"Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not altogether cheat that common sadness of the new time, that memory, and insoluble riddle of the countless lives that had stumbled and failed in pain and darkness ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... 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
... pondering over the complication. He saw that until further investigation disproved it there could be but one solution of this intricate riddle. Billy Cass, the maker of the bet, was a race track frequenter; David Cass was not. They must be separate personalities; but they resembled each other; they were of the same name—they might be brothers. Billy Cass had been in possession ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... certain complicated pieces of machinery; the description was not so lucid as it might have been, owing to lack of words, but it manifested the completest understanding of things which to his companion were as hard as the riddle of the universe. His modesty, withal, was excessive; to Wilfrid's humane culture he deferred at all times; for all the learning which lay outside his own sphere he had boundless reverence. Wilfrid's gain by him was not only of a pleasant personal ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... Mr. Wright said, turning to us, "and I hardly know what to make of it. Can you solve the riddle?" ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... some of the most brilliant rays of Grecian literature and art? If we follow the indications given by our oldest literary authority on the subject, the author of the Homeric hymn to Demeter, the riddle is not hard to read; the figures of the two goddesses, the mother and the daughter, resolve themselves into personifications of the corn. At least this appears to be fairly certain for the daughter Persephone. The goddess who spends three or, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... old woman puts on a nightcap, is like my eyes and ears. It can now only understand what is of the earth—what you can understand, Gogo, who are still of the earth. I forget, as one forgets an ordinary dream, as one sometimes forgets the answer to a riddle, or the last verse of a song. It is on the tip of the tongue; but there it sticks, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the meaning of it all?" I was pondering. Is there any more explanation to the riddle of life than to Alice in Wonderland? Are we not all a lot of "slithy toves, that gyre and gimble in the wabe"—or worse? Must we who love living only regard it as ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... subsequent life. It struck us, discussing idly the various mysteries and terrors that may lie behind this fact or this fable, that no doom or horror conceivable and to be defined in words could ever adequately solve this riddle; that no reality of dreadfulness could seem caught but paltry, bearable, and easy to face in comparison with this vague we ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... came home, his wife said to him, "Cassim, I know you think yourself rich, but you are much mistaken; Ali Baba is infinitely richer than you; he does not count his money but measures it." Cassim desired her to explain the riddle, which she did, by telling him the stratagem she had used to make the discovery, and shewed him the piece of money, which was so old that they could not tell in what prince's ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... self-registering meteorological instruments! I was thunderstruck, thinking, of course, that the man was making a fool of me. I had carefully studied his face all the time to find the key to this riddle, and did not know whether to laugh or weep. Lindstrom's face was certainly serious enough; if it afforded a measure of the situation, I believe tears would have been appropriate. But when my eye fell upon the thermograph and read, "Stavanger Preserving Co.'s finest rissoles," I could contain ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... the solution of the little riddle propounded by Pascal in one passage of his Thoughts: "Two faces that are alike, although neither of them excites laughter by itself, make us laugh when together, on account of their likeness." It might just as well be said: "The gestures of a public speaker, no one ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... entangle the ground unnecessarily, and keep the mind upon the stretch to remember, when it should only feel. We think this a fault with Mr Fuseli; it often renders him obscure, and involves his style of aphorisms in the mystery of a riddle. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... will be on the alert if these hotheads can be restrained," the general replied, and his words were a riddle to me ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... lord, to send back and bid fifty of the vassals to come up hither at once, with bows and arrows. They can so riddle those bushes that the defenders will be unable to occupy them ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... going to Cherbourg: if so, why had he said nothing about the trip to her when she spoke of her own approaching voyage thither? The yacht changed its character in her eyes; losing the indefinite interest of the unknown, it acquired the charm of a riddle on motives, of which the alternatives were, had Lord Mountclere's journey anything to do with her own, or had it not? Common probability pointed to the latter supposition; but the time of starting, the course of the yacht, and recollections of Lord Mountclere's homage, suggested ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... dreadful stillness, and a cold eerie wind whined and sighed over us. We spoke little, having no breath to spare, for the ground was growing more steep and broken towards the second rise, up which we clambered, sliding and falling, grasping frozen heather till we reached the top. The hill was now a riddle of peat hags and binks, like a bee's skep, a place of treachery and slimy death, although the frost would have most of the sinking pools in its iron hand; but we never stopped the long stride that seemed so slow to me at first. Dan bent and twisted through the peat banks like a hound on the trail. ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... the highest things we depend upon the key-note of the soul. Knowledge thereby becomes an intimate personal concern. But this is what it really is to the Mystic. Tell some one the solution of the riddle of the universe! Give it him ready-made! The Mystic will find it to be nothing but empty sound, if the personality does not meet the solution half-way in the right manner. The solution in itself is nothing; it vanishes if the ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... 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 ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... all too slow for the anxious hearts of those aboard. For there was not one of the Wolverines who did not expect from this aimless traveller of desert seas at the least a leading clue to the riddle that ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of men who have tried to find in vain how and when a relationship becomes an entanglement. He ought to break off now, and the riddle was just why he should feel this compunction in breaking off now. He had disappointed her, and he ought not to have disappointed her; that was the essential feeling. He had never realized before as he realized now this peculiar quality of his own mind and the gulf ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... feeling, and to find what different conclusions they arrive at. Each man interprets the hieroglyphic in his own way; and the painter, perhaps, had a meaning which none of them have reached; or possibly he put forth a riddle, without himself knowing the solution. There is such a necessity, at all events, of helping the painter out with the spectator's own resources of feeling and imagination, that you can never be sure how much of the picture you ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... horse at once. It is all very mysterious and extraordinary; but then you have been a mystery, Rupert Hyde, a riddle and a puzzle, ever ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... a stallion and nervous and belongs on the biggest farm we've got in our country, the Van Riddle place that belongs to Mr. Van Riddle of New York. Sunstreak is like a girl you think about sometimes but never see. He is hard all over and lovely too. When you look at his head you want to kiss him. He is trained ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... must then be more attentive; for it is not for every one to understand this riddle. Hear therefore and answer. Is not the end, according to them, to reason rightly in the election of things according ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... again, and he was laughing now. "I just thought of a riddle. This is it. What kind of a boat can you sail without water? It's ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Aunt Jo's • Laura Lee Hope
... gate is open let no one bar the one you guard. While the flag flies over the public school, keep it aloft over Ellis Island and have no misgivings. The school has the answer to your riddle. ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... on a master who had solved MERCATOR'S riddle, A nigger cook with earrings who neither chewed nor drank, Who wore a red bandanna and was handy on the fiddle, I would take a piping bos'un and a cabin-boy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... worker; and he was on a new tack, as we shall see presently. And he would not in any case have thought much, as a practical naturalist, of the more or less mystical intellectual speculations of the Deists of 1790-1830. Scientific workers were very tired of Deism just then. They had given up the riddle of the Great First Cause as insoluble, and were calling themselves, accordingly, Agnostics. They had turned from the inscrutable question of Why things existed, to the spade work of discovering What was really occurring in the world and How ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... and the God in the inmost soul of all; the roving-ground of life's surplus, the home of all that was inexplicable and mystical. The sea had drunk the blood of thousands, but its color knew no change; the riddle of life brooded ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Faithful, bear witness against me that this damsel is more learned than I in medicine and what else, and that I cannot cope with her." And he put off his clothes and fled forth. Quoth the Caliph to Tawaddud, "Ree us thy riddle," and she replied, "O Commander of the Faithful, it is the button and the button-loop.[FN414]"—Then she undertook the astronomers and said, "Let him of you who is an astronomer rise and come forward." So the astronomer advanced and sat down before her; and, when she saw him, she laughed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the end, I know not whether I mean the Thought for the Fancy—or the Fancy for the Thought, or why the book trails off to playing, rather than standing strong on unanswering fact. But this is alway—is it not?—the Riddle of Life. ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... dead 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 Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... only true and eternal realities; who, tormented alike by the awfulness of the infinite unknown, and by the petty cares and low passions of the finite mortal life which they knew but too well, had determined to renounce the latter, that they might give themselves up to solving the riddle of the former; and be at peace; and free, at least, from the tyranny of their own selves. Eight hundred years before St. Antony fled into the desert, that young Hindoo rajah, whom men call Buddha now, had fled into the forest, leaving wives and kingdom, to find rest for ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... wishes," said her cousin, "they are mere soap-bubbles; but as to your own views—why, really you are somewhat of a riddle to me. I rather think, were I such a quiet, civil, well-disposed person as you, I could have married Lord Glenallan well enough. He is handsome, good-natured, and rich; and though 'he is but a Lord, and nothing but a Lord,' still ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... documents?... The following is the reason why publication should be exhaustive. As long as we are confronted by this mass of sealed and mysterious manuscripts, they will appeal to us as if they contained the answer to every riddle; every candid mind will be hampered by them in its flights of induction. It is desirable to publish them, if only to get rid of them and to be able, for the future, to work as if they did not exist...." (Revue des Deux ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... the Beast be the more difficult to identify, must be referred to Mr. Taylor, the only person who has attempted both. His cogent argument on the political secret is not unworthily matched in his treatment of the theological riddle. He sees the solution in [Greek: euporia], which occurs in the Acts of the Apostles as the word for wealth in one of its most disgusting forms, and makes 666 in the most straightforward way. This ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Temperley with a sudden laugh. "You evidently, Dodge, are one of those who strive to read the riddle of this painful earth. Tell me what you think ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... had gone differently these past months,—no, from his birth and from hers, too,—if every circumstance of society had not conspired to put them apart, who knows! They might have solved a riddle or two together and been happy. But it was all foolish speculation now, and it was well that their differences should be emphasized at this last chance meeting; that she should be hostile to him. He summed the matter ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... look beyond them we might read the Riddle of the Universe. I think we could—I think so!" Here was the undercurrent of sadness again, sounding through an odd intensity of tone. "Surely, there is something beyond them. There must be! What do ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... the assumption of the Trinitarian doctrine of Christ. If Christ were indeed the Son of God, standing to God in such a relation that what He did was likewise the doing of God the Father, we can understand the apostle's meaning. On any other hypothesis his language is a riddle of which the key has been lost. A further question still remains to be answered. I said just now that if St. Paul had written, "Christ commendeth His own love towards us, in that He died for us," we could have understood Him. But here, also, something is implicit which requires ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... riddle, sir,—it's a solution of all the riddles. I will tell you. While I was convalescing, I went to a Y.M.C.A. camp. I had never been to one of these places before; I don't know why I went then, except that the time hung a bit heavy on my hands. You see, every man was ...
— "The Pomp of Yesterday" • Joseph Hocking
... said to have visited Solomon, "to prove him with hard questions," by which have generally been understood enigmatical puzzles. Some of these are to be found in sacred writ, of which the riddle which Samson proposed to the young men of Timnath, is a very ancient and curious specimen. It appears from the writings of the ancients, that the Greeks and all the Eastern nations, were singularly attached to enigmas. Plutarch, in his Feast of the Seven Sages, introduces the following questions ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... morning I was back on time. 'Well, Mr. Riddle,' says I, when he opened the bedroom door, 'and how ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... half-million a very desirable acquisition towards the war expenses of my detachment. But these Orientals never can understand our way of thinking, and our ideas of honour will always remain an insoluble riddle to them. With a present, that he, of course, has meant for me personally, this despot believes he has smoothed over everything that could possibly spell trouble for him—the plot against Mrs. Irwin as well as the diamond ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... me a riddle to guess, and I never guess riddles. I won't even try at it. But they all seem ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... means one of those who will give up a fancy under the shock of a fact. If by sheer genius he frequently guessed right, he was not the kind of man to admit easily that he had guessed wrong. His version of Cromwell's filthy cruelties in Ireland, or his impatient slurring over of the most sinister riddle in the morality of Frederick the Great—these passages are, one must frankly say, disingenuous. But it is, so to speak, a generous disingenuousness; the heat and momentum of sincere admirations, not the shuffling fear and flattery of the constitutional or patriotic historian. ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... throws his right leg higher than his head, and while taking aim shakes his cue affectedly; but, after all, not everyone has a fancy for these accomplishments. He can drink, too ... but in Russia it is hard to gain distinction as a drinker. In short, his success is a complete riddle to me.... There is one thing, perhaps; he is discreet; he has no taste for washing dirty linen away from home, never speaks a word ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... hamlets should replace the earthen ramparts and palisades of their strongholds with buildings of stone. When peace came to be securely established throughout the land and such fortresses were no longer needed, these places of refuge were abandoned and soon became a riddle to after generations. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... so absurd that Mallow proceeded to riddle it. It was, upon its face, a contradiction, for none but smart men could be crooked, and the laws of logic proved the converse to be ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... they are to the common grammars, which he ridicules. Surely, such expressions as, "Harris's Hermes, Philips's Poems, Prince's Bay, Prince's Island, Fox's Journal, King James's edict, a justice's warrant, Sphinx's riddle, the lynx's beam, the lass's beauty," have authority enough to refute the cavil of this writer; who, being himself wrong, falsely charges the older grammarians, that," their theories vary from the principles of the language correctly spoken or written."—Ib., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... that the Bible is not a riddle, neither inconsistent with itself; but if you take off one leg of a pair of compasses, the measuring ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... lost secrets of the world," replies the baronet. But I can hardly understand a learned Orientalist speaking in that way about what appears to me a very patent circumstance: it is clear that he never earnestly applied himself to the solution of the riddle, or else—what is more likely, in spite of his rather high-flown estimate of his own "Reason"—that his mind, and the mind of his ancestors, never was able to go farther back in time than the Edmundsbury Monks. But they did not make the stone, nor did they dig it from the depths of the earth ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... perfected." If there was an "emptying," there was also a "filling," so that we see in Him the fulness of God. How He alone of all mankind came so to receive the Self-giving Father remains for us, as for our predecessors, the ultimate riddle, a riddle akin to that which makes each of us "indescribably himself." And as for the origin of His unique Person, we have no better explanations to substitute for those of the First Century; the mystery of our Lord's ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... of view is that of the philosopher and religionist, who ponder the tie that binds "soul" and body in an effort to solve the riddle of "creation" and pierce the ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... a riddle to Malcolm, but his reverence for her made him lay them up deeply, as he watched her kneeling at the Mass, her upturned face beaming ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mind was busy with this mystery. It was fairly to be assumed that his committee did not want his autograph to distribute for a souvenir; they must want it for some vital purpose, to meet some new move of the bosses. The answer to this riddle was not slow in coming: having failed in their effort to find money on him, the bosses had framed up a letter, which they were exhibiting as having been written by the would-be check-weigh-man. His friends wanted his signature to disprove ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... 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 of ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... nothing to prevent you from covering me, calling for help, and solving the riddle as you please. After all, what does it matter, whether the end comes to-day or to-morrow, for it would be impossible to elude the police. You don't understand, I know—but I am not flying from justice: it was a case ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... commentary on Lichtenberg's prophecy. But whether the end be seventy years hence, or seven hundred—be the close of the mortal history of humanity as far distant in the future as its shadowy beginnings seem now to lie behind us—this only we may foretell with confidence—that the riddle of man's nature will remain unsolved. There will be that in him yet which physical laws will fail to explain—that something, whatever it be, in himself and in the world, which science cannot fathom, and which suggests the unknown possibilities of his origin and ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... surrounded the cat—that has led to its bitter persecution—that has made it the hero of fairy lore, the pet of old maids? I believe it is—I believe that in this psychic faculty of smell lies, in degree, the solution to the oft-asked riddle—why is the cat uncanny? Having then satisfied oneself on this point, namely, that cats are in the possession of rare psychic properties, is it likely that the Unknown Powers which have so endowed them, should withhold from them either souls ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... not yet formed one. It is a bit of a riddle there, for the crow and the eagle do ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... rather be up there, I own! See! curling smoke and flames right blue! To see the Evil One they travel; There many a riddle to unravel. ...
— Faust • Goethe
... 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. Their ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... street, the town houses of well-known personages seem quite inadequate for their purpose; viewed from within, they are all that is stately and appropriate. Those of us who live in less favoured neighbourhoods would fain solve the riddle. ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and contained many variations from the text of the first edition. Mr. Dobell's impression was that 'the author's manuscript, written on loose leaves, had fallen into confusion, and was then printed without any attempt at re-arrangement.' This was near the mark; but the complete solution of the riddle was furnished by Mr. Quiller Couch in an article in the 'Daily News' for March 31, 1902, since recast in his charming volume 'From a Cornish Window', 1906, pp. 86-92. He showed conclusively that 'The Prospect' was 'merely an early draft of 'The Traveller' printed backwards in fairly regular ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the woman he loves; he loses nothing by it; but as for such as you, you believe that you are nothing apparently, you do not wish to be ruled.—Five-and-thirty, my dear boy,' she continued, turning to me, 'that is the clue to the riddle.—"No," does he say again?—You know quite well that I am thirty-seven. I am very sorry, but just ask your friends to dine at the Rocher de Cancale. I could have them here, but I will not; they shall not come. And then perhaps my poor little ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... gentle remonstrance with the drowsy three. 'The sleep of the disciples, and of these disciples, and of all three, and such an overpowering sleep, remains even after Luke's explanation, "for sorrow," a psychological riddle' (Meyer). It is singularly parallel with the sleep of the same three at the Transfiguration—an event which presents the opposite pole of our Lord's experiences, and yields so many antithetical parallels to Gethsemane. No doubt the tension of emotion, which had lasted ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... untrue suspicion entertained by Lady Richard and possibly shared by Miss Quisante (the old lady's face was a riddle) spread at all to anybody else, the fault lay entirely at the sufferer's own door. He knew too well how real the attack had been; when the ladies mingled with the men to take tea and coffee, he was still suffering from its after-effects. But he treated the occurrence ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... In a word, return, my dear Amadis; the adventure of the Solway-nets is not reserved for your worship. Come back, and I will be your faithful Sancho Panza upon a more hopeful quest. We will beat about together, in search of this Urganda, the Unknown She of the Green Mantle, who can read this, the riddle of thy fate, better than wise Eppie of Buckhaven, [Well known in the Chap-Book, called the History of ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... social pleasure which came of his remarkable combination of vast knowledge and general culture, combined with a certain loveliness of character and an almost childlike simplicity. I once heard our greatest preacher nobly illustrate, with Samson's riddle as his text, the delightfulness of that form of human character in which sweetness and strength are blended. As I listened, somehow I began to recall Wyman, for it was just here that his social charm resided. He was intellectually stronger even than any of his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... zaid a penny, but I zaid five poun'. The wager was laid, but the money not down. Zinging right fol de ree, fol de riddle lee While I am a-zinging I'd ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... towards copying the features of the Faun of Praxiteles. One observer in a thousand is conscious of something more, and lingers long over this mysterious face, departing from it reluctantly, and with many a glance thrown backward. What perplexes him is the riddle that he sees propounded there; the riddle of the soul's growth, taking its first impulse amid remorse and pain, and struggling through the incrustations of the senses. It was the contemplation of this imperfect portrait of Donatello that originally interested us in his history, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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
... may come within the field of its influence. This thesis of the relation of heterogeneous ethnic and social elements to each other, with all the consequences proceeding from it, contains within it the key to the solution of the entire riddle of the natural process of human history. We shall see this thesis illustrated ever and everywhere in the past and the present in the interrelations of heterogeneous ethnic and social elements and become convinced ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... which once employed so many hands, should have so completely collapsed is, as I have hinted, a bit of a mystery. I can only guess, and as tracking conundrums is not my purpose in these chapters, I will leave others to unravel the riddle if they can. It is, however, a matter of local business history that some thirty years or more ago the Cambridge Street concern shewed signs of tottering to its fall, and when Mr. Atkins went into ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... account-books of the school in her upper bureau-drawer at that moment, and in the lower ones her wedding things. Dresses and cloaks all made; and such lovely linen! As for Hugh Guinness, he was, after all, but a perplexing shadow, a riddle that turned from her the more she tried to make him ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... religion of Christ do not, however, disturb the faith of Browning in the Christian revelation of Divine love. In Cleon he exhibits the failure of Paganism, even in its forms of highest culture, to solve the riddle of life and to answer the requirements of the human spirit. All that regal power liberally and wisely used can confer belongs to Protus in his Tyranny; all that genius, and learning and art can confer is the possession of Cleon; ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... of its marvellously complicated molecule. Of course it is made up of carbon, hydrogen, and other substances within the domain of chemistry. But is it, therefore, merely a chemical compound? The reply involves the whole riddle of Vitalism. The author would say that it, as well as all the living things to which it belongs, is purely and solely a chemical compound; and he must take the consequences of his belief. One of these consequences, from which doubtless ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... to return at once to Paris, because I am in a secret affair, which concerns me personally, and which I shall intrust to you alone, and in which I need your assistance. The Countess Lamotte-Valois will give you the key to this riddle." ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... ladies and lordings gay, God have you all in guard: Since ye are pleased with me to play, My riddle it is not hard. I sing because, of all that ride, I am the least of worth: I sing because, to match my pride, Never was ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... answered, nodding. 'I think my lady cast her spell over him by the way. The lad left Blois with her, if what you say be true, without faith in the world. He came to my hands two days later the stoutest of Huguenots. It is not hard to read this riddle.' ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... I do—I know a lot about 'em. I was one myself once, though not long—not so long as my clothes. They were very long, I recollect, and always in my way when I wanted to kick. Why do babies have such yards of unnecessary clothing? It is not a riddle. I really want to know. I never could understand it. Is it that the parents are ashamed of the size of the child and wish to make believe that it is longer than it actually is? I asked a nurse once why it ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... some time to solve this riddle, I concluded that I must be the victim of my own imagination; and I turned my attention to making the best possible use of my sudden fortune. On the same day, I took a little room in the Faubourg St. Denis; and I bought myself a sewing-machine. Before the week was over, I had work before me ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... morning owing to an alarm of illness seizing grandfather. He had been taken with a sudden faintness. Of course we sent for the doctor, but before he arrived the faintness had passed, so he looked wise at us, like a prize riddle which had to be guessed before his next visit, left us his autograph (a wonderful hieroglyphic), and went away. Since then grandfather has been in the hands of a less taciturn practitioner, whom he calls the 'flower of Glenfaba' (that's me), and after talking nonsense to him all day and playing ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... dissolution and dispersion in and from the grave, when these bodies that have been the children of royal parents, and the parents of royal children, must say with Job, Corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister. Miserable riddle, when the same worm must be my mother, and my sister and myself! Miserable incest, when I must be married to my mother and my sister, and be both father and mother to my own mother and sister, beget and bear that worm ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... wish that we might have inflicted greater damage upon their village. The report is that only two scalps were taken, but that may mean very little. The attacks which Colonel Bird, with his five hundred Indians and Canadians, made upon Riddle's Station and the little station upon the Licking River, seem to me to show that the Indians are not ready to give ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... unduly emphasized the importance of service. M'Loughlin gave us speed, dash, and verve in our tennis. It remained for R. N. Williams and W. M. Johnston to restore the balance of the modern game by solving the riddle of the Californian's service. Brookes and Wilding led the way by first meeting the ball as it came off the ground. Yet neither of these two wizards of the court successfully handled M'Loughlin's service as ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... 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 ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... and Man. How and where can these two incommensurates find a meeting place? What is Incarnation? The greatness and the littleness of Man obsessed Chesterton as it did Pascal; it is the eternal riddle: ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... replied, after silence had in a measure been restored. "What I want to say now is this. Is it believable that simultaneously with my own return from the grave another member of my family should reappear before you from an older and much more certain burying? I tell you no. The riddle is one which calls for quite another solution and I have come to assist you in ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... melody which gives to common speech the fascination of music. Mr. Chainmail could not reconcile the dress of the damsel with her conversation and manners. He threw out a remote question or two, with the hope of solving the riddle, but, receiving no reply, he became satisfied that she was not disposed to be communicative respecting herself, and, fearing to offend her, fell upon other topics. They talked of the scenes of the mountains, of the dingle, the ruined castle, the solitary ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... found only one worm, and this one escaped only by accident, for several of the birds had been within a quarter of an inch of it. "So eager are woodpeckers in search, of codling moths that they have often been known to riddle the shingle traps and paper bands which are placed to attract the larvae about ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving for ever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time. (It is certainly not the solution of any problems of ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. * * * * * Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled; The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! Essay on Man, Epistle ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... of Scripture. Interpretation is ordinarily from one language into another, or from the language of one period into that of another; it may also be a statement giving the doubtful or hidden meaning of that which is recondite or perplexing; as, the interpretation of a dream, a riddle, or of some difficult passage. Definition, explanation, exposition, and interpretation are ordinarily blended in a commentary, which may also include description. A comment is upon a single passage; a commentary may be the same, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Tzu and the positivism of Confucius on the one hand, and the landmark of the Taoistic transcendentalism of Chuang Tzu (fourth and third centuries B.C.) on the other, we find several "guesses at the riddle of existence" which must be briefly noted as links in the chain of Chinese speculative thought ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... travel, with this new-found faculty! Whenever I choose, I can have the talking bird, the singing tree, and the laughing water! I always thought those peeps into irrational nature the chief charm of the Arabian tales. How little did I dream of ever being able to read with my own eyes the riddle of the world! By-the-way, let me look at my Graces, and see if they, too, are conscious forms ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... clear-sighted to neglect home duties, yet leave this difficulty unfaced, in that they look for all the pleasure of their life outside home, and within that home allow themselves to live in an atmosphere of friction and peevishness. The girl who does that has left the riddle of home life unsolved: she was meant to wrestle with that difficulty till she wrung from it the blessing, the peace which comes only from self-conquest and acceptance of all the ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... against the rules of life and the general philosophy of his fellow-creatures, and shrinking with a shy, uncomprehended pride from the companionship of society. Shelley's disposition was a marked and rare one, but there is nothing of the riddle in it; for thousands, of his temperament, may always be found going strangely through the world, here and there, and the interpretation of such a character could be made extremely interesting, and even instructive, by any one capable of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... dairy door open, and see if she is not as bad a thief as the kitten. There's fire in the flint, cool as it looks: wait till the steel gets a knock at it, and you will see. Every body can read that riddle, but it is not every body that will remember to keep his gunpowder out of the ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... law,—this seems to us to destroy man's dearest faith and hope. This is the teaching of Lucretius, yet on this road he marches with a step so firm and buoyant, an eye so awake to all beauty and grandeur, a spirit so elate, that as we read we catch the energy and elation. The reading of the riddle is this: the religion against which Lucretius made his attack was not the soaring idealism of Plato, nor the inspiring and consolatory faith of Christianity, but an outworn mythology in which this ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... To have them in perfection, they must be gathered the same day that they are dressed, and be put on to boil within half an hour after they are shelled. As large and small peas cannot be boiled together, the small ones should be separated from the rest, by being passed through a riddle or coarse sieve. For a peck of young peas, which will not be more than sufficient for two or three persons, after they are shelled, set on a saucepan with a gallon of water. When it boils, put in the peas with a table-spoonful of salt. Skim it well, keep ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... of course could have no idea how near he was hewing to the truth. That walk was fated to have a very considerable influence on the course of events, and also upon the solving of the riddle; ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... wilful treason in the largest sense: And they who once rebel, must certainly Their God, and king, and former oaths defy; If ye allow no mal-administration Could cancel the allegiance of the nation, Let all our learned sons of Levi try, This ecclesiastic riddle to untie; How they could make a step to call the prince, And yet pretend the ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... can speak of 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 are ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... Liddell Or Scott; and Smith, and White, And Lewis, Short, and Riddle Are 'emptied of delight.' Todhunter and Colenso (Alas, that friendships end so!) He curses in extenso Through morning, ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... did likewise help towards a satisfactory solution of the riddle propounded by Garrison: "Shall the Liberator die?" The fresh access of anti-slavery strength, both in respect of zeal and numbers, begotten by it, exerted no slight influence on the longevity of the Liberator. Poor the paper continued, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... but this just made me curious to ascertain what precious thing was concealed there. I was urgent, and went through the bag half with violence, until at last, in the bottom, I got a solution of the riddle—a loaded revolver. Several of the natives had also breechloaders. The oldest age with stone implements, and the most recent period with breechloaders, thus here reach ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... down the canal, ever and anon we see some empty returning boat (called "light boat" in the technical canal phrase) rounding a curve before us, It comes nearer: the horses walk the same tow-path: how are the boats to pass without confusion? Ah, the riddle is solved. Our captain (who holds the helm while the boy, his assistant, is down in the cabin preparing supper) calls out suddenly, at the last moment, "Whoa!" The well-trained horses instantly stop; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... thou, who on the ocean of thy days Dost like a swimmer patiently contend, And though thou steerest with a shoreward gaze Misdoubtest of a harbour or an end, What would the threat, or what the promise be, Could I but read the riddle of ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... 'hasty-pudding,'—that is, Scotch oatmeal which had been ground over again, so as to be nearly as fine as flour;... or 'lumpy,'—that is, boiled quickly and not thoroughly stirred; or else in one of the three kinds of cake which they call 'fermented,' viz., 'riddle cake,' 'held-on cake,' or 'turn-down cake,' which is made from oatcake batter poured on the 'bak' ston'' from the ladle, and then spread with the back of the ladle. It does not rise like an oatcake. Or of a fourth kind called 'clap cake.' They also made 'tiffany cakes' of ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... a good deal. But "From Papa" caught my eye on a little parcel. I seized it and unfolded. From papa, and he so far away! But I guessed the riddle before I could get to the last of the folds of paper that wrapped and enwrapped a little morocco case. Papa and mamma, leaving me alone, had made provision beforehand, that when this time came I might miss nothing except themselves. They had thought ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... both men and women, very prudent and knowing people in consequence of what they were taught there. The biggest, and those of best capacity, received instruction in natural science and astronomy, and in poetry and in riddle-making, arts highly esteemed among the little people. John was very diligent, and soon became a most clever painter and drawer. He wrought, too, most ingeniously in gold and silver and stones, and in verse and riddle-making ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... rapid stream, I saw my first come gliding by, Its airy form soon caught my eye; Its texture frail, and colour various, Like human hopes, and life precarious. Sudden, my second caught my ear, And filled my soul with constant fear; I quickly rose, and home I ran, My whole was hissing in the pan.—Riddle. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... speech of yours, mon cher,' yawned Cyril. 'Lady Sinfi is going to strike up with the Welsh riddle unless you get ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... in the west. So well confirmed was this belief that the details did not engage his thought; but on the result of the other encounter he speculated with some interest. From the first McNamara had been a riddle to him, and mystery breeds curiosity. His blind, instinctive hatred of the man had assumed the proportions of a mania; but as to what the outcome would be when they met face to face, fate alone could tell. Anyway, McNamara should never have Helen—Roy ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... must have an intuition, through which, in one and the same appearance, it is in itself at once conscious and unconscious, and this condition is given in the aesthetic experience. The beautiful is thus the solution of the riddle of the universe, for it is the possibility of the explicit consciousness of the unity of Nature and the Self—or ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... the riddle," cried Scraps, dancing with glee. "Those fence-boards are made of wood, and if the Woozy stands close to the fence and lets his eyes flash fire, they might set fire to the fence and burn it up. Then he could walk away with us ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... for keeps," he announced, with the grin of a man who has solved a humorous riddle. "By refusing to thwart the lady you throw away your last slender chance of freedom, and you will find her waiting at the gate of the State Penitentiary when you come out. By Jove, you've been pretty rapid, though. No ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... 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 half fiend, half man (at least, no more so than all of us are); ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... thought, "I can hide it no longer. I must contrive by some means that Kriemhild tell me why her husband, that is our vassal, hath so long paid us no tribute. I cannot lose this riddle." ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... I went through the garden gap, Who should I meet but Dick Red-cap! A stick in his hand, a stone in his throat, If you'll tell me this riddle, I'll give you ...
— Young Canada's Nursery Rhymes • Various
... ostentatiously loyal, yet extremely not unmindful of the widowed proprietor, and of all the possible changes of ownership looming ahead. Mr. Brumley, reading it in the Londonward train, was greatly reminded of the Hostels. That was a riddle he didn't begin to solve. Of course, it was imperative the Hostels should continue—imperative. Now they might run them together, openly, side by side. But then, with such temptations to hitherto inconceivable vulgarities. And again, insidiously, those visions returned of two figures, manifestly ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... his pistol, "Mr. Black will please note that while I am standing by the bulwarks I shall be watching indeed. Should he make an attempt to escape from the vessel I shall riddle him with bullets." ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... of Athenian barter, some swarthy Egyptian obtained it; but our friend the Egyptian, in time, was gathered to his fathers. He was embalmed, and slept in the shadow of the Pyramid, where his royal predecessors were sleeping, and by the side of the eternal Sphynx, whose riddle he could not read in life. Perhaps death unsealed the mystery of those stony lips to him. The token was placed in the mummy case upon the Egyptian's lips, perhaps as Charon's toll. But, in that event, evidently our friend the Egyptian never crossed over the black river ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Marianne stood aside; she dimly perceived that something vital was going on, that something inevitable had happened which would admit of no interference. Gorgo, as she freed herself from Constantine's embrace, stood strangely solemn and unapproachable. To the simple matron she was an inscrutable riddle to which she could find no clue; but she was pleased, nevertheless, when Gorgo came up to her and kissed her hand. She could not utter a word, for she felt that whatever she might say, it would not be the right thing; and it was a real ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this island Timar found health and rest. It became his home, and for the summer months every year he would slip away from Komorn, and no one, not even Timea, guessed his secret. When he returned Timea's cold white face was still an unsolved riddle to her husband. She would greet him kindly, but never was there any token that she loved him. Timar's ever-increasing business operations were excuse for his long absences, but all the same the double ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... rose, is a curious point upon which Plattner insists. During the Other-World night it is difficult to move about, on account of the vividness with which the things of this world are visible. It becomes a riddle to explain why, if this is the case, we in this world catch no glimpse of the Other-World. It is due, perhaps, to the comparatively vivid illumination of this world of ours. Plattner describes the midday of the Other-World, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the overtones of a ghost story rather than the narrative itself—the less than half-told adventure of some new Childe Roland heroically challenging a heedless universe. Never have silence and black night been reproduced more creepily, nor has the symbolism of man's courage facing the cryptic riddle of life been more ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... first glance, she decided to copy it. She did not know where to look for a sheet of paper, but remembered several paper bags on the pantry shelves, so she went in search of one. Finding one with only a cupful of sugar left in it, she tore off the top and wrote the riddle on that with a stub of a pencil which ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... not disturbed by the occasional censure of practices which good taste condemns as ungraceful, or prudence as prejudicial to happiness. But the man of keener insight, who, instead of wrestling with the riddle of life, seeks for a time to forget it, and to place in its stead the rounded representation of activity which the novelist supplies, cannot but find the vanity of hiding his face from the presence which he dreads. Out of heart with the world about him—conscious of its actual meanness, ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green |
