"Mysterious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and self-denial promised happiness but all agreed in thinking it normal as well as laudable that a man should devote his life to meditation and study. Compared with this frame of mind the teaching of the Buddha is not unsocial, unpractical and mysterious but human, business-like and clear. We are inclined to see in the monastic life which he recommended little but a useless sacrifice but it is evident that in the opinion of his contemporaries his disciples had an easy time, and that he had ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... shame, all the grief and distress that had passed through that anteroom in which he stood. What terrible confessions must have been heard, what a procession of suffering, ignominy, and wretchedness must have been witnessed by that woman who received the children in her mysterious little office! To her all the wreckage of the slums, all the woe lying beneath gilded life, all the abominations, all the tortures that remain unknown, were carried. There in her office was the port for the shipwrecked, there the black hole ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... her little guest through the hall to the library, where a great fire was blazing, with sundry mysterious packages in white paper piled on the table beside it. But Miss Terry did not stop at the fire-place. She drew Mary to the window which looked out on the sidewalk. Above the lower sash Mary saw the remains of a burned-out Christmas candle; and over it hung a pink papier-mache ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... dances, with the interesting background of Chinese politics, in which things are never dull. There is always a rebellion of some kind to furnish delightful thrills, and one never can tell when a new political bomb will be projected from the mysterious gates ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... part of the group of daring adventurers from the Space Academy who travel to mysterious lands in outer space on dangerous and exciting missions. It's as simple as opening a book ... ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... servant-wenches from the farm and the mill turned pale with longing; Pierre and Jacques flushed red with delight. Little Jean put out his tongue at it all. Everything the barrow held seemed to them rich and rare. But what they coveted most of all were those mysterious articles whose meaning and use they could make nothing of. For instance, there were polished globes like mirrors that reflected their feces with the features ludicrously distorted. There were Epinal wares with figures in impossibly vivid colours; there were little cases ...
— Child Life In Town And Country - 1909 • Anatole France
... I had thought forgotten for ever; which I could not possibly have recalled at will, even under the most favourable auspices. And what cause had produced in a moment the whole of this strange, complicated, mysterious effect? Nothing but some rays of moonlight shining in at my ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... closed every day's search, by some strange contradiction, only confirmed him in the belief that Madeleine was in Paris, and that he would shortly find her there; that he would meet her by some fortunate chance; would be drawn to her by some mysterious magnetic instinct. Every few days he visited the bureau des passeports, to ascertain whether her passport had been presented to ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... him, offering him first the cup of tea, then the milk and sugar, then the cake, and bread and butter. Her repugnance had nothing to do with him; it was an obscure feeling, quite incomprehensible to herself. When he looked up she answered him with a smile which she felt to be mysterious, and he perceived its mystery, for he compared it to the hesitating smile of the Monna Lisa, a print of which hung on the wall. But the remark increased her foreboding and premonition. And she was sorry for her father, who was saying that he hoped to send her abroad ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... not ceased to peck at the liver of men's benefactors. All great and high art is purchased by suffering—it is not the mechanical product of dexterous craftsmanship. This is one part of the meaning of that mysterious Master Builder of Ibsen's. "Then I saw plainly why God had taken my little children from me. It was that I should have nothing else to attach myself to. No such thing as love and happiness, you understand. I was to be only a master builder—nothing else." And the tense ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... that she had treated herself to more expensive dresses. As I calculated that we could hardly have at this period more than fifteen or twenty crowns remaining, I did not conceal my surprise at this mysterious augmentation of our wealth. She begged of me, with a smile, to give myself no trouble on that head. 'Did I not promise you,' said she, 'that I would find resources?' I loved her too purely to experience ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... herself a drink and went to the window. She looked down. He was out there somewhere, going about his mysterious business. The smile she thought of as soft and tender was really brittle and quite hard. She downed her drink thirstily as though it helped quench the fever in ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... can discover, that remains as yet in the mysterious depths of my Lords Commissioners' minds," answered Jack, glancing over some other letters. "Hemming has an idea that it may be to the West Indies; at least such is the opinion of the Portsmouth tailors, who have generally more correct information on these matters than any one ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... complete quiet; but Sarah was extremely brief, scornful, and indignant, and bestowed very few words on Miss Martindale. 'Yes, ma'am—no, ma'am,' was all that hard pumping could extract, except funereal and mysterious sighs and shakes of the head, and a bustling about, that could only be understood to intimate that she wished to ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... reddened the edges of belted cloud bars near the base of the sky, and the jagged ice bowlders crowded together over the frozen ocean stretching indefinitely northward, while more than a hundred miles of that mysterious Wrangell Land was seen blue in the northwest—a wavering line of hill and dale over the white and blue ice prairie and pale gray mountains beyond, well calculated to fix the eye of a mountaineer; but it was to the far north that I ever found myself turning, where ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... were unclosed from her soft neck belonged to a light, easily awakened sleeper. Nanny missed her darling Susy; and terrified at being left alone, in the vast mysterious darkness, which had no bounds and seemed infinite, she slipped out of bed, and tottered, in her little nightgown, towards the door. There was a light below, and there was Susy and safety! So she went onwards ...
— Lizzie Leigh • Elizabeth Gaskell
... declared my cousin had heard the voice, and said that mother wanted me. Accordingly she returned with me to grandmother's room, and led my cousin into an adjoining apartment. The door was ajar, and I listened with bated breath. Mother told Mehitable all about this mysterious voice, and asked if she really did hear Mary's name pronounced in audible tones. My cousin answered quickly, and emphasized ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... silent dances' mysterious measure. All that is glorious in Heaven, and all that the ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... the problem of the MYSTERIOUS NOISES. This was, perhaps, the most weird and mystifying of all the telephone problems. The fact was that the telephone had brought within hearing distance a new wonder-world of sound. All wires at that ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... of no such idiotic proposition," returned the Doctor. "And as for the music cure I don't know anything about it. Haven't heard everybody talking about it, and doubt the existence of any such thing outside of that mysterious realm which is bounded by the four corners of your own bright particular cerebellum. What do you ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... Pensacola on the Gulf and Fernandina on Amelia Island, at the mouth of the St. Mary's River. The island had long been a notorious resort for smugglers. Hither had come British and American vessels with cargoes of merchandise and slaves, which found their way in mysterious fashion to consignees within the States. A Spanish garrison of ten men was the sole custodian of law and order on the island. Up and down the river was scattered a lawless population of freebooters, ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... legal tie mattered as little as if Mortimer had been transposed by some beneficent law to the status of a brother. The will when it is strong enough can control acts, and, when favored by bias, thought; but it has no command whatever over the sub-consciousness, and in that mysterious region are the subtle inheritances of mind and character, the springs and the direction, of all functional life; a fate with a thousand threads on her wheel, filaments from the souls and the bodies, the minds and the acts, of every ancestor straight back to that vast impersonal ocean where, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... the garret of a country home can ever forget its mysterious charm. But I must remember that I am writing of flowers, and leave the captivating subject of garrets. Multitudes of potent herbs may now be found in the woods, by the road-side, everywhere: tansy, camomile, wormwood, everlasting, wild basil, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sight. Then, if you should hear some time that he has ended the struggle with pistol, rope, or poison, thus decreasing the income of yourself and your partner, the dram-seller, you can console yourself with pious reflections on the mysterious ways ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... as far as man could go in crime. But he was arrested and saved in a moment. And mark you, he was not coerced. No violence was done to his perfect freedom. Every man is free; that is his birthright; in Saul's case he was not asked to surrender an iota of it. Yet by some mysterious divine power he changed in a moment of time. Henceforth he was a new man, with a new heart, new ideals, new hopes, new ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... the play; and though the general purport of the principal speeches has been sometimes preserved, the language and sentiments are generally extremely different. The character of Shakespeare's Hamlet was wholly unsuited to the taste of a French audience. What is the great attraction in that mysterious being to the feelings of the English people, the strange, wild, and metaphysical ideas which his art or his madness seems to take such pleasure in starting, and the uncertainty in which Shakespeare ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... retorted, shaking my head, "the genus 'Boy' is distinguished by the two attributes, dirt and appetite. You should know that by this time. I myself have harrowing recollections of huge piles of bread and butter, of vast slabs of cake—damp and 'soggy,' and of mysterious hue—of glutinous mixtures purporting to be 'stick-jaw,' one inch of which was warranted to render coherent speech impossible for ten minutes at least. And then the joy of bolting things fiercely in the shade of the pantry, with one's ears on the stretch for foes! I sometimes find myself sighing ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... nigh, Scevinus seemed to grow more and more excited with the thoughts of what was before him. He attracted the attention of the domestics at his house, by his strange and mysterious demeanor. He held a long and secret consultation with Natalis, another conspirator, on the day before the one appointed for the execution of the plot, under such circumstances as to increase still more the wonder and curiosity of his servants. He formally executed his will, ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... have been speaking grows with its roots "in the pure river of the water of Life, which proceeds from the throne of God and the Lamb." What exactly the author of the book meant by this passage has been much debated. It is clear that there is here a veiled allusion to the Zodiac—that mysterious belt of constellations which runs like a river round the whole starry heavens, and rises in the constellation of the Ram or He-lamb—but to debate that question now would be unprofitable, even were one fully competent to do so. More to the point is it to see that this remarkable ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... the sea-republic, except the fine, and in most parts well-conditioned walls. Here and there a double-arched window, with a bit of fine carving in the capitals, peeps out from the jutting uglinesses of seraglio windows, close latticed and mysterious; one or two fine doorways, neglected and battered as to their ornamentation, some coats of arms, three or four arched gateways, and as many fountains, are all that will catch the eye of the artist inside the walls, unless ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... two pontoon bridges. A glaring fire wine-tinted the waters of the river. Its rays, shining upon the moving masses of troops, brought forth here and there sudden gleams of silver or gold. Upon the other shore a dark and mysterious range of hills was curved against the sky. The insect voices of the night ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... clambering up the heap of rubbish to the breach. The French had no idea of the existence of the counterscarp. The ladders that they had brought were too short to enable them to descend it, and the officer in command hesitated as to what course to adopt. The mysterious silence maintained by the enemy was disquieting. That the Turks had all fled and the tower was undefended did not occur to the officer in command, and he feared that they must have placed mines in the breach, and were for the present abstaining from showing themselves or firing ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... would have been but two hours since, feeling his hair stand on end, and a cold sweat began to stream down his face as the strange fantastic being step by step approached him. At length the apparition paused, the prisoner and he stood face to face for a moment, their eyes riveted; then the mysterious stranger spoke in ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... they seemed insurmountable—all these have given a hasty and peremptory cast to his character, which can neither endure contradiction nor make allowance for deficiencies. Then he is himself so very accomplished. Do you know, there was a murmur, half confirmed too by some mysterious words which dropped from my poor mother, that he possesses other sciences, now lost to the world, which enable the possessor to summon up before him the dark and shadowy forms of future events! Does not the very idea of such a power, or even of the high talent ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... fountain? As he sat in the hot garden, with his back against the old gray wall, the nest of his family for countless generations, with the scent of the flowers in his nostrils, and the sound of the bees in his ears, it had begun to dawn upon him that he had lost the stream of his childhood, the mysterious, infinite idea of endless, inexplicable, original birth, of outflowing because of essential existence within! There was no production any more, nothing but a mere rushing around, like the ring-sea of Saturn, in a never ending circle of formal change! Like a great dish, the mighty ocean was ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... There were mysterious rumours afloat about treasure which had been buried by the pirates in Texas, known only to him; a thing not improbable, as the creeks, lagoons, and bays of that country had always been a favourite resort of these freebooters; but nothing had ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... all the ordure through which it has been dragged, love, eternal and fatal love, is none the less a celestial law as powerful and as incomprehensible as that which suspends the sun in the heavens. What is this mysterious bond, stronger and more durable than iron, that can neither be seen nor touched? What is there in meeting a woman, in looking at her, in speaking one word to her, and then never forgetting her? Why this one rather than that one? Invoke the aid of reason, or habit, of the senses, ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... Unresisting, with eyes still closed, silent, she was carried upstairs and laid in her bed. Her mother sat by her. Midnight came, and Hood did not return. Already Mrs. Hood had begun to suspect something mysterious in Emily's anxiety; her own fears now became active. She went to the front door and stood there with impatience, by turns angry and alarmed. Her husband had never been so late. She returned ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... little ball of fur clumsy, stupid, bewildered, but natural. Let but a few months pass, and when you repeat the process you will find nature buried in convention. He will do nothing plainly; but the simplest processes of our material life will all be bent into the forms of an elaborate and mysterious etiquette. Instinct, says the fool, has awakened. But it is not so. Some dogs - some, at the very least - if they be kept separate from others, remain quite natural; and these, when at length they meet with a companion of experience, and have the game explained to ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... slow and cold. Life itself, the Doctor thought, impatiently, was cool and tardy here among the hills. Even he fell into the tranquil tone, and chafed under it. Nowhere else did the evening gray and sombre into the mysterious night impalpably as here. The quiet, wide and deep, folded him in, forced his trivial heat into silence and thought. The world seemed to think there. Quiet in the dead seas of fog, that filled the valleys like restless vapour curdled into silence; quiet in the ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... are ye the man to let her? Are ye willin' to run on her errants, to fetch her dinners ez ye do? Thar ez men ez does it; not yer in Californy, but over in the States thar's fellows is willing to take that situation. I've heard," continued Bill, in a low, mysterious voice, as of one describing the habits of the Anthropophagi—"I've heard o' fellows ez call themselves men, sellin' of themselves to rich women in that way. I've heard o' rich gals buyin' of men ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... classes, and were themselves too poor to have any but unpleasant relations with men of business. Now merchants were becoming ambassadors of civilization, and had developed intellect so as to control distant and, as it seemed, mysterious sources of wealth; by a stroke of the pen and largely through the coffee houses they had come to know their ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... speed of bird and wind And sunbeam's glance will lend to me, That, soaring upward, I may find My resting-place and home in Thee? Thou, whom my soul, midst doubt and gloom, Adoreth with a fervent flame,— Mysterious spirit! unto whom Pertain nor ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... with sustained energy to building up the fortunes of Cesare, whom he released from all ecclesiastical obligations, and to whose service he seemed bound by some mysterious power. Nor did he even resent the savageness and cruelty which this young hell-cat vented in his presence on the persons of his favorites. At one time Cesare stabbed Perotto, the Pope's minion, with his own hand, when the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... go without protest or reproach. A mysterious lesion seemed to have taken place, I felt astonished and relieved, yet I was heavy with sadness. My emancipation had been bought at a price. Something hitherto spontaneous, warm and living was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Fitzpatrick, who lived a few doors away in the only house that had been able to resist the Galician invasion. It had not escaped Mrs. Fitzpatrick's eye nor her kindly heart, as Paulina moved in and out about her duties, that she would ere long pass into that mysterious valley of life and death where a woman needs a woman's help; and so when the hour came, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, with fine contempt of "haythen" skill and efficiency, came upon the scene and took command. It took her only a few moments to clear from ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... charms of talent hid these faults from every eye; faults all the more odious in a woman, since she can only please by self-sacrifice and unselfishness; but nothing escapes the eye of a good father, and Monsieur de Fontaine often tried to explain to his daughter the more important pages of the mysterious book of life. Vain effort! He had to lament his daughter's capricious indocility and ironical shrewdness too often to persevere in a task so difficult as that of correcting an ill-disposed nature. He contented himself with giving her from time to time some gentle and kind advice; but he had ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... it," said Raed, "if we can. But let's make sure of our breakfast first. I suppose there will be no great danger in letting down the boat as soon as it gets fairly light, will there, captain? This iceberg seems to be a rather mysterious chap. I propose that we circumnavigate it in the boat. Perhaps we may find a chance ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... than a common language or set of languages; but it is a simulacrum, and a simulacrum only. It is neither a proof nor a product of true unity. Language passes from conqueror to conquered, from conquered to conqueror, almost indifferently. Convenience, accident, and many a mysterious force which the historian cannot analyze, propagates it, or checks it. Gaul, thickly populated, organized by but a few garrisons of Roman soldiers and one army corps of occupation, learns to talk Latin universally, almost within living ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... Bulgaria;[15] who, less advanced in civilization than the tribes bordering on Italy, could as yet neither write nor read; while the latter were already in possession of an alphabet of an ancient and mysterious origin. For the first appearance of the Glagolitic letters, (glagol signifies in Slavic word, or rather verb,) is still buried in perfect darkness. An almost fabulous antiquity has been ascribed to this alphabet by various old writers. According ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... found the library. He made several journeys. He brought up twenty-seven volumes bound in white vellum with marbled boards, a set of Shakespeare, ten volumes in green morocco. These made pillars and cloisters, dark, mysterious, and attractive. More Noah's Ark animals added an Egyptian-looking ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... did not respond to it. But, though bitterly angry, for the moment she was cowed, and she made no further reference to the mysterious lady. ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... greater law-binding effect than the commands of the civil functionary. The gownsman used those weapons appropriate to his office which best touched the sensibilities and won the adhesion of a rude audience. The priest appealed to the soul, to the unknown, to the awful and the mysterious. Go where he would, the convert's imagination was so pervaded with the mystic tuition that he came to regard his tutor as a being above common humanity. The feeling of dread reverence which he instilled into the hearts ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... to signify their will by omens, and also by the following methods: the ordeal, in which the innocence or guilt of a person was shown by the way the god permitted him to endure fire or other torture; exorcism, the driving out of demons by saying mysterious words or names over them. Becoming skilled in interpreting the will of the gods, the Druids came ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... a ploughed field, and the rich brown earth heaved in a great circle against the sky and in the depth of its furrows there were mysterious velvet shadows—the brown hedges stood back against the sky line. The world was so fresh and clean and strong this morning that the figure and voice of his grandfather hung unpleasantly about him and depressed him. There were so many things that he wanted to ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... way—though not so far as from the place of Finn's captivity to the Sussex Downs—and carries misery with it just as far as ever it can reach. Upon the hearer who has any bowels of compassion it falls with a weight of physical appeal which may not be denied. Above all, it is a strange, mysterious, uncanny cry, and not a sound which can be ignored. It is a sound to fetch you hurriedly from your bed at midnight; and that though you had been sunk in dreamless sleep when first it smote its ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... powers—the enterprise of the soul, to raise itself again to its original high estate. It was curiosity which stimulated the great Newton to search into the laws of heaven, and enabled his master-mind to translate the vast mysterious page of Nature, ever before our eyes since the creation of the world, but never, till he appeared, to be read by mortal man. It is this passion which must be nurtured in our childhood, for upon its healthy growth and vigour depends the ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... was obeyed, the slight demonstration proved sufficient, and the mysterious division drew away again out of range. In the meantime our main body advanced steadily, and kept up a brisk fire on the Nabob's camp with our artillery. On this some of the retiring troops showed a disposition to come ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... is, having too this strange interest, that though mainly characterised by a great plainness and simplicity of thought, and, in the earlier stages, of expression, we feel, oftentimes, a sudden weirdness, a strange glamour shoots across the poem when the tale seems to open for a moment into mysterious depths, druidic secrets veiled by time, unsunned caves of thought, indicating a still deeper range of feeling, a still lower and wider reach of imagination. A youth came once to the Fianna Eireen encamped at Locha Lein [Note: The Lakes of Killarney.], ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... not uncommon in the Dry-towns, are based on expediency and suspicion, and are frequently, though not always loveless. It explained Dallisa's taunts, and it partly explained, only partly, why I found her in my arms. It did not explain Rakhal's part in this mysterious intrigue, nor why Kyral had taken me for Rakhal, (but only after he remembered ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... at this mysterious occurrence that they positively got frightened. They began to shout excitedly, calling for help. In a moment the alarm was given, a crowd of men rushed at us, and, with their swords drawn, surrounded us. One man, braver than the rest, gave Mansing a ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... then connect her friend of the music and laughter with the boy of the Hill Place. How could she, when Jerry-Jo's description still stood unchallenged in her mind? Indeed, the stranger did not seem wholly of the earth, earthy. She had accepted him as another phase evolved by the mysterious rite—a new revelation of the ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... ago), but the emperor refused to part with the beloved body. Neglectful of all matters of state, he remained in the mortuary chamber day after day. His trusty adviser, Turpin, suspecting the presence of some mysterious talisman, slipped into the room while the emperor, exhausted with fasting and weeping, was wrapped in sleep. After carefully searching for the magic jewel, Turpin discovered it, at last, in the dead ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... mystical poets, knew better than to countenance this frivolity. Recognising that there is a profound and intimate correspondence between all physical manifestations and the life of the soul, they flung the reins on the neck of metaphor in the hope that it might carry them over that mysterious frontier. Their failures and misadventures, familiarly despised as "conceits," left them floundering in absurdity. Yet not since the time of Donne and Crashaw has the full power and significance of figurative language been realised in English poetry. These poets, like some of their late descendants, ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... and a sudden blowing of horns, and firing of guns, announced the arrival of the assailants at the turnpike selected for attack. The work of demolition was soon effected: gate, posts, and tollhouse were razed to the ground; and the work was no sooner done than the mysterious assailants galloped off, firing their guns and blowing their horns; and no trace was to be found of the quarter whence they had come, or to what place they had retreated. At first the trustees re-erected some ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... regard to worth becomes aware of any marked superiority in a fellow creature,—an experience which in unhappy lives very seldom occurs,—a feeling of certainty usually accompanies it, which is as mysterious as the evidence upon which it is based is intangible and elusive. A man knows that he has met his superior, he knows too how far the superiority he recognises extends, and he is conscious of experiencing something exceptional, ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... lower classes that the agents of Hanno's vengeance operated. Among these the disappearance of so many men who were regarded as leaders among the rest spread a deep and mysterious fear. Although none dared to complain openly, the news of these mysterious disappearances was not long in reaching the leaders of ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... their courses keep, But not angels of the deep: Day and night their turn observe, But the day of day may swerve. Is there warrant that the waves Of thought in their mysterious caves Will heap in me their highest tide, In me therewith beatified? Unsure the ebb and flood of thought, The ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... difficulty obtained it. He went to London, waited on Secretary Falconer, and found him ten times more official in his style of conversation than in his letters. Godfrey recollected that his cousin Cunningham had always been solemnly inclined, but now he found him grown so mysterious, that he could scarcely obtain a plain answer to the simplest question. "The whole man, head and heart, seemed," as Godfrey said, "to be diplomatically closed." It was clear, from the little that Cunningham did articulate, that he ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... of days To us is sensible; and each revolve Of the recording sun conducts us on Further in life, and nearer to our goal. Not so with Time,—mysterious chronicler, He knoweth not mutation;—centuries Are to his being as a day, and days As centuries.—Time past, and Time to come, Are always equal; when the world began ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... of "the great game" as it is played behind the latticed windows of the harem. It is not only in London and Berlin and Washington and Paris that wives and daughters of diplomats boost the business of their men-folk. In this mysterious, women's world of Turkey there are curious complications; as when a Young Turk, with a Paris veneer, has taken as second or third wife a European woman. One wonders which of these heavily veiled figures on the Galata Bridge, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... and trouble to fix the verse in his memory. Nika, needing no advice, had long ago decided what to do. Every day as soon as the meals were over, she silently disappeared. Agnes and Cornelli bolted the door of the music room and let mysterious songs issue from behind it. Only Dino was still undecided about his task. When he was left alone with his mother and Mux one day, and all the others were busy with their preparations, he said: "Tell me what ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... edition is said to be of 1585;[62] the third, Paris, 1618. Bungus is not for my purpose on his own score, but those who gave the numbers their mysterious characters: he is but a collector. He quotes or uses 402 authors, as we are informed by his list; this just beats Warburton,[63] whom some eulogist or satirist, I forget which, holds up as having used ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... friends joined us in taking tea. Cups, glasses, cakes, champagne bottles, cakes and cold meats, crept somehow from mysterious corners in our vehicles. The station master was evidently accustomed to visits like this, as his rooms were ready for our reception. We were two hours in making our adieus, and consuming the various articles provided for the occasion. There was a general ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Still, Lucian had ample courage, and more curiosity, for the adventure, as the chance of it stirred up that desire for romance which belongs peculiarly to youth. Also he was anxious to satisfy himself concerning the blind shadows, and curious to learn why Berwin inhabited so dismal and mysterious a mansion. Add to these reasons a keen pleasure in profiting by the occurrence of the unexpected, and you will guess that Denzil ended by accepting the ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... in long review: Each spurs his jaded Pegasus apace, And Rhyme and Blank maintain an equal race; Sonnets on sonnets crowd, and ode on ode; And Tales of Terror [21] jostle on the road; Immeasurable measures move along; For simpering Folly loves a varied song, 150 To strange, mysterious Dulness still the friend, Admires the strain she cannot comprehend. Thus Lays of Minstrels [22]—may they be the last!— On half-strung harps whine mournful to the blast. While mountain spirits prate to river sprites, That dames ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... house, that Nicholas explained his protege's reason for remaining behind; nor so much as hinted at his secret doubts, or the fact that he had left a cold luncheon spread on the kitchen-table, in case the mysterious Prince should not, after all, send ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... a little this mysterious flight of Frejus, Dubois told me he had news of Villeroy. He said that the Marechal had not ceased to cry out against the outrage committed upon his person, the audacity of the Regent, the insolence of Dubois, or to hector Artagnan all the way for having lent himself to such criminal violence; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... copy and lay-out and type-face, in a corner of the Grey-Matter office, contributed to the triumphant prosperity and grace of this unconscious beneficiary? Indeed she seemed to him, fiercely tormenting himself with her loveliness, a symbol of the mysterious and subtle power of publicity. It was Advertising that had done this—that had enabled Mr. Chapman, a shy and droll little person, to surround this girl with all the fructifying glories of civilization—to foster and cherish her until she shone upon the earth ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... looking down upon us, and here was one more happy band drawing more closely to each other since separated from friends at home, enacting over again such scenes as the famous river has witnessed upon its bosom for thousands of years—one generation going and another coming, but the mysterious Nile remaining to welcome each succeeding ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Do tell me what for, Carter!" Betty cried. "I thought Bob Henderson was awfully mysterious this morning at breakfast. Do you know what is in ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... cheerfully. "I must decline to yield to your argument, and stick to my decision. What I want to talk to you about, Mr. Moran, is not your own case, save as it may please you, but about the mysterious death of ...
— Snow on the Headlight - A Story of the Great Burlington Strike • Cy Warman
... at a distance; so he said to him, "Despair not, valiant knight, nor regard as an untoward fate the position in which thou findest thyself; it may be that by these slips thy crooked fortune will make itself straight; for heaven by strange circuitous ways, mysterious and incomprehensible to man, raises up the fallen ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... conceive, and hints of ancient harmonies in nature. This ignorance at least is largely irremediable. We shall never learn the affinities of beauty, for they lie too deep in nature and too far back in the mysterious history of man. The amateur, in consequence, will always grudgingly receive details of method, which can be stated but never can wholly be explained; nay, on the principle laid ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... largest S.A.T.C. enrolment of any university in the country, Michigan gladly devoted all her resources to the one supreme aim of training soldiers. Practically every fraternity house was turned over to the War Department as a barracks; the mysterious Greek letters were dropped and henceforth they were known simply by number—officially at least. The sum of $260,000 was borrowed from the State War Board to hasten the completion of the Union sufficiently to serve as a mess hall ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... little box of ointment which the dervish shewed me had something in it more precious than all the riches which I was obliged to him for: the place from whence the dervish took it, said I to myself, and his care to secure it, makes me believe there is something mysterious in it. This determined me to obtain it. I had just embraced him and bade him adieu; but as I turned about from him, I said, "What will you do with that little box of ointment? It seems such a trifle, it is not ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... won't shut herself up," Burns had suggested, though he himself had been unable to discover the mysterious attraction of the little old house. The garden promised better, he thought. He could understand her being caught by the forsaken though powerful charm of that. Doubtless it would furnish backgrounds for her outdoor photography, which would put to blush any painted screens such as the ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... that wondrous and mysterious principle, life, are completely dependent upon the decomposition of organised matter. Not an effort of the mind, not a motion of the body, can be accomplished without involving the destruction of a portion ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... were idly watching some hospital people bury a dead Turk. The dragoman at once dashed forward to peer through the throng and see the face of the corpse. Then he came and supplicated Coleman as if he were hawking him to look at a relic and Coleman moved by a strong, mysterious impulse, went forward to look at the poor little clay-coloured body. At that moment a snake ran out from a tuft of grass at his feet and wriggled wildly over the sod. The dragoman shrieked, of ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... that to which the memory of humanity reverts as to its dim golden age, and which ever expresses the bright dream of our youth, ere the rigor of misfortune or the dulness of experience has spoilt it. The dramatis personae are three individuals, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. There are the mysterious tree, with its wonderful fruit,—the beautiful, but inquisitive woman,—the thoughtful, but too compliant man,—and the insinuating reptile. One speaks, the other rejoins, and the third fills up ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... also, but fortunately for him, an inflammation of the knee kept him at home. Ojeda was in such a hurry to get to El Dorado—for it was in the territory to the southward of his allotment, that the mysterious city was supposed to be located—that he did not stop at Jamaica to take off Esquivel's head—a good thing for him, as ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... mysterious sentence is one of many scattered through, the Diary, which, aided by dashes and omission-marks by the editorial son, point to certain sentimentalisms in which Crabbe was still indulging, even in the vortex of fashionable gaieties. We gather throughout that the ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... the dust of ages, and now awaking to the broad daylight of science in order to reveal the age of the old world to the new! Is this not solemn and terrible, Lelia? Within the dried-up entrails of a human corpse the inquisitive glance of our century discovered the papyrus, that mysterious and sacred monument of man's eternal power—the still dark but incontrovertible witness of the imposing duration of creation. Our eager hand unrolls those perfumed bandages, those frail and indissoluble shrouds at which destruction stopt short. These bandages that once enfolded a corpse, these ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... and she urged John on no account to part with it, as there was no telling what revenge the fairies might take if their wishes were set aside. And the old wool-gatherer proceeded to tell such wonderful stories of the terrible vengeance wrought by these mysterious little beings on people who had despised their gifts, that the shepherd was glad to put an end to such unpleasant suggestions by walking off at a rapid pace ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... it is impossible to say which), sufficiently proved. Now, when one considers the inevitable hurry and trepidation of Mary under the circumstances stated, time barely sufficing for any chance of executing her errand, it becomes evident that she must have connected some deep feeling of mysterious uneasiness with the movements of this unknown man; else, assuredly, she would not have found her attention disposable for such a case. Thus far, she herself threw some little light upon what it might be that, semi- consciously, was then passing through her mind; she said, that, notwithstanding the ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... Bunyip! the Bunyip!" and they tumbled over one another in their hurry to get away from a place haunted, as they thought, by that wicked demon which they fear so much. At full speed they fled back to their camp, with the sound of Dot's cries, and the mysterious bellowing noise, following them on the breeze; and they never stopped running until they regained the light of their camp fires. There they told the "Gins," in awe-struck voices, how it had been no Kangaroo they had hunted, but the "Bunyip," who had pretended to be one. And the Black gins' eyes ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... Oh, that mysterious singing sadness of youth! Exotic colors in the lamplit darkness of wet streets, Musk and roses in the twilight, The moon in the park like ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... News reports the mysterious disappearance from the Government Saw Mills at Portsmouth, of 2,570 feet of deal. "No one can say," it is added, "what became of the wood." Why, it walked off of course, with so many feet the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 9, 1892 • Various
... no means willing to give up a certainty for an uncertainty. Yesterday's lesson had been well learned; she turned back to the questions about the State of Kansota, and at the first sentence the mysterious visitor's dignity melted into an unconscious smile. He listened intently for a minute, and then seemed to reoccupy himself with his own thoughts and purposes, looking eagerly about the old school-house, and sometimes gazing steadily at the children. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of her "servants." She readily consented, and, accordingly, a night- School was opened in the very woodshop in which he worked by day. Here young Flipper was initiated into the first of the three mysterious R's, viz., "reading 'riting and 'rithmetic." Here, in 1864, at eight years of age, his education began. And the first book he ever studied—I dare say ever saw—was a confederate reprint of Webster's "Blueback Speller." His then ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... gayety. Strange that the man who suffers wishes to make her whom he loves suffer! To lose control of one's self, is that not the worst of evils? Is there anything more cruel for a woman than to hear a man turn to derision all that is sacred and mysterious? Yet she did not flee from me; she remained at my side, while in my savage humor I insulted love and allowed insane ravings to escape from lips that were still moist with ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... robber had gone, he loaded his fellow-traveller with abuse, declaring her to be in confederacy with the highwayman. She replied that certainly appearances were against her; but if the company in the stage would sup at her house the following evening, she would explain a conduct which appeared so mysterious. After a debate among themselves, they consented to go the next evening according to her invitation. They were ushered into a magnificent room, where an elegant supper was served, after which, the lady taking a pocket-book from her pocket, showed that it contained ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... they have not had a thought of their own.... I do not speak of the cat, to whom we are nothing more than a too large and uneatable prey: the ferocious cat whose side long contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in our own homes. She at least curses us in her mysterious heart: but all the others live beside us as they might live beside a ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... countenance betokened agitation; it was plain she was wrestling with her conscience, and the battle still hung dubious. The question of what to do troubled me extremely. I could not venture to touch such an intricate and mysterious piece of machinery as my landlady's spiritual nature; it might go off at a word, and in any direction, like a badly-made firework. And while I praised myself extremely for my wisdom in the past, that I had made so much a friend of her, I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... came the closed and mysterious box-cars, important with big numbers and initials in cabalistic sequence, indicating a wide and exciting range of travels. Then came stock cars, from between the slats of which strange and envied cattle looked out on their way to a ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... nature put under contribution; here he is at large, 'making what work he pleases.' He who is content to talk from his chair of professional learning of 'pieces of leather,' and their unions, and bid his pupil note and 'consider well' that mysterious, unknown, unexplored power in nature, which holds their particles together, in its wrestling with its opposite; and where it ceases, or seems to cease; where that obstinate freedom and predominance ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... Compiegne as a historic wildwood goes back to the Druids who practiced their mysterious rites under its antique shade centuries before the coming of the kings, who later called it their own special hunting preserve. Stone hatchets, not unlike the tomahawks of the red man, have been found and traced back—well, definitely to the Stone Age, and ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... story of the days of the French Revolution, abounding in dramatic incident, with a young English soldier of fortune, daring, mysterious ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... of ship-masts, and forests of steam-chimneys; the sailors are singing on board the ships, the bargees salute you with oaths, grins, and phrases facetious and familiar; the man on the paddle-box roars, "Ease her, stop her!" which mysterious words a shrill voice from below repeats, and pipes out, "Ease her, stop her!" in echo; the deck is crowded with groups of figures, and the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to one who so seldom wept; and they were blessed, for a heavy weight seemed removed from the orphan's heart, the torturing secret was revealed; she might weep now without restraint, and never more would her conduct appear mysterious either to her aunt or uncle. They now knew it was no caprice that bade her refuse every offer of marriage that was made her. How that treasured secret had escaped her she knew not; she had been carried on by an impulse she could neither resist nor understand. At the first, ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... river canon is built up in stories of basalt rock, each story defined by a horizontal fissure, out of which these mysterious waters gush, white and cold, taking glorious colors in the sunlight from the rich under-painting of the rock. There is an awfulness about it, too, as if that sheer front of rock were the retaining-wall of a reservoir as deep as the bluffs are high, which had sprung a leak in a thousand places, ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... A deep silence pervaded the party. Night was above us with her mysterious stars. The ancient forest stretched around us on every side, and a foreboding sadness sunk upon my heart. Memory was busy with the events of many years. I retraced step by step the pilgrimage of my past life, until arriving at that passage in its sombre history, I gazed through tears upon ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine,[23] Poet Laureat, and Bard-in-Chief, in and over the districts and countries of Kyle, Cunningham, and Carrick, of old extent,—To our trusty and well-beloved William Chalmers and John M'Adam, students and practitioners in the ancient and mysterious science of ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... said Inspector MacDonald. "You met Mr. Douglas in a boarding house in London, did you not, and became engaged to him there? Was there any romance, anything secret or mysterious, about the wedding?" ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... his death than he had done during his lifetime, as is not unfrequently the case with much greater men. The night succeeding the squall passed off, as far as I know, quietly enough; but the next morning I saw several groups of men talking together, as if something mysterious had occurred. ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... the first signal. The ships which until now had been at some distance apart were deliberately forming into the position necessary for their convoy. It was almost as if they were making ready for a naval attack; the boats slowed down, mysterious whistles were ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... when Adrian beheld before him the lofty mountains that shelter Palestrina, the Praeneste of the ancient world. Back to a period before Romulus existed, in the earliest ages of that mysterious civilisation which in Italy preceded the birth of Rome, could be traced the existence and the power of that rocky city. Eight dependent towns owned its sway and its wealth; its position, and the strength of those mighty walls, in whose ruins may yet ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sleep, it seems, Have ceaseless "rat-tats" thundered; All night through Daisy's rosy dreams Have devious Postmen blundered, Delivering letters round her bed,— Mysterious missives, sealed with red, And franked of course with due Queen's-head,— While Daisy lay ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... the sun shone but dimly there, and the landscape was always dark and wintry. Such is the impression which one carries away from the perusal of books like Bradford's and Winthrop's Journals, or Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World—an impression of gloom, of flight and cold, of mysterious fears besieging the infant settlements scattered in a narrow fringe "between the groaning forest and the shore." The Indian terror hung over New England for more than half a century, or until the issue of King Philip's War, in 1670, relieved ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... is an articulate sound," &c.—L. Murray's Gram., p. 7. But this confounding of the visible signs with the things which they signify, is very far from being a true account of either. Besides, letters combined are capable of a certain mysterious power which is independent of all sound, though speech, doubtless, is what they properly represent. In practice, almost all the letters may occasionally happen to be silent; yet are they not, in these cases, necessarily useless. The deaf and dumb also, to whom none of the letters express ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... to leave; but it was feared that the undiscriminating minds of the savages might not give proper weight to the consideration, or might ascribe it to some policy which was the more dreadful because so mysterious. It was seen now how great had been the mistake in permitting Sassacus, the terrible chief of the Pequots, the most dreaded and implacable foe of the Taranteens, to be present at the council. Him the Taranteens had seen in apparent good understanding with the ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... as we could, which was surprisingly little—I wonder if you would find more—and, all through, we made a special point of finding poems written about any of the events. We found Punch a valuable assistance, and we much enjoyed the cartoons and jokes which had been so mysterious to us before. Just that part of history which is not in "Bright," and which, yet, is before our time, is so very hard to find out about, and many allusions in the newspapers and parliamentary speeches are consequently ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... continue to supply Walworth with their produce, but, from motives of caprice or economy, would deliver it himself. Accordingly, the man you have seen pass this evening appeared; and all was uniform and punctual as before. In a few days, however, he came, attended by that mysterious female, dogged precisely as you have seen him an hour ago, and at once the heart of every cook and kitchen-maid in the parish was on fire with curiosity and suspicion. From the kitchen the contagion spread to the drawing-room, and commissions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... instance, retires, I hear him in conversation with the young porters mention the candidates for the post, explain that such a one would not be confirmed by the minister, that another would himself refuse to accept it, then drop into fantastic details concerning mysterious papers received in the office, secret conversations alleged to have taken place between the minister and the trustee, and so on. With the exception of these details, he almost always turns out to be right. His estimates of the candidates, though original, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm, and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer still were the faraway blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery, the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in the mist of their summits... There was peace and happiness... "I should wish for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there," thought Rostov. "In myself alone ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... stockbroker, and, by the methods peculiar to that mysterious profession, he had captured a sufficiency of money to enable him to regard the future with calmness and his fellow-creatures with condescension—perhaps the happiest state to which a certain humanity ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... world has been so misjudged as the Bible. Men judge it without reading it. Or perhaps they read a bit here and a bit there, and then close it saying, "It is so dark and mysterious!" You take a book, now-a-days, and read it. Some one asks you what you think about it. "Well," you say, "I have only read it through once, not very carefully, and I should not like to give an opinion." Yet people take up God's book, read a few pages, and condemn ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... court to a case of which he had been the prime mover and complainant. This was Secretary Brush; and the trial he had been urging on, through Stearns, the acting state's attorney, was that of the alleged murderer, to whose somewhat mysterious, as well as suspicious, arrest and imprisonment allusion has ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... Sponge, at least not until she saw further, had nevertheless got an idea that she was destined for a much higher sphere. Having duly considered all the circumstances of Mr. Spraggon's visit to Jawleyford Court, conned over several mysterious coughs and half-finished sentences he had indulged in, she had about come to the conclusion that the real object of his mission was to negotiate a matrimonial alliance on behalf of Lord Scamperdale. His lordship's constantly expressed intention of getting married ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... good physical condition and I am going to have the thing over with. I am therefore asking you to send the telegrams you will find further over, to two young surgeons I know who will be interested enough in the case to put up with the inconvenience of the place. I would not risk exciting this mysterious person by moving him to a hospital. Mrs. Lupo appears anxious to make amends and will remain to cook and help generally. I think you had better bring over the 'Comet' to take back your friend, Mr. R. Hook, who seems strangely ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... stopped. The document! In the middle of a left-hand page, his eyes saw the five mysterious lines of dots and figures! He made sure, with a glance, that the text was identical with that which he had studied so long; the same arrangement of the signs, the same intervals that permitted of the isolation of the word ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... Christendom as the victor of Lepanto, intoxicated himself with visions of a crown and the rank of 'Infant' of Spain, and from the moment of his apogee was swiftly cast down by his brother, Philip II, sent to undertake the impossible task of ruling the Low Countries, and left to die, forsaken, of a mysterious illness, at the age of twenty-eight, in a camp outside Namur. The story embraces the greater part of this Prince's short life, which was one glowing romance of love and war, played in the various splendours of Spain, Genoa, Venice, Naples, ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... oska-maer, wish- maidens, another name for the Valkyries—Odin's corse-choosers—who picked out the dead for him on the field of battle, and waited on the heroes in Valhalla. Again, the Edda is filled with 'choice things', possessing some mysterious power of their own, some 'virtue', as our older English would express it, which belong to this or that god, and are occasionally lent or lost. Thus, Odin himself had a spear which gave victory to those on whose side it was hurled; Thor, a hammer which destroyed ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... officers and agents were to have been resisted by the crew of the vessel, consisting partly of American citizens. Such events are too serious, too possible, to be left to hazard, or to what is more than hazard, the will of an agent whose designs are so mysterious. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... wave which, I hear, has swept over Rome as well as London is a wave of early peace expectation. The British newspapers have lately been encouraging this by mysterious phrases. Some men here of good sense and sound judgment think that this is the result of the so-called German "peace offensive," which makes the present the most dangerous ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... gentility of a ship and her crew depend upon the length and character of the voyage. An India or China voyage always is the thing, and a voyage to the Northwest coast (the Columbia River or Russian America) for furs is romantic and mysterious, and if it takes the ship round the world, by way of the Islands and China, it out-ranks them all. The grave, slab-sided mate of the schooner leaned over the rail, and spoke to the men in our boat: "Where are you from?'' Joe answered ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... three days in bed for the cunning little murderers, after which brother and sister both went out with 'em on horseback, with the same mysterious results—except that Rex II didn't get in till next day and looked like he'd come through a feed chopper. For the next hunt, four days after that, the old lady went, too, all of 'em on horseback; but the same slinking marauder got at the pack before they ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... called upon hereafter to deal with forces yet undiscovered. The developments of science have brought to your aid things as mysterious as life, which no mind can penetrate. You are now called upon to use electricity as a motive power and as light. You must develop these secrets of nature, and you will have no more fear of the exhaustion of gold, for these new powers will contribute ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... host of questions relating to entomology or philosophy; others ask him for impossible answers to some of the fascinating and mysterious problems which he has expounded; women confide in him their little private griefs or their intimate sorrows, a naive form of homage; but a thousand times more touching than any other, and one that ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... that a king is above the laws, he did not understand this in the popular sense; nor was he the inventor or the reviver of similar doctrines. In all his mysterious flights on the nature of "The Prerogative Royal," James only maintained what Elizabeth and all the Tudors had, as jealously, but more energetically exercised.[A] Elizabeth left to her successor the royal prerogative strained to its highest pitch, with no means to support a throne ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... France from its new master than time showed to be in store. Other republicans besides herself had been disposed to build high their hopes of this future "saviour of society" in his youthful days of adversity and mysterious obscurity. When in confinement at the fortress of Ham, in 1844, Louis Napoleon sent to George Sand his work on the Extinction of Pauperism. She wrote back a flattering letter in which, however, with characteristic sincerity, she is careful to remind him that the party to which she belonged ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... this time. His awaking had been sudden; and the horror that he found in the object that now presented itself was, that the shuffling sound that arose from the ladder was the step of Doom,—and the mysterious visitant was stealing towards him to make him its prey. There arose within him an awful anticipation. His eyes fixed themselves upon the place where the light was shining; all his soul awaited, in dreadful expectation, the appearance of the mysterious visitor, and as the stealthy step ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... has lived so intensely, made so much progress, been of such historical importance and yet about whom so comparatively little is known. His history is like the Mardi Gras of the city of New Orleans, beautiful and mysterious and wonderful, but with a serious thought underlying it all. May it be better known ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... about his death," he said. "The man shot himself with an old dueling pistol that hung above the mantel in his library. The family, when they found him, put the pistol back on the nail and fitted the affair with the stock properties of a mysterious assassin. ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... country-club porch if I had had my luck with me. Now what was I to think her—an escaped lunatic or something more accountable and therefore worse? If I detest anything, it is the unconventional, the stagy, the mysterious. Setting my teeth, I resolved to wait until she concluded her researches; after that, politely but ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... mysterious part of the letter, where he speaks of one word which would be of such infinite importance, it is difficult, if not rather utterly impossible, to explain it by any rational conjecture. Mr. Macpherson's favourite hypothesis, that the Prince of Orange had been ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... nightfall with the spoils of ocean, mostly young sharks, to judge by the display in the market. Their white sails bear fabulous devices in golden colour of moons and crescents and dolphins; some are marked like the "orange-tip" butterfly. A gunboat is now stationed here on a mysterious errand connected with the Albanian rising on the other side of the Adriatic. There has been whispered talk of illicit volunteering among the youth on this side, which the government is anxious to prevent. And to enliven ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... plain gold circlet set with a single small ruby. It was cut through and twisted out of shape, just as I had anticipated; and as I examined it I wondered what part it had played and was yet destined to play in the drama of Veronica Jeffrey's mysterious life and still more mysterious death. That it was a factor of some importance, arguing some early school-girl love, I could but gather from the fact that its removal from her finger was effected ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... Are we not unwittingly expressing the unconscious yearning of the fractions to merge once more in the sweet kinship of the unit, of the ninths and the nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninths of humanity to merge their differences in the mighty generalisation Man, of man to merge his finite existence in the mysterious infinite, the undivided, indivisible One, to 'be made one,' as theology phrases it, 'with God'? How the complex life of our time longs to return to its first happy state of simplicity, we feel on every hand. What is Socialism but a vast throb of man's desire after unity? ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... What possible prospect of escape have we? Is it not a certainty that we shall perish miserably by thirst and starvation if we succeed in avoiding death by drowning? I must confess that I shall bitterly regret the respite that has in some mysterious way come to me, if I am doomed to linger on and endure the protracted horrors of death from ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... when she called on Alice, the latter invited her visitor up into her own chamber, and seating her there, said, with a mysterious air: ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the chant of the birds, so joyous that it seemed impossible they sang in a world of sorrow. Hidden among the leaves, aloft in the beeches, the linnet sang with full-throated melody, and the blackbird and the thrush. In the distance a cuckoo called its mysterious note, and far away, like an ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... discrimination alone will find, and a man of the very highest genius will alone depict after he has discovered it. The characters of Shakespeare are not more exclusively human, not more perfectly men and women as they live and move, than those of this mysterious author. It is from this circumstance that, as we have already observed, many of his personages are supposed to be sketched from real life. He must have mixed much and variously in the society of his native ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... of the highest importance from the practical standpoint that we decide whether the Holy Spirit is merely some mysterious and wonderful power that we in our weakness and ignorance are somehow to get hold of and use, or whether the Holy Spirit is a real Person, infinitely holy, infinitely wise, infinitely mighty and infinitely tender who is to get hold of and use us. The former conception is utterly heathenish, not ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... rejoice and thank God with you for this great mercy. After your sad account of your dear wife and her falls in escaping we feared much for her, but what a joy to have another living babe in place of the sweet little one whom the Good Shepherd has folded in His own arms.... How mysterious it seems that everything, just when completed, should thus in a moment have been destroyed; and then, just when the fire came, that the children should have been so ill: but if trials like these do make us cling the more to the Mighty One shall it not be well?... L550 is now in hand for ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... coil, through an open door, into a smaller room on the right. In this room was a small table carrying a Crookes tube connected with the coil. The most striking object in the room, however, was a huge and mysterious tin box about seven feet high and four feet square. It stood on end, like a huge packing case, its side being perhaps five inches from ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... when we were alone—we walked slowly from end to end of the Belvidere. The moon was, by this time, low in the heavens; but her mild mysterious light still streamed over the roof of the house and the high heathy ground round it. I looked attentively at Romayne. He was deadly pale; his hand shook as it rested on my arm—and that was all. Neither in look nor manner did he betray the faintest ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... still out at church. My wife meanwhile could hardly make out these scenes that were transpiring, not seeming to dare to interrupt the proceedings with one French word to me; and my sister not having yet thought to ask me who this mysterious woman was, she followed me indoors without any questioning and like myself sat down. I pulled off my knapsack, and the shaving-tackle was brought out; but it put me so much in mind of the ceremony with the iron hoop when we crossed ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... at Thoresby that Lady Mary's strange love affair with the handsome Mr. Edward Wortley, of Wharncliffe Chase—the abode of the Dragon of Wantley—began, and after many difficulties ended in one of the most mysterious marriages that ever puzzled literary students. When a girl of fourteen she met the gentleman at a party, and was delighted with the attraction which he found in her conversation. She became a particular friend of his sister, with whom she commenced a sentimental correspondence—most ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... this poor idiot has uttered no other words than these," said the doctor to Madame George, who looked at the Schoolmaster with horror; "what mysterious events are connected with these words, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... by this very thoughtlessness that the fame of some men is created. It rises gradually, like one of those mysterious mounds in barbarous countries, to which a stone is added by every passerby; each one brings something at random, and adds it as he passes, without being able himself to see whether he is raising a pedestal or a gibbet. Who will dare look behind him, to see ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Mallare fancied himself aware of the drift and nuance of his madness. Its convolutions seemed neither incomprehensible nor mysterious to him. ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... great Excursions beyond the Bounds which these Rules prescrib'd to me, unless it is in the Chapter concerning Superstition. And even here, unless the Commentary had been somewhat copious, the Text it self wou'd have appear'd like a motly Piece of mysterious Nonsense. Thus much I thought my self oblig'd to do in Justice to Theophrastus; and as for the Enlargements which I have made, over and above what wou'd have satisfy'd this Demand, they will not, 'tis hop'd, be unacceptable ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally |
