"Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the driver, and Bob had solved the riddle. He then told Mr. Waterman how he had tried to think what "Gi-may" meant, thinking at first that it meant something like "Allons" but that he had found out ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... father, and marry his mother, the son forsook Corinth, and made his abode at Thebes. Meeting Laius in a narrow pass, and provoked by his attendants, he slew them and him. At Thebes there was a female monster, the Sphinx, who propounded a riddle, and each day devoured a man until it should be solved. Oedipus won the prize which the Queen Jocaste had offered; namely, the crown and her own hand to whomsoever should free the city. When his two sons and daughters had grown up, a pestilence broke ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... could hold a man who knew how to pack himself in! It had a false bottom with a spring! One in hiding could escape that way!... Once closed on the person concealed within, the chair looked empty. A most ingenious hide-hole! Juve now knew the answer to the riddle of the bandit's disappearance. Within an ace of arrest, he had seized the chance offered by Juve's interchange of glances with the king, and with an acrobat's agility had slipped inside this chair! No sooner was the ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... the invasion was that some week-end guest of the East Cliff Hotel left a copy of "The Riddle of the Sands" in the coffee-room, where von Gottlieb found it; and the fact that Ford attended the Shakespeare Ball. Had neither of these events taken place, the German flag might now be flying over Buckingham Palace. And, then again, it ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... say, as the Frenchmen do, that their nation was taken by surprise. A nation, no more than a woman, is excused for the unguarded hour when the first adventurer who comes along can do violence to her. The riddle is not solved by such shifts, it is only formulated in other words. There remains to be explained how a nation of thirty-six millions can be surprised by three swindlers, and taken ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... read it for yourself, and think over it, and see if you can find out," said Mr. Raymond, giving him the book. "And now you had better go home to your mother. When you've found the riddle, ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... was dead, the Nazarene came and seized his seat beneath the sun, The votary of the Riddle-god, whose one is three and three ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... one miserable Jackson, over twelve or fourteen strong, healthy tars, is a riddle, whose solution must be left ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Woman prepared her morning meal. "Who am I?" had become the obsessing riddle of her life. She was no longer a young woman, being in her fifty-third year. In the eyes of the white man's law, it was required of her to give proof of her membership in the Sioux tribe. The unwritten law of heart prompted her naturally ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... The riddle was soon solved. The horses being sensible of what was restraint and what was not, felt the reins dangling about their hocks, and, having had no food since they left their stables at Gottenborg, walked to the wayside, and began to crop the ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... her," said Mrs. Maxa. "It is a riddle to me, too, how she succeeded in entering this garden. I knew nothing about it till yesterday evening when the children came home from the castle. I am terribly afraid that Maezli has ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... I do—I know a lot about 'em. I was one myself once, though not long—not so long as my clothes. They were very long, I recollect, and always in my way when I wanted to kick. Why do babies have such yards of unnecessary clothing? It is not a riddle. I really want to know. I never could understand it. Is it that the parents are ashamed of the size of the child and wish to make believe that it is longer than it actually is? I asked a nurse once ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Which I think is a little more than the truth,—and only a little, as perhaps may appear by and by. Beyond dispute, these Polish events did at last grow interesting enough to Prussia and its King;—and it will be our task, sufficient in this place, to extricate and riddle out what few of these had any cardinal or notable quality, and put them down (dated, if possible, and in intelligible form), as pertinent to throwing light on this distressing matter, with careful exclusion of the immense mass ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... immediately between the cutter and the island. At first they were considerably puzzled to determine the character of these small craft, which were steering due west; but at length, as they closed and became more distinctly visible, Ned was enabled to solve the riddle. The fleet was none other than the boats belonging to the Flying Cloud! And Ned conjectured that the hasty abandonment of Refuge Harbour, indicated by the appearance of the boats at sea, arose either from a fear ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... finger and held out the bag of tarts. He watched him, half incredulous of his prize, and with many a cautious look over his shoulder, pass out of sight. For a long while he sat alone, only the evening birds singing out of the greenness and silence of the churchyard. What a haunting inescapable riddle ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... a virtuous youth, Did ever, in so true a flame of liking, Wish chastely, and love dearly, that your Dian Was both herself and love; O, then, give pity To her whose state is such that cannot choose But lend and give where she is sure to lose; That seeks not to find that her search implies, But, riddle-like, lives ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... down,' is intelligible as a free comment near the end of the first century; but has no meaning in our Lord's mouth at a time when the Ascension had not been heard of." (p. 84.)—"The Apocalypse" in like manner, to "cease to be a riddle," must be "taken as a series of poetical visions which represent the outpouring of the vials of wrath upon the City where our LORD was slain." (p. 84.) ... (Is it possible that a Minister of the Gospel of CHRIST can speak thus concerning the Divine record?) ... "The second of ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... upon some such ludicrous pretext as there being someone else there. But MacIan was in a condition of criticism much less than the average masculine one, being in fact merely overturned by the rushing riddle ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... a kind of riddle, you see, and all the more that no one knows who may be by the king's side, when the storm breaks. A generation back, men might make a fair guess; but now it were beyond the wisest head to say and, for ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... immediately, for my albumess will be catechised on this subject; and how can I prompt her? Lake Leman, I know, and Lemon Lake (in a punch bowl) I have swum in, though those lymphs be long since dry. But Maggiore may be in the moon. Unsphinx this riddle for me, for my shelves have no gazetteer. And mayest thou never murder thy father-in-law in the Trivia of Lincoln's Inn New Square Passage, where Searl Street and the Street of Portugal embrace, nor afterwards make absurd proposals to the Widow M. But I know you abhor any ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... lamp which, filled with light, seems almost resembled be an ethereal existence. The dark-blue eyes had an expression of soul and feeling which attracted even the simple domestics at the hall. The physician assured them that her chest was sound, and that her malady was to him a riddle. A beautiful summer, he thought, ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... world and newly-born babes which would render the latter more obnoxious to attack than elder children or adults; or whether, as I have put it at the beginning of this chapter, their helplessness alone suggested their exceeding danger. To solve the riddle we must wait for a ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... of labor cannot, therefore, be measured, in individual cases, by time units. Despite a hundred passages which, detached from their context, seem to imply the contrary, Adam Smith recognized this very clearly, and attempted to solve the riddle by a differentiation of skilled and unskilled labor in which he likens skilled labor to a machine; and insists that the labor and time spent in acquiring the skill which distinguishes skilled ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... Shrope!" commanded the queen sharply. "Thy wits are addled. Who is there who will read the riddle clearly? ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... one by one. "How?" said the little girls, looking aghast at such an abrupt conclusion. "They disappeared," said Felix, "one every night." "But that's no story, how did they disappear?" "Oh, you must guess, my story is a riddle." So they guessed and guessed, but, becoming no wiser, they clamourously called on him to tell. "But if you don't guess," said Felix, "how can I tell, for not one of them was left alive." "You are a stupid boy," said Lilly, "and tell a very bad story." "Yours ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... us. We spoke little, having no breath to spare, for the ground was growing more steep and broken towards the second rise, up which we clambered, sliding and falling, grasping frozen heather till we reached the top. The hill was now a riddle of peat hags and binks, like a bee's skep, a place of treachery and slimy death, although the frost would have most of the sinking pools in its iron hand; but we never stopped the long stride that seemed so slow to me at first. Dan bent and twisted through the peat banks like a hound ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... "in order to solve the riddle of a crime, the detective's first task is to study the scene topographically. Plans and elevations of a room or house are made. The position of each object is painstakingly noted. In addition, the all-seeing eye of the camera is called ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... on this island Timar found health and rest. It became his home, and for the summer months every year he would slip away from Komorn, and no one, not even Timea, guessed his secret. When he returned Timea's cold white face was still an unsolved riddle to her husband. She would greet him kindly, but never was there any token that she loved him. Timar's ever-increasing business operations were excuse for his long absences, but all the same the double life he was leading made him ill. He could not tell Timea of Therese and Noemi, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... first vague rumors of battles said to have been fought at San Francisco, Port Townsend, and Seattle, had arisen, even these sources of information ran dry. The question from where all the hostile troops had come, remained as much of a riddle as ever. That was a matter of indifference after all; the chief consideration was to adopt measures of defense ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... than himself, and a rivalry begun in good-humor was likely to take a different cast. In his pique, Marlboro' bade his host farewell, and returned to Blue Bluffs; but it was idle riding, for every day found him again at The Rim, like the old riddle,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... which every republic had toiled upward from the barren lowlands of early hardship and poverty, just at the point where the steepness of the hill had been overcome and a prospect opened of pleasant uplands of wealth and prosperity, a sphinx had ever stood, propounding the riddle, 'How shall a state combine the preservation of democratic equality with the increase of wealth?' Simple indeed had been the answer, for it was only needful that the people should so order their system of economy that wealth should be equally shared as it increased, in order ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... protoplasm a chemical compound? Some have considered it so, and spoken of its marvellously complicated molecule. Of course it is made up of carbon, hydrogen, and other substances within the domain of chemistry. But is it, therefore, merely a chemical compound? The reply involves the whole riddle of Vitalism. The author would say that it, as well as all the living things to which it belongs, is purely and solely a chemical compound; and he must take the consequences of his belief. One of these consequences, from which doubtless ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... the nettle firmly, and as shrewdly as firmly, and have taken no hurt. It remains only to pluck it. For heaven's sake no over-confidence or premature elation; but there is really good hope that Sir Redvers Buller has solved the Riddle of the Tugela—at last. At last! I expect there will be some who will inquire—'Why not "at first"?' All I can answer is this: There is certainly no more capable soldier of high rank in all the army in Natal than ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... uncle's riddle,' said Stanley;'the cautious old soldier did not care to hint to me that I might hand over to you this passport, which I have no occasion for; but if it should afterwards come out as the rattle-pated trick of a young Cantab, cela ne tire a rien. You are therefore to be Francis Stanley, with this ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 'It's no riddle, sir,—it's a solution of all the riddles. I will tell you. While I was convalescing, I went to a Y.M.C.A. camp. I had never been to one of these places before; I don't know why I went then, except that the time hung a bit heavy on my hands. ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... but I wish it was daylight and I could get a good aim at one of them. I say, they'll riddle ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... 'never' with two v's. There is enough in that immensely funny correspondence to bring an influx of subscribers for a fortnight. He will shake in his shoes lest an anonymous letter should supply his wife with the key to the riddle. The question is whether Florine will consent to appear to persecute Matifat. She has some principles, which is to say, some hopes, still left. Perhaps she means to keep the letters and make something for herself out of them. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... mood, it is hard to guess, and the speculation does not interest us. Shelley's prose opinions were of no importance. What we do trace in his poetry is a tendency, half conscious, uttering itself only in figures and parables, to read the riddle of the universe as a struggle between two hostile principles. In the world of prose he called himself an atheist. He rejoiced in the name, and used it primarily as a challenge to intolerance. "It is a good word of abuse to stop discussion," he said once to his friend Trelawny, "a painted devil ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... as an old woman puts on a nightcap, is like my eyes and ears. It can now only understand what is of the earth—what you can understand, Gogo, who are still of the earth. I forget, as one forgets an ordinary dream, as one sometimes forgets the answer to a riddle, or the last verse of a song. It is on the tip of the tongue; but there it sticks, and won't ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... all a riddle to me," I said, a little impatiently. "You forget that I do not know the ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... RIDDLE believed that the question of universal franchise would be tried before the grand tribunal of the world, and, if not victorious, it would appeal and appeal again. The question ought to be met squarely by the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the Spaniards discovered the approach of the Merrimac, in the darkness, they opened upon her with their batteries from both shores, and she was subjected to a fire which it would seem must riddle her like a sieve and kill every man. But under the direction of the cool-headed and daring Lieutenant the collier was swung into the right position, and, but for the shooting away of the rudder, would have been sunk directly across the channel, which would have been ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... her young face, and yet not an expression wholly of pain—for her lips were parted with a smile,—that glad yet troubled smile with which one who has been revolving some subject of perplexity or fear greets a sudden thought that seems to solve the riddle, or prompt the escape from danger; and as I softly took her hand she returned my gentle pressure, and inclining towards me, said, still ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... books, medicine books, riddle books, almanacs, craftsmen's proverbs, fabulous travels, prophecies, legends, romances and the like, hawked ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... of my position. Since then, for three years I have been the prisoner of my Parliament,—but now—now, and for the rest of the time granted to me on earth, I will live my life in the belief that its riddle must surely meet with God's own explanation. To me it has become evident that the laws of Nature make for Truth and Justice; while the laws of man are framed on deception and injustice. The two sets of laws contend one against the other, and the finite, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the Princess's answer to the riddle of the nineteenth day in A Digit of the Moon. I am this middle thing, and it is only the very bad and very good that achieve peace and ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... assigned him, and lay awake a long time, musing on the past and the present. "Ah, I see," he said to himself, "why I am an object of wonder and something of awe to the people of the valley. I have lived apart from human ties, while they have grown old and ripe together. I must be a riddle to them all—a something which they have invested with an air of veneration, because I was not daily in their midst. Had it been otherwise, I should have been neither new nor fresh to them. How know I but this is God's reserve force wherewith each may become refreshed, and myself an humble ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... The riddle was too much for them; Lily gave it up, and returned to the fun of acting the part of lover to Marjorie. She was just putting her arm affectionately about her room-mate, when the trained nurse, who was supposed to represent Florence Nightingale, ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... in shooting? At that short distance Jack realized that he could riddle the object sadly; for the charge of shot, having no chance to spread, would go with all the ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... Oh, damn the clubs! A blaze of light and raucous voices, ships' masters, ships' chandlers, merchants, discussing the riddle of local politics, and the simony of office; or the price of hides, and freight charges; how a ship's master could turn a pretty penny in bringing out shoddy clothes, or pianos—Jesus! they were crazy for ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... he answered the riddle. "Because, dear dullards, I want you to enter the service of Gonzague. If I return to France to right a wrong, I know the risk I run and the blessing of you two devils ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... was about to be invaded, was impossible. In fact, the daylight which had just been admitted to the last compartments had exposed to the soldiers the bark being rolled towards the sea, the two rebels within musket-shot; and one of their discharges would riddle the boat if it did not kill the navigators. Besides, allowing everything,—if the bark escaped with the men on board of it, how could the alarm be suppressed—how could notice to the royal lighters be prevented? What could hinder the poor canoe, followed by ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... or the Beast be the more difficult to identify, must be referred to Mr. Taylor, the only person who has attempted both. His cogent argument on the political secret is not unworthily matched in his treatment of the theological riddle. He sees the solution in [Greek: euporia], which occurs in the Acts of the Apostles as the word for wealth in one of its most disgusting forms, and makes 666 in the most straightforward way. This explanation has as good a chance as any other. The work contains a general ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... that Science will solve the riddle by casting aside the works and improvements of a thousand years,—the "wave line," the spar, the sail, and all,—and with them the men of the sea. It may be that "Leviathans" will march unheedingly through the mountain waves,—that steam and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... affairs of men than any man we know of in history? Is it a great figure? Does our emphasis fall on the great features of that nature—are they within our vision, and in our drawing? Does our explanation of him really explain him, or leave him more a riddle? What do we make of his originality? Is it in our picture? What was it in him that changed Peter and James and John and the rest from companions into worshippers, that in every age has captured and controlled the best, the deepest, and tenderest of men? Are we afraid that our picture ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... show Pascal’s relation to philosophy, and to Pyrrhonism in particular. He is no enemy of philosophy, but he certainly does not believe it capable of explaining the riddle of human nature. He is so far from being a Pyrrhonist in the sense of resting on Pyrrhonism, that he seeks to mount on its shoulders to a higher truth. Nay, he clearly recognises that man has an inborn ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... the same kind as yours, I mean pains in my legs, hips, and arms: whether gouty or rheumatic, God knows; but, I believe, both, that fight without a decision in favor of either, and have absolutely reduced me to the miserable situation of the Sphinx's riddle, to walk upon three legs; that is, with the assistance of my stick, to walk, or rather hobble, very indifferently. I wish it were a declared gout, which is the distemper of a gentleman; whereas the rheumatism is the distemper of a hackney-coachman or chairman, who is obliged ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... said Lord Ronald, "For I am yours in word and in deed; Play me no tricks," said Lord Ronald, "Your riddle is ...
— Lady Clare • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... resignation. Either his colleague's intellect was in a failing state—or his colleague had some purpose in view which had not openly asserted itself yet. He began to suspect that the right reading of the riddle was involved in the latter of those two alternatives. Instead of entering any fresh protest, he wisely ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... has been a growing tendency among scholars to seek in the Mysteries the clue which shall enable us to read aright the baffling riddle of the Grail, and there can be little doubt that, in so doing, we are on the right path. At the same time I am convinced that to seek that clue in those Mysteries which are at once the most famous, and ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... that—she seems to get rid of her troubles just by telling them. Now she had passed her riddle on to me, and I could not keep Peggy and her affairs from my mind. I tried to tell myself that it would be better for every one to find out now than later if Henry Goward was not worthy to be Peggy's husband. But, oh, for all their sakes, how I hoped this cloud, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... the theoretic problem is not solved' (p. 23). The question is, 'How the diversity can exist in harmony with the oneness' (p. 118). To go back to pure experience is unavailing. 'Mere feeling gives no answer to our riddle' (p. 104). Even if your intuition is a fact, it is not an understanding. 'It is a mere experience, and furnishes no consistent view' (pp. 108-109). The experiences offered as facts or truths 'I find that my intellect rejects because they contradict themselves. ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... RIDDLE. A question-mark gone mad. A foolish member of the Interrogation family whose most fiendish offspring is "How old is Ann?" ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... rights, and I'm going to turn my talents to account so as to see that he gets all that's coming to him. What relation could Aleck bear a youngster like Owen but that of grandpa, eh? Why, it promises to be about as good as a play. But I mustn't let on that I've guessed the riddle, for I don't understand why they're at daggers' points—what has Owen done—why did he skip down the river without even his gun? H'm, there's lots to unravel even here, and perhaps I'd better get Chum Owen to confide in me before I ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... stepping into a new arena, on which potent forces that may radically affect both are struggling with each other. Is Jewish poetry on the point of dying out, or is it destined to enjoy a resurrection? Who would be rash enough to prophesy aught of a race whose entire past is a riddle, whose literature is a question-mark? Of a race which for more than a thousand years has, like its progenitor, been wrestling ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... haunted by the glory of their ancestors, spellbound by the past of their city, declaring that she contains everything, that they themselves cannot know her thoroughly, that she is the sphinx who will some day explain the riddle of the universe, that she is so great and noble that all within her acquires increase of greatness and nobility, in such wise that they demand for her the idolatrous respect of the entire world, so vivacious in their minds is the illusive legend which ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... enigmatical message describing what she has sent. The Negress porter eats a part of the food, but delivers the message. The stranger shrewdly guesses its meaning, and sends back a reply that convicts the Negress of theft of a part of the gift. The other story opens with the "bride-wager" riddle, and later enumerates many instances of the ingenuity of the clever young wife. See Phillott and Azoo, "Some Arab Folk-Tales from Hazramaut," Nos. I and XVII (in JRASB 2 ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... indifference was not altogether assumed to serve a peculiar purpose, it was nevertheless certain that he bestowed not the slightest attention upon any of his questioners, not even upon Doe, who had previously endeavoured to unravel the riddle by seeking the assistance of Ralph Stackpole,—assistance, however, which Ralph, waxing sagacious of a sudden, professed himself wholly unable to give. This faithful fellow, indeed, professed to be just as ignorant of the person and character of ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... enterprise, some twenty-nine of the first citizens of Alexandria—among them Edmund I. Lee, William Herbert, Josiah Watson, Ludwell Lee, Elisha Cullen Dick, Joseph Riddle and Jonah Thompson—agreed with one another to contribute the sum of two hundred dollars each to be laid out and expended for the erection of a theatre upon the aforesaid piece of ground. The subscribers ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... this councillorship query remained, of course, a riddle to her, yet she handed him the paper without replying. It was a coarse wood-cut, representing a splendid meteor "as seen in the town of Cologne," which was to be read ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... know where to look for a sheet of paper, but remembered several paper bags on the pantry shelves, so she went in search of one. Finding one with only a cupful of sugar left in it, she tore off the top and wrote the riddle on that with a stub of a pencil which ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sorrows, and more of the loving purpose which appoints them all, we should find life less difficult, less toilsome, less mysterious. That one thought taken to our hearts, and honestly applied to everything that befalls us, would untie many a riddle, would wipe away many a tear, would bring peace and patience into many a heart, and would make still brighter many a gladness. Without it our lives are a chaos; with it they would ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... we make nothing better than that out of our lesson, we shall have to go on spelling at it and stumbling over it, through all the days of our life, till we make our last stumble, and take our final header out of this riddle of a world, which we once dreamed we were to rule over, exclaiming "vanitas vanitatum" to the end. But man's spirit will never be satisfied without a kingdom, and was never intended to be satisfied so; and One wiser than Solomon tells us day by day that ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... 1636 the "Poetical Blossoms" were re-issued with an appendix of sixteen more pieces under the head of "Sylva." A third edition of the "Poetical Blossoms" was printed in 1637—the year of Milton's "Lycidas" and of Ben Johnson's death. Cowley had written a five-act pastoral comedy, "Love's Riddle," while yet at school, and this was published in 1638. In the same year, 1638, when Cowley's age was twenty, a Latin comedy of his, "Naufragium Joculare," was acted by men of his College, and in ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... down. Cabot stared at him, crossed his knees, and continued to stare. Occasionally he shook his head, as if the riddle were proving too much for him. Galusha did not move. Neither man spoke. The old ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... farming, reading voraciously all the time and feeding sparingly, saving his wages against the coming bleak winter in his fireless attic in an Edinburgh wynd. He talked to Marcella, dogmatically, prodigiously, unanswerably. On her legends and fairy-tales and poetry he poured contempt. He read the "Riddle of the Universe" and the "Kritic of Pure Reason," orating them to Marcella as they worked together in the harvest field. She did not even understand their terminology. He had a quite unreasoning belief in the stolidly utilitarian of German philosophers and laid siege ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... houses of well-known personages seem quite inadequate for their purpose; viewed from within, they are all that is stately and appropriate. Those of us who live in less favoured neighbourhoods would fain solve the riddle. ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... The riddle was too great for solving. Perhaps Wilbur had disappeared merely to play a practical jest on her; but that supposition was too childish to be retained an instant. Perhaps—perhaps Pierre himself had discovered her, but having vowed never to see her again, he ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... they met—indeed he knew scarcely as much. He told the brief story to Doctor Mary in the parlor. She heard him listlessly; all that was not much to the point on which her thoughts were set, and did not answer the riddle which the scene in the Tower put to her. She was calm now—and ashamed that she ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... subject of one of its fatal experiments. The element by which only the heart lives is sucked out of her crystalline prison. Watch her through its transparent walls;—her bosom is heaving; but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle, compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the "Book of Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that frightened her most. How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... What is known as "Bhakti Yoga" deals with the Love of the Absolute—God. What is known as "Gnani Yoga" deals with the scientific and intellectual knowing of the great questions regarding Life and what lies back of Life—the Riddle ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... over-powering and might find its root in equal likeliness in the breast of queen or beggarmaid. I could not say Vicky was incapable of crime—indeed, her gay, volatile manner might hide a deeply perturbed spirit. She was an enigma, and I—I must solve the riddle. I felt I should never rest, until I knew the truth, and if Vicky were a martyr to circumstances, or a victim to Fate, I must know all ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... and whatever I had shared with him, wanting him, became a distracting torture. Mine eyes sought him every where, but he was not granted them; and I hated all places, for that they had not him; nor could they now tell me, "he is coming," as when he was alive and absent. I became a great riddle to myself, and I asked my soul, why she was so sad, and why she disquieted me sorely: but she knew not what to answer me. And if I said, Trust in God, she very rightly obeyed me not; because that most dear ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... she marry him? Not the sea, nor the sky, nor the great mysterious midnight, when he opens his casement and gazes into starry space will give him answer; no Œdipus will ever come to unravel this riddle; this sphinx will never throw herself from the rock into the clangour of the sea-gulls and waves; she will never divulge her secret; and if she is the woman and not a woman of thirty, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... coral of their lips, and feed Upon their spicy breath, a meal at need: Rove in their amber-tresses, and unfold That glist'ring grove, the curled wood of gold; Then peep for babies, a new puppet play, And riddle what their prattling eyes would say. But here thou must remember to dispurse, For without money all this is a curse. Thou must for more bags call, and so restore This iron age to gold, as once before. This thou must do, and yet this is not all, For thus the poet would be still in thrall, ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... talk foolishly Till that were cancell'd; and when that was gone, We left an air behind us, which alone Was able to make the two next companies Eight witty; though but downright fools were wise. When I remember this, * * * I needs must cry I see my days of ballading grow nigh; I can already riddle, and can sing Catches, sell bargains, and I fear shall bring Myself to speak the hardest words I find Over as oft as any with one wind, That takes no medicines, but thought of thee Makes me remember all these things to be The wit of our young ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... introduced under the skin. After some inquiries I found, from Fortin's own wife, that similar drugs had been sometimes seen in the hands of Lilihae, who had bought them of a druggist in Honolulu for the treatment of syphilis. The riddle was at once completely solved. A few days passed, and Lilihae killed himself by poison, convinced that all his attempts could not kill me. In his native superstition, he was satisfied that the gods would not forgive his indiscretion, since they withheld from him ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... Works that I was Mistress of, and telling her Stories of Nuns, and endeavouring to bring her to the Knowledge of the true God: But of all Discourses, Caesar liked that the worst, and would never be reconciled to our Notions of the Trinity, of which he ever made a Jest; it was a Riddle he said would turn his Brain to conceive, and one could not make him understand what Faith was. However, these Conversations fail'd not altogether so well to divert him, that he liked the Company of us ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... an answer to his riddle he gazed fro he eyrie over the wide horizon, upon leagues of sea rising upward to blend their essence, under the magic touch of evening, with the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... by the Dean, the locks were therefore broken, and new ones were put on by order of the House. The whole question of the Pyx Chapel is one of vast interest, and much of its history is still an insoluble riddle. It is enough to tell our party that the regalia and Crown jewels were kept here for many centuries, and that in later times the pyx, a box containing the standard pieces of gold and silver money, took the place of the ancient treasure. ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... the leading Whig paper of western Pennsylvania, Robert M. Riddle, its editor and proprietor. His mother was a member of our church, and I thought somewhere in his veins must stir anti-slavery blood. So I wrote a letter to the Journal, which appeared with an editorial disclaimer, "but the fair writer ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... his telescope pointed at the probable spot, but search as he might, the heavens showed nothing new. In the morning he sought eagerly for news of any discovery made by fellow-watchers, but they, too, had found nothing unusual. Could it be that the mystery would now fade away, a new riddle ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... for the thought of Dorothy brought back the purpose of his journey. Interrupting the Rattlesnake in the midst of a new riddle, he explained how anxious he was to return to the little farm where he had been discovered and try to find some traces ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the artisan who makes another man's shoes may be temperate, and yet he is not doing his own business; and temperance defined thus would be opposed to the division of labour which exists in every temperate or well-ordered state. How is this riddle to ...
— Charmides • Plato
... daughter's name, Marina, is intensified for us when we realize that in this play the sea is not only her birthplace, but is the {198} symbol throughout of Fortune and Romance. From the polluted coast of Antioch, where Pericles reads the vile King his riddle and escapes, past Tarsus, where he assists Creon, the governor of a helpless city, to Pentapolis, where, shipwrecked and a stranger, he wins the tournament and the hand of the Princess Thaisa, the waves of chance carry the Prince. They ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... a simple and convenient solution of the riddle if the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type, to the realization of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But there is no warrant for such an expectation. Their dreams are generally ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... added. She herself was pacified—trouble was a false note. Later he was on the point of asking her how she knew the objects she had mentioned were not in the house; but he let it pass. The subject was a profitless riddle—a puzzle that grew grotesquely bigger, like some monstrosity seen in the darkness, as one opened one's eyes to it. He closed his eyes—he wanted another vision. Besides, she had shown him that she had extraordinary senses—her explanation would have been stranger than the fact. Moreover ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... be "different" in the Modern Utopia? After all it is time we faced the riddle of the problems of marriage ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... I think of it well, I'm no nearer The riddle's solution than ever—for how's My pretty invented word, "tose," any clearer In point of ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... read this riddle, monsieur?" she asked. "All kinds of solutions come to me, madam, but none that seem to entirely fit ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... heaven, how dark a riddle's thy decree, Which bounds our wills, yet seems to leave them free! Since thy fore-knowledge cannot be in vain, Our choice must be what thou didst first ordain. Thus, like a captive in an isle confined, Man walks at large, a prisoner of the mind: Wills all his crimes, while heaven the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... letter this morning owing to an alarm of illness seizing grandfather. He had been taken with a sudden faintness. Of course we sent for the doctor, but before he arrived the faintness had passed, so he looked wise at us, like a prize riddle which had to be guessed before his next visit, left us his autograph (a wonderful hieroglyphic), and went away. Since then grandfather has been in the hands of a less taciturn practitioner, whom he calls the 'flower ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... my saul," said the king, "ye shall gang roun' to yere place again; for sa meikle as these country gowks mauna ken the riddle ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... is the Lion of the tribe of Judah—He is the answer to Samson's riddle, for in His wounds is found the honeycomb of the strongest charity, and from this strength proceeds the sweetness of our greatest consolation. And certainly since our Lord's dying for us, as all Scripture testifies, is the climax of his love, it ought also to ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... mystery? Of what was it that he was afraid? Who was this young man who, after his departure, had taken so much interest in his niece and myself at Charing Cross? Was it some one whom he had desired to evade?—a detective, perhaps, or an informer? The riddle was not easy to solve. Common-sense told me that my wisest course was to fulfil my original intention, and take the first train on the morrow to my brother's house in Norfolk. On the other hand, inclination ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... years later, when after his mother's death it became his duty to read letters exchanged between his parents during this period, did Dominic Iglesias touch the key to the riddle, and fully measure the public danger, the private strain and stress which had surrounded his childhood and early youth. For his father, a man of far from ignoble nature, but of narrow outlook and undying ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... had, through all these long years, borne the heat and burden of the day; rest for him was to be elsewhere, not here. But as he had met life, so he now met death—calmly and unrepiningly, certain that hard as it had been hard as it seemed now, it must yet be for the best—the solving of the riddle ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... thinking; he had had too much of thought. Suddenly that question which had been a riddle to him was a riddle no longer. He had the answer, and could see himself as others no doubt had seen him—a fool who had believed in the supremacy of fineness; a boy who had reached for the moon. But it left the issue ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... killed in the Revolution; my grandfather fought in the War of 1812; my father sacrificed his health in the Civil War; but I, though born in New England, am the first of my family to emigrate to this country—the United States of America. That sounds like a riddle or a paradox. It isn't; it's a plain ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... God's will, Anne," said Marilla, helpless before the riddle of the universe—the WHY of undeserved pain. "And little Joy ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "It's all a riddle to me," answered Captain Langless. "We are not in the business of carrying prisoners. We are bound for Sandusky for a cargo ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... command. We are going into the Aranian city to pick up Inverness and Brady. I anticipate no trouble, and if there is no trouble, we shall return within an hour. If we are not back within three hours, blast this entire area with atomic grenades, and riddle it with the rays. Is ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... starting at the thought, said: "No." Then said Sveggum: "I don't trust that man. They ought to know of this at Nystuen." For there was to be the really important meeting. But how to let them know was the riddle. Borgrevinck was going there at once with ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Wilton Barnstable, drawing his pistol, "Mr. Black will please note that while I am standing by the bulwarks I shall be watching indeed. Should he make an attempt to escape from the vessel I shall riddle ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... of 1860, Hamblin was directed to attempt to establish the faith in the Hopi towns. This time, from Santa Clara, he took Geo. A. Smith, Jr., son of an apostle of the Church, Thales Haskell, Jehiel McConnell, Ira Hatch, Isaac Riddle, Amos G. Thornton, Francis M. Hamblin, James Pearce and an Indian, Enos, with supplies for a year. Young Ammon Tenney was sent back. This proved a perilous adventure. Hamblin told he had had forebodings of evil. Failure attended an attempt ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... aqueduct. acueste, pres. subj. of acostar. Adan, m., Adam. adelantarse, to go ahead, go in advance. adelante, forward; en —, henceforth. ademas, moreover, besides. adentro, within; para sus —s, to himself. iadios! good-by! adivinanza, f., riddle. adivinar, to guess; suspect. admirarse, to be surprised. adonde, where, whither. adorable, adorable, adored. adormecer, to go to sleep. adornar, to adorn. adorno, m., ornament. adulto, -a, m. and f., adult, grown-up. adversidad, f., adversity, misfortune. ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy
... little,' repeated Bazarov. 'Perhaps you are right; perhaps, really, every one is a riddle. You, for instance; you avoid society, you are oppressed by it, and you have invited two students to stay with you. What makes you, with your intellect, with your beauty, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... lest he should mix with the losing side. But this theory jibed so ill with Monsieur's character that not even his worst detractor could accept it. For he was known to all as a hotspur—a man who acted quickly and seldom counted the cost. Therefore his present conduct was a riddle, nor could any of the emissaries from King or League, who came from time to time to enlist his aid and went away without it, read the answer. The puzzle was too deep for them. Yet it was only this: to Monsieur, honour was more than a pretty word. If he could ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... comrade, if you would not turn my heart into a woman's when it has need to be of flint. Sit you here on the ledge the while that I take one more turn. You will not? Then come with me, and we will make the round together, and apply our wits once more to the riddle. Until swords have put an end to me, I shall not cease to believe that it ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... back, and I could not hope that she would return. Philosopher that I was I could not explain the sinking and the fear that took possession of me. The philosopher did not know himself. All his thought and all his reasoning could not solve the simple riddle the quick intuition ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... cannot read the riddle any more than you yourself, Rene," quoth Mademoiselle de Savenaye, composedly from her corner; "and, as for me, I can give no explanations until I am ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the red limousine was at the door, and, stepping into it with his two companions, he was whizzed away to Olympia and the first step toward the solution of the riddle. ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... volume of feeling to what is momentous in human life. Literature has its piety, its conscience; it cannot long forget, without forfeiting all dignity, that it serves a burdened and perplexed creature, a human animal struggling to persuade the universal Sphinx to propose a more intelligible riddle. Irresponsible and trivial in its abstract impulse, man's simian chatter becomes noble as it becomes symbolic; its representative function lends it a serious beauty, its utility endows it with ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana |
