"Puzzle out" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mother nor daughter spoke. Sue waited, trying to puzzle out the significance of what she had caught; and scarcely daring to charge an indiscretion. Mrs. Milo waited, forcing Sue to speak first, and thus betray how ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... to do a little painting here; but, after all, I don't seem to take as much interest in composing pictures as in trying to puzzle out ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... little about the Deephaven burying-ground, for its interest was inexhaustible, and I do not know how much time we may have spent in reading the long epitaphs on the grave-stones and trying to puzzle out the inscriptions, which were often so old and worn that we could only trace a letter here and there. It was a neglected corner of the world, and there were straggling sumachs and acacias scattered about the enclosure, while a row of fine old elms marked the boundary of two sides. The grass was ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... dream of ultimate success and distinction for Theron. He had demonstrated clearly enough to himself, during that brief season of unrestrained effulgence, that he had within him the making of a great pulpit orator. He set to work now, with resolute purpose, to puzzle out and master all the principles which underlie this art, and all the tricks that adorn its superstructure. He studied it, fastened his thoughts upon it, talked daily with Alice about it. In the pulpit, ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... paper that Elbridge Newton had pushed under the door that morning. It was limp from the nervous clutch and tremor of her hands, and wet with her tears; but she kept reading her father's letter in it, and trying to puzzle out of it some hope or help. "He must be crazy, he must be crazy," she moaned, more to herself than to Suzette, who sat rigidly and silently by. "He couldn't have been so cruel, if he had been in his right mind; he ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... exercise and read. I can't think now how I behaved so unaccountably those last few weeks, and I wonder if you will ever understand. I have been reading over and over again your long letter, trying hard to puzzle out its meanings, but I fear I am very ignorant. I know nothing of the crisis you speak of. I know that "ye have the poor always with you," I know that there is much suffering in the world—I have suffered myself—but ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... who wanted to go into the grocery business, I should take care that he was well grounded in the principles of sound bookkeeping and prudence. But I should not fail to tell him the story of the Harrison Avenue grocer, hoping that he would puzzle out ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... embrace her as he had greeted the other sisters, and then squirming out of his arms, she backed into a corner, where she frowned impartially on the excited group, all talking at once, while she tried to puzzle out how this man could be "Grandpa" when all her own relatives had long since been carried ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... other men's practices—which had, when I was following it, seemed intolerably irksome, now appeared to possess many desirable features; and I found myself occasionally hankering to sit once more by the bedside, to puzzle out the perplexing train of symptoms, and to wield that power—the greatest, after all, possessed by man—the power to banish suffering and ward off the ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... convince us that philosophers should be content with a more modest attitude than they have sometimes adopted; give up the pretensions to framing off-hand theories of things in general, and be content to puzzle out a few imperfect truths which may slowly work their way into the general structure of thought. I wish to speak humbly as befits one who cannot claim any particular authority for his opinion. But, in ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... you," Duane said. "Womankind are needed here. I could do so little. Mrs. Laramie, you look better already. I'm glad. And here's baby, all clean and white. Baby, what a time I had trying to puzzle out the way your clothes went on! Well, Mrs. Laramie, didn't I tell you—friends would come? ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... try and puzzle out in my mind what bearings this amazing incident could have on my own affairs. I was not even sure as yet whether the man with the scar had been really spying on my movements or whether my seeing him twice on the night ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... Without pausing to puzzle out a possible reason for the singular condition of the vessel, I hastily resigned the yoke-lines to Miss Onslow and, springing upon the mast thwart, proceeded to hail the brig at the full power of my lungs, my delight at once more seeing a vessel so close at hand being coupled with a deadly anxiety ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... late Parson Froude, in North Devon, than whom a keener sportsman never holloaed to hounds, and the breeder of one of the best packs for showing sport ever seen, hunted hare, fox, deer, and even polecats, sooner than not keep his darlings doing something; and, while his hounds would puzzle out the faintest scent, there were among the leaders several that, with admirable dash, jumped every gate, disdaining to creep. Some of this stock are still hunting on Exmoor. There are at present several very good M.F.H. who began ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... to the memory of it. If the "Mary" of my early days were still living, and if I had met her, would she have treated me as this woman had treated me? Never! It was an injury to "Mary" to think even of that heartless creature by her name. Why think of her at all? Why degrade myself by trying to puzzle out a means of tracing her in her letter? It was sheer folly to attempt to trace a woman who had gone I knew not whither, and who herself informed me that she meant to pass under an assumed name. Had I lost ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... not been able to puzzle out. According to your notion—and you may have proved it since, for all I know—Locke was not in the showroom during or after the murder. And yet it should have been he who dropped the little particle from the railroad ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... nod; he would stop, put his book in his pocket, and though his talk was often above my comprehension, still somehow I felt happier and better, and less of an infant, when I thought over it, and tried to puzzle out the meaning; for he had away of suggesting, not teaching, putting things into my head, and then leaving them to work out their own problems. I remember a special instance with respect to that same flower-pot and geranium. Mr. Squills, who was a bachelor, and well-to-do in the world, often ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it was sculptured all over, from base to summit, with boldly executed figures of men, women, and animals, which, when his admiration had passed sufficiently to enable him to study them in detail, seemed to Stukely to tell some sort of a story. But what the story was he was quite unable to puzzle out, for there were hunting episodes depicted, and also scenes which seemed to represent some sort of religious ceremonial, while others, again, might be interpreted as representing either a human sacrifice, or, possibly, the execution of a criminal; for they represented a group of ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... mademoiselle; that very afternoon I had warned you against Monsieur Spencer, and I feared—Oh, forgive me! that you had killed him because he had injured your father. After a long interval I crept upstairs to the attic and there tried to puzzle out what would be best to do for mademoiselle. Fearing the police would make me tell what I had seen, I ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... dabs of sealing-wax all over it, and a handwriting so gentlemanly as to be almost unreadable. Every one crowded round the eldest son to see it opened—and out fell five ten-crown notes. "Mercy on us!" they cried in amazement, and "Can it be for us?" The next thing was to puzzle out what was written in the letter. And who should that turn out to be from but—no other than Peer's father, though he did not say it in so many words. "Be good to the boy," the letter said. "You will receive fifty crowns from me every half-year. See that he gets plenty to eat and goes dry and well ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... stand quite still, you perhaps might shame your admirers into better behaviour, and thereby be the means of furthering the interests of sport." This rebuke means that when a gallop is suddenly stopped by hounds losing the scent of their fox and being obliged to puzzle out the line, the ladies of the hunt should remain silent, should pull up and not impede the huntsman who will do his best to aid his hounds in recovering the lost scent. Mr. Paget's remark about the lady who led the field over ground where the pack intended to cast themselves, ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... you from thinking earnestly of anything else. Like knitting, like the work of a copying clerk, it gradually neutralises and sets to sleep the serious activity of the mind. We can think of this or that, lightly and laughingly, as a child thinks, or as we think in a morning dose; we can make puns or puzzle out acrostics, and trifle in a thousand ways with words and rhymes; but when it comes to honest work, when we come to gather ourselves together for an effort, we may sound the trumpet as loud and long as we please; the great barons ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... puzzle out where it is. I know. It must be somewhere at the west corner, because that's where there is ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... terrible pain in my head, and a sensation as of something warm and wet trickling down the side of my face, accompanied by a peculiar smarting which made me involuntarily raise my hand and quickly draw it away again, for I had only increased the pain. Then I lay quite still, trying to puzzle out ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... and subsided into motionless calm. There was not a movement along the roofs or the wall, or in the rings of those who squatted. Arabia was spellbound, watching something she had never seen before and trying to puzzle out the wherefore of it. There were knives and guns available, yet these men fought without weapons. The white contender had a friend, but the friend did not join in. Why? Had Allah struck all three men mad? They sat still to see the end, having no doubt but that ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... they scatter and run backward and forward, nosing under every dead leaf and up the trunk of every tree. The fault is complete, and the young dogs give it up and lie down panting, while the older hounds try every expedient to puzzle out the trail and take up the scent again. He certainly has not treed, there is neither earth nor hollow to hide him, and yet the scent has gone! And it never came back. If any reader can tell what became of that fox, he is a wiser man than I. Certain it is that we never ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... puzzle out the clue, Which must be skill, or craft, or luck in you: Unless, indeed, ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... printed characters must be due to a kind of mental obliquity, and that I must be rapidly going mad! Even Yamba could not sympathise with me, because the matter was one which I never could have made her understand. I tried to put this strange puzzle out of my head, but again and again the accursed and torturing passage would ring in my ears until I nearly went crazy. But I presently put the thing firmly from me, and resolved to think no more ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... ahead of me. Man or woman? Impossible to tell till I overtake it. The February fog deepens the darkness, and the faces one passes are indistinguishable. As for the numbers of the houses, no one thinks of looking for them. If you know the quarter you count doors from the corner, or try to puzzle out the familiar outline of a balcony or a pediment; if you are in a strange street, you must ask at the nearest tobacconist's—for, as for finding a policeman, a yard off you couldn't tell him from ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... hand), and other passages, show knowledge of Latin texts which in his day had not appeared in published translations, or had not been translated at all as far as we know. In my opinion Will had Latin enough to puzzle out the sense of the Latin, never difficult, for himself. He could also "get a construe," when in London, or help in reading, from a more academic acquaintance: or buy a construe at no high ransom from some poor ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... family, I thought it would be nicer like if it came through me. Put me on a better footing, so to speak. Well, I 'ad three days before me left of my 'olidays, so there wasn't no hurry, so I covered it up and went on digging, and tried to puzzle out 'ow I was to make sure of it. ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... sometimes, especially when I sit in the dark. I send them out like strange birds, all over the world,—up, up, everywhere,—but they never come back to me again,' finished Jill mournfully; 'if they build nests I never know it: I just sit and puzzle out things, ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... I tried to puzzle out the probable meaning of this somewhat extraordinary happening. My acquiescence in the attitude that had been so suddenly forced upon me was owing entirely to one circumstance. Mr. Joseph H. Parker I had recognized at his first entrance as a regular habitue ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it's too hot, to-night, and I'm too tired and sleepy to try and puzzle out your conundrums, so if you want me to understand what you're about you had better speak out. What ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... had a glimpse of a black shoulder or leg, and Colin, whom I kept on the leash, was half-mad with excitement. I had seen all I wanted, and went home with a preoccupied mind. I sat long on Wardlaw's garden-seat, trying to puzzle out the truth ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... softly out, leaving Tom bent over the paper. Again he smoothed it out carefully on the table, bringing the two candles nearer, and tried to puzzle out the ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold |
