"Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the new system on its theoretical side; that it goes far toward explaining both the physiological and the structural gradations and relations between the two kingdoms, and the arrangement of all their forms in groups subordinate to groups, all within a few great types; that it reads the riddle of abortive organs and of morphological conformity, of which no other theory has ever offered a scientific explanation, and supplies a ground for harmonizing the two fundamental ideas which naturalists and philosophers conceive to have ruled the organic world, though they could not reconcile ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Livy apparently easy and really very hard. So, again, with the poets; and most of all I found no interest (fancy!) in Plato and Aristotle. They were presented to me as merely school books; not as the great effort of the cultivated heathen mind to solve the riddle of man's being; and I, in those days, never thought of comparing the heathen and Christian ethics, and the great writers had no charm ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... constantly looked away at the railway line, almost as if he feared the train more than the pointed steel. Syme, on the other hand, fought fiercely but still carefully, in an intellectual fury, eager to solve the riddle of his own bloodless sword. For this purpose, he aimed less at the Marquis's body, and more at his throat and head. A minute and a half afterwards he felt his point enter the man's neck below the jaw. It came out clean. Half mad, he thrust again, and made what should have been a bloody ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine once was; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the soul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, there to a hair, do I. Is't a riddle? ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... records of the past. We find traces of man-like things—but, suddenly, man appears, far too much developed to be the "next step" in a well-linked chain of evolutionary evidence. Perhaps something like the events of this story furnishes the answer to the riddle. ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... in separate "TIFF" files, which may [not at this time. . .] or may not be available at PG. "Riddle" is said to be one of the best spy and sailing yarns ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... to Mother Earth. I don't kiss her. I don't cleave to her bosom. Am I to become a peasant or a shepherd? I go on and I don't know whether I'm going to shame or to light and joy. That's the trouble, for everything in the world is a riddle! And whenever I've happened to sink into the vilest degradation (and it's always been happening) I always read that poem about Ceres and man. Has it reformed me? Never! For I'm a Karamazov. For when I do leap into the pit, I go headlong ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Attempting to solve this problem Emerson coolly assumed that the men of the Elizabethan age were so great that Shakespeare himself walked about among them unnoticed as a giant among giants. This reading of the riddle is purely transcendental. We know that Shakespeare's worst plays were far oftener acted than his best; that "Titus Andronicus" by popular favour was more esteemed than "Hamlet." The majority of contemporary poets and critics regarded Shakespeare rather as ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... all the clews to guide him which they had received, and, moreover, rather astonished that the former had not come to greet him, according to her usual custom, when he entered the house after an absence of some hours, had his tale to tell and his riddle to solve. ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... and the name of Elford instantly solved the riddle: it was poor Mary; and the boy, whose life I had saved, was the child of which she was delivered, after the adventure of the barn. Her features suddenly became as it were familiar to me. She revived a long train of ideas, inspiring that kind of melancholy pleasure which mind so much delights to ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... of an hour, and sure enough, the ticement began to wark i' my head stronger and stronger. At lang length I crept downstairs agean i' my stocking feet into the kitchen. All was whisht as the grave, and the fire was by now nearly out, so that there were no flame-deevils to freeten me. So I took the riddle that I'd gotten ready afore and began to riddle the ash all ower the hearthstone. The stone were hot, but I were cowd as an ice-shackle, and I felt the goose-flesh creeping all ower my body. When I'd riddled all the ash I made it snod wi' the peat-rake, and then, more dead nor wick, I crept back ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... the magistrate thoughtfully. Then, suddenly straightening his short, broad figure, he thrust his little fat hand into a fold of the knight's doublet, exclaiming: "Boemund, do you want to know the most difficult riddle that the Lord gives to us men to solve? It is—take ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... curious to solve the riddle. A door which she had often noticed, but never seen opened, now stood wide open, and the old quadrangular garden, which was James Steadman's particular care, smiled at her in the golden evening light. Seen thus, this little old Dutch garden seemed to ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the Egyptians, the legend of Isis and Osiris, the builders of the Pyramids and the Temples, the Riddle of the Sphinx, all add to the fascination of this romantic picture ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... regarded her. "Point is, where are you going? All dressed up and somewhere to go! I'll bet you have! I've seen you jazzing about the place when you haven't seen me, Dods. And heard about you! There was a chap with me watching you at the Riddle Club the other night ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... deep sense of pathos that she should have died before she had spent her money. That seemed to him a dark and pitiable mystery; and he looked from the coins in his hand to the dead woman, and back again to the coins, shaking his head over the riddle of man's life. Henry V. of England, dying at Vincennes just after he had conquered France, and this poor jade cut off by a cold draught in a great man's doorway, before she had time to spend her couple of whites—it seemed a cruel way to carry on the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... must solve the riddle of this new Sphinx, or be devoured. Though Mr. Lincoln's policy in this critical affair has not been such as to satisfy those who demand an heroic treatment for even the most trifling occasion, and who will not cut their coat according to their cloth, unless they ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... not the concern of the artist at all; but, on the other hand, you will find but few of the great artists of the ages who have not been thrilled and haunted with the deep desire to help others, to increase their peace and joy, to interpret the riddle of the world, to give a motive for living a fuller life than the life of the drudge and the raker of ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... creative, but in eloquence she at least showed herself beyond expression masculine and vigorous. The supreme interest of her history, the massive characters of the men that wrought it, would here have shown themselves in the working; men whose natures are a riddle to us, would have stood out, judged by their own testimony, clear as statues; and we should not have had so often to pin our faith on the biassed views of party, or the uncritical panegyrics of school-bred professors or courtly rhetoricians. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... you what has just occurred." Alwin's excitement bore down her caution. "I have guessed the riddle of what my service is to be,—or, to tell it truthfully, luck has guessed it for me, owl that I am! Here ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Wyndham breathing thickly, with his eyes Dilating in the darkness, "Darrell—he! I set my springe for other game than this; Of hare or rabbit dreamed I, not of wolf. His frequent visitations have of late Perplexed me; now the riddle reads itself. A proper man, a very proper man! A fellow that burns Trinidado leaf And sends smoke through his nostril like a flue! A fop, a hanger-on of willing skirts— A murrain on him! Would Elizabeth In some mad freak had clapped him in the Tower— Ay, through the ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in the morning, I was but little moved by Fustov's tears. I could not conceive how it was he did not ask me if Susanna had not left something for him. Altogether their love for one another was a riddle to me; and a riddle it ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... there and fidgeted. Twenty times he tried to solve, in his own mind, the riddle of why Dalzell should be away, and where he was. But it was a ...
— Dave Darrin's Fourth Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... Act I. Pericles, Prince of Tyre, comes to Antioch to guess a riddle propounded by the King. If he guess rightly, he will be rewarded by the hand of the Princess in marriage. If he guess wrongly, he will be put to death. The riddle teaches him that the Princess is living incestuously with her father. He flies ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... PARTY was headed by the industrious and indomitable Horace Greeley. His claim to the feelings of humanity should never be disputed; but as a practical man who sought to solve the riddle of every-day life he placed his practical views in the foreground. As a political economist he reasoned that slave labor was degrading to free labor; that free labor was better than slave labor, and, therefore, he most earnestly ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... the title, and the ultra-curious in search of the origin of the name, need no more overhaul their Hindu or Persian dictionaries, than they need their Liddell and Scott. A simple inversion of the letters is all that is necessary to solve the riddle, a process which discovers the word "jilted," and discloses the character ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... the temper attributed to the Irish. Lever makes them gay, Miss Lawless and Miss Barlow make them sad. No one denies that sadness is nearer the reality, but it is unreasonable to call Lever insincere. Naturally careless and lighthearted he does not trouble himself with the riddle of the painful world; the distress which touches him most nearly is a distress for debt. But if Lever is not realistic he is natural; he follows the law of his nature as an artist should; he sees life through his own medium; and if books are to be valued as companions, not many of them are ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... nothing, understand nothing, but the great peace of perfect security. She let him hold her still, with her head against his shoulder and his dear face near, so near she seemed to lose sense of her own identity. All the answer to her life's riddle lay there, behind the love that emptied her soul of need. Out of the blissful unspeakable light some words ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... twinkled. "Forty years ago Ah was laying by a pool just as Ah seen ye this morning, looking and trying hard to read the riddle of the spring Peeper. Ah lay there all day, aye, and mony anither day, yes, it was nigh onto three years before Ah found it oot. Ah'll be glad to save ye seeking as long as Ah did, if that's yer mind. Ah'll show ye ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... total stillness, and poor Tulliver's dimly lighted soul had ceased to be vexed with the painful riddle ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the riddle made clear. I could contain my gravity no longer, but burst into a hearty fit of laughter, in which I was joined by Hannah. Our young lady was mortally offended; she tossed the decanter from hand to hand, and glared at us ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... above all, that which gives them the greatest room to play in, is the obscure, ambiguous, and fantastic gibberish of the prophetic canting, where their authors deliver nothing of clear sense, but shroud all in riddle, to the end that posterity may interpret and apply it according ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... all came Greek corruption, Greek worship, Greek vice. For years the mysteries of Dionysus and the orgies of the Maenads were celebrated on the slopes of the Aventine and in those deep caves that riddle its sides, less than a mile from the Forum, from the Capitol, from the house of the rigid Cato, who found fault with Scipio of Africa for shaving every day and liking Greek verses. The evil had first come to Rome from Etruria, and ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... psychological human being really and truly 'conveys' to another by means of the simple contract known as the "plighted troth" or that of a larger deed called the called the "solemnization of matrimony", is a riddle difficult of solution; and as to how much one may claim on the strength of one or other of these indentures, that is a more ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... 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 why it ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... shape from anything that had stood in their house in Norton. What could it be? Mark and Ruth asked each other this question a dozen times a day, and, but for their mother's refusal to allow them to do so, would have long since solved the riddle by ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... pleased to be facetious," returned O'Sullivan sourly. "But I would ask you to remember that you are not yet out of the woods, Mr. Montagu. My Lord seems satisfied, but here are some more of us waiting a plain answer to this riddle." ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... difficult," continued De Fervlans. "The imprisoned marquis will not reveal the destination of the fugitives; but we have learned, through your clever little daughter, that they have gone to a country where there is order, but where there are no police. That, methinks, is not a very difficult riddle to solve. You need only journey from place to place until you find such a country. The fugitives will be certain to betray themselves by their secrecy, and I have not the least doubt but your search will be rewarded before ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... to attribute to the influence of Socrates notions which have found their way into the drama, and may be learned at the theatre. Socrates undertakes to show that Meletus (rather unjustifiably) has been compounding a riddle in this part of the indictment: 'There are no gods, but Socrates believes in the existence of the sons of gods, ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... If the riddle be not already guessed, a few words will explain the simple machinery by which this "coming event" was made to cast its "shadow before." Three men had plotted the robbery and murder of Mr. Higginbotham; two ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... be resisted; Vithout you vishes to get twisted! [16] And never nose upon yourself— [17] You then are sure to keep your pelf. Fol, de, riddle. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... fix their guns and command the surrounding country. If this lesson could be presented without the pupils knowing the title (by writing the poem on the black-board, for instance), there would be the added interest of solving a riddle, namely, what ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... law,") and which has been often misunderstood, or misrepresented. But yet I am well aware, that mere explanations of Scripture cannot be expected to interest those to whom Scripture is not familiar. The answer to a riddle would be very soon forgotten, unless the riddle had first at once amused and puzzled us. Just so, explanations of Scripture, to be at all valued, must suppose a previous knowledge of, and desire to understand, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... between the interest on mortgages and the products of the soil. Those who, from 1802 till 1827, had merely laughed at the little man as they saw him trotting to Saint-Thibault and attending to his business, like a merchant living on his vineyards, found the answer to the riddle when the ant-lion seized his prey, after waiting for the day when the extravagance of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse culminated in the ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... cry out to himself, "Her last hope shall not be disappointed!" Then he stretched his limbs, and a new impulse of energy flashed into his brain, and on and on he went, working restlessly till the iron riddle solved itself harmoniously, till each lever was transformed into a muscle, each tube into an artery, contrived on the wisest plans, like a human body by the spirit of ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... The riddle of existence is seen not from the Old World point of view, but from that of the new. It is of the nature of a surprise. The Sphinx of Emerson is not carved in stone. It is not silent and motionless, waiting for answers ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... A riddle is it still unto me, this dream; the meaning is hidden in it and encaged, and doth not yet fly above it ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... wit quintuple hear; Five able-bodied editors combine Their strength prodigious in each laboured line!" O wondrous vintner! hopeless seemed the task To bung these drainings in a single cask; The riddle's read-five leathern skins contain The working juice, and scarcely feel the strain. Saviours of Rome! will wonders never cease? A ballad cackled by five tuneful geese! Upon one Rosinante five stout knights Ride fiercely ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... were times when the payment that landlords demand Was a source of continual woe, When the tenant preferred to adhere to his land, And the agent preferred him to go: When their claims to adjust and the balance to strike Was a riddle to baffle the Sphinx,— But they're reconciled now, by resolving alike That they never ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... amazement. "A moment ago you did not understand me, he said after a pause; and now you have told me a riddle that terrifies me." ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... libraries to base uses; though the dry rot and the insect have destroyed inestimably precious records; though within the historic period the Spanish brigands made bonfires of the works of the refined archaic American races, which, if spared, would have solved many a riddle of history; though Omar lit the fires of the Alexandrian baths for months with the literary treasures of the Serapeum; though the Sybilline and other mystical books of Rome and Greece were destroyed in war; though the South Indian ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... sought to catch them, has touched them with his refining art and has spoiled them. The playwright has striven to transfer from the field to the stage a cotton-picking scene and has made a travesty of it. To transfer the passions of man and to music-riddle them is an art with stiff-jointed rules, but the charm of a cotton-picking scene is an essence, and is breathed but cannot be caught. Here seems to lie a sentiment that no other labor invites, and though old with a thousand endearments, it is ever an opera rehearsed for the ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the dark valley appears for a brief space with the light of the heavenly city on his countenance. Ah, prophet, who spoke but now so sadly, what is this new message that we see brightening on your lips? Will it solve the riddle of sin and beauty, at last? We listen intently; we seem to lean out a little ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... style, which became highly ridiculous; instead of improving the national idiom they completely spoilt it. Where formerly D'Urfe, Malherbe, Racan, Balzac, and Voiture reigned, Chapelain, Scudry, Mnage, and the Abb Cotin, "the father of the French Riddle," ruled in their stead. Moreover, every lady in Paris, as well as in the provinces, no matter what her education was, held her drawing-room, where nothing was heard but a ridiculous, exaggerated, and what was worse, a borrowed phraseology. The ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... there will be anything left of the mission of Jesus: whether, in short, we may not throw the gospels into the waste-paper basket, or put them away on the fiction shelf of our libraries. I venture to reply that we shall be, on the contrary, in the position of the man in Bunyan's riddle who found that "the more he threw away, the more he had. "We get rid, to begin with, of the idolatrous or iconographic worship of Christ. By this I mean literally that worship which is given to pictures ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... for thee create, Deep riddle of mysterious state? Bold Nature, that gives common birth To all products of seas and earth, Of thee, as earth-quakes, is afraid, Nor ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... every morning. Twice he packed fully—once he ordered his travelling carriage, but countermanded it the following day. What definitely he hoped, intended, resolved, he could not have said. He was always thinking of Rozsi, he could not read the riddle in her face—she held him in a vice, notwithstanding that everything about her threatened the very fetishes of his existence. And Boleskey! Whenever he looked at him he thought, 'If he were only clean?' and mechanically ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... taken off his hat before the might of death, and made a perfunctory sign of the cross. He looked up and down the lofty wall, as if it could give him the word of that riddle. Twice his spurs clashed softly, and, with one hand grasping the rope, he stooped low in ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... 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 purple ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... "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 ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... mills rang for midnight. Sunday morning had dawned. Whatever hidden message lay in the tolling bells floated past these men unknown. Yet it was there. Veiled in the solemn music ushering the risen Saviour was a key-note to solve the darkest secrets of a world gone wrong,—even this social riddle which the brain of the grimy puddler ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... perhaps a mystery for hundreds of years. I can conceive, even, that this might be of importance in settling the heirships of estates; but which now, only the two insulated parts of the story being known, remain a riddle, although the solution of it is actually in the world, if only these two parts could he united across the sea, like the ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is said to have visited Solomon, "to prove him with hard questions," by which have generally been understood enigmatical puzzles. Some of these are to be found in sacred writ, of which the riddle which Samson proposed to the young men of Timnath, is a very ancient and curious specimen. It appears from the writings of the ancients, that the Greeks and all the Eastern nations, were singularly attached to enigmas. Plutarch, in his Feast of the Seven Sages, introduces the following questions ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... pallid as with snows, stretched the gray woods. The moon shone very brightly, and there was no wind. So unearthly was the quiet of the night, so solemn the light, so high and still and calm the universe around him, that awe fell upon his soul. It was well to lie upon the hilltop and guess at the riddle of the world; now dimly to see the meaning, now to lose it quite, to wonder, to think of death. The easy consciousness that for him death was scores of years away, that he should not meet the spectre until the wine was all drunken, the garlands withered, and he, the guest, ready ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... a riddle to him, but you would never have guessed it from his tone. As for me, I began to have an inkling. Ben Gunn's last words came back to my mind. I began to suppose that he had paid the buccaneers a visit while they all lay drunk together ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 clock ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... many things which troubled him, Michael tried to solve the riddle of how Millicent had gained her knowledge of his movements. Freddy's words had come back to him—that the fair Millicent had not come to their camp to learn of his engagement to Margaret! She had come ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... 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 ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... So the riddle of the Tugela had at last been solved. Even now, with all the light which has been shed upon the matter, it is hard to apportion praise and blame. To the cheerful optimism of Symons must be laid some of the blame of the original entanglement; but man is mortal, and he laid down his life for ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Greek influence have thus been exhibited in the case of Hercules and of Castor, and it remains to inquire what Etruria did. There is no race about which we know so much and yet so little as about the Etruscans. They have always been and still are a riddle, and as our knowledge of them increases we seem further than ever from a solution, and what we gain in positive knowledge is more than counterbalanced by the increased sense of our ignorance. Altogether aside from the problem of the origin of the Etruscans, and the race to which ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... and had no acquaintance at Belfast, a town in Maine, two hundred miles distant from Salem. After poring over it in vain, he handed it to his son, Nathaniel Phippen Knapp, a young lawyer; to him also the letter was an inexplicable riddle. The receiving of such a threatening letter, at a time when so many felt insecure, and were apprehensive of danger, demanded their attention. Captain Knapp and his son Phippen, therefore, concluded to ride to Wenham, seven miles distant, and show the letter to Captain ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... and crossed the square for the last time, turning toward the loom of the spaceship, filing the girl away as just another riddle of Wolf I'd ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... of what to him was doubtless a consecrated offering to the Sun God; Sorez, acquiring it with the tradition that the image held the secret, thought that with the psychic gift of the girl he had solved the riddle. This much seemed a reasonable explanation. But where was this treasure, and of what did it consist? He turned to the second parchment. At the end of an hour he had before him a half page of minute directions for approaching the treasure from the starting-point of a hut in the mountains. ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Bible has become a meaningless riddle and uninteresting to most people because it is not rightly divided. It is assumed that all parts of the Bible are addressed to everybody. This is far from the truth. While we must recognize the unity and interdependence of the entire Bible and that each part teaches great spiritual ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... influenced in what you say by your hope that Professor Brierly will help solve the riddle of the Tontine ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... the 13th of September, an extract from his narrative, copied almost literally: he then endeavoured to discover whence the editors could have obtained these details; it cost him but little time to solve the riddle. ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... the Seasons go, With store of good and ill; Do all men find you cold as snow, And unresponsive still? O beautiful enigma, say, Will love's sublime persistence Solve for you, in the usual way, The riddle of existence? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 23, 1890. • Various
... correctly all the puzzles in the October "Riddle-Box," but her answers came too late for ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... he replied, smiling, "you shall have cleared up along with all my other mysteries. Like every riddle, although it may seem difficult now, it will be plain ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... to 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, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... 'The riddle that has worried me three weeks he has solved in a way which is simplicity itself. He has got it, ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... for the riddle seemed quite unreadable, and as we had already sat up until long past midnight I begged for my candle, and proposed to defer our conversation until the morning. Jack, declaring that none of the beds in the damp old house ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... now again be heard, that voice which once Through all old Onondaga's hills and vales Proclaimed thy lineage from a Giant race, And claimed as subjects, all who trembling hear Art thou a son of old Polyphemus, Or brother to the Sphinx, now turned to stone— The mystery and riddle of the world? Did human passions stir within thy breast And move thy heart with human sympathies? Was life to thee, made up of joy and hope, Of love and hate, of suffering and pain, In fair proportions to thy Giant form? Did ever wife, ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... said 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
... scornful expression on her face, old Hagar would listen to these remarks, and then, when sure that no one heard her, she would mutter: "Marks of blood! What nonsense! I'm almost glad I've solved the riddle, and know 'taint blood that makes the difference. Just tell her the truth once, and she'd quickly change her mind. Hester's blue, pinched nose, which makes one think of fits, would be the very essence of aristocracy, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... goes with the manse," said Robert. "His case is a paradox. He is always marrying, and yet never is married. Quite a riddle isn't it?" ...
— Hester's Counterpart - A Story of Boarding School Life • Jean K. Baird
... those who ride against those who slay. Do you know this one who rides at the head, smiling, swinging his sword well and smiling all the time? It is he who said in the mountains that riddle of the end and the beginning—who knew that to the heart of nature we must come, for either the end or the beginning of this, our life. Do you see upon his breast the red rose? I think he rides to battle with the rose, ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... he continued, "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 into ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... Nights," "Pilgrim's Progress," &c. It is quite true that in all these there is much the child does not understand, but where there is something vividly apprehended, there is an additional pleasure procured, and an admirable stimulant, in the endeavour to penetrate the rest. There is all the charm of a riddle combined with all the fascination of a story. Besides, do we not throughout our boyhood and our youth, read with intense interest, and to our great improvement, books which we but partly understand? How much was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... he found the Major a riddle that he could not read; but the Governor's first smile had melted his reserve, and he declared Mrs. Ambler to be "a ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... and full, almost overfull, recognition which startled me. For she had understood me—understood me almost better than I had understood myself. It seemed to me that while I had labored to interpret, partially, a psychological riddle, she, coming after, had comprehended its bearings better than I had, though confining herself strictly to my own words and emphasis. The scene ended (and it ended rather suddenly), she dropped her eyes, and ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... upheld the wide renown of the Spanish infantry. But neither the abilities nor the auspicious fortunes of Charles were inherited with this vast dominion by Philip. It is almost a mystery the crumbling away during his reign of such wealth and such strength. To read the riddle, we must know Philip. The biography which we shall now hurriedly sketch, of one of his most eminent favourites and ministers, who was, also, one of the most remarkable men that ever lived, enables us to see further ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... upon Lossing at the bridge, in which we both saw the hand of Voisin. Mrs. Camp, too, added her quota to the solution of this riddle when she recognised in Voisin the swindler of the Turkish Bazaar, and identified the hand of Voisin as the hand which had held out the Spurious bank-notes to Camp; and, finally, there came his second attempt to destroy Lossing in the Cold Storage fire, ending ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... duty overcoming inclination, he merged his two frames together and continued his life. A letter from him to his friend explaining matters crossed a letter from the friend, in which he told how he also had been aware of his presence. The incident is narrated in detail in Mr. Funk's "Psychic Riddle." ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... we have the old sly Elia, fooling people now as he fooled them in his lifetime, and a riddle both to the godly and the ungodly. The great Goethe, whose Walpurgis Night "He-Apes" made Elia put out his tongue, read, we learn, with no little pleasure some fantastic skit of this incorrigible one. Did he discern—the ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... was the riddle of the Sphinx! Angelique's life, as she had projected it, depended upon the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to ponder. The road to the Glendora was the worst in the country, but it didn't take him long to read the riddle. ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... utmost recesses of His Spiritual Mind. "This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"—what meant these words? And still, no answer came to that cry of His soul which sought in vain for a freeing of that riddle. ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the wisest and most divine of poets, was unaware of the impossibility of knowing a thing badly: for it was no less a person than he who said of Margites that 'he knew many things, but knew them all badly.' The solution of the riddle is this, I imagine:—By 'badly' Homer meant 'bad' and 'knew' stands for 'to know.' Put the words together;—the metre will suffer, but the poet's meaning is clear;—'Margites knew all these things, but it was bad for him to know them.' ...
— Alcibiades II • An Imitator of Plato
... 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 its ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... Kookoo, no;" and the inquisitive little man would shake his head and smile, and shake his head again, as a man has a perfect right to do under the conviction that he has been for twenty years baffled by a riddle and is learning to read it at last; he had guessed what was in 'Sieur George's head, he would by and by guess what was in ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... Chickahominy at Long Bridge, in advance of the Fifth Corps, and by 7 o'clock next morning had driven the enemy's pickets up to White Oak bridge, where he waited for our infantry. When that came up, he pushed on as far as Riddle's Shop, but late that evening the Confederate infantry forced him to withdraw to St. Mary's Church; for early in the morning General Lee had discovered the movement of our army, and promptly threw this ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... hour or so and then woke up to the contemplation of Miriam's hunched back and the riddle of life, and this bright attractive idea of ending for ever and ever and ever all the things that were locking him in, this bright idea that shone like a baleful star above all the reek and darkness of ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... her riddle I read) Was a woman of genius: whose genius, indeed, With her life was at war. Once, but once, in that life The chance had been hers to escape from this strife In herself; finding peace in the life of another From the passionate wants she, in hers, failed to smother. But the chance ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... cupidity. The profits which we had derived from commerce with the Americans, and which were the ostensible object proposed in planting the colonies, were not sufficient: if we could obtain it, we must share in their profits likewise. But this was a question which time only could solve; a riddle, which events ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... on thy threshold, and shouldst thou dream, it is the balsam of magic blossoms that intoxicates thee—flowers of a strange and distant world where I am at home and not a stranger as in this book[12] where a ravenous tiger devours the delicate image of spiritual love. I do not understand this cruel riddle; I cannot comprehend why they all make themselves unhappy and why they all serve a malicious demon with a thorny sceptre, why Charlotte, who strews incense before him daily, yes, hourly, should prepare misfortune for them all with ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... attractions; if she were to turn into an echo their delicious duet ran the risk of becoming the dullest of monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier he had resented her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment he found himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... gingerbread nuts were too hard for him. It was decided that John should come to the palace the next day, when the judges and the whole of the counsellors would be present, to try if he could guess the first riddle. If he succeeded, he would have to come a second time; but if not, he would lose his life,—and no one had ever been able to guess even one. However, John was not at all anxious about the result of his trial; on the contrary, he was very merry. He thought only of the beautiful princess, and believed ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen |
