"Obscurely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about 3-4 mm., stipitate or substipitate at the base, growing densely caespitose, in patches, black, smooth, the apices usually obscurely mammillate. Stipes usually short, but sometimes 6-8 mm. long, and when growing in clusters, the bases consolidated by a carbonous stroma. Interior of the receptacle in two compartments (Fig. 841 x6), the lower filled with soft tissue, black around the edges, but white in the center. The upper ...
— Synopsis of Some Genera of the Large Pyrenomycetes - Camilla, Thamnomyces, Engleromyces • C. G. Lloyd
... in his Life of Marlborough, has obscurely alluded to the circumstances attending the building of Blenheim. "The illness of the duke, and the tedious litigation which ensued, caused such delays, that little progress was made in the work at the time of his decease. In the interim a serious misunderstanding arose between ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... religion stimulated and modified by the ideas of Aryan invaders. For the greatest deities of Hinduism, Siva, Krishna, Rama, Durga and some of its most essential doctrines such as metempsychosis and divine incarnations, are either totally unknown to the Veda or obscurely adumbrated in it. The chief characteristics of mature Indian religion are characteristics of an area, not of a race, and they are not the characteristics of religion in Persia, Greece or other ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... remained taciturn, self-absorbed without expansion, without confidants. This work of mental exaltation was brought about obscurely but surely. The nerves of children are quickly excited; one ought to have regard to the fact that they live in a state of deep quiescence up to the time of their almost complete development. But does anyone reflect that, for certain students, an unjust imposition can be as great a pang as ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... soul, without family ties, with no outside influence powerful enough to counteract their precepts. Moreover, they had inculcated in him a certain tendency towards the marvelous which, interned and exercised in the close quarters of his fixed ideas, had slowly and obscurely developed in his soul, until today it was blossoming in his solitude, affecting ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... "we shall see. Anyhow, this is what I had in my mind. We were saying just now that when people talk about 'real life,' the 'real world,' and so on, they are not always very clear as to what they mean. But one thing, I think, perhaps they have obscurely in their heads—that the Real is something from which you cannot escape; something which forces itself upon you without reference to choice or desire, having a nature of its own which may or may not conform, more or less to yours, but in any ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... race, the "Man-himself," is the Platonic counterpart of their [Hebrew: adm kdmon], or "primal man," who is known in the ancient allegorizing of the Song of Songs. His number-mysticism and his speech-idealism reappear more crudely, but not obscurely, in their ideas of creative letters, of which the cosmogony by the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in the Sefer Yezirah is typical. Finally, his teachings of ecstasy and Divine possession are repeated in divers ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... rosebud down the howe, Just op'ning fresh and bonny, Blinks sweetly 'neath the hazel bough, And 's scarcely seen by ony; Sae, sweet amidst her native hills, Obscurely blooms my Jeanie, Mair fair and gay than rosy May, The flower ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... follow; but of their imperial policy the dying words of Mary Tudor, "Calais will be found graven on my heart," form the epitaph. It was not merely the loss of Calais that oppressed the dying Queen, but she felt instinctively, obscurely, prophetically that here was an end to the empire which her house had inherited from Norman ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... hasty violet-black dab. For the landscape needed it. It was too pale—greys flowing into lavenders, and one star or a white gull suspended just so—too pale as usual. The critics would say it was too pale, for he was an unknown man exhibiting obscurely, a favourite with his landladies' children, wearing a cross on his watch chain, and much gratified if his landladies liked ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... B——, of H——, AEt. 55. Symptoms of hydrothorax, at first obscurely, afterwards more distinctly marked. Many things were tried, but the squill alone gave relief. At length this failed. About the third month of the disease, a grain of pulv. Digital. was ordered to be taken night and morning. This produced the happiest effects. In ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... of personal risk which in other wars might make a magazine article or a book chapter, once you sat down to write it, melted away as your ego was reduced to its proper place in cosmos. Individuals had never been so obscurely atomic. With hundreds of thousands fighting, personal experience was valuable only as it expressed that of the whole. Each story brought back to the mess was much like others, thrilling for the narrator and repetition for the polite listener, except it was some officer fresh from the ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... rumors that the Rebels contemplated a raid upon Holly Springs, for the purpose of cutting General Grant's communications and destroying the supplies known to be accumulated there. From the most vague and obscurely-worded hints, given by a Secessionist, I inferred that such a movement was expected. The Rebels were arranging a cavalry force to strike a blow somewhere upon our line of railway, and there was no point more attractive than Holly Springs. I attached no importance to the story, as I had invariably ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... my hope that this story, if it does nothing else, will in some small measure enhance the not-too-strong interest in which the poorly paid, obscurely enacted heroism of the men in this service is held ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... a woman of strong logical faculties, but she had in some things a very surprising and awful astuteness. She seldom introduced any purpose directly, but bore all about it, and then suddenly sprung it upon her unprepared antagonist. At other times she obscurely hinted a reason, and left a conclusion to be inferred; as when she warded off reproach for some delinquency by saying in a general way that she had lived with ladies who used to come scolding into the kitchen after they had taken their bitters. "Quality ladies ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... Scriptures)— that it cannot but seem strange, and assuredly is against all analogy of Gospel revelation, that such a doctrine—which, if true, must be an article of faith, and a most important, yea, essential article of faith—should be left thus faintly, thus obscurely, and, if I may so say, OBITANEOUSLY, declared and enjoined. The time of the formation and closing of the Canon unknown;—the selectors and compilers unknown, or recorded by known fabulists;—and (more perplexing still) the belief of the Jewish Church—the belief, I mean, common to the Jews ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the cities of America, in those busy and worldly centres of traffic and trade, of luxury and wealth, with their average of good and evil, virtue and crime, this "volunteer army" distributes itself noiselessly, quietly, and as it were obscurely, not heralded nor preceded by the emblems of pomp or worldly power, but nevertheless making its conquests and asserting its quiet influence in lanes and alleys, gathering up the little children, taking them to its camps, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... to that, later," said Maxwell, willing to take the humorous view of the matter, if it would please the manager and smooth the way for the consideration of his work; but, more obscurely, he was impatient, and sorry to have found him ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... to 3 inches broad, convex or nearly plane, viscid or glutinous when moist, often obscurely streaked (virgate). Flesh whitish or dull yellowish. Tubes plane or convex, adnate, small, nearly round, yellow, becoming ochraceous. Stem 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 inches long, 2 to 4 lines thick, equal, ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... unable to contemplate them as a whole; while other discoveries still more important, and still more remote from ordinary experience, are manifestly approaching, and may be seen looming in the distance whence they are now obscurely working on the advanced thinkers who are nearest to them, filling their minds with those ill-defined, restless, and almost uneasy feelings, which are the invariable harbingers of future triumph; while the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... diminish the opportunity of the vulture so far as is possible. Where he can enter these lists has been suggested in the previous pages. Further than to the "investor" in mines, he has a duty to his brothers in the profession. In no profession does competition enter so obscurely, nor in no other are men of a profession thrown into such terms of intimacy in professional work. From these causes there has arisen a freedom of disclosure of technical results and a comradery of members greater than that in any other profession. No profession is ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... suppose affections are, in a sense, to be learned. If there exists a native spark of love in all of us, it must be fanned while we are young. Hers, if she ever had it, had been drenched in as ugly a lot of corrosive liquid as could be imagined. But I was surprised at Fyne obscurely feeling this. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... shallow double stairway of the Palais des Nations, up and down which tripped the gay crowds who knew one another but knew not him, and so out to lunch, which he had poorly, inexpensively, obscurely and alone, at a low eating-house near the Secretariat. After lunch he had coffee at a higher eating-house, on the Quai, and sat under the pavement awning reading the papers, listening to the band, ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... swept through Ashe's mind, coupled also with a curious sense of something foreseen. He had never witnessed precisely this mood in her before; but now that it was thus revealed, he was suddenly aware "that something like it had been for long moving obscurely below the surface of her life. He took the child and laid him on the floor, where he rolled at ease, cooing to himself. Then he came back to Kitty, and soothed her with extraordinary tenderness and skill. Presently she looked at him, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... than the English sparrow, but apparently much larger because of its wide wing-spread. Male and Female — Grayish brown or clay-colored above. Upper wings and tail darkest. Below, white, with brownish band across chest. Tail, which is rounded and more nearly square than the other swallows, is obscurely edged with white. Range — Throughout North America south of Hudson Bay. Migrations — April. October. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... occupied, fairly intelligent men from the tricks of the specialists who work the party machines. We know Mr. Sanity, we want Mr. Sanity, but we are too busy to watch the incessant intrigues to oust him in favour of the obscurely influential people, politically docile, who are favoured by the organization. We want an organizer-proof method of voting. It is in answer to this demand, as the outcome of a most careful examination of the ways in which voting may be protected from ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... higher, something purer and further from selfishness, something into which charity shall willingly grow and cease, and that is justice. Not the justice of our Christless codes, with their penalties, but the instinct of righteous shame which, however dumbly, however obscurely, stirs in every honest man's heart when his superfluity is confronted with another's destitution, and which is destined to increase in power till it becomes the social as well as the individual conscience. ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... of manly beauty;' and thus the Cavalier warden, in denying this aspirant the means of cultivating literature on a little university oatmeal, was turning back on the world one who was fated to become a republican power of the age. This shining light, instead of comfortably and obscurely merging in a petty constellation of Alma Mater, was to become a bright particular star, and dwell apart. The avowed liberalism of Robert may, however, have done more in reality to shock Sir Henry, than his inability to add a cubit to his stature. It is pleasant ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... Delivered or Paradise Lost. We do not know who put together in their present form such traditional tales as the Lay of the Nibelungs and Beowulf, and the personal element in the narrative is only obscurely felt, whereas Jerusalem Delivered is a constant revelation of Tasso, and the personality of Milton colors every line in Paradise Lost. When Matthew Arnold tells us that Homer is rapid, plain, simple and noble, he is depicting the characteristics ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... roof, over a triangular altar of black marble. The architecture of the room was strange and massive as of Egyptian temples. Strong, dark colors met the eye on all sides; in the panels of the walls and distant ceiling fantastic devices showed obscurely forth. Nine mighty columns, of design like those in the doorway, were ranged along the walls, their capitals buried in ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... catch on, like Sinclair Lewis in "Main Street," are men who have succeeded in projecting definitely what great numbers of other people were obscurely trying to say inside their heads. "You have said it for me." They establish a new form which is then endlessly copied until it, too, becomes a stereotype of perception. The next pioneer finds it difficult to make the public see Main Street any other way. And he, like ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... was dressed in rich clothes and jewels; for Hermione had made it very fine when she sent it to Leontes, and Antigonus had pinned a paper to its mantle, and the name of Perdita written thereon, and words obscurely intimating its high birth and ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to explain the allegories and "Midrashim" in two works to be entitled "The Book of Reconciliation" and "The Book of Prophecy." But after reflecting on the matter a number of years I decided to desist from the attempt. The reasons are these. If I expressed my explanations obscurely, I should have accomplished nothing by substituting one unintelligible statement for another. If, on the other hand, I were really to make clear the matters that require explanation, the result would not be suitable for the masses, for whom those treatises were intended. Besides, those ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... manner to spin out the whole course of their life; that is, if it may be explained, to live at ease. For this opinion of theirs is not to be concealed, many of them delivering it clearly, and not a few more obscurely." Who therefore did more grow old in this scholastic life than Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Diogenes, Zeno, and Antipater, who left their countries not out of any discontent but that they might quietly enjoy their delight, studying, and disputing at their leisure. To verify which, Aristocreon, the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... affection's eye, Obscurely wise and coarsely kind; Nor, lettered arrogance, deny Thy praise to ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... more than its most striking peculiarities. Of these, one that evokes surprise upon first acquaintance with the dialect is the fact that final o marks the feminine of nouns, adjectives, and participles. It is a close o, somewhat weakly and obscurely pronounced, as compared, for instance, with the final o in Italian. In this respect Provencal is quite anomalous among Romance languages. In some regions of the Alps, at Nice, at Montpellier, at Le Velay, in Haute-Auvergne, in Roussillon, and in Catalonia the Latin final a is preserved, ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... leaping on the cadence of their first poems, clawing the air with crooked fingers and scenting at the Academy gates the good smell of our decaying minds." Well, it is satisfactory to be told, however obscurely, that this sort of thing is coming to an end some day, to be replaced by some other tomfoolery. And though I commonly refrain from clawing the air with crooked fingers, I can assure Mr. Marinetti that this omission does not disqualify ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... mist of windless marshes, masked the Kentish coast. The Medway at flood-tide from Sheerness to Gillingham Reach was one maze of creeks and bends and inlets and tiny bays. Nothing was visible an oar's length overside but shifting cloudy shapes that bulked obscurely in the fog. But although this was Francis Drake's first voyage as master of his own ship, he knew these waters as he knew the palm of his hand. His old captain, dying a bachelor, had left him the weather-beaten cargo-ship as reward for his "diligence and fidelity", and at sixteen ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... concentrated that I had yet found in literature. By that time my father had himself put me through the first two books of Livy, and I knew, therefore, what close-set language was; but I saw then that Livy, as afterward that Horace and Tacitus, were studiously, often laboriously, and sometimes obscurely concentrated; while Byron wrote, as easily as a hawk flies and as clearly as a lake reflects, the exact truth in the precisely narrowest terms,—not only the exact truth, but the most central and useful one. Of course I could no more measure Byron's greater powers at that time than I could Turner's; ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... too?—that there was something tremendous in me if it could only be got out; and I felt Vard was the Moses to strike the rock. There were vulgar reasons, too, that made me hunger for a victim. I'd been grinding on obscurely for a good many years, without gold or glory, and the first thing of mine that had made a noise was my picture of Pepita, exhibited the year before. There'd been a lot of talk about that, orders were beginning to come in, and I wanted to follow it up ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... Occasionally I obscurely felt as if a demand were being made upon us for a ritual which should express and carry forward the hope of the social movement. I was constantly bewildered by the number of requests I received to officiate at funeral services and by the curious confessions made to me by total strangers. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... a slight offered to him, and extricated himself with honour. Another is the work of him(4) who, without any one exterior advantage but mere strength of genius, had the most sublime imaginations, and executed them accordingly, yet lived and died obscurely. Another we shall consider as the work of him(5) who restored Painting when it had almost sunk; of him whom art made honourable, but who, neglecting and despising greatness with a sort of cynical pride, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... with their conquests in his Majesty's Scottish Dominions, had been so venturous as to invade England itself, and had actually advanced so far as the trading town of Derby! Then did those who had been long, albeit obscurely, suspected of Jacobitism, come forth from their lurking holes and corners, and almost openly avow their preference for the House of Stuart. Then did very many respectable persons, formerly thought to be excellently well affected ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... if I could show you these men and women, all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honour, the poor jewel of their souls! They may seek to escape, and yet they cannot; it is not alone ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to their opinions, but ascending the nearest bastion to take a wider survey, in a few minutes he discerned, though obscurely, through the gleams of morning, what appeared to be the whole host of Russia advancing in profound silence towards the Polish lines. The instant he made this discovery, he came down, and lost no time in giving orders for the defence; ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... obscurely switching to the matter of delinks—those characters who act like adolescents, not only while they are kids, but after. They were the permanent major annoyance of the cops, because what they did didn't make sense. Learned books explained why people ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... smiled curiously. "I have perhaps expressed myself obscurely. Yet I am generally considered a clear exponent. First of all, let me ask you, do you believe in the ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... San Fernando dwells, An innocent and venerable man; His earlier days were spent within its cells. And end obscurely as they first began. Manhood's career in savage climes he ran, On lonely California's Indian shore— Dispelling superstition's deadly ban, Or teaching (what could patriot do more?) Those rudiments of peace, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... interlude was over now, and that real life must begin again with their change of lodgings. Stradella was a musician and a singer, without settled fortune, and he must return to the business of earning bread for them both; moreover, he was famous, and therefore could not possibly get his living obscurely. The Pope's adopted family would vie with the ex-Queen of Sweden, the Spanish Ambassador and the rich nobles, to flatter him and attract him to their respective palaces. Alberto Altieri, who had lost his heart to Ortensia's beauty at first sight, would organise every sort of fashionable ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... of sensitized matter at times appearing grotesque, dimly lit, although never flimsy. This pedantic, pictorial, even scholarly system by our revered writer adopted, is bent, applied to meet extreme passes of imaginative perfection and delicacy. The picture is naively introduced and obscurely, somewhat trenchantly elaborated, allows itself to be apologetically understood; whilst in succession the lower taste for animal sentiment is sorcerized by vivid flashes of captivating contrast, forked, as lightning, and left, as embers smouldering to glow in the crucible of memory's recesses. ...
— Original Letters and Biographic Epitomes • J. Atwood.Slater
... of revolt against the hierarchy, though broken and repressed thus terribly by the measures of Innocent III., continued to live on obscurely in sequestered spots, in the mountains of Savoy, and Bosnia, and Bohemia, ready on occasion to spring into fresh and vigorous life. In the following century Protestant ideas were rapidly germinating in England, alike in baron's castle, in yeoman's farmstead, in citizen's ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... had not written obscurely, this fellow would have had nothing to be proud of. But what is it that I desire? To understand Nature, and to follow her! Accordingly I ask who is the Interpreter. On hearing that it is Chrysippus, I go to him. But it seems ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... man verbosus, that was a fine generosus; He was a great guller, his name I take to be Fuller; See where he stands, that unto my hands convey'd a powder; And, like a knave, sent her to her grave, obscurely ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... see—" She debated a moment, then reached under the table, fumbled obscurely, and came up with more money. "Now, here, here's twenty more besides that first I gave you, so you can pay the dame her money and get all fixed up again, fresh suit and clean collar and a shine and everything. No, no—this is my scene; you ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... agreeably to my ears than that of Aime Bonpland, I cannot here dwell upon it, nor write his biography, however congenial the theme. Some one who reads this may find the task both pleasant and profitable; for though his bones slumber obscurely on the banks of the Parana, amidst the scenes so loved by him, his name will one day have a higher niche in Fame's temple than it has hitherto held— perhaps not much lower than that of Humboldt himself. I here introduce it, with some incidents of his life, as affecting ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... such a creature with monstrosity during the period of its power is simply to expose one's self to popular jeers. Having immense respect for majorities in this country, we only venture obscurely to hint, that, of all arts, none before has ever been so threatening, curious, and fascinating a monster as that of printing. We merely suggest the hypothesis, novel since some centuries, that old Faustus and Gutenberg were as much inspired by the Evil One as they have been fabled ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... what is said, but understands nothing. Gradually, however, there begins to filter into her old breast, like a stream of joy, an understanding of something big, of something in which she can take part. She discovers that she too is a free creature, and, obscurely, there is formed in her mind the notion that every human being has a right to live. Then she speaks: "The earth is tired of carrying so much injustice and sadness, it trembles softly at the hope of seeing the new sun which is rising in the bosom of mankind." So the obscure and miserable woman ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... life, at this very moment when it most needs and aspires to enlightened liberty, is crushed back into mechanical conformity with statutory regulations to which no common assent has been or can be obtained, and the logical consequences of which are as yet but obscurely recognized, even by the limited portion of the community which has been active in establishing them. To give it its most favorable interpretation, it is a sort of crazy counsel of perfection, incompatible with the healthy tenor and contents of human nature, and sure in the end ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... and obscurely beautiful to the imagination, and there is not a syllable about sex—though "ethereal mildness," which is an Impersonation, and hardly an Impersonation, must be, it is felt, a Virgin Goddess, whom all the divinities that ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... they have exchanged their dreams of glory for the reality of sacrifice—they know to what they may look forward. But untried troops have yet to be disillusioned; dreams of the pomp of war are still in their eyes. They have not yet owned that they are merely going out to die obscurely. ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... "Just as soon as I've finished it you shall have it." I wanted to ask whether he would reciprocate by lending me one of his own books, which would give me some clue to his tastes; but again I felt obscurely that he would not ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... see the king's lieutenant, and it was easily noticed that they were conversing on weighty matters. We had scarcely become accustomed to having strangers quartered upon us in the first three months, when a rumor was obscurely circulated that the allies were on the march, and that Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick was coming to drive the French from the Main. Of these, who could not boast of any special success in war, no high opinion was held; ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... pondering his hurt, and in the dark Gave audience to a host of grievances. For never comes reflection, gay or grave, But it brings with it comrades of its hue. So did he fall to thinking how his day Declined, and how his narrow life had run Obscurely through an age of great events Such as men never saw, nor will again Until the globe be riven by God's fire. Others had ventured for the Golden Fleece, Knaves of no parts at all, and got renown, (By force ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... imagine the intense desire that was created, by this time, in my heart, to learn all about this "brotherhood," and "fraternity," so often introduced, and yet so obscurely as to give me no ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... 4-pointed lobes bent backward; corolla of 4 spreading petals; 8 stamens; 1 pistil; the stigma 4-cleft. Stem: Erect, wand-like, or branched, 1 to 5 ft. tall, rarely higher, leafy. Leaves: Alternate, lance-shaped, mostly seated on stem, entire, or obscurely toothed. ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... grandfather should be an Englishman, and that even his father should have been a year old when he came to this country; but on his mother's side he could boast a grandfather and a great-grandfather who had taken part, however briefly or obscurely, in both the wars against Great Britain. He hated just as much as any of the boys, or perhaps more, to be the Bridish when they were playing war, and he longed as truly as any of them to march against the ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... and entreated Malarichus to explain in intelligible language what he wanted, and not to use such obscure terms. For he declared that he, being but a plain and somewhat rude man, had not in the least understood what was intimated so obscurely. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... produced upon the subsequent destinies of civilized man, the most memorable in the history of the world.... The wrecks and fragments of these subtle and profound minds, like the ruins of a fine statue, obscurely suggest to us the grandeur and perfection of the whole. Their very language ... in variety, in simplicity, in flexibility, and in copiousness, excels every other language of the western world.' Then, after some words on their sculpture, he adds: 'their poetry seems to maintain ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... charge. This may explain what seems an extraordinarily high rate of pay. Perhaps it is the Comes himself, not his Domestici, who is to receive the emolumenta here specified; but, if so, the letter is very obscurely expressed.] ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... the moving characters, with fine dramatic contrasts, as belongs to "Venice Preserved" or to the "Fiesco" of Schiller. 2dly, That of a great military expedition offering the same romantic features of vast distances to be traversed, vast reverses to be sustained, untried routes, 20 enemies obscurely ascertained, and hardships too vaguely prefigured, which mark the Egyptian expedition of Cambyses—the anabasis of the younger Cyrus, and the subsequent retreat of the ten thousand, the Parthian expeditions of the Romans, especially those of Crassus 25 and Julian—or (as more ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... a little as he pronounced those last words, and the girl's hands clasped each other more tightly as she perceived the snare in the phrase. If the Etheling should answer unheedingly or obscurely, so that it should not be made quite clear to ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... family had been very poor. They had lived in a small adobe house on the mesa. For ten years Mrs. MacDougall had done all of her own housework, including the washing; the two children had gone to school in clothes that seemed always too small for them; and MacDougall had laboured obscurely day and night in a small dark office. During these ten years the MacDougalls had been completely overlooked by local society, and if they felt any resentment they did not ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... strong. The solemnity of such an extent of wood unbroken by any intervening objects, and the whole hanging over declivities, is alone great; but to this the addition of a constant roar of falling water, either quite hid, or so far below as to be seen but obscurely, united to make those impressions stronger. No contradictory emotions are raised; no ill-judged temples appear to enliven a scene that is gloomy rather than gay. Falling or moving water is a lively object; but this being obscure the noise operates differently. Following ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... can I hesitate, when I find these conclusions of mine not obscurely foreshadowed as impending in 1872 by Ernest Renan, and re-affirmed as imminent in ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... river, "the invincible strangers"; the thought of resistance, far less the hope of success, had not yet dawned on the Samoan mind. He returned (November 1889) to a changed world. The Tupua party was reduced to sue for peace, Brandeis was withdrawn, Tamasese was dying obscurely of a broken heart; the German flag no longer waved over the capital; and over all the islands one figure stood supreme. During Laupepa's absence this man had succeeded him in all his honours and titles, in tenfold ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the question almost entirely in respect to human knowledge. In definitely denying the degeneration of man, Bodin was only expressing what many thinkers of the sixteenth century had been coming to feel, though timidly and obscurely. The philosophers and men of science, who criticised the ancients in special departments, did not formulate any general view on the privileged position of antiquity. Bodin was the first ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... admitted in a proper manner to civil office. At that point their Highnesses must stop. They could not but entertain grave apprehensions that, if Roman Catholics were made capable of public trust, great evil would ensue; and it was intimated not obscurely that these apprehensions arose chiefly from the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... higher quality, some of which, like the lovely Never the Time and Place, I have been already quoted. Ixion is too obscurely put to attain its end with the general public. But it may be recommended, though vainly, to those theologians who, hungry for the Divine Right of torture, build their God, like Caliban, out of their ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... the amorous discontent of the secret heart, and with the temporary exhilaration of the spirits, produced by the occasion on which they were met. This must surely be the meaning of Horace in this Ode, however obscurely expressed. People of sense do not, even in their gayest conversation, start from their subject to another of total inconnexion. When the latent meaning in the concluding verses is perspicuously paraphrased, it accounts for the Poet's preference at that period, of trifling to literary ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... modern history. It was, admittedly, the most important for Spain, also for that country (then unknown) which her sailors were to discover and explore, and which was to receive the name of the Florentine merchant then living obscurely ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... solitary and desolate, now thronged with an eager multitude on foot and with numerous open carriages, in which were seated ladies in full dress as at the opera with us. Arriving at the Coliseum, we left the carriage and passed through the huge portal. The gloomy arches were obscurely seen in the dusky Roman twilight, when suddenly, as if by magic, every arch and crevice of the gigantic ruin glowed, incarnadined, as if dyed with the blood of the martyrs that had drenched its soil. There were salvos of artillery, bursts of military music and a few vivas ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... well allowed; and in such observances of good nurture, is a nomad man's honour among his tribesmen. And this is nigh all that serves the nomad for a conscience, namely, that which men will hold of him. A poor person, approaching from behind, stands obscurely, wrapped in his tattered mantle, with grave ceremonial, until those sitting indolently before him in the sand shall vouchsafe to take notice of him; then they rise unwillingly, and giving back enlarge the coffee-circle to ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the Lutheran period, for Martin Luther (1483-1546) was the most prominent character in the general literature as well as in the theology of Germany. He was the exponent of the national feeling, he gave shape and utterance to thoughts and sentiments which had been before only obscurely expressed, and his influence was felt in almost every department of life and literature. The remodeling of the German tongue may be said to have gone hand in hand with the Reformation, and it is to Luther more than to any other ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... such an atmosphere and rather the antithesis of force and violence than a complement for it. And again, though the rifles were disquietingly bright and effective-looking, the violin was old and shabby, hanging obscurely in its corner, as if, whatever it might have in common with its master, it had nothing in common ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... National Assembly one. No distinct answer, for weeks. At last it becomes plain that the right answer is negative. Go, ye Chimeras, with your magnetic vellum; sweet young Chimera, adust middle-aged one! The Prison-doors are open. Hardly again shall ye preside the Rouen Chamber of Accounts; but vanish obscurely into Limbo. (See ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... water-proof hat. Her hair was tumbling about her ears, and her bright cheeks were moist with rain, or rather with the intermittent showers that the wind shook every now and then from the still dripping oak trees above her. Peter thought her lovelier than ever—a wood-nymph, half divine. Yet, obscurely, he felt a change in her, from the beginning of their talk. Why had she sent for him? The wildest notions had possessed him, ever since her letter reached him. Yet, now that he saw her, they seemed to float away from him, like thistle-down on ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... What is more obvious and ordinary than a mole? and yet what more palpable argument of providence than she? The members of her body are so exactly fitted to her nature and manner of life: For her dwelling being under ground where nothing is to be seen, nature has so obscurely fitted her with eyes, that naturalists can hardly agree whether she have any sight at all or no. But for amends, what she is capable of for her defence and warning of danger, she has very eminently conferred upon her; for she is exceedingly quick of hearing. ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... companion walking with men through the gloom and brilliance of the West and North, and sometimes her heart is so full that it cannot find utterance at all. In the "dream state," that which is mere nature for the scientist reveals itself, obscurely indeed and yet insistently, as very God. God is dwelling in Fiona. He is smiling in all sunsets. He is filling the universe with His breath and holding us all in ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... a strange new vision learns: The night remains for it as dark and dense, Yet clearly in this darkness it discerns 10 As in the daylight with its natural sense; Perceives a shade in shadow not obscurely, Pursues a stir of black in blackness surely, Sees spectres also ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... He was almost everywhere abused, and very generally cut. But with a firmness and ability scarcely ever seen in any man so young, he brought his proofs forward, and, after an inquiry of some weeks, fully made out his case. —— was dismissed in disgrace, and is now living obscurely in England. The Government here and the Directors at home applauded Trevelyan in the highest terms; and from that tithe he has been considered as a man likely to rise to the very top of the service. Lord William told him to ask for anything ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... most solemn moment, the Grand Chaplain availed himself of his exclusive privilege, which was to present the Gospel to the royal lips. Assisting him in the general service was the hacienda curate. This curate, obscurely found in the Huasteca wilds and yet not a Mexican, was a large sleek man whose paunch bulged repulsively under the priestly surplice. His flabby jowls hung down, and gave his head the shape of a pea, in the top of which were the eyes set close together. They were ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... have turned from so lurid an occupation to any other pursuit; but Mr. Sealman looked as if his health were more fragile than that of the car. When he clawed obscurely at the crystallized sugar ornaments under the bright bonnet of the fainting Model, his air looked so dejected, his eyes so hollow, and his smile so wan that Angela's fury melted into pity. Passionate resolves to shed him and his blue abomination died within her as she watched his struggles. ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... tallest and the darkest of the three. Her face followed the type obscurely; and vividly and emphatically it left it. There was dusk in her honey-whiteness, and dark blue in the gray of her eyes. The bridge of her nose and the arch of her upper lip were higher, lifted as it were in a decided and defiant manner of their own. About Gwenda there was something alert ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... slip unnoticed, especially as they did not advertise it. Stephen mostly came, on afternoons when there was no rehearsal, to tea. He, Stephen, had a perception of contrasts which answered fairly well the purposes of a sense of humour, and nobody could question hers; it operated obscurely to ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... honours, when all heaven Laboured for him, when each propitious star Stood wakeful in his orb, to watch that hour, And shed his better influence. Her own birth-day Our queen neglected, like a vulgar fate, That passed obscurely by. ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... velvety brown; the base being obscurely ochrey; the yellowish colour running up into brown; the fringe ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... resembled his great countryman, Walt Whitman, in carrying a kind of universe with him like an open umbrella; but he was not only alone, but lonely. For Ashe had gone abruptly up to London, and since his return had been occupied obscurely with legal matters, doubtless bearing on the murder. And Treherne had long since taken up his position openly, at the great house, as the husband of the great lady, and he and she were occupied with sweeping reforms on the estate. The lady especially, being of ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... of Priscian, it was the custom of ancient writers to express obscurely some portions of their books, so that those who came after might study with greater diligence to find the thought within their words. The philosophers knew this well, and were the more unwearied in labour, the more subtle in distinctions, ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... his eating, if he were not hard up for food, as they had been a good deal lately. They found everything perfection. As to lodgings, Mrs. Mouse found a hole which delighted her extremely. It was obscurely hid in the wainscot under the wardrobe, where nobody could possibly see them going in and out—just to her liking. With a little nibbling of the wood here and there inside the hole, she thought it would make the most delightful house anybody ever had. ...
— Harper's Young People, November 25, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... is summed up, not merely speciously, in the two first questions of the rival catechisms, the English tritely inquiring, "What is your name?" the Scottish striking at the very roots of life with, "What is the chief end of man?" and answering nobly, if obscurely, "To glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever." I do not wish to make an idol of the Shorter Catechism; but the fact of such a question being asked opens to us Scots a great field of speculation; and the fact that it is asked of all of us, from the peer to the ploughboy, binds ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mind grows upon what it consumes, Prescott was soon stricken with a second thought, and the next day at twilight he bought as obscurely as he could a Virginia-cured ham and carried it away, wrapped in ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... movements are quiet and obscure in their origin. As the magnificent forest was slowly and obscurely germinated in darkness, in the seeds from which it sprung, so are the great discoveries in science and philosophy matured in quietness and obscurity. The thinker hears afar the sound of strife and the agitation of parties ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... Gibbon, chap. i. "The name which, used by Ptolemy and Pliny in a more confined, by Ammianus and Procopius in a larger sense, has been derived, ridiculously, from Sarah, the wife of Abraham, obscurely from the village of Saraka, more plausibly from the Arabic words, which signify a thievish character, or Oriental situation. Yet the last and most popular of these etymologies is refuted by Ptolemy, who expressly remarks the western ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... adds, (what could have originated only in an oversight of dates,) that the Prince was made, in consequence of his conduct on this occasion, the chief of the council, and was always called the dear and beloved son of his father. He intimates, (but very obscurely,) that, by the aspersions of some, his fame sustained for a short time some blemish in ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, The post of honor is a private station. Cato, Act iv. Sc. 4. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... was, in this instance, justified—there was between the two a direct, even dynamic, connection. Laramie thus figured prominently in the older Falling Wall feuds. It would have been difficult for him to figure obscurely, and do it more ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... low, Of "blood" and "an intriguer"? Oh! ye cannot of murder bring down the red guilt On your souls, my brothers, surely! Though I fear—from the hands that are chafing the hilt, And the hints you give obscurely. ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... begged Rudin to remain the night. Alexandra Pavlovna, as she went home in the carriage with her brother, several times fell to exclaiming and marvelling at the extraordinary cleverness of Rudin. Volintsev agreed with her, though he observed that he sometimes expressed himself somewhat obscurely—that is to say, not altogether intelligibly, he added,—wishing, no doubt, to make his own thought clear, but his face was gloomy, and his eyes, fixed on a corner of the carriage, seemed even more melancholy ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... ruin impending over his country. In one of his letters (says his biographer) he uses these remarkable expressions: "I am ending the course of my life; the world will witness how I have loved my country. I have returned not only to die in her bosom, but to die with her." He was buried as obscurely as he had closed his life, in St. Anne's Church, and the following epitaph was inscribed over ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... in the history of the human mind when science suddenly came into the vicarages, into all the studies and quiet places that had been the fastnesses of conviction and our ideals, and denied, with all the power of evidence it had been accumulating for so long, and so obscurely and inaggressively, with fossils and strata, with embryology and comparative anatomy, the doctrine of the historical Fall and all the current scheme of orthodoxy that was based on that! What a quickening shock it must have been ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... lay the emphasis, whether on the first, second, third, or fourth, it strikes out a different sense."—Murray's Gram., 8vo, p. 243. (25.) "To inform those who do not understand sea phrases, that, 'We tacked to the larboard, and stood off to sea,' would be expressing ourselves very obscurely."—Ib., p. 296; and Hiley's Gram., p. 151. (26.) "Of dissyllables, which are at once nouns and verbs, the verb has commonly the accent on the latter, and the noun, on the former syllable."—Murray, p. 237. (27.) "And this gives our language a ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... all sorts of feelings had long before begun to stir obscurely, was aroused to full consciousness by the reading of Mapu's works. Casual acquaintance with an intelligent woman made his heart vibrate with notes unknown until then. Life in his native town became intolerable, and he left it for ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... but subordinate. It was the thing that was done; not the words that were said, that was mighty with God. Here, as these Catholics round Isabel at any rate understood it, and as she too began to perceive it too, though dimly and obscurely, was the sublime mystery of the Cross presented to God. As He looked down well pleased into the silence and darkness of Calvary, and saw there the act accomplished by which the world was redeemed, so here (this handful of disciples believed), He looked down into the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... third of a box at the Opera, obscurely situated on the lower tier for the purpose of not being much in sight. For the last few days Calyste, grown bolder, had escorted the marquise to her box, placing himself behind her, and timing their arrival at a late hour ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Obscurely sacrificed, his nameless tomb, Bare of the sculptor's art, the poet's lines, Summer shall flush with poppy-fields in bloom, And Autumn yellow ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... Scripture. Of this we have a remarkable example in what the apostle says of Christ's delivering up the kingdom to the Father upon the completion of the work of redemption. 1 Cor. 15:24-28. But no great truth relating to the way of salvation through Christ is thus taught obscurely and in some single passage of Scripture. Every such truth pervades the broad current of revelation, and shines forth from its pages so clearly that no candid inquirer can fail to apprehend its true meaning. If, then, we find in the Bible dark and difficult passages, they must, if interpreted at ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... story is told very obscurely, and should have been assisted by an Argument in prose. Young writers are often astonished to find that passages, which seem very clear to their own heated imaginations, appear very dark to their readers.—The author of the poem before us may produce ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... into the base of the great formation known as the true Chalk, divided into the three subdivisions of the chalk-marl, white chalk without flints, and white chalk with flints. The first of these is simply argillaceous chalk, and passes up into a great mass of obscurely-stratified white chalk in which there are no flints (Turonien of D'Orbigny; Mittelquader of Germany). This, in turn, passes up into a great mass of white chalk, in which the stratification is marked by nodules of black flint arranged ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... her by the egotism of THEIR passions; but if once that danger were duly guarded against the fulness of one's measure amounted to no more than the equal use of one's faculties or the proper playing of one's part. It had come to the Princess, obscurely at first, but little by little more conceivably, that her faculties had not for a good while been concomitantly used; the case resembled in a manner that of her once-loved dancing, a matter of remembered steps that had grown vague from her ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... one of Smith's most characteristic productions. Its material is ill-arranged, and much of it is obscurely written; it runs backward and forward along his life, refers constantly to his former works and repeats them, complains of the want of appreciation of his services, and makes himself the centre of all the colonizing exploits of the age. Yet it is interspersed with strokes ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... proclaimed himself King of France, and quartered the lilies of France on the royal shield. The Flemish proved a very reed; and though the French army came up to meet the English in the Vermando country, no fighting took place, and the campaign of 1339 ended obscurely. Norman and Genoese ships threatened the southern shores of England, landing at Southampton and in the Isle of Wight unopposed. In 1340 Edward returned to Flanders; on his way he attacked the French fleet which lay at Sluys, and utterly destroyed ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... Looking back to lift my hat for the last adieu, I saw the honest old baronet, bareheaded in the clear moonlight, waving his hand from the lowest step, with Lady Berenicia and the others standing above him, outlined upon the illumined doorway, and the negroes grouped on either side, obscurely gesticulating in the shadows of the broad, dark front of the Hall, which ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... years in the United States. The pendulum worked well. It came and went, to and fro, slowly along the line of Indifference, without ever transgressing as its extreme limits on either hand, Moderate Desires and Slight Troubles. I led obscurely a contemplative life, and I was generally considered a queer character. I fulfilled my duties, and took little heed of any one. Whenever I had an hour at my disposal, I sought solitude in the neighboring woods, far from the town and from mankind. I ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... letter and tore it open. She was too agitated to read calmly, but she saw enough to convince her that Roland, and no other, had appropriated the money. This must have been the matter he had obscurely hinted at in one of his last conversations with her. The letter was concluded very much after Roland's ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood |
