"Open secret" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... newspapers have been excluded from Germany, and Berlin has added truthless to meatless days. But the Germans have long since found a substitute for veracity as well as for leather and butter and rubber and bread. They are said to have found a substitute for International Law, and it is an open secret that they are even now in search of a substitute for victory. We might even suggest a few more substitutes which have not yet been utilised. As, for example, a substitute for Verdun with the German flag flying over it; substitutes for several German Colonies; a substitute ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... not strange, resolved gentlemen,[14] That I thus privatelie have severed you, To open secret furrowes of my hart. Think not I do intend to undermine, Your passed lives, although you know I am A man to whom the true unpartiall sworde, Of equall justice is delivered. Therefore sweare both, as you respect ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... was very proud of his physical resemblance to her portrait by Reynolds. He had played with great success the part of Fortinbras in the provinces, and Mr. Alexander has assured me that he was the ideal impersonator of Rosencrantz. It was an open secret that he had refused Mr. Arthur Bourchier's offer of that role in a proposed revival of Hamlet at the Garrick. Since the burial of Sir Henry Irving in the Abbey, he has never been seen: though I saw him myself in the funeral cortege. All his friends remember the curious exaltation in ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... and busier end of which they were obliged to pass, Mr. Taggett caused a sensation. The drivers of carts and the pedestrians on both sidewalks stopped and looked at him. The part he had played in Slocum's Yard was now an open secret, and had produced an excitement that was not confined to the clientele of Snelling's bar-room. It was known that William Durgin had disappeared, and tdhat the constables were searching for him. The air was thick with flying projectures, but none of them precisely hit the mark. ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... his false pursuit, Mr Bennett proceeds from error to error, abounding in reckless misstatements, atrocious imputations, and scattering charges void of truth. As briefly as possible, I will deal with his accusations. One of his first deliverances is as follows:—"It is, of course, an open secret that in all our Soudan battles the enemy's wounded have been killed. The practice has, ever since the days of Tel-el-Kebir, become traditional in Soudanese warfare. After the battle of Atbara, it was announced that 3000 ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... add that she was also his darling of them all, but this was a perfectly open secret between them, and had been such as long as Nan could remember. She laughed up at him with tender impudence in ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... plausible. But as the days went by and the horror of her absence grew into the soul of the lonely woman whose care Betty had been for years, Candace became more and more restive and suspicious. It was these suspicions which sent her on her investigations, and made her uncannily wise to pry open secret locks and cover all trace of her absence after she had ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... crowds. It is the London expression, and, in its way, the Paris expression. It is the quickly caught, though not interested, look, the dull but ready glance of those who do not know of their forfeited place apart; who have neither the open secret nor the close; no reserve, no need of refuge, no flight nor impulse of flight; no moods but what they may brave out in the street, no hope of news ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... the Archduke.—By a hideous irony of fate Francis Ferdinand was the one man capable of restoring order to an already desperate internal situation. His very person was a programme and a watchword, and it had long been an open secret that his accession would be the signal for drastic reforms. It was his ambition to supersede the effete Dual system by a blend of centralism and federalism such as would reconcile the national sentiment of individual races with the consciousness of a common ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... off Nantucket something analogous to the famous action of Commodore Tatnall when with the cry, "Blood is thicker than water" he took a part of his crew to the aid of British vessels sorely pressed by the fire of certain Chinese forts on the Yellow River. As it was it is an open secret that one commander appealed by wireless to Washington for authority to intervene. He did not get it of course. No possible construction of international law could give us rights beyond the three-mile limit. He had at least however the satisfaction when the German commander asked ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... weekly journal the art of camouflage played a most important part in recent naval warfare. It is, of course, quite an open secret that the Naval authorities are aware that one of our largest Dreadnoughts is somewhere in a certain English harbour, but, owing to the excellence of its camouflage, they have not yet been ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... boys, who were all equally in the open secret of the ring, were now all equally and simultaneously ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... uncomfortable state of affairs arises from ourselves. Once we have passed a certain barrier, which at present looks so frowning and impossible, but which fades into nothing immediately we have passed it—once we have found the open secret of identity—then the way is indeed open ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... with the other princes went to asperse the dead body with holy water in the church of the Blancs Manteaux, and as he drew nigh, exclaiming against the foul murder, blood is said to have issued from the wounds. At the funeral he held a corner of the pall, but his guilt was an open secret, and though he braved it out for a time he was forced to flee to his lands in Flanders for safety. In a few months, however, Jean was back in force at Paris, and a doctor of the Sorbonne pleaded an elaborate justification of the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... Revelation is the Initiation of Man into the Immemorial Mystery of the Open Secret of Being, revealed as the Inevitable Vortex of Continuity. Inevitable is the word. Its motive is inherent—it is what has to be. It is not for any love or hate, nor for joy nor sorrow, nor good nor ill. End, beginning, or ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... had been supposed. Churchman was the first to break the long conspiracy of silence which withheld from the world Teresa's full name. Cascales y Muoz has since thrown more light upon this episode. But these gentlemen have done nothing more than to tell an open secret. Escosura, long ago, all but betrayed it in the following pun: "Tendamos el velo de olvido sobre esa lamentable flaqueza de un gran corazn," he says, referring to the affair with Teresa, "y recordemos, de paso, que el sol mismo, ese astro de luz soberano, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... and classical example is, of course, furnished by our Boy Chancellor. It is an open secret that, with that sagacious foresight which has always characterised him, Lord BIRKENHEAD recognises the impermanency of his exalted position and is resolved when and if he leaves the Woolsack to resume practice as a Junior. It is further rumoured ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... it may be asked, speak of such a thing as the Secret Doctrine at all, since it were better named the Open Secret of the world? For two reasons, both of which have been intimated: first, in the olden times unwonted knowledge of any kind was a very dangerous possession, and the truths of science and philosophy, equally with religious ideas other ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... right to talk. It was an open secret that he had loved Kate faithfully ever since he joined the gang. But apparently Terry Hollis cared little about the moods of the girl. He was the center of festivities that evening until an interruption from the outside formed a diversion. It came in the form of a hard rider; ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... he will dredge you up a choice word from the ooze of Cotton Mather himself. A diction at once so rich and so homely as his we know not where to match in these days of writing by the page; it is like homespun cloth-of-gold. The many cannot miss his meaning, and only the few can find it. It is the open secret of all true genius. What does he mean, quotha? He means inspiring hints, a divining-rod to your deeper nature, "plain living and high thinking." We meant only to welcome this book, and not to review ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... it is a very open secret in the community, the gentleman in question, my dear Marquise, is one of the isolated instances. If you are studying social institutions in this country you must make a note of that, and underline ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... time James Hargis presided as county judge. J. B. Marcum and his wife both had known for a long time that he was a marked man. Indeed, ever since he had represented the Fusionists in contesting the election of Jim Hargis as county judge, it was an open secret that Marcum would meet his doom sooner or later. Added to this was the animosity aroused on the Hargis side by Marcum's defense of young Tom Cockrell for ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... of the enemy were now known to be in the neighbourhood, and a spy came in saying that it was an open secret among the Boers that Krugersdorp was De la Rey's objective as soon as a favourable opportunity should present itself. In spite of this it was difficult to make the danger of going beyond the outposts appreciated, and this resulted in the death of one of ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... the governor's dashing aide. The enthusiasm of this recruiter of regiments had not ceased with Ferris's departure for the front; the number of disabled officers forbade him to lionize any one of them, but he befriended Ferris; he made a feint of discovering the open secret of his poverty, and asked how he ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... there at the very door-sill of the Gallery of Men and Women is surely not accidental, even if Browning's habit of plotting his groups of poems symmetrically by opening with a prologue-poem sounding the right key, and rounding the theme with an epilogue, did not tend to prove it intentional. It is an open secret that the last poem in "Men and Women," for instance, is an epilogue of autobiographical interest, gathering up the foregoing strains of his lyre, for a few last chords, in so intimate a way that the actual fall of the fingers may be felt, the pausing smile seen, as the performer turns towards ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... open secret. There are a good many people similarly situated. A small and badly-kept estate is ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... safer ground in guessing him vastly proud of trotting Goethe round. Such fame throughout Europe had Goethe won by his works that it was necessary for him to travel incognito. Not that his identity wasn't an open secret, nor that he himself would have wished it hid. Great artists are always vain. To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... torrent to divert the currents. There had then been a talk of Tilsit, and diverting the stream, or part of it towards Macdonald in the north. But D'Arragon knew that Macdonald was likely to be in no better plight than Murat; for it was an open secret in Dantzig that Yorck, with four-fifths of Macdonald's army, was about to ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... was raised almost to the point of white heat on the morrow. The cause of the old mare's behavior, and the interview which had led to the practical joke, soon became an open secret, and while it convulsed the town with laughter, it also gave the impression that young Haldane was ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... even contrive that without your assistance, eh, Marriott," laughed Rosmore. "He who holds the key can easiest open the door. Don't look so astonished, man. It is an open secret that, from the King downwards, personal aims enter into this rebellion. Jeffreys has his, a stretching out towards power; you have yours, which are no concern of mine; I have mine, which ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... supper, in the Indian room of the Windsor, and I was invited. By this time people had come to know something about me. I was a globe-trotter, a man of leisure, interested as a hobby in research work in medicine. I discovered that her affair with the young Grand Duke was a fairly open secret in her set; also, that she was expecting him in London almost daily. Gradually I hinted that I knew the young Grand Duke. As I gained her confidence further, I invented amorous affairs for him and hinted to her about ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... however, for striking his trail was purely accidental, and no effort whatever was being made to arrest him personally. Had this been especially desired it might have been accomplished very readily just after Lee's surrender, for it was an open secret that Early was then not far away, pretty ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 5 • P. H. Sheridan
... Huxley's positions, as well as views more extremely iconoclastic than any advanced by Huxley. Although Dr. Mivart's outspoken words have called down on him the official thunders of Rome, it is an open secret that many good Catholics think this attempted exclusion of modern knowledge to be fraught with grave danger to the Church. In these matters the Protestant churches have advanced ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... in case his proposed declaration in favor of the restoration of the Catholic Church produced any trouble in the island, the aid of French troops. The scheme was never consummated; but these clandestine negotiations, however, becoming an open secret, made the people very uneasy and suspicious. This state of the public mind led to ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... late James Payn, then "reader" for an eminent firm. While fully recognising the remarkable gifts of the author Mr. Payn's hesitancy as to the book's attractions got the better of his judgment; and with "The House of Merrilees" it is now an open secret that very much the same point of view was taken in more than one instance. Mr. Marshall's "Peter Binney, Undergraduate," had been and is still decidedly popular, but his new book was more ambitious, possessing such a plot as to require peculiarly delicate handling. Had ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... open secret of the meaning of most of these fires. And after he had cursed the fire fiends, he apologized for them. "It's the curse of the system," explained he. "It's all the curse of the system. These here storekeepers and the farmers ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... kindred of meaning. Fundamentally indeed they are still the same; in this most important respect especially, That they have penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery of the Universe; what Goethe calls 'the open secret.' "Which is the great secret?" asks one.—"The open secret,"—open to all, seen by almost none! That divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all Beings, 'the Divine Idea of the World, that which lies at the bottom of Appearance,' as Fichte styles it; of which all Appearance, from ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... proper source. Mysterious hints were dropped of political reunions in a house on a thickly wooded hill, a quarter of a mile behind the Governor's, the fortunate guests to which enchanted abode being sworn to secrecy. That it was the nightly resort of Clintonians was an open secret, but that Federalism was being intelligently interpreted, albeit with deepest subtlety, was guessed by few of the visitors themselves, and Hamilton divined rather than heard it. If converts were not actually made, they were at least ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... the laugh again upon the speaker, for it was an open secret that the Southern heiress dearly loved her ease and took it, up to the last moment, then had to "cram for all she was worth" ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Roden, with a pale face. "Yes—go on." But she bit her lip and was silent. "It is an open secret," she went on after a pause. "Everybody knows that it is a disgrace or worse—perhaps a crime. If you have made a fortune, be content with what you have made, and clear yourself ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... sergeant were awarded him, and even then the battalion was taken by surprise. There was no surprise a few months later, however, when he was promoted over a score of classmates and made captain of his company. It was an open secret that the commandant had said that if he had it all to do over again, Mr. Stanley would be made "first captain,"—a rumor that big John Burton, the actual incumbent of that office, did not at all fancy. Stanley was "square" and impartial. His company was in admirable discipline, though many of ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... subject of his song. As secrecy was a duty incumbent upon [16] the troubadour, he usually referred to the lady by a pseudonym (senhal); naturally, the lady's reputation was increased if her attraction for a famous troubadour was known, and the senhal was no doubt an open secret at times. How far or how often the bounds of his formal and conventional relationship were transgressed is impossible to say; "en somme, assez immoral" is the judgment of Gaston Paris upon the society of the age, and is confirmed by expressions of desire occurring from time ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... subjecting their unfortunate victims to the foul air of the station house, and the still fouler language of its guardians. Yet crimes are rapidly multiplying, and society is paying the price. On the other hand, it is an open secret that when the unfortunate citizen has been given the full "mercy" of the law, and for the sake of safety is hidden in the worst of hells, his real Calvary begins. Robbed of his rights as a human being, degraded to a mere automaton without will ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... "Baron Lauerwinkel" matter. There he had promptly come forward and in his own name challenged the anonymous author of a pamphlet bearing the title of "Hypocrisy Unveiled." The anonym had, like Scott, shirked, and had maintained his anonymity. (Lord Cockburn says it was an open secret, but I do not know who he was.) Thereupon Lockhart took no further notice, just as he did in the later matter, and I do not believe that a court of honour in any country would find fault with him. At any rate, I think that we are entitled to know, much more definitely ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... not night from day in his toil,—in organizing, conciliating, compelling when necessary. Letters passed between him and Springfield. And, after that solemn inauguration, between him and Washington. It was an open secret that the Governor of Missouri held out his arms to Jefferson Davis, just elected President of the new Southern Confederacy. It soon became plain to the feeblest brain what the Leader and his friends had perceived long ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... delight when he recited before them, which, as he had a good memory and was fond of poetry, he often did. They were proud to go out walking with him. But his attentions never gave rise to jealousy; for it was an open secret in the servants' hall that he loved his mistress. He had never said anything to that effect, and no one dared allude to it in his presence, much less rally him on his weakness; but his passion was well known for all that, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... from the shock of painful wounds, surely that officer was Abbot. The colonel well knows with what pride and blessing his revered old father would welcome his coming—the joy it would bring to the household at his home. It is an open secret, too, that he is engaged to Genevieve Winthrop, and surely a man must want to see the lady of his love. He well remembers how she came with other ladies to attend the presentation of colors to the regiment, and how handsome and distinguished a ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... Catalogue (including the Typographical Supplement, 1897), a noble monument to the energy and courage of the grand marchand whose name it bears, is a good deal more than even a bookseller's advertising medium on a large or the largest scale. It is, in fact, a literary performance; and it is an open secret to whom we owe it. The collector, apart from the question of purchase, will find it replete with useful, instructive, and trustworthy information, so far as ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... the little Harlem flat had long ceased to have more than a semblance of being professional, and it was an open secret that he wished to make Margaret his wife. Margaret said no, though with a heightened color and a quickened breath—which told at least herself how easily the "no" might have been ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... official position in the country of his residence, but it was an open secret that those responsible for the real direction of affairs sought his counsel on nearly every step that they meditated, and that his counsel was very rarely disregarded. Some of the shrewdest and most successful enactments of the ruling power were believed to have ...
— When William Came • Saki
... practically rustlers preying upon larger interests passing through the country to the Indian reservations. Year by year the feeling had grown more bitter, That Snaith and McRobert backed the river settlers was an open secret. A night herder had been shot from the mesquite not a month before. The blame had been laid upon a band of bronco Mescaleros, but the story was whispered that a "bad man" in the employ of the Lazy S M people, a man known as ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... miner, unable to hold the open secret any longer, told the Pet about Grump's operation in dust. Great was the astonishment of the young man, and puzzling miners gained sympathy from the weak eyes and open mouth of the Pet as he meandered homeward, evidently as much at a ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... open secret that I would have looked for nothing better than to marry Millicent Gladwyne." He paused with a slight flush creeping into his bronzed face. "For all that, I knew some years ago that I hadn't the faintest chance and never would have. I have her ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... paper a resolution standing in the name of Mr. Jennings, framed in terms not calculated to smooth the path of the Conservative Government, just then particularly troubled. That Mr. Jennings had prepared it in consultation with Lord Randolph Churchill was an open secret. Indeed, Lord Randolph had undertaken to second it. Before the motion could be reached a debate sprang up, in which Lord Randolph interposed, and delivered a speech which, in Mr. Jennings's view, entirely cut the ground from under his feet. He ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... and dull in its weary round of ceremony. The moving spirit was now occupied elsewhere, and his constant absent-mindedness made the whole structure meaningless; for it was an open secret that the soft grace and beseeching eyes, the graceful and willowy form, the exquisite taste and winning ways of Josephine would avail her no longer. The little nephew, Hortense's son and Napoleon's darling, his intended heir, was dead; Joseph had only daughters, and ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... being first by separating from itself particularised, and then by return into itself individualised, the whole being what Hegel characterises as Der Process des Geistes, "The Process of the Spirit." Something like this is what Dr. Stirling calls "The Secret of Hegel," and an open secret it is, for he finds it pervading the whole system; "open where you will in Hegel," he says, "you find him always engaged in saying pretty well the same thing"; always identity by otherness passing into selfness, or making ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... state in Russia. I know young men of the highest rank whose chief boast is that they know how to conquer fortune; that is, to cheat. One of the Matuschkins goes so far as to challenge all foreign cheats to master him. He has just received permission to travel for three years, and it is an open secret that he wishes to travel that he may exercise his skill. He intends returning to Russia laden with the spoils of the dupes he ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Sam briefly, and Michael knew he would do his best. It might be that Sam's change of viewpoint would have more effect upon Buck than anything Michael could say. For it was an open secret between Sam and Michael now that Sam stood for a new order of things and that the old life, so far as he was concerned, he had ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... movement had not yet been "sprung" upon the public. It was still an open secret among the young men of the "better element" in the Lincoln, the ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... that there was something wrong, that the rest of the Department did not look on life and work as he did. But he could not decide just where the trouble lay. And in his uncertainty he made it a point to entrench himself by means of "politics." It became an open secret that he had a pull, that his position was impregnable. This in turn tended to coarsen his methods. It lifted him beyond the domain of competitive effort. It touched his carelessness with arrogance. It also tinged his arrogance with ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... building strategic railways to the Belgian frontier she betrayed the line of direction which the potential energy was intended to take, when the burst came. Unofficially Germany has long since proclaimed her intention to invade Belgium; it was an "open secret." ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... and Poet, well understood, have much kindred of meaning. Fundamentally indeed they are still the same; in this most important respect especially, That they have penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery of the Universe; what Goethe calls 'the open secret'. 'Which is the great secret?' asks one.—'The open secret,'—open to all, seen by almost none! That divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all Beings, 'the Divine Idea of the World, that which lies at the bottom of Appearance,' as Fichte styles it; of which all Appearance, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... his hair irritably and shrugged his shoulders. "Her secret? It is every artist's secret,"—he waved his hand,—"passion. That is all. It is an open secret, and perfectly safe. Like heroism, it ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... artillery," said the editor, when Kent had guardedly outlined some portion of his plan. "We are on your side of the fence, and have been ever since Bucks was sprung as a candidate on the convention. But you've no case. Of course, it's an open secret that the Universal people are trying to break through the fence of the new law and establish themselves in the Belmount field without losing their identity or any of their monopolistic privileges. And it is equally a matter of course to some ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... show a singular capacity for romantic affection, and gleams of hope of supreme happiness. But death frustrated this hope, and the disappointment brought him to the verge of insanity. In his domestic life,—it was an open secret,—he had some of the experience which disciplined Socrates. Perhaps we go to the root of his sadness if we say that in his deepest heart he was a passionate idealist, and by circumstances he was long shut out from the natural ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... of, there was an open secret to every well informed Greek that the Queen of Greece, Olga, had been the tool of the Russian bureaucracy, trying by means of religious influences to keep the Greeks under the Russian political control; that the Queen ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... Lome incident—the intercepted letter of the imprudent Spanish Minister, and his subsequent disgrace and recall—was another much-discussed topic. It was an open secret, especially among the newspaper fraternity and others in the know, that the former minister had dispensed with lavish hand a corruption fund to influence writers on the American press. A little clique of journalists in and around the Capitol had profited greatly. Information about ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... displeasure, which, truth to tell, had little effect upon the culprit. It was not the first, nor the second, nor the twentieth time that a similar scene had been enacted, for "mother's resurrections" were a standing joke in the Asplin family, and the final fate thereof an open secret. However lofty might be the first suggested use, the end was always the same. Her offerings scorned by ungrateful relatives, she took refuge in dusters, and patiently hemmed squares of the rejected fabrics, with which to enrich the already lordly store of these useful commodities. On the ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... now an open secret that Sutoto and Cinda were in love. If the Chief knew of it he did not exhibit any alarm, or offer any objections. John knew that courtships on the islands were not usually of long duration. He thought it would be a fine thing to make the wedding ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... pointed out that while a realization which is also a reality, or a reality which is also a realization, is in nature or what is external to us a mystery and a puzzle, it is just when we look inwards the open secret of our being; in our life or action regarded from within, it appears as something which is only dark because it is so close and familiar to us that inspection of it is difficult, not because it is in itself opaque or unintelligible. ...
— Progress and History • Various
... Langworthy's church. He subscribes liberally to the Associated Charities, and no good object or worthy public enterprise fails to receive his support. He is not now actively in politics, and his paint is not partisan; but it is an open secret that he is, and always has been, a staunch Republican. Without violating the sanctities of private life, we cannot speak fully of various details which came out in the free and unembarrassed interview which Colonel Lapham accorded our representative. But we may ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... moment, after listening to the boy's grave explanation of the raw wound across his cheek, and on a quite momentary impulse written across its back that short sentence which was so meaty with meaning. Every detail of Hogarty's country-wide search for a man who could whip Jed The Red was an open secret, so far as he was concerned; he was familiar with all the bitterness of every fresh disappointment, but he had never seen Hogarty's face so alive with exultant hope as ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... His hand closed firmly over the one on his arm. "Call it 'The Man With the Glove,'" he said quietly. "It is the open secret ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... Holy One of God, will in His Father's Name, enter and take possession. Then faith will bring the solution of all our difficulties, the victory over all our failures, the fulfilment of all our desires: 'The tent, the heart, shall be sanctified by my glory; and I will dwell among them.' The open secret of true holiness, the secret of the joy unspeakable, is Christ dwelling in the heart ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... On the last day of the autumn camping, the silver stunt cup was to be awarded. It was an open secret that this was to go to Nick Vernon, and the scouts of both troops were agreeable enough to this disposition ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Lawrence had come home, and she was anxious to wear it to meeting in the hope that he might admire her in it. Should she betray this artless preening and trimming of her maiden plumage, which, though, like a bird's, an open secret of nature, must nevertheless be kept sacred by an impulse of modest concealment and deceit towards the one for whose ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... most in the United States was levity. We expected mere excitement, violent fluctuations of opinion, a confused irresponsibility, and possibly mischievous and disastrous interventions. It is no good hiding an open secret. We judged America by the peace headline. It is time we began to offer our apologies to America and democracy. The result of reading endless various American newspapers and articles, of following the actions of the American Government, of talking ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... hot foot against the combined armies of five kings, flushed with recent victory, to rescue one man! His army? Just 318 odd fellows, armed like a circus crowd. And he won too. "He always wins who sides with God." What pluck! Only a farmer! No war training! Yet what hero has eclipsed his feat? His open secret? He was THE FRIEND ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd
... of Nature upon this point is not less striking—it may be added, not less solemn. It is an open secret, to be read in a hundred analogies from the world around, that of the millions of possible entrants for advancement in any department of Nature the number ultimately selected for preferment is small. Here also "many ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... one had outweighed all the rest: Mary must be told that her young uncle and Paula were betrothed; for she knew by experience that the child could keep nothing of importance from her grandmother, and that Neforis had no love for Paula was an open secret. As yet she certainly could know nothing of her son's formal suit, but if once she were informed of it she would do everything in her power—of this Katharina had not a doubt—to keep Orion and Paula apart. So the girl had told ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the masses are pitiless irony. There is no need for symposiums. It is an open secret. It cries upon the house-tops. It calls above the world in the Sabbath bells. A church that believes less than the world believes shall lose its leadership in the world. "Why should I pay pew rent," says the man who sings with his ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Bonaparte and Sieyes: he had been dismissed from the Foreign Office in the previous month of July because in his hands it had proved to be too lucrative to the holder and too expensive for France. It was an open secret that, when American commissioners arrived in Paris a short time previously, for the settlement of various disputes between the two countries, they found that the negotiations would not progress until 250,000 dollars had ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose |
