"Baffling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mr Fledgeby's gaze with such a baffling hitch, that that agreeable gentleman was for some time at a loss how to resume his fascinating part in the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... defining its quality,—as perfect cadence or semicadence. Also Nos. 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 33, 14, 15, 16, 3,—and others. As a curious illustration of the difficulty which may sometimes attend the analysis of phrases and cadences, the student may glance at No. 31 (Kriegslied, D major); a more baffling example will rarely be found, for the piece abounds in irregular phrase-dimensions, and cadences that are disguised to the verge of unrecognizability; the only fairly reliable clue the composer has given lies in the formation ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... weary world. Before the Power "manifest in the flesh" in Jesus Christ, our souls hush, in an awe which breathes within us worship, trust and love. And if this Power be the very Power felt in history and in nature, whose ways therein are so often baffling to the moral sense, then all is well. But, if this be so, the holy Power who is shrined in Christ must show the features of the Mind which tabernacles in nature. There can be no contradiction. Unquestionably an essential characteristic of the Mind in ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... must entreat you, friends, below! The angry storm begins to blow, For the weather changes with the moon. All this morning, until noon, We had baffling winds, and sudden flaws Struck the sea with their cat's-paws. Only a little hour ago I was whistling to Saint Antonio For a capful of wind to fill our sail, And instead of a breeze he has sent a gale. Last night I saw St. Elmo's stars, With their glimmering lanterns, ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... when Mars on fire to slay The hero, foremost with his brazen lance Assail'd him, hurling o'er his horses' heads. But Athenaean Pallas in her hand The flying weapon caught and turn'd it wide, 1015 Baffling his aim. Then Diomede on him Rush'd furious in his turn, and Pallas plunged The bright spear deep into his cinctured waist Dire was the wound, and plucking back the spear She tore him. Bellow'd brazen-throated Mars 1020 Loud as nine thousand ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... spiritual music traced its beautiful corresponding forms on the sand of outward things. He stood thus at the very junction-lines of the visible and invisible, and could shift the points as he willed. His thoughts became a mounted infantry, passing with baffling swiftness from horse to foot or foot to horse. He could express as he listed the material and the immaterial in terms of each other. Never has a poet in the past rivalled him as regards this gift, and hardly will any poet rival him as regards it in the future: men are ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... thankful for the perfect wisdom of God. Even while presenting to us God in Christ; that is to say, God with all those attributes which we can understand, and fear, and love; and without those which, throw us, as it were, to an infinite distance, overwhelming our minds, and baffling all our conceptions; even then the utmost care is taken to make us remember that God in himself is really that infinite and incomprehensible Being to whom we cannot, in our present state, approach; that even his manifestation of himself in Christ Jesus, is one less perfect than we shall be ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... been considered for the most part as of little hope.[22] With the auditory organs so securely hidden away in the head, entrenched within the protecting temporal bone, and with their structure so delicate and complicated, the problem may well have been regarded a baffling one even for the best labor of medicine and surgery. Hence it is that after deafness has once effected lodgment in the system, a cure has not usually been regarded as within reach, though for certain individual cases there may ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... be a way to read between the lines, to come to some other understanding of the baffling situation. Evidently the old man had given the note to the "Mex" who did not know enough of the English language to carry word of mouth; the Mex ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... merciless whippings in her army, peculiar to herself alone, the conspicuous commission and freest acknowledgment of vice in the upper classes; the overweening distinctions shown to opulence and birth, so destructive of a sound moral sentiment in the nation, so baffling to virtue. These are some of the traits that rise up to a contemplation of the inhabitants ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... time, there were fickle currents of air playing in various directions about the ship, but always in sufficient force to urge her slowly through the water; and then, when the equilibrium of the element seemed established, there was a total calm. During the half-hour of the baffling winds, the brigantine had been a gainer, though not enough to carry her entirely beyond the reach ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... before the bar of politics, Octavio's conduct is unimpeachable. He does his duty in baffling a powerful traitor in the most effective way. It is not his fault that Wallenstein is deceived in him, and nothing requires that he go and undeceive him. He resorts to no tricks, he feigns no sentiments that are not his. He but tells the truth to Butler ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... as yet received no check from life, no threat of an obstacle, or worse still a snub. Her pride pranced with an assurance, a certainty, that was at once baffling and unbaffled. In the presence of her sister's unbroken and unshaken will and resolute assertion of her smallest rights, Cleopatra shrank as before the force of an elemental upheaval. Her tottering self-confidence swayed ominously in the neighbourhood of the younger girl, and it was with alarm and ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... the town, and take our station near the Oratory of S. Giovanni Battista, before we can appreciate the beauty of its design, or the boldness of the group it forms with the cathedral dome and tower and the square masses of numerous out-buildings. Yet this peculiar position of the palace, though baffling to a close observer of its details, is one of singular advantage to the inhabitants. Set on the verge of Urbino's towering eminence, it fronts a wave-tossed sea of vales and mountain summits toward the rising ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of not being free, of having gained everything but freedom that was at times galling in the extreme: this sense of living with a woman for whom I had long ceased to care, a woman with a baffling will concealed beneath an unruffled and serene exterior. At moments I looked at her across the table; she did not seem to have aged much: her complexion was as fresh, apparently, as the day when I had first walked ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... granite, and the inscription is—Girls!" cried Aunt Pen, rising and clasping her knees with unexpected energy, "I expressly forbid my age being printed in the paper, or on the lid, or on the stone! I won't gratify every gossip in town, that I won't! I shall take real pleasure in baffling their curiosity. And another thing, while I am about it, don't you ask Tom Maltby to my funeral, or let him come in, if he comes himself, on any account whatever. I should rise in my shroud if he approached me. Yes, I should! Tom Maltby may be all very well; I dare say he is; ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... when Little Tim repeated his roar and flourished the instrument of death, which he styled his "little carving-knife." The Blackfeet turned and fled right and left, scattering over the plains individually and in small groups, as being the best way of baffling pursuit. ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... we find that the admonitions of Hamlet awakened the conscience of the queen, and recalled her to penitence and virtue. The king, observing the change, became doubly suspicious of the prince; and baffling some preliminary steps he took to vengeance; Hamlet was entrapped by him into an embassy to England. He sent along with him two courtiers, who bore private letters to the English monarch, requesting him, as the greatest favour he could confer on Denmark, to compass, by secret ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... going to lose this time, either," Dick declared. "I know that I'm going to strike out a string in every inning. If I go stale, you have Darrin to fall back on, and he's as baffling a pitcher as I can hope to be. And Ripley ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... arose in a universe of dead matter is just as baffling a question to the ordinary mind, as how the universe itself arose. If we assume that the germs of life drifted to us from other spheres, propelled by the rays of the sun, or some other celestial agency, as certain ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... on the balcony, and the evening of that trying day had been one of baffling disappointment. Eleanor was in her room, apparently tired out by the adventures of the night before; and although Miss Foster appeared at dinner she had withdrawn immediately afterwards, and there had been no chance for anything but the ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... consequently infamous; insurance offices exclude it from their field, and it was not without misgiving that my captain risked the Casco in such waters. I believe, indeed, it is almost understood that yachts are to avoid this baffling archipelago; and it required all my instances—and all Mr. Otis's private taste for adventure—to deflect our course across ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... EVERYBODY, is our only possible story. It will give us what we must have—time. And next—where is the second volume of Quain? I want that. And next—why have you broken faith with me?' Mrs Lawford sat down. This sudden and baffling outburst had stupefied her. ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... until the vessel rounded the Land's End. After that it became baffling and fickle, and it was more than three weeks after the date of her sailing from Glasgow that the vessel entered the mouth of the Thames. By this time Ronald's boyish spirits had allayed all suspicion on the part of his guards. He joked with ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... the bridge; and, having overcome this great difficulty, he dug another trench round the northern and western sides of the city. London was now circumvallated, and cut off from all supply of corn and cattle; but the citizen's hearts were staunch, and, baffling every attempt of Canute to sap or escalade, the Dane soon raised the siege. In the meantime, Edmund Ironside was not forgetful of the city that had chosen him as king. After three battles, he compelled the Danes to raise their ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... establishing a safe egress for the twelve hundred visitors, it was then first ascertained that all traces of The Masque had been lost in the smoke and subsequent confusion; and that, with his usual good fortune, he had succeeded in baffling his pursuers. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... in it, its contradictory and fluctuating interests, the transition from one situation to another, the hours, months, years spent in one fond pursuit after another; that it is, in a word, the length of our common journey and the quantity of events crowded into it, that, baffling the grasp of our actual perception, make it slide from our memory, and dwindle into nothing in its own perspective. It is too mighty for us, and we say it is nothing! It is a speck in our fancy, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... been a growing tendency among scholars to seek in the Mysteries the clue which shall enable us to read aright the baffling riddle of the Grail, and there can be little doubt that, in so doing, we are on the right path. At the same time I am convinced that to seek that clue in those Mysteries which are at once the most famous, and the most familiar to the classical scholar, i.e., the ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... This baffling of the rifleman by the artillery supporting the cavalry and bayonet charge will produce momentous changes, not only in the future of war, but also in that of international relations. Anything which tends to discount the value of personal bravery and to elevate the tactics of the ambuscade ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... them—not where they would show it; and finding out about the shield in my pocket wouldn't scare them, either. They hated cops, as I say; but cops were a part of their environment. It was strange, and baffling. ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... what he does with his money, and where. It does not, however, indicate the result, which is a happy variant upon what is usual in such cases. You know already, I imagine, the special qualities to be looked for in a tale by Miss Conyers—chief among them a rather baffling inability to lie a straight course. If I may borrow a metaphor from her own favourite theme, she is for ever dashing off on some alluring cross-scent. More important, fortunately, than this is the enjoyment which she clearly has in writing her stories and passes ...
— Punch, Volume 153, July 11, 1917 - Or the London Charivari. • Various
... merit, of course. But you know how these things go." Dr. Foxmore was beginning to feel uncomfortable. The lofty air of this struggling, as yet unrecognized, country girl was both baffling and exasperating. "Oh, come, Miss Lane," he continued, making a desperate effort to recover his patronizing tone, "you know just what we all think of ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... his well-known tendency for philandering into his own family, as it were. But as the full days went by, and she encountered in him, wherever they met, the same grave, kindly attention, the same pleasant mouth and curiously baffling eyes, in spite of herself she began to experience a certain breathless and half-flattered and half-frightened ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... posted up, advertising the first "throw off" for the next day. On this occasion they hunted an old fox round the Claudian Aqueduct, into the body of which, on getting over his surprise, he scoured a retreat, thus baffling the pursuers. The next field-day his successor was not so fortunate, losing both brush and life at the end of a long run. The third was distinguished by the feat of a Roman prince, who contrived to be in at the death, and received the brush for his encouragement. After this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... explosion. What had happened was this: about midnight a fire had broken out in a vinegar manufactory in the densely-crowded district of Gateshead lying between the parish church and the river. This fire, baffling the efforts of the fire brigade, spread quickly, until it reached some large bonded warehouses adjoining the vinegar manufactory. By this time it had acquired such proportions that it had been found necessary to summon the military from the Newcastle Barracks to assist in the effort ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... he was about thirty, and though the handsome face was repellently cold and grave, it was difficult to believe that that smooth, fair brow had been for so many years uplifted for the handwriting of time. He looked just what he was, a baffling, fascinating mystery. You felt that his countenance was a volume of hieroglyphics which, could you decipher, would unfold the history of a checkered and painful career. Yet the calm, frigid smile which sat on his lip, and looked out defiantly from his deep-set eyes, seemed to dare you to ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... again at the heart of the mystery which he found so baffling—"you seem so well satisfied with the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... was full of enthusiasm, and the task allotted to him was a congenial one: the baffling and discomfiture of those who had insulted him. If—as he believed—Crystal would be accompanying her aunt on the journey toward Paris, then indeed would his own longing for some sort of revenge for the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... and George Kelly led an assault on the | |Dallas pitchers this afternoon while Pol Perritt and| |Fred Schupp were baffling the local talent at home | |plate. The net result was a shutout for Dallas and | |five runs for ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... plausible we agreed to pretend a misunderstanding; the man hit was to have thought that his opponent would fire only one shot, the man who escaped would express deepest regret, but maintain that the arrangement had been for two successive shots. I had very little doubt that these arrangements for baffling inconvenient inquiry would prove thoroughly adequate. For the rest, I made up a packet for Varvilliers containing a present for Coralie. To make any other preparations would not have been fair to Wetter; for my death, if it happened, must seem absolutely accidental. After all I did not ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... above definitions, the more baffling they become. Try as I may, I have not been able to fit them, not only to the facts of my own experience, which may not be strange, but I cannot reconcile them even to each other. There seem to me ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... left the letter in the post for some years while I formed fours and saluted, I picked up a magazine in the Mess one day and began to read a detective story. It was a very baffling one, and I really didn't see how the murderer could possibly have committed his foul deed. But the detective was on to it at once. He searched the wastepaper basket, and, picking an envelope therefrom, said "Ha!" It was just about then ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... no intelligent person to-day supposes that, outside of Sir Conan Doyle's interesting novels, detectives seek the baffling criminal by means of analyzing cigar butts, magnifying thumb marks or specializing in the various perfumes in favor among the fair sex, or by any of those complicated, brain fatiguing processes of ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... on tapestries are as numerous as the marks on china or silver, and the absence of marks confronts the hunter of signs with baffling blankness, as is the case of many very old wares, whether china, silver or tapestries. Also, late work of poor quality is unmarked. Having thus disposed of the situation, it remains to identify the marks when they exist. The ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... either with simplicity or with a baffling irony. "Why not open my mind's eye for me? My friend Harold March here will tell you I sometimes see ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... now before you. This marvel of human ingenuity, this baffling example of mechanical intricacy is now within your reach. It can do anything. It is yours. It is yours at prices that would make a miner turn from picking up gold nuggets. It is yours for one dollar and twenty-five ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... her thoughts here, and tried to make herself feel like a woman engaged to be married. Somehow the fact persisted in baffling her. There was an unreality about it that prevented her from tasting the full sweet. Engaged—to a rich man, and a rich man's son. Well, perhaps when Ward came back, it ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... cases quick transition from the compressed air in the caisson to the open air at the surface results fatally to the workers. The caisson disease is popularly called "the bends" a kind of paralysis which is more or less baffling to medical science. Some men are able to bear a greater pressure than others. It depends on the natural stamina of the worker and his state of health. The further down the greater the pressure. The normal atmospheric pressure at ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... eighty thousand men Have made good speed across Bavaria To wait the French and give them check at Ulm, That fortress-frontier-town, entrenched and walled, A place long chosen as a vantage-point Whereon to encounter them as they outwind From the blind shades and baffling green defiles Of the Black Forest, worn with wayfaring. Here Mack will intercept his agile foe Hasting to meet the Russians in Bohemia, And cripple ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... she and Richard Calmady looked full at one another, he apprehended in her a baffling element, a something untamed and remote, a freedom of soul, that declared itself alike in the gallantries and severities of her dress, her attitude, and all the lines of her person. She bore relation to the glad mystery haunting ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... great a variety of unmeaning, or of ambiguous words, as they possibly can.[14] That state juggler, Oliver Cromwell, excelled in this species of eloquence; his speeches are models in their kind. Count Cagliostro, and the Countess de la Motte, were not his superiors in the power of baffling the understanding. The ancient oracles, and the old books of judicial astrologers, and of alchymists, were contrived upon the same principles; in all these we are confounded by a multiplicity of words which ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... victims of their own delusions. But beside these there has always been a numerous class of men, who, with minds perfectly disengaged and free, have applied themselves to concert the means of overreaching the simplicity, or baffling the penetration, of those who were merely spectators, and uninitiated in the mystery of the arts that were practised upon them. Such was no doubt the case with the speaking heads and statues, which were sometimes exhibited ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... bottom of a mystery that centers around a prize poster contest and a fire in the school building—through seven baffling clues that hold the key ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... the first breath of the north-east Trades in latitude 3 degrees 47 minutes North, and longitude 158 degrees 55 minutes West, having been driven back almost as far east as Christmas Island by the baffling winds and furious squalls with which we had been obliged to contend; and this brought the dangerous Marshall group right athwart our track. Therefore, the poor old skipper being still unwell, and quite unfit for duty, I decided to make a good stretch to ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... brewing she was not far from the Downs, but the baffling winds retarded her progress, and it was pitch dark when she reached the neighbourhood of the Goodwin sands. Nevertheless those on board of her did not feel much uneasiness, because a good pilot had been ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... Another baffling story by the great detective-story writer who is already becoming world-famous for his marvellously intricate and ingenious plots. This story is a jewel of many facets in brilliant setting. Here Mr. Keeler's genius for the mystery-plot comes into an ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... stood away in the direction of Fernando de Noronha, with her prize in company, with the intention of there taking on board a fresh supply of coal. The run was not a little protracted by the light and baffling winds that still prevailed, and as though this was not enough, fortune must needs play her a trick, by sending her off on a chase of fourteen miles after a supposed Yankee whaler, which, when at last overhauled, turned out to be nothing but a ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... the business of the lunch. Everything was spread out on a white tablecloth, Mrs. Macomber's second best. There was a baffling variety of sandwiches, olive and peanut-butter, lettuce and cucumber—quite soggy and dangerous—devilled ham, thin bread and butter, and a small pile whose filling was made up chiefly of discarded chicken scraps. There was a highly indigestible chocolate cake sodden enough to serve as ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... appreciation came from an opposite source. He regarded Disraeli not as a flatterer, but as a busy mocker, laughing at the people thought he was laughing with them. He made no attempt at a really critical estimate of the most baffling figure in English politics. He fastened on the picturesque aspects of Disraeli's career, and touched them with an artist's hand. As to what it all meant, or whether it meant anything, he left his readers as much, in the dark as they were before. My own theory, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... humble little bug had aroused the admiration of the boy; and in the end he had picked up both ball and bug, and placed them safely above the baffling ascent in the road. And after that hour Step Hen awoke to the fact that an observing boy need never lack for something intensely interesting to chain his attention, no matter where he might be. All he had to do was to keep his ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... readjusted his disguise. He looked back with baffling, inscrutable eyes, his dark face masklike in its impenetrability. But he spoke no word in answer. He had said his say. Like a mantle he gathered his reserve about him again, as a man resuming a solitary journey through the desert which all his ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... have played at hare and hounds, can fully appreciate the excitement, the interest, and the pleasure of the game; or the proud feeling of the hare, who finds that he is successfully baffling his pursuers when he is distancing them by the rapidity of his pace, or by the artfulness of his dodges; still all the time, whatever twists and turns he may make, knowing that he is bound to leave traces of his scent sufficiently strong ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... transitory gleam of order or prosperity. At last it becomes almost a relief when we reach the name of Roderick O'Connor, and know that before his death fresh actors will have entered upon the scene, and that the confused and baffling history of Ireland will, at all events, have entered upon ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... and also very small and mean. Your great man and your national hero can become very poor worms when, so to speak, they are off duty. But I didn't come here, at great inconvenience, to talk this sort of stuff at midnight. Go ahead; give me the details of this sabotage case which is baffling Dawson and the naval authorities; let me hear about the ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... him, so absorbed was he in intense anxiety,) believing that he could establish the same facts by another and, as he thought, a better witness, did not re-examine; but calling that other, with an air of nonchalance, succeeded in extracting from him all that the former had failed in; baffling all the attempts of the Attorney-General to affect his credit. At length, another ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... watched him. I tried to see what in his home, in his school, in the streets, he seized upon and how he made this his own. I tried to determine what were the relationships he used to order his experiences. Fortunately for the purposes of writing stories I did not have to get behind the baffling eyes and the inscrutable sounds of a small baby. Yet I learned much for understanding the twos by watching even through the first months. What "the great, big, blooming, buzzing confusion" (as James describes it) means to an infant, I fancy ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... silence that followed, a blue-bottle fly buzzed rowdily against an adjacent window-pane, with occasional loud bumps against the glass tokening that he too had his tragedy, a prisoner pent by baffling transparency from the bright world that blazed so ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... seemed to be different from ordinary rooms, though one hardly knew in what; partly from the absence of superfluities; and somehow after many a triumph over the bewilderment of a sulky yet dazzled decorator, Bertha had contrived, in baffling him, to make the house look distinguished without being unconventional; dainty without being artificial; she had made it suit her perfectly and, what was more, the atmosphere was reposeful. Her husband always besought her to do anything ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... reassured Billo, drew a little away from her father. In earlier times when moods of abstraction fell upon him, she had sought to rouse him; but latterly she had learned the wisdom and kindness of silence. She knew that this annual autumnal gypsying held for him the keenest delight and, in another and baffling phase, a poignancy on which, as she had grown to womanhood, it had seemed impious to allow her imagination to play. She watched him now with the pity that was woven into her love for him: his tall figure and the slightly stooped shoulders; ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... communicated even to the seamen; while the anguish of M. de Fontanges, expressed with all the theatrical violence characteristic of his nation, was a source of continual reminiscence and regret. They had been four days on their voyage, making little progress with the light and baffling winds, when they were shrouded in one of those thick fogs which prevail in the latitude of the Cape de Verds, and which was rendered more disagreeable by a ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... and Slim from taking a full eight hours of much-needed sleep, while Lieutenant Mackinson, Joe and three other officers whom the captain had taken into his confidence in the matter, followed out every possible clue in pursuit of a solution of the baffling mystery. ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... assiduous in her attentions. She was not a silent person either, far from it. She bubbled over with precise and cheerful comment, she appeared to talk even more than was absolutely necessary and it was only upon her departure that her entertainers noticed that she had said nothing at all. A very baffling person to deal with. Coombe could not manage to "take to" her at all and great sympathy was felt for Mrs. Coombe when she was reported to have said to Miss Milligan that going out with Miss Philps felt exactly like a jail delivery—whatever ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... book." It has been calculated that there was one Cambridge graduate for every two- hundred and fifty inhabitants, and within six years from the landing of John Winthrop and his party, Harvard College had begun its work of baffling "that old deluder, Sathan," whose business in part it was "to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures." To secular learning they were indifferent, but every man must be able to give reason for ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... work upon, and I could but ask when these lines were written—before or after Mr. Pfeiffer's death and whether he had ever succeeded in solving the riddle he had suggested, or whether it was still a baffling mystery to him. I was so moved by the suggestion conveyed in his final and half-finished sentence, that I soon lost sight of these lesser inquiries in the more important one connected with the filigree ball. For I had seen this filigree ball. I had even handled it. From the description ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... went during that swoon I cannot tell. Whatever she saw, or wherever she travelled in her trance on that strange night she kept her own secret; never whispering a word to Memory, and baffling imagination by an indissoluble silence. She may have gone upward, and come in sight of her eternal home, hoping for leave to rest now, and deeming that her painful union with matter was at last dissolved. While she so deemed, an angel may have warned her away from heaven's ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... serve an excellent purpose if they lead to getting a yearly record by planters on bearing and tree growth of their varieties. Few people know enough to go into the matter of soils and treatments intelligently. One can hardly blame them. It is a baffling subject. An unbalance in one element will lock up another element until one has quite a time unlocking them again. It seems that a conservative middle course is about the best ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various
... arrived in New York city, is drawn into a mystery, partly through financial need and partly through his interest in a beautiful woman, who seems at times the simplest child and again a perfect mistress of intrigue. A baffling detective story. ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... no mistake. He beckoned to Big Bob Jeffries to try for goal. It was an oblique slant, and only a clever kicker could succeed, with that baffling wind against him. Big Bob looked once in the direction of the grandstand as if to draw inspiration. Most people believed he must know some girl, whose encouragement he sought; but Mollie and Lucy and Adelaide did not venture to take such honor to themselves. ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... crossed the deep, And stood with thee on deck, to gaze On waves that rose in threatening heap, While stagnant lay a heavy haze, Dimly confusing sea with sky, And baffling, even, the pilot's eye, Intent ...
— Poems • (AKA Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte) Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell
... British made ready to carry the privateer by boarding. The shoals rendered it impossible for the heavy ships to approach, and the lack of wind and the baffling currents also interfered for the moment with the movements of the sloops-of-war. Accordingly recourse was had to a cutting-out party, always a favorite device with the British seamen of that age, who were accustomed to carry French frigates ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... of the soldiers remained to Washington a baffling problem. When the war ended their pay was still heavily in arrears. The States were timid about imposing taxation and few if any paid promptly the levies made upon them. Congress bridged the chasm in finance by issuing paper money which so declined in value that, as Washington said grimly, ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... rather than its hopes; enthusiasms die out, illusions vanish, belief in the perfectibility of ourselves and of others fades, as we learn to realize the shortness of life, the waywardness of human nature, the baffling power of circumstances, too easily allowed; but in their place, a humble faith in a more perfect and satisfying hereafter, which shall be the complement of our existence here, the fulfilment of our unfinished efforts, our many shortcomings, ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... and the pain of mystery hung about the new life, attracting him, yet baffling him at every step. He could not fathom or grasp the people with whom he lived intimately, they seemed beyond him, and yet he dared ask no questions, dared not go even to Monsignor for explanations. With the prelate his relations had ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... was that the Subaltern noticed for the first time that the Huns had a distinctive smell of their own. It was a curious smell, completely baffling description. If it is true that certain odours suggest certain colours, one would have described this as a brown smell, preferably a reddish-brown smell. Certain it was that the enemy left it behind him wherever ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... unseen, beaming across the ages, Brimful of fun And wit and wisdom, baffling all the ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... fiction could more profitably read than his for their large and simple method, their trust of the reader's intelligence, their sympathy with life. With him the problems are all soluble by the enlightened and regenerate will; there is no baffling Fate, but a helping God. In Bjornson there is nothing of Ibsen's scornful despair, nothing of his anarchistic contempt, but his art is full of the warmth and color of a poetic soul, with no touch of the icy cynicism which freezes ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 5/Aug. 15 Weighed anchor, as did consort, and in company dropped down Southampton Water. Took departure from Cowes, Isle of Wight, and laid course down the Solent to Channel. Winds baffling. General ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... cattle which Thorfin had brought with him in the ships. But what in the world could a Greek slave know of that affair? I wandered up and down among the streets trying to unravel the mystery, and the more I considered it, the more baffling it grew. One thing only seemed certain and that certainty took away my breath for the moment. If I came to full knowledge of anything at all, it would not be one life of the soul in Charlie Mears's body, but half a dozen—half a dozen several and separate existences spent on blue water ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... remote that only by distinct effort do we transport ourselves thither. It would, for instance, be absurd to call "Two in the Campagna" difficult in form or phrasing, yet it narrates an experience intelligible only to those who have loved deeply but have found in the very heart of that love a baffling sense of inevitable personal isolation. Sometimes the difficulty arises from the extreme subtlety of the thought. "Evelyn Hope," the simplest of poems in expression, presents novel and elusive ideas. Mr. Chesterton ingeniously ascribes Browning's obscurity to "intellectual humility," to ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... him: the child that was not his child produced for him when he fell upon that squalid nest of peasants in the Genoese country; and then the confessions, retractations, contradictions, lies, terrors, threats, and general bottomless, baffling baseness of every one in the place. The child was gone; that had been the only definite thing. The woman who had taken it to nurse had a dozen different stories,—her husband had as many,—and every one in the village had a hundred more. Georgina ...
— Georgina's Reasons • Henry James
... have been designated as "social-democratic," "socialist labor," or "labor" parties. Socialism in this sense of a party organization, or movement, is very different from a social philosophy. In its partizan phase socialism exhibits all of the baffling variability and elusiveness that it does in its other aspects. However, in its printed program the socialist party sets forth both a socialist philosophy and an ideal of active socialism in ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... mental work, and encountering a distraction, such as the sound of the phonograph downstairs, may, of course, give up and listen to the music, but, if he is very intent on what he is doing, he puts more energy into his work and overcomes the distraction. When he encounters a baffling problem of any sort, he does not like to give it up, even if it is as unimportant as a conundrum, but cudgels his brains for the solution. As a general proposition, and one of the most general propositions that psychology has to present, we may say that obstruction ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... Nick grinned with baffling amiability. "No, I don't think. I know. Quite a small spoke is enough to stop a wheel—even a mighty big wheel—if ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... growing weary. He often toiled there all day long, his hands red and swollen with the cold, for the winter, as I have before remarked, was unusually severe. For many days I saw him working on a Descent from the Cross by Tintoretto—a bold attempt, for Tintoretto's colors are as baffling as those of the great Venetian master himself. This copy had received very general praise, and one day I took a Lucca friend, a dilettante, to see it. Mr. G—— brought the canvas out in the hall, that we might see it outside of the ocean of color which surrounded it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... seconds M. Desmalions watched that resolute face, those intelligent eyes, at once innocent and satirical, grave and smiling, eyes through which you could certainly not penetrate their owner's baffling individuality, but which nevertheless looked at you with an expression of absolute frankness and sincerity. Then he called ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... that she was caught, that she could only escape by a desperate violent effort that would hurt others and perhaps be, for herself, a lasting reproach. She wanted so simple a thing ... to be always with Martin, working, with all this confusing, baffling, mysterious religion behind her; this simple thing seemed incredibly difficult ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... comparatively secure ground of observations and the arrangement of observations into the perilous regions of metaphysics. Most scientific men return quickly, repelled and perhaps a little scared by the baffling confusion of that windy region of thought where no rules of logic seem incontrovertible, no conclusions tenable, and no discussions profitable. Huxley, however, not only entered into metaphysical questions with enthusiasm, but gave a great ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... scarcely had one mysterious event been straightened out from the tangled skein, when another, even more baffling, crowded on its ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... abundance of good music a solace and a comfort to Causidiena, for, like Dossonia, her predecessor, like so many former Chief Vestals, Causidiena was going blind from some disorder slow, painless and obscure, altogether baffling to the best ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... has been written had passed like a whirlwind through Peggy's harassed brain in much less time than it has taken to put it on paper. It was all a jumble to poor Peggy; vague, yet very real; understood yet baffling. The only real evidences of her unhappiness and doubt were the tears and sobs, and these soon called, by some telepathic message of love and a life's devotion, the faithful old nurse who had been the comforter of her childish woes. ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... method employed by one's opponents in baffling one's open and honorable efforts to ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... as the days went on. She was as lovely in the spirit as in the flesh. Her moods were many and always striking. She was never violent when angry: she became as calm and baffling as the sea in doldrums. She never grew angry for anything her husband did: such anger as came to her was directed against the lazy, incompetent servant who was always snooping about ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... golden fringe, no "bright light in the clouds;" but a day of disclosures is at hand. "Take it on trust a little while." An earthly child takes on trust what his father tells him: when he reaches maturity, much that was baffling to his infant comprehension is explained. Thou art in this world in the nonage of thy being—Eternity is the soul's immortal manhood. There, every dealing will be vindicated. It will lose all its "darkness" when bathed in the floods "of the ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... into the Cafe de l'Opera, a tumble-down frame shack with a corrugated iron roof, to order a cooling drink and to puzzle out this utterly baffling mystery. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... thinks of it, what a piteous page in the history of human experience is the baffling and defeat of real genius by the mere weight of necessity, the bare exigencies of existence, the need to live from day to day. Think of Beethoven dying, and saying to Hummel, with that most wonderful assertion of his own great gifts, "Pourtant, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... spheres Circled by her moon of tears,— Tell me how, when I forget All the schools have taught me, yet I recall each trivial thing In a golden far off Spring,— Give me whispered hints how I May instruct my heart to fly Where the baffling Vision gleams Till I overtake my dreams, And the impossible be done When the Wish and Deed ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Eckartsberg—but the Austrians don't come out. And, for three weeks in this fierce necessity of being speedy, he cannot get one right stroke at the Austrians; who sit inexpugnable upon their Eckart's Hill, bristling with cannon; and can in no way be manoeuvred down, or forced or enticed into Battle. A baffling, bitterly impatient three weeks;—two of them the worst two, he spends at Weissenberg itself, chasing Pandours, and scuffling on the surface, till Keith and the Magazine-train come up;—even writing Verses now and then, when ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... in its baffling anxiety, she rose and walked toward him, absolutely forgetful of their curious meeting and their lack of a common ground ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... a royal message was delivered, referring to the seditious practices of democratic societies, and intimating the necessity of taking measures for baffling their dangerous designs. The message stated that seditious practices had been carried on by societies in London in correspondence with other societies, for the purpose of assembling a convention to represent the people, in defiance of and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... of light, disperse my baffling fears, Give me a look but for a moment's space Upon the tranquil glory of Thy face, To serve as force to fight the chilling years. Clouds hide Thee from me, and the bitter tears Run down my cheek in floods. Out of Thy grace Let my heart's chamber be a dwelling-place For Thee. Come for ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the rim wall and probably five hundred yards from the opposite rim, which was now seen to be considerably below them. The glaring red cliff presented a deceitful and baffling appearance. It had a thousand ledges and holes in its surfaces, and one moment it looked perpendicular and the next there seemed to be a long slant. Thorne pointed out where he thought Mercedes was hidden; Ladd selected another ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... had lost its usual roughness. His mind had leapt back over many years to a time when he had been concerned for that name in a way that had stirred him to great warmth. He smiled. It was a baffling, somewhat ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... craft, has something in it closely akin to the English temperament. Sarpi was a sound Catholic Christian in religion, and in politics what we should call a staunch Whig. So far as it is now possible to penetrate his somewhat baffling personality, we might compare him to a Macaulay of finer edge, to a Dean Stanley of more vigorous build. He was less commonplace than the one, more substantial than the other. But we must be cautious in offering ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... despised him, but by some means this attitude of his had become very materially modified. He greeted Saltash now with the hand of friendship which Saltash on his part was always ready to accept with a baffling smile that was not wholly without irony. He was wont to say that any man could make an enemy of him, but no man could keep him as such. Perhaps it was that very volatility of his which made anything of the nature of prolonged enmity an ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... In this baffling but wonderful domain I am inspired by the ambitious hope that some, at any rate, of the many unsolved problems of the Science of Life may yet give up their secrets to the demand of my persistency, exerted in the interest of the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... final word about him, to sum him up in a sentence. He is so palpable, so real, so near at hand, that the critic or expounder of him promises himself an easy victory; but before one can close with him he is gone. He is, after all, as subtle and baffling as air or light. ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs |
