"Oracle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what questions I might, the resources of his vocabulary remained invariably the same. Still this youthful Oracle answered ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... Their ordination, in obedience to this divine communication, was a decisive recognition of their spiritual authority. The Holy Ghost had attested their commission, and the ministers of Antioch, by the laying on of hands, set their seal to the truth of the oracle. Their title to act as founders of the Church was thus authenticated by evidence which could not be legitimately disputed. Paul himself obviously attached considerable importance to this transaction, and he afterwards refers to it in language of marked emphasis, when, in ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... it does not disgust, or even horrify, but leaves a memory of peace with the listener, who has not failed to catch the last strain for sight of the divine and dying eyes." So the critic of the London oracle wrote of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... Next year you may have to preach on the same gospel or feast; of what use will your notes be then? The ideas, arguments, and illustrations that now spring to your mind with a glance at this cipher or note will then have vanished. The cipher remains, but its inspiring power has passed. The oracle is dumb. You may summon spirits from the vasty deep—but will they come? You have again to face your old task; year after year the same drudgery awaits you with less hope of success. The brain, at first stimulated by novelty, poured forth the hot tide ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... Mantinea, about eight miles through a level, tolerably well-cultivated country. At the narrow passage between the mountains, there stood in ancient times a grove of cork-trees, called 'Pelagus,' the sea. Epaminondas, warned by an oracle to beware of the 'Pelagus,' had carefully avoided the sea. But it was just in this spot that he drew up his troops for the great battle which cost him his life. When mortally wounded, he was carried to a high place called 'Skope'—identified with the sharp spur of Mount Maenalus, which ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... King Athamas, because he had killed his child; and he roamed about in his misery, till he came to the Oracle in Delphi. And the Oracle told him that he must wander for his sin, till the wild beasts should feast him as their guest. So he went on in hunger and sorrow for many a weary day, till he saw a pack of wolves. The wolves were tearing a sheep; but when they saw Athamas they fled, and left the sheep ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... proof is a terrible one, but I require this proof. I must descend into the tomb to obtain it: well, then, I will descend into the tomb. I must consult the sombre oracle of death concerning the mysteries of life: well, then, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... not been "pre-eminently virtuous or just." This is true in its way. Oedipus is too passionate to be just; but he is at least noble in his impetuosity, his devotion, and his absolute truthfulness. It is important to realise that at the beginning of the play he is prepared for an oracle commanding him to die for his people (pp. 6, 7). And he never thinks of refusing that "task" any more than he tries to elude the doom that actually comes, or to conceal any fact that tells against him. If Oedipus had been an ordinary man the play would have ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... war; the other a pilgrim, and one who was out with the bear flag and under Fremont when California was taken by the States. They are both true frontiersmen, and most kind and pleasant. Captain Smith, the bear-hunter, is my physician, and I obey him like an oracle. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of several minutes, during which I fondled the seeds and Halicarnassus enveloped himself in clouds of smoke. Presently there was a cessation of puffs, a rift in the cloud showed that the oracle was opening his mouth, and directly thereafter he delivered himself of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... Hesiod may be told in outline. After the contest at Chalcis, Hesiod went to Delphi and there was warned that the 'issue of death should overtake him in the fair grove of Nemean Zeus.' Avoiding therefore Nemea on the Isthmus of Corinth, to which he supposed the oracle to refer, Hesiod retired to Oenoe in Locris where he was entertained by Amphiphanes and Ganyetor, sons of a certain Phegeus. This place, however, was also sacred to Nemean Zeus, and the poet, suspected by his hosts of having seduced their sister [1105], was ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... devotion [p]. The reverence for the clergy had been carried to such a height, that, wherever a person appeared in a sacerdotal habit, though on the high way, the people flocked around him, and, showing him all marks of profound respect, received every word he uttered as the most sacred oracle [q]. Even the military virtues, so inherent in all the Saxon tribes, began to be neglected; and the nobility, preferring the security and sloth of the cloister to the tumults and glory of war, valued themselves chiefly on endowing monasteries, of which they assumed the ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... observed this oracle, "that she is fifty-six years old; and we think she is old enough to know better than to write such a ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... found fierce denunciation of predecessors, ingenious refutations of principles which they had evolved from rigid analysis of the facts of consciousness, and an intolerant dogmatism which astonished and confused her. One extolled Locke as an oracle of wisdom; another ridiculed the shallowness of his investigations and the absurdity of his doctrines; while a third showed conclusively that Locke's assailant knew nothing at all of what he wrote, and maintained that he alone could set matters right. She studied Locke for herself. ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... random, seeking for a divine guidance, and his eye lighted on the words, "There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, even that we would be partakers of the divine nature." Before he left the house he again consulted the oracle, and the first words he read were, "Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." In the afternoon he attended service in St. Paul's Cathedral, and the anthem, to his highly wrought imagination, seemed a repetition of the same hope. The sequel may be told in his own words: "In the evening I went ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... expect immediate returns. It is only the lowest caste that is now reached, and the Christianizing of India must come, eventually, from the highest,"—words which we shall be very ready to take as opinion, but very slow to receive as oracle, since, from the time when the Founder of Christianity was upon the earth, and the common people heard him gladly, while the higher classes thrust him out of their synagogues, till the present day, the history of Christianity has been the history of an influence rising ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... "Minnie always was an oracle. To think of gentlemen whom you were likely to fall in love with, and marry, perhaps—but I don't think there are many of ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... oracle, Christina, and you have a deal to learn yet; but I'm not saying but what poor Sophy did make a mistake in her marriage. Folks should marry in their own class, and in their own faith, and among their own folk, or else ninety-nine times out of a hundred they marry sorrow; ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... contests in Greece—Olympian, at Olympia, Pythian, near Delphi, seat of Apollo's oracle, Isthmian, on the Corinthian Isthmus, Nemean, at Nemea ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Demeter and such other Places as were always kept closed. The occupation of the plot of ground lying below the citadel called the Pelasgian had been forbidden by a curse; and there was also an ominous fragment of a Pythian oracle which said: ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... purposes. Both her children felt that. Her Natalka had obtained a diploma of a Superior School for Women and her son was a student at the St. Petersburg University. He had a brilliant intellect, a most noble unselfish nature, and he was the oracle of his comrades. Early next year, she hoped he would join them and they would then go to Italy together. In any other country but their own she would have been certain of a great future for a man with the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... went much further, when he tested the clairvoyance of the oracles of Greece, by sending an embassy to ask what he was doing at a given hour on a given day, and by then doing something very bizarre. We do not know how the Delphic oracle found out the right answer, but various easy methods of fraud at once occur to the mind. However, the procedure of Croesus, if he took certain precautions, was relatively scientific. Relatively scientific also was the inquiry of Porphyry, with whose position our own is not unlikely ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... My father indeed understood the meaning of it though I did not understand; but it was little agreeable to be thus made a helpless instrument, without any will of mine, in an operation of which I knew nothing; and to enact the part of the oracle unwillingly, with suffering and such a strain as it took me days to get over. I resisted, not as before, but yet desperately, trying with better knowledge to keep down the growing passion. I hurried to my room ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... said, "I advised against the Sicilian expedition, so did Nicias, so did the astronomer Meton, but it was to be. Alcibiades had managed to procure a favourable response from the oracle in ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... of his sureties for the payment of the fine which he proposed has the appearance of truth. More suspicious is the statement that Socrates received the first impulse to his favourite calling of cross-examining the world from the Oracle of Delphi; for he must already have been famous before Chaerephon went to consult the Oracle (Riddell), and the story is of a kind which is very likely to have been invented. On the whole we arrive at the conclusion that the Apology is true to the character of Socrates, but we cannot show ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... contrived with the intention to keep up the national spirit, and diffuse hopes of the new enterprise of Vasco de Gama, who had just sailed on a voyage of discovery to the Indies. Three stones were discovered near Cintra, bearing in ancient characters a Latin inscription; a sibylline oracle addressed prophetically "To the Inhabitants of the West!" stating that when these three stones shall be found, the Ganges, the Indus, and the Tagus should exchange their commodities! This was the pious fraud of a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Greeks in general skilfully availed themselves even of extra-scenic matters, and made them subservient to the stage effect. Thus, I doubt not, but that in the Eumenides the spectators were twice addressed as an assembled people; first, as the Greeks invited by the Pythoness to consult the oracle; and a second time as the Athenian multitude, when Pallas, by the herald, commands silence during the trial about to commence. So too the frequent appeals to heaven were undoubtedly addressed to the real heaven; and when Electra on her first appearance exclaims: "O ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... under the wings of a raven and bat. Came the omen from the entrails of a falcon which, when spread before the oracle, did lift themselves one against the other. Then did they tremble without touch of hand and did wrap themselves in a knot and struggle together until they did burst asunder. And from that which was hidden therein came forth the ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... gazing, and the oracle uttered some further statement, which my grandfather received with ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... thenceforth observed to express himself, on all occasions, in favor of the French alliance. The more to engage him in his interests, Francis entered into such confidence with him, that he asked his advice even in his most secret affairs; and had recourse to him in all difficult emergencies, as to an oracle of wisdom and profound policy. The cardinal made no secret to the king of this private correspondence; and Henry was so prepossessed in favor of the great capacity of his minister, that he said he verily believed he would govern Francis ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... at most of a few years, the tenant is dislodged to give place to another, and he in turn to a third. "Who," says Sir Thomas Browne, "knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? Who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whither they are to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... right, therefore, that you should be the first to learn also of Ayesha, Hesea and Spirit of the Mountain, the priestess of that Oracle which since the time of Alexander the Great has reigned between the flaming pillars in the Sanctuary, the last holder of the sceptre of Hes or Isis upon the earth. It is right also that to you first ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... over again, to make sure that all the principal expressions were indistinct, and that the composition generally, except the postscript, resembled a Delphic oracle, when there was a hasty footstep, and a tap at her door, ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... the oracle of the household, as the village waren is of the entire neighbourhood, often usurping the functions of judge and jury, causing sometimes the innocent to suffer for the guilty, but also, by his prophecies, being the means of recovering stolen property. There are ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... there the impious Titans warred with the sky; there Jupiter was born and nursed; there was the celebrated shrine of Ammon, dedicated to Theban Jove, which the Greeks reverenced more highly than the Delphic Oracle; there was the birth-place and oracle of Minerva; and there, Atlas supported both the heavens and the ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... a prophecy Mr. Tidditt was accustomed to make each year to the crowd at the post office, when the receipt for the draft for taxes caused him to wax reminiscent. The younger generation here in Bayport regard their town clerk as something of an oracle, and this regard has made Asaph a trifle ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Leonard," his wife said almost fiercely, "it is most amusing, you made a mistake. Your brother's dying prophecy was like a Delphic oracle—it could be taken two ways, and, of course, you adopted the wrong interpretation. You left Grave Mountain a day too soon. It was by Jane Beach's help that you were to recover Outram, not by mine," and she ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... snort of profanity, but if he listens he will hear a bright and poetic blending of words rippling after it. A great preacher, whose sermons are read by the world, sat one day in the club, uttering the slow and heavy sentences of an oracle. He touched his finger tips together. He was discoursing on some phase of life; and an old night police reporter listened for a moment and said, "Rats!" The great man was startled. Accustomed to deliver his theories to a silent congregation, he was ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... general hand-shaking, and a wish to every one that the supper might set well. The Germans are long-lived, and almost every domestic hearthstone supports the easy-chairs of grandparents. Grandfather was often fresh and cheerful, the oracle and comforter of the children, treated with deference by those grown up, and presented to the guest as the central figure of the home. As the younger ones dropped off to bed and things grew quieter, grandfather's chair was apt to be the centre toward which all tended, ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... "Conrad," he said, in a low voice, "we will now consult an oracle as to my life and death. If the parrot pauses first, I shall die soon; if the nightingale pauses, God will permit me ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... lyric muse! Old Homer sung unto the lyre, Tyrtaeus, too, in ancient days— Still, warmed by their immortal fire, How doth our patriot spirit blaze! The oracle, when questioned, sings— So we our way in life are taught; In verse we soothe the pride of kings, In verse the drama ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... but yet without synne. But now this remaynith as yet to be discussed / which theis men do take as for an oracle / and most ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... who was the great novelist's maid, appeared on the threshold of the oracle's lair. She was a sober-looking, black-silk personage, who always wore a pork-pie cap in the house, and a Mother Hubbard bonnet out of it. Having been in service with Mrs. Greyne ever since the ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... fields, he was like one lately couched, by whom the order of things was gradually becoming recognised, but who was oppressed by the unwonted light, and inwardly ashamed of the hesitation and uncertainty of his tread. While sons, nephew, and a throng of his officers, were listening to him as to an oracle, and following the tracings of his sword, as he showed how this advance and that retreat had been made above two thousand years ago, he was full of consciousness that the spirit of the history of freedom was ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... Thus his oracle, but Jean Jacques' voice suddenly died down, for, as he sat there, the face of a woman made a vivid call of recognition. He slowly awakened from his self-hypnotism, to hear a woman speaking to him; to see two dark eyes looking at him from under heavy black ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... money-mastery as an elderly nerve-ridden woman might worship youthful physical energy, the comfortable, plump-bodied cafe-oracle had jested and gibed at the ambitions of the Balkan kinglets and their peoples, had unloosed against them that battery of strange lip-sounds that a Viennese employs almost as an auxiliary language to express the thoughts when his thoughts are not complimentary. ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... city of Pandion, to be mindful of Bacchus, all together throughout the wide streets to return fit thanks to the Bromian, and crowned with wreaths, to cause the odor of sacrifice to rise from the altars. In this oracle, Athens is the city of Pandion, because it was reported that under his rule the worship of Dionysus was introduced into the city. This and the other commands from Dodona and Delphi concerning Dionysus refer to the introduction of the worship of ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... weel learnt man," and fair in an argument, and willing to look at all the sides of a subject. This was Weaver Sim's opinion of the minister, and he was an oracle in a ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... on the top of a frightful rock, in a frozen climate. At length, at dawn of day, he perceived the rock, which was very high and very steep, and upon the summit of it was the bird, speaking like an oracle, telling wonderful things. He thought that with a little dexterity it would be easy to catch it, for it seemed very tame. He got off his horse, and climbed up very quietly. He was so close to the green bird that he thought he could lay ...
— The Frog Prince and Other Stories - The Frog Prince, Princess Belle-Etoile, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp • Anonymous
... thread, and diluting the sense, and sparing the ornaments, of his passionless poetry,—if poetry, which, by the definition of its highest authority, is "simple, sensuous, passionate," can ever be unimpassioned,—that he was the oracle of feminine taste while he lived, and at his death bequeathed a fame yet dear to the school of Southey and Wordsworth. Daniel was no otherwise Laureate than his position in the queen's household may authorize that title. If ever so entitled by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... said you are." That hard-faced gentleman a wit! Why, Nature wrote on his fanatic forehead fifty years ago, "Wit never comes, that comes to all." I should be as scandalized at a bon-mot issuing from his oracle-looking mouth as to see Cato go down a country-dance. God love you all! You are very good to submit to be pleased with reading my nothings. 'T is the privilege of friendship to talk nonsense and to have ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... doubted of the thing That she had dreamed it, till a fair gold ring, Unseen before, upon her hand she found, And touching her bright head she felt it crowned With a bright circlet; then withal she sighed. And wondered how the oracle had lied, And wished her father knew it, and straightway Rose up and clad herself. Slow went the day, Though helped with many a solace, till came night; And therewithal the new, unseen delight, She ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... is. And tell me yourself, Alexandra Pavlovna, what is his position in Darya Mihailovna's house? To be the idol, the oracle of the household, to meddle in the arrangements, all the gossip and petty trifles of the house—is that a dignified position for ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... came out of Wiltshire, not out of Yorkshire; and so forth. Esmond did not think fit to correct his old master in these trifling blunders, but they served to give him a knowledge of the other's character, and he smiled to think that this was his oracle of early days; only now no longer ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... shipmaster on board who had left his vessel in Rio Janeiro, with directions to the mate to bring her to San Francisco, by way of Cape Horn. The oracle was consulted as to the position of the ship at that particular time. Without a moment's hesitation, the latitude and longitude of the vessel were given, placing her somewhere off Valparaiso (Chili). "That's just where I put her!" cried the master ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... had a ready tongue for repartee, took advantage of the first opportunity to remark: "Do you know, brother, matrimony is a subject that I always enjoy hearing discussed by such an oracle as yourself. But did it never occur to you what an unjust thing it was of Providence to reveal so much to your wisdom and conceal the same ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... news of the day, the affairs of the tribe, the events and exploits of their last hunting or fighting expedition; or listening to the stories of old times told by some veteran chronicler; resembling a group of our village quidnuncs and politicians, listening to the prosings of some superannuated oracle, or discussing the contents of an ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Uncle Gutton faced the bride and bridegroom. The disillusioned Joseph was hidden from me by flowers, so that his voice, raised from time to time, fell upon my ears, embellished with the mysterious significance of the unseen oracle. ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... what does it signify what he says? Is it an oracle that has spoken? To hear you, anyone would think that Mr. Purgon holds in his hands the thread of your life, and that he has supreme authority to prolong it or to cut it short at his will. Remember that the springs of your life are in yourself, ...
— The Imaginary Invalid - Le Malade Imaginaire • Moliere
... "The oracle speaks in poetry," laughed Eric. "That was Florence Percival, who led the class in mathematics, as I'm a living man. By many she is considered the beauty of her class. I can't say that such is my opinion. I don't greatly care for that blonde, babyish style of ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Southern oratory and journalism for the last eighteen months. No devilish hate expressed in Milton's magnificent epic surpasses in intensity, however it may in dignity and genuine force, that which is breathed through every oracle of Southern popular sentiment. And this is insisted on by Southern letter-writers and journalists as demonstrating the impossibility of 'reconstruction.' 'How can those who hate each other so implacably ever again be one people? What use ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the midnight voice he had heard. But recovering from the first shock of such a doom, and remembering that it still left the choice to himself, between dishonored life or glorious death, he resolved to show his respect to the oracle by manifesting a persevering obedience to the eternal voice which gave those agents utterance: and while he bowed to the warning, he vowed to be the last who should fall from the side of his devoted country. "If devoted," cried he, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... believe him. Their parapets are dimmer, perhaps, but from them still they lean and laugh. They are immortal as the hexameters in which their loves unfold. Yet, oddly enough, presently the oracle of Delphi strangled. In his cavern Trophonios was gagged. The voice ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... those milk paps That through the window-bars bore at men's eyes, Are not within the leaf of pity writ, But set them down horrible traitors. Spare not the babe, Whose dimpled smiles from fools exhaust their mercy; Think it a bastard, whom the oracle Hath doubtfully pronounc'd thy throat shall cut, And mince it sans remorse. Swear against objects; Put armour on thine ears and on thine eyes, Whose proof nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes, Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding, Shall pierce a jot. There's gold to pay thy soldiers: ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... currants, pepper, and mustard all jumbled into one mess. What think you of a rice- pudding seasoned plentifully with pepper, mustard, and, may be, a little rappee or prince's mixture added by way of sauce. I think the recipe would cut quite a figure in the Cook's Oracle or Mrs. Dalgairn's Practice of Cookery, under the original title ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... chained. She had once picked up, in a house where she was staying, a translation of the EUMENIDES, and her imagination had been seized by the high terror of the scene where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour's repose. Yes, the Furies might sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the dark corners, and now they were awake and the iron clang of their wings was ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... some kind," replied the oracle. "I've heerd say as how when them lanterns is showed aboard of a craft, that it's a sure sign as she's a doomed ship. I remembers one time when I was in the Chinee seas in the old—Lord ha' mercy on us! ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... that this young gentleman would "get it hot," notwithstanding that this was his first offense. Odds were taken that he would have fourteen years. "At all events," said one of the small officials, in answer to eager inquiries, "more than he could do on his head." With this enigmatical reply of the oracle its astonished questioners were compelled to ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... King, who became 'suddenly fallen into a great dump, and as it were a man amazed.' Shakespeare's lines give the explanation of his discomfiture. 'It seems,' comments Fuller, 'Sathan either spoke this oracle low or lisping.' ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... up the receiver, and seized a railway time-table from the rack before him. After a rapid consultation of this oracle, he flung it down with a forcible word as Mr. Silver hurried into the room, followed by a hard-featured man with spectacles, and a youth ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... and Dixon, with their wives, were the only Republican members of the upper house present, but there was no lack of those from sunnier climes, with their ladies, among whom Mrs. Slidell, who was something of an oracle in political circles, was conspicuous. Mrs. Senator Thompson, of New Jersey, dressed in white, with silver ornaments, was much admired. The ladies of the Diplomatic Corps were elegantly attired, especially Madame de Sartiges, the wife of the French Minister. President Buchanan and ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... "We must consult the Oracle of the Divine Bottle," exclaimed Pantagruel, "before you enter on so dangerous an undertaking. Come, let us prepare for ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... has consulted her oracle and it has barked out the truth. Let us hope she will not ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... desirous as a piece of courtesy to address him in Greek, "O Paidion," by a slip in pronunciation ended with the s instead of the n, and said, "O Paidios," which mistake Alexander was well enough pleased with, and it went for current that the oracle ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... mutter, and hum? Into what Pandemonium is Pentecost come? Oh, what is the name of the god at whose fane Every nation is mix'd in so motley a train? What weird Kabala lies on those tables outspread? To what oracle turns with attention each head? What holds these pale worshippers each so devout, And what are ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... effect was serious. The women, having once started, needed no more urging. One after another they confronted and questioned the oracle ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... translated "Why hast thou cast me thus into the town of the ever-blind, to proclaim thine oracle by the opened sense? What profits it to lift the veil where the near darkness threatens? Only ignorance is life; this knowledge is death. Take back this sad clear-sightedness; take from mine eyes this cruel light! It is horrible to be the mortal channel of ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... women and one had a stool stuck to her back, and one had a bundle of thatching grass stuck on her head, and the third had her foot stuck fast to a rice-pounder, and they asked him where he was going, and he told them, "to visit the shrine of the Bohmae bird": then they asked him to consult the oracle and find out how they could be freed from the things which were stuck fast to them, and he ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... She was an idle Baggage, and bid her go on. Ah Master, says the Gypsie, that roguish Leer of yours makes a pretty Woman's Heart ake; you ha'n't that Simper about the Mouth for Nothing—The uncouth Gibberish with which all this was uttered like the Darkness of an Oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left the Money with her that he had crossed her Hand with, and got up ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and trivial circumstance afforded infinite material for extending his investigations. There is a town called Abydum in the most remote corner of the Egyptian Thebais, where an oracle of the god, known in that region by the name of Besa, had formerly enjoyed some celebrity for its prophecies, and had sacred rites performed at it with all the ceremonies anciently in use ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... fact that, while talent cannot safely ignore what is called technique, genius almost can. Coleridge, in spite of his formlessness, remains the wisest man who ever spoke in English about literature. His place is that of an oracle among controversialists. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... whom the Oracle indicated as the wisest man alive. All men knew nothing, but Socrates was found wiser than they, for he alone knew ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... weight was now given by the speaker to his promise of counsel than to a restriction which seemed interposed for the sake of form and consistency. The King resumed his own seat, and compelled De Comines to sit by him, listening at the same time to that statesman as if the words of an oracle sounded in his ears. De Comines spoke in that low and impressive tone which implies at once great sincerity and some caution, and at the same time so slowly as if he was desirous that the King should weigh and consider each individual word as ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the best thing I could do concerning the Book you wanted was to send your Enquiry to the Oracle itself:—whose ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... thick that the beams of the sun could not pierce it. The atmosphere of the place was of a delicious temperature; the scene was every where interspersed with fountains; and all the fruits of the earth were found in the highest perfection. In the midst was the temple and oracle of the God, who was worshipped in the likeness of a ram. The Egyptian priests chose this site as furnishing a test of the zeal of their votaries; the journey being like the pilgrimage to Jerusalem or Mecca, if not from so great a distance, yet attended in ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... was this to be brought about? Therein lay the difficulty. The philosophers were not wise enough for this. To make the princess cry was as impossible as to make her weigh. They sent for a professional beggar, commanded him to prepare his most touching oracle of woe, helped him, out of the court charity-box, to whatever he wanted for dressing up, and promised great rewards in the event of his success. But it was all in vain. She listened to the mendicant artist's story, and gazed ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... be considered to flatter, making his concealment more insinuating than his speech. He approaches with fictitious humility to the creature of his praise, and hangs with rivetted attention upon his lips, as though he spake with the voice of an oracle. He repeats what phrase or sentence may particularly gratify him, and both hands are little enough to bless him in return. Sometimes he extols the excellencies of his friend in his absence, but it is in the presence ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... I guess, I realized the awful helplessness that comes over the Psiless when a TK invokes his telekinetic power. I wanted no part of the future this corn-fed oracle had conjured up. But it might be the only ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the fame of this divinity as an oracle, as connected with the calendar. But it is true that the name could with equal correctness be translated "The God, the Mighty Serpent," for can is a homonym with these and other meanings, and we are without positive proof ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... the purport of the Pope's discourse but the manner high bred, languid, kindly, and free from all tone of dictation. He seemed to be gently probing the matter in concert with his hearers, not playing Sir Oracle. At the bottom of all which was doubtless a slight touch of humbug, but the humbug that embellishes life; and all sense of it was lost in the subtle Italian ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... bad humours, whose temperament is to be corrected and new formed by medicines, it was necessary to begin a new regimen. With these sentiments he went to Delphi, and when he had offered and consulted the god, he returned with that celebrated oracle, in which the priestess called him "Beloved of the gods, and rather a god than a man." As to his request that he might enact good laws, she told him, Apollo had heard his request, and promised that the constitution he should ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... his seniority and his gravity, soon became the oracle of the party. We usually found him seated on the stairs of the first floor, lost in the perusal of some ragged book of the marvellous school—scraps of which he used to read aloud to us, with more unction than propriety, indulging rather too much in the note of admiration ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... of remote antiquity to have been much regarded by either sex. At Babylon, the capital of the Assyrian empire, it was so little valued, that a law of the country even obliged every woman once in her life to depart from it. This abominable law, which, it is said, was promulgated by an oracle, ordained, That every woman should once in her life repair to the temple of Venus; that on her arrival there, her head should be crowned with flowers, and in that attire, she should wait till some stranger performed with her the rites sacred ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... great benefactor to Rouen died the following year, deeply lamented by the inhabitants, and generally so by France; but, above all, regretted by Louis XIIth, his sovereign, whom, to use the words of Guicciardini, he served as oracle and authority. The author of the History of the Chevalier Bayard, is still louder in his praise.—The western facade of the cathedral was not finished till 1530, twenty years after ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... from fire unto fire, From passionate pain to deadlier delight,— I am too young to live without desire, Too young art thou to waste this summer night Asking those idle questions which of old Man sought of seer and oracle, ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... dreaming, or was this some trick of liquor in his often distorted fancy? He, Whiskey Dick! the butt of his friends, the chartered oracle of the barrooms, even in whose wretched vanity there was always the haunting suspicion that he was despised and scorned; he, who had dared so much in speech, and achieved so little in fact! he, whose habitual weakness had even led him into the wildest indiscretion here; he—now ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... What they are Prohibited. When any are religiously disposed, these Priests sent for in great Ceremony. None ever used violence towards them before this present King. The Second Order of Priests. The third Order. How they dedicate a Red Cock to the Devil. Their Oracle. ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... possessed an iron will and unflinching determination, before which obstacles had to yield, and persecution found itself powerless. His talent to grasp and appreciate the true and the beautiful rendered him the oracle of the thousands who, to this day, are proud to call themselves his disciples. To him Haskalah was not merely acquaintance with general culture, or even its acquisition. It was the realization of one's individuality as a Jew and a man. Gordon's advice, to be a ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... considered the interview at an end. The persuasive Mr. Morrissey tried to get a wedge in somewhere to reopen it, but he tried in vain. Enos Walker was adamant. So, disappointed and discomfited, the emissaries of Colonel Richard Butler bade "good-day," to the oracle of Cobb's Corners, and ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... library, were peopled in his days with all those who could enhance his pleasures, or add to their own, by their presence. When Poverty stole in there, it was irradiated by Genius. When painters hovered beneath the fretted ceiling of that library, it was to thank the oracle of the day, not always for large orders, but for powerful recommendations. When actresses trod the Star Chamber, it was as modest friends, not as audacious critics on Horace, his ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... whose chief and oracle he had been for so long, asked him what they ought to do; Cavalier replied that if they would follow him, their best course and his would be to take the first opportunity of gaining the frontier and leaving the country. They all declared ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... "scandal session" of 1891, had it not been for two disasters which overtook the Liberals: The publication of Blake's letter and the revelation of the rascalities of the Mercier regime. Perhaps of the two blows, that delivered by Blake was the more disastrous. The letter was the message of an oracle. It required an interpretation which the oracle refused to supply; and in its absence the people regarded it as implying a belief by Blake that annexation was the logical sequel to the Liberal policy of unrestricted reciprocity. The result was seen in the by-election campaign ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe
... was a favorite among the boys of the Institute, a kind of leader and oracle among them, though I was not fully conscious of the fact at the time. While I now think I owe the greater portion of the esteem and regard in which I was held by my companions to my desire to be good and ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... —Smintheus an epithet taken from sminthos, the Phrygian name for a mouse, was applied to Apollo for having put an end to a plague of mice which had harassed that territory. Strabo, however, says, that when the Teucri were migrating from Crete, they were told by an oracle to settle in that place, where they should not be attacked by the original inhabitants of the land, and that, having halted for the night, a number of field-mice came and gnawed away the leathern straps of their baggage, and thongs of their armour. In fulfilment ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... man with many gifts. Plutarch's Lives was the great staple of education in the Renaissance—and as good a one, perhaps, as we have yet discovered, even in this age when there are so many theories of education with foreign names. Plutarch, then, writing about Delphi, the shrine and oracle of the god Apollo, said that men had been "in anguish and fear lest Delphi should lose its glory of three thousand years"—and Delphi has not lost it. For ninety generations the god has been giving oracles to ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... through The Tribune more influence, perhaps, than was possessed by any other Republican with the single exception of Lincoln. His newspaper constituency was enormous, and the relation between the leader and the led was unusually close. He was both oracle and barometer. As a symptom of the Republican panic, as a cause increasing that panic, he was of ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... everything about Wylder. She was constantly hinting something of the kind; and begging of him to make a disclosure—disclosure of what? It was enough to drive one mad, and would make a capital farce. Rachel has a ridiculous way of talking like an oracle, and treating as settled fact every absurdity she fancies. She is very charming and clever, of course, so long as she speaks of the kind of thing she understands. But when she tries to talk of serious business—poor Radie! she certainly ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Jehovah formed an essential part of the constitution, since it was God who ruled the nation. The oracle, in the form of a pillar of cloud, directed the wanderings of the people in the wilderness. This appeared amid the thunders of Sinai. This oracle decided all final questions and difficult points of justice. It could not be interrogated ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... and to Grandfather Smallweed's house. The door is opened by the perennial Judy, who, having surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but indeed with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she consults the oracle as to their admission. The oracle may be inferred to give consent from the circumstance of her returning with the words on her honey lips that they can come in if they want to it. Thus privileged, they come in and find Mr. Smallweed with his feet in the drawer of his chair as if it were a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... now so elaborate and cumbersome, had supplanted the prophetic oracle. The ritualist is never a prophet; and out of such a formal cult no words of inspiration are apt to flow. With all the greater carefulness, therefore, would the people treasure the messages that had come to them from the past. Accordingly these prophetic writings, which had ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... though temple thou hast none, Nor altar heap'd with flowers; Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan 30 Upon the midnight hours; No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet From chain-swung censer teeming; No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat Of ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... stood still and are satisfied to repeat those ancient doctrines which the Germans have abandoned long ago. English Socialists try to impose upon an uncritical public by parading the worn-out stage properties of the forties. Marx is to the vast majority of British Socialists still an oracle and the fountain head of all wisdom. "Marx is the Darwin of modern sociology."[267] "All over the world his brain is put on pretty much the same level as Aristotle's."[268] "Modern Socialism is based, nationally and internationally, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... Rommany, what Mr Borrow has said, that no English Gipsy knows the word for a leaf, or patrin. He admitted that it was true; but after considering the subject deeply, and dividing the deliberations between his pipe and a little wooden bear on the table—his regular oracle and friend—he suddenly burst forth in the following beautiful illustration ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... Educational Institution, kept in the same room—a little general shop. She had no idea what stock she had, or what the price of anything in it was; but there was a little greasy memorandum-book kept in a drawer, which served as a Catalogue of Prices, and by this oracle Biddy arranged all the shop transaction. Biddy was Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt's granddaughter; I confess myself quiet unequal to the working out of the problem, what relation she was to Mr. Wopsle. She was an orphan like myself; like me, too, had been brought up by hand. She ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... answered Sue, who had long ago come to consider Pickles the greatest oracle she had ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... if Herodotus' story is well founded, they were ignorant of their quality. Croesus took his time, sending envoys to consult oracles near and far. Herodotus tells us that he applied to Delphi not less than thrice and even to the oracle of Ammon in the Eastern Sahara. At least a year must have been spent in these inquiries alone, not to speak of an embassy to Sparta and perhaps others to Egypt and Babylon. These preliminaries at length completed, the Lydian gathered the levies of western Asia Minor ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... Antonia drew off her glove, and presented her white hand to the Gypsy, who having gazed upon it for some time with a mingled expression of pity and astonishment, pronounced her Oracle in the following words. ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... children.—Such teaching palliates educational situations without affording a solution. It is so steeped in tradition that it resorts to statistics as it would consult an oracle. We look to see it establishing precedents only to find it following precedents. When we would find in it a leader we find merely a follower. To such teaching statistical numbers mean far more than living children. Indeed, children are but objects ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... the letter and wholly devoted to spirit, are doing their best in the cause of materialism. They surrender the very points at issue between religion and worldliness. They are so blinded by a vague humanitarian impulse as to make the New Testament an oracle of popular Radicalism.' ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... landed on a deserted island, where they found the ruins of a city. Here there was an ancient temple of Diana, and an image of the goddess, which image was endued with the power of uttering oracular responses to those who consulted it with proper ceremonies and forms. Brutus consulted this oracle on the question in what land he should find a place of final settlement. His address to it was in ancient verse, which some chronicler has turned into English ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... conceptions of scholarship and mental discipline were piously maintained. The curriculum rested for its main support upon a basis of the classics and mathematics, which imparted a classic and mathematical rigidity to the whole structure. The professor was an oracle, backed by oracular textbooks; the student's activity was restricted by a traditional association of learning with self-restraint and outward severity of life. The revolutionary change came with the marvelous development ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... embraced by persons in a certain grade of comfort and respectability; by persons approaching to what we should call the MIDDLE CLASSES in their condition, their education, and their moral views. Of this class Seneca himself was the idol, the oracle; he was, so to speak, the favourite preacher of the more intelligent and humane disciples of nature and virtue. Now the writings of Seneca show, in their way, a real anxiety among this class to raise the moral tone of mankind around them; a spirit of reform, a zeal for ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... soft purring tone, an echo of a voice, as it were, beneath the rustling leaves; but, none the less, Richard Gessner caught every word as though it had been the voice of an oracle. A very shrewd man, he had feared this knowledge, and fear had brought him to this covert interview. The Pole could betray him and betrayal must mean death—and what a death, reluctant, procrastinating, the hour of it unknown, the manner of it beyond any words terrible. Such had been the end of many ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... always to the realm of popular magazine literature appealing to a very wide audience—for the editor of some magazine to project his personality through the printed page and to convince the public that he was not an oracle removed from the people, but a real human being who could talk and not merely write ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... He soon became the oracle which was consulted in all naval deliberations; and the king raised him to the dignity of a peerage. In July, sir John Balchen, an admiral of approved valour and great experience, sailed from Spithead with a strong squadron, in quest of an opportunity to attack ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... was much wilder than before. The plains were gashed with ravines and broken into hollows and steep declivities, which flanked our course, as, in long-scattered array, the Indians advanced up the side of the stream. Mene-Seela consulted an extraordinary oracle to instruct him where the buffalo were to be found. When he with the other chiefs sat down on the grass to smoke and converse, as they often did during the march, the old man picked up one of those enormous black-and-green crickets, which the Dakota call by ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... excitement took the form of a shuffling of feet. The Judge deliberately lighted his pipe, a token of mental relaxation. Then from out the haze of blue smoke, like the voice of an oracle from the seclusion of a shrine, issued the familiar recitative tone for which everybody had ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... oracle declares, temperance and fortitude, prudence and every virtue, are certain purgatives of the soul; and hence the sacred mysteries prophesy obscurely, yet with truth, that the soul not purified lies in Tartarus, immersed ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus
... the Oracle, my Curtius, how? Methought, while on the shadow'd terraces I walked and looked towards Rome, an echo came, Of legion wails, blent into one deep cry. "O, Jove!" I thought, "the Oracles have said; And saying, touched some ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... reverently leaning In secret cellars o'er the Sibyl's strain, Beyond the fact that several pars Had something vague to do with Mars, Failed, as a rule, to find the smallest meaning, But told the plebs the oracle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... go.'"—Smith's New Gram., p. 65. According to Murray, whom these men profess to follow, let, in all these examples, is an auxiliary, and the verb that follows it, is not in the infinitive mood, but in the imperative. So they severally contradict their oracle, and all are wrong, both he and they! The disciples pretend to correct their master, by supposing "Let me to go," and "Let me to ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Woodward family somewhat in the light of a Delphic oracle. To apply to her was always the very last resource. Matters must have reached a crisis, Winona thought, if they were obliged to appeal to Aunt Harriet's judgment. She followed Percy into the garden with a sober look ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... old leaf fell out, the copy of a Bohemian folk-song, which Franziska, and she too, had sung long ago. She took it up, not without emotion, for in her present mood the most natural occurrence might easily seem an oracle. And the simple verses, as she read them through again, brought the hot tears ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... A man of understanding trusteth in the law; and the law is faithful unto him, as an oracle. ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... Washington; of Randolph, through whose initiative the stain produced by the word "slavery" was effaced from the provisional draft of the American Constitution; of Marshall, the most eminent jurist in the Republic, the oracle of the Constitution and the constructor of the Federal law; of Madison, the emulator of Hamilton in the editing of The Federalist; of Monroe, the asserter of the international doctrine of the independence of this continent; of John Quincy Adams, the pioneer of abolitionism in his radical ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... great mortification of Miss Jenny's attentive hearers, the hour of entertaining themselves being at an end, they were obliged to leave the poor little Mignon in the greatest distress and fright lest the giant should awake before he could fulfil the commands of the oracle, and to wait for the remainder of ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... a Hieland oracle [*It may not he unnecessary to tell southern readers, that the mountainous country in the south-western borders of Scotland, is called Hieland, though totally different from the much more mountainous and more extensive districts of ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... been thus, thou might'st have scorn'd the sword Of fierce Antonius; here is not one word Doth pinch; I like such stuff, 'tis safer far Than thy Philippics, or Pharsalia's war. What sadder end than his, whom Athens saw At once her patriot, oracle, and law? Unhappy then is he, and curs'd in stars Whom his poor father, blind with soot and scars, Sends from the anvil's harmless chine, to wear The factious gown, and tire his client's ear And purse with endless noise. Trophies ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... suddenly acquired a mysterious and wise significance and became oracular. She alone had the power of inspiring him to be profound. He had noticed that before, years ago, and first at their first meeting. Or was it that she saw in him an oracle, and caused him to ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... is sublimed into an exquisite thing called modern "spiritualism." The amount and quality of "faith" are, indeed, pleasingly diversified when come to examine individual professors thereof; but it always based upon the principle that man is a light to himself; that his oracle is within; so clear either to supersede the necessity—some say even possibility—of all external revelation in any sense of that term; or, when such revelation is in some sense allowed, to constitute man the absolute arbiter how much or how little of it is worthy ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... occupied there an infinitely lower place than Man. It is difficult to believe this, when we see such range and dignity of thought on the subject in the mythologies, and find the poets producing such ideals as Cassandra, Iphigenia, Antigone, Macaria; where Sibylline priestesses told the oracle of the highest god, and he could not be content to reign with a, court of fewer than nine muses. Even Victory wore a ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... educated with great care. So the Hebrews depended on him, and were of good hopes great things would be done by him; but the Egyptians were suspicious of what would follow such his education. Yet because, if Moses had been slain, there was no one, either akin or adopted, that had any oracle on his side for pretending to the crown of Egypt, and likely to be of greater advantage to them, they abstained from ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... unknown animal, or the god that he worships; but we are more inclined to the latter opinion, because he assured us (if we understood him right, for he expressed himself very imperfectly), that he seldom did anything without consulting it. He called it his oracle, and said it pointed out the time for every action of his life. From the left fob he took out a net almost large enough for a fisherman, but contrived to open and shut like a purse, and served him for the same use; we found therein several massy pieces of ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... their supreme divinity, he probably in some degree represented the national aspirations of Upper Egypt as opposed to Middle and Lower Egypt: he also remained the national god of Ethiopia, where his name was pronounced Amane. The priests of Amane at Meroe and Napata, in fact, regulated through his oracle the whole government of the country, choosing the king, directing his military expeditions (and even compelling him to commit suicide, according to Diodorus) until in the 3rd century B.C. Arkamane (Ergamenes) broke ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Head he very much recommends a Form of Prayer the Lacedemonians made use of, in which they petition the Gods, to give them all good Things so long as they were virtuous. Under this Head likewise he gives a very remarkable Account of an Oracle to the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the last word satirically against her. She sat convulsed with fury and violation, speechless, like a stricken pythoness of the Greek oracle. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... assert themselves in the influential and responsible post which the cura occupies. Very frequently the cura is the only white man in the place, and no other European lives for miles around. Therefore, not only is he the curator of souls, but also the representative of the government. He is the oracle of the Indians, and his special decision in anything that concerns Europe and civilization is without appeal. His advice is asked in all important affairs, and he has no one from whom he himself can seek advice. Under such circumstances all their intellectual ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... Talbot, that man is never so flattered as when some woman thinks him an oracle. Besides, although yours is the best mind in any pretty woman's head I know of—in any woman's head for that matter—you still have much to learn, and I should feel very jealous if you learned ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton
... the cost of an unrecovered Flush, could not but oppose the new trade of elaborate deception. But his feeling was intensified by the personal repulsiveness of the professional medium. The vain, sleek, vulgar, emasculated, neurotic type of creature, who became the petted oracle of the dim-lighted room, was loathsome in his eyes. And his respect for his wife's genius made him feel that there was a certain desecration in the neighbourhood to her of men whom he regarded as verminous impostors. Yet he recognised her ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... military oracle of the Administration in the first days of the war. His ability and great experience entitled him to regard and deference on all questions relating to military operations. No one appreciated his qualities more than the President, unless it was General Scott himself, who with great self-esteem ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... Custis' mother could bear the strain of all these people. He wondered how she could manage the army of black servants who hung on her word as the deliverance of an oracle. He could hear the hum of the life of the place already awake with the rising sun. Down in the ravine behind the house he caught the ring of a hammer on an anvil and closer in the sweep of a carpenter's ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon |
