"Oracle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... day after to-morrow we begin our removal to a home which Jane has taken near to Miss Winter's in Suffolk. That she was able to find just what we wanted at a moment's notice encourages me in thinking that Providence is on our side, or, as your dear father used to say, that the oracle has spoken. In a week's time I hope to send news that we are settled. You are forbidden to come here before our departure, but will be invited to the new home as soon as possible. The ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... principles was adopted amidst prolonged cheers, and the selection of electors approved without dissent. The happy combination of the two electors-at-large, William Cullen Bryant and James O. Putnam, evidenced the spirit of loyalty to Abraham Lincoln that inspired all participants. Bryant had been an oracle of the radical democracy for more than twenty years, and had stubbornly opposed Seward; Putnam, a Whig of the school of Clay and Webster, had, until recently, zealously supported Millard Fillmore and the American party. In its eagerness ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the gods.[93] Every one also has rather marvelled at the somewhat lame and impotent conclusion of the play when Athene—herself in reality one of the most infamous of the Olympian deities—is brought on the stage to save the prestige of the oracle at Delphi and to explain away the altogether disreputable behaviour of the no less infamous Apollo. But no one before Verrall had thought of coupling together the free-thinking and the episode in the play. This is what Verrall did. Ion sees ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... before, but would come to him on the first day of the year and give, some more, some less. He, after adding as much or more again, would return it, not only to the senators but to all the rest. I have also heard the story that on one day of the year, following some oracle or dream, he would assume the guise of a beggar and would accept money from those who passed. This, whether trustworthy or ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... appear trivial which could not either be evolved out of similar principles, by the same process, or at least brought under the same forms of thought, by perceived or imagined analogies? And so it was. For more than a century men continued to invoke the oracle of their own spirits, not only concerning its own forms and modes of being, but likewise concerning the laws of external nature. All attempts at philosophical explication were commenced by a mere effort of the understanding, as the power of abstraction; or by the imagination, transferring ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... A comet was seen, and also three Suns: In which yeer, Florus President of the Jews was by them slain. Paul writes to Timothy. The Christians are warned by a divine Oracle, and depart out of Jerusalem. Boadice a British Queen, killeth seventy thousand Romans. The Nazareni, a scurvie Sect, begun, that boasted much of Revelations and Visions. About a year after Nero was proclaimed enemy ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... born yesterday. Will you allow me to express an opinion, in which I may be quite wrong, but to which I am entirely wedded? If the custom-house officers had been coming, they would have been here now. In other words, somebody is working the oracle, and (for a good guess) ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... is grounded only upon the word and oracle of God, and not upon the light of Nature. Herein there has not been sufficiently inquired the true limits and use of reason in spiritual things. Exposition of Scriptures, on the other hand, is not deficient. Divinity has four main branches—faith, manners, liturgy, and government—in ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... not, in that event, to conceal from Lord Mountclere the circumstances of her position till it should be too late for him to object to them, she found her conscience inconveniently in the way of her theory, and the oracle before her afforded no hint. 'Ah—it is a point ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... their hearts and told them that France could not die. Hoping nothing from earth, they lifted their souls to heaven; an ardent religious fervor seized upon them, which had no part with clergy or creed. It rose from the extremity of their need, and fixed its root in an old oracle of the Middle Ages, which had predicted that France should be 'lost through a woman and saved by ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... friends at last found him and induced him to return, for his country was going to rack and ruin, and even its capital had fallen into the enemy's hands. The loving fairy herself sends the prince back to his country; for the oracle has decreed that she shall lay upon her lover the severest of tasks. Only by performing this task triumphantly can he make it possible for her to leave the immortal world of fairies in order to share the fate of her earthly lover, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... suffer death at the altar unless some one offers to die in her place; likewise a custom whereby a nymph between fifteen and twenty years of age is annually sacrificed to the goddess. When besought to release the land from this tribute Diana through her oracle replies: ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... palliates educational situations without affording a solution. It is so steeped in tradition that it resorts to statistics as it would consult an oracle. We look to see it establishing precedents only to find it following precedents. When we would find in it a leader we find merely a follower. To such teaching statistical numbers mean far more than living children. Indeed, ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... the little cell on top of the eight-storied tower at Babylon, and was said by the priests to share the couch of the god; that the Thebans in Egypt tell a similar story of their god; that at Patara, in Lycia, the priestess who gave the oracle consorted with the god; and that at Babylon every woman was compelled once to sacrifice herself to the first comer in the temple of Mylitta. The last statement was long considered so monstrous that it was not believed. That incredulity arose from modern mores, in which religion ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... the only object he had on earth was to deprive the Duchess of her power and favour with the King. Christian smiled internally to see him approach the state of mind in which he was most easily worked upon, and judiciously kept silence, until the Duke called out to him, in a pet, "Well, Sir Oracle, you that have laid so many schemes to supplant this she-wolf of Gaul, where are all your contrivances now?—Where is the exquisite beauty who was to catch the Sovereign's eye at the first glance?—Chiffinch, hath he seen her?—and what does he say, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... "We are your oracles." —Dodona was an oracle in Epirus.—The temple of Zeus there was surrounded by a dense forest, all the trees of which were endowed with the gift of prophecy; both the sacred oaks and the pigeons that lived in them answered the questions of those who came to consult ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... no opportunity of enquiring what I wished of that so holy oracle of Thine, his breast, unless the thing might be answered briefly. But those tides in me, to be poured out to him, required his full leisure, and never found it. I heard him indeed every Lord's day, rightly expounding ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... great benefactor to Rouen died the following year, deeply lamented by the inhabitants, and generally so by France; but, above all, regretted by Louis XIIth, his sovereign, whom, to use the words of Guicciardini, he served as oracle and authority. The author of the History of the Chevalier Bayard, is still louder in his praise.—The western facade of the cathedral was not finished till 1530, ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... breath of rose Steals from the dawn and softly blows Beneath the lintel, where is hung My little bell with winged tongue; Steals from the dawn, that it may be An oracle of peace to me; For hark! athwart my fitful dreams There mingles with the Orient beams A wakening psalm of tinkling bell: "God brings the ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... how this was to be done. The devil advised them to make a brazen head, with all the internal structure and organs of a human head. The construction would cost them much time, and they must wait with patience till the faculty of speech descended upon it. Finally, however, it would become an oracle, and, if the question were propounded to it, would teach them the solution of their problem. The friars spent seven years in bringing the subject to perfection, and waited day after day in expectation that ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Albert and their children. Indeed the Baron seems to have been a permanent pillar for princes to lean upon. From youth to old age he was to two or three royal households the chief "guide, philosopher, and friend"—a Coburg mentor, a Guelphic oracle. ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... Potomac against the universality of the impeaching power. The system of the Senate may be inferred from their transactions heretofore, and from the following declaration made to me personally by their oracle.* 'No republic Can ever be of any duration without a Senate, and a Senate deeply and strongly rooted, strong enough to bear up against all popular storms and passions. The only fault in the constitution of our Senate is, that their term of office is not ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Rome, year in and year out. Temples were erected to Thetis, Diana, Flora, etc., and peasants went about dressed up as haruspices and augurs. The Pontifex slaughtered a sheep on the sacrificial altar, the oracle was consulted in a cave, and in a temple dedicated to the sun young priests kept up an ever-flaming fire. On this estate an actor was master of the hunt, librarian, theatre director, high priest of the sun and—schoolmaster, all in his own person; and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... time, if Mathieu had renounced the actual exercise of authority, he none the less remained the creator, the oracle who was consulted, listened to, and obeyed. He dwelt with Marianne in the old shooting-box which had been transformed and enlarged into a very comfortable house. Here they lived like the founders of a dynasty who had retired in full glory, setting their only delight in beholding around them the ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... sense is still the canon by which his judgment is determined. On this ground he disbelieves the Jewish religion,(454) selecting successive passages of the national history, such as the sacrifice of Isaac, the oracle of Urim,(455) the ceremonial religious system,(456) as the object of his attack. A degree of interest attaches to his criticism on these points, in that it was the means of calling forth the celebrated work of Warburton on the Divine Legation ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... great oracle of God, St. John Chrysostom, deplores with infinite compassion in some part of his works the disaster and calamity of his century, in which not only was the memory of an infinity of illustrious persons cut off from among mankind, ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... to insist much upon the inexpressible value of the Bible, the privilege and blessing of it to nations, families, and persons; but he never entertained the least notion of the worth of it till now, when being to talk to heathens, savages, and barbarians, he wanted the help of the written oracle for his assistance. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... 'Tis ill-Manners to pluck the Masque off, when we would not be known: besides that, Curiosity has lost Men many a Blessing, and plung'd the Discoverers into signal Calamities; as witness Oedipus, and the Oracle, Lot's Wife, Orpheus and Eurydice, and several other true and ancient Histories, which I have something else to do than think ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... they wandered down to the banks of the river, and watched the trout and the running water. Hadria had long been wishing to find out what her oracle thought about certain burning questions on which the sisters held such strong, and such unpopular sentiments, but just because the feeling was so keen, it was ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... was killed by the falling of a log it will be remembered that Ekpenyong was blamed for the event and retired to the bush. Not long afterwards a young chief there fell sick, and the witch- doctor on consulting his oracle declared that he saw Akom and her son dancing the whole night long, and gaily piercing the sick man with knives and spears. Akom was charged with sorcery, and asked to take the poison ordeal. Her friends advised her to flee, and she and her son disappeared during the night and took refuge in ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... he seems the last, Remembering all his greatness in the past. No more in soldier fashion will he greet With lifted hand the gazer in the street. O friends, our chief state-oracle is mute; Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood, The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute, Whole in himself, a common good. Mourn for the man of amplest influence, Yet clearest of ambitious crime; Our greatest, yet with least ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... folks would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in a corner of the chimney, would croak forth, for a long winter afternoon, a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, and ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... Thebans—he intervened in the Phocian War. Phalaecus surrendered. Phocis was crushed. Philip took its place in the Amphictyonic Council, and was thus established as a Greek power in the very centre, at the sacred hearth, of Greece. The right of precedence in consultation of the oracle ([Greek: promanteia]) was transferred from Athens to Philip. While indignant Athenians were clamouring for the revocation of the peace, Demosthenes upheld it in his speech "On the Peace" in September. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... me right With: Our evening is over us; our night | whelms, whelms, and will end us. Only the beak-leaved boughs dragonish | damask the tool-smooth bleak light; black, Ever so black on it. Our tale, our oracle! | Let life, waned, ah let life wind Off her once skeined stained veined variety | upon, all on two spools; part, pen, pack Now her all in two flocks, two folds—black, white; | right, wrong; reckon but, reck but, mind But these two; ware of a world where but ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... will furnish us with a piece of history not unapplicable to our present purpose. Servius Sulpicius, a gentleman of the patrician order, and a celebrated orator, had occasion to take the opinion of Quintus Mutius Scaevola, the oracle of the Roman law; but for want of some knowlege in that science, could not so much as understand even the technical terms, which his friend was obliged to make use of. Upon which Mutius Scaevola could not forbear to upbraid him with this memorable reproof[g], "that ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... maid, naming all the girls one after another, shall marry, to which he answers according to his own whim, or agreeable to the intimacies he has taken notice of during the time of merriment, and whatever he says is absolutely depended upon as an oracle; and if he couple two people who have an aversion to each other, tears and vexation succeed the mirth; this they call "cutting off the fiddler's head," for after this he is ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... question of my dear oracle, I know what the answer will be; and hence, no doubt, the reason why I so often consult her. I have but to wear a particular expression of face and my Diana takes her reflection from it. Suppose I say, "My dear, don't you think the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Romans, especially those of Crassus and Julian—or (as more disastrous than any of them, and in point of space as well as in amount of forces, more extensive,) the Russian anabasis and katabasis of Napoleon. 3dly, That of a religious Exodus, authorized by an oracle venerated throughout many nations of Asia, an Exodus, therefore, in so far resembling the great Scriptural Exodus of the Israelites, under Moses and Joshua, as well as in the very peculiar distinction of carrying along with them their entire families, women, children, slaves, their herds ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... Indian Jake discharged his old debt with the Company. This was not sufficient, however, to re-establish confidence in him. There was a lurking suspicion among them, fostered by Uncle Ben Rudder of Tuggle Bight, the wiseacre and oracle of the Bay, that Indian Jake's payment of the debt was not prompted by honesty but by ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... recognised, but who was oppressed by the unwonted light, and inwardly ashamed of the hesitation and uncertainty of his tread. While sons, nephew, and a throng of his officers, were listening to him as to an oracle, and following the tracings of his sword, as he showed how this advance and that retreat had been made above two thousand years ago, he was full of consciousness that the spirit of the history of freedom was received more truly by the youngest of his audience than ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... and Scotch subjects, have an undue prominence in "N. & Q.:" let me therefore introduce to your readers a neglected Irishman, in the person of Peter Brett, the "parish clerk and schoolmaster of Castle-Knock." This worthy seems to have been a great author, and the literary oracle of the district over which he presided, and exercised the above-named important functions. His magnum opus appears to have been his Miscellany; a farrago of prose and verse, which, to distinguish ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... Morrissey tried to get a wedge in somewhere to reopen it, but he tried in vain. Enos Walker was adamant. So, disappointed and discomfited, the emissaries of Colonel Richard Butler bade "good-day," to the oracle of Cobb's Corners, and drove back ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... great duties and the great responsibilities of the priesthood, young men upon whom the spirit of God seems to have rested. There were in Israel schools of prophets; this does not mean that their training ended in the diploma of a seer or an oracle, but that this novitiate was favourable to the action of God upon their souls, and inclined them thereto. A smaller seminary possesses also the hope of the harvest. It is there that the minds of the students, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... observes. Blackwell, in his curious Life of Homer, after showing that the ancient oracles were the fountains of knowledge, and that the votaries of the god of Delphi had their faith confirmed by the oracle's perfect acquaintance with the country, parentage, and fortunes of the suppliant, and many predictions verified; that besides all this, the oracles that have reached us discover a wide knowledge of everything relating to Greece;—this learned writer is at a loss ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... He arraigned the guilty pair before God; and, laying his axe at the root of the tree—calling on Herod's conscience, long gagged and silent, to take part in the impeachment—he said, in effect: "I summon you before the bar of God, and in the pure light which streams from his holy Oracle, your consciences being witnesses against you, you know perfectly well that it is not right for you to be living as you are living. 'Thou shalt ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... stood in a more imposing attitude and spoke in a more commanding tone than are indicated in the foregoing sentences. The prevailing stand point from which he spoke was that of an oracle giving responses from the inner shrine of the Divinity. The words and sentiments he uttered were not his, but the Father's; and he uttered them in the clear tones of knowledge and authority, not in the whispering accents of speculation ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the oracle of the Pythia," she said at last. "We will not commit ourselves to anything at the behest of Richard Percival. On my way to the station, now, in fact, Madeline and I will go to see this rose among cabbages. We will introduce ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Trauer, and quoted the text of Scripture Auge um Auge, Zabn um Zahn, after which he did not again allude to his wife's decease. In his last years, when my father managed the estate, and he only lived with us and criticised, he came to have the reputation of an oracle. The neighbours sent him their sons at the beginning of any important phase in their lives, and he received them in this very arbour, administering eloquent and minute advice in the deep voice that rolled round the shrubbery and filled me with a vague sense of guilt as I played. Sitting ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... servitude implies that of subordination of man to things; and when later feudal law declared the serf ATTACHED TO THE GLEBE, it only periphrased the literal meaning of the word servus.[16] Spontaneous reason, oracle of fate itself, had therefore condemned the subaltern workman, before science had established his debasement. Such being the case, what can the efforts of philanthropy do for beings ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... found at night like any Pagan of old worshipping one of the lions in Trafalgar Square, around whose mane he had hung a votive wreath of water-lilies, across whose unresponsive neck the Lord Mayor had wound his arms in supplication, imploring it that it might speak, and give a sign like the Oracle in Delphi. ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... bought a cup-and-ball, and was trying, not very successfully, to induce the sphere to abide in the hollow prepared for it. Navailles had got a large Pulcinello doll that squeaked, and was pretending to treat it as an oracle, and to interpret its mechanical utterances as profound comments on his companions and prophecies as to their fortunes. Albret was tripping over a skipping-rope; Gironne puffed at a spinning windmill; Choisy played on a bagpipes, and Montaubert ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Leontes, her husband. Leontes had sent some messengers to ask the god, Apollo, whether he was not right in his cruel thoughts of the Queen. But he had not patience to wait till they came back, and so it happened that they arrived in the middle of the trial. The Oracle said— ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... just endeavoured to find a message, "godly and wholesome, and necessary for these times," in the opening paragraphs in the Epistle to the Hebrews. We come now to interrogate our oracle again, and we open the third chapter as ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... such man as he were to sit upon our woolsack now; what would the world think, if when the mighty oracle commanded the next cause to come on, the reply should be, "Please your good lordship, there is no other!" Well might ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... originated the ten ayllus mentioned above. From his time began the idols huauquis, which was an idol or demon chosen by each Inca for his companion and oracle which gave him answers[58]. That of Manco Ccapac was the bird indi already mentioned. This Manco Ccapac ordered, for the preservation of his memory, the following: His eldest son by his legitimate wife, who was his ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... Venus' Oracle in turn I leaned the Secret of my Love to learn. The Answering Riddle came: "She loves you, yes, In just Proportion to the Sum ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... Bear! You talk like an oracle. I guess we'll run up my red parasol on the end of an oar for a danger sign. Bert could see that from the terrace." She glanced shorewards as she spoke, and he saw her face change momentarily. "Why," she said quickly, "I thought we were close in. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... people themselves are generally denied, because they are not in harmony with foregone conclusions. The meaning of ancient manuscripts is disfigured, and, in fact, sacrificed to fiction, if only the latter proceeds from the mouth of some favorite oracle. ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... expected her to throw off the unholy prestige of that long domination? She could not help believing what she had been told; that she was in some mysterious way odious and unlovable. It was cruelly true—to her. The oracle of so many years had spoken finally. Only other people did not find her out at once.—I would not go so far as to say she believed it altogether. That would be hardly possible. But then haven't the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... a narrow-minded, selfish man, caring very little for any one's comfort but his own, and at times was exceedingly cross and testy. Unfortunately, he took great interest in politics, and was quite an oracle in the village bar-room. He was bigoted and "set" in his opinions, considering all who differed from him as enemies to their country, and called them rascals and hypocrites freely. His wife had been dead about two years, when a presidential election came on. James Foster, unluckily, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Society; and which, notwithstanding such malicious assertions, waxed stronger as it grew. There was one noticeable feature of affairs at this juncture, that the uninitiated were at a loss to account for, and that was the studied neutrality maintained by the oracle of the village, who had been wont to utter his momentous decisions, upon the current topics of the day, through the medium of that "valuable" ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... being himself naturally of a devout and serious turn of mind, that he resolved to remain among them; and, in addition to the instruction of the children, has taken upon himself the duty of clergyman, and is the oracle of the community.' ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... as you see, are in good condition. The bronze 'Serpent Column' in the centre of the square, representing three serpents coiled around each other, once supported the tripod used in the ceremonial services of the Pythian oracle ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... results. Cooper says not one Tory called on him when he was to England, but Walter Scott; and that I take it, was more lest folks should think he was jealous of him, than any thing else; they jist cut him as dead as a skunk; but among the Whigs, he was quite an oracle on ballot, univarsal suffrage, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the east and some to the west to pay their vows, but the holiest shrine is where true love is, and there alone the oracle speaks in response to young hearts. Amelie, sweet, modest flower that she is, pays her vows to Our Lady of St. Foye, Pierre his to Amelie! I will be bound, dame, there is no saint in the calendar so holy in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... said Miss Bell. "He will teach what we are to think of marriage. I am inclined to listen to him as to an oracle. He does not see the things that we see, and he sees things that we do not see. Monsieur Choulette, what do you ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... squeezes the cocoa-nut gratings over a wooden bowl, and a creamy juice runs through his fingers. The bowl is brought to Agelan, who looks at it as if reading an oracle; then he selects a hot stone from his own fire, and sends the bowl back to be embedded in the gratings. He approaches with his stone in a wooden fork, and squats down near the bowl lost in thought, as if anxious not to miss the right moment; then ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... "Damn your oracle of Delphi, you old rascal," cried the Prince, with great good-humour. "That's a crumb of the mouldy bread of learning you used to cram down my throat in the old days. It makes Master Wheatman writhe to hear it. The only advantage I ever got out of being a Prince was that ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... said. "The proof is a terrible one, but I require this proof. I must descend into the tomb to obtain it: well, then, I will descend into the tomb. I must consult the sombre oracle of death concerning the mysteries of life: well, then, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... countrymen into a corner at the point of a logical bayonet from which they felt that there was no escape, he proposed that the question what was to be done should be referred to an oracle in which the whole country had the greatest confidence, and to which recourse was always had in times of special perplexity. It was whispered that a near relation of the philosopher's was lady's-maid to the priestess who delivered the oracle, ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... dear Harry, and probably if Mrs. Cecil Burleigh had been as effusive as these young folks, she might have done the same; for while they talked in the rose-bower Mr. Cecil Burleigh and his wife came by, she leaning on his arm and looking up and listening as to the words of an oracle. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... to ask: 'Was it not possible to avert this annexation which loomed before every mind, brooding like a shadow upon the country?' He went to Sir Theophilus; he asked his question; and at length the oracle spoke. Without moving a muscle of his wonderfully impassive countenance, without even raising his eyes to look at the interlocutor, Sir Theophilus calmly murmured: 'It is too late!—too late!' And so, without the authorization of the home Government, without the consent of her Majesty's High Commissioner, ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... and Pelias felt secure upon the throne he had taken from his brother. Once he sent to the oracle of the gods to ask of it whether he should be fearful of anything. What the oracle answered was this: that King Pelias had but one thing to dread—the ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum
... mother boasted to the nymphs, daughters of Nereus, that she was far more beautiful than they. This roused their anger, and they persuaded Neptune, their friend, to make the sea overflow our shores and send a monster to destroy us. Then an oracle proclaimed that we never should be rid of these evils until the queen's daughter should be given for the monster's prey. The people forced my parents to make the sacrifice, and I was chained ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... blood. The threadbare author hates the gaudy coat; And swears at the gilt coach, but swears afoot: 10 For 'tis observed of every scribbling man, He grows a fop as fast as e'er he can; Prunes up, and asks his oracle, the glass, If pink and purple best become his face. For our poor wretch, he neither rails nor prays; Nor likes your wit, just as you like his plays; He has not yet so much of Mr Bayes. He does his best; and if he cannot please, Would quietly sue out his writ of ease. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Richelieu, the penetration, the exquisite tact, the almost instinctive presentiment of approaching events which gave so much authority to the counsel of Shaftesbury, that "it was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of God." In this school Thucydides studied; and his wisdom is that which such a school would naturally afford. He judges better of circumstances than of principles. The more a question is narrowed, the better he reasons upon it. His work suggests ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I could do concerning the Book you wanted was to send your Enquiry to the Oracle ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... two of which take the form of denial. First, he denies that there is in man anything of the nature of Free-Will, and attributes the belief in it to vulgar and childish ignorance. Secondly, and in support of the primary negation, he denies that there is any oracle in man's bosom,—that his spirit had any knowledge of itself or of the relationships it sustains: in other words, denies the validity of Consciousness. Thirdly and lastly, he attempts to show that all actions of individuals originate not in themselves, but result from a law ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... nostrils, and his coarse, half-formed lips, of the bluish color of raw corned-beef. But I looked upon these feelings as unreasonable prejudices, and strove to conquer them, seeing the admiration which he received from others. He was an oracle on the subject of 'Nature.' Having eaten nothing for two years, except Graham bread, vegetables without salt, and fruits, fresh or dried, he considered himself to have attained an antediluvian purity of health,—or that he would attain it, so soon as two pimples on his left temple should ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... LONG the oracle of the country gentlemen of the high Tory party. The ancient News-Letter was written in manuscript and copied by clerks, who addressed the copies to the subscribers. The politician by whom they were compiled picked up his intelligence ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... feel that my temperament is so excitable, that I should fear giving up my mind to other subjects which have ever proved sufficiently alluring to me, and which I fear would make my life a fever of unsatisfied longings and expectations.' So men unconsciously often hint an oracle of their lives. Perhaps these forebodings of a high-wrought hour may in other hues have at many moments come back to Mr. Gladstone's mind, even in the full sunshine of a triumphant career of duty, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... beg his advice, how I might carry my self securely there, without offence of mine own conscience. Signor Arrigo mio (sayes he) I pensieri stretti, & il viso sciolto, will go safely over the whole World: Of which Delphian Oracle (for so I have found it) your judgement doth need no commentary; and therfore (Sir) I will commit you with it to the best of all securities, Gods dear ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... piece of tender air, thy virtuous daughter, Which we call mollis aer; and mollis aer We term it mulier; which mulier, I divine, Is this most constant wife: who even now, Answering the letter of the oracle, Unknown to you unsought, were clipp'd about ...
— Game and Playe of the Chesse - A Verbatim Reprint Of The First Edition, 1474 • Caxton
... our holy faith. With all the rage of an infuriated lion it pounced upon every literary production or practical movement that had a tendency to restore the old landmarks. Its influence was felt throughout Germany and the Continent. Every university and gymnasium listened to it as an oracle, while its power was felt even in the pot-houses and humblest cottages. Berlin was completely under its sway, and Berliner was a synonym of Rationalist. Oetinger wrote a curious passage in a volume of sermons, published in 1777, in which he descants On those ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... dragon Fafnir reminds us of Python, whom Apollo overcame; and, as Python guarded the Delphic Oracle, ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... a Jewish bookbinder, Simcha Kalimann, a wit and bel esprit, the oracle of the entire province, the living chronicle of his ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... Burns says that in 1889 "Lane's chief hero was Cleveland, and his oracle Godkin, of the EVENING POST"—later, the NATION. "When I knew him in New York he represented a San Francisco newspaper, the CHRONICLE, I think, as correspondent. He was not whole-heartedly in sympathy with his proprietor, nor indeed with the sensational aspect of journalism, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... cure's too easy, and the price too dear: Great Portland near was banter'd when he strove, For us his master's kindest thoughts to move: We ne'er lampoon'd his conduct, when employ'd King James's secret councils to divide: Then we caress'd him as the only man, Who could the doubtful oracle explain; The only Hushai, able to repel The dark designs of our Achitophel: Compared his master's courage to his sense, The ablest statesman, and the bravest prince; On his wise conduct we depended much, And liked ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... the wheel of his burning spirit, revolving as the planets do, throws off sparks or streams of fire. To the accuracy of this observation witness both Browning and Tennyson. When they were "possessed," as the Delphic oracle would say, they marched toward truth like an invincible troop. Truth seemed the missing half of their own sphere, toward which, by a subtle and lordly gravitation, they swung. When Tennyson's instincts ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... published, and I sat staring at a book of my own making, and wondering how it ever got into being! And what was more, the book "took," and sold, and was reviewed in People's journals, and in newspapers; and Mackaye himself relaxed into a grin, when his oracle, the Spectator, the only honest paper, according to him, on the face of the earth, condescended, after asserting its impartiality by two or three searching sarcasms, to dismiss me, grimly-benignant, with a paternal pat on the shoulder. Yes—I was ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... came and stood in the corner of the hearth, with his back to the fire, and delivered himself like an oracle concerning you. He told me that early in life (conveying to me the impression of about a quarter of a century ago) you had had your feelings desperately wounded by some cause, real or imaginary—"It does not matter ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... souls, fired with the same zeal penitents and nuns, men rescued from the scorching furnace of life in the world, and women brought up from infancy in the shade of the cloister. M. Arnauld was a great theologian, an indefatigable controversialist, the oracle and guide of his friends in their struggle against the Jesuits; M. de Sacy and M. Singlin were wise and able directors, as austere as M. de St. Cyran in their requirements, less domineering and less rough than he; but M. de St. Cyran alone was and could be the head of Jansenism; he alone could have ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... who knows for one who wants to know, he answered more frankly, "Who are they waiting for? Why, Quidnunc. Mister Quidnunc. That's who it is. Him they call Quidnunc. So now you know." In fact, I did not know. He had told me nothing, would tell me no more, and while I stood pondering the oracle I was sensible of some common movement run through the company with a thrill, unite them, intensify them, draw them together to be one people with one faith, one hope, one assurance. And then the nun, who stood near me, fell to her ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... ages for destroying[31]." Now Theseus and Hercules, you know, have been the heroes of all poets, and have been renowned through all ages, for destroying monsters, for succouring the distressed, and for putting to death inhuman arbitrary tyrants. Is this your oracle? If he were to write the acts and monuments of whig heroes, I find they should be quite contrary to mine: Destroyers indeed,—but of a lawful government; murderers,—but of their fellow-subjects; lovers, as Hercules was of ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... paternal bookshop, where he soon familiarised himself with the novels of the world from Dumas and Luise Muehlbach to Ohnet and Zola, and with the popular sciences from Darwin to Mantegazza. His brain was a book catalogue, and his mouth an oracle of the tastes displayed at the last fair. But in reality he not only did not like the books, he regarded all this printed matter as a jolly fine deception practised on people who did not know what to do with their money. ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... though temple thou hast none, Nor altar heap'd with flowers; Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan 30 Upon the midnight hours; No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet From chain-swung censer teeming; No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... proclaimed himself a convert to Socialism. When this great figure from the bourgeois intellectual world stepped boldly and somewhat noisily into the arena, there was not wanting a considerable group of young and uninitiated members in the party who flocked to his standard and found in him a new oracle. ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... solemnity. The third party of the group, Gregory's sister Rosamond, who had her brother's braids of red hair, but a kindlier face underneath them, laughed with such mixture of admiration and disapproval as she gave commonly to the family oracle. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... therefore, educated with great care. So the Hebrews depended on him, and were of good hopes great things would be done by him; but the Egyptians were suspicious of what would follow such his education. Yet because, if Moses had been slain, there was no one, either akin or adopted, that had any oracle on his side for pretending to the crown of Egypt, and likely to be of greater advantage to them, they abstained from ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... known as Granny Bains. Having spent almost her whole life out of doors, in heat and cold, storm and rain, she had come to be intimately acquainted with all the signs foreboding change of weather, and was looked upon by her acquaintances as a perfect oracle. She had also a most retentive memory, and being of a joyous nature, with a bodily frame that never knew illness, had learnt every verse or melody that was sung within her hearing, until her mind became a very storehouse of songs. To John, old Granny ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his audience. Who has not hearkened to Her infinite din? She is Truth's speaking-trumpet, the sole oracle, the true Delphi and Dodona, which kings and courtiers would do well to consult, nor will they be balked by an ambiguous answer. For through Her all revelations have been made, and just in proportion as men have ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... very happy marriage; and when her husband died just before I went to Europe, she was left alone and poor. I arranged a small house for her in the neighbourhood of the Hollow; and there she lives—a kind of mysterious oracle to the people about. And her greatest earthly pleasure, I suppose, is to have me come and see her. Gyda Boerresen is ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... had come—the reference here and elsewhere is always to the realm of popular magazine literature appealing to a very wide audience—for the editor of some magazine to project his personality through the printed page and to convince the public that he was not an oracle removed from the people, but a real human being who could talk and not ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... of winter; he liked the casual converse of the chance passengers, the inevitable deference to his local knowledge, the birdlike chatter and flattery of the young women. He liked, so easily, to play oracle and wiseman; he liked the admiration called forth by a certain theatrical prowess with the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... example, the account which Herodotus gives us of the actions of the Greeks at Plataea, when their army confronted the remnant of the army of Xerxes, in the year 479 B.C. Here we see each side hesitating to attack the other, merely because the oracle had declared that whichever side struck the first blow would lose the conflict. Even after the Persian soldiers, who seemingly were a jot less superstitious or a shade more impatient than their opponents, had begun the attack, we are ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... be told. The patriotism and the sound sense of the people, whenever the Federal Government from its high places of authority shall proclaim the truth in unequivocal language, will, in my firm belief, receive and approve it. But so long as we deal, like the Delphic oracle, in words of double meaning, so long as we attempt to escape from responsibility, and exhibit our fear to declare the truth by the fact that we do not act upon it, we must expect speculative theory to occupy the mind of the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... fancy was his only oracle; Who could buy lands and pleasure at his will, Yet slighted that ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt |
