"Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on wondering where the ravens, which frequented the neighbourhood of the river and its mountainous cliffs, built their nests; but wondering did not help him, and he gave up the riddle, and began, in his pleasant holiday idleness, to look about at other things in the unfrequented wilderness through which the river ran. To trace the raven by following it home seemed too difficult, but it was easy to follow ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... birth-right," answered Middlemas. "When I thought of going to India, I knew not my parents, or how to make good the rights which I had through them. That riddle is solved. I am entitled to at least a third of Moncada's estate, which, by Winter's account, is considerable. But for you, and your mode of treating the small-pox, I should have had the whole. Little did I think, when old Gray was likely to have his wig pulled off, for putting out ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... full, the prisoners wondered what was going to be done with their cargo of dirt? The riddle was solved when the overseer ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... went, till Catherine trembled for the consequences. She herself took in Mrs. Richards and her children, comforting the sobbing creatures afterwards with a calmness born of her own despair. Robson, in the last stage himself, sent him a grimly characteristic message. 'I shall solve the riddle, sir, before you. The doctor gives me three days. For the first time in my life, I shall know what you are still guessing at. May the blessing of one who never blessed thing or creature before he saw you go ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... surround herself. There was something about her as cold and as pure as blue ice, and she gave the same impression of crystal clarity. All in all, hers was a baffling personality and Phillips fell asleep with the riddle of it unanswered. He awoke in the morning with it ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... 'The riddle that has worried me three weeks he has solved in a way which is simplicity itself. He has got it, and ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the causes and results of Pessimism. It can touch the practical side of the riddle of life by asking certain questions, the answers to which lie within the province of human experience. Among these ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... lady was in black, and so it's possible that your mother may have died, and that she took you to see your father, to whom, for some reason or other, she wanted to introduce you. That's how I read the riddle, ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... his two frames together and continued his life. A letter from him to his friend explaining matters crossed a letter from the friend, in which he told how he also had been aware of his presence. The incident is narrated in detail in Mr. Funk's "Psychic Riddle." ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... natural defense against the outer world of a man all compact of imagination and sleepless energy; the touch in him of "the imperishable child," combined with the brooding intensity of the explorer who is always guessing at the next riddle; the fun, simplicity, bonhomie he showed with those who knew him well—all these are vividly ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... total stillness, and poor Tulliver's dimly lighted soul had ceased to be vexed with the painful riddle of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... all the members of the apostle's flock, intended therefore for the Christians of Asia in and around Ephesus. It is a strange fact that St. Augustine, in quoting iii. 2, describes the passage as "said by John in his Epistle to the Parthians." This statement is a riddle which no commentator has been able to answer satisfactorily. As the Eastern Churches had little or no knowledge of this title, we are compelled to regard it as a mistake. It may have arisen from some scribe failing to read a partially illegible manuscript in which St. ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... archaeologists are rather stupid to have given up the riddle?" she asked, as she and her escort turned away and stepped out again into ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... that moved like a living thing. He was clad in his full white and yellow uniform, as to receive his guests within, except that the sash or scarf had been unbound and lay rather crumpled by his side. Before he could be lifted he was dead. But, dead or alive, he was a riddle—he who had always hidden in the inmost chamber out there in the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... moment the half-formed question found its answer, though the answer seemed rather to ask a new riddle than to answer the old one. A door at the other end of the passage opened a little way, and a melodious voice called softly, "Papa, papa!" The cat ran towards the speaker, the door was opened wide, and for an instant Dieppe ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... dealing with somewhat whose matter he had never seen before. And as he read each stanza, with its laudation of some lovely lady that was one of the living graces and glories of our city, those that spelled the cryptic riddle of its meaning clapped their hands for pleasure and turned their eyes to where the lady thus bepraised stood and smiled at her, and she, delighted, would bridle and fidget with her fan and seek to maintain herself as if she did not care one whit for what in reality she prized very highly. ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... that divided my station in two Showed that Nature designed that two fees should be due. Mr. Riddle assured me ’twas paid but for show; But he kept it and spent it; ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... figures, in frocks and frills, Go roaming about at their own sweet wills, And "play with the pups," and "reprove the calves," And do nought in the world (but Work) by halves, From "Hunt the Slipper" and "Riddle-me-ree" To watching ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... balsam of magic blossoms that intoxicates thee—flowers of a strange and distant world where I am at home and not a stranger as in this book[12] where a ravenous tiger devours the delicate image of spiritual love. I do not understand this cruel riddle; I cannot comprehend why they all make themselves unhappy and why they all serve a malicious demon with a thorny sceptre, why Charlotte, who strews incense before him daily, yes, hourly, should prepare misfortune ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... down. Cabot stared at him, crossed his knees, and continued to stare. Occasionally he shook his head, as if the riddle were proving too much for him. Galusha did not move. Neither man spoke. The old clock ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... black flea-beetles riddle the leaves with holes and cause the foliage to die. Bordeaux mixture as applied for potato blight protects the plants by making them ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... is a most pig-headed sot! (aloud) Young man, you cannot know the risk you run. Th' alternative's in earnest—not in fun. Dame Turandot will spin you a tough riddle, That's not to be "got thro' like any fiddle." Not such as this, which any child might guess— (Though the Emperor could not, I must confess;) "What gives a cold, cures a cold, and pays the doctor's bill?" Not short enigmas lightly disentangled; Hard nuts you'll ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... was mostly his hope of chancing on some clue to the mystery of Dorothy Calender—bewitching riddle that she was!—that fascinated his imagination so completely. Aside from her altogether, the great house that stood untenanted, yet in such complete order, so self-contained in its darkened quiet, intrigued him equally with the train of inexplicable ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... conclusion; A sequel stands beyond, Invisible, as music, But positive, as sound. It beckons and it baffles; Philosophies don't know, And through a riddle, at the last, Sagacity must go. To guess it puzzles scholars; To gain it, men have shown Contempt of generations, And ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... What are you interrupting for! Just guess this riddle. What's this: round—but not a girl; with ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... that without a breathing stop, Were surely past a mortal's strength— Unless, indeed, it be no bigger Than some wee, pigmy, dwarfish figure, Which one would head a cane withal;— And if to this the case should fall, The adventurer's honour would be small! This posting seems to me a trap, Or riddle for some greenish chap; I therefore leave the whole to you.' The doubtful reasoner onward hies. With heart resolved, in spite of eyes, The other boldly dashes through; Nor depth of flood nor force ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... SPHINX. It is a vast riddle—an unfathomable mystery; and on every side there is temptation to questioning. In every leaf, in every cell of every leaf, there are a hundred problems. There are ten good years of a man's life in investigating what is ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... a riddle to him, and he let the subject drift away. "Shall we go and sit in the cathedral?" he asked, when their ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... Chapman's brigade, crossed the Chickahominy at Long Bridge, in advance of the Fifth Corps, and by 7 o'clock next morning had driven the enemy's pickets up to White Oak bridge, where he waited for our infantry. When that came up, he pushed on as far as Riddle's Shop, but late that evening the Confederate infantry forced him to withdraw to St. Mary's Church; for early in the morning General Lee had discovered the movement of our army, and promptly threw this column of infantry south of ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... and harmony of nature, he could have been a poet, or a statesman of the old heroic type. But he did not attain, for he did not seek with the whole heart. And he puzzled others, because he had never read the riddle of himself. ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... sea. Meanwhile Fanti advanced on Perugia, and was on the point of entering Viterbo when a detachment from the French garrison in Rome suddenly occupied the town: one of Napoleon's facing-both-ways evolutions by which he thought to save the goat and cabbages of the Italian riddle, but the final result was to lose both one and the other. Lamoriciere went home, declaring that he took his defeat less to heart than the cruel disillusions he had undergone in Rome. Some one proposed that he should go to the rescue ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... of a riddle, Mr McKay. I suppose you consider a man with ten thousand a year rich, and a man ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... green butterfly," I called it; but it was really all too sad even for a mental joke, though a little timely laughter is often the best weapon to meet trouble with, sometimes having an effect like that of a gay sunshade suddenly opened in the face of an angry bull. Unable to solve the riddle, I retired to my room to sleep my last ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... thus trying to decide, the small guide continued to ply him with questions, until he came to the conclusion that the best plan would be to give a portion of the story, otherwise, in case he met the men, Jim might ask them to solve the riddle. ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... the silent land, removed from all human company but Marc'antonio's, with no clock but the sun and no calendar but the creeping change of the season upon the macchia, what wonder if I forgot human probabilities at times in piecing and unpiecing solutions of a riddle which ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... of that grace of patience which comes to her sex like an instinct born of centuried servitude. How her husband ever fascinated so fascinatingly elusive a creature is a mystery to all who know him and a miracle to all who know her; but who has ever guessed the riddle of a woman's heart? Surely no man yet known to the world, except possibly Balzac, and he only occasionally by some sort of electric, psychological accident. The true story of Mrs. Blaine's infelicities has been carefully hidden from the public, although some superserviceable, would-be friends ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... the first vague rumors of battles said to have been fought at San Francisco, Port Townsend, and Seattle, had arisen, even these sources of information ran dry. The question from where all the hostile troops had come, remained as much of a riddle as ever. That was a matter of indifference after all; the chief consideration was to adopt measures of defense as speedily ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... so may seem very strange to us who now have been told the answer to the riddle; for the upper waters of this great river were known of before Christ and spoken of by Herodotus, Pliny and Ptolemy, and its mouths navigated continuously along by the seaboard by trading vessels since the fifteenth century, but they were not recognised ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... followers. But the last word on that has not yet been spoken. Another pen than mine may, perchance before long, tell the whole truth about that tragic episode, and explain what is still an unsolved riddle in all dispassionate minds. Without challenging and exciting the strongest racial prejudices, it will be impossible to lift the veil, and I have no intention of affording even the slightest preliminary ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... derisively at her own affected ignorance. She would guess again and again, and assume the most gleeful surprise upon at last giving the proper answer, and then she would laugh jubilantly, and mockingly scout herself with having given out "a fool-riddle" that she could guess ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... of us, which some dreamers have sought to interpret as inherited remembrances,—recollections of pre-existence.... Vainly you ask yourself:—"Whose voice?—whose face?" It is neither young nor old, the Face: it has a vapoury indefinableness that leaves it a riddle;—its diaphaneity reveals no particular tint;—perhaps you may not even be quite sure whether it has a beard. But its expression is always gracious, passionless, smiling—like the smiling of unknown friends ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... This is no riddle, the answer being too easy. Men would have answered, "Guessed in once, she was pretty!" And the women would guess in once too, but would keep silent, the pretty ones merely smiling, having sampled the Coventry-sending powers of plain women in the majority ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... wouldst fathom Life and Being, Thou wouldst see through Birth and Death. Thou wouldst solve the eternal Riddle, Thou, a speck, a ray, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... understanding of this strange ever-developing nineteenth century, some real sympathy with its new wonders, some real sphere of labour in it; and this drives them to devour the very newest authors—any book whatever which seems to open for them the riddle of the mighty and mysterious present, which is forcing itself on their attention through every sense. And so up and down, amid confusions and oscillations from pole to pole, and equally eclectic at either pole, from St. Augustin and Mr. Pugin to Goethe and George Sand, and all intensified ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Dreiser, Conrad is forever fascinated by the "immense indifference of things," the tragic vanity of the blind groping that we call aspiration, the profound meaninglessness of life—fascinated, and left wondering. One looks in vain for an attempt at a solution of the riddle in the whole canon of his work. Dreiser, more than once, seems ready to take refuge behind an indeterminate sort of mysticism, even a facile supernaturalism, but Conrad, from first to last, faces squarely the massive and intolerable fact. His stories are not chronicles of men who conquer ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... his arm] Do you know this riddle? On four legs in the morning; on two legs at noon; and on ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov
... start Beethoven planned a fine career for his nephew. "The boy must be an artist or a savant that he may lead a noble life," he said once. On another occasion, when the youth was about eighteen years of age, he said, on introducing him to a visitor, "you can ask him a riddle in Greek if you like." "My wishes and efforts have no other aim than that the boy may receive the best possible education," he wrote when contending in the Court of Appeals for possession of the boy, "as his capacity warrants the indulgence of the best hopes for his future, and that the expectation, ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... was headed by the industrious and indomitable Horace Greeley. His claim to the feelings of humanity should never be disputed; but as a practical man who sought to solve the riddle of every-day life he placed his practical views in the foreground. As a political economist he reasoned that slave labor was degrading to free labor; that free labor was better than slave labor, and, therefore, he most earnestly desired its abolition. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... soon; Failure brings no kind of stigma - Dance we to another tune! String the lyre and fill the cup, Lest on sorrow we should sup; Hop and skip to Fancy's fiddle, Hands across and down the middle - Life's perhaps the only riddle That ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... goes far toward explaining both the physiological and the structural gradations and relations between the two kingdoms, and the arrangement of all their forms in groups subordinate to groups, all within a few great types; that it reads the riddle of abortive organs and of morphological conformity, of which no other theory has ever offered a scientific explanation, and supplies a ground for harmonizing the two fundamental ideas which naturalists and philosophers conceive to have ruled the organic world, though they could not ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... is he?" The pitch of the captain's voice had altered. He intended to riddle the man's statement with a cross-fire ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... demanding immediate attention. We shall soon learn, however, how my search in the second story was rewarded. While the results may appear not very significant, they were nevertheless of vast importance in pointing a way to the riddle's answer. ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... to his. Between them they polished the riddle; but by the time it was done the Home Secretary had begun to find Meadows's little wife, whose existence he had not noticed hitherto, more agreeable than Lady Dunstable's table with its racked countenances, and its too ample supply of pencils ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... her head back, and looked with a challenging smile at Baldassarre, as if she had proposed a difficult riddle to him. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... A cab is an interesting sight, particularly a Northbury cab. Shall I make a riddle for you on the spot, Miss Bell? What is the sole surviving curiosity still to be found out ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... you'd be safer down on the ground?' Alice went on, not with any idea of making another riddle, but simply in her good-natured anxiety for the queer creature. 'That wall is so ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... in the meantime, I began to speculate as to why the boar had come with a liberty cap upon his head. After exhausting my invention with a thousand foolish guesses, I made bold to put the riddle which teased me to my old informant. "Why, sure," he replied, "even your slave could explain that; there's no riddle, everything's as plain as day! This boar made his first bow as the last course of yesterday's dinner and was dismissed by ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... psychologic, biologic systems that have waxed and waned, dazzled and deluded, from the first utterances of Gotama, to the very latest of the advanced Evolutionists, is there any other than the Christian solution of the triple-headed riddle—Whence? Wherefore? Whither?—that will deliver us from the devouring Sphinx Despair, or yield us even shadowy consolation when the pinions of gentle yet inexorable death poise over our household darling, and we stand beside the cold silent clay, which natural affection ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... to spend the entire summer trying to solve this riddle for all time, concentrating on it to the exclusion of everything else. They drove west in a station wagon stuffed with equipment and tracking a ...
— The Hohokam Dig • Theodore Pratt
... religious—indeed, everything that a man can be, short of absolute perfection. She thinks me narrow-minded and prejudiced because I do not care to read his life, and because, in spite of all Moore's assertions, I maintain that with Byron's own works in one's hand his character cannot possibly be a riddle to anybody. I dare say the devil may sometimes be painted blacker than he is; but Byron has a fancy for the character of Lucifer, and seems to me, on the contrary, tres pauvre diable. I have no idea that Byron was ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... history and English learning, in the North of England. Venerable he truly was. We need not go back to the legend which supposed that he received the title from the Roman Senate for having solved a strange riddle which they could not answer; nor to the other legend, which tells us that, on his grave-stone at Durham, you can still read the inscription in which it is said that an angel in the night filled up the blank space with Venerabilis. He is venerable ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... of the actual existence, as a vera causa, of the process by which a saying. 'Apollo pursues Daphne,' remains in language, while the meaning of the words is forgotten. This process is essential, but undemonstrated. See the chapter here on 'The Riddle Theory.' ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... mountain spirit. There is a further point, however, in which they also recall Derbyshire, but in which they are far preeminent. This is the vast agglomeration of caves and vertical potholes—like those in Craven, but here called etonnoirs—that riddle the rolling wolds in all directions. Chief among these is the mammoth cave of Han, the mere perambulation of which is said to occupy more than two hours. I have never penetrated myself into its sombre and dank recesses, but something may ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... riddle will do. Yes, there are precedents for that. A riddle would be quite in accordance with Court etiquette. Ask him a ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... Laius. Oedipus. The Oracle. Sphinx. The Riddle. Oedipus made King. Jocasta. Origin of Pegasus. Fountain of Hippocrene. The Chimaera. Bellerophontic Letters. The Centaurs. The Pygmies. Description of the Griffin. The Native ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... infallible meanes (as is supposed) by finding out a thiefe with a Siue and a payre of Sheares, with that coniunction [y]Dies, mies, Iescet, &c. and the rest of such sencelesse and monstrous tearmes, a Riddle that Oedipus himselfe could not vnfolde. But because this conceit of charming hath ouer-spread it selfe in this Sunneset of the world, and challengeth a lawfull approbation from the authority and practise of ancient [z]Physitians, yea and found some [aa]Diuines to be their Patrons respectiuely, ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... Oracle in turn I leaned the Secret of my Love to learn. The Answering Riddle came: "She loves you, yes, In just Proportion to ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... mahogany logs to a States market. Gee whiz! they sure are a tough proposition to move around but here's the cutest little fort any playboy could wish for. Let him come along—who cares a red cent what he does, so long's I got this here machine-gun with plenty o' cartridges in the belts to riddle things with. Ring up the curtain, an' let the play start. Makes me think I'm back in the old line again along the Argonne, an' say, jest 'magine how it all works out with one o' them same Hun pilots swooping down on me! It sure ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... a simple and convenient solution of the riddle if the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type, to the realization of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But there is no warrant for such an expectation. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... my business," answered Ali Partab, with the air of a man who knew all of the secret details but would not admit it. Jaimihr began to think that he had lit at random on the answer to the riddle. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... do not believe that the theory of evolution would have made its way so easily and so quickly after Darwin took up the cudgels in favour of it if he had not been able to support it by a principle which was capable of solving, in a simple manner, the greatest riddle that living nature presents to us,—I mean the purposiveness of every living form relative to the conditions of its life and its marvellously ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... Henley determined to make another effort to force open the door. His resolution was not entirely the result of curiosity, for he had taken such a sudden and strong liking for the girl that he disliked the thought of leaving her; and yet the riddle of her environment was such that he conceived it to be no more than a proper regard for his own safety to take such a precaution while visiting her. Having reached this determination, he cast about for the means ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... Hoyday, a riddle! neither good nor bad! What need'st thou run so many miles about, When thou mayest tell thy tale the nearest ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... can guess her name," said old Sanders. "It's—it's Mildred Wallace!" and his manner suggested a child solving a riddle. ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... tongue, Shrope!" commanded the queen sharply. "Thy wits are addled. Who is there who will read the riddle clearly? Thou, Francis Stafford?" ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... succeeds to the throne of Thebes. The country around is vexed with a terrible monster, with the face of a woman, the wings of a bird, and the tail of a lion, called the Sphinx, who has learned from the Muses a riddle, which she proposed to the Thebans, and on every failure to resolve it one of them was devoured. But no person can solve the riddle. The king offers his crown and his sister Jocasta, wife of Laius, in marriage to any one who would explain the riddle. OEdipus solves it, and is made king of Thebes, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... life women had been to him the most delectable of riddles, and his expressed desire to marry and settle down was perhaps only another statement of the fact that he longed to solve one example of the riddle, one form in which it was presented to him. He felt now that he wished he had married years ago, that he had already become quiet and domesticated. There was a time for youth's fiery passions, its ecstatic uncontent, ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... hushed on his account. Nor did he forget the young visitor. When the elder daughter, to whom my visit was made, was at school, he would care for my entertainment by telling a story, or propounding a riddle, or providing an entertaining book to beguile the ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... circus once: The fool was in the middle. Loud laughed contemptuous Common-sense At every frisk and riddle. ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... work or sing, Or a child pluck flowers of spring, Thou wilt scatter music out, Rouse him with thy wandering note, Changeful fancies set afloat, Almost tell with thy clear throat, But not quite,—the wonder-rife, Most sweet riddle, dark and dim, That he searcheth all his life, Searcheth yet, and ne'er expoundeth; And so winnowing of thy wings, Touch and trouble his heart's strings. That a certain music soundeth In that wondrous instrument, With a trembling upward sent, That is reckoned sweet above ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... a moment you have guessed the riddle!" I exclaimed, liking and understanding the girl better than I had liked or understood her yet. "I believe that's the secret of the Sphinx. The king who had this stupendous idea, and caused it to be carried out, said to some inspired sculptor, 'Make for me from the rock ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... like a stiletto. She supposed that she was often forgetful and indiscreet. Perhaps the large court she held so easily on these occasions beneath the trees or in the great drawing-rooms of the old house had more to do with the matter. If so, she never guessed the riddle. In society she was conscious of one aim, and one aim only. Its very simplicity made other women incredulous, while it kept herself ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... or late." With such partisanship and advocacy the world has been liberally, and more than liberally, supplied. Such a number of Eurekas have been shouted! So often it has been discovered that the world is no such riddle, after all,—that half of it is really the whole! No doubt all this was good boy's-play once; afterwards it did to laugh at for a while; then it ceased to be even a joke, and grew a weariness and an affliction; and at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... toward the trap as the tiger approached, entered and dropped the door, blazed away at the beast, who turned tail and limped off into the jungle. Ai! It was a sight for eyes. They could laugh behind Umballa's back, the gutter born, the iron heeled upstart; they could riddle (confidentially) the council with rude jests. The law was the law; and none, not even the priests in their shaven polls and yellow robes, might slip beyond the law as it read. The first ordeal ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... Aranian city to pick up Inverness and Brady. I anticipate no trouble, and if there is no trouble, we shall return within an hour. If we are not back within three hours, blast this entire area with atomic grenades, and riddle it with ...
— The Death-Traps of FX-31 • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... surprising: and I affirm also that it would not have been the more striking if, instead of two, it had extended to two hundred similar cases. Supposing that a thousand persons were required severally to propose a riddle, no conditions or limitations being expressed as to the terms of the riddle, it would be surprising if any two in the whole thousand should agree: suppose again that the same thousand persons were required to ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... see, the slanting Rays begin to fall, Flinging lights and colours flaunting Through the shadows tall. Onward! onward! must we travel? When will come the goal? Riddle I may not unravel, Cease to ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... days from 1 Manik brings us to 1 Been instead of 1 Men; 26 more to 1 Cauac, a day not found in either column as given in the original. Taking the second column and counting 26 days from 1 Ymix, we reach 1 Manik, instead of 1 Been. This gives us the key to the series and solves the riddle. We must commence with 1 Ymix, then take 1 Manik, then 1 Been, and so on, going ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... the Chesapeake reached under his pillow and produced a pistol. "Out of my cabin or I'll riddle ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... is the eternal riddle of the living. Although mediums have been exposed since the beginning of time, and so-called "spiritualism" has fallen into disrepute over and over again, it emerges triumphantly in spite of charlatans, and once more becomes the theme ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... much I ponder on your evident dejection, But my carefulest reflection leaves the riddle still unread. How do you yourself explain your dismal tendency to wander By the melancholy City of the ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... to Beryl he was in some ways more of a riddle than ever. He talked curiously little about the war—at least to her. He had a way of finding out, both at Chicksands and Mannering, men who had lost sons in France, and when he and Beryl took a walk, it seemed to Beryl as though ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... will meet it: let me not mistake, This is some Shepherd! sure I am awake; What may this riddle mean? I will retire, To give my self ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... were recently revived for me by the reading of the essay "Ultimate Questions," in the last and not least precious volume bequeathed us by the world's greatest thinker. The essay contains his final utterance about the riddle of life and death, as that riddle presented itself to his vast mind in the dusk of a lifetime of intellectual toil. Certainly the substance of what he had to tell us might have been inferred from the Synthetic ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... Squire Thorncliff borrowed ten punds o' me to gang to York Races—deil a boddle wad he pay me back again, and spake o' raddling my banes, as he ca'd it, when I asked him but for my ain back again;—now I think it will riddle him or he gets his horse ower the Border again—unless he pays me plack and bawbee, he sall never see a hair o' her tail. I ken a canny chield at Loughmaben, a bit writer lad, that will put me in the way to sort him. ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Lawless took possession of my poor writing-desk, and commenced tracing on the top thereof, with the red-hot poker, what he was pleased to term a "design from the antique," which consisted of a spirited outline of that riddle-loving female the Sphinx, as she appeared when dressed in top-boots and a wide-awake, and regaling herself with a choice cigar! He was giving the finishing touch to a large pair of moustaches, with which he had embellished her countenance, and which he declared ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... medicine books, riddle books, almanacs, craftsmen's proverbs, fabulous travels, prophecies, legends, romances and the like, hawked about ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... spoken, had not at least questioned him about the hints she had gathered on the way. He did not know the two ladies next to her, he did not even, as it chanced, know Mrs. Lorin Boulger; but he knew New York, and New York was the sphinx whose riddle she must read ...
— Autres Temps... - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... I hardly think so. However" (with a look of the utmost innocence), "Winnie will be able to solve that riddle," and the spiteful girl turned towards her sick friend and awaited ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... all your learning solve this riddle for me!" I exclaimed. "Can all the Martian women be like this? She is beautiful of body and strangely warm and winning to the touch, but as cold of heart as the drifting snow that suffocates a poor lost lamb. She ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... a fiery red. There was obviously no answer to such a remark, which seemed the quintessence of rudeness. But Mrs. Grainger continued to smile, and to stare at her with the air of trying to solve a riddle. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... having the brother of a Lord of the Admiralty on this occasion for my agent, as otherwise, from the vagueness of my statement, the information might not have been procured; which remark of his lordship was long a great riddle to me; for I could not think what he meant about an agent, till, in the course of the year, we heard that his own brother was concerned in the admiralty; so that all his lordship meant was only to crack a joke with me, and that he was ever ready and ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... is the nest-building instinct, turned by the Devil himself into an institution to hold the human soul in chains. The whole story of marriage is told in the old riddle: "Why do birds in their nests agree? Because if they don't, they'll fall out." That's it. Marriage is a nest so small that there is no room in it for disagreement. Now it may be all right for birds to ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... to read the riddle of the sphinx, and your words are as enigmatical. I have not begun to find their clew," replied Madeleine, pausing in the garland she was forming, and letting the ivy drop unnoticed ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Mendelssohn. And there were also several others, who, having been dragged forward by Schwarz, from inefficient beginnings, now left him, to write their acquired skill to Schrievers' credit. Furst was the greatest riddle of all. It was he who, on subsequent concert-tours, was to have extended the fame of the Conservatorium; he was the show pupil of the institution, and, in the coming PRUFUNGEN, was to have distinguished himself, and his master ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... The riddle was too much for them; Lily gave it up, and returned to the fun of acting the part of lover to Marjorie. She was just putting her arm affectionately about her room-mate, when the trained nurse, who was supposed to represent Florence Nightingale, approached, and, in a very squeaky, obviously ...
— The Girl Scouts' Good Turn • Edith Lavell
... therefore it is the sincerity of thought, not its fashion, that matters. True, Ivan Gregoriev, musician by necessity, philosopher by instinct only, left in the end little record of his answer to the riddle. But this was rather well than ill. For, from the very beginning, Ivan's "glimpse behind the veil" was distorted, clouded, smirched, by an unconquerable cynicism: a personal resentment and rebellion against the God who stood forth as the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... yours. And thus, by these two uses of a clipped-up and half-empty Bible, you may make gains that shall yet set you above those whose Bibles of promises are still as fresh as when they came from God's own hand. And Samson said, I will now put forth a riddle unto you: Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... us in the 'Riddle of the Ivy,' he happened to be leaving Battersea, and being asked where he was going, calmly replied to 'Battersea.' Which is really to say that we find our way to Brixton more eagerly by way of Singapore than by way of Kennington. In a few words, it is what we mean when we say, as ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... could not sing, and there must be something mysterious about it. He tied his horse to a stump on the bank, and sat down on the bridge to listen, hoping that his eyes or ears would give him some solution of the riddle. All was still for a while, but presently the invisible ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... down to the woman; and he gave a feast there (for so bridegrooms used to do). When the Philistines saw him, they provided thirty comrades to be with him. And Samson said to them, "Let me now tell you a riddle. If you can tell me what it is within the seven days of the feast, I will give you thirty fine linen robes and thirty suits of clothes; but if you cannot tell me, then you shall give me thirty fine linen robes and thirty suits of clothes." They said to him, "Tell ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... a harsh, cynical tone, and Lionel had turned cold at his words. He stood a long while in silence there, turning them over in his mind and considering the riddle which they presented him. He thought of asking his brother bluntly for the key to it, for the precise meaning of his disconcerting statement, but courage failed him. He feared lest Sir Oliver should confirm his own dread interpretation ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... simple one, your excellency. I shall cause my niece, the Countess von Truchsess, who is not merely lady of honor, but also reader to the queen, to read to her majesty the last numbers of the Berlin Telegraph, which I have just received. This seems like a riddle, but it is not. That journal contains charges against the queen, which, it appears to me, render it impossible for her to declare so loudly and publicly in favor of a continued alliance with the Russian emperor. Her majesty, therefore, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... "A horse and a fool flying," she muttered. "Even what the cards showed. The fool seeking the duke!" A puzzled look crossed her face. "But the duke is here?" she continued to herself. "A strange riddle! All the signs show devilment, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... he did so is a question for philosophy in the highest sense of that word. The fact of his having done so is matter of history. Shall I solve my own riddle? ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Avenue is the abode of these shadows. Where are they from, and whither going—these women without beauty, who walk the streets without handkerchiefs, but blubbering with too much or too little drink? What is the terrible riddle? Why, even as they blubber, are there women whose bodies have the quality of cream, slipping in between ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... he appreciated the character of Emerson; and if so, he would not be likely to appreciate Emerson's intimate friends. A man like John Brown, always ready to rush upon destruction for an idea, must have been an inexplicable riddle to him. Yet John Brown was the only American who could match Hawthorne in ideality—totally different as they were in ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... upon me, Amelia, who did not want for spunk, dug at him with the two-pronged fork, and stuck it through so many plies of his mantle till he was obliged to cry out, "Here, lassie, lay down that leister, or ye will hae me like miller Tamson's riddle, that the cat ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... has twenty pages of the text out of the sixty-two which constituted the entire book printed from wood blocks. These twenty pages are inserted at intervals among the others, and how and why they came there is a riddle ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... women to a seat in a trooper's saddle, and the whole green world from which to pick and choose his pleasures? Bah! it isn't reasonable, and if this knee of mine will permit me to hobble into the presence of the Shining One some fine morning I will have another guess at the riddle. ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... dreamed, this bird could say. Then down he shot, bounced airily along The sward, twitched in a grasshopper, made song Midflight, perched, prinked, and to his art again. Sweet Science, this large riddle read me plain: How may the death of that dull insect be The life of yon trim Shakespeare, ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... wind-god, was pictured as rushing through mid-air on his eight-footed steed, from which originated the oldest Northern riddle, which runs as follows: "Who are the two who ride to the Thing? Three eyes have they together, ten feet, and one tail: and thus they travel through the lands." And as the souls of the dead were supposed to be wafted away on the wings of the storm, Odin was worshipped ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... noticed in many aspects of our popular education that this is not done at all. One teaches our London children to see London with abrupt and simple eyes. And London is far more difficult to see properly than any other place. London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation. The education of the Parisian child is something corresponding to the clear avenues and the exact squares of Paris. When the Parisian boy has done learning about the French reason and the Roman order he can go out and see the thing repeated in the shapes of ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton |
