"Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but kindness to us. But years have passed since we began this life; and to take from my brother any part of what has so endeared him to me, and so proved his better resolution—any fragment of the merit of his unassisted, obscure, and forgotten reparation—would be to diminish the comfort it will be to him and me, when that time comes to each of us, of which you spoke just now. I thank you better with these tears than ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... certain independent means, she is far from being an opponent of private property as such. Her bete noire is the fashionable or aristocratic classes, these being the true Antichrist; and she has founded a church whose main spiritual mission is to instigate an elite of the obscure and earnest to despise them. By and by she meets some members of this despicable class herself. Among them is a Tory Prime Minister, who joins with his sister, an exceedingly fine lady, in expressing a respectful and profound admiration of her intellect. Mrs. Norham's philosophy of social ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... work in the army and the record of its brilliant achievements may in some degree obscure the service rendered our country and its Allies by the Negro in the navy, but the Negro was represented in this branch of the military service almost in the same proportion, and, just as with Perry on Lake ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... execution of this book is not better than its substantial merits deserve. The style is generally clumsy, often obscure, and not unseldom harsh and inflated. Take an instance or two, picked out absolutely at random.—"The disaffected, who held throughout the contest the seaboard of the State in abeyance, driven forth, would have felt in their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Galsworthy, Mr. Granville Barker, Mr. Cunninghame-Graham, Mr. Belloc, and Mr. Chesterton have written books the motives of which have been satire, divine anger, saeva indignatio, directed against the established moral codes or intellectual habits of the time. Mr. Shaw, who originally followed the obscure Samuel Butler, showed the way for the others. His method was, and is, to combine argument with the more telling weapon of ridicule. In his Preface to Blanco Posnet he exposes and ridicules the Dramatic Censorship, just as in ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... reveries and rhapsodies, tidings reached Newstead of the untimely death of Lord Byron. How they were received by this humble but passionate devotee I could not ascertain; her life was too obscure and lonely to furnish much personal anecdote, but among her poetical effusions are several written in a broken and irregular manner, and evidently ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... thus done, are to us indeed evident, but to the Jews they are obscure; because they hearkened not unto the voice ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... the time of Major Fairfax's arrival in the character of an agent, and for the very same purposes, was called before the Committee, and examined, point by point, article by article, upon all that obscure enumeration of bribes which the Court of Directors declare they did not understand; but he declared that he could speak nothing with regard to any of these transactions, and that he had got no instructions to explain any part of them. There was but one circumstance which in the course of his examination ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... teaching the plot of such a story as Cinderella, let the parent who loves his children, and who wishes to be no stranger to their interests, joys and sorrows, seat himself among them some time and begin to read to them. Pausing now and then to explain some word whose meaning may be obscure to them, or to comment on some phase of the story that may be of special interest, let him read on to the end without attempting to do much more than to make the story a vivid tale where the interest centers in ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... and moon present broad disks, so that if some of the light is intercepted, the eye does not notice the loss. The same is true also of the planets, which appear large when they are magnified, but not of the stars, owing to their immense distances; and when the impurities in the atmosphere obscure or divert the narrow line of light they send to us, the eye perceives it at once. Some of the stars appear very brilliant through the large telescopes, but the light still seems to proceed from a single point. There are some four or five thousand ...
— Harper's Young People, December 2, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... nebulous ocean, bewitched into sudden immobility; or a rack of tempest-driven clouds hanging in the sky, momentarily awaiting the transforming violence of a fresh onset. Sometimes continents of pale light are separated by narrow straits of comparative darkness; elsewhere obscure spaces are hemmed in by ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... more unfortunate in Hutton's case was that, in his enthusiasm, he used expressions which led to his being charged with heresy and even with being an enemy of religion. His writings were further so obscure in style as often to lead to misconception as to their true meaning, while his great work—so far as the fragment which was published goes—contained few records of original observations on which his ...
— The Coming of Evolution - The Story of a Great Revolution in Science • John W. (John Wesley) Judd
... when you go out into the great world peers and princes will woo you, my darling; the noblest in the land will sue for your favor, and you, who might have been a duchess, will repent loving and caring for one so poor and obscure as I am. I can give ...
— Marion Arleigh's Penance - Everyday Life Library No. 5 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... was hidden in the garden among the rose bushes, and he would see her hand, if it was raised ever so slightly. Maybe that was why the window was open, because the clearest glass even could obscure a signal meant to be faint, unnoticed by all except the one for whom it was intended. He would have that garden searched thoroughly when the sergeant returned, and his heart beat with a throb of relief when he heard the stalwart Whitley's footstep ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... single word? It was true that within the past hour she had innocently and dreamily bestowed upon the Greek caresses which might easily have been misunderstood; and that all the while, the door having been partly open, a person standing outside and concealed by the obscure gloom of the antechamber, could have covertly witnessed whatever had transpired within. But AEnone knew that whatever might be her husband's other faults, he was not capable of countenancing the self-imposed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... was prepared entirely by Mr. NICHOLAS TRÜBNER. I am not aware that he had any assistance in writing it. I mention this because I have never met with any person who was so equally familiar with obscure and obsolete old German facetious literature (as the text indicates), and at the same time with Americanisms. I should say that in all of the later ballads, or at least in fully one half of all in the book, the author was indebted to him for ideas, suggestions, ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... literature than it has thus far been given, and this unquestionably because of a lack of authentic data regarding the conquering of the wilderness. Considering how many years the pioneers struggled on the border of this country, the history of their efforts is meager and obscure. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... are Old English, while others are borrowed from Latin. Some authors prefer to use, where they can, old English words and expressions, which are shorter, plainer, and more direct; others prefer the Latin words, which are more ornamental and elaborate, and perhaps fit for explaining what is obscure, and for showing us the difference between things that are very like. This is one great contrast; and there are others which you will see for yourselves as you go on. And while you notice carefully ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... you didn't pick up when it was first presented might come clear to you the fifth or sixth time around. Cavender suspected, however, that as far as he was concerned much of the theory of Total Insight was doomed to remain forever obscure. ...
— Ham Sandwich • James H. Schmitz
... in happier hours; to realize that this, after all, is the true reality, and that it shines in the spiritual firmament as the sun does in the heavens, however long the period of storm and clouds that obscure its radiance. The tendency to doubt and depression is often as prevalent as an epidemic. In extreme cases it becomes the suicidal mania; in others it effectually paralyzes the springs of action and leaves its victim drifting helplessly and hopelessly with the current; and any such mental tendency ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... necessary to human life, made by the bruising and grinding of the grain, unostentatiously having no life or worth of its own except as it is absorbed into the life of others and lives in them. We wished in this history to speak of a class of lives formed on the model of Christ, and like his, obscure and unpretending, like his, seeming to end in darkness and defeat, but which yet have this preciousness and value that the dear saints who live them come nearest in their mission to the mission of Jesus. They are made, not for a career ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ardent spirits from the family table and sideboard, the social entertainment, the haying field, and the factory had not been attained without some corresponding loss. Close upon the heels of the reform in the domestic and social habits of the people there was spawned a monstrous brood of obscure tippling-shops—a nuisance, at least in New England, till then unknown. From the beginning wise and effective license laws had interdicted all dram-shops; even the taverner might sell spirits only to his transient guests, not to the people of the town. With the suppression of social drinking ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... not meet again until—with the Countess de Santiago—Annesley arrived at the obscure church chosen for the marriage ceremony. There Dr. Torrance awaited them outside the door, and took charge of the bride, while the Countess found her way in alone; and Annesley saw through the mist of confused emotion her Knight of love and ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... chosen, so he said, for his service this morning the favourite hymns, Scripture, and text of an obscure member of the congregation taken from earth in a strange manner the day before. For more years than he could remember, there had come and gone in that congregation an old blind man. He had heard him spoken of from time to time ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... at the time about certain circumstances which have since made a great deal clear to me that was obscure before. ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... office, viz. a fuller recital in the preamble of the Bill and no penal clause in the body of it. (The present Bill looked pettish and undignified, as if framed in anger as a return for the insult, and not a correction of the state of the law.) He thought the Law very complex and obscure, and never found it acted upon. He would have proposed therefore that Committees of both Houses should enquire into the whole subject; the state of the Convents; whether subjects were detained against their ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... times, and are liable to damage unless handled with great care. It is obvious that anything which alters the weight of a single piece in an analytical set will introduce an error in every weighing made in which that piece is used. This source of error is often extremely obscure and difficult to detect. The only safeguard against such errors is to be found in scrupulous care in handling and protection on the part of the analyst, and an equal insistence that if several analysts use the same set of weights, each shall realize ...
— An Introductory Course of Quantitative Chemical Analysis - With Explanatory Notes • Henry P. Talbot
... order for Wuz is concise and as usual obscure, giving rise to a host of disputes and casuistical questions. Its text runs (chapt. v.), "O true believers, when you prepare to pray, wash (Ghusl) your faces, and your hands unto the elbows; and rub (Mas-h) your hands and your feet unto the ankles; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... mostly editions de luxe. Thomas smiled over the many uncut volumes. True, Dickens, Dumas and Stevenson were tolerably well-thumbed; but the host of thinkers and poets and dramatists and theologians, in their hand-tooled Levant . . . ! Away in an obscure corner (because of its cheap binding) he came across a set of Lamb. He took out a volume at random and glanced at the fly-leaf—"Kitty Killigrew, Smith College." Then he went into the body of the book. It was copiously marked and ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... Shi-tai-mu. Numerous traces of small-roomed houses can be seen on this mound and on some of the lower surroundings. The uneven summit is about 300 by 200 feet, and the village seems to have been built in the form of an irregular ellipse, but the ground plan is very obscure. ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... in Atuona Valley, the hoot of the owl, the kouku, which in Malay is the ghost-bird, the burong-hantu, seemed to deepen the silence. Does not that word hantu, meaning in Malay an evil spirit, have some obscure connection with our American negro "hant," a goblin or ghost? Certainly the bird's long and dismal "Hoo-oo-oo" wailing through the shuddering forest evoked dim and chilling memories of tales told by candlelight when I was a child ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... divided into several small parties, afraid to meet. Fortunately for them the Government were aware of the state of affairs in the country and did not remain indifferent to it; and, as I have heard yourself explain to the Indians, Her Gracious Majesty has at heart the welfare of even the most obscure of her subjects. In the summer of 1874, I was travelling amongst the Blackfeet. It was painful to me to see the state of poverty to which they had been reduced. Formerly they had been the most opulent Indians in the country, ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris
... have selected for their victim an individual so certain to be missed as the Father Tommaso? From his long residence at Damascus, and the nature of his calling, his absence was sure to be noticed. Why not have selected for their victim some more obscure individual, on whom their barbarous fanaticism might have exercised their impious rites with impunity? Bah! why waste time by pursuing the ridiculous absurdities of ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... as being a middle-aged gentleman, of foreign birth, very marked in his polite, graceful manners; yet there appears to be a great mystery hanging about him, and some have ventured to remark that his is no common history, that he is not merely what he pretends,—an obscure artist! there is that about his bearing which denotes high birth. I have admired his talent displayed, and must see this remarkable production; for you know I am a great admirer ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... wonderfully. I look forward with aversion to the little, dull labours of the Court of Sessions. You see, Temple, I have my troubles as well as you have. My promise under the venerable yew has kept me sober.' Letters of Boswell, p. 198. On June 19, he is 'vexed to think myself a coarse labourer in an obscure corner.... Mr. Hume says there will in all probability be a change of the Ministry soon, which he regrets. Oh, Temple, while they change so often, how does one feel an ambition to have a share in the great department! ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... notion could ever have possessed the companions of Jesus, if it had not been true. If really this parabolical method had been peculiarly intelligible, what could make them imagine the contrary? Unless they found it very obscure themselves, whence came the idea that it was obscure to the multitude? As a fact, it is very obscure, to this day. There is much that I most imperfectly understand, owing to unexplained metaphor: as: "Agree with thine adversary quickly, &c. &c.:" "Whoso calls his brother[2] ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... doubt many of the latter, as well as the former, had brought cargoes of cotton from Confederate ports; for though the blockade was regarded as effective, and treated as such by foreign nations, many small vessels contrived to escape from obscure harbors on the Southern coast. Christy had been concerned in the capture of a considerable number of such. On the wharves were stacks of cotton which had been landed from these vessels, and several of them were engaged in transferring it to small steamers, for large ones were unable ...
— Fighting for the Right • Oliver Optic
... if the fishmonger will be pleased by the lady's representation of my few words, and I make a mental note to keep away from his stall. All at once another lady, who for some obscure reason is carrying a bucket, grips me by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 20, 1917 • Various
... fell silent, for here, indeed, was he entering into an adventure which infinitely surpassed any anticipation that he could have formed. He was, besides, of a cautious nature, and was entirely disinclined to embark in any affair so obscure and tangled as that in which he now found himself ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... ago my grandfather received positive word from one of his agents that Steven Meredith was stationed in a Belgian town, though what his business there could be was a mystery. This little town was an obscure one near Brussels, where he could keep in the background. Its name is Sempst; and that's ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson
... phraseology which the employment of the other phrases would sometimes have occasioned. In a civilized and educated community, the social sentiment may, on almost all points except those which involve obscure or delicate considerations of morality, be taken to be identical with the moral sentiment of the most reflective members of the society, and hence in the tolerably obvious instances which I have selected there was no need to draw ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... plaques of precious stones and enamel, many of which have fallen out. The effect of this piece is somewhat heavy, and if considered apart from the rest of the parure, its purpose might seem somewhat obscure. In order to form a correct judgment, we have, however, to remember in what fashion the women of ancient Egypt were clad. They wore a kind of smock of semi- transparent material, which came very little higher than the waist. The chest and bosom, neck and shoulders, ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... historical criticism. After due allowance has been made for his apologetic purpose and his well-known tendencies, a large and valuable body of historical facts remain with which it is possible at many otherwise obscure points to reconstruct the course of ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... world did put it about, that she admired my style. The world did notice that as time flowed by, my style became traceable in the dictation-exercises of Miss Brobity's pupils. Young man, a whisper even sprang up in obscure malignity, that one ignorant and besotted Churl (a parent) so committed himself as to object to it by name. But I do not believe this. For is it likely that any human creature in his right senses ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... a very dense wood, and the track they had been following became more and more obscure when, just as they crossed a little stream, a stern ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... National, and mostly founded on the old German legends. Tannhauser is taken from the epic poem of "Parzifal," written by Wolfram von Eschenbach in the Middle Ages. Lohengrin, which is touched on in the "Parzifal," Wagner also found in the poem of an obscure Bavarian poet; and a more complete account of the celebrated "Swan Knight" appears in a collection of stories edited by the brothers Grimm. Lohengrin is a Knight of the Holy Grail, so part of the legend ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... and third senators, so that it was evident that they were dissatisfied with the senator himself, but had not any one to substitute for him; for it was of no use that the same persons should be nominated again, to no other purpose than to hear of their vices, and the rest were much more mean and obscure than those who first occurred to their recollection. Thus the assembly separated, affirming that every evil which was most known was easiest to be endured, and ordering the senate to be discharged ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... sense you mean; but let me now explain to you what I have never explained before, that her father is a descendant in the male line of one of the oldest Norman houses, like a good many others who lead obscure agricultural lives in our villages, and are dubbed 'sons of ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... of The Sentimental Bloke speaks for itself; but there's a danger that its brilliance may obscure the rest, especially for minds, of all stations, that, apart from sport and racing, are ...
— The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke • C. J. Dennis
... done by Lincoln and one that was to have an immediate effect upon the course of the war. This was the appointment of General Ulysses S. Grant to the position of Commander in Chief of the Union forces. General Grant, like Lincoln, came from obscure beginnings. He had volunteered his services at the beginning of the war, and had won his way upward through sheer merit. On the Fourth of July, 1863, he had captured the Southern city of Vicksburg, while General Meade in the same year beat the Confederates decisively on the field of Gettysburg ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... that, try as he may, a worker of that class cannot hope to know or to see every detail that is of importance. The creature is human, and on some days his mind is less alert than on others. Nor is he interested in everything alike: an apocryphal fragment or an obscure saint will excite me, while a letter of St. Bernard which may be unpublished leaves me calm. But in spite of the imperfections of cataloguers, catalogues must be used, and they must be read and not only referred to. The mere juxtaposition ...
— The Wanderings and Homes of Manuscripts - Helps for Students of History, No. 17. • M. R. James
... subject, but which left it in the end in the complete ignorance in which the most exhaustive researches had left it. Doubtless the question of heredity fascinated him as it did only because it remained obscure, vast, and unfathomable, like all the infant sciences where imagination holds sway. Finally, a long study which he had made on the heredity of phthisis revived in him the wavering faith of the healer, arousing in him the noble and wild ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... medium the sun's rays had to penetrate. In so far as the dust-particles were opaque they would obscure these rays; where they were transparent or polished they would refract and reflect them. That the material of which those dust-particles was composed was very various has been ascertained, proved, and recorded by the Krakatoa Committee. The attempt to expound this ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... little opportunity for business, to tempt him. Everything was flat. Mr. Gartney must wait. Mrs. Gartney and Faith felt, though they talked of waiting, that the prospect really before them was that of a careful, obscure life, upon a very limited income. The house in Mishaumok had stood vacant all the summer. There was hope, of course, of letting it now, as the winter season came on, but rents were falling, and ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... aware. Just such a drama let us now compose. Plunge boldly into life—its depths disclose! Each lives it, not to many is it known, 'Twill interest wheresoever seiz'd and shown; Bright pictures, but obscure their meaning: A ray of truth through error gleaming, Thus you the best elixir brew, To charm mankind, and edify them too. Then youth's fair blossoms crowd to view your play, And wait as on an oracle; while they, The tender souls, who love the melting mood, Suck from your work their ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... poverty. There were women, too, whose costume emulated the classic drapery of the ancients, and who displayed, in their looped togas, no niggard share of their forms; while others, in shabby mourning, sat in obscure corners, not noticing the scene before them, nor noticed themselves. A strange equipage, with two horses extravagantly bedizened with rosettes and bouquets, stood at the door; and as I looked, a pale, haggard-looking man, whose foppery in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... was hardly that, for Norman did not love her. Daughter of a felon as she—Madaline—was—poor, lowly, obscure—he had given her his heart, although he could never make her the mistress of his home. There was some compensation for human suffering, some equality in the human lot, after all. She would be resigned. There were lots in life far worse than hers. What if she had learned to love Norman, and ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... "fixing" of hers means nothing—that she is, simply, a coquette. But he "can't tell what her look said." Certainly not any "vile cant" about giving her heart to him because she saw him sad and solitary, about lavishing all that she was on him because he was obscure, and she the queen of women. ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... diplomatic game, and from England's preference for us who spoke her language and thought her thoughts about liberty, law, what a man should be, what a woman should be, issued the Monroe Doctrine. And you will find that no matter what dynastic or ministerial interruptions have occurred to obscure this recognition of kinship with us and preference for us upon the part of the English people, such interruptions are always temporary and lie always upon the surface of English sentiment. Beneath the surface the recognition of kinship persists unchanged ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... of asparagus, which also waved lightly over the gilded looking-glass, and was reflected airily therein. Asparagus plumes waved over all the old pictures also. The whole room from this delicate garnishing, the faded green tone of the furniture covers and carpet, from the wall-paper in obscure arabesques of green and satiny white, appeared full of woodland shadows. Miss Camilla, swaying her feather fan, served to set these shadows slowly eddying with a motion of repose. She had dozed in her ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... demonstrations at the advent of the Ferenghi and the bicycle. These people seem as incapable of controlling their emotions and their voices as so many wild animals; they shout and gesticulate excitedly, and run about like people bereft of their senses. The uncivilization crops out of these obscure Harood villagers far plainer than it does in the tents of the wandering tribes. They are noisier and more boisterous than the nomads, who, as a matter of fact, are sober-sided ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... action—doctrines that became a heritage of the United States and have had a profound effect upon the labor movements in America. The first of these was the doctrine of conspiracy, a doctrine so ancient that its sources are obscure. It was the natural product of a government and of a time that looked askance at all combined action, fearing sedition, intrigue, and revolution. As far back as 1305 there was enacted a statute defining conspiracy and outlining ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... obscure Roumelian or Albanian renegado named Mahomedi was banished from Constantinople by the Grand Turk; he established himself in the island of Mitylene and there married a Christian widow named Catalina, by whom he had two sons, Uruj and Khizr. The father had been a sailor and both sons adopted the same ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... I had supposed that every man, whose wealth or power gave him influence in society, would start up, the moment it was known that an obscure individual, the usher of a school, had written a tragedy; not only to protect and produce it to the world, but to applaud and honour the author! Would secure him from the possibility of want, load him with ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... was closing gloomily, with ominous forecasts of the coming hurricane, when the babe who was destined to leave so imperishable a name in English literature, first saw the light in an humble cottage in an obscure Bedfordshire village. His father, Thomas Bunyan, though styling himself in his will by the more dignified title of "brazier," was more properly what is known as a "tinker"; "a mender of pots and kettles," according to Bunyan's contemporary biographer, Charles Doe. He was not, ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... bestow. The man had once served him in his extremity. Even to this day he never quite realised how the thing had come about, and Leslie Standing refused to talk of it. All he knew was that as mill-boss of an obscure mill, far in the interior of Quebec, away down south of Sachigo, he had fought one of those sudden battles with a lumber-jack which seem to spring up without any apparent reason. And in the desperateness of it, in the fierce height to which his battling temper had arisen, he had killed his man. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... correspondents who reside in localities favourable for making observations on this subject may be induced to pay attention to it; the exact appearance may be ascertained, with probably other facts calculated to throw light on the obscure ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... few unleashed as scouts to others held in reserve; for no more were seen or heard for sometime. Meanwhile, Mr. Huertis seems to have struck out a brilliant scheme. He collected his whole party into that obscure branch of the cavern, near its entrance, which has been described as a depository of animal bones, and ordering them to sling their rifles at their backs, bade them stand ready with their knives. Almost instantly, they observed a party of ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... credulous and confiding. Children of that character if reared by timid and over-fond parents, are deprived of the rough contact with society that is necessary to their development. There are many whom the lack of self-confidence, the lack of ambition, and lack of business energy condemn to an obscure life, when their intellectual capacities would fit them for an influential position. A kind but mistaken system of training confirms the defect, and dooms them to an inefficient life, or a stern system of repression deprives them ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... Gilbert Carstairs at Hathercleugh House. Had I done so, matters would have become simplified, and much more horror and trouble avoided, for Mr. Lindsey was just then at the beginning of a straight track and my silence turned him away from it, to get into more twisted and obscure ones. But—I said nothing. And why? The answer is simple, and there's the excuse of human nature in it—I was so much filled with the grand prospects of my stewardship, and of all it would bring me, and was so highly pleased with Sir Gilbert Carstairs ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... theory is worn out: a new theory has presented itself in its stead. The old one has become useless; and the crowd has looked into the secret sanctuaries of the high priests, and has seen that there is nothing there, and that there has been nothing there, save very obscure and senseless words. This has taken place ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... the beginning of that brilliantly spectacular series of events destined so soon to make Paris the Mecca of the world, there sat at table, in a little, obscure cabaret of the gay city, a group of persons who seemed to have chosen that spot for purposes of privacy. Yet privacy was difficult where all the curious passers-by stared in amaze at the great coach near the door, half filling the narrow ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... lantern high, walked ahead of the obscure group, which slowly followed. The light illumined her stooping, meagre figure as she made her way down the path across the back garden to the gate. Only now and again, by the chance swaying of the lantern, a ray lit the heavy blackness of the mass ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... and compared existing churches there with records, traditions, and memories of what they formerly were. The shifting of old windows and other details irregularly spaced, and spacing them at exact distances, has been one process. The deportation of the original chancel arch to an obscure nook and the insertion of a wider new one, to throw open the view of the choir, is a practice by no means extinct. Next in turn to the re-designing of old buildings and parts of them comes the devastation caused by letting restorations ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... or so that there's something in the group that's strange. It's never got out, because newspapermen never really got after it and covered their reunions. The reasons that first got them together are obscure, but one thing that holds them together is a Tontine insurance ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... A.D. 1600, is one of apprentice work, in which the details of art were being mastered, but in which no music, according to our acceptation of the term, was produced. The history of this period is somewhat obscure, the writers who throw light on it averaging scarcely more than one to a century, scattered about in different parts of Europe. Nevertheless, the most important changes in the history of music took ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... of the men out of the barroom, all talking together, clamorously suggesting plans, or merely, as in the case of the younger men and boys, venting their excitement in hoots and catcalls. It was a close dark night, obscure enough to make cowards brave, and the crowd that surged out of the tavern were by no means cowards, but angry and resolute men, whose exasperation at the action of the authorities, was sharpened and ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... be sure, adding, combining, comparing, and drawing its own conclusions. Why should lawyers, he wondered, treat those who came to them like children, advancing only in so far as it suited them out of the darkness where they housed among strangely worded paragraphs and obscure formulas?—But these musings were cut short. Having fondled his chin for a further moment, Ocock looked up and put a question. And, while he could not but admire the lawyer's acumen, this did not lessen Mahony's discomfort. All unguided, it went straight for what he believed ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... bereavement of the Boccaneras. He had loved Benedetta like a dear daughter during the sad days when she had dwelt near him; and finding the newspaper accounts of her death somewhat singular, worried in fact by the obscure points which he could divine in the tragedy, he was asking Pierre for particulars, when his son Luigi suddenly entered the room, breathless from having climbed the stairs so quickly and with his face full of anxious fear. He had just dismissed his contractors ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... we have been considering the struggles of men who have risen from obscure positions in life, by the aid of their own genius, industry, and courage, to the front rank of their respective callings. We shall now relate the story of one who having already won fortune, periled it all upon an enterprise in which his own genius had recognized ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... men, two women and a child in the room. They were all Dry-towners and had an obscure family likeness, and they all wore rich garments of fur dyed in many colors. One of the men, old and stooped and withered, was doing something to the brazier. A slim boy of fourteen was sitting cross-legged on a pile of cushions in the corner. There was something ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... explanation of the process in attention itself. We know that the opening of motor channels in one direction somewhat closes the channels for discharge in the opposite direction, but what mechanism does that work is still very obscure. Whichever principle of hypothetical explanation we might prefer, it certainly leads to difficulties in view of the extreme complexity of attention in states of suggestion and hypnotism. We might think of a mechanism which through the medium of the finest blood-vessels ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... diffusion of arts by various processes of acculturation; and of admixture and reciprocal diffusion of customs, institutions, and traditions. Arts, customs, institutions, and traditions extend beyond the boundaries of languages and serve to obscure them, and the admixture of strains of blood has obscured primitive ethnic divisions, ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell
... of the war. It is at bottom nothing but the effort of the Berlin absolute monarch and his group to impose their will on as large a part of the world as they can overrun. The President started out with the idea that it was a war brought on by many obscure causes—economic and the like; and he thus missed its whole meaning. We have ever since been dealing with the chips which fly from the war machine and have missed the larger meaning of the conflict. Thus we have failed to render help to the side of Liberalism and Democracy, ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... late as usual," observed Austin. "Philip and I don't mean to butt into this very grand function—Hello, Gerald! Hello, Gladys! . . . Where's our obscure corner below the salt, Nina? . ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... saints and angels fell around?—who placed it there, and for what purpose?—will no zealous antiquarian, on his way from a visit to the wondrous circle of Carnac and the gigantic Dolmens of Saumur, pause at Le Mans, at this obscure corner of the cathedral, opposite the huge Pans de Gorron, and tell the world the meaning of this figure with ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... of all, an obscure tale of a revolt of an unfixed date, but which must have happened between 1048 and 1053. The rebel, William Busac of the house of Eu, is said to have defended the castle of Eu against the duke and to have gone into banishment in France. But the ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... the time we are too old to get over it, that we are born with a natural gift for being interested in ourselves. We realise in a general way, that our lives are not very important—that they are being lived on a comparatively obscure but comfortable little planet, on a side street in space—but no matter how much we study astronomy, nor how fully we are made to feel how many other worlds there are for people to live on, and how many other people have lived on this ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... processes, where it has entered the internal ring. When the hernia extends itself from this part, its course will be obliquely inwards, corresponding with the direction of the inguinal canal. While it still occupies the canal without passing through the external ring, it is rendered obscure by the restraint of the external oblique tendon; but yet a degree of fulness may be felt in this situation. When the hernia has passed the external ring, T, Plate 36, it dilates considerably, and assumes the form of an oblong swelling, H, Plate 36, behind which the spermatic vessels are situated. ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... very best, (and therefore the most expensive) situations which can be had in a town or city. Now I do by no means intend to say, that in our trade, business, art, or profession, we should seek the most obscure, retired, out of the way place possible, and say, "God will provide, and I need not mind in what part of the town I carry on my calling." There are most assuredly certain things to be considered. The persons who are likely to buy the articles I sell, or employ me, are to be considered, ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... The girl, curled up at his side like a cat, paid little attention to the marvel of the flames. Her big, dark eyes, wild and furtive under the dark, tangled masses of her hair, kept wandering back and forth between the man's brooding face and the obscure black thickets which filled the valley behind him. The dancing flames she did not understand, but she understood the ponderous crashing, and growls, and savage cries which came from those black thickets and slopes of tumbled rocks. The man being absorbed in watching ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... The government itself began to be disturbed; the ministers of the sovereign were agitated; and, had no menaces been thrown out, it was generally understood that they would have given way to the popular voice, now continually more distinct and clamorous. In the midst of all this tumult obscure murmurs began to arise that Barratt had practised the same or similar villainies in former instances. One case in particular was beginning to be whispered about, which at once threw a light upon ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... there, for honest poverty, That hangs his head, and a' that? The coward slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that; For a' that, and a' that, Our toils obscure, and a' that; The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... protracted spell of rough weather. A railroad has been proposed and planned: in a more prosperous era it might be constructed, with the result of greatly developing all the Atlantic side of the island, and converting obscure villages into ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... century has been largely lost from view. Hence it has seemed fit to center this study about the man who stated the situation with the most unmistakable and uncompromising clearness, and who still occupies a unique though obscure position in ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... over the problem night and day; sometimes her hours of gloomy introspection were interrupted by bursts of rebellious fury. She would not bear it, she would not be despised and obscure and ignorant, when, so close to her, there were girls of her own age to whom Fate had been utterly kind; it was not her fault, and it was not right—it was not right to despise her for what ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... signal, I heard it. Stealthily following Vampa, I concealed myself as I had done on previous occasions. I was now thoroughly familiar with the details of the base transaction in progress between the precious pair and could readily comprehend even their most obscure and guarded allusions. Old Solara informed the chief that the young men had arrived, proposing that Vampa should abduct Annunziata at the earliest possible moment, so arranging matters that suspicion would fall upon the Viscount Massetti. This the chief agreed to do. The ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... of Rama's exile in the jungle is one of the most obscure portions of the Ramayana, inasmuch as it is difficult to discover any trace of the original tradition, or any illustration of actual life and manners, beyond the artificial life of self-mortification and selfdenial said to have been led by the Brahman sages of olden time. At the same ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... call for this extended reply which I hope will be of service to you. If I have left anything obscure that you would like to know about, or if I can assist you in any other ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... obscure paraphrases," said he; "but you, with your unfailing Italian simpatia, have divined the exact shade of ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... face to see if a sarcasm might not lurk somewhere in that obscure speech, but the gentle simplicity of the beautiful eyes that met his, banished that suspicion. He went away and conferred with the proprietor. Both appeared to be non-plussed. They thought and talked, and talked and thought by turns. Then both came forward ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... yourself and your unborn children, at once to leave him; if you DO love me, it's your duty to me, and still more your duty to yourself and our unborn children, at once to cleave to me. Don't let any sophisms of taboo-mongers come in to obscure that plain natural duty. Do right first; let all else go. For one of yourselves, a poet of your own, ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... contemporary published criticism which it is now not uninteresting to glance over. In selecting these he has been aided by the kindness of Mrs. Ogilbie. From the Abbotsford manuscripts and other sources he has added notes on points which have become obscure by lapse of time. He has especially to thank, for their courteous and ready assistance, Lady Napier and Ettrick, who lent him Sir Walter's letters to her kinswoman, the Marchioness of Abercorn; Mr. David Douglas, the editor ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... bands of black crepe round their sleeves, square, stolid-looking peasants, with tears running down their cheeks. They knelt on the stone flagging, their eyes turned toward the altar with its gold crucifix and jeweled ikons. The candle-flames only seemed to make the dimness more obscure. And the deep voice of the priest chanting in the darkness: all Russia seemed to be on its knees offering its faith as a bulwark against the Germans. When I turned to leave, I came face to face with an old woman. The tears were still wet on ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... one of them, boys and girls alike, retained an air of high birth, which at the first glance distinguished them from the other tenants of the estate. Though they were not aware of it, some sense of their remote origin must have survived in them, and I think that in a still more obscure way some sense of it survived in the country side, for the villagers did not think worse of the O'Dwyers because they kept themselves aloof from the pleasures of the village and its squabbles. The O'Dwyers kept ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... my fellow countrymen, which are not exhaustive but only representative, that I find ample warrant for satisfaction and encouragement. We should not let the much that is to do obscure the much which has been done. The past and present show faith and hope and courage fully justified. Here stands our country, an example of tranquillity at home, a patron of tranquillity abroad. Here stands its Government, aware of its might but obedient to its conscience. Here it ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... Burst from their chains, erect, uplifting hands Of rapture to the glad new light that then, Then first, began to struggle thro' the clouds And crown all manhood with a sacred crown August—a light which, though from age to age Clouds may obscure it, grows and still shall grow, Until that Kingdom come, that grand Communion, That Commonweal, that Empire, which still draws Nigher with every hour, that Federation, That turning of the wasteful strength of war To accomplish ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... spleene, the heauing of my lunges prouokes me to rediculous smyling: O pardon me my stars, doth the inconsiderate take salue for lenuoy, and the word lenuoy for a salue? Pag. Doe the wise thinke them other, is not lenuoy a salue? Ar. No Page, it is an epilogue or discourse to make plaine, Some obscure precedence that hath tofore bin faine. Now will I begin your morrall, and do you follow with my lenuoy. The Foxe, the Ape, and the Humble-Bee, Were still at oddes, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... be unfair to question whether he was a born novelist at all, though he had not a few of the qualifications necessary to the kind, and exercised, coming as and when he did, an immense influence upon it. The subject is too obscure. Its only original vates, Charlevoix, though always a respectable name to persons of some acquaintance with literature and history, has never been much more, either in France or in England. The French, unluckily for themselves, never took much interest in ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... where I may, thou ever art with me, As Counsellor and Friend, dear Memory! Thy secret depths I would again explore, And must draw largely ere my task be o'er. Be thou no ignis fatuus to allure Me from the paths of truth, nor it obscure, While I attempt to paint the coming scenes, Which COOPER passed through with such slender means, 'Tis early Spring-time, and the opening buds Bestud the boughs of trees through all the woods. The snow and frost remain till ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... youth; that amazement at the awakening of sensual impulses which clothe themselves in mental forms; of mental necessities which clothe themselves in sensual images; all the reflections upon these, which obscure rather than enlighten us, as the fog covers over and does not illumine the vale from which it is about to rise; the many errors and aberrations springing therefrom,—all these the brother and sister shared and endured hand in hand, and were ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
