"Sphinx" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him munching a sandwich and keeping his own eyes rather away from than on her own, she asked herself whether she had undertaken too much, and whether this sphinx-like face might hide danger for her. She at least knew it was far from being possible to tell by looking at the outside of a man's head what might be going on inside. Only the plight of her father's affairs had seemed to justify her; even this did not seem to now, but it was too late ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... the equation of womanhood? Colonel Joseph is effusive in his cheery greeting. "My dear madame, I am glad to be in Paris once more." He would charm this sphinx into life and warmth. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... H. H.; "am I not here? Then there is Archbold—he is always Johnny on the spot." Rockefeller smiled a sphinx-like smile, as near as he ever came to indulging in a laugh, and mosied out of the room. That night he went up to the Catskills. The next day a telegram came from Rockefeller addressed to "Johnny-on-the-Spot, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... all kinds of disguises. Now he is the most beautiful and noble of the Greek gods, Apollo; now he is Odin, with a single eye; now he is Hercules, the hero, with his twelve great labours for the good of men; now he is Oedipus, who met the Sphinx and solved her riddle. In the early times men saw how everything in the world about them drew its strength and beauty from the sun; how the sun warmed the earth and made the crops grow; how it brought gladness and hope and inspiration to men; and they made it the centre of the great world ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... hole at one end being answered by the gods through the priest or priestess hidden from view at the other. The different recesses, our guide informed us, were used as lovers' seats and wishing stones. The "Frog and the Porpoise," the "Oyster Rock," the "Porpoise's Head," the "Sphinx," the "Elephant and Yoke of Oxen," and the "Hippopotamus's Head" were all clearly defined. The "Dancing Bear" was a splendidly shaped specimen, and then there was a "Boat Rock," with bow and stern complete. But on the "Mount Delectable," ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... sufficient number of generations), the offspring will remember the fact when association wakens the memory; it will need no instruction, and—unless when it has been taught to look for it during many generations—will expect none. This may be seen in the case of the humming-bird sphinx moth, which, as Mr. Darwin writes, "shortly after its emergence from the cocoon, as shown by the bloom on its unruffled scales, may be seen poised stationary in the air with its long hair-like proboscis uncurled, and inserted into the minute orifices of flowers; AND NO ONE I BELIEVE HAS EVER ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... her a Sphinx. Perhaps he was biassed by the opinion the fair Maria had expressed. Jack did not altogether like to hear her talked about, especially by the master and purser, or the lieutenant of marines, who called her a monstrously ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... it be purely ornamental, it may not weaken or obscure the general design; and finally, whether, if we decide to use it, we should do so grossly and notably, or in some conventional disguise: are questions of plastic style continually rearising. And the sphinx that patrols the highways of executive art has no more unanswerable ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was hugging the rear end of the day coach in order to keep out of the cruel storm, when his eyes rested upon the white face of a poorly clad woman. She stood motionless as a statue, voiceless as the Sphinx, with the cold rain beating upon her uplifted face, until Patsy cried "All aboard." Then she pulled herself together and climbed into the train. The conductor, leaving his white light upon the platform ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... him, "The Life and Adventures of Valentine Vox the Ventriloquist," indicated the interest his friends took in this amusement. One of his own purchases was "Modern Magic," the frontispiece of which is the sphinx that figures in ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... writings, may perhaps solve the question as to the origin of all religions, and may even suggest a solution to the secret so long concealed beneath the flat nose, thick lips, and negro features of the Egyptian Sphinx. It may also confirm the statement of Dioderus, that "the Ethiopians conceive themselves as the inventors of divine worship, of festivals, of solemn assemblies, of sacrifices, and ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... tongues, or at least could when he left college a few months back, but now his life, the life of his crew, the salving of the dock, and the winning of a possible fortune, depended upon his answering the riddle of this Twentieth Century Sphinx. It was like attempting to understand all mathematics, from addition to celestial mechanics, at ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... lotus sips the waters Of ever-fruitful Nile, and the huge Sphinx In awful silence,—mystic converse with The stars,—doth see the pale moon hang her crescent on The pyramid's sharp peak,—e'en there, well in The straits of Time's perspective, Went out, by Caesarean gusts from Rome, The ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... self-supporting. I had to learn to be so; and I tried my hand at a number of things ... adventurous, menial, commercial. ... It's not a bad thing for a man to have to live his life—and we nearly all manage to dodge it. Our first round with the Sphinx may strike something out of us—a book or a picture or a symphony; and we're amazed at our feat, and go on letting that first work breed others, as some animal forms reproduce each other without renewed fertilization. So there we are, committed to our first guess at the riddle; and ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... found it somewhat difficult to explain Jasmine's sphinx-like mysteries, and on certain points Wei showed a disposition to be anything but satisfied. Jasmine's engagement to Tu implied his rejection, and he was disposed to be splenetic and disagreeable about it. His pride was touched, and in his irritation he was inclined to impute treachery ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... provided with a long and pliant proboscis for the purpose of acquiring this grateful food, as a variety of bees, moths, and butterflies: but the Sphinx Convolvuli, or unicorn moth, is furnished with the most remarkable proboscis in this climate. It carries it rolled up in concentric circles under its chin, and occasionally extends it to above three inches in length. This trunk consists of joints and muscles, and ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... the intense bitterness in his tone. Truly this man, with his lightning changes from boorish incivility to whole-hearted hospitality, from apparently impenetrable reserve to an almost desperate outspokenness, was as incomprehensible as any sphinx. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... the second floor, is one hundred feet high, and sixty wide, in the clear. The ascent from the front is by a single line of thirty-eight Italian marble steps, decorated on either side, at the entrance, by a stone sphinx. Upon nearing the summit of these steps, the visitor finds himself near the centre of this immense alcove, surrounded by fourteen brick piers, plastered and finished in imitation of marble, and supporting iron galleries, midway between the floor ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... for her pictures of cats. She illustrated the "Fireside Sphinx," by Agnes Repplier. Her picture of "Hot Milk" is in the Pennsylvania Academy; her "Suspense," in a private gallery in ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... Parthenon, as you enter it everything portrayed on the gables relates to the birth of Athene, and behind is depicted the contest between Poseidon and Athene for the soil of Attica. And this work of art is in ivory and gold. In the middle of her helmet is an image of the Sphinx—about whom I shall give an account when I come to Boeotia—and on each side of the helmet are griffins worked. These griffins, says Aristus the Proconnesian, in his poems, fought with the Arimaspians beyond the Issedones for the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... human features are against the letter of the Koran. A statue is always an irreligious object in their eyes. What do these fellows care for the sentiment of Europe? The more they could offend it the more delighted they would be. Down would go the Sphinx, the Colossi, the Statues of Abou-Simbel,—as the saints went down in ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... Clinton landed his troops on Long Island Sir Peter undertook to attack the fort, which was commanded by Colonel Moultrie. General Lee, however, with a large force, had by rapid marches advanced to the protection of the city. The Thunder-bomb began the action, during which the Sphinx, Syren, and Actaeon ran foul of each other and got on shore. The two first hauled off, but the Actaeon remained, and was ultimately abandoned and burned. The fire was most tremendous and deadly on both sides, but the British suffered the most; indeed, seldom have ships ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... door like some historical personage, probably the Sphinx, and repeated a guttural kind of incantation while George stretched his ears until they stood out more than usual ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... soften a sphinx. Sinclair carried the dripping bucket on the side nearest the girl and thereby gained valuable distance. "I'm mighty glad it's you and not one of the rest," confided Sally, still smiling firmly up ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... of the Sphinx.*—It is not theoretical but practical interests which start the work of the investigation activity in the child. The threat to the conditions of his existence through the actual or expected arrival of ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud
... these gods were dog-headed or longly beaked. Some, though, were alive. In temples were saurians on purple carpets, bulls draped with spangled shawls, hawks on shimmering perches, that little gold chains detained. Among gods of this character, the Sphinx, in its role of eternal spectre, must have seemed the ideal. Others were nearly ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... intelligence of this woman. To this end, he asked Gilder and the District Attorney to withdraw, while he should have a private conversation with the prisoner. As she listened to his request, Mary smiled again in sphinx-like fashion, and there was still on her lips an expression that caused the official a pang of doubt, when, at last, the two were left alone together, and he darted a surreptitious glance toward her. Nevertheless, he pressed on ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... and chance excavations will some day most certainly bring them to light. The few which we do possess barely go back beyond the III dynasty: namely, the hypogeum of Shiri, priest of Sondi and Pirsenu; possibly the tomb of Khuithotpu at Saqqara; the Great Sphinx of Gizeh; a short inscription on the rocks of Wady Maghara, which represents Zosiri (the same king of whom the priests of Khnumu in the Greek period made a precedent) working the turquoise or copper mines of Sinai; and finally the step pyramid where this Pharaoh rests. It forms a rectangular ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... Venetian chair—of which at first, however, she but made, with her brooding face, a sort of throne of meditation. She would thus have recalled a little, with her so free orientalism of type, the immemorially speechless Sphinx about at last to become articulate. The Colonel, not unlike, on his side, some old pilgrim of the desert camping at the foot of that monument, went, by way of reconnoissance, into the drawing-room. He visited, according to his wont, the windows ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... upon us, who keeps down with a strong hand that which would revolt, so that we obey, as if we were charmed, without murmuring, but also without praising, for that is no music. Thus the sonata concludes, as it began, enigmatically, like a sphinx with a mocking smile. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... deaf man whose sight grows keener, and like a blind man whose hearing becomes more acute. He had applied himself to riddling out the significance of the different peals, and he had succeeded, so that this taciturn and enigmatical cloister possessed no secrets for him; the sphinx babbled all her secrets in his ear. Fauchelevent knew all and concealed all; that constituted his art. The whole convent thought him stupid. A great merit in religion. The vocal mothers made much of Fauchelevent. He was a curious mute. He inspired confidence. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the Marvellous Floatin' Goddess. Just about to commence! This way for the Mystic Gallery—three Illusions for threepence! Atalanta, the Silver Queen of the Moon; the Oriental Beauty in the Table of the Sphinx, and the Wonderful Galatea, or Pygmalion's Dream. Only threepence! This way for the Mystic Marvel o' She! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 25, 1890 • Various
... after the First Empire style, hung and furnished in yellow satin, whose high white panels were decorated with trophies of antique weapons carved in wood and gilded. A dauber from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts would have branded with the epithet "sham" the armchairs and sofas ornamented with sphinx heads in bronze, as well as the massive green marble clock upon which stood, all in gold, a favorite court personage, clothed in a cap, sword, and fig-leaf, who seemed to be making love to a young person in a floating tunic, with her hair dressed ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... severest. They are therefore among the most fearless fighters in the world, and always put in a tight place on the French front. There is one man at the enlisting depot[9] who is a wonderful being, and can size up a new recruit at a glance. He is known as "Le Sphinx." You must give him your real name and reason for joining the Legion, and in exchange he gives you a number by which henceforth you are known. He knows the secrets of all the Legion, and they are never divulged to a living soul; he never forgets, nor do they ever pass his lips. One ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... Certainly the sphinx could have propounded no more puzzling riddles than those which Elizabeth thus suggested to Buckhurst. To make war without an army, to support an army without pay, to frame the hearts of a whole people to peace who were unanimous for war, and this ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... broken to the farm and went away healed. Clive was a Theosophist: all men were her brothers, and all women her sisters; but those especially among art-workers who fell by the wayside might share her bread and blanket. They called her Old Mother Sphinx, because of her inscrutable eyes, and the tenderness of ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... in the scale of evolution, and To-jo, who was just a shade nearer the ape, while there were others who had flatter noses, more prognathous faces and hairier bodies. The question puzzled me. Possibly in the outer world the answer to it is locked in the bosom of the Sphinx. Who knows? I ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... aspect, than it now rests upon. Had he compared the accumulation of the pyramid with the proportion of the peristyle, and then with the aspiration of the spire; had he set the colossal horror of the Sphinx beside the Phidian Minerva, and this beside the Pieta of M. Angelo; had he led us from beneath the iridescent capitals of Denderah, by the contested line of Apelles, to the hues and the heaven of Perugino or Bellini, we might have been tempted to ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... probably ever occurred to mortal—a tiny coin strung on to one of her strong coarse hairs." Of the studies made during the journey, one is a woman's head, draped so as to have a singularly archaic and Sphinx-like effect. Another is the fine profile of a young peasant; and yet another, the head of an ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... in a steel-built city who had all that money could buy, she had gold and dividends and trains and houses, and she had pets to play with, but she had no sphinx. ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... gain the position of chief witch-doctor, he would do it, even as he, Bakahenzie, would have done in his place. Therefore upon these matters did he talk very guardedly with Marufa, who was unusually reticent. However, after communing with himself in sphinx-like gravity, Marufa assented to the proposal that Zalu Zako be isolated in the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... said the General, somewhat drawling on the words, 'you exchanged cards and confidences?' Polson stretched out his hands again in appeal, and the General, looking at him with a countenance impassive as the Sphinx, felt a pang of pity in his heart, for the lad was a good lad, and the old warrior knew it, and he had been near to loving him, this past half-dozen years. And the boy was not merely pale with the suffering of his mind, but his very eyes had lost their colour, ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... mined hopes. Natacha, standing in a corner, with her face singularly calm, watched this extraordinary scene that was like a menagerie in which the tamer himself had become a wild beast. From another corner, Rouletabille kept his eyes fixed on Natacha who ignored him. Ah, that girl, sphinx to them all! Even to him who thought a while ago that he could read things invisible to other vulgar men in her features, in her eyes! The impassive face of that girl whose father they had tried to assassinate only a few hours before and who had just pressed the hand of Priemkof, the assassin! ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... having its autumn hues, Monument Mountain looks like a headless sphinx, wrapped in a rich Persian shawl. Yesterday, through a diffused mist, with the sun shining on it, it had the aspect of burnished copper. The sun-gleams on the hills are peculiarly magnificent just in ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... how go on when one was tired—tired of her—and wanting only Gyp, only his own wife? That was a funny thing! And now, when, for an hour or two, he had shaken free of worry, had been feeling happy—yes, happy—this fellow must come, and stand there with his face of a sphinx! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... more soft and sensible Than are the tender horns of cockled snails: Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste. For valour, is not Love a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides? Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair; And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods Make heaven drowsy with the harmony. Never durst poet touch a pen to write Until his ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... stepped quickly before her and pressed her gently back as he closed it. She heard him moving to and fro, and knew his burdens—the poor, little burdens he bore. When she entered, he was alone in the room. The grim switchboard flashed its metallic face in cryptic, sphinx-like immobility. She seated herself on a stool and donned the bright earpiece. She looked at the mouthpiece. She had never looked at one so closely before. It was wide and black, pimpled with usage; inert; dead; almost sarcastic in its unfeeling curves. ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... been attracted in the Quiapo fair by a head, wrongly called a sphinx, exhibited by Mr. Leeds, an American. Glaring advertisements covered the walls of the houses, mysterious and funereal, to excite the curiosity of the public. Neither Ben-Zayb nor any of the padres had yet seen it; Juanito Pelaez was the only one who had, and he was describing ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... or plant-louse, sometimes attacks the young, tender shoots of the vine. The moment they appear, take off the shoot, and crush it on a board with the foot. Leaf-rollers, the grape- vine sphinx, and caterpillars in general must be caught by hand and killed. Usually they are not very numerous. The horrid little rose-chafers or rose-bugs are sometimes very destructive. Our best course is to take a basin ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... W.; biographical note on, VI, 42; articles by—on mocking at the Sphinx, 42; on the beginnings ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... looked on naked nature unashamed, And saw the Sphinx, now bestial, now divine, In change and re-change; he nor praised nor blamed, But drew her as he saw with fearless line. Did he good service? God must judge, not we. Manly he was, and generous and sincere; English in all, of genius blithely ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... been cultivating Cloran myself for the last two weeks. We're quite pals! I'm for playing the luck every time! When the jewels showed up to-day, I figured that to-night's the night—see? Cloran and I are going to supper together at the Silver Sphinx at about eleven o'clock—and this is where you shed the Gypsy Nan stuff, and show up as your own sweet self. Cloran'll be glad to ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... said and written, the statues of Antinous do not render up their secret. Like some of the Egyptian gods with whom he was associated, he remains for us a sphinx, secluded in the shade of a 'mild mystery.' His soul, like the Harpocrates he personated, seems to hold one finger on closed lips, in token of eternal silence. One thing, however, is certain. We have before us no figment of the artistic imagination, but a real youth of incomparable beauty, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... ultra-human and extra-human, who can't consistently be styled gods, but who partake with gods and man in the attributes of free-will, conscious agency and susceptibility of pleasure and pain—such as the Harpies, the Gorgons, the Sirens, the Sphinx, the Cyclops, the Centaurs, etc. After a great struggle, or contest, among these wonderful creatures, there arises a stable government of Zeus, the chief among the gods. Then appears chaos, then the broad, ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... had been waiting for his sentence there was something terrible in the grim impassivity of Prince Falkenberg's features. His face was set and white and sphinx-like. Only his eyes shone with a ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... front posterity through a Life and Letters. That Memory's the Mother of the Muses, We're told. Alas! it must have been the Furies! Mnemosyne her privilege abuses,— Nothing from her distorting glass secure is. Life is a Sphinx: folk cannot solve her riddles, So they've recourse to spiteful taradiddles, Which they dub "Reminiscences." Kind fate, From, the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... same axis of thought,—if the system of Confucius stands opposed, on another axis, to that of Zoroaster,—we find a third development of like polar antagonisms in the systems of ancient Egypt and Greece. Egypt stands for Nature; Greece for Man. Inscrutable as is the mystery of that Sphinx of the Nile, the old religion of Egypt, we can yet trace some phases of its secret. Its reverence for organization appears in the practice of embalming. The bodies of men and of animals seemed to it to be divine. Even vegetable organization had something sacred in it: "O holy nation," ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... is a sensitive creature, and Raggles soon shrivelled in the bleak embrace of the undecipherable. The chill, sphinx-like, ironical, illegible, unnatural, ruthless expression of the city left him downcast and bewildered. Had it no heart? Better the woodpile, the scolding of vinegar-faced housewives at back doors, the kindly spleen of bartenders behind provincial ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... I answered, 'Lady Alroy was simply a woman with a mania for mystery. She took these rooms for the pleasure of going there with her veil down, and imagining she was a heroine. She had a passion for secrecy, but she herself was merely a Sphinx without ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... government so thoroughly presupposes a little aristocratic agricultural state, and our strong attachment to form and ritual so hampers all attempts at reorganisation, that the way in which we shall answer, if we do answer, the question of this sphinx, cannot as ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... gave rise to a new hypothesis. Unconscious of all these inquiries and fictions, Maurice Kirkwood lived on in his inoffensive and unexplained solitude, and seemed likely to remain an unsolved enigma. The "Sachem" of the boating girls became the "Sphinx" of the village ramblers, and it was agreed on all hands that Egypt did not hold any hieroglyphics harder to make out than the meaning of this young man's odd ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... land, A wonderful land that the winds blow over, And none may fathom nor understand The charm it holds for the restless rover; A great grey chaos — a land half made, Where endless space is and no life stirreth; And the soul of a man will recoil afraid From the sphinx-like visage that Nature weareth. But old Dame Nature, though scornful, craves Her dole of death and her share of slaughter; Many indeed are the nameless graves Where her victims sleep ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... The attitude of the caterpillars, resembling that of the Sphinx, has given this name to the tribe. The moths of the Sphinx have the peculiar power of erecting their wings, but even these cannot make them meet over the back as butterflies do. Their chief food ...
— The Emperor's Rout • Unknown
... from my head and vision; the solution of the Sphinx-riddle was won; the conjunction of those two names, Pere Silas and Paul Emanuel, gave the key to all. The penitent had been with his director; permitted to withhold nothing; suffered to keep no corner of his heart sacred to God and to himself; the whole narrative of our late ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... but found that his commander was yet inactive. He was still waiting and watching with a patience that seemed equal to that of the Sphinx. Noon came, food was served, and the hours ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that a woman of education should make such a spectacle of herself. Such husbands as I had been familiar with had never hesitated to vent their feelings under such circumstances. But from Douglas van Tuiver there came—not a word! He sat, perfectly straight, staring before him, like a sphinx; and Sylvia, after one or two swift glances at him, began to gossip cheerfully about her plans for ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... use. The first class could only guess. No cadet knew, unless it were Holmes, what Prescott's intentions were about quitting the corps in the near future. And Greg, usually both chatty and impulsive, could be as cold and silent as a sphinx where his chum's secrets ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... of by the French government as libels; and the answer returned was, that the only means which the ministry possessed of punishing such offences, was by the verdict of a jury. The Attorney-general, in opening the case, described the paper. On its frontispiece, was a sphinx with a crown upon its head, the features closely resembling those of Bonaparte. A portion of the paper was devoted to a parody of the harangue of Lepidus against Sylla. It asks the French people, "Why they have fought against Austria, Prussia, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... itself was freighted, however, with peculiar significance as an artistic work, far surpassing that of the circumstances which gave it origin, or which saw its first production in the mysterious land of the Nile and Sphinx. ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... claims our times avow, The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of shade; And comes Despair, whom not her calm may cow, And coldly on that adamantine brow Scrawls undeterred his bitter pasquinade. But Faith (who from the scrawl indignant turns) With blood warm oozing from her wounded trust, Inscribes even ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... uttered an exclamation, and no wonder, for inside the ebony case was a magnificent silver casket, about twelve inches square by eight high. It appeared to be of Egyptian workmanship, and the four legs were formed of Sphinxes, and the dome-shaped cover was also surmounted by a Sphinx. The casket was of course much tarnished and dinted with age, but otherwise in ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... Sir, would not you wish to know old age? He who is never an old man, does not know the whole of human life; for old age is one of the divisions of it.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, what talk is this?' BOSWELL. 'I mean, Sir, the Sphinx's description of it;—morning, noon, and night. I would know night, as well as morning and noon.' JOHNSON. 'What, Sir, would you know what it is to feel the evils of old age? Would you have the gout? Would you have decrepitude?'—Seeing him heated, I would not argue ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... Ammophila, which had just paralysed it, a caterpillar of Dicranura vinula. What a strange capture compared with the ordinary caterpillar! Bridling in thick folds beneath its pink neckerchief, its fore-part raised in a sphinx-like attitude, its hinder-part slowly waving two long caudal threads, the curious animal is no caterpillar to the schoolboy who brings it to me, nor to the man who comes upon it while cutting his bundle of ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... Mr. Rodd lifted with a visible effort, and when he released it, it fell heavily, like the hand of a dead man. Then, as he turned to go, he glanced at Juanna's face, but could make nothing of it, for it was as the face of a sphinx. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... Sphinx, and Theban jests, I true in me perceive; I suffer riddles; death from dark ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... hears of a "humming-bird" going the rounds of the garden, but at this hour it is usually the sphinx-moth hovering above the flower-beds — the one other creature besides the bee for which the bird is ever mistaken. The postures and preferences of this beautiful large moth make the mistake a ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... anything about her," he said. "Do you know her? She's a sphinx. All the Pendletons are Stoics. And besides, she's been so busy with this Charities Conference that she hasn't had time to think of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... fancy! I haff by chance with my cultivator among your potatoes already twenty pupae of the magnificent moth, Sphinx Atropos, upturned! See! Regard them, mademoiselle! What lucky chance! What fortune for me, an entomologist, this wonderful sphinx moth to discover ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... of fresh implications and I had no answer for them at all. As I approached Nettie she ceased to be the mere butt of my egotistical self-projection, the custodian of my sexual pride, and drew together and became over and above this a personality of her own, a personality and a mystery, a sphinx I had evaded only ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... director of the French National Conservatory of Arts and Trades; and next him, the sphinx of the committee—the most silent man I ever saw the rector of the Portuguese University of Coimbra. During the three months of our session no one of us ever heard him utter a word. Opposite was Jules Simon, eminent as an orator, philosopher, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... astonishing position, dominated by vast inaccessible ridges. Leaving the so-aptly named "Dead Man's Gully" on the left, you look up to the "Sphinx," that perfect position of the sniper, climb to "Battleship Hill," and then to Chunuk Bair. In an hour or so you may walk all the way we ever got. And we did not need to have got much further than Chunuk Bair. Down below on the one hand is the sea where the men-of-war lay and thundered ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... turned he found himself looking into a pair of steady, serious, inscrutable eyes. No white woman can hide her thoughts behind such an impenetrable mask as the squaw. Surely the Indian face might well have served as a model for the Sphinx. ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... still rang, if so staid a community could be said to ring, with reports of the event of the week before. Doctor Thayer had been sphinx-like, and Little Simon had been imaginative and voluble; and it would have been difficult to say which had teased the popular curiosity the more. Aleck found a tale ready for his ears about the launch and its three passengers, with ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... pursuing a track on the royal road of respectability and duty, and then complain of those ways being so intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us. But verily there is not an accident in our lives, not a misshapen day or a misfortune, that could not be traced back to our own doings in this or another life ... Knowledge of Karma gives ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... voices,—the vast silence, the vast light, seemed full of weirdness. And these hushes, these transparencies, do not always inspire a causeless apprehension: they are omens sometimes—omens of coming tempest. Nature,—incomprehensible Sphinx!—before her mightiest bursts of rage, ever puts forth her divinest witchery, makes more manifest ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... some of the species might be phytophagic—that is, due to the direct action of the differently coloured leaves on which the insect fed. Mr. Poulton's experiments have thrown much light on this question, since he has conclusively proved that, in the case of the sphinx caterpillar of Smerinthus ocellatus, the change of colour is not due to the food but to the coloured light reflected from ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Psalmist? And what is the problem of government but one of human nature? What Burbank has as yet made grapes to grow on thorns or figs on thistles? The riddle of the universe is no nearer solution than it was when the Sphinx first looked upon the Nile. The one constant and inconstant quantity with which man must deal is man. Human nature responds so far as we can see to the same magnetic pull and push that moved it in the days of Abraham and of Socrates. The foundation of government ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... manner in which they ventilate their hives by a swift motion of their wings, causing the buzzing noise they make in a summer evening; their method of repairing broken comb, and building fortifications, before their entrances, at certain times, to keep out the sphinx—all these curious matters are treated fully in many of our works on bees. But we must forego the pleasure of presenting these at length, it being our sole object to enable all who follow our directions, so to manage bees as to render them profitable. In preparing the brief directions that follow, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... vainly doth the earnest voice of man Call for the thing that is his pure desire! Fame is the birthright of the living lyre! To noble impulse Nature puts no ban. Nor vainly to the Sphinx thy voice was raised! Tho' all thy great emotions like a sea, Against her stony immortality, Shatter themselves unheeded and amazed. Time moves behind her in a blind eclipse: Yet if in her cold eyes the end of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the observer, continuing his study, would have forgotten the parcel, the white slaves, the gigantic negro, the self-willed hair and beard of pride—the face alone would have held him. The countenance of the Sphinx has no beauty now; and standing before it, we feel no stir of the admiration always a certificate that what we are beholding is charming out of the common lines; yet we are drawn to it irresistibly, and by a wish vague, foolish—so foolish we would hesitate ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... the declivity of the hay, disappeared from sight, leaving his companion crouched like a sphinx, with his eyes fixed on ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... a woman of the world, thirty-three years of age—no deception, Morgan—and, knowing you have lived twenty-eight, I naturally suspect the existence of those chapters, you darling sphinx. And when I suddenly come across a poem from your pen about a sweet little girl, my suspicion becomes almost ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... she was still questioning the Sphinx instead of trying to find an answer to it, she ventured to tax her husband with ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... In another was Napoleon, flag in hand, leading the charge across the bridge of Lodi. In still another was Napoleon in Egypt, before the Pyramids, seated, impassive, on his horse, gazing at the Sphinx, as if about to utter his immortal words to his soldiers: "Here, forty centuries look down upon us." These object lessons of the past are all gone now and the land used ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... through Philip as he returned to his quarters. He wondered just how much MacGregor knew, and he sat down to bring up before him for the thousandth time a vision of the two faces that had played their part in his life—the face of the girl at home, as beautiful as a Diane de Poitiers, as soulless as a sphinx, who had offered herself to him in return for his name and millions, and of that other which he had met away up in the frozen barrens of Lac Bain. Beauty-proof! He laughed and loaded his pipe. MacGregor had made a good guess, even though ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... few there are who tell us that they live there always, listening to the voice of God; but these are old and worn with journeying—men and women who have outlived passions and ambitions and the fire heats of love, and who now, girt about with memories, stand face to face with the sphinx Eternity. ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... life easier, multiplies the species in excess of the means of subsistence, it raises up within itself, in the intensest form, the unlimited struggle for existence. "This is the true riddle of the Sphinx, and every nation which does not solve it will, sooner or later, be devoured by ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... Hazlitt in the "Lectures on the English Poets" confesses that he knows nothing of him save "some beautiful verses to his wife, dissuading her from accompanying him on his travels abroad (see p. 318), and some quaint riddles in verse, which the Sphinx could not unravel." ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... learned men into different branches of study. The statements of Greek writers on Egyptian thought not to be depended upon. Quotations from the Book of the Dead on the symbolism of the scarabaeus deity. The symbolism of the Great Sphinx. Further quotations from the Book of the Dead, on the symbolism of ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer
... for me and commenced asking questions about the S. A. S. I tried not to tell, but you know the way the Dowager looks when she's angry. Even a sphinx would break down and tell everything it knew, and I never did pretend ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster
... at me shrewdly. "And there's another mysterious thing. Anthony's like a yapping sphinx over it. What were you two talking to Gedge about ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... must generally appear to them. Towards evening the hawk glides noiselessly along and alights on a bough, near where he hears the small birds twittering amongst the bushes. Perhaps they see him and are quiet for a little, but he sits motionless as the sphinx, and they soon get over their fear and resume their play or feeding. Then suddenly a dark mass swoops down and rises again. It is the hawk, with a small bird grasped in his strong talons, gasping out its last breath. Its comrades are terror-struck ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... savage as those with which he had cursed the tules; and suddenly they stopped, checked by the Chinaman's expression. It was neither angry or alarmed, but intently observant, the eyes unblinking—an imperturbable, sphinx-like face against which the flood of rage broke, leaving ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... practical statement of Nature's dual forces, and will prove of great value to Occult students. A rare treat is in store for you on The Sphinx and Pyramids of Egypt. Symbolism and Correspondence alone are worth many times the cost ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... entrance to the Egyptian temple. It was square and heavy-browed, flanked by short thick columns rising from a base of sculptured papyrus-leaves, and flowering in lotus capitals. Three marble steps led to the threshold, while on either side reclined a sphinx in polished granite, softened, however, by a delicate flowering vine, which had been trained to cling round their necks. On the deep panels of the door were mystic emblems carved in relief. A line of hieroglyphics inscribed the lintel in deep blue, red, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... you do care for him—despite your life-long reserve and apparent indifference? I have suspected as much, several times, but that imperturbable sphinx-face of yours always baffled me. My child, you need not droop your head; he is worthy of your love; he is the only man I know whom I would gladly see you marry. Irene, look up—tell me—did Leonard ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... never rests content under a mystery,' he said; 'and you have proved my good angel, so I can only avow my gratitude. But do you know that from a boy I have viewed that cupboard as impenetrable as the sphinx itself? And yet my energy or ambition to solve its secret was never sufficient to allow me to succeed. My father always told me that age had some advantages, and that when the time came for me to know all that he did, I ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... with my name under them, I have been in wondering admiration at the boundless loving-kindness of my English and Scottish friends, in keeping up such a warm heart for such a Gorgon. I should think that the Sphinx in the London Museum might have sat for most of them. I am going to make a collection of these portraits to bring home to you. There is a great variety of them, and they will be useful, like the Irishman's guideboard, which showed where ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... number of things that they are not," said Hadria, "especially to men. A poor benighted man might as well try to get on to confidential terms with the Sphinx, as to learn the real thoughts and wishes ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... on the subject than most people, having above my share of friends and relations who have been there. I have the clearest possible picture of the country—a stretch of sand, some pyramids in the background, and, in the centre foreground, smiling enigmatically—not the Sphinx, but my friend or relation. I at once gave Mr. LOW five marks out of ten upon discovering that none of his illustrations reproduced himself on either on or off a camel. On less personal grounds, I have no scruple in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... will you do with us, we hundreds of millions, who cannot keep pace with you?" If the New Republic emerges at all it will emerge by grappling with this riddle; it must come into existence by the passes this Sphinx will guard. Moreover, the necessary results of the reaction of irresponsible wealth upon that infirm and dangerous thing the human will, the spreading moral rot of gambling which is associated with irresponsible wealth, will have been working out, ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... laborers, had there ever been, before them, a thriftier or a more skilful race? When he looked back on the fate and deeds of nations, on the remotest horizon where the thread of history was scarcely perceptible, that same gigantic Sphinx was there—the first and earliest monument of human joy in creative art—those Pyramids which still proudly stood in undiminished and inaccessible majesty beyond the Nile, beyond the ruined capital of his forefathers, at the foot of the Libyan range. He was the son of the men who had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the only end of the thing is nothing," said Dr. Bull with his sphinx-like smile, "it hardly ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... that the Negroes of the United States have a fairly correct idea of what the white people of the country think of them, for that opinion has for a long time been and is still being constantly stated; but they are themselves more or less a sphinx to the whites. It is curiously interesting and even vitally important to know what are the thoughts of ten millions of them concerning the people among whom they live. In these pages it is as though a veil had been drawn aside: the reader is given a view of the inner ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... edge of the Desert of Sahara there stands the world-famous Sphinx with its inscrutable face turned toward the East, ever greeting the sun as its rising rays herald the newborn day. It was said in the Greek myth that it was the wont of this monster to ask a riddle of each traveler. She devoured those who could not answer, ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... origin the first Christian baron of France had pointed out with ill-disguised contempt, but whose plans and purposes had now acquired such world-wide importance that grave diplomats and shrewd churchmen esteemed the difficult riddle of her sphinx-like countenance and character a worthy subject of prolonged study. Not far from their royal brother, were two children: the elder, a boy of ten years, Edward Alexander, a few years later to appear on the pages of history under the altered name of Henry the Third, the last ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... for several minutes over the cigars and whiskey before Grim opened fire at last. He talked straight out in front of Mrs. Davey, for she had mothered Cosmopolitan Oil men in a hundred out-of-the-way places. She knew more sacred secrets than the Sphinx. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... of Thebes, surrendered the city to Aedipus, who had freed it from the sphinx, resumed rule after death of Aedipus' sons, killed by his son Haeemon for cruelty ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... and the whole European continent was his stage. At all times and under all circumstances he knew the precise attitude that would impress the spectators most and he understood what words would make the deepest impression. Whether he spoke in the Egyptian desert, before the backdrop of the Sphinx and the pyramids, or addressed his shivering men on the dew-soaked plains of Italy, made no difference. At all times he was master of the situation. Even at the end, an exile on a little rock in the middle of the Atlantic, a sick man at the mercy of a dull and intolerable British governor, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... and bar, brings on A season, in the which, one sent from God, (Five hundred, five, and ten, do mark him out) That foul one, and th' accomplice of her guilt, The giant, both shall slay. And if perchance My saying, dark as Themis or as Sphinx, Fail to persuade thee, (since like them it foils The intellect with blindness) yet ere long Events shall be the Naiads, that will solve This knotty riddle, and no damage light On flock or field. Take heed; and ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... was now united again as to its persons; though in spirit far otherwise. They went through the church in general talk, Ladywell sad but serene, and Ethelberta keeping far-removed both from him and from Neigh. She had at this juncture entered upon that Sphinx-like stage of existence in which, contrary to her earlier manner, she signified to no one of her ways, plans, or sensations, and spoke little on any subject at all. There were occasional smiles now which came only from the face, and ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... senate and to various officials, and then change whatever they wished in them. Therefore they received also from him a ring, so that they should have the means of sealing the epistles. He had had the seal which he used most at that time made double, with a sphinx raised on both sides alike. Subsequently he had his own image made in intaglio, and sealed everything with that. Later emperors likewise employed it, except Galba. The latter gave his sanction with an ancestral device which showed a dog bending ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... Speculate (theorise) teoriigi. Speculative (theoretic) teoria. Speculum spegulo. Speech parolado. Speechless muta. Speed rapido. Speed rapidigi. Speedy rapida. Spell silabi. Spell cxarmo. Spend elspezi. Spendthrift malsxparulo. Sphere sfero. Spherical sfera. Sphinx sfinkso. Spice spico. Spider araneo. Spider's web araneajxo. Spike najlego. Spile ligna najlo. Spill (liquid) disversxi. Spill (corn, etc.) dissxuti. Spin sxpini. Spinage spinaco. Spinal ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... more complex than the natural objects that first excited them, have been called compounded ideas, as when we think of a sphinx, or griffin. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... or domesticated, has its habits, and many of the noisiest of mouths, when the mood is on them, can be as dumb as a sphinx, and as Wild Bill came shuffling up on his snowshoes, with a box of goodly size lashed to his sled, not a sound proceeded therefrom. It is needless to record that the greeting between the two men was most hearty. How delightful is the meeting of men of the woods! Manly ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... forehead riven by one deep line, his straight firm mouth set close and hard. His servant, the only living being who had approached him, had set food by his side, which now and then he had mechanically taken. Changeless as a sphinx, he had sat there in darkness and in light, whilst sunlight had changed to moonlight, and the songs of the birds had given place to the low murmuring of frogs from ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... march, and though I realized that in some way I had offended Dian the Beautiful I could not prevail upon her to talk with me that I might learn wherein I had erred—in fact I might quite as well have been addressing a sphinx for all the attention I got. At last my own foolish pride stepped in and prevented my making any further attempts, and thus a companionship that without my realizing it had come to mean a great deal to me was cut off. Thereafter I confined my conversation ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the skies for help. For ages had they striven against the forces of evil; they had sought by every device to turn back the flood-tide of base passion and avarice, but to no purpose. It seemed as if all men were engulfed in one common ruin. Patient, sphinx-like, sat woman, limited by sin, limited by social custom, limited by false theories, limited by bigotry and by creeds, listening to the tramp of the weary millions as they passed on through the centuries, patiently toiling and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... as the last object on earth, the corpse of his wife and mother! Once more Oedipus reappears, barred for ever from the light of day. In the fury of his remorse, he "had smote the balls of his own eyes," and the wise baffler of the sphinx, Oedipus, the haughty, the insolent, the illustrious, is a forlorn and despairing outcast. But amid all the horror of the concluding scene, a beautiful and softening light breaks forth. Blind, powerless, excommunicated, Creon, whom Oedipus accused of murder, has now become ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as useless as to try to solve the enigma of the Sphinx. The dog's lips were sealed as tightly as the stone lips; the barrier between his brain and Donaldson's brain was as high as that between the man-chiseled image and the man who chiseled. He was only wasting his time on such a ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... has just occurred to me that, since we have been married, you have expended, on rolling back those everlastingly relapsing sleeves of yours, enough energy to have rolled the Sphinx of Egypt up on top ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... to rank but to power. As the ship gathered way and moved slowly out of the harbour I pulled the sleeve of Peter's father. "Look!" I said. The Lieutenant-General and Peter were engaged in an animated conversation on the deck, and the great man, usually as silent as the sphinx and not less inscrutable, was evidently contesting with some warmth and great interest, as though hard put to keep his end up, some point of debate propounded to him ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... in vain. Mrs. Quackenboss was impressed; but the doctor smiled always a sphinx-like smile, and reiterated his belief in the unfitness of mid-stream as an ideal place for swopping horses. The more he declined, and the better he talked, the more eager Charles became each day to secure him. And, as if on purpose to draw him on, the ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... camel. Riding a camel for the first time is quite an experience. The beast will lie down, but it is continually snarling and when it gets up you go through all kinds of motions. As I rode around the great pyramid and sphinx on one of these beasts the swing was not unlike that of a great rocking chair and while this ship of the desert did not seem to be going fast I noticed that the driver was running and the donkey alongside was on the gallop most of ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... excitement, Damaris raised herself, from the small of her back, resting on her elbows, sphinx-like in posture, her hands and arms—from the elbows—stretched out in front of her across the pillows. Her face was flushed, her eyes blazed. There was storm and ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... dreamy thought the while, With a sphinx-like shadowy smile, Poet Florio sat, but now Spake in deep-voiced accents slow, More as one who probes his mind, Than for us—"Who seeks, shall find— Widening knowledge surely brings Vaster themes to him who sings. Was veiled Isis more sublime ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... other deals found it difficult to believe their ears—but was not old Langdon at this moment narrating the amazing transaction on the floor of the Senate? Would the statue on the pedestal step down? Would the sphinx of the desert speak the story of the lost centuries? Would honor take the place of expediency in the affairs of state? What might not happen, thought the Senate machine, now that Peabody and Stevens had taken to their bosoms what they termed ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... was nothing but an aching china blank. The men looked round the table for something else to "nash," but everywhere was the same depressing desolation. Only in the centre of the table towered in awful intact majesty the great Bar-mitzvah cake, like some mighty sphinx of stone surveying the ruins of empires, and the least reverent shrank before its austere gaze. But at last the Shalotten Shammos shook off his awe and stretched out his hand leisurely towards the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... conundrum of life, and Ernest White is figurin' it out successful. And lots of other good and earnest souls all over the world are workin' away at the sum with their own slates and pencils. But oh, the time is long! One needs the patience of the Sphinx to set and see it go on, to labor and to wait. But God knows the answer to the problem; in His own good time He will reveal it, as the reward of constant labor, tireless patience, trust and prayer. But to resoom forwards: ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... bonnet; the Vicar smiled, and bent his head in a courtly little bow, which said much without the banality of words. The Squire had no expression! Whether he approved, disapproved, or furiously disliked, he remained insoluble as the Sphinx. Oh, some day—somehow—some one—I hope, will wake him into life, and whoever she is, may she shake him well up, and ride rough-shod over him for a long, long time before she gives in! He needs ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to the grim sphinx clock on the black marble chimneypiece, as it remorselessly ticked away his last few moments of home-life, and he ingeniously set himself to crown his sorrow by reviving ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... Kedsty. Kent's eyes shot to the face of the commander of N Division. There was scarcely recognition in it. A mere inclination of the head, not enough to call a greeting, was the reply to Kent's nod and salute. Never had he seen Kedsty's face more like the face of an emotionless sphinx. But what disturbed him most was the presence of people he had not expected. Close behind Kedsty was McDougal, the magistrate, and behind McDougal entered Constables Felly and Brant, stiffly erect and clearly under orders. Cardigan, pale and uneasy, came in ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood |
