"Oracular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the ridicule which was heaped upon him for this apparently blind adherence to an untenable theory. But victory complete and demoralizing to his opponents awaited this oracular utterance when later a disciple of Darwin, led by the same spirit of faith and conviction, visited Madagascar, and was soon able to affirm that he had caught the moth, a huge sphinx-moth, and that its tongue measured eleven inches ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... niver mind, as you say, sir; feelin's es feelin's, an' th' ould Mennear's wan eye went mortal agen 'un. Not but what he wudn' turn et to account now an' then. 'Tummas doubted,' he said wan day, 'an' how was he convenced? Why, by oracular demonstrashun—'" ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... some floating piece of Paradise, Preserved by wonder from the flood, Long wandering through the deep, as we are told Famed Delos[3] did of old; And the transported Muse imagined it To be a fitter birth-place for the God of wit, Or the much-talk'd-of oracular grove; When, with amazing joy, she hears An unknown music all around, Charming her greedy ears With many a heavenly song Of nature and of art, of deep philosophy and love; While angels tune the voice, and ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... creative impulse of Love. But the workings of this impulse are singularly contrasted in the productions of the Greek and Mediaeval artists. Nature, we have seen, offered to the former mysterious and oracular Sibylline leaves, profoundly significant of an indwelling humanity diffused through all her woods and fields and mountains, all her fountains, streams, and seas. Those meditative creators sat at her feet, earnest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... object of which was neither very popular nor well understood. What the result of the action between Copenhagen and the British fleet might ultimately have been, is therefore altogether uncertain. THE BOMBARDMENT OF COPENHAGEN BY NELSON, as it is generally styled, is therefore, like most other oracular phrases of the day, a mere combination of ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... This oracular utterance was confidentially delivered from the leathern chair at the writing-table, in an inner recess of Rachel's sumptuous sitting-room. The chair had been wheeled aloof from the table, on which were ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... 'plot'—the technical term for the harmony that binds the different parts of a story into one whole. In the present case there are three 'motives' underlying the plot. (1) What has been called the 'oracular action': the interest of mystic dream oracles gradually becoming clear as the oracles are fulfilled. (2) The development of an ironic situation—Joseph recognising his brethren but not recognised by them: once developed this situation is prolonged to the utmost by the hero's conflict ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... he went on his way toward Libya and Egypt. Over the latter land ruled Busiris, the son of Neptune and Lysianassa. To him during the period of a nine-year famine a prophet had borne the oracular message that the land would again bear fruit if a stranger were sacrificed once a year to Jupiter. In gratitude Busiris made a beginning with the priest himself. Later he found great pleasure in the custom and killed all ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... this oracular saying when Croisette touched his sleeve. "Pray can you tell us if it be true," the lad said eagerly, "that the Admiral ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... Oxonian was at the bottom of all this oracular mystery, and was disposed to amuse himself with the general, whose tender approaches to the widow have attracted the notice of the wag. I was a little curious, however, to know the meaning of the dark hints which had so suddenly disconcerted Master ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... is further confirmed by numerous statements, publicly made by Volksraad members, and also by President Steyn's famous and now historic message to President Krueger some short time before, in the laconic and oracular ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... touch her, but looked deeply into her eyes for a long space of time, and took from her again an equally searching regard; then, turning to her father-in-law and the company at large, she said, "This is begun, and will be done. He is like his father before him." To that oracular utterance old King, catching probably but the last sentence, replied, "And he couldn't do better, my child." He meant no more than a testimony to his daughter-in-law. Mrs. King's observations, coupled with that, nevertheless, went far to give ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... composition: first the detached thoughts of the "Journal;" second, the rearrangement of this material for use upon the lecture platform; and finally, the essays in their present form. The oral method thus predominates: a series of oracular thoughts has been shaped for oratorical utterance, not oratorical in the bombastic, popular American sense, but cunningly designed, by a master of rhetoric, to capture the ear and then the mind ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... It might be a great profession, but it has its liars and tricksters like the rest. It is eaten up by little men who wrap themselves in priestly garments and hide their ignorance behind oracular silences. They play up to the superstitious weakness of the mob, and replace one religion by another. They don't care what beastly misery and evil they keep alive so long as they can pull off their particular little stunts. You mustn't ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Mrs. A—— and Miss B——, and the two C——s. And if you read about the old Italian masters, you will find that many of them had wives, or daughters, or sisters, who helped them a great deal. I wish I had been such an one! Depend upon it, my dear girl," said Meliora, waxing quite oracular in her enthusiasm, "there is no profession in the world that brings fame, and riches, and happiness, like that ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... extremely small prophet, a prophet Who brings us unbounded returns: For he can prophesy With a wink OF his eye, Peep with security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humour proclivity For a nativity. With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he Makes a reduction on taking a quantity! Oh! If any one anything lacks, He'll find it all ready in stacks, If he'll only look in On the resident ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... milder stimulants stale and insipid. No sooner were M. and Madame Roland established in their city residence, than they were involved in all the plots and the counterplots of the Revolution. M. Roland was grave, taciturn, oracular. He had no brilliance of talent to excite envy. He displayed no ostentation in dress, or equipage, or manners, to provoke the desire in others to humble him. His reputation for stoical virtue gave a wide sweep to his influence. ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... don't know's I mind now about those fish being burned," with which oracular remark, she helped herself to two slices of cake, and ate ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... with Sir Isaac Newton, Knight, and umwhile master of his Majesty's mint, that the (pretended) science of astrology is altogether vain, frivolous, and unsatisfactory.' And here he reposed his oracular jaws. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to that sort of airy nonsense. When sure of his audience, he had spoken much more disrespectfully of the Parisian band of Kings in exile. But to-day his chubby cheeks refused to crease in a grin. He remained morose, oracular, heavy jowled. In fact, he had set himself a very difficult task. Now that the moment had arrived for its fulfilment, he ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... all—for we yearn to know it—tell us how thy inspiration came? A plain answer, of course, we cannot expect—that were impossible from a German; but such explanation as we can draw from metaphor and oracular response, seems to be conveyed in that favourite and elaborate preface to the poems, which accordingly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... from his interviews with Pan in the Walden woods; while Emerson, with the zeal of an engineer trying to dam wild waters, sought to bind the wide-flying embroidery of discourse into a whole of clear, sweet sense. But still in vain. The oracular sayings were the unalloyed saccharine element; and every chemist knows how much else goes to practical food—how much coarse, rough, woody fibre is essential. The club struggled on valiantly, discoursing celestially, eating apples, ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... not very incongruous with the Devil's Temper, or with the Nature of his Business, to shift hands; possibly he found that he had tried the World with Oracular Cheats; that Men began to be forfeited with them, and grew sick of the Frauds which were so frequently detected; that it was time to take new Measures, and contrive some new Trick to Bite the World, that he might not be expos'd to ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... Jane's patronage, she demanded and obtained admission to the inner apartment of this Temple of Fashion, where presided the Pythoness whose oracular ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... declared to himself that he had certainly impoverished himself by his devotion to Lord Silverbridge's interests. At breakfast on the following morning he endeavoured to bring his friend back to the subject. But the Captain was cross, rather than oracular. "Everybody," he said, "ought to know his own business. He wasn't going to meddle or make. What he had said had been taken amiss." This was hard upon Tifto, who had taken ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... rejects Jesus as an authoritative teacher, distinctly denies that the acceptance of Jesus in this character is any condition of salvation and of the divine favour, and treats of my "demand of an oracular Christ," as inconsistent with my own principles. But this is mere misconception of what I have said. I find Jesus himself to set up oracular claims. I find an assumption of pre-eminence and unapproachable moral wisdom to pervade every discourse from end to end of the gospels. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... in the literary productions which reflect it." Time has verified the accuracy of this judgment. In short, Arnold has made a profound rather than a wide impression. To a few, however, of each generation, he will continue to be a "voice oracular,"—a poet with a purpose and ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... with an eager, a most eager and intent face to a man whose garb betrayed his healing profession, and who, laying a finger on the outstretched palm of his other hand, appeared giving his precise instructions, and uttering that oracular breath which—mere human words to him—was a message of fate itself,—a fiat on which hung all that makes life life to his trembling and devout listener. Monarchs of earth, ye have not so supreme a power over woe and happiness ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he, With a particularly oracular air, "Claudet is dead, and the dead, like the absent, are always in the wrong. But who is to say whether you are not mistaken concerning the nature of Reine's unhappiness? I will have that cleared up this very day. Good-night; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the clear brow 650 Which shadowed them was like the morning sky, The cloudless Heaven of Spring, when in their flow Through the bright air, the soft winds as they blow Wake the green world—his gestures did obey The oracular mind that made his features glow, 655 And where his curved lips half-open lay, Passion's divinest stream had made ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... "insurrection," whose origin, growth, and extinguishment in blood have now been traced, has been the cause of we know not how many oracular warnings from the lips of those who have not been distinguished by any hearty attachment to the rights of the black. "See now," they say, "what is the peril of emancipating these blacks." "Behold what comes of educating ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... indeed Cupid,' replied the youth; 'and am curious to know what Ixion is thinking about.' 'Thought is often bolder than speech.' 'Oracular, though a mortal! You need not be afraid to trust me. My aid I am sure you must need. Who ever was found in a reverie on the green turf, under the shade of spreading trees, without requiring the assistance of Cupid? Come! be frank, who is the heroine? Some love-sick nymph ...
— Ixion In Heaven • Benjamin Disraeli
... donative, were in haste to make a generous diffusion of the knowledge they had thus gratuitously received. To make this bountiful communication, they adjourned from the church in the Old Jewry to the London Tavern, where the same Dr. Price, in whom the fumes of his oracular tripod were not entirely evaporated, moved and carried the resolution, or address of congratulation, transmitted by Lord Stanhope to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... (our oracular friend who talked in the style of an oration) was with us this evening at the tea-table, and we were mentioning the fact that about thirty colleges last summer in the United States contested for the championship in boat-racing. About two hundred thousand young ladies could not sleep ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... horror. In this situation, he revolved in his mind the question proposed; and whatever was impressed upon him by his exalted imagination, passed for the inspiration of the disembodied spirits, who haunt these desolate recesses. In some of the Hebrides they attributed the same oracular power to a large black stone by the sea-shore, which they approached with certain solemnities, and considered the first fancy which came into their own minds, after they did so, to be the undoubted dictate of the tutelar deity of the stone, and, as such, to be, if possible, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... bit of it: they 're more so, if anything," was the oracular response of the young wife. "Possibly there are men," she continued,— "the story-tellers say so, anyhow,—who are attracted by repulsion and warmed by coldness, who like resistance for the pleasure of overcoming it. There must be a spice of the tyrant in such men. I wouldn't want to ...
— A Love Story Reversed - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... oracular gravity, "is a combination of hard work and fine art. It requires both toil and genius. I think I may say, with all natural modesty, that I have shown great natural aptitude for it. My profession is making friends. I have made friends useful and ornamental, friends great and small, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... replying at all gave a quiet dignity to his tone, and an involuntary sigh that accompanied his words was not lost upon Miss Joliffe. To her this speech seemed oracular and ominous; there was a sepulchral mystery in so vague an expression. He might have to take a holiday. What could this mean? Was this poor young man completely broken by the loss of his friend Mr Sharnall, or was ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... to Delphi, central shrine II 2 Of Earth, I'll seek, for light divine, Nor visit Abae's mystic fane Nor travel o'er the well-trod plain Where thousands throng to famed Olympia's town, Unless, with manifest accord, The event fulfil the oracular word. Zeus, Lord of all! if to eternity Thou would'st confirm thy kingdom's large renown, Let not their vauntings high Evade the sovereign look of the everlasting eye! They make as though the ancient warning slept By Laius ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... boy's countenance needed a twinkle of merriment to redeem it from a too serious acceptance of self. "Not to like poetry—if it's real poetry—is simply to be a plain clod." He spoke with an oracular and pedantic assurance which challenged the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... aquiline nose, nor was it an aquiline nose reversed. It was not a nose snubbed at the extremity, gross, heavy, or carbuncled, or fluting. In all its magnitude of proportions, it was an intellectual nose. It was thin, horny, transparent, and sonorous. Its snuffle was consequential and its sneeze oracular. The very sight of it was impressive; its sound, when blown in school hours, was ominous. But the scholars loved the nose for the warning which it gave: like the rattle of the dreaded snake, which announces its presence, so did the nose indicate to the scholars ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... reduced in extent and in means. From no part of Europe have come more decided condemnations of the course of Austria than from the Russian capital. The language of the St. Petersburg journals touching the Treaties of Vienna has been absolutely contemptuous; and that language is all the more oracular and significant because we know that the editors of those journals must have been inspired by the government. It has been justly regarded as expressing the views of the Czar, and of the statesmen who compose his cabinet. Though not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of us," resumed Vladimir, "never contradicts his own character? In Russia the duties of my position oblige me to be reserved, secret, enveloped in mystery from head to foot, a great pontiff of science, speaking but in brief sentences and in an oracular tone; but here I am not obliged to play my role, and by a natural reaction, finding myself alone in the woods with a man of sense and heart, my tongue unloosens like a magpie's. Let us see; if I tell you my history do ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... me, in a mysterious, oracular sort of way, that something would be sure to happen to prevent the marriage; and, when I doubted, you pledged your honor that there would be an arrest of the proceedings. And then I almost believed ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... unsuspected pitfall into which they successively plunge headlong. For it is precisely in such cryptographies that mankind are prone to seek for and find a wonderful amount and variety of significance. Omne ignotum pro mirifico. How do we admire at the antique world striving to crack those oracular nuts from Delphi, Ammon, and elsewhere, in only one of which can I so much as surmise that any kernel had ever lodged; that, namely, wherein Apollo confessed that he was mortal. One Didymus is, moreover, ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... the Flying Dutchman, which could scarcely be the case seeing the latitude we are in," said Dick Harper with oracular authority, "she's near akin to the chap, that you may depend on, for no other would have been for to go for to play us such a trick as he has been doing; and for that matter, messmates, look ye here—he may be the Dutchman himself; for if he can cruise about ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... role. 'Tis vastly fine, of course; if fate would smile, I fancy that the Cloud-Compeller's style Would suit me sweetly; just the line I love; Resolute rule's the appanage of a Jove. But SHELLEY's dismal Demogorgon's self, That solemn, shadowy, stern, oracular elf, Plus obstinate Prometheus, did not play Such mischief as the parties do to-day, With Law and Order. Who would be a god When force forsakes his bolt, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... possible that the tricks of acoustics may have been practised by the priests who officiated at oracular shrines, which would have awed the ignorant multitude; as in sacred groves a tree might have been made to speak by the simple contrivance of a man concealed within the hollow stem, which to outward ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... suppose, like nations, wax and wane,' I said, 'they become atrophied, if not extinct.' The port was magnificent—of the year '64—and I felt oracular. 'Hence the use of bastards. Robert the Devil from the top of his tower falls in love with the laundrywoman bleaching linen on the green, and in natural course William the Conqueror ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... much the same capacity that cup-bearers did royalty in ancient days; and they are expected to taste strong liquors as well as sweet cordials and sour light wines. Moreover, a certain haze of sanctity envelops the precincts of 'Maga,' whence the incognito 'we' thunders with oracular power; for, notwithstanding the rapid annihilation of all classic faith in modern times which permits the conversion of Virgil's Avernus into a model oyster-farm, the credulous public fondly cling to the myth that editorial sanctums ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... girl" endeavoured to look oracular as she replied: "That will largely depend upon the nature of the information you are about to communicate ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... applied to doings as well as sayings," and that "there is no linguistic precedent for straining the expression, used at that period, to mean anything beyond a collection of sayings of Jesus, which were oracular or Divine." [124:4] To this Dr. Lightfoot replies that if the objection has any force it involves one or both of the two assumptions: "first, that books which were regarded as Scripture could not at this early date be called 'oracles,' unless they were occupied entirely with Divine ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... unbegotten Son) or his Messenger (Andaman, Noongaburrah, Kurnai, Kamilaroi, and other Australian tribes). He reports to the somewhat otiose primal Being about men's conduct, and he sometimes superintends the Mysteries. I am disposed to regard the prophetic and oracular Apollo (who, as the Hymn to Hermes tells us, alone knows the will of Father Zeus) as the Greek modification of this personage in savage theology. Where this Son is found in Australia, I by no means regard him as a savage refraction from Christian teaching ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... from the oracular platform and go down through my own chosen underbrush for haphazard adventure. I renounce the platform. Whatever it may be that I find, pawpaw or may-apple or spray of willow, if you do not want it, throw it over the edge of the hill, without ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... impetuous eagerness, so creditable to her heart, he replies with the oracular solemnity by which caution can ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... complete, and Joseph snapped his fingers with delight, when the corpulent dame waddled up asthmatically, and announced with a wheeze that her mission was prosperous. If there had ever been doubt, there was now no more. The oracular "fetiche" had announced that the delivery of the bride to her lord might take place "on the tenth day ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... by personal acquaintance with a Minister, obtained more or less full knowledge of what the Queen's Speech would contain. But he was bound in honour to preserve his informant from possibly inconvenient consequences of his garrulity, and so the oracular style was adopted. When other papers, put on the track, obtained information in the same way they adopted the same quaint practice, till now it has become deeply ingrained in journalism. To-day, whilst there is no secret of the sources of information very properly ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... this principle that the whole practice and doctrine of Sortilegy rest. Let us confine ourselves to that mode of sortilegy which is conducted by throwing open privileged books at random, leaving to chance the page and the particular line on which the oracular functions are thrown. The books used have varied with the caprice or the error of ages. Once the Hebrew Scriptures had the preference. Probably they were laid aside, not because the reverence for their authority ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... communicating with each other by subterranean passages, through which they led those who wished to consult the oracle hidden in the bowels of the earth." "Not far from the lake of Avernus," says Maximus of Tyre, "was an oracular cave, which took its name from the calling up of the dead. Those who came to consult the oracle, after repeating the sacred formula and offering libations and slaying victims, called upon the spirit of the friend or relation ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... of an oracular phrase. No doubt he had been meditating it during the supper. Addressing Mr. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... Dyce stared at the oracular message, written in capitals on a sheet of paper which contained nothing else. He again examined the envelope, but the post-mark in no way helped him. He glanced at his mother, and, finding her eye upon him, folded the ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... teacher, he bore off the palm from all the gifted men who, at various periods, taught by his side. A friend and once a colleague described his manner while lecturing as singularly imposing and impressive. "He was magisterial, oracular, conveying the idea always that the mind of the speaker was troubled with no doubt. His deportment before his classes was such as further to enhance his standing. He was always, in the presence of his students, not the model teacher only, but the dignified, ...
— Pioneer Surgery in Kentucky - A Sketch • David W. Yandell
... oracular utterance, the official turned on his heel and departed, to my intense relief. I was fairly overcome with dread and mortification, and my eyes fell under the interested ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... far wrong in some points as either the poet or his master, was the first to remark, and this in the oracular, enigmatical style peculiar to the German, that "man is the sum total of all the animals." Gifted, as all allow, with a peculiarly nice eye for detecting those analogies which unite the animal world ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... With which oracular and superhumanly wise utterance Lois closed her eyes softly again. Madge, provoked, was about to carry on the discussion, when, noticing how pale the cheek was which lay against the crimson chair cushion, and how very delicate the lines of the face, she thought better of it and was silent. A while ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... young fellow, with whom I have spent many a jolly hour; but being just dubbed a graduate in physic, he has gained such an entire conquest over the risible muscles, that he hardly vouchsafes at any time to smile. I have heard him harangue, with all the oracular importance of a veteran, on the possibility of Canning's subsisting for a whole month on a few bits of bread; and he is now preparing a treatise, in which he will set forth a new and infallible method ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... further preservation of this air of simplicity, a particular care should be taken to express with all plainness those moral sentences and proverbial speeches which are so numerous in this poet. They have something venerable, and as I may say, oracular, in that unadorned gravity and shortness with which they are delivered: a grace which would be utterly lost by endeavouring to give them what we call a more ingenious (that is, a more modern) ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... don't mean to tell me you understand that oracular sentence of his—'Suspect the very last person on whom suspicion could possibly ...
— My Lady's Money • Wilkie Collins
... Witch's Sabbath, rapidly dispels the idea. Nor does a version of the popular Faust legend—"Dr. John Faustus"—appear to be edifying for young people. This and "Friar Bacon" are of the class which lingered the longest—the magical and oracular literature. Even to-day it is quite possible that dream-books and prophetical pamphlets enjoy a large sale; but a few years ago many were to be found in the catalogues of publishers who catered for the million. It is not very long ago that the Company of Stationers omitted hieroglyphics of coming ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... only, and all such scorn to set a second, lesser, lower idol, where formerly they bowed in worship. Even false gods hold sway long after their images are defiled, their temples overthrown, and as the Dodonian Groves still whisper of the old oracular days, to modern travellers, so a woman's idolatry leaves her no shrine, no libation, no reverence for new divinities; mutilated though she acknowledges her Hermae, no fresh image can profane their pedestal. Memory is the high priestess who survives the ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... alarm, or to attempt flight. As accident had thus brought him, as it might be on a visit, to the spot, he at once determined to give his arrival the character of a friendly call, and the better to support the pretension, to blend with it, if possible, a little of the oracular, or "medicine" manner, in order to impose on the imaginations of the superstitious beings into whose power he had ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... a most unfavorable light before a select assembly—an obscure navigator, a member of no learned institution, destitute of all the trappings and circumstances which sometimes give oracular authority to dullness, and depending on the mere ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... rising slowly with all the dignity he could muster, looked gravely over his glasses at Houston in exact imitation of Mr. Blaisdell, and in an oracular ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... about the room, almost vacuously, as though the old-fashioned wooden bed and the faded curtains and the blank walls might hold some oracular answer to the riddle that lay before him. Then he went to the open window, and looked out, almost as vacuously, over the unbroken blue distance of the Mediterranean, trembling into soft ribbons of silver where the wind rippled ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... the sudden anger that swept over his father, replacing the oracular banter with which he had begun his discourse on the decadence of manners ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... such as must have been most carefully treasured and concealed. This has been shown conclusively to be out of the question in Diels' now famous little book "Sibylline Leaves." But we may also follow Diels in assuming that about the end of the sixth century some kind of Greek oracle or oracular saying did actually arrive at Rome, purporting to be an utterance of the famous ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... such tyranny and cruelty that, whilst he was once gone on a visit of pleasure to a castle at a distance from the city, his royal seat was usurped by a certain sorceress. Whereupon, having consulted a wooden statue which used to give oracular responses, it answered that he would recover his dominions when the sorceress should lose her sight. But seeing that the sorceress, besides being well guarded, knew at a glance the people whom he sent to annoy her, and did dog's justice upon them, he became quite desperate, and out ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... after every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hill-tops rising toward the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... Jerusalem becomes the Old Testament, the foal the New Testament, and the two apostles who went to loose them the moral and mystical senses; blind Bartimeus throwing off his coat while hastening to Jesus, opens a whole treasury of oracular meanings. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... nailed up in timber; while, on the other hand, in Coleridge's "Wallenstein," you have the "nobler change," spoken of by Addison, of—shall we say?-a cold and stately holly-tree turned into a murmuring and oracular oak. ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... any farther, however; he did not ask why Helen was not intolerant, nor ask whether even intolerance may not sometimes be more tolerable than indifference. And in spite of his unpleasant irritation at finding this "average" woman not overawed by his oracular utterances, nor easily beaten in a controversy, Albert had a respect for her deeper than ever. There was something in her anger at Westcott that for a moment had seemed finer than anything he had seen in the ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... you saucy scamp! I can't afford to feed you on diamonds from my sacred ring! Did you get your greedy nature from some sable Dodonean ancestress? If we had lived three thousand years ago, I might be superstitious, and construe your freak into an oracular protest against my engagement. Feathered augurs survive their shrines. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Ethiopia. The inhabitants worship no other gods than Jupiter and Bacchus; but these they honour with great magnificence. They have also an oracle of Jupiter; and they make war whenever that god bids them by an oracular warning, and against whatever country he bids them. Sailing from this city, you will arrive at the country of the Automoli, in a space of time equal to that which you took in coming from Elephantine to the capital of the Ethiopians. These Automoli are called by the name of Asmak, which, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... wherein Captain Cuttle encounters Mrs. Macstinger in charge of Bunsby, bent on rivetting matrimonial chains upon that confused and ancient mariner. Bunsby is one of the happiest of Dickens's creations; stupid as an owl, he has nevertheless an oracular mode of delivering himself, and the simple-minded Cuttle places as much reliance upon this wooden-headed sailor as the ancients did on the mysterious utterance of the Delphic Apollo. That the powerful will of ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the oracular old lady, who was rapidly driving John mad, "commands a twenty-sixth part of the British army, and he says that he comes here to farm with Uncle Silas Croft. He says," she went on, with withering contempt, "that ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... purpose of accustoming themselves to support hunger; but all the circumstances connected with these voluntary privations leave no doubt that they were solemn religious exercises. Dreams and visions during these fasts were looked upon as oracular, and respected as the revelations of Heaven. The Indian frequently propitiates the favor of the inferior spirits by vows; when for some time unsuccessful in the chase, or suffering from want in long journeys, he promises the genius of the spot to bestow upon one of his ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Greeks built combination temples and sanitaria, to which the afflicted resorted. The priests were in charge and these ancient heathens were great rogues. By fooling the people they got big fees out of them. Their oracular sayings and miracles were adroitly presented. They did not teach that overeating is the chief cause of disease, for this did not suit the mystic times. The people liked oracular prescriptions, and they got them. ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... After this oracular utterance John o' the Warren, who took his popular name from the rabbit homes, to the exclusion of his proper surname of Searby, tramped heavily after his companion to the Priory kitchen, where they both worried a certain amount of bread and cheese, and muttered ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... it might relieve itself. What is a lover without a confidante? I thought at once of my sister Sophy, my early playmate, the sister of my affections. She was so reasonable, too, and of such correct feelings, always listening to my words as oracular sayings, and admiring my scraps of poetry as the very inspirations of the muse. From such a devoted, such a rational being, what secrets could ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... mid barbarian hordes a sculptured Greece: She falls. To live and shine, she grows her fleece, Is shorn, and rubs with follies and with lies. So following her, your hewing may attain The right to speak unto the mute, and shun That sly temptation of the illumined brain, Deliveries oracular, self-spun. Who sweats not with the flock will seek in vain To shed the words which are ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... named Oubaios: [186][Greek: Oubaios, ho estin Hellenisti Basiliskos]. It should have been rendered [Greek: Oubos], Oubus; for [Greek: Oubaios] is a possessive, and not a proper name. The Deity, so denominated, was esteemed prophetic; and his temples were applied to as oracular. This idolatry is alluded to by Moses,[187] who, in the name of God, forbids the Israelites ever to inquire of those daemons, Ob and Ideone: which shews that it was of great antiquity. The symbolical worship of the serpent was, in the first ages, very extensive; and was introduced into all ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... threatening point, when a grape-shot, swifter than the blade, fairly struck the gunner. With blood streaming from his shoulder, he swayed from side to side, passing his hand before his eyes as one who questions oracular evidence, and then sank to the earth with an arm thrown over the tube of copper. Above his bronzed face the light curls waved like those of a Viking; though his clothes were dyed with the sanguinary hue and his chest rose and fell with labored breathing, it was with an almost ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... has not the ugly clamoring Nor the dumb stillness of the other homes About and opposite. For in our home Rare birds sing forth uncommon melodies; And in our home-yard a young offshoot grows, Sprung from Dodona's tree oracular! And in the garden of our home, full thick, The ironworts and snakeroots blossom on; And in our home the magic mirror shines Reflecting always in its gleaming glass The visage ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... was reckoned in the number of Heroes or Demigods; and we are informed by Philostratus that his head was preserved at Lesbos, where it gave oracular responses. Orpheus is not mentioned by Homer or Hesiod. The learned scholar Lobeck, in his Aglaophamus, has entered very deeply into an investigation of the real nature of the discoveries ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... first; and the most wretched artists taking pride in work which is simply slurred, slovenly, ignorant, empty, and insolent, as if it were nobly mysterious (just as a drunkard who cannot articulate supposes himself oracular); whereas the noble art-mystery, as all noble language-mystery, is reached only by intense labor. Striving to speak with uttermost truth of expression, weighing word against word, and wasting none, the great speaker, or writer, toils first into perfect intelligibleness, then, as ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... Cabinet was against being a party to the representation, and he capitulated. I do not think his support was very sincere: it certainly was not hearty ... I ought to add that, after the Cabinet had come to a decision and the outline of a draft had been discussed, the Chancellor uttered a few oracular sentences on the danger of refusing the French invitation, and gave a strong support to Lord John. His support came rather late ... I proposed that we should tater le terrain at Washington and ascertain whether there was any chance of ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... deity, god of storms, ruler of the atmosphere, favorite divinity of the Aryan race in all its branches, became Indra when he reached India, Jupiter when he arrived in Italy, Zeus when in Epirus he became the chief god of the Pelasgi, and was worshipped at that most ancient oracular temple of all Greece, Dodona. To him in the Iliad (XVI. 235) does Achilles pray, saying: "O King Jove, Dodonean, Pelasgian, dwelling afar off, presiding over wintry Dodona." A reminiscence of this old Pelasgian god long remained both in the Latin and Greek conversation, when, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... not a patriot. It takes red blood to make a patriot!" said Peterkin. In the pride of heroism and prestige, he was becoming an oracular enunciator of commonplaces from the lips of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... to be disturbed without injury; that we may not force on the unfolding mind our artificial forms; but that psychology, also, discloses to us a law of supply and demand to which, if we would not do harm, we must conform. Thus, alike in its oracular dogmatism, in its harsh discipline, in its multiplied restrictions, in its professed asceticism, and in its faith in the devices of men, the old educational regime was akin to the social systems ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... in loud, confident, oracular tone, "no horse of mine ever gets out without my knowing it, and never at night unless you ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... various ways to the question of their origin. Now and then we encountered a sentence, like Prof. Owen's "axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things," which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such oracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet deprecating, the coming time of trouble, we still hoped that, with some repairs and makeshifts, the old views ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... treaty, expunged the unpleasant word blackmail from his lexicon, and sapiently observed, so impossible is it for him not to indulge in platitudes, that sometimes a nation has to pay more for a thing than it is really worth; a reflection that would have done credit to the oracular wisdom of ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... below: ought they not consequently to speak the language of a more simple olden time, and their voices, too, ought they not also to seem a feeble sound of wailing, when contrasted with the thundering oracular language of Jupiter? For this reason Shakspeare chose a syllabic measure which was very common before his time, but which was then going out of fashion, though it still continued to be frequently used, especially in translations of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... not persuade him to hate him again. His coyness to the other's passion—for hate demands a return as much as love, and starves without it—is most arch and pleasant. Pray, like it very much. For his theories and nostrums, they are oracular enough, but I either comprehend 'em not, or there is "miching malice" and mischief in 'em, but, for the most part, ringing with their own emptiness. Hazlitt said well of 'em: "Many are the wiser and better for reading Shakspeare, but nobody was ever wiser ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... were added to the severity of the lyre, and precipitate eloquence produced an unusual language [in the theater]: and the sentiments [of the chorus, then] expert in teaching useful things and prescient of futurity, differ hardly from the oracular Delphi. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... became a public lecturer, and—after the manner of our most popular lyceum lecturers—propounded unintelligible conundrums to the confiding public. He had a Hall at Delphi, where he used to speak upon "The Lesson of the Hour," and his oracular sayings were every bit as valuable as those of RALPH WALDO EMERSON himself. People used to ask him all manner of questions, precisely as they now ask questions of the editors of newspapers. Now-a-days if a girl wants to know ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... abstract would quickly strip the favored '25' of some rays of their infamous glory, and do more to expose the blunders, follies, and ferocious inhumanities of convict discipline than volumes of concocted reports and oracular despatches. From his position, Dr. Hampton must know that under the name of discipline, deeds have been done sufficiently atrocious to glut the soul of a Caligula. He knows that the perjuries and punishments about tobacco were sins that ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... be considered of no value to the world! Consider THAT gigantic absurdity! ... consider, that when we read our newspapers we are not learning the views of Europe on a certain point,—we are absorbing the ideas of the EDITOR, to whom everything must be submitted before insertion in the oracular columns we pin our faith on! Thus it is that criticism,—literary criticism, at any rate,—is a lost art,—YOU know that. A man must either be dead (or considered dead) or in a 'clique' to receive any open encouragement at all from the so-called 'crack' critics. And the cliquey men are generally ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Hawes for a moment. However he assumed an oracular look, and replied, "I think some of it is true and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Harry Luttrell was manoeuvred towards the centre of the maze. Suddenly he stopped with a finger on the lips. A voice reached to them from the innermost recess—a voice which intoned, a voice which was oracular. ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... His offspring. Even if they had not been, should we grudge that some of the children's meat should be given unto dogs? Shall we deny to these "unconscious prophecies of heathendom" their oracular significance? Shall we be jealous of the ethical loftiness of a Plato or an Aurelius? Shall we be loth to admit that some power of the Spirit of Christ, even mid the dark wanderings of Seneca's life, kept him ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... dimly in the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,— "They enslave their children's children who make ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... is in Ely to-day and a great deal more. For instance (a third and last idea out of the thousand that Ely arouses), Ely is dumb and yet oracular. The town and the hill tell you nothing till you have studied them in silence and for some considerable time. This boast is made by many towns, that they hold a secret. But Ely, which is rather a village than a town, has alone ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... but in a side-winded way, yet you can trace them always at work, through the daily, weekly, monthly periodicals, in desperate exertion to attract public attention. They have at their head one sublime genius, whom they swear by, and they admire him the more, the more incomprehensible and oracular he appears to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... woman of color, sent for a diviner in order to ascertain what ought to be done. The diviner, after throwing his dice, worked himself into the state of ecstasy in which they pretend to be in communication with the Barimo. He then gave the oracular response that the child was being killed by the spirit of a Portuguese trader who once lived at Cassange. The case was this: on the death of the trader, the other Portuguese merchants in the village came together, and sold the goods of the departed to each other, each man accounting ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... his mistress, but rather as a baby to its mother; and thus, half unconsciously to himself, he taught her where her true kingdom lay,- -that the heart, and not the brain, enshrines the priceless pearl of womanhood, the oracular jewel, the 'Urim and Thummim,' before which gross man ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... dissonant words."[21]—Sir Hans Sloan tells us, also, that the Indians employ tobacco in all their enchantments, sorceries, and fortune-tellings; that their priests intoxicate themselves with the fumes, and in their ecstacies give forth ambiguous and oracular responses.[22] ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... writer, as if he had been guilty of a base fabrication, and had invented this hideous charge, to dishonour the Philadelphia audience. Without any fair opportunity of investigating the facts, they had the decency and modesty to pronounce sentence with an assumption of oracular infallibility. Probably the annals of literature can hardly produce a more unfair attack upon any writer than the review to which ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... Small men are apologetic and give excuses for being on earth, and reasons for staying here so long, and run and peek about to find themselves dishonorable graves. Not so the Great Souls—the fact that they are here is proof that God sent them. Their actions are regal, their language oracular, their manner affirmative. Leonardo's mental attitude was sublimely gracious—he had no grievance or quarrel with his Maker—he accepted life, and ever found it good. "We are all sons of God and it doth not yet appear ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... term "Nymphe" and its derivations was used to designate young women, brides, the marriage chamber, the lotus flower, oracular temples and the labiae minores ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Modern Astronomy, the apparition of the German, John Kepler, presents itself. Familiarly associated in general apprehension with that inductive triad known as "Kepler's Laws," which form the foundation of Celestial Geometry, it is much less generally known that he was an august and oracular soul, one of those called Mystics and Transcendentalists, perhaps the greatest genius for analogy that ever lived,—that he led a truly epic life, a hero and helper of men, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... suitable to a fair person, and the shades proper to be used by the wide class ranging between these extremes she knew also, with a special provision for red-haired and sandy folk and those who have no complexion at all. Certain laws which she formulated were cherished by her daughter as oracular utterances—that one should match one's eyes in the house and one's hair in the street, was one; that one's hat and gloves and shoes were of vastly more importance than all the rest of one's clothing, was another; that one's hair and stockings should tone as ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... or not is worthy to this house. Go, my attendants, I must enter it; This man, though poor, more cheerful than the rich Receives me; to his kindness thanks are due. More would it joy me if thy brother, blest Himself, could lead me to his prosperous house: Yet haply he may come; th' oracular voice Of Phoebus firmly will be ratified: Lightly of human prophecies I ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... restoration of the Union as it was, notwithstanding the Proclamation, still considered by the Secretary of State as being a waste of paper. How far the foreign diplomats believe the like oracular decisions, is another question; certain it is that they shrug ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... has ever read Little Dorrit, whatever else in the novel may slip the memory, fails to recall the oracular utterance of Mr. F.'s aunt that "There's milestones on the Dover road". To the opening of A Tale of Two Cities the colour and atmosphere of the time in which it is set, and of the drama which is to be developed, are given at once by the alarm of the passengers ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... wholly unmixed with amusement, Odger junior regarded me majestically for a moment, and then, ejaculating the oracular phrase, "Oh, ah!" walked off, his four-foot-one drawn to its full height, his hands behind his back, and his mouth still drawn up for whistling, but apparently too overcome with dignity to emit the music which an observer would ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... respect shown by the natives until it came out that the Islanders considered their white guests to be semi-idiots, and hence powerful sorcerers to be placated. Fijian religion had developed into the oracular stage, and the priest after receiving prayers and offerings would on occasions be entered into by the god. Tremors would overspread his body, the flesh of which would creep horribly. His veins would swell, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... convey a full idea of his poetry. His language may not be intelligible, but his manner is not to be mistaken. It is clear that he is either mad or inspired. In company, even in a tete-a-tete, Mr. Wordsworth is often silent, indolent, and reserved. If he is become verbose and oracular of late years, he was not so in his better days. He threw out a bold or an indifferent remark without either effort or pretension, and relapsed into musing again. He shone most (because he seemed most roused and animated) in reciting his own poetry, or in talking about ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... dear sir—a piece of clap-trap," he said lightly. "That is what would be said of such pictures—in England at least. And it WILL be said by many oracular, long-established newspapers, while Cellini lives. As soon as he is dead—ah! c'est autre chose!—he will then most probably be acknowledged the greatest master of the age. There may even be a Cellini 'School of Colouring,' where a select company of daubers will profess to know ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... would be revealed by the god of healing to his worshipper in the latter's dreams.[98:2] The interpretation of these dreams and the revelation to the patient of their alleged meaning was entrusted to a priest, who served as an intermediary between Esculapius and the patient. Several of these oracular prescriptions, inscribed upon a marble slab, were found on the site of an Esculapian temple near Rome. Translations of two of them may ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... swiftly, ere too late, where dwelleth he?' 'Ah, that I know not,' spake the little voice, 'Yet keep thy courage, seek thou out the stork, The ancient stork that saw from earliest days, Sitting in primal contemplation lost, Sphinx-like, seraphic, and oracular, Watching the strange procession ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... of Mirza, took position near the centre of the room where the light was ample. His black velvet pelisse contrasting strongly with his white hair and beard, he looked a mysterious Indian potentate to whom occult Nature was a familiar, and the stars oracular friends. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the times. Baron Stockmar was to an equal degree in his King's confidence; but Stockmar never had the political position of Van de Weyer, nor do I think he was so able a man. I had hinted, in my review of Stockmar's Life, [Footnote: Edinburgh Review, October 1872.] that his oracular powers had been somewhat exaggerated, and that he was rather more attached to the interests of the House of Coburg than to those of England; for which I do not blame him. However, Van de Weyer and some others of Stockmar's friends (including the Queen) dispute ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... play is exquisitely respondent to its title, and even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter's tale; yet it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years voluntary concealment. This might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... own. "Too 'flippant'? He has made it too oracular. Mr. Bousefield says he has killed it." Then perceiving my stupefaction: "Don't you know what has happened?" she pursued; "isn't it because in his trouble, poor love, he has sent for you that you've come? You've heard nothing at all? Then you had ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... up as a "wizard"; but this fate has dogged him until he has come at last to resign himself to it with a resentful indignation only to be appreciated when watching him read the latest full-page Sunday "spread" that develops a casual conversation into oracular verbosity, and gives to his shrewd surmise the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... O with what a round And series of rich pangs fled forth each note Oracular, that I had found, had found (Head waters of old Nile held less remote) Golden Dorado, dearest, most renowned; But when as 't were a sigh did overfloat, Shaping 'how long, not long shall this endure, Au jour le jour' ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... was apologizing for a vice of his own rather than making an impersonal statement of truth. "How can a tall man help thinking of his size," he asked, "when dwarfs are constantly standing on tiptoe beside him?" The personal note that occasionally breaks in upon the oracular rhythm of the Table Talk, however, is a virtue in literature, even if a lapse in philosophy. The crumbs of a great man's autobiography are no less precious than the crumbs of his wisdom. There are moods in which one prefers his egotism to his great thoughts. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... of the giant bones Of the dread image, and in the black pits Which once were eyes, I see two livid flames. These prodigies are oracular, and show The presence of the unseen Deity. 65 Mighty events are hastening to ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to seek, yet some stray godsend or rare literary windfall which may serve to excuse his indulgence in the seemingly profitless pastime of a truant disposition. It is a pure impertinence to affirm with oracular assurance what might perhaps be admissible as a suggestion offered with the due diffidence of modest and genuine scholarship; to assert on the strength of a private pedant's personal intuition that such must be the history or such the composition ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... been adjusted easily enough, if Beatrice, who was sitting between Betty and Dora, had not turned to Betty with her oracular smile, and murmured, "A keen sense of irony for one so young, isn't it?" behind ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... that they used those of Tristram Shandy, gent., rather scurvily; which was to be expected. All, however, had a show of courtesy and good manners. The satire was covert and artfully insinuated; the praise was short and sweet. We meet with no oracular theories; no profound analysis of principles; no unsparing exposure of the least discernible deviation from them. It was deemed sufficient to recommend the work in general terms, 'This is an agreeable volume,' or 'This is a work of great learning and research,' to set forth the title and table ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... to introduce our subject with such very general and undeniable observations, had not experience taught us that the best way of introducing any subject is by a string of platitudes, delivered after an oracular fashion. They arouse attention, without exhausting it, and afford the pleasant sensation of thinking, without any of the trouble of thought. But, the subject once introduced, it becomes necessary to ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... notices of his various virtues and studies; puffs of the productions he is preparing for the press, and anticipations of the fame which he is to reap by their means, from a less ungrateful age; and all this delivered with such an oracular seriousness and assurance, that it is easy to see the worthy Laureate thinks himself entitled to share in the prerogatives of that royalty which he is bound to extol, and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... cannot be so well comprehended without some reference to the parts; but they shall be again referred to the whole. Without this latter attention, several of the passages would certainly remain covered with an impenetrable and truly oracular obscurity. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... set over against the authority of Rome. The age knew of no other authority than external, extra-natural official authority, the king by divine right in the realm of thought. In the place of the authority of the Church rose the authority of the Bible; an oracular, infallible, miraculous Book, instead of an oracular, infallible, miraculous Church. Men could only sustain the elaborate speculative system they had spun out of the New Testament letters, by insisting upon the authority ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... friend! (since thou remind'st me of that theme) Fame here reports that num'rous suitors haunt 270 Thy palace for thy mother's sake, and there Much evil perpetrate in thy despight. But say, endur'st thou willing their controul Imperious, or because the people, sway'd By some response oracular, incline Against thee? But who knows? the time may come When to his home restored, either alone, Or aided by the force of all the Greeks, Ulysses may avenge the wrong; at least, Should Pallas azure-eyed thee love, as erst 280 At Troy, the scene of our unnumber'd woes, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... however, and knew well with whom she had to deal. She talked in solemn and oracular tones, as if she had possessed all the secrets of fate, but she told nothing, and when she went away she said in a low voice but authoritative manner, "Be kind to your girl—be very kind; for she will bring good luck and fortune to you all." The next day she laid ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Error sits most lightly on that sense, I know not what to call it; but it reckons With me ofttimes for pain, and sometimes pleasure; A spirit which seems placed about my heart To count its throbs, not quicken them, and ask Questions which mortal never dared to ask me, 530 Nor Baal, though an oracular deity—[q] Albeit his marble face majestical Frowns as the shadows of the evening dim His brows to changed expression, till at times I think the statue looks in act to speak. Away with these vain thoughts, I will be joyous— And ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... visit at Possil, his seat in Scotland. As men who had achieved scientific or literary distinction inspired me with far greater awe than those of the highest rank - of whom from my childhood I had seen abundance - Alison's celebrity, his courteous manner, his oracular speech, his voluminous works, and his voluminous dimensions, filled me with too much diffidence and respect to admit of any freedom of approach. One listened to him, as he held forth of an evening when surrounded by his family, with reverential ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... seemed to flash out. He opened his thin lips to speak. When old men speak, they have the air of rousing themselves from an eternal contemplation in order to do so, and what they say becomes accordingly oracular. ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... inquirer with a reply from a wholly different and unexpected point of view; as when you ask a physician, 'Well, Doctor, how does your patient promise this morning?' and he answers, with a wise look and an oracular shake of the head, 'It is not given to humanity to look into futurity.' The effect is not destitute of the element of bathos." ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... Eyes-in-the-hands as he was of his tribal god; many were impressed by the propaganda of Sakamata and Yabolo and the impunity with which Yabolo and Sakamata and company had quietly gone over to the enemy. Meanwhile Bakahenzie squatted in oracular silence, murmuring incantations that were prayers to the Unmentionable One interlarded with promises of the things he would accomplish for the said Deity, with solemnity and sincerity, for he felt that the result ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... that night, my grandmother said "You must go to Picault's ball, my dear;" and my grave, oracular father added: "Yes, you shall go among our people now. I am about to send you ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... surprised," he observed with oracular amiability. "I would na be surprised—if that's th' ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... been erected on the battlefield, with an inscription describing the contest as "a useful lesson to British kings never to exceed the bounds of their just prerogative; and to British subjects, never to swerve from the allegiance due to their legitimate monarch." This is certainly an oracular utterance, and of its injunctions the reader can take ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... guests of quality, had just sat down to dinner; that there was excellent brandy at the hostler-wife's at Wolf's Hope down below; and he held out some obscure hint that the reckoning would be discharged by the Master; but this was uttered in a very dubious and oracular strain, for, like Louis XIV., Caleb Balderstone hesitated to carry finesse so far as direct falsehood, and was content to deceive, if possible, without ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... the inner room downstairs, had a mirror so placed that he could see all who came through the main door, without himself being seen, and so appearing to place callers under observation. At my expressing some surprise that this was necessary, I was met with the oracular reply that though it wasn't talked about, such an arrangement would be found "in every office in London." Of a piece with this half-reality, half make-believe, with which, as I say, Townsend transformed ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey |
