"Oracular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... verdant Broceliande that Vivien, another fairy, that crafty dame of the enchanted lake, the instructress of Lancelot, bound wise Merlin so that he might no more go to Camelot with oracular lips to counsel ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... "insurrection," whose origin, growth, and extinguishment in blood have now been traced, has been the cause of we know not how many oracular warnings from the lips of those who have not been distinguished by any hearty attachment to the rights of the black. "See now," they say, "what is the peril of emancipating these blacks." "Behold what comes of educating this people up to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... various virtues and studies; puffs of the productions he is preparing for the press, and anticipations of the fame which he is to reap by their means, from a less ungrateful age; and all this delivered with such an oracular seriousness and assurance, that it is easy to see the worthy Laureate thinks himself entitled to share in the prerogatives of that royalty which he is bound to extol, and ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... possess property with an unwavering voice. As eternal aspects of the complex vision, both conscience and the aesthetic sense, when their power is exercised in harmony with all the other aspects of the soul, indicate with an oracular clearness that the possessive instinct ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... suppose, like nations, wax and wane,' I said, 'they become atrophied, if not extinct.' The port was magnificent—of the year '64—and I felt oracular. 'Hence the use of bastards. Robert the Devil from the top of his tower falls in love with the laundrywoman bleaching linen on the green, and in natural course William the Conqueror sees ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... This oracular discourse exasperated Byrne. "In the name of God," he cried, "tell me plainly if you think my man is reasonably safe ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... the work of Marco Polo had over the mind of Columbus, gives it particular interest and importance. It was evidently an oracular work with him. He frequently quotes it, and on his voyages, supposing himself to be on the Asiatic coast, he is continually endeavoring to discover the islands and main-lands described in it, and ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... Islands in Torres Straits, the scientific staff were much pleased at the decided evidences of respect shown by the natives until it came out that the Islanders considered their white guests to be semi-idiots, and hence powerful sorcerers to be placated. Fijian religion had developed into the oracular stage, and the priest after receiving prayers and offerings would on occasions be entered into by the god. Tremors would overspread his body, the flesh of which would creep horribly. His veins would swell, his eyeballs ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... on Cap'n Amazon was most puzzling. As Mrs. Conroth refused to sit down—she could talk better standing, becoming quite oracular, in fact—the captain could not, in politeness, take his customary chair. And he had discarded his pipe upon going to the door to let the ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... lyre, and precipitate eloquence produced an unusual language [in the theater]: and the sentiments [of the chorus, then] expert in teaching useful things and prescient of futurity, differ hardly from the oracular Delphi. ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... while being thoroughly Oriental, still smacked of anticipation of this very event. Instantly the lights went out and a panic ensued, everyone getting into the street somehow or other. I found myself there side by side with my neighbor, who informed me in an oracular manner that he had ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... the talk about flying-machines and the possibilities of electricity, witnessing that flying-machines were "dead certain to come," and that electricity was "wonderful, wonderful"; how he went and watched the billiard playing and said, "Left 'em" several times with an oracular air; how he fell a-yawning; and how he got out his cycling map and studied it intently,—are things that find no mention here. Nor will I enlarge upon his going into the writing-room, and marking the road from London to Guildford ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... upon the altars, in other lands burnt for a sweet savour. At Thebes the divine wife of the god, or high priestess, was the head of the harem of concubines of the god; and similarly in Babylonia the chamber of the god with the golden couch could only be visited by the priestess who slept there for oracular responses. The Egyptian gods could not be cognisant of what passed on earth {3} without being informed, nor could they reveal their will at a distant place except by sending a messenger; they were as limited as the Greek gods who required the aid of Iris to communicate one with ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... its divinity; and to arrange means wilfully for catching at such casual words, would have defeated the purpose. A well-known variety of augury, conducted upon this principle, lay in the "Sortes Biblicae," where the Bible was the oracular book consulted, and far more extensively at a later period in the "Sortes Virgilianae," [2] where the Aeneid ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... kiss her or touch her, but looked deeply into her eyes for a long space of time, and took from her again an equally searching regard; then, turning to her father-in-law and the company at large, she said, "This is begun, and will be done. He is like his father before him." To that oracular utterance old King, catching probably but the last sentence, replied, "And he couldn't do better, my child." He meant no more than a testimony to his daughter-in-law. Mrs. King's observations, coupled with that, nevertheless, went far to give credit ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... Dick answered with oracular gravity, "is a combination of hard work and fine art. It requires both toil and genius. I think I may say, with all natural modesty, that I have shown great natural aptitude for it. My profession is making friends. I have made friends useful and ornamental, friends great and ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... sleepum," he said, in the sonorous, oracular tone which he usually employed when a subject held his serious thought. "Peaceful Hart, him all same sleepum. All same sleepum 'longside snake. No seeum snake, no thinkum mebbyso catchum bite." He glanced down at his own snake-bitten ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... not intend," said Mr. Milburgh in his best oracular manner, "describing all the events which preceded the death of the late Thornton Lyne. Nor will I go to any length to deal with his well-known and even notorious character. He was not a good employer; he was suspicious, unjust, and in many ways mean. Mr. Lyne was, I admit, ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... his owne genius is his intelligencer. His mint goes weekely, and he coines monie by it. Howsoeuer, the more intelligent merchants doe jeere him, the vulgar doe admire him, holding his novels oracular: and these are usually sent for tokens or intermissiue curtsies betwixt city and countrey. Hee holds most constantly one forme or method of discourse. He retaines some militarie words of art, which hee shootes at randome; no matter where they hitt, they cannot ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... though I feel me on all sides Well squar'd to fortune's blows. Therefore my will Were satisfied to know the lot awaits me, The arrow, seen beforehand, slacks its flight." So said I to the brightness, which erewhile To me had spoken, and my will declar'd, As Beatrice will'd, explicitly. Nor with oracular response obscure, Such, as or ere the Lamb of God was slain, Beguil'd the credulous nations; but, in terms Precise and unambiguous lore, replied The spirit of paternal love, enshrin'd, Yet in his smile apparent; and thus spake: ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... he resumed the production of his oracular works,—"prophetic books," he called them. These he illustrated with his own peculiar and beautiful designs, "all sanded over with a sort of golden mist." Among much that is incoherent and incomprehensible may be found passages of great force, tenderness, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... when he says that nothing analogous to the ancient oracles was incorporated with Christianity.[1] There is the notable case of the god Sosthenion, whom Constantine identified with the archangel Michael, and whose oracular functions were continued in a precisely similar manner by the latter.[2] Oracles that were not thus absorbed and supported were recognized as existent, but under diabolic control, and to be tolerated, if not patronized, by the representatives of the dominant religion. The oracle ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... hammer sent it flying again, with Mr. Baker and his assistant in full pursuit. But it quickly distanced them with its long, tireless gallop, and they were obliged to return to the forge, lost in wonder and conjecture. For the blacksmith had recognized it as a stranger to the locality, and as a man of oracular pretension had a startling theory to account for its presence. This he confided to the editor of the local paper, and the next issue contained an editorial paragraph: "Our presage of a severe winter in the higher Sierras, and consequent spring floods in the valleys, has ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... cell, with which, it is supposed, all organisms begin, is in all the same, but, being placed in different situations, is developed here into a man, and there into a mushroom. "The offspring," he says, not without oracular twang, "is like its parent, not because it includes an immortal typical form, but because it is exposed in development to the same conditions as was its parent." Behold a cheap explanation of the mystery of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... sits in state, and daily praises her babes with the most doating loquacity. And she does this with so grave a face that it is impossible to forbear laughing, when you hear her. She is so serious, so solemn, so convinced that every thing she utters is oracular, and so irascible if she does but so much as smell a doubt concerning the beauty and perfection of her brats, that there is no scene in the world which tickles my imagination so irresistibly as to watch her maternal visage ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... remarkable mind rising up amongst us Germans; God grant him success! My days are over; such things are not for my age, nor yet for my calling; but you—Jonathan? I envy you many things that will come to light in the days to come." Jonathan understood Wacht's oracular words the more easily, since some days previously he had discovered by chance Goetz von Berlichingen[15] lying on the Master's work-table, half covered by other papers. Wacht's great mind, whilst acknowledging the uncommon genius ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... role. 'Tis vastly fine, of course; if fate would smile, I fancy that the Cloud-Compeller's style Would suit me sweetly; just the line I love; Resolute rule's the appanage of a Jove. But SHELLEY's dismal Demogorgon's self, That solemn, shadowy, stern, oracular elf, Plus obstinate Prometheus, did not play Such mischief as the parties do to-day, With Law and Order. Who would be a god When force forsakes his ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... reminiscences and anecdotes of the disturbances at the same place, and at Hatfield four or five years previous. Ezra Phelps, who had been concerned in them, having subsequently removed from Hatfield to Stockbridge, enjoyed by virtue of that fact an oracular eminence, and as he stood under the shadow of the buttonwood tree before the tavern, relating his experiences, the people hung ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... have stood in the midst of human affairs," said the chair, with a very oracular enunciation, "I have constantly observed that Justice, Truth, and Love are the chief ingredients of ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... it is not very incongruous with the Devil's Temper, or with the Nature of his Business, to shift hands; possibly he found that he had tried the World with Oracular Cheats; that Men began to be forfeited with them, and grew sick of the Frauds which were so frequently detected; that it was time to take new Measures, and contrive some new Trick to Bite the World, that he might not be expos'd to Contempt; or perhaps he saw the Approach of new Light, which the Christian ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... ignorant folk who came to visit his temple of science, and to inspect its curiosities, felt themselves insulted—not always without reason. He kept a tame maniac in the house, named Lep, and he used to regard the sayings of this personage as oracular, presaging future events, and far better worth listening to than ordinary conversation. Consequently he used to have him at his banquets and feed him himself; and whenever Lep opened his mouth to speak, every one else was peremptorily ordered to hold his tongue, so that Lep's words might ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... in various ways to the question of their origin. Now and then we encountered a sentence, like Prof. Owen's "axiom of the continuous operation of the ordained becoming of living things," which haunted us like an apparition. For, dim as our conception must needs be as to what such oracular and grandiloquent phrases might really mean, we felt confident that they presaged no good to old beliefs. Foreseeing, yet deprecating, the coming time of trouble, we still hoped that, with some repairs ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... the foal the New Testament, and the two apostles who went to loose them the moral and mystical senses; blind Bartimeus throwing off his coat while hastening to Jesus, opens a whole treasury of oracular meanings. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Missionary, who collected two hundred blankets last August, and at that time saved a like number of little negroes in the West Indies from freezing, has received nothing but the yellow fever. The Hon. Oracular M. Matterson becomes able to withstand any quantity of late nights and bad brandy, is elected to Congress, and lobbies through contracts by which he realizes some 50,000 dollars; while private individuals lose 100,000 dollars by the Atlantic Cable. Contracts are popular— the cable isn't. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... the Republic. The Lincoln-Douglass debate augmented everywhere the excitement, fed the already mighty numbers of the new party. More and more the public consciousness and conviction were squaring with Mr. Lincoln's oracular words in respect that the Union could not "endure permanently half slave ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... to all such claims as were urged by the zealous and loud-spoken Puritans. But early Deism lacked an indispensable element of strength,—the power of adapting itself to the people. Its best priests could not leave the tripod, though many of the oracular responses were heard some distance from the temple-doors. In time, there arose a group of essayists and poets, who, with a similar coterie of novelists, dictated religion, morals, politics, and literature to the country. Their influence was ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... his legs to return home. "Oh! Mr. Snodgrass," said the lady, looking slyly, as she adjusted her cloak, at him and Miss Isabella, "there will be marrying and giving in marriage till the day of judgment." And with these oracular words she ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... the Bibelot shaking their heads and saying, "Poor chap!" And I could see Charley Furuseth, as I had said good-bye to him that morning, lounging in a dressing-gown on the be-pillowed window couch and delivering himself of oracular and pessimistic epigrams. ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... accustomed to surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hill-tops rising towards the sky, had begun, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as the brooding soul of the world, cannot fail of its oracular promise as to Woman. "The mothers," "The mother of all things," are expressions of thought which lead the mind towards this side of universal growth. Whenever a mystical whisper was heard, from Behmen down to St. Simon, sprang up the ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Rose approached her oracular cave, was seated on a tripod in front of the fire, distilling strong waters out of penny-royal. But no sooner did her distinguished visitor appear at the hatch, than the still was left to take care of itself, and a clean apron and mutch having ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... down out of the skies, immaculate, infallible, oracular—this is the traditional view ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... which could scarcely be the case seeing the latitude we are in," said Dick Harper with oracular authority, "she's near akin to the chap, that you may depend on, for no other would have been for to go for to play us such a trick as he has been doing; and for that matter, messmates, look ye here—he may be the Dutchman ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... is a way out of most things. But it costs something." Mrs. Bogardus was so concise in her speech as at times to be almost oracular. ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... the Present what is small and what is great, Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of fate, But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din, List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,— "They enslave their children's children who make compromise with ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... pure fragrance of melilot. He honored certain plants with special regard, and, over all, the pond lily, then the gentian, and the Mikania scandens, and "life-everlasting," and a bass-tree which he visited every year when it bloomed, in the middle of July. He thought the scent a more oracular inquisition than the sight—more oracular and trustworthy. The scent, of course, reveals what it concealed from the other senses. By it he detected earthiness. He delighted in echoes, and said they were almost the only kind of kindred voices that he heard. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... dallying and delaying with any trifle by the way to put off the arrival at the hill of evil prospect. At last I learned the lesson of this abrupt ending to the dream at the point of full disillusion; it forced itself upon me with the power of an oracular utterance warning me to cease my palterings with fate. My reason now rebuked me like a stern judge, dissecting all false pleas and laying bare their weakness. What right had I, now knowing myself incurable, even to dream of easing my own pain by darkening and despoiling a second life? The love ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... man, mark my words: that hurt will be the death of you in your forty-second year." He immediately recognised in this old raven one of those soothsayers who usually followed the army, and gained a livelihood by their oracular powers. Mr. L. certainly did mark her words, inasmuch as returning to England, he quitted the army, entered the church, and amongst other red-coat reminiscences, used frequently to mention (and mention but to ridicule) ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... been impressed with these words, so solemn were they, so oracular, and, as it then appeared, so fitly spoken. At the time of making these experiments I was on board one of the Pacific Mail steamships, on my way to San Francisco; and I had reason to be particularly solicitous in ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... unmixed with amusement, Odger junior regarded me majestically for a moment, and then, ejaculating the oracular phrase, "Oh, ah!" walked off, his four-foot-one drawn to its full height, his hands behind his back, and his mouth still drawn up for whistling, but apparently too overcome with dignity to emit the music which an observer would naturally be ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... of an oracular phrase. No doubt he had been meditating it during the supper. Addressing ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... voice was repeated by the next, and in a moment it circulated through this innumerable people, which rang with the acclamation of "It is the will of God! It is the will of God!"[76] The neighboring villages caught up those oracular words, and it is incredible with what celerity they spread everywhere around into places the most distant. This circumstance, then considered as miraculous, contributed greatly to the success of the Hermit's mission. No less did the disposition of the nobility throughout ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... The oracular sentence was hailed with a ringing cheer. Still, it is unlucky the British seaman is so enamoured of theological terms; ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... a man who conceals staggering bewilderment under the transparent disguise of incredulity; and Sollicker, looking, like Thurlow, wiser than any man ever was, enjoyed my discomfiture as much as he was capable of enjoying anything. Then he proceeded with great deliberation to interpret his oracular utterance; but first, with a powerful facial exertion, he wrenched his mouth and nose to one side, inhaling vigorously through the lee nostril, then cleared his throat with the sound of a strongly-driven ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... vision of majestical Pan in "the cool of a cleft" exalts our human heroism into relation with the divine benevolence, and the reward of release from labour is proportionally higher than a holiday with the "belle Aurore." Victory and then domestic love is the human interpretation of Pan's oracular promise; but the gifts of the gods are better than our hopes and it proves to be ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... opine with Sir Isaac Newton, Knight, and umwhile [*Late] master of his Majesty's mint, that the (pretended) science of astrology is altogether vain, frivolous, and unsatisfactory." And here he reposed his oracular jaws. ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... effect, and it was very true that political effect was desired. "We wish that the visit shall exert a beneficent influence upon the mutual relations of both empires." Public opinion in England allowed itself to be satisfied with this equivocal, oracular statement. In other countries, however, a keener insight was displayed. THE NEW YORK TIMES judged the situation correctly when it said: "It is always a mistake to force a warm friend, who is at the same time a business friend, a blood relative, out of intimate ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... dumb! Through their oracular depths and secret nooks, To the mute supplication of her looks No mystic ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... thee?" Loud and sudden and near the note of a whippoorwill sounded Like a flute in the woods; and anon, through the neighboring thickets, Farther and farther away it floated and dropped into silence. "Patience!" whispered the oaks from oracular caverns of darkness: And, from the moonlit meadow, a sigh ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Maggs!' roared the beadle; and the tenth Muse, brought to a sudden stand-still, ceased her oracular utterances, and, grasping her modicum of shining silver, vanished ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... fence. He slowly turned the quid of tobacco in his cheek, and lifting up his voice spoke with an oracular drawl:— ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... oracular. Out of a joke, he crossed her palm with a sixpence. She looked him all over, though she knew well what he had in his mind, examined the lines of his hand minutely, and then delivered ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... our public writers owe most of their virtues to the one, and most of their vices to the other. If Mill taught some of them to reason, Macaulay tempted more of them to declaim: if Mill set an example of patience, tolerance, and fair examination of hostile opinions, Macaulay did much to encourage oracular arrogance, and a rather too thrasonical complacency; if Mill sowed ideas of the great economic, political, and moral bearings of the forces of society, Macaulay trained a taste for superficial particularities, trivial circumstantialities ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... patriotism are so boring and so out of date," said a revered lady who had some pretensions to oracular utterance; "we are too cosmopolitan nowadays to be really moved by them. That is why one welcomes an intelligible production like 'Cousin Teresa,' that has a genuine message for one. One can't understand the message all at once, ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... for some time, gazing with gloomy eyes into the fire. Finally he said, speaking in an oracular manner, yet brokenly as he always did, for the English tongue was hard to him: "Jonas Harding not friend to Injin; Injin not friend to him. You friend to Crow Wing. You fight Crow Wing; fight 'um fair; when foot well we fight ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... had achieved scientific or literary distinction inspired me with far greater awe than those of the highest rank - of whom from my childhood I had seen abundance - Alison's celebrity, his courteous manner, his oracular speech, his voluminous works, and his voluminous dimensions, filled me with too much diffidence and respect to admit of any freedom of approach. One listened to him, as he held forth of an evening when surrounded by his family, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... he writes in "The Editor's Table" of Appleton's Journal for October, 1880, "when the theatre had a pit, where critics and wiseacres were wont to assemble and utter oracular things about the plays and the performers. The actors were in those days afraid of the Pit, especially at the Park, of the fourth bench from the orchestra, where the magnates of the pen sat watchful, ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Love in '76 - An Incident of the Revolution • Oliver Bell Bunce
... will produce 4,400 pounds of plantains or bananas. The cultivation of the various varieties in India, China, and the Malay Archipelago dates, says De Candolle, 'from an epoch impossible to realise.' Its diffusion, as that great but very oracular authority remarks, may go back to a period 'contemporary with or even anterior to that of the human races.' What this remarkably illogical sentence may mean I am at a loss to comprehend; perhaps M. de ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... confirmed by the Emperor Valentinian III (445). But for some time after the Council of Sardica the new prerogative was used with the greatest caution. The Popes of that period use every precaution to make their oracular answers inoffensive. They assure their correspondents that Rome enjoins no novelties; that she does not presume to decide any point on which tradition is silent; that she is merely executing a mandate which general councils have laid upon her. Those who evince respect for her claims are overwhelmed ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... said he, "for an immediate and categorical answer, not delivered in an oracular style, ambiguous and inconclusive, respecting the armaments in Bohemia, and I demand a positive assurance that the queen will not attack me either during this or the ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... another, a poem of essential worldly wisdom, to be bracketed with Browning's equally oracular "The Statue and the Bust," fable and poem ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... in high ecclesiastical life as the nolo episcopari, he consented to take on himself the chill dignity of going to Kench's. But to the farrier's strong disgust, Mr. Macey now started an objection to his proposing himself as a deputy-constable; for that oracular old gentleman, claiming to know the law, stated, as a fact delivered to him by his father, that no ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... anatomically beautiful and desirable—he bethought him of a subject that would enable him to introduce his trouvaille. As but one attitude could display the special formation to advantage, the idea of a Sibyl, sitting brooding beside her oracular tripod, was soon evolved, but not so soon was its form determined and fixed. Like Mr. Watts, Sir Frederic Leighton thinks out the whole picture before he puts brush to canvas, or chalk to paper; but, ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... went with Russia against Turkey. The "unspeakable Turk" was to be "struck out of the question and Bismarck invited to arbitrate. Such was the oracular deliverance from Cheyne Row, and Froude obeyed the oracle. He attended the Conference at St. James's Hall in December at which Gladstone spoke, and Carlyle's letter was read, sitting for the only time in his life on the same ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... class of the oracular I certainly did not belong. I felt that I had nothing to say, that it should be very difficult to understand. I resolved, if I could help it, not to "darken counsel by words without knowledge." This was my principle in the Enquiry concerning ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... says it was a sea-shell. Tradition affirms that the magnet originally was not on a pivot, but set to float on water in a cup. The old antiquarian is wildly theoretical on this point, and sees a compass in the Golden Fleece of Argos, in the oracular needle which Nero worshipped, and in everything else. Yet undoubtedly there are some curious facts connected with the matter. Osonius says that Gama and the Portuguese got the compass from some pirates at the Cape of Good Hope, A.D. 1260. M. Fauchet, the French antiquarian, finds ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... erected on the battlefield, with an inscription describing the contest as "a useful lesson to British kings never to exceed the bounds of their just prerogative; and to British subjects, never to swerve from the allegiance due to their legitimate monarch." This is certainly an oracular utterance, and of its injunctions the reader can ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... person, and the shades proper to be used by the wide class ranging between these extremes she knew also, with a special provision for red-haired and sandy folk and those who have no complexion at all. Certain laws which she formulated were cherished by her daughter as oracular utterances—that one should match one's eyes in the house and one's hair in the street, was one; that one's hat and gloves and shoes were of vastly more importance than all the rest of one's clothing, was another; that one's hair and stockings ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... the dame consulted the bells when ringing, and which seemed to repeat, "Marry your man John." She took this oracular advice, married, and soon repented. She again applied to the curate, who told her, "You have not observed well what the bells said; listen again." She did so, when they distinctly repeated, "Don't ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... Europe have come more decided condemnations of the course of Austria than from the Russian capital. The language of the St. Petersburg journals touching the Treaties of Vienna has been absolutely contemptuous; and that language is all the more oracular and significant because we know that the editors of those journals must have been inspired by the government. It has been justly regarded as expressing the views of the Czar, and of the statesmen who compose his cabinet. Though not disposed for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... also at length opened their oracular jaws on the subject of Bonaparte, and acknowledged its rapid sale, and the probable exhaustion ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... returned the dealer with an oracular smile. "If you've got it here let me look at ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... still existed—for a moment I doubted whether I should not awake her; so effeminate an horror ran through my frame.—Great God! would it one day be thus? One day all extinct, save myself, should I walk the earth alone? Were these warning voices, whose inarticulate and oracular sense forced belief ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Livingstone, in one of his priceless little etchings, 'was a man of great spirit, but much subdued by inward exercise, and who attained the most rare experiences of downcasting and uplifting.' And in Rutherford's first letter to this Earlston, written from Anwoth in 1636, he says, in that lofty oracular way of his, 'Jesus Christ has said that Alexander Gordon must lead the ring in Galloway in witnessing a good conscience.' This, no doubt, refers to the prosecution that Gordon was at that moment undergoing at the hands of the Bishop of Glasgow for refusing to admit a nominee of the Bishop into ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... dire it was, by Thee Is known,—by none, perhaps, so feelingly; But Thou, who, starting in thy fervent prime, Didst first lead forth this pilgrimage sublime, Hast heard the constant Voice its charge repeat, Which, out of thy young heart's oracular seat, First roused thee.—O true yoke-fellow of Time With unabating effort, see, the palm Is won, and by all Nations shall be worn! The bloody Writing is for ever torn, And Thou henceforth shalt have a good Man's calm, A great Man's happiness; ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth
... though scarcely content. In the meantime, daily and hourly they all pumped Mr Tadpole, who did not find it difficult to keep up his reputation for discretion; for knowing nothing, and beginning himself to be perplexed at the protracted silence, he took refuge in oracular mystery, and delivered himself of certain Delphic sentences which adroitly satisfied those who consulted him ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... my grandmother said "You must go to Picault's ball, my dear;" and my grave, oracular father added: "Yes, you shall go among our people now. I am about to send ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... Buxieres;" said he, With a particularly oracular air, "Claudet is dead, and the dead, like the absent, are always in the wrong. But who is to say whether you are not mistaken concerning the nature of Reine's unhappiness? I will have that cleared up this very day. Good-night; keep ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... In this oracular manner the Constitution of 1799 came into existence, and it was not his fault that it degenerated in the strong hands of Napoleon. He named the three Consuls, refusing to be one himself, and he passed into ceremonious obscurity as president ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... not only found no answering sympathy from within, but even exaggerated by constrast my despondency. In this condition I reached Saint Giles's Church. A crowd was assembled at the gate opposite its entrance, and presently the long surly toll of the death-bell—that solemn and oracular memento—announced that a funeral was on the eve of taking place. The funeral halted at the entrance gate, where the coffin was taken from the hearse, and and thence borne into the chancel. This ceremony concluded, the procession again set forth towards the home appointed for the departed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... a Christian, could not, according to the testimony of Schoolcraft, be made to waver in his belief, that he was visited by spirits in the exhibitions connected with the tight-wound pyramidal, oracular lodge; but he believed they were evil spirits. No cross-questioning could bring out any other testimony. He avowed that, aside from his incantations, he had no part in the shaking of the lodge, never touching the poles at any time, and that the drumming, rattling, singing, ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... glory that redounds Therefrom to human kind, and what we are. Be mine to follow with no timid step Where knowledge leads me; it shall be my pride That I have dared to tread this holy ground, Speaking no dream, but things oracular, Matter not lightly to be heard by those Who to the letter of the outward promise Do read the invisible soul; by men adroit In speech, and for communion with the world Accomplished, minds whose faculties are then Most active ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... in my wildest moments had I dreamt that he would try and get into Germany in war-time, into that land where every citizen is catalogued and pigeonholed from the cradle. But Red Tabs' oracular utterance had made everything clear to me. Why a mission to Germany would be the very thing that Francis would give his eyes to be allowed to attempt! Francis with his utter disregard of danger, his love of taking risks, his impish delight in taking a rise out of the stodgy Hun—why, ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... however, he was a man of limited education; he had read much, but his reading had been almost wholly superficial; he possessed, upon an infinite variety of subjects, that little knowledge which is a dangerous thing. There was consequently no topic of conversation upon which he had not something oracular to say; he was wont to maintain his own opinion with a very considerable amount of heat, and so obstinate was he that it was quite impossible to convince him that he was ever in the wrong. He was essentially a vulgar man; but, as might naturally be supposed from what has already ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... below: ought they not consequently to speak the language of a more simple olden time, and their voices, too, ought they not also to seem a feeble sound of wailing, when contrasted with the thundering oracular language of Jupiter? For this reason Shakspeare chose a syllabic measure which was very common before his time, but which was then going out of fashion, though it still continued to be frequently used, especially in translations of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... The laurels, too)—Ver. 5. The "cortina" or oracular shrine was surrounded with laurels; which were said to quiver while the oracles were being pronounced. This is probably the most beautiful portion of these newly-discovered poems. Still, it cannot with propriety be ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... There's a many of them as can say so, and yet it's not in 'em to do it. And there's men as don't know hardly how to say it, and yet it's in their hearts all the while." Polly must have been thinking of Ontario as she made this latter oracular observation. ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... honour, the Master of Ravenswood, and some guests of quality, had just sat down to dinner; that there was excellent brandy at the hostler-wife's at Wolf's Hope down below; and he held out some obscure hint that the reckoning would be discharged by the Master; but this was uttered in a very dubious and oracular strain, for, like Louis XIV., Caleb Balderstone hesitated to carry finesse so far as direct falsehood, and was content to deceive, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... of jealousy, my dear sir, against young members of ability," said Mr. Botcher, in his most oracular and impressive tones. "The competition amongst those—er—who have served the party is very keen for the positions you desired. I personally happen to know that the general had you on the Judiciary and Appropriations, and that some of your—er—well-wishers persuaded him to take ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... admire. If you are candid in calling yourself a pilgrim I appreciate your candour. If you are not, I appreciate even more your discretion. But you will still let me observe that for a young gentleman of personal attractions to walk half naked through an inquisitive nation, and to give oracular replies to questions put him by officials (to say the least of it) is to excite remark. I have some recommendations to make, which I hope you'll pardon—as first, stockings; second, a pair of stout walking-shoes; third, a hat; fourthly, some apparent calling ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... of which was neither very popular nor well understood. What the result of the action between Copenhagen and the British fleet might ultimately have been, is therefore altogether uncertain. THE BOMBARDMENT OF COPENHAGEN BY NELSON, as it is generally styled, is therefore, like most other oracular phrases of the day, a mere combination of words, without the ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... my own. "Too 'flippant'? He has made it too oracular. Mr. Bousefield says he has killed it." Then perceiving my stupefaction: "Don't you know what has happened?" she pursued; "isn't it because in his trouble, poor love, he has sent for you that you've come? You've heard nothing at all? Then you had better know before you see them. Get in here ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... the sanguine and impetuous mind of Olinthus beheld in the power of Apaecides the means of divulging to the deluded people the juggling mysteries of the oracular Isis. He thought Heaven had sent this instrument of his design in order to disabuse the eyes of the crowd, and prepare the way, perchance, for the conversion of a whole city. He did not hesitate then to appeal to all the new-kindled enthusiasm of Apaecides, to arouse his ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... have not been first got together by spontaneous, unartificial associations, resting upon forgotten particulars, blending together disparities or inconsistencies, and having in his mind old and familiar phrases and oracular propositions of which he has never rendered to himself an account; and there is no man who has not found it a necessary branch of self-education to break up, analyze, and reconstruct these ancient mental compounds." [Footnote: Grote has written very ably, and at unusual length, respecting Socrates ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the oracular Nares; "taste is all a matter of opinion. But the point is, how will your friend take it? You refuse a favour, and you take the high horse at the same time; you disappoint him, and you rap him over the knuckles. It won't do, Mr. Dodd; no friendship can stand that. You must be as good ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... on his way toward Libya and Egypt. Over the latter land ruled Busiris, the son of Neptune and Lysianassa. To him during the period of a nine-year famine a prophet had borne the oracular message that the land would again bear fruit if a stranger were sacrificed once a year to Jupiter. In gratitude Busiris made a beginning with the priest himself. Later he found great pleasure in the custom and killed all strangers who came to Egypt. So Hercules was seized and placed on the ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... homage and power, that those who have once quaffed them find all milder stimulants stale and insipid. No sooner were M. and Madame Roland established in their city residence, than they were involved in all the plots and the counterplots of the Revolution. M. Roland was grave, taciturn, oracular. He had no brilliance of talent to excite envy. He displayed no ostentation in dress, or equipage, or manners, to provoke the desire in others to humble him. His reputation for stoical virtue gave a wide sweep to his influence. His very silence invested him with a mysterious ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... said some one in the crowd; let us have it, with no non-committal.] Yes, my friend, without non-committal or evasion, without barren generalities or empty phrase, without if or but, without a single touch, in all I say, bearing the oracular character of an Inaugural, I shall, on this occasion, speak my mind plainly, freely, and independently, to men who are just as free to concur or not to concur in my sentiments, as I am to utter them. I think you are entitled to hear my opinions freely and frankly ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... as and including Mainz. Bismarck replied that "the true interest of France is not to obtain an insignificant increase of territory, but to aid Germany in constituting herself after a fashion which will be most favorable to all concerned." Delphos could not have been more oracular. But Napoleon III. could not or would not heed. A week later Benedetti was instructed to submit a regular scale of concessions—the frontiers of 1814 and the annexation of Belgium, or Luxemburg and Belgium, Benedetti received the most courteous attention and ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... grazed. He held up against the shock, thus wasting much of the vital force which absolute repose from the beginning would have spared him. He is a very sick man, but I believe with the doctor that he will pull through. Indeed," added Batoche in that quaint oracular way which was no longer new to those who heard him, "Cary Singleton cannot, must not die. Not only is his own young life precious, but there are dear lives depending upon his. What would Zulma Sarpy do without him, ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... coins and Indian medals, a serpent was represented, coiled round the trunk of a tree. Python, the Serpent Deity, was esteemed oracular; and the tripod at Delphi was a triple-headed serpent ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Importation of Foreign Rags," in which King Bomba of Naples, the Emperor Louis Napoleon, and the Pope were shown landing on British shores in very sorry plight. And in due time England was to see—at least, as far as the two monarchs were concerned—the realisation of the oracular couplet combined:— ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... niver mind, as you say, sir; feelin's es feelin's, an' th' ould Mennear's wan eye went mortal agen 'un. Not but what he wudn' turn et to account now an' then. 'Tummas doubted,' he said wan day, 'an' how was he convenced? Why, by oracular demonstrashun—'" ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... pictures again. When I looked his way again, a few minutes later, he held out his hand to me, and we entered into a conversation which lasted until Griffiths gave me a hint that Turner had business to transact which I must leave him to. He gave me a hearty handshake, and in his oracular way said, "Hmph—(nod) if you come to England again—hmph (nod)—hmph (nod)," and another hand-shake with more cordiality and a nod for good-by. I never saw a keener eye than his, and the way that he held himself up, so straight that he ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... how another day he saw a cow. These marginal annotations have been carelessly taken up into the text, have been religiously held by the pious to be orthodox scripture, and by dexterous exegesis have been made to yield deeply oracular meanings. Presently the real prophet takes up the word again and speaks as one divinely inspired, the Voice of a higher and invisible power. Wordsworth's better utterances have the bare sincerity, the absolute abstraction ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... fallen in my way, somewhat a la languissante. But I am all this while forgetting the star of the evening, the Baroness herself. She sat in a line with about six ladies, before whom were arranged as many gentlemen, all listening to the oracular tongue of their ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... I find, rejects Jesus as an authoritative teacher, distinctly denies that the acceptance of Jesus in this character is any condition of salvation and of the divine favour, and treats of my "demand of an oracular Christ," as inconsistent with my own principles. But this is mere misconception of what I have said. I find Jesus himself to set up oracular claims. I find an assumption of pre-eminence and unapproachable ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... serpents moved before they were condemned to crawl, and where Eve found thread to stitch her figleaves. To his speculations on these subjects he gave the lofty name of the Oracles of Reason; and indeed whatever he said or wrote was considered as oracular by his disciples. Of those disciples the most noted was a bad writer named Gildon, who lived to pester another generation with doggrel and slander, and whose memory is still preserved, not by his own voluminous works, but by two ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... pragmatism faces forward to the future, so does rationalism here again face backward to a past eternity. True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution. ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... seem to fancy all their acquaintance deaf, and come up so close to you that they may be said to measure noses with you, and frequently overcome you with the full exhalations of a foul breath. I would have these oracular gentry obliged to speak at a distance through a speaking-trumpet, or apply their lips to the walls of a whispering-gallery. The Wits who will not condescend to utter anything but a bon-mot, and the Whistlers or Tune-hummers, who never articulate at all, may be joined very agreeably ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... extremely small prophet, a prophet Who brings us unbounded returns: For he can prophesy With a wink of his eye, Peep with security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humor proclivity For a nativity. With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he Makes a reduction on taking a quantity! Oh! If any one anything lacks, He'll find it all ready in stacks, If he'll only look in On the resident Djinn, Number ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... himself to imitate his man. He placed himself on a chair, his head fixed, his hat coming over his eyebrows, his eyes half-shut, his arms hanging down, moving his jaw up and down like an automaton:] Gloomy, obscure, oracular as ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... side-winded way, yet you can trace them always at work, through the daily, weekly, monthly periodicals, in desperate exertion to attract public attention. They have at their head one sublime genius, whom they swear by, and they admire him the more, the more incomprehensible and oracular he appears to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... of his; albeit, we demurred to it at the time that he propounded it in his dogmatic way, rapping poor little Teddy Allison on the head with a parallel ruler, which he held in his hand at the moment, for daring to dispute his oracular assertion on the point and making us all laugh by a capital imitation of the haughty airs of our pet aversion and his cynical mode of speech, while in the same breath he took his part, generous lad that ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Rogers with oracular emphasis, "that is where your business education is flawed. No man has done his business properly who has missed a single dollar he could have secured in the doing of it. I do not think a fair judge would find me guilty of avarice, either in business or in the manner of ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... death, Orpheus was reckoned in the number of Heroes or Demigods; and we are informed by Philostratus that his head was preserved at Lesbos, where it gave oracular responses. Orpheus is not mentioned by Homer or Hesiod. The learned scholar Lobeck, in his Aglaophamus, has entered very deeply into an investigation of the real nature of the discoveries ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... appears, nevertheless, a pretty considerable non-sequitur. "For I will give you no patient mockery, no laborious insult of that glorious nature, whose I am and whom I serve." Here the graduate is treated as a servant, and the writer of the letter assumes the Pythian, the truly oracular vein. "Let other servants imitate the voice and the gesture of their master while they forget his message. Hear that message from me, but remember that the teaching of Divine Truth must still be a mystery." "Like master like man." Both ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... Church gone dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here meant Chapterhouses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let him,' says the oracular Professor, 'read on, light of heart ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... look round for new markets on the continent of Europe? And was it not Fox, Burke, Sheridan, and the minor whig luminaries, who opposed him, while not a single member of his own government in the House of Lords was willing or able to defend him? But even reminiscences of Mr. Pitt, and oracular descriptions of Lord Shelburne as the most remarkable man of his age, brought little comfort to men sincerely convinced with fear and trembling that free corn would destroy rent, close their mansions and their parks, break up their lives, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... in these iron chains, and being exhibited for the amusement of an idle world, what would the fierce blood of the Macleods say to that debasement? He began to dislike this old man, with his cruel theories and his oracular speech. But he forbore to have further or any argument with him; for he remembered what the Highlanders call "the advice of the bell of Scoon"—"The thing that concerns you not meddle ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... and dat may not be," the German answered, in the same oracular voice. "I thought, in any case, my good friend Clutterbuck, dat I vould give you vat you call in English the straight tap. It is always vell to have ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... spied his master, Messer Simone. He had now disarmed, and sat, very big with meat and drink and very red of face, talking loudly to a company of obsequious gentlemen who thought, or seemed to think, his utterances oracular. A good way off, at the head of his own table, sat Messer Folco, grave and gray and smiling, his one thought seeming to be that those that came under his roof should be happy in their own way, so long as that way accorded with the decorum expected of Florentine citizens. I fancy that his ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... daring originality of thought and a springlike freshness of expression that set them apart from all other essays ancient or modern. They are the most quotable, the fittest to "point a moral or adorn a tale" that have ever appeared in our literature; but they are also disjointed, oracular, hard to follow; and the explanation is found in the manner of their production. When Emerson projected a new lecture or essay he never thought his subject out or ordered it from beginning to end. That would have been another man's way of doing it. He collected from his notebooks such thoughts ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... gross impostures, were never practised upon mankind, than are all, or very nearly all, those oracular responses by which courts assume to determine that certain statutes, in restraint of individual liberty, are within the constitutional power of the government, and are therefore valid and binding ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... play is exquisitely respondent to its title, and even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter's tale; yet it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years voluntary concealment. This might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle, as ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... These oracular verses, pronounced by Bampfylde with all the enthusiasm of one who was inspired, had the desired effect upon our wise man; and he left the presence of the king of the gipsies with a prodigiously high opinion of his majesty's judgment and of his own, fully resolved ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... You are as oracular and as immovable as one of Egypt's monuments; only they are very hard, and you are very soft, my dear little Daisy!—and they are very brown, according to all I have heard, and you are as white ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... true; but not a little also, when examined in detail, of that sublime-sounding sweep of despotic generality, (so inherent a vice of German literature,) which delights to confound the differences, rather than to discriminate the characters, of things; much that seems only too justly to warrant that oracular sentence of the stern Fichte with which we set out, "The younger brother wants clearness;" much that, when applied to practice, and consistently followed out in that grand style of consistency which belongs to a real German philosopher, becomes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... caste the symbol was the horse. The favourite, and therefore the chosen sacrifice of Odin, their ancestor and God, the horse's flesh was eaten at the sacrificial meal; the horse's head, hung on the ash in Odin's wood, gave forth oracular responses. As Christianity came in, and the eating of horse-flesh was forbidden as impiety by the Church, while his oracles dwindled down to such as that which Falada's dead head gives to the goose-girl in the German tale, the ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... harm—making him disconsolate and unhappy." "If you learn him now to read, he'll want to know how to write; and, this accomplished, he'll be running away with himself." Such was the tenor of Master Hugh's oracular exposition of the true philosophy of training a human chattel; and it must be confessed that he very clearly comprehended the nature and the requirements of the relation of master and slave. His discourse was the first decidedly anti-slavery lecture to which it ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... with an apparition. At times the prophets had overpowering visions when awake, during which mighty revelations were made to them. When prophetic revelations ceased, the Jews had recourse to Bath Kol, that is, the Daughter of Voice, or the Daughter of a Voice, because it succeeded, they say, the Oracular Voice delivered from the Mercy Seat when Urim ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... windows and doorway of a large warehouse for the sale of mourning. Giles Hickbody would not speak above his breath, and took his beer standing; but Dorothy was hopeful, and really believed that her aunt would recover. Perhaps Sir Peter had spoken to her in terms less oracular than those which he used ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... perusing the COGITATA ET VISA, one of the most precious of those scattered leaves out of which the great oracular volume was afterward made up, acknowledged that "in all proposals and plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master workman"; and that "it could not be gainsaid but all the treatise over did abound with choice conceits of the present ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... mysteriously wrapped up, and with so many seals on it to secure secrecy, that I had to tear the paper before I could unfold it. And when I came to the writing I could hardly understand the meaning, it was so involved and oracular. I made out, however, that I was to go to Miss Pole's at eleven o'clock; the number ELEVEN being written in full length as well as in numerals, and A.M. twice dashed under, as if I were very likely to come at eleven at night, when all Cranford was usually a-bed and ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... at all knowing what it might be best to say in the momentary pause which ensued upon these remarks, made an elaborate demonstration of intending to deliver something very oracular indeed; trusting to the certainty of the old man interrupting him, before he should utter a word. Nor was he mistaken, for Martin Chuzzlewit having taken breath, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... three methods of writing are no mere literary accidents, dependent on the personal choice of this or that particular writer, but necessities of literary form, determined directly by matter, as corresponding to three essentially different ways in which the human mind relates itself to truth. If oracular verse, stimulant but enigmatic, is the proper vehicle of enthusiastic intuitions; if the treatise, with its ambitious array of premiss and conclusion, is the natural out-put of scholastic all-sufficiency; ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... Praetorium. All was hurry and excitement there. As it was the time of the Jewish Passover, the city was thronged with strangers. A multitude of people had assembled and were clamoring for the death of this man. On our arrival he was brought forth. He proved to be that Prophet of Nazareth whose oracular wisdom and wonder-working power had been everywhere noised abroad. I had ...
— The Centurion's Story • David James Burrell
... oracular descant for the lady of the house, the rest of the company were all eager to have their fortunes told likewise, but she put them off till the next Friday, when they promised to have silver coin ready for crossing their palms. The senor lieutenant now came in, and heard a glowing account of the charms ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... broad daylight, it betokens an approaching misfortune. Let it warn you, Madame Regent Anna! You have called me a toad—very well, toads always have correctly prophesied misfortune, and if they can never avert it, it is because otherwise people will not listen to such oracular voices of all-wise Nature! Let me be your toad, your highness, and listen to me! I foresee misfortune for you. Believe my prophecy, and that misfortune may yet be averted. Mark the signs by which fate would warn you! Did you not yesterday see Elizabeth driving through ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... The above oracular statement proceeded from the parched and puckered lips of Sandy-haired Jim—one of the many "hands" employed on the immense Tesoro Rancho, which covered miles of valley, besides extending up on to the eastern flank of the Coast Range, and taking in considerable tracts of woodland and mountain ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... penetrate a little into the secrets of futurity. The same tutelary gods who bestowed their care, and exerted their powers to procure present pleasure and happiness for mankind, were supposed not averse to grant them, in this respect also, a little indulgence. Hence the famous oracular responses of antiquity; hence the long train of conjurers, fortune-tellers, astrologers, necromancers, magicians, wizards, and witches, that have been found in all places and at all times; nor have superior ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... mutilation, degrading enough in any man, was destructive to a philosopher; Kelly, therefore, lest his wisdom should suffer in the world's opinion, wore a black skull-cap, which, fitting close to his head, and descending over both his cheeks, not only concealed his loss, but gave him a very solemn and oracular appearance. So well did he keep his secret, that even Dee, with whom he lived so many years, appears never to have discovered it. Kelly, with this character, was just the man to carry on any piece of roguery for his own advantage, or to nurture the delusions of his master for the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... first time in her life her slumber was fitful and restless, long intervals of wakefulness alternating with snatches of fantastic dreams. . . . And then her mind reverted to Tom Pratt, to old Simon Burney, and to her mother's emphatic and oracular declaration that widowers are in league with Satan, and that the girls upon whom they cast the eye of supernatural fascination have no choice in the matter. "I wish I knowed ef that thar sayin' war true," she murmured, her face still turned to the western spurs, and the moon sinking slowly ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... contemporary questions this opinion is worth quoting, although the ritualistic leanings of the present day hardly operate to support it. But here, as in his published works, his religious utterances are somewhat ambiguous and oracular; and one welcomes the marking of a definite epoch in Church history when he writes emphatically that 'the Broad Church among the clergy may be said to have almost perished ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... profiting by personal acquaintance with a Minister, obtained more or less full knowledge of what the Queen's Speech would contain. But he was bound in honour to preserve his informant from possibly inconvenient consequences of his garrulity, and so the oracular style was adopted. When other papers, put on the track, obtained information in the same way they adopted the same quaint practice, till now it has become deeply ingrained in journalism. To-day, whilst there is no secret of ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various |
