"Enigmatical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... more direct imitation in the "Six Hundred," falling, the first somewhat, and the last considerably, short of it. The sweep of the metre, the martial glow of the sentiment, and the skill with which the names are wrought into the verse, are altogether beyond praise. Drayton never, unless the enigmatical sonnet to Idea (see ante) be really his, rose to such concentration of matter and such elaborate yet unforced perfection of manner as here, yet his great qualities are perceptible all over his work. The enormous Polyolbion, written in a metre the least suitable ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... said Lesley's father, with a slight enigmatical smile. "Especially with the Earl of Courtleroy. Hallo! there's the dinner bell. We have wasted all our time talking up ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... this individual sense. But it allows that something more powerful, though more indefinite, is inherited,—the sum of ancestral memories incalculable,—the sum of countless billions of trillions of experiences. Thus can it interpret our most enigmatical sensations,—our conflicting impulses,-our strangest intuitions; all those seemingly irrational attractions or repulsions,—all those vague sadnesses or joys, never to be accounted for by individual ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... misplaced jocularity must be accountable for an enigmatical inscription at St. Andrew's, Worcester, on the tomb of a man who died in ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... long silence he spoke again to ask his wife to get him a book from his bedroom, which he had been reading that morning, to find in it many sweet comforting things. She had been seated at some distance from him, apparently paying no attention to his enigmatical words, but now quickly put down her work and got the book for him ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... "What are you doing? sit still." On Sundays, after mass, he was allowed to play, that is to say, he was given a thick book, a mysterious book, the work of a certain Maimovitch-Ambodik, entitled "Symbols and Emblems." This book was a medley of about a thousand mostly very enigmatical pictures, and as many enigmatical interpretations of them in five languages. Cupid—naked and very puffy in the body—played a leading part in these illustrations. In one of them, under the heading, "Saffron and the Rainbow," the interpretation ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... agreement for example about a certain impresario, Maxfield Ware, who created a sensation among the company and staff by turning up ostentatiously unaccounted for from New York and looking intensely enigmatical whenever any one asked him any questions. He was a sufficiently well-known figure in that world for surmises to spring up like round-eyed ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the discovery of the philosopher's stone, I now inquired about the sublime alkahest or universal solvent, and whether he had succeeded in deciphering the enigmatical descriptions of the ancient writers on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... to the course of this conversation, which had sufficiently explained to her whatever was enigmatical in the first appearance of the bailiffs. The painful and incredible reality that was thus presented effectually dissipated the illusions of frenzy to which she had just been a prey. "My dear Madam," said she to Mrs. Hammond, "do not harass yourself with useless efforts. I am very sorry ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... are obvious similes to use concerning a powerful and warlike people. These two similes are, therefore, not sufficient by themselves to prove that the tribal standards are being referred to. But the otherwise enigmatical verse— ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... tried that game last week. He's in the horspital now." This was portentous and enigmatical. The guard continued: "If a party gets electrocuted, it's no concern of the employees on the line. It lies between such parties and the Company. I shouldn't myself, if I was you! But it's between you and the Company. I wash ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... answer and under the steadiness of her silent gaze, his momentary reassurance wilted. He had foreseen the possibility of encountering a woman turned Valkyrie, but was unaccoutred to face this enigmatical calm. ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... we all were, by reason of the rebellion we had been guilty of against his majesty the king. Whereupon the child did only laugh, and told me, "Here she would abide until the time came." And with this enigmatical expression I was fain to be content; for she would vouchsafe me no other. And, corroborative of all which, she said, she relied on the assurances made unto her to that effect by Sir Walter Ouseley, one of the young gentlemen which ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... then about six miles from the Chimneys, not far from that part of the downs in which the engineer had been found after his enigmatical preservation. They halted at this place and prepared for breakfast, for it was half-past eleven. Herbert went for some fresh water from a stream which ran near, and brought it back in a jug, which ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... is rather enigmatical to the average member, who would, ordinarily, look upon the author as a dolt or pretender. They do not dare to do either in the case of Mr. Knox; therefore, the conclusion that he is indifferent. Never have the men associated ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... sternly assert themselves contemporaneously and in contrast with the careless and free-handed tendencies of the season by the emission of Christmas books—a kind of literary assignats, representing to the emitter expunged debts, to the receiver an investment of enigmatical value. For the most part bearing the stamp of their origin in the vacuity of the writer's exchequer rather than in the fulness of his genius, they suggest by their feeble flavor the rinsings of a void brain after the more ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... see nothing but the line of burnished copper stretching across his path and flashing the light back in his eyes. Behind this, a moment later, he made out the dark and gloomy mass of the black safe. Then he looked deeper, with what was still again a flutter of enigmatical fear about his heart, for that twin and ghostlike glow which had filled ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... Mr Brooke, who was puzzled by this last rather enigmatical speech. "Of course we have watchful eyes in our boat, but I don't see anything ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... negro of the purest, blackest type, with the eyes of a white man, of a man from the North, pale, cold, clear, blue eyes, and his surprise increased, when, after a few words of excuse for his untimely visit, he added, with an enigmatical smile: ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... of idiosyncrasies and peculiarities, are all on the woman's side. A man has to stand much. There are times when a woman may be an angel, but others when she behaves as if her ancestry was in a different direction. No wizard works such enigmatical changes as that master of human destinies called Love. Lives are glorified or ruined by it, and no man or woman experiences it who is not more or less, in the process of experiencing, some sort of a fool. ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... remains to some extent enigmatical, appeared about this time and unquestionably had some intercourse with Jesus. About the year 28 of our era there spread through the whole of Palestine the reputation of a certain John, a young ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... sordid tragedy came out in broken snatches, to the last particle. For once in her life Evelyn Desmond spoke the unvarnished truth, adorning nothing, extenuating nothing; and Honour listened in an enigmatical silence—a silence which held even after the last word had been spoken. Evelyn ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... moment Varney laid down the paper, but Varney, staring absently out of the porthole, did not listen. This, then, was the meaning of the pale young editor's enigmatical remark last night. Here was no idle malice. Diabolically resourceful and without shame, young Mr. Smith had circulated this lie to discredit reform and drive off its new champion. And this was the way that he, Varney, had kept the coming of ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... to the consideration of a far more enigmatical class of agglomerated matter — the smallest of all asteroids, to which we apply the name 'arolites', or 'meteoric stones',* when they reach our atmosphere ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... contained in a little tract which has fallen in our way, containing "extracts from a sermon addressed to the students in the United Presbyterian Theological Seminary of Xenia, Ohio, by Rev. William Davidson." It begins in this somewhat enigmatical way:— ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... situation may be very briefly told; I had inquired into many matters, in order that I might become wise, and I had read and pondered over the words of the wise, so called, till I had made myself master of the sum of human wisdom; namely, that everything is enigmatical and that man is an enigma to himself; thence the cry of 'What is truth?' I had ceased to believe in the truth of that in which I had hitherto trusted, and yet could find nothing in which I could put any fixed or deliberate belief—I was, indeed, in a labyrinth! In what did I not doubt? With ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... period came when he rejoiced in an inveterate enemy's discomfiture. It is fanciful to affirm that he would have been pleased to assist in turning aside the final shock of ruin. His sentiments towards Essex at the end, unhappily, are too certain for the precise meaning of his enigmatical undated letter to Cecil, discovered among the Hatfield papers, to be of much consequence. Of its authenticity there is no real doubt, though Mr. Charles Kingsley, whose enthusiasm for Ralegh is delightful and unmixed, chooses to question it on the slender ground that it is signed by ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... friends, by a few men whose keen natural perception of genius enabled them to discern it in spite of the eccentricity and inequality of his work; but to the general public, on whose recognition depends the reputation of the artist, his verses as well as his drawings were a sealed, or at least an enigmatical, book. His verses have no literary atmosphere about them: they smell neither of the midnight oil nor of that smoke of fame the fumes of which Byron tells us "are frankincense to human thought." They seem to have been written as spontaneously as a bird might warble on a bough, and no bird was ever ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... reflection. "But you must suffer me to say a word upon the other side. We have a natural curiosity to learn the truth of this affair; I have some of it myself; my lord (it is very plain) has but too much. The matter of the Indian's return is enigmatical." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the contrary, my sweet friend: only the poet is talking in riddles after the fashion of his tribe. For all poetry has by nature an enigmatical character, and it is by no means everybody who can interpret it. And if, moreover, the spirit of poetry happen to seize on a man who is of a begrudging temper and does not care to manifest his wisdom but keeps it to himself ...
— Alcibiades II • An Imitator of Plato
... you by force? Yet that is what you ask of God. If you were right in going, let the circumstance prove it; if we were right, let it appear by time. So says God; and his friendship has eternity to work in; so also has every human friendship. Let us wait, but in faith." This ending, somewhat enigmatical to her, had yet recurred to her heart so often that she knew ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... But this passage is enigmatical, as the original type seems to be involved in dense obscurity. Buffon considered the shepherd dog to be the least modified by domestication—very erroneously, according to Dr Prichard; it is still a vexata questio, whether the original progenitor of the dog ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... bother about me. I have relegated my little romance to the garret of no-account things, at least for the present," said Hillard, with an enigmatical smile. He sought his watch. "Make up your mind at once; we have ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... of feeling and expression, and that these were waited upon and worshiped by a set of nobles and litterateurs, who used towards them a peculiar strain of high-flown, pedantic gallantry. These ladies adopted fictitious names for themselves and gave enigmatical ones to the commonest things. They lavished upon each other the most tender appellations, as though in contrast to the frigid tone in which the Platonism of the Hotel required them to address the gentlemen of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... time her too-ready tongue tripped. She looked away and recovered herself to the end of the sentence. She could not resist another look, however, and this time her words came more slowly. She paused—wavered—and then fixed her gaze in silence upon the enigmatical device. There was a unanimous smothered sigh as the bystanders recognized their good fortune. Guido, frightened half to death, slipped unobserved out of a side door, and was never seen at Greenwich again. Nor has that fatal newspaper ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... herself the little innocent figure of her child, which she at once placed between herself and him. Seeing this, I recalled the scraps of cipher left in my room above and wished I had succeeded in determining their meaning, if only to understand the present enigmatical situation. ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... day the girl was enigmatical both to Horace and to Ann. Weary hours, crowding one upon another, offered her no relief. The thought of Lon's letter shattered hope and made her desolate. She did not stop to reason that her relations with Horace demanded ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... under the charm of her enigmatical and mocking smile, that smile in which her teeth gleamed cruelly between her red lips, and glistened as if they were ready to bite and to heighten the pleasure of the most delightful, the most ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... parlor we are all tarred with the same brush, all daubed with the same dauber; we have nothing, as the rather enigmatical phrase goes, on one another. Indeed, we hardly look at one another, and are as remote as strangers sitting side by side in a theatre. Individually, in a steady, subconscious way, I think we are all wondering how we are going to get ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... inscrutable, secret, dark, mystic, transcendental, enigmatical, mystical, unfathomable, hidden, obscure, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... enigmatical spectacle the artist descends within himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife, if he be deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal. His appeal is made to our less obvious capacities: to that part of our nature which, because of the ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... seriously, and turn towards heaven, the devotion which he misplaced on earthly beauties. This conversation is the subject of one of Boccaccio's eclogues, entitled, "Philostropos." His eclogues are in the style of Petrarch, obscure and enigmatical, and the subjects are muffled up under emblems ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... Now this was enigmatical enough to the king and courtiers. But the reverse of the plate explained it a little. Its writing amounted ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... can revisit old places? If I had the quaint Muse of Sir Philip Sidney to assist me, I would write a Sonnet to the Road between W—m and Shrewsbury, and immortalise every step of it by some fond enigmatical conceit. I would swear that the very milestones had ears, and that Harmer-hill stooped with all its pines, to listen to a poet, as he passed! I remember but one other topic of discourse in this walk. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... been accepted as archbishop he should resign the see and return to his beloved Bangor. So in 1137 he nominated and consecrated Gelasius as his successor in the primacy, and "returned to his former parish, but not to Connor." Let me explain this enigmatical statement. Malachy had had some years' experience of the people of the diocese of Connor, whom St. Bernard gently describes as "not men but beasts." He had doubtless discovered that the district which it included could not be ruled by a single bishop. In fact it ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... towards the fugue of youth. Older by a quarter of a century than General D'Hubert, he looked upon him in the secret of his heart as a rather troublesome youngster in love. He had heard his enigmatical words very well, but attached no undue importance to what a mere man of forty so hard hit was likely to do or say. The turn of mind of the generation of Frenchmen grown up during the years of his exile was almost unintelligible ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... loser, but which did not occur till seven years afterwards), somebody indicated by seven asterisks and possessing an income of L1200 a-year, was "totally transformed into baseness." There is certainly not much light here, any more than in the equally enigmatical description of the third sorrow as being "in some sort included in the second," so that "what the former was to friendship the latter was to a still more inward bond." The truth is, that all Coleridge's references to himself in his later years are shrouded in a double ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... anything odd about that," she exclaimed impatiently. "Don't be so enigmatical. If you've anything to say, say it! Don't look at me like ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... borders on the grotesque, and holding a hunting-spear. Still more astonishing in its exaggeration of a Venetian mode in portraiture[44] is the great crimson, dragon-crowned helmet which, on the left of the canvas, Cupid himself supports. To the right, a rival even of Love in the affections of our enigmatical personage, a noble hound rubs himself affectionately against the stalwart legs of his master. Far back stretches a prospect singularly unlike those rich-toned studies of sub-Alpine regions in which Titian as ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... laughter! This earthquake which invisible powers heave up out of the knotty entanglement of our dark enigmatical being! which in boisterous senseless noises announces that within, in the unseen world, the soul neither recks of nor knows truth or falsehood, and has just been murdering the innocent herald who was bringing these phantasms before it! These ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... bas-reliefs represents two soldiers of the Swiss guard, the next a Turk and a Slav tilting at each other, and then comes a scroll entwined round a thistle, and inscribed with this enigmatical motto: "Giane le sur ou rien." In the third bas-relief a couple of passionate Italians are winding up a gambling dispute with a hand-to-hand combat, in the course of which table, cards, and dice have got cantered over; the fourth presenting us with two French ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... consequently, that a first beginning, mathematical or dynamical, is by no means required. The possibility of such an infinite derivation, without any initial member from which all the others result, is certainly quite incomprehensible. But, if you are rash enough to deny the enigmatical secrets of nature for this reason, you will find yourselves obliged to deny also the existence of many fundamental properties of natural objects (such as fundamental forces), which you can just as little comprehend; and even the ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... newly alight in the hall, burning with that spare, clear brilliancy that the recent removal of ashes imparts to a wood fire. All the world was still beclouded with mists, and the windows and doors looked forth on a blank white nullity—as inexpressive, as enigmatical, as the unwritten page of the unformulated future itself. The present seemed eliminated; he stood as it were in the atmosphere of other days. But whither had blown the incense of that happy time? The lights on the shrine had dwindled to extinction! What had befallen his strong ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... played straight through like a Haydn symphony, as well as the orchestra could manage it, Pohlenz, instead of having to conduct a vocal quartette, a cantata, or an Italian aria, took his place at the desk to undertake this highly complicated instrumental work, with its particularly enigmatical and incoherent opening, one of the most difficult tasks that could possibly be found for a musical conductor. I shall never forget the impression produced upon me at the first rehearsal by the anxiously and carefully played ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... street, in sixes and sevens, like so many reliefs on army duty. A gang would enter the sitting room occupying the chairs and sofa, look on with open mouths for ten or fifteen minutes and listen to what must have been enigmatical to them; then looking one at the other, the entire party would rise together, stalk back to the store, where they would relate their experience to others, who in turn would brace up and make a descent on the lion of ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... scene remained fixed in Irene's memory. She drew from it formerly, extensive conclusions, then she ceased altogether to recall it; now she thought again of it, forgetting her painted chrysanthemums, which, on the blue satin, seemed to gaze at her, having as subtle and enigmatical a look ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... Elhaj Beshir, came face to face with the newly arrived ministers in the ante-chamber where the Mantle of the Prophet was jealously guarded, he rubbed his hands together with an enigmatical smile which ill became his coarse, brutal countenance and cloven lips, and when the Padishah asked him what the rebels wanted, he replied that he ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... science besides that of stellar aggregation, Herschel may justly be styled a pioneer. He was the first to bestow serious study on the enigmatical objects known as "nebulae." The history of the acquaintance of our race with them is comparatively short. The only one recognised before the invention of the telescope was that in the girdle of Andromeda, certainly familiar in the middle of the tenth century to the Persian ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... found a difference in vertical height of 7 feet. In the chalky sand, sometimes occurring in interstices between the separate fragments of flint, constituting the coarse gravel Number 4, entire as well as broken freshwater shells are often met with. To some it may appear enigmatical how such fragile objects could have escaped annihilation in a river-bed, when flint tools and much gravel were shoved along the bottom; but I have seen the dredging instrument employed in the Thames, above and below London Bridge, ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... country still largely mysterious to the denizen of Western Europe, and the Russian peasant, the moujik, an impenetrable riddle to him. Of all the great Russian writers not one has contributed more to the interpretation of the enigmatical soul of the moujik than Russia's great poet, Nekrassov, in his life-work the national epic, Who can ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... minds of children. But words, vague as they may be, are still too precise to express those feelings; one would need that uncertain language that comes in dreams, of which upon awakening, one retains merely enigmatical, ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... may have gone far towards shaping itself, but just as in that sort of lantern show that used to be known in the village as the "Dissolving Views," the scene that is going remains upon the mind, traceable and evident, and the newer picture is yet enigmatical long after the lines that are to replace those former ones have grown bright and strong, so that the new England of our children's children is still a riddle to me. The ideas of democracy, of equality, and above all of promiscuous fraternity have certainly never really entered ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... The original text says in a more enigmatical fashion, "he nourishes the religion of Mazda as a hundred feet of men and a thousand breasts of women ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... was a tedious journey: in the whole Banat the harvest was over; only the maize was still standing, otherwise they saw nothing but monotonous fields of stubble. None of them spoke; all three found it hard to keep awake. In the afternoon Timar could no longer endure the silent looks, the enigmatical expression of his wife; under pretense of wanting to smoke he took a seat by the driver in the open coupe, and remained there. When they got out at a post-house, Athalie grumbled at the bad roads, the dreadful heat, the annoying flies, the stifling dust, and all the rest of ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... not quite sure of that," replied Mustapha, with a stern look, in hopes of frightening the man into a compliance with his wishes—"there was something very enigmatical in those words. Your 'hard crust' may mean his sublime highness the pacha; 'wearing away your teeth' may imply exactions from the government and as you affirmed that he was happy who could command the hard crust—why it ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... pipe—Poetry and Music had been dedicated to the worship of the gods of Greece. At the appointed season of festival to each several deity, his praises were sung, his traditionary achievements were recited. One of the divinities last introduced into Greece—the mystic and enigmatical Dionysos, or Bacchus, received the popular and enthusiastic adoration naturally due to the God of the Vineyard, and the "Unbinder of galling cares." His festival, celebrated at the most joyous of agricultural seasons [7], was associated ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... instant, then with an enigmatical smile extended her hand, but there was nothing enigmatical in the sidelong look which Van Lennop gave Dr. Harpe, a look that, had she seen it, would for once have made her grateful for her sex. Subconsciously he had seen the slight ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... blotted by the rain and by the kindness of nature, was fortunately illegible, for it is possible that its philosophy concerning the inhalation of gold, at the same time both enigmatical and lucid, might not have been to the taste of the sheriffs, the provost-marshals, and other big-wigs of the law. English legislation did not trifle in those days. It did not take much to make a man ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... vein of feeling, a patriot passion so vehement and dangerous, that, like that which stirred the Hebrew prophet, it is compelled to veil itself from power, or from sympathy, in utterance made purposely enigmatical. The passage which begins "Last came and last did go", raises in us a thrill of awe-struck expectation which. I can only compare with that excited by the Cassandra of Aeschylus's Agamemnon. For the reader to feel this, he must have present in memory the circumstances of England in 1637. He ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... think so—by my old Annamite friend of the Penguin experience, who stood by his flag nodding his head at me. He said, "Beaucoup bon," showing his polished black teeth in an approving grin. I forgot for the moment that "beaucoup bon" was his enigmatical comment upon all occasions, and that he would have grinned just as broadly had he been dragging me out from ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... Cambridge, I may say, and subsequently brought out a respectable edition of Polyaenus—contained among other things the notes which the old Vicar had made upon the occasion of Sir Matthew Fell's death. And for the first time Sir Richard was confronted with the enigmatical Sortes Biblicae which you have heard. They amused ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... understand," said Jimbo coolly, with no sign of being offended. "How could you?" He glanced at his sisters, gaining so much support from their enigmatical faces that he added, for their especial ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... task—which is no light one; for in our survey of this book we have to keep in view both hero and hero-worshipper, Cromwell and Carlyle, both somewhat slippery personages, abnormal, enigmatical. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... was quite the caballero. The brig herself was then all black and enigmatical, and very dirty; a tarnished gem of the sea, or, rather, a neglected work of art. For he must have been an artist, the obscure builder who had put her body together on lovely lines out of the hardest tropical timber fastened with the purest copper. Goodness only ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... anxious to know how they bored these long barrels, which seemed perfectly true and are said to shoot admirably; and, on asking the Gusti, received the enigmatical answer: "We use a basket full of stones." Being utterly unable to imagine what he could mean, I asked if I could see how they did it, and one of the dozen little boys around us was sent to fetch the basket. He soon returned with this most extraordinary boring-machine, the mode of using which the ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... an enigmatical reply, and Dick saw that it was useless to ask them questions. Robertson mounted, and Dick, without another word, sprang up behind him. Two of the privates rode up close, one on either side, and the other kept ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... enigmatical speech was left to the ear, for the young Countess was gazing at her big black fan, where luminous fireflies hung tangled amongst the dusky feathers. Quickly with some dissatisfaction she became aware that Rallywood was not looking at her—as he should have been doing—but ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... nothing. They did not seem to exist, he points out, even in politics until prohibitionist fury threatened their beer. Then, indeed, the American German emerged from silence and obscurity, but only to rescue his mug and retire again with it into enigmatical silence. ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... With this enigmatical peroration the major made Hester a low bow, and handed her a sheet of foolscap, twice folded, and tied with a bit of white ribbon. She took it with a sweetly radiant curiosity. It was the title-deed of the house in Addison square. She gave a cry of joy, got up, threw her arms round majie's ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... predecessors in the novelty of the combinations of his opening, in the complications of the windings through which he led the expectant cortege; and this course, even when restricted to a single saloon, might be made remarkable by the designing of graceful arabesques, or the involved tracing of enigmatical ciphers. He made good his claim to the place he had solicited, and displayed his skill, by inventing close, complicated and inextricable figures; by describing them with so much certainty and accuracy, that the living ribbon, turned and twisted as it might be, was never broken in the loosing ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... uneasily. "You can think as you please, Jack," said he: "but we'll see—we'll see." The coroner, like many other men of greater claims to wisdom, used this enigmatical expression when he could ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... esse" (Vol. vii., pp. 235. 342.).—In one of Dr. Byrom's Common-place Books now in the possession of his respected descendant, Miss Atherton, of Kersal Cell, is the following arrangement and translation of this enigmatical inscription, probably made ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... and that exclamation, "It was this very place!" Whew! Jonah had tied a bit of his bootlace on the hedge just under the spot, and could find it again within a foot. Then the rencontre with the two boys and the strange, enigmatical talk in the shed, pointing to the plot of a new crime of which he—Trimble—was to be the victim. Ha, ha!—and the business over that tricycle too, in the candle-light. Jonah could see through that. He could put a spoke in a wheel as ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... restaurant, unless the Italian restaurant had been perchance created for them. But that last hypothesis was unthinkable, since one could not place them anywhere outside those special establishments. One never met these enigmatical persons elsewhere. It was impossible to form a precise idea what occupations they followed by day and where they went to bed at night. And he himself had become unplaced. It would have been impossible ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... peers voted for repeal, 61 against it. Thirty-three peers thereupon signed and recorded their protest. At the third reading no division was had, but a second protest, bearing 28 signatures, was entered. On March 18 the king, whose position had been a little enigmatical, but who at last had become settled in opposition to the bill, unwillingly placed his signature to it, and ever ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... very quiet. It was the first sensation of its kind he had ever experienced; it was disquieting, and yet soothing; it filled him with an indefinable uneasiness, and yet with a strange yearning. He stood, in these moments, at the inscrutable threshold of the great North; he felt the enigmatical, voiceless spirit of it; it passed into his blood; it made his heart beat a little faster; it made him afraid, and yet daring. In his breast the spirit of adventure was waking—had awakened; he felt the call of the Northland, and it alarmed even as it thrilled him. He knew, now, that this was ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... was enigmatical to Rainey, but there was no mistaking Lund's tremendous seriousness and, duly impressed, Rainey promised to carry ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... and mortar. I liked the situation; it was just far enough away from a town to enable me to escape all the smoke and traffic, and near enough to make shopping easy. The only obstacles were the shadows—the strange, enigmatical shadows I had seen in the hall and passages, and the figure of the walker. Dare I take a house that knew such visitors? At first I said no, and then yes. Something, I could not tell what, urged me to say yes. I felt ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... supernatural. He therefore prepares his roots and herbs with the most singular ceremonies, and, in mixing them up, invokes the aid of the Great Spirit. He also accompanies his directions with various gesticulations and enigmatical expressions. The ceremonies he uses are various. Sometimes he creeps into the oven where he sweats, howls, and roars, and now and then grins horribly at his patient. Altogether I cannot conceive of a more irrational manner of performing ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... with enigmatical eyes while, in his thought, wrath was beginning to bubble. He almost hated her on recalling the arrogance with which she had treated him, fleeing from that room. "Hypocrite!..." She was just amusing ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... eternity smiled benignly and touched with his delicate, almost transparent, hand the curly head of the sprightly little boy. Then the child became a prince really, though the smile of his holiness was ever enigmatical. But whoso had been touched by the divine hand was not to know misfortune in life and had to ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... enigmatical shape a little more boldly, and sitting down beside him, opened a conversation ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... entered the Mosque, and presently returned with the Fakir's answer, in these enigmatical words:—"He who would see the sun rise must watch till ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... of the Roman occupation. The second class, of greater antiquity than the first, at least on the ground of subject, is also distinguished by a much more mythological character, a bolder use of the miraculous, an enigmatical form, a style full of alliteration and plays upon words. Of this number are the tales of Pwyll, of Bramwen, of Manawyddan, of Math the son of Mathonwy, the Dream of the Emperor Maximus, the story ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... feverishly finished his julep, and as the other stopped, he placed his glass beside him on the board-pile and swung a long leg across, so that he sat directly facing his enigmatical guest. The latter, in the enthusiasm of his argument, swung into a similar position, and so they sat, both hammering on the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... it were tentacles on all sides in quest of chance prey, and quickened into a whole system of imagination by the electric quiver imparted by a single word, at once the key and symbol of the thinking it had led to. And so he puts down word or phrase, so enigmatical to us who see it by itself, which to him would wake up a whole train of ideas, as he remembered the occasion of it—how at a certain time and place this word set the whole moving, seemed to breathe new life and shed new light, and has remained the token, meaningless in itself, which reminds ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... of her wonderful eyes, widely opened and turned upon me with such an enigmatical expression as set my heart leaping wildly—then, stepping back, Karamaneh placed the lamp upon the boards of the passage and ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... window now and then it dropped, with a vague presage, upon the sleek head of the daring and enigmatical captain, reading the Litany, from 'battle, murder, and sudden death, good Lord deliver us,' and he almost fancied he saw a yellow skull over his shoulder glowering cynically on the Prayer-book. So the good attorney prayed on, to the edification of all who saw, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... my chops, turn round, lie down, and go to sleep again." It was bad policy in me to let the words "go to sleep" sound upon the reader's ear, for I have not yet quite done; I have one more class, and though last not least; were I to adopt that enigmatical style which made the fortune of the oracle of Apollo, I might add—and though least, greatest. But this, the oracular sublime, has now gone to the gipsies and the conjurors, and I must write ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... the enigmatical response. And Mr. Starr muttered something about women and geometry and went away, shaking his head. And Aunt Grace ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... to find it hard reading the character of John Charles Fremont, calling it enigmatical and baffling. Not so with those who knew him best. "His unwritten history," writes one of these, "gives the clew to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... its kind: a tragedy of thought inspired by continual and never-satisfied meditation on human destiny and the dark perplexity of the events of this world, and calculated to call forth the very same meditation in the minds of the spectators. This enigmatical work resembles those irrational equations in which a fraction of unknown magnitude always remains, that will in no way admit of solution. Much has been said, much written, on this piece, and yet no thinking head who anew expresses himself on it, will (in ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... the verses of Orpheus and the sacred books of the Egyptians and Phrygians, that the ancient theology, not only of the Greeks, but of all nations, was nothing more than a system of physics, a picture of the operations of nature, wrapped up in mysterious allegories and enigmatical symbols, in a manner that the ignorant multitude attended rather to their apparent than to their hidden meaning, and even in what they understood of the latter, supposed there to be something more deep than what they perceived. Fragment ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... enigmatical; but her meaning had at length, more through his own reflection than her exposition, dawned upon Duncan. He leaped up with a Gaelic explosion of concentrated ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... over, as unfit for dainty ears and dulcet tones, facts, and rumours of facts, which none the less often determined events by stirring the strong feelings of your ancestors, whose conduct, unless explained by this light, must remain enigmatical. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... St. Petersburg that Russia would acquiesce in any measures proposed by France and Great Britain to maintain peace. Minister Klobukowski reported from Brussels that the Belgian Government regarded Germany's attitude as enigmatical, and justifying every apprehension. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... Without a word the Texan complied, and as he held a match to the cigarette he stared straight into the man's eyes: "You've started out good," he remarked gravely. "I'm just wonderin' if you can play your string out." With which enigmatical remark he turned to the cowboys: "The drinks are on me, boys. Jerk off that rope, an' go back to town! An' remember, this lynchin' come off as ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... had read my thoughts, his eyes caught mine and held them. To all appearances he was listening to the banter of Dicky and his wife, but there was an inscrutable look in his eyes, an enigmatical smile upon his lips, as he looked at me that vaguely troubled me. His glance, his smile, seemed significant somehow, as if we were old friends who held some humorous experience in common remembrance. And I had never seen him but ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... extravagant outlay for expedition, replied that he would lay this proposition with the despatch, before the San Francisco office. He then took it and read it—and re-read it. He preserved the usual professional apathy,—had doubtless sent many more enigmatical and mysterious messages,—but nevertheless, when he finished, he raised his eyes inquiringly to his customer. That gentleman, who enjoyed a reputation for equal spontaneity of temper and revolver, met his gaze a little impatiently. ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... with its one Creator; Pantheism with its "one Spirit's plastic stress"; and Science with its one Energy. He is hard upon Christianity and its "trinal God": I have not softened his expression ({Arabic} a riddle), although it may offend readers. There is nothing more enigmatical to the Moslem mind than Christian Trinitarianism: all other objections they can get over, not this. Nor is he any lover of Islamism, which, like Christianity, has its ascetic Hebraism and its Hellenic hedonism; with the world of thought moving between these two extremes. The former, defined as predominant ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... But his depositions had been taken at his bedside, were sworn to by him, and were now placed before the magistrate by the prosecuting counsel, and the facts they revealed were certainly as remarkable as they were brief and enigmatical. ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... of this view. It is this generic quality and compositeness of the purpose of the individual and of the spirit of society that obscures the meaning of history and often makes individual lives so enigmatical, and which also makes these purposes of individuals and nations so persistent, sometimes ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... interest. It was strange how the enigmatical personality of the owner of Far End kept cropping ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... glanced towards Avery, but she did not raise her eyes. She worked on, still with that faint, enigmatical smile about her lips. ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... yourself, my excellent friend! Just as in the case of the relationship between collective ownership and human degeneration, which seemed so "enigmatical" to this same Baron Garofalo—and although he has not offered his gratitude for the solution of this enigma to the socialist Oedipus who explained it to him—here also, in the case of this other enigma, the explanation ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... Mariam had spoken of her power, and gave him to understand that she did not require money; the squalor of her room made this seem rather enigmatical to the sick man, but he knew such people were sometimes eccentric in their mode of living, and this might possibly account for his surroundings. However, it was no affair of his, she had been an angel of goodness to him, and he had no right to pry ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... many days of dallying, great Philip decided to sacrifice himself for Spain and marry his enigmatical sister-in-law. She must, of course, renounce Protestantism and all the laws that made her legally a queen; which was absurd, as Feria soon saw, and frankly told his master. So then Philip half-heartedly patronised the suit of his Austrian ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... only true of advice direct. You never, I grieve to say, get from the great men a plain answer to a plain question; still less can you entangle them in any agreeable gossip, out of which something might unawares be picked up. But of enigmatical teaching, broken signs and sullen mutterings, of which you can understand nothing, and may make anything;—of confused discourse in the work itself, about the work, as in Duerer's Melancolia;—and of discourse not merely confused, but apparently unreasonable ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... was going to lower the glass when from behind the massive angle of the stockade there stepped out into the brilliant immobility of the landscape a man in a long white gown and with an enormous black turban surmounting a dark face. Slow and grave he paced the beach ominously in the sunshine, an enigmatical figure in an Oriental tale with something weird and menacing in its sudden emergence and ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... shall see," was the queen's enigmatical rejoinder. She swept to her chariot, and with her brilliant train, soon left Stafford ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... is he one encounters almost solely in the music of the third period, the enigmatical little pieces for orchestra and piano. It is he who has emerged victorious from the duel revealed by the D-minor Quartet. Those grotesque and menacing little works are lineally descended from the ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... keep my word!" was the enigmatical remark the smiling Quimby made as he entered. Then, catching sight of the festive board, he stopped short and stared, with an utterly confounded face, at that, at the embarrassed Nattie, at Cyn, behind the door, and at the saucepan ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... sooner be built without any ground to fix it on, than a commonweal be constituted altogether void of any religion and opinion of the gods,—or being constituted, be preserved. But this, which is the foundation and ground of all laws, do these men, not going circularly about, nor secretly and by enigmatical speeches, but attacking it with the first of their most principal opinions directly subvert and overthrow; and then afterwards, as if they were haunted by the Furies, they come and confess that they have grievously offended in ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... in misadventure. Sybil had often described to her little son the concealed valuables, which, if the exiled Royalists were ever able to re-visit England, she hoped to recover for herself and for him; and, in later years, Sir Ralph could still recall the enigmatical words in which his mother had (possibly with the idea that the rhyme might, as it did, cling to his childish memory) spoken to him of ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... princess is said to have visited Solomon, "to prove him with hard questions," by which have generally been understood enigmatical puzzles. Some of these are to be found in sacred writ, of which the riddle which Samson proposed to the young men of Timnath, is a very ancient and curious specimen. It appears from the writings of the ancients, that the Greeks and all the Eastern nations, were singularly attached ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... voices. Another time he came upon a working-gang busy at hoeing weeds. They scarcely noticed him when he came up, though they knew thoroughly well what was going on. It was no affair of theirs that the enigmatical white men should be out trying to kill each other, and whatever interest in the proceedings might be theirs they were careful to conceal it from Sheldon. He ordered them to continue hoeing weeds in ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... times over with those enigmatical proverbs of yours," said the Parson testily, "you would not make it ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... uncertain as to the result. He was determined to secure Antwerp, but he yet thought it possible to secure it by negotiation. The enigmatical policy maintained by France perplexed him; for it did not seem possible that so much apparent solemnity and earnestness were destined to lead to an impotent and infamous conclusion. He was left, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "Meine Reisen" and the puerile abbreviation as well as the reasons assigned for it, were intended to be a Sterne-like jest, apitiful one. Why Goedeke should suggest "Meine Randglossen" is quite inexplicable, since Gchhausen himself in the very first chapter indicates the real title. Beneath the enigmatical title stands an alleged quotation from Shandy: "Ein Autor borgt, bettelt und stiehlt so stark von dem andern, dass bey meiner Seele! die Originalitt fast so rar geworden ist als die Ehrlichkeit."[65] The book itself, ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... desisted, and, with all her faculties abnormally on the alert, she lay awake and listened. A deathlike hush hung over the house, interrupted at intervals by the surreptitious noises peculiar to the night—enigmatical creaks and footsteps, rustlings as of drapery, sighs and whisperings—all very faint, all very subtle, and all possibly, just possibly, attributable to natural causes. Mrs. Murphy caught herself—why, she could not say—waiting for some definite ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... atoning power. There is no sense of wrongdoing or unworthiness on the part of the performers, or of any relation to a deity. The theology of Central Australia is still obscure—the general religious situation in that region has much that is enigmatical. ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... that this man, with his mournful face, his huge, brushlike eyebrows, and his small, yellow eyes, startling by their incessant activity, had for the observer something enigmatical about him, and therefore did not ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... quite manifest that Saturn did not exhibit a simple circular disc like Jupiter, or like Mars. It seemed to Galileo as if the planet consisted of three bodies, a large globe in the centre, and a smaller one on each side. The enigmatical nature of the discovery led Galileo to announce it in an enigmatical manner. He published a string of letters which, when duly transposed, made up a sentence which affirmed that the planet Saturn was threefold. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... satisfactory, explanation. The question: 'How does Anthroposophy explain this or that?' is quite wrongly put. We ought rather to ask: 'How does Anthroposophy help us to read more clearly this or that otherwise enigmatical chapter ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... to enigmatical utterances of this kind has long ago passed away; and, if any meaning ever attaches to them, it is apt to be sadly commonplace. Nevertheless, when Balder was born, and the hereditary blue eyes were found wanting, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... himself; and went away with a lighter heart. The trick of reading truly the enigmatical forces at work in women at given times, which with some men is an unerring instinct, is peculiar to minds less ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... untroubled as to the origin of dreams, the popular view holds firmly to the belief that dreams really have got a meaning, in some way they do foretell the future, whilst the meaning can be unravelled in some way or other from its oft bizarre and enigmatical content. The reading of dreams consists in replacing the events of the dream, so far as remembered, by other events. This is done either scene by scene, according to some rigid key, or the dream as a whole is replaced by something else of which it was ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... Payne and I have long puzzled over these enigmatical and possibly corrupt lines: he wrote to me in 1884, "This is the first piece that has beaten me." In the couplet above (vol. xii. 230) "Rayhani" may mean "my basil-plant" or "my food" (the latter Koranic), "my compassion," etc.; and Susani is equally ancipitous ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... or three revolutions of my brain to perceive how this answer bore upon the question, and when I repeated it to Alister, his comment was almost as enigmatical. ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... now; but I shan't be long," answered the young hostess, with a confident wink in Alfaretta's direction. To which that matter-of-fact maid replied by a contemptuous toss of her head and the enigmatical words: ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... youth whom in her innocence she called her lover was almost enigmatical to Pierrette, she believed in it with all her virgin faith. Her heart was filled with that sensation which travellers in the desert feel when they see from afar the palm-trees round a well. In a few days her ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... of this strikingly original theory the present writer should not be understood as assenting to it. That it appears bizarre is not, in itself, a reason for rejecting it, when we are dealing with so problematical and enigmatical a subject as the Milky Way; but the serious objection is that the theory does not sufficiently accord with the observed phenomena. There is too much evidence that the Milky Way is an organic system, however fantastic its ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... standing. She had resumed her composure, and her face had taken on the enigmatical expression so difficult to fathom, especially as she had assumed a deliberate air of dejection, which Perenna guessed was intended to hide her excitement and alertness, together with the tumultuous feelings which even she had great ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... the pole-star, and seeking ambitiously for a north-west passage, instead of circumnavigating all the capes and head-lands I had doubled in my outward voyage, I came suddenly upon such knotty problems of alleys, such enigmatical entries, and such sphynx's riddles of streets without thoroughfares, as must, I conceive, baffle the audacity of porters and confound the intellects of hackney-coachmen. I could almost have believed at times that I must be the first discoverer ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... its name. Few were aware that it was merely a band of "Sontag-Reiters." Our hon. sec., being at the time prominent in politics, received congratulations from those who imagined the T.P.C. was a political association, and much wonderment was excited by the decidedly enigmatical appellation of the small and select society. Sir Edward Lawson showed marked ingenuity in retaining the mystery by his paragraphs in his paper. The first meet of our second season was the only one I missed during the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... whose original genius qualified him for sympathizing even to excess with any real merits in that work. This novel is in its own nature and purpose sufficiently obscure; and the commentaries which have been written upon it by the Hurnboldts, Schlegels, &c., make the enigma still more enigmatical. We shall not venture abroad upon an ocean of discussion so truly dark, and at the same time so illimitable. Whether it be qualified to excite any deep and sincere feeling of one kind or another in the German mind,—in a mind trained under German discipline,—this we will consent to waive ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... time when you'll yield, just because you are blue and discouraged—or something; whatever mood it is that makes the temptation hardest to resist. I know myself that things are harder to endure some days than they are others." She stopped and looked at him in that enigmatical way she had. "You may not know it—but I've been staying here just to see whether you fail or succeed. I thought I understood a little of why you came, and I—I stayed." She leaned and twisted a wisp of Hooligan's mane nervously, and ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... with disdain for his fellow-guests, Monsieur le Marquis talked little, but with a very lofty manner, as if he were obliged to stoop to those persons whom he honored with his conversation. From time to time he tossed at the Nabob, across the table, sentences that were enigmatical to everybody. ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... thought I, "she has been invited to spend at Stedman's country-house on Schuylkill. She consented to go, and I was to accompany her. I am fit only for solitude. My behaviour, in her presence, will be enigmatical, capricious, and morose. I must not go: yet what will she think of my failure? Not to go will be ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... weapon of office, which in the place of a gun was an immense carved wooden mace, not unlike a leg of the old-time wooden bedstead of antiquity. His ugliness was embittered somewhat by sunken, toothless jaws and an enigmatical stare from a cross-eye; he was also knock-kneed, and as an erstwhile gunpowder worker, had lost two fingers and a large part of one ear. But he had learnt the secret of simple duty: he had no dreams, no ambition embracing vast limits, did not appear to wish to achieve ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... will now be seen that, if the proposition were reversed, it would be nearer the reality. On the other hand, considered historically, the primitive association of Conveyances and Contracts explains something which often strikes the scholar and jurist as singularly enigmatical, I mean the extraordinary and uniform severity of very ancient systems of law to debtors, and the extravagant powers which they lodge with creditors. When once we understand that the nexum was artificially prolonged to give time to the debtor, we can better comprehend his position ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... not sure that I gave you my name, Miss Killigrew." He was secretly confused over this enigmatical reception. ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... flights of thought so common in dreams I heard the hoarse falsetto of the bric-a-brac dealer, repeating like a monotonous refrain the phrase he had uttered in his shop with so enigmatical an intonation: ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... the columns of the Giant's Causeway is rather enigmatical. The Causeway cannot be a dyke, as has often been supposed, otherwise the columns would have been horizontal, i.e., at right angles to the sides of the dyke. Mr. R. G. Symes, of the Geological Survey, has suggested that the ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull |
