoroughness of method. To watch him had become a never-ending delight, even in the dull preliminary work of a case as baffling as this one. Mackay also seemed content just to enact the role ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... upon this. But such a man was not always to be had. It was needful to have always handy on the table of the Inquisition a good fool's guide, to reveal to simple and inexperienced judges the tricks of the Old Enemy, the best way of baffling him, the clever and deep-laid tactics employed with such happy effect by the great Sprenger in his campaigns on the Rhine. To that end the Malleus, which a man was required to carry in his pocket, was commonly printed in small 18mo, a form at that time scarce. It would not ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... feeling within me to touch the object. Now I need not tell you that what impelled me to these actions was the desire to prevent my mother's death; whenever I touched any particular object, it was with the view of baffling the evil chance, as you would call it—in this instance ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... chin met Mr Fledgeby's gaze with such a baffling hitch, that that agreeable gentleman was for some time at a loss how to resume his fascinating part in the dialogue. At length ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... White Chief of Katleean had crystallized into a certainty that he meant no good to herself or to her husband. That he desired her she had now no doubt, and while she knew in her heart that she was in no way responsible for this, she felt more keenly than ever that baffling sense of guilt that had attached itself to her since her first meeting with the man. It seemed some loathed feeling shared with the man and more gripping ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... visible life:—the lake in the arms of giant mountains: the far-spreading hazy plain; the hanging forests; the pointed crags; the gleam of the distant rose-shadowed snows that stretch for ever like an airy host, mystically clad, and baffling the eye as with the motions of a flight toward the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... ambiguous meaning. He had taken things for granted which literally were not there, and he found things there—except that he couldn't catch them—which he had not hitherto counted in or presumed to handle. This baffling effect, eminently in the line of the mystifying, so familiar to Nash, might have been the result of his whimsical volition, had it not appeared to our artist, after a few hours of the job, that his sitter was not the one who enjoyed it most. He was ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... with life. Round all the walls had sat priests, each in his place; and beside each kneeled a penitent, making ready for the joy of Bethlehem once again—wise and simple—Shepherds and Magi—yet all simple before the baffling and entrancing Mystery. There had been footsteps and voices there too—yet of men who were busy upon their Father's affairs in their Father's house, and not upon their own. They were going from ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... that Jane was handsome. She hadn't one straight feature, except her eyebrows which were too straight. She wasn't pretty, either. There was something about her too large and dominating for that. She had that baffling and provoking modern beauty which secures its effect by some queerness, some vividness of accent, and triumphs by some ugliness subdued. It was part of her queerness that she had the square brows, the wide mouth, the large, innocent muzzle of a deer, and a neck that carried her head ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... understanding that a nurse who knew the girl's real mother in New York, where Edna was born, appeared on the scene and gave us data upon which we could base some opinions of the outcome. The case in its entirety had proved very baffling to detectives because of the mass of contradictory lies told by both the girl ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... out, as cunning as you are," said the agent, piqued into an encounter of wits with this fellow, whose baffling of every question pleased ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... little English, so they got on capitally. The captain said he would not go back to Sierra Leone, but would land them at Fernando Po. The brig, they found, had touched, while they were in bed, at several places along the coast: and what with light winds and baffling winds her progress was ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... undercurrent of connections, as if Fate were dimly pointing all the while toward the invisible culmination. Suddenly there would be a new manifestation of Auber's faculty, and a new instance would be added, illusive, baffling, and yet forming each time new threads in the vague warp and woof of something that we called our theory. "There it is again," we would say to ourselves, as we sent the ghostly shuttle flying in our ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... first thought was of the sick man. I was afraid I should not recognise him, so baffling had been the light of the lantern; and found myself unable to decide if he were Scots, English, or Irish. He had certainly employed north-country words and elisions; but the accent and the pronunciation seemed unfamiliar and incongruous ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pique, doubt—that she could restore nothing to order. She knew Derby thought Giovanni wanted her money—instinctively her mouth hardened as she thought of it—but then—every one wanted it except Jack! And at once, with an unaccountable baffling ache, she was brought face to face with the fact that Jack, as it happened, did not want ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... of the night, the surviving brother tells the king's daughter, whom her father had employed to detect him, the story of his exploits in baffling the guards and carrying off the body of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... provocation, idealist to the extent of preferring a simple country life to all the glamour of London, a man seemingly endowed with all the ambitions of the most sober and unimaginative middle class—truly he presents strange and baffling contrasts. ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... of late years in protracting and interrupting negotiations. Hence the cunning measure of appointing as ambassador some political pettifogger skilled in delays, sophisms, and misapprehensions, and dexterous in the art of baffling argument; or some blundering statesman, whose errors and misconstructions may be a plea for refusing to ratify his engagements. And hence, too, that most notable expedient, so popular with our government, of sending out a brace of ambassadors, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... and solitude, Scorn and despair,—these are mine empire. More glorious far than that which thou surveyest From thine unenvied throne, O, Mighty God! Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb, Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life. Ah me! alas, ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... hours she sat in the witness chair and coolly swore his life away, baffling with keenest wit at every turn the shrewd lawyer who baited, harassed and cross-questioned her ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... the three pairs of eyes drilling him as he answered: "It seems to me, sir, that—disregarding such baffling obstacles to independence as their absolute defenselessness as a nation, the profound ignorance of the masses, lack of a common tongue, and all that,—I think that in view of the fact that under ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... a withering look, turned and walked away, leaving him to ponder the baffling contrarieties of ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... all day long, his hands red and swollen with the cold, for the winter, as I have before remarked, was unusually severe. For many days I saw him working on a Descent from the Cross by Tintoretto—a bold attempt, for Tintoretto's colors are as baffling as those of the great Venetian master himself. This copy had received very general praise, and one day I took a Lucca friend, a dilettante, to see it. Mr. G—— brought the canvas out in the hall, that we might see it outside of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... of a most extraordinary continuation of calms, baffling winds, and neap tides, the enemy's ships never got within our bar till the 27th of June, and on the following morn, the memorable 28th, they weighed anchor on the young flood, and before a fine breeze, with top gallant sails, royals, and ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... stood, a straggling shrub, the only one for rods, hung over the brink. I silently sank to a seat behind it, lest I disturb the singer, and remained without movement. The baffling carol went on for some seconds, and for the only time in my life I wished I could put a spell upon brook-babble, that I might ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... and cynical—his worn face twisted into a mocking smile; his keen, baffling eyes, from under their scowling brows, seeing all, understanding all. Aaron King, weary with the work of the past days, ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... to damaging admissions. He was slow to resort to harder modes of attack, of which he was at the same time fully capable. Every facility was offered to a candid and confiding witness, and there was still greater satisfaction in baffling the vigilance of an adversary who was on his guard against an attack from a different quarter. A hostile witness, after an encounter with Mr. Hope-Scott, sometimes found that his answers formed a plausible ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... briefly to the third of the great triad. Aristotle is, of course, the most systematic thinker of the three: and it is just for that very reason that the two elements already noted in Greek political thought, the local and ephemeral and the universal, are most closely interwoven and most baffling to disentangle. Tutor of Alexander though he was, his mind is incapable of stepping outside the city-state framework. His Ethics is half a treatise on human nature, half a book, akin to the Characters ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... invariably the same essence from which so many different products borrow either their obtrusive odour or their delicate perfume? The greatest of thinkers, from Aristotle downwards, have tackled this little problem, which has a knack of baffling every effort, of slipping away and escaping only to bob up again, a pert challenge flung at philosophic speculation. Our excuse for attacking the problem in our turn must lie in the fact that we shall not aim at ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... enchanted things of earth and air, this preciousness has been drawn. From the south wind that breathed a century and a half over the green wheat; from the perfume of the growing grasses waving over heavy-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the green finches, baffling the bee; from rose-lined hedge, woodbine, and cornflower, azure blue, where yellowing wheat stalks crowd up under the shadow of green firs. All the devious brooklets' sweetness where the iris stays the sunlight; all the wild woods hold of beauty; all the broad hills of thyme ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... we study the above definitions, the more baffling they become. Try as I may, I have not been able to fit them, not only to the facts of my own experience, which may not be strange, but I cannot reconcile them even to each other. There seem to me inherent ambiguities ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... well that we were unaware of their baffling fears, when the vigorous efforts incited by the memorial presented by Reed to Commodore Stockton, the military Governor of California, were likewise frustrated by ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... the boy who with his pal Scotty lives on an island called Spindrift and takes part in so many thrilling adventures and baffling mysteries involving science and electronics. You can share every one of these adventures in the pages of Rick's books. They are available at your book ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Buns, once fresh and tender, become hard and misanthropic in its refreshment rooms, and look as if they had seen the littleness of existence and were disillusioned. But there the station stands, year after year, wrapped in a discreet gloom, always the same, always baffling and inscrutable. Not even the porters understand it. "I couldn't say, sir," is the civil but unsatisfying reply with which research is met. Now and then one, more gifted than his colleagues, will inform the traveler that his train ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... now hanging over the inland sea, that lay fully four thousand feet below, its further shore hidden in what seemed to be a cloud, though it might prove to be a rising fog, fated to engulf both pursuing and pursued air craft in its baffling folds, and turn the comedy of the race into ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... I was able to understand, he has a very important case on hand—a sort of romance in high life; and I think he wants your assistance to unravel it; it seems to be baffling him." ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... legal right to inspect the printer's books. But this is valueless. The printer would cook his books to please the publisher. You can have no conception of the villany done under all these sharing agreements. But forewarned forearmed. Think of some way of baffling this invariable fraud. Ask a knowing printer some way. Do anything but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... Corson, in his chapter on "Browning's Obscurity," has done his best to smooth the path of the reader by explaining, and so removing from his way, those grammatical obstructions, habits of word inversion and baffling ellipses that stand as a lion in the path to so many of the poet's untried readers. This chapter is exceedingly well wrought out, and, once carefully studied, with the illustrations given, can hardly fail ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... like a goddess's. The poet Muscari drew a deep breath as if he were drinking something, as indeed he was. He was drinking the Classic; which his fathers made. Ezza studied her with a gaze equally intense and far more baffling. ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... The baffling part of the new schoolmate was that her powers of acting were so highly developed that it was impossible to tell whether she was serious or playing a part. She "took in" her teasers times out of number, and in fairness ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... and, though night had come, the battle-stained soldiers, hungry and exhausted, were marched on. The Sixth Corps encamped at 10 P.M. near Rice's Station, about three miles from the battle- field. Other corps on different lines were kept to their work, and their operations also contributed towards baffling Lee's ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... Shirley (there's a dear fellow) and send it soon. We sadly want books, and this will be readable again and again, and pay itself. Tell Emma I grieve for the poor self-punishing self-baffling Lady; with all our hearts we grieve for the pain and vexation she has encounterd; but we do not swerve a pin's-thought from the propriety of your measures. God comfort her, and there's an end of a painful necessity. But I am glad she ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... no mind In that graceful form enshrined? Can the love that filled those eyes With most eloquent replies, When the glossy head close pressing, Grateful met your hand's caressing; Can the mute intelligence, Baffling oft our human sense With strange wisdom, buried be "Under the wild-cherry tree?" Are these elements that spring In a daisy's blossoming, Or in long dark grasses wave Plume-like o'er your favorite's grave? Can they live in us, and fade In all ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... sailed by Salisbury spire, calculating that a few minutes' run, at two or three miles a minute, would bring them to their destination on the outskirts of Portsmouth. But a few miles south the baffling mist had made its appearance, and Smith found himself bereft of landmarks, and compelled to tack to and fro in utter uncertainty of his course. He was as much at a loss as if he were navigating a vessel in a sea-fog. To sail through ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... and at its dark depths and sinister shadows I was frightened, and more than frightened. Conflicting and confusing emotions, a sense of outrage and revolt, were making me first hot and then cold, and distrust and suspicion and baffling helplessness were enveloping me beyond resistance. The happy ignorance and unconcern and indifference of my girlhood, my young womanhood, were vanishing before cruel and compelling verities, and that which, because of its ugliness, its offensiveness, its repulsiveness, ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher
... Ibsen in which the psychological interest is predominant, and in which there is no attempt to disguise the fact. Nothing that has since been written about this drama, the very perfection of which is baffling to criticism, has improved upon the impression which Georg Brandes received from it when he first read it forty years ago. The passage is classic, and deserves to be cited, if only as perhaps the very earliest instance in which the genius of Ibsen was rewarded by the analysis of a great critic. ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... marriage, if the old relation remains the same, it is because she is a Carmen at heart. She is alluring, tempting, cajoling and scorning in the same breath; at once tender and commanding, inspiring both love and fear, baffling and eluding even while ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... things which we call reality. It is of the inspired and ideal kind, and seems to have been conceived and executed in a similar state of feeling to that which produced among the ancients those perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the baffling models of succeeding generations. There is a unity and a perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. The central figure, St. Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the painter's ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... once, long ago, when I was on board a sailing ship, that we had baffling winds as we tried to run up the coast; and morning after morning for a week we used to come up on deck, and there were the same windmill, and the same church-tower that we had seen last night, and the night before and the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... night, and we had a succession of rain and baffling winds for six or seven days, during which I had no opportunity of hearing the remainder of the boatswain's history. We joined the fleet off Toulon, closed the admiral's ship, and the captain went on board to pay his respects. When he returned, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... document where she had left off in her reading. But often she laid the book absent-mindedly in her lap to listen with an ear turned toward the bed, and often, too, she looked out into the spreading softness of golden-green laced through by dove-gray and sepia-brown branches on which played baffling reflexes of soft ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... a day of calms and baffling airs, and a sickening swell rolled in from the south that made of the brigantine a staggering, squealing platform, hammering all the Viking spirit out of Little for a while and forcing him to run to cover like a very greenhorn. Barry visited him in his cabin from time to ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... constantly floating through her mind. If he had only been more precise! She wanted to know what to do,—here, now. He had said: "Wait! It will all be clear. It makes little difference what it is. You will find the path." With her eager temperament that was all baffling. Margaret had found her path,—had seen her Vision, and it had brought to her peace. Her restless, bitter nature had been wonderfully changed into something exquisitely calm and poised, so that her very presence, silent in the room, could ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... Malatesta and his nephew Galeotto prisoners in 1416. Splendid as it is, something has been lost to us by restoration. Paola Uccello, the friend of Donatello and of Brunellesco, was all his life devoted to the study of perspective. Many marvellous drawings in which he traced that baffling vista, of which he was wont to exclaim when, labouring far into the night, his wife poor soul, would entreat him to take rest and sleep: "Ah, what a delightful thing is this perspective." And then, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... the invisible God, Repository of All Virtues, and visible man, apparently possessed of none, is often baffling! But ingenuity is equal to the maze. Inner research soon exposes a unity in all human minds-the stalwart kinship of selfish motive. In one sense at least, the brotherhood of man stands revealed. An aghast humility follows this leveling discovery. It ripens into compassion for one's fellows, blind ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... struggles of callous selfishness were made all the more desperate by the bewildering confusion of the political situation. The most difficult problem had been the attitude of Monk, and that was all the more baffling from the fact that Monk had no clear discernment of his own line of policy, and with all his accidental command of the situation, was too obtuse to choose his own course and follow it consistently. The Presbyterians were ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... saw much of Arthur Vibert's wife, and found himself a fool in her strong grasp. The girl had such baffling contrasts of character, such slippery moods, such abundant fantasy that the young man—volatility itself—lost his footing, his fine sense of honor and made love to this sphinx of the ink-pot, was mocked and flouted but never entirely driven from her presence. More than ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, the essence of virtue, and the essence of life, which we call Spontaneity ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Government was impressed that it must have consideration for the demands of libertines, and consideration for Chinese "custom." Neither of these arguments has any worth when applied to the slave conditions of California, and therefore the most serious, baffling obstacles to a removal of the evil are out of the way. Both pretexts, we maintain, were false. There is no necessity for furnishing vice to libertines; there was no lawful Chinese custom to be opposed in opposing brothel slavery. But even if these ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... soul went during that swoon I cannot tell. Whatever she saw, or wherever she travelled in her trance on that strange night she kept her own secret; never whispering a word to Memory, and baffling imagination by an indissoluble silence. She may have gone upward, and come in sight of her eternal home, hoping for leave to rest now, and deeming that her painful union with matter was at last dissolved. While she so deemed, an angel may have warned her away from heaven's threshold, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... contention in its weakest place and carry it deeper than Spencer did. But in fact, the exact limits he should assign to religious beliefs as an evolutionary function were still indeterminate in his system. He, like all cosmic philosophers, found this the most baffling and elusive of all his problems. Meantime, here in this little country church, he was to witness the supreme rite of the supreme religious belief. There was some compensation for his enforced attendance in that thought. He looked about him with genuine and candid interest. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... was the first naturalist who detected the true nature of the Crinoids, and placed them where they belong in the classification of the Animal Kingdom. They had been observed before, and long and laborious investigations had been undertaken upon them, but they were especially baffling to the student, because they were known only in the fossil condition from incomplete specimens; and though they still have their representatives among the type of Echinoderms as it exists at present, yet, partly owing to the rarity of the living ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... had two days of this, passing a good many vessels; both steam and sail, that were getting all they could out of what was baffling us; then there was a shift of wind; it fell light, everything turned dry, and we went along with all cloths showing, sailing about five knots—not more, and I don't think less. When the change of weather came Mr. Robinson looked more cheerful. Seemed happier, he did, ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... provided the penalty of reduction of representation in Congress for states depriving Negroes of the ballot, they saw themselves written out of the Constitution by the words, "male inhabitants" and "male citizens," used to define legal voters. It was baffling to be kept from their goal by a single word in a provision which at best was the unsatisfactory compromise arrived at by radical and conservative Republicans and which sincere abolitionists felt was unfair to the Negro. That it was unfair to women, ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... silver-buttoned functionaries at the gates. Within rose two Wonder Houses gorgeous with dome and pinnacle, bewildering with gold and snow, displaying before the aching sight the long cool stretch of verandahs, and offering the baffling glimpse of vast interiors whence floated the dim sound of music and laughter; and bright, happy beings, in wondrous raiment, wandered in and out unchallenged, unconcerned, as if the Wonder Houses ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... voyage of it and much of baffling gales from the south, and drove north into the main; but they made Iceland, and were by then come to the north off Longness when they found where they were: so little space there was betwixt them that they spake together; and Asmund ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... distress you too much," the detective apologized grimly, "if I ask you a few questions. Fact is, I must. I'm investigating the circumstances surrounding what may turn out to be a baffling crime, and, irrespective of your personal wishes, Mr. Sloane, I can't let go of it. This ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... aid in baffling the malignant, Who, with unholy art, conspire to see Our ease dis-eased, our dignity indignant, We do Thee homage on the bended knee. And I would add a word of common gratitude To those thy coadjutors, ao and lao,[3] Who take, with Thee, th' uncompromising attitude From ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... these, Sir—I am still in the domain of practice and administration—I should put his singular, perhaps an unrivalled, tact in the management of men, and a judgment of intuitive shrewdness as to the best outlet from perplexed and often baffling situations. He had, in its highest and best development, the genius of common sense. These rare gifts of practical efficiency were, during the whole of his Kingship, yoked to the service of a great ideal. He was animated every ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... country place is located, however, there are certain problems confronting the city dweller who takes to rural life. They are the more baffling because they are not problems at all to his country-bred neighbors. The latter assume that any adult with a grain of common sense must know all about such trifles as rotten sills, damp cellars, hornets that ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... "odourless disinfectant" that seemed to have its headquarters near by. In one place some bales of dried and withered roots were being loaded on a truck: they gave off a faint savour, which was familiar but baffling. On inquiry, these were sarsaparilla. Endymion was pleased with a sign on a doorway: "Crude drugs and spices and essential oils." This, he said, was ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... of the book is based on lectures, often of an informal nature, in the Appreciation Course at Harvard University and lays no claim to original research. The difficulty in establishing points of approach makes it far more baffling to speak or write about music than about the other arts. Music is sufficient unto itself. Endowed with the insight of a Ruskin or a Pater, one may say something worth while about painting. But in music the line between mere statistical analysis and sentimental rhapsody must be drawn with exceeding ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... by the pursuit of his wily antagonist. Marion remained in perfect mastery over the whole territory which he had been wont to overrun, with a strength somewhat increased by the fact that he had succeeded in baffling and eluding the attempts of one who had hitherto been successful in all his enterprises. From this moment the career of Tarleton ceased to be fortunate. His failure to capture Marion was the first in a long train of disappointments and disasters, some of which were also attended by the ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... to Bellair; keeping an eye upon the proceedings of Mr. Arthur; finding out what game that man and woman are playing there; and baffling ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... only is there in men this baffling duality of principle, but there is something else in us which ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... of course. But you know how these things go." Dr. Foxmore was beginning to feel uncomfortable. The lofty air of this struggling, as yet unrecognized, country girl was both baffling and exasperating. "Oh, come, Miss Lane," he continued, making a desperate effort to recover his patronizing tone, "you know just what we all ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... sea and ominous, and it was hard for Count Victor, in that welter of midnight voices, to hear the call of an owl, yet it came to him by and by, as he expected, with its repetition. And then the flageolet, with its familiar and baffling melody, floating on a current of the wind that piped about the castle vents and sobbed upon the stairs. He opened his door, looked into the depths that fell with mouldering steps into the basement and upwards to the flight where the Baron had been going. ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... to the honor of Shakspeare, that he should have been able to discern the true coloring of this most original character, under the smoke and tarnish of antiquity. It is no less to the honor of the great triumvir, that a strength of coloring should survive in his character, capable of baffling the wrongs and ravages of time. Neither is it to be thought strange that a character should have been misunderstood and falsely appreciated for nearly two thousand years. It happens not uncommonly, especially amongst an unimaginative people like the Romans, that the characters ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... friends was relieved many days sooner than it would otherwise have been by the fact of our having spoken the German steamer 'Sakhara,' in the Magellan Straits, Oct. 13, four days after we were supposed to have gone to the bottom.) The weather continues fine, and we have the same light baffling winds. We hoped, when we started, to average at least 200 miles a day, but now we have been a week at sea, and have only made good a little more than 700 miles altogether, though we have sailed over 800 miles through the water. It is, however, wonderful, in the opinion ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... seconds M. Desmalions watched that resolute face, those intelligent eyes, at once innocent and satirical, grave and smiling, eyes through which you could certainly not penetrate their owner's baffling individuality, but which nevertheless looked at you with an expression of absolute frankness and sincerity. Then he called ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... said, "but not so complete as to look absolutely insoluble. I have, as you may be aware, made a study of criminology, and in my researches, which have included criminality, have come across incidents which to the smartest detective brains were at the outset quite as baffling. Clement's tragic end is a great blow to me, and I am not going quietly to accept the easy, obvious conclusion of suicide. I knew and appreciated my brother better than that. I mean to probe ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... up once more the idea of keeping a school. If, by this means, they three could live together, and maintain themselves, all might go well. They would have some time of their own, in which to try again and yet again at that literary career, which, in spite of all baffling difficulties, was never quite set aside as an ultimate object; but far the strongest motive with Charlotte was the conviction that Anne's health was so delicate that it required a degree of tending which none but her sister could give. Thus she wrote ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... adventure occurred, and not of a kind pleasant to recall, even on this short voyage. The passage to Dublin from the Head is about sixty miles, I believe; yet, from baffling winds, it cost us upwards of thirty hours. On the second day, going upon deck, we found that our only fellow-passenger of note was a woman of rank, celebrated for her beauty; and not undeservedly, for a lovely creature she was. The body of her travelling coach had been, as usual, unslung from the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... street-loungers who respectfully hastened to make way for her passage. It was the high character that radiated from her, scorning the conventionalities that conspire to belittle her sex, determined to be free and not afraid of being a pioneer in baffling the barbarism of her native laws. A singular story hers, that demands to be told in full, since it is full of inspiration to ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... held no friendship. For by her skin patterns he knew her for the one who had led that triumvir who had sent him into the cavern of the mist. And with her was the younger witch he had trapped on the night that all this baffling action had begun. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... entreat you, friends, below! The angry storm begins to blow, For the weather changes with the moon. All this morning, until noon, We had baffling winds, and sudden flaws Struck the sea with their cat's-paws. Only a little hour ago I was whistling to Saint Antonio For a capful of wind to fill our sail, And instead of a breeze he has sent a gale. Last night I saw St. Elmo's stars, With their glimmering lanterns, all at ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... And not only so, but I question whether this probability has been even seriously impaired by such advance, seeing that although this advance has revealed a speculative raison d'etre of the mechanical precision of nature, it has at the same time shown the baffling complexity of nature; and therefore, in view of what has just been said, leaves the balance of probability concerning the existence of a God very much where it always was. For stay awhile to contemplate this astounding ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... vehement—instructed him in much that he had desired to learn. It was made clear to him that a long combat of wills and desires had been in progress between the crafty courtesan and the half wily and the half brutal soldier, with a baffling of Heliodora's devices which would never have come to his knowledge but for this outbreak of rage. How far the woman had gone in her lures, whether she had played her last stake, he could not even now determine; but he suspected that only ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... and also very few domestic or literate serfs, and in the lives of the peasantry of those parts the mysterious undercurrents in the life of the Russian people, the causes and meaning of which are so baffling to contemporaries, were more clearly and strongly noticeable than among others. One instance, which had occurred some twenty years before, was a movement among the peasants to emigrate to some unknown "warm rivers." Hundreds of peasants, among them the Bogucharovo folk, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... wicket. Blueskin therefore had nothing to stop him. Dashing through the open door, he crossed the Old Bailey, plunged into a narrow court on the opposite side of the way, and was out of sight in a minute, baffling ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... himself—there was no one else for him to talk to—"why is it that when a man is sure of his meals every day he has endless invitations to dine out, but that when those events are matters of uncertainty he gets not a bidding to the feast?" This question, not a new one, baffling in its mystery and chilling to the marrow, George Henry classed with another he had heard somewhere: "Who is more happy: the hungry man who can get nothing to eat, or the rich man with an overladen table who can eat nothing?" The two problems ran together in his mind, like a couple of hounds in ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... obvious leading question. Ruth answered in all apparent innocence and sincerity, yet with an utterly different turn of the conversation from what had been expected, and with an indifference that was hopelessly baffling unless the young ambassador asked a point blank question, which she hardly dared to do of Ruth Macdonald without more encouragement. And so at last a long two hours dragged thus away, and finally Dottie Wetherill at ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... Bascomb rushed in, but Merriwell was light as a feather on his feet, and he danced nimbly about, tapping the other fellow now here, now there, smiling sweetly all the while, and showing a skill that was very baffling to Bascomb. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... by the baffling fact that important traits of morphology are frequently found distributed among widely differing languages within a large area, so widely differing, indeed, that it is customary to consider them genetically unrelated. Sometimes we may suspect that the resemblance is ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... With speed, thought baffling, unabating, Earth's splendour whirls in circling flight; Its Eden-brightness alternating With solemn, awe-inspiring night; Ocean's broad waves in wild commotion, Against the rocks' deep base are hurled; ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... sole purpose of her coming. Nor did she so much as ask permission thus to violate the rules of professional courtesy. This sketching from a finished picture she found vastly easier than drawing from the object itself, a task which always proves elusive and baffling to the beginner. Manasseh took his stand behind her as she worked, but his eyes were not wholly occupied in ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... Indians, his cross-examination had borne scant results. The best of his questions but involved him in a maze of baffling surmises. Gradually his anger had mounted, until now the Indian at the door knew by the wax-like appearance of the more prominent places on his deeply carved countenance that he had nearly reached the point ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... when this trial is over than will suit his book." It did not occur to Augustus Burlingame that in Crozier, who knew why he had fled the house of the showy but virtuous Mrs. Tynan, he might find a witness of a mental and moral calibre with baffling qualities and some ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... or Laurence Varney? Baffling mystery surrounding prominent men, one of whom now hiding here. Probable scandal, one ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... hair, and whose somewhat massive majesty melted, at any contact, into the graciousness of some incomprehensible tongue, moved away to make room for the vague gentleman, after benevolent greetings to him which embodied, as he believed, in baffling accents, some recognition of his face from a couple of Sundays before. Then he had remarked—making the most of the advantage of his years—that it frightened him quite enough to find himself dedicated to the entertainment of a little foreign girl. There were ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the hopes of men are tossed as they cleave the waves of baffling falsity: and a sure token of what shall come to pass hath never any man on the earth received from God: the divinations of ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... slipped out two cigars, offered one to his officer, after a brief but baffling examination to discover which was the worse, and lit ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... tying his cravat, as these thoughts ran through his tortured mind. Suddenly his hands dropped at his sides and he strained his eyes at the reflection that met him. First it was the color of the eyes that held and amazed him; then an expression at once familiar and baffling. Was his own face, for the first time in his life, becoming known to him? Or was the face of that girl of the dunes crowding all other faces from his vision? Once, when first Janet's beauty had stirred him, he had noticed her perfect ears set close to her head. The ears were shell shaped and ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... their hair was ornamented with shells and beads. After they left the ship, Captain Marshall made sail, being desirous to make the westward part of the islands if possible before the night came on; but in this he was disappointed, as the wind grew light and baffling. Several large canoes now put off from the shore with eight or ten men in each; it already has been observed that the Charlotte, Captain Gilbert, was in company with the Scarborough; at this time she was some distance ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... not long left to conjectures. A light before their eyes throws light upon the enigma that has been baffling their brains. There is a break in the timber, where the moonbeams fall free ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... thought was of the sick man. I was afraid I should not recognise him, baffling had been the light of the lantern; and found myself unable to decide if he were Scots, English, or Irish. He had certainly employed north-country words and elisions; but the accent and the pronunciation seemed unfamiliar ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her into her coffin while Constance and her mother had nothing by which to remember her, no tangible souvenir of her beauty. Then she fought for the scissors. She clutched at some one—always through those baffling veils—who was putting her into the bath by the bedside, and fought frantically. It appeared to her that this some one was the rather stout woman who had supped at Sylvain's with the quarrelsome Englishman, four years ago. She could not rid herself of this singular conceit, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... yet unseen, beaming across the ages, Brimful of fun And wit and wisdom, baffling all the sages ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... principally directed. Being intimately acquainted with the ground, he, together with a few friends, dashed into the ravine which the Indians had occupied, but which most of them had now left to join in the pursuit. After sustaining one or two heavy fires, and baffling one or two small parties who pursued him for a short distance, he crossed the river below the ford by swimming, and, entering the wood at a point where there was no pursuit, returned by a circuitous route to Bryant's ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... savage a mighty interesting and companionable person, and I often thanked the kind fate that directed the crossing of our paths. From her I learned much of Caspak, but there still remained the mystery that had proved so baffling to Bowen Tyler—the total absence of young among the ape, the semihuman and the human races with which both he and I had come in contact upon opposite shores of the inland sea. Ajor tried to explain the matter to me, though it was ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The hatch above remained open, but carefully guarded night and day, while we were permitted on deck for air and exercise only in squads of ten, two hours out of every twenty-four. This alone served to break the dread monotony of the voyage, for while we almost constantly encountered baffling head winds, no other storm of any magnitude obstructed our passage. The brig carried heavy canvas, and the skipper loaded her with all she could bear, but at that she was a slow sailor, dipping so deeply ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... ceremony," purred Marjorie, highly delighted with the new venture. "And of course we'll arrange a password and signals, and I don't see why we shouldn't have a cryptogram, and write each other notes. It would be ever so baffling for the rest to find letters lying about that they couldn't read. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... said Old Sharon; "I give you an opinion for your guinea; but, mind this, it's an opinion founded on hearsay—and you know as a lawyer what that is worth. Venture your ten pounds—in plain English, pay me for my time and trouble in a baffling and difficult case—and I'll give you an opinion ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... manoeuvres. Ere long it seemed hard to decide whether she meant to come in or no—what she wanted, or what she was about. The wind, which had breezed up a little during the night, was now extremely light and baffling, which the more increased the apparent uncertainty of her movements. Surmising, at last, that it might be a ship in distress, Captain Delano ordered his whale-boat to be dropped, and, much to the wary opposition of his mate, prepared ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... the face of this baffling mood, which he felt but could not understand, the old man ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... on her face was that delicious wary look he loved so well, baffling and baffled, disturbing because disturbed, as when a little wind ruffles at evening a willow, exposing to the sky in spite of protest the silvery undersides ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant |
