"Enigmatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a little too self-assured, but otherwise she appeared as enigmatic as an accomplished actress. Gazing at her earnestly, there was nothing in her expression at present to suggest any emotion save a natural annoyance at ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... too glad to do it——" I felt my temper most curiously running away with me, ranting about things I hadn't meant to at all. I looked for another outburst from her, but to my amazement she flashed me a smile with a most enigmatic look back of it. She tossed her head, but resumed her wiping of the glass with a certain demureness. She spoke ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... She lifted her thick veil before beginning to speak, and the extreme paleness and unbroken composure of the lady produced a singular impression. This was not an impression of hardness. Interesting femininity was the first thing to be felt in her presence. She was not even enigmatic. It was only clear that the force of a powerful character was at work to master the emotions of her situation. Once or twice as she spoke she touched her eyes with her handkerchief, but her voice was low ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... Valonne smiled his enigmatic smile. "Yes," he said. "I have once or twice—perhaps you think this room shows traces of some rather violent amusements, and really on looking round, I ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... Her face had a brooding, enigmatic look, and she seemed to be staring at her mother without seeing her. "I'm sorry, but I can't help ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... Swedish Professor, named Palmblad, groping about for other objects in the College Library of Lund (which is in the country of the Konigsmark connections), came upon a Box of Old Letters,—Letters undated, signed only with initials, and very enigmatic till well searched into,—which have turned out to be the very Autographs of the Princess and her Konigsmark; throwing of course a henceforth indisputable light on their relation. SECOND THING: A cautious exact old gentleman, of diplomatic habits (understood to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... book under his arm, in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. His unassuming figure, short and slight, with its half-gliding, half-tripping motion, gave him a boyish aspect, which contrasted, oddly, but not unpleasantly, with the touch of grey on his hair and whiskers. There was the same contrast— enigmatic and attractive—between the sunburnt brick-red complexion—the hue of the seasoned ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... against him and was not to be erased. One did not go to the class to learn but in order not to get this absence mark, for the class was reduced to reciting the lesson from memory, reading the book, and at the most answering a few abstract, profound, captious, enigmatic questions. True, the usual preachment was never lacking—the same as ever, about humility, submission, and respect to the clerics, and he, Placido, was humble, submissive, and respectful. So he was about to turn away when he remembered that the examinations were ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... over the boat, and "old Takki's exhortations were successful".(7) Waitz(8) discovers the same attitude towards the animals among the negroes. Man, in their opinion, is by no means a separate sort of person on the summit of nature and high above the beasts; these he rather regards as dark and enigmatic beings, whose life is full of mystery, and which he therefore considers now as his inferiors, now as his superiors. A collection of evidence as to the savage failure to discriminate between human and non-human, animate ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... throat. It was an artifact—a crumbling ruin, the remnant of an ancient structure whose original appearance I could not fathom. The stone seemed iron-hard. There were traces of inscription on it, but eroded to illegibility. And I never did learn the history of those enigmatic ruins.... They did ...
— Where the World is Quiet • Henry Kuttner
... example—is not a possible object for pity or patronage; they would be foolish who could doubt his word or mistrust his motives. He was "queer," as most great Englishmen of letters of his time were; but the more his at first enigmatic character comes to light, through his own letters and through the recollections of his friends, the more clearly do we see him to have been a pure-minded and well-bred man, kind, honest, generous, and gentle. His life was almost wholly passed among books,—books in many languages, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... his hands and rolled his fat thumbs one around the other. The little eyes, surrounded by puffy flesh, became enigmatic. All at once he glanced up with ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... boils over here, and he is hot. Here tenderness has mastered him, and the love of old days. He is weak in body just now, and worn out in spirit; he is hopeless, almost to the brink of despair; he is bright with wit, he is full of irony, he is purposely enigmatic—all of which require an Atticus who knew him and the people among whom he had lived, and the times in which the events took place, for their special reading. Who is there can read them now so as accurately to decipher every intended detail? Then comes some ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... slip of a sweetheart, who would exultingly show me love-letters, photographs, and flowers, and who asked me if I hadn't a sweetheart with whom to correspond. A feeling of inexplicable bashfulness tied my tongue, and I only replied with an enigmatic and haughty smile. And when they questioned me as to what I thought of the beauty of their little maidens, I would shrug my shoulders and disdainfully call them ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... pale face, so sad and worn, her black, straight brows and solemn grey eyes, so inscrutable, mysterious, Sibylline. A striking, even impressive, personality this, I reflected, with something in it sombre and enigmatic that attracted and ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... strains that appealed to the very finest susceptibilities of men's natures, and there were elements that gratified low egoism, tickled gossiping curiosity, and fascinated timorous superstition. His need of personal predominance, his labyrinthine allegorical interpretations of the Scriptures, his enigmatic visions, and his false certitude about the Divine intentions, never ceased, in his own large soul, to be ennobled by that fervid piety, that passionate sense of the infinite, that active sympathy, that clear-sighted demand for the subjection of selfish interests to the general good, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... then in Paris one of those enigmatic men who are at the same time intriguers and statesmen. Unknown and unconsidered, they play under some name parts hidden, but important in affairs. Men of police, as well as of politics, the governments ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Mr. Burns—man of enigmatic moods—made this statement with an inanimate face and staring wilfully at the rudder casing. The statement itself was obscurely ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... recently, their stupendous feats in plunder of England, siege of London, and other wonders and splendors of viking glory and success, had gone over all the North, awakening the attention of Hakon and everybody there. The name of "Ole" was enigmatic, mysterious, and even dangerous-looking to Hakon Jarl; who at length sent out a confidential spy to investigate this "Ole;" a feat which the confidential spy did completely accomplish,—by no means to Hakon's profit! The mysterious "Ole" proved to be no other than Olaf, son of ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... me as we drew near the shore. Leavitt's failure to appear seemed sinister and enigmatic. I began to evolve a fantastic image of him as I recalled his queer ways and his uncanny tricks of speech. It was as if we were seeking out the presiding deity of the island, who had assumed the guise of a Caliban holding unearthly sway over ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of the Tuscan renaissance, the meridian of the intellectual and artistic supremacy of Florence. In Lorenzo it found its fullest expression. He was typical of its spiritual as well as of its moral meaning; typical, too, of that mental unrest which sought escape from the pressing problems of an enigmatic present by reverting to the study of a classic past whose ethical, social, and political difficulties were rarely of a complex character, but concerned themselves principally with what may be termed the elementary verities of man's relations to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... own accord, Jaska placed her arms around Sarka, and gave him her lips. Her new behavior was as incomprehensible to Sarka as her former enigmatic expression had been. Wise in the ways of science was Sarka, but he knew ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... brow of the plaisant clouded, but recovering himself, he confronted the king with an enigmatic smile. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Nazareth was ever "the little Jesus," the curly-headed babe of the sacred picture; and in truth, for the parents as well, such was the image oftenest brought to mind by the Name. Not the sad enigmatic Christ of the Protestant, but a being more familiar and less august, a newborn infant in his mother's arms, or at least a tiny child who might be loved without great effort of the mind or any thought of the ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... an enigmatic sentence which impressed me so much that I find I entered it verbatim in ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... An enigmatic picture! Yet, indeed, In current Gallic light not hard to read. Woman, with angel-wings, and mournful face, What are the plans those listless fingers trace? What are the visions those fixed eyes survey? The War-dog fierce lies couchant in your way. The instruments of Art are scattered round. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 29, 1893 • Various
... even more apparent as the hoist accelerated toward the roof. The flooring seemed to expand. Spidery scaffold beams dropped past them. There were things being built over by the sidewall. Joe saw a crawling in-plant tow truck moving past those enigmatic objects. It was a tiny truck, no more than four feet high and with twelve-inch wheels. It dragged behind it flat plates of metal with upturned forward edges. They slid over the floor like sledges. Cryptic loads were carried ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... desolation befitting the mouth of hell. Grass and flowers on which souls might tread in the paradise of the Florentine poet. Stony forms, monstrous, enigmatic, reared like symbolic tokens of defeated gods, or of the worn-out evil passions that troubled old creation before the coming of man, and the fresh order of spiritual and carnal bewilderment. Why should I go on ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... "the legations" must be separated politically, and a viceroy set over those provinces. Walewski and Clarendon supported these views, but cautiously using the enigmatic language of diplomacy. The Plenipotentiaries of the other Powers were silent, or refused to give an opinion, on the ground that they had no instructions. M. de Mauteuffel alone, the Prussian representative, sternly observed that such ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... hour—answering questions as to whether he really did believe in ghosts and whether the experiments in mesmerism in his story, "The Case of M. Valdemar" had any foundation in fact, with his captivating but enigmatic smile, and a little Frenchified shrug ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... four classes:—1, Representational or ikonographic; 2, Symbolic or tropical; 3, Enigmatic; 4, Phonetic. From the examination of hieroglyphic inscriptions of different ages, it is evident that these four classes of symbols were used promiscuously, according to the pleasure ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... the same thing is true of "thinking" animals; although we must always remember that an analogous relation may only be apparent or extrinsic. Besides, the tone also of the "communications" in the two fields seems to me very much akin. I allude to the curious, angular, enigmatic, spasmodic, often playful and bantering communications, with frequent "unexpected replies" and philosophic platitudes. I find all these in Lola, and I remember similar stories of Rolf and of the horses, giving me an impression very like that which I get ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... a doomed man, it doesn't matter what happens to me, and I have the audacity to say that the other enigmatic part is that of the unbelievable provocation created in the ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... in silence, while I turned over in my mind what she had said. I could come to no conclusion upon it save that my dislike for her enigmatic aberrations was becoming more intense as my liking for the girl herself increased. To change the current of her thoughts and my own, I asked ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... 1877, near the Porta del Popolo, has revealed a curious state of things. In demolishing one of the towers by which Sixtus IV. had flanked that gate, we found a fragment of an inscription of the second century, containing these strange and enigmatic words: "If any one dare to do injury to this structure, or to otherwise disturb the peace of her who is buried inside, because she, my daughter, has been [or has appeared to be] a pagan among the pagans, ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... effusion, and our refuge—the British Museum—is the wide sea shore and the wind of the ocean. There, there is real joy in the flesh; our statues are naked, but we are ashamed, and our nakedness is indecency: a fair, frank soul is mirrored in those fauns and nymphs; and how strangely enigmatic is the soul of the antique world, the bare, barbarous soul ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... early. She smiled at the enigmatic portrait of Samuel Butler, glanced at the row of books over her bed, and dressed rapidly. She ran downstairs, eager to begin her experience as a bookseller. The first impression the Haunted Bookshop had made on her was one of superfluous dinginess, and as Mrs. Mifflin refused to let ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... PIPER is rather enigmatic where his personal statistics are concerned. It may be stated that he lives in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, that he is an expert on the history and use of hand weapons, that he has been writing and selling science-fiction for many years to the leading magazines, and that he is ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... chief characters, they must be painted in fainter colors—they should be suggested rather than presented in detail. It might be well to give a definite gesture to the Elephant—say, a characteristic movement with his trunk—a scowl to the Tiger, a supercilious and enigmatic smile to the Camel (suggested by Kipling's wonderful creation). But if a gesture were given to each of the animals, the effect would become monotonous, and the minor characters would crowd the foreground ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... The enigmatic neurenteric canal is a very old embryonic organ, and of great phylogenetic interest, because it arises in the same way in all the chordonia (both tunicates and vertebrates). In every case it touches or embraces like an arch the posterior end of the chorda, which has been developed here in ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... She smiled—a cold, enigmatic smile that made her face seem her grandmother's own peering through a radiant mask of youth. She glanced away, around—"Ah! there are mamma and Augusta Burke." And she left him to ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... not complete the sentence and his meaning was enigmatic. Altogether Moore seemed not like himself. The fact disturbed Columbine. Always she had confided in him. Here was a most complex situation—she burned to tell him, yet somehow feared to—she felt an incomprehensible satisfaction in his bitter reference to Jack—she ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... limbs. The upper part of her body, twisting a little from the waist, was thrown back as she leaned upon one arm, hand pressed palm downward on the tiger-skin. In her other hand she held a golden goblet, proffering the fatal draught, and her tilted face with its strange, enigmatic smile and narrowed lids held all the seductive entreaty and beguilement, and the deep, cynical knowledge of mankind, which are the garnerings of ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... daresay Florence would have given me the better. She showed signs of it. I think, perhaps, the enigmatic smile with which she used to look back at me over her shoulder when she went into the bathing place was a sort of invitation. I have mentioned that. It was as if she were saying: "I am going in here. I am going to stand so stripped ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... to have flown lightly beyond me, anticipating the extent of my confusion, for the smile about her mouth, while enigmatic, suggested—enticingly suggested—mischief. ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... lips and brimming eyes—an enigmatic answer which Billy could not read. He sat beside her, smoothing her dress furtively, until she got up, and, whispering, "I must go," left the room, unconscious of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... observe, to wonder about, at meal-time. I was glad when, on my second evening, I found seated at the table opposite to mine another guest. I was the gladder because he was just the right kind of guest. He was enigmatic. By this I mean that he did not look soldierly or financial or artistic or anything definite at all. He offered a clean slate for speculation. And, thank heaven! he evidently wasn't going to spoil the fun by engaging me ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm
... became acquainted with their routes and their rendezvous, their tricks and ways and records. But, what was more important, he also grew into an acquaintanceship with ward politics, with the nameless Power above him and its enigmatic traditions. He got to know the Tammany heelers, the men with "pull," the lads who were to be "pounded" and the lads who were to be let alone, the men in touch with the "Senator," and the gangs with the fall ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... made no further explanation, even to herself, of her enigmatic state of mind, but fell to writing letters as she had planned. Some thought she devoted to what she should write Dick about his sister's friend, the distinguished Russian general. But whatever she planned sounded either too pointed or else had ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... enigmatic utterances filled me with excitement, very inadequately expresses the state of my mind. He followed me indoors, and, while I mixed a drink for each of us, he saw that the windows and doors were closed. Then seating himself in an easy chair, he selected ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... but you must remember that I have come all the way from Europe in response to a very urgent message. As yet I have done nothing except form a very uncomfortable third at a luncheon and tea party, and listen to a good deal of enigmatic conversation between you and the charming Lady Carey. This evening I made sure that I should be enlightened. But no! You have given me a wonderful dinner—from you I expected it. We have eaten terrapin, canvas-back duck, and many other things the names of ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with a smile which I meant to be enigmatic, but assuredly must have been fatuous, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... being discussed, vaguely ashamed of herself, but comforted that Father had not laughed, had understood. As happened so frequently, it was Father who understood and Mother who did the right thing. She suddenly made an enigmatic, emphatic exclamation, "Goodness gracious!" and reaching out her long arms, pulled Sylvia up on her lap, holding her close. The last thought of that remembered time for Sylvia was that Mother's arms were very strong, and her breast ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... she found him difficult and enigmatic. An impenetrable wall seemed to be ever between them, erected by his will, not hers; therefore she would not try by the least suggestion of manner, or even of thought, to know why, nor would she admit to her own spirit ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... guess at as the completion of Walter Pater's message, alas! must remain for ever a matter of surmise. The completion, the rounding of his doctrine, can take place only in the grateful appreciation of his readers. We have been left with unfinished systems, fragmentary, sometimes enigmatic, utterances. Let us meditate their wisdom and vibrate with their beauty; and, in the words of the prayer of Socrates to the Nymphs and to Pan, ask for beauty in the inward soul, and congruity between the inner and the outer man; and reflect in such manner the gifts of ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... [Footnote 44: This enigmatic exclamation is addressed to the absent Lancelot, who is the secret lover of Guinevere, and who, though he long remains anonymous as "the Knight of the Cart", is really ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... some women whose calm, enigmatic faces seem always to suggest the infinite. It is given to few to know them, so rare as they are, and their lives usually so withdrawn; but sometimes they pass in the street, or sit like sphinxes in the church or the theatre, and ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... or in so vicious a temper. Most of the lighter furniture had been already reduced to matchwood; the glass doors of the bookcase were starred or shivered; precious Egyptian pottery and glass were strewn in fragments on the carpets, and even the mummy, though it still smiled with the same enigmatic cheerfulness, seemed to have suffered ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... king's unconstitutional action to which he owed his position. He found it difficult to form a ministry, for few were willing to join him in a struggle in which victory seemed hopeless. Shelburne, his former leader, he would not invite, for he could not endure his habitually enigmatic conduct. Temple, an instigator and the agent of the king's action, became secretary of state, but immediately resigned owing apparently to a personal offence. The new cabinet consisted only of Lords Sydney (Thomas ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... very quiet. Helena was sad and gentle; he had a peculiar, enigmatic look in his eyes, between suffering and mockery and love. He was quite intractable; he would not soften to her, but remained there aloof. He was tired, and the look of weariness and suffering was evident to her through his strangeness. In her ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... while the boat drifted on the smooth and oily water almost in the shadow of the cliffs. At some distance beyond them the cliffs sank, and the shore curved sharply in the direction of the island with its fort. There was the enigmatic dimness, though not dense darkness, of the night. Nearer at hand the walls of rock made the night seem more mysterious, more profound, and at their base flickered the flames which had attracted Artois' attention. Fitfully now these flames, rising from some invisible brazier, ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... Mirabeau may begin to discern clearly whither all this is tending. Patriotism, accordingly, regrets that his zeal seems to be getting cool. A man stout of heart, enigmatic, difficult to unmask! Meanwhile, finances give trouble enough. To appease the deficit we venture on a hazardous step, sale of the clergy's lands; a paper-money of assignats, bonds secured on that property is decreed; and young Sansculottism thrives bravely, growing by hunger. Great ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... Now the enigmatic eyes of Monk were boring into him, seeking to search his soul, with a question in their stare which he could not read and, quite likely, would have declined to answer if he could. Also the eyes of Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes were very round ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... the enigmatic Colonel, WILSON'S right-hand man in France When the PRESIDENT was leading Peace's great Parisian dance, Once again returns to Europe ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... all quarters against the opening of the session. Her ladyship's eldest boy declares violently against being bewulfenbuttled,(621) a word which I don't pretend to understand, as it is not in Mr. Johnson's new dictionary. There! now I have been as enigmatic as ever I have accused you of being; and hoping you will not be able to expound my German hieroglyphics, I proceed to tell you in plain English that we are going to be invaded. I have within this day or two seen ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... to find these books, books of a dry didactic learning? Does the student know how many times, in how many forms, under how many different heads, he perseveringly inserts the bold assurance, that the form of poesy and enigmatic allusive writing is the only form in which the higher applications of his discovery can be made to any purpose in that age? Who would expect to find this part in any professedly scientific work, when he tells us expressly, 'Reason cannot be so sensible, nor examples so fit,' as the examples ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... I cut all seven trails," he remarked to his partner. "I happen to know where this sheep outfit is headin' for." With which enigmatic remark he jerked a thumb toward Hidden Water and circled to the west and north. Not half an hour later he picked up a fresh trail, a broad path stamped hard by thousands of feet, and spurring recklessly along it until he sighted the herd ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... this talk with its jargon of words which he did not comprehend, bored him considerably, but by degrees he felt that he was being drawn into a vortex, and began to understand its drift. Even while it was enigmatic it acquired a kind of unholy attraction for him, and he began to seek out its secret meaning in which he found that company ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... all the earth by producing little Francois into the light of this sun. Of Madame Arouet, who, or what, or how she was, nothing whatever is known. A human reader, pestered continually with the Madame-Denises, Abbe-Mignots and enigmatic nieces and nephews, would have wished to know, at least, what children, besides Francois, Madame Arouet had: once for all, How many children? Name them, with year of birth, year of death, according to the church-registers: they all, at any rate, had that degree of history! No; even ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... would explain and gild with delicate interest the expression of sombre and uncommunicative melancholy that hung like a cloud over her face. I felt reluctant to delve further into a history that was footed upon so unsatisfactory a foundation as this enigmatic creature who had blazed suddenly upon the painter-cousin's vision, a mere spendthrift man of pleasure, inarticulate save in his startlingly decadent behaviour. After all, what had he done, this fine gentleman with an eagle face and iron ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... 207 to the end we have this sequel, the story of Apollo's dealings as Delphinian, and as Pythian; all this following on detached fragments of enigmatic character, and containing also (305-355) the intercalated myth about the birth of Typhaon from Hera's anger. In the politically inspired sequel there is, according to Mr. Verrall, no living zeal for the honour of Pytho (Delphi). The threat of the God to his Cretan ministers,—"Beware ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... colors. The warm odors were almost intoxicating. One, intermingled with the rest, aroused no responsive echo in Casanova's memory. Puzzled, he was about to say a word on the subject to Marcolina, when he perceived that the enigmatic, stimulating fragrance emanated from herself. She had removed her shawl from her shoulders and was carrying it over her arm. From the opening of her gown came a perfume at once kindred to that of the thousand flowers of the ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... were curious, to a stranger enigmatic. Not money, nor jewels, but rolls of closely written papyri, and things which the orator studied more intently,—a number of hard bits of clay bearing the impressions of seals. As Democrates fingered these, his face might ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the ease with which Othello strangled Desdemona. Further thought gives it explanation. The poor girl was half suffocated before he laid hands on her. I find also a solution of Macbeth's enigmatic speech, "Wicked dreams abuse the curtain'd sleep." Any dream that could get at you through the circumvallation of glass, brocade, cotton and feathers could be no better than a quadruplicated house-breaker, compounded out of ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... Serenaders who had just begun to be inexplicable in the Square below. But she left the first to assert its claim to authorship of the flush of rose colour that certainly made her tell to advantage, and the last to account for the animation which helped it. For the enigmatic character of South Carolina never interferes with a certain brisk exhilaration in its bones. She repeated in a vague way:—"A hundred things!" and shut ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of seven syllables, with the rhymes disposed as in Tennyson's 'In Memoriam.' The concluding 'threnos' is in five three-lined stanzas, also in trochaics, each stanza having a single rhyme. The poet describes in enigmatic language the obsequies of the Phoenix and the Turtle-dove, who had been united in life by the ties of a purely spiritual love. The poem may be a mere play of fancy without recondite intention, or it ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... new landscape of my story as it eventually became, spread out before me. I was justified in waiting all the years. My discontent with the futile end of the tale as I originally knew it and saw it was justified. Charley Steele, brilliant, enigmatic and epigrammatic, did not die at the Cote Dorion, but lived in that far valley by Dalgrothe Mountain, and became a tailor! So far as I am concerned he became much more. He was the beginning of a new epoch in my ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fish as I ever came across," responded Cleek, with an enigmatic smile. "And I can't help having a sneaking admiration for the person who's engineering the whole thing. How he must laugh at the state of the old Yard, with never a clue to settle down upon, never a thread to pick up and unravel! All of which is unbusinesslike of me, I've no doubt. ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... up his mind with reference to the contents of a somewhat enigmatic message after ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... quarter of the table she pushed crockery towards Rachel with a gesture of disillusion; the courage to smile had been but momentary. She felt old—older than she had ever felt before. The young generation presented themselves to her as almost completely enigmatic. She admitted that they were foreign to her, that she could not comprehend them at all. Each of the three at her table was entirely free and independent—each could and did act according to his or her whim, and none could say them nay. Such freedom seemed ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... been an AEschylus, had there been a Shakspeare!—But poor Peter's shocking Six Months of History has been treated by a far different set of hands, themselves almost shocking to see: and, to the seriously inquiring mind, it lies, and will long lie, in a very waste, chaotic, enigmatic condition. Here, out of considerable bundles now burnt, are some rough jottings, Excerpts of Notes and Studies,—which, I still doubt rather, ought to have gone in AUTO DA FE along with the others. AUTO DA FE ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... reminds me of Lord Acton, another new friend of the 'eighties. Yet Lord Acton had been my father's friend and editor, in the Home and Foreign Review, long before he and I knew each other. Was there ever a more interesting or a more enigmatic personality than Lord Acton's? His letters to Mrs. Drew, addressed, evidently, in many cases, to Mr. Gladstone, through his daughter, have always seemed to me one of the most interesting documents of our time. Yet I felt sharply, in reading them, that ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... about him, and perhaps entertained a not too high opinion of Mexican fair play. So, before turning round, he advanced till he was alongside his companion. Then he looked, and saw something which was certainly enigmatic. ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... named Keingala, because she stays out at graze longer than suits his laziness, he flays the unhappy beast alive in a broad strip from shoulder to tail, the thing goes beyond a joke. Also he is represented, throughout the saga, as invariably capping his pranks or crimes with one of the jeering enigmatic epigrams in which one finds considerable excuse for the Icelandic proneness to murder. However, in his boyhood, he does not go beyond cruelty to animals and fighting with his equals; and his first homicide, on his way with a friend of his father's to the Thing-Parliament, is ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... weary he was! Hark—some one played the piano! A Chopin mazourka! It was the princess. Mila! How lovely her touch!... Mila! What a lovely name! A sleeping princess. A prince with such a sleepy head. How the girl could play ... along the spiral road he saw the music glow in enigmatic figures ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... something of a shock one encounters the enigmatic Knut Pedersen from the Northlands, who has turned from literature to tramping, who speaks of old age as if he had reached the proverbial three-score and ten, and who time and again slips into something like actual whining, as when he says of himself: "Time has worn me out so that I ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... to attention, her face still hidden. Then slowly she raised her head, her cheeks streaked with tears. Little rivulets of black coursed from her lashes. For several seconds her gaze swept his countenance, her expression strangely hostile, yet enigmatic. Watching her, Esther could not possibly guess what was going on ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... just within the walls, that every traveller will first make his way. Passing from Ponte di Mezzo down the Lung' Arno Regio, past the Palazzo Agostini, beautiful in its red brick past Palazzo Lanfreducci with its little chain and enigmatic motto, "Alla Giornata," past the Grand Ducal Palace, you turn at last into the Via S. Maria, a beautiful and lovely street that winds like a stream full of shadows to the Piazza del Duomo. On your right ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... luxuries as tinned and compressed vegetables, condensed milk, &c. Jensen did not even think of ship's biscuits until I called his attention to the oversight. He demurred at first about buying them, but I told him I would not go until we had the biscuits aboard. Jensen was a very bluff, enigmatic sort of fellow, as I afterwards found out. He was of a sullen, morose nature, and I could never get much out of him about his past. He would not speak about himself under any circumstances, and at no time of our acquaintance was he any sort of a sociable companion. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... with vague enigmatic hopes and promises, and certainly leaves its readers little wiser than they were before. In the opinion of the Messrs. 'Sobieski Stuart' (who called themselves his grandsons), Charles really did visit Sweden, and his jewel, as ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... was due partly to certain women being inclined to run after him—and therefore to jealousy on behalf of the professional lady-killer of the military species—and partly to a vague feeling that he was enigmatic—Sphynx-like, as some women said. He was too silent sometimes, especially if the conversation amongst men tended towards racy stories; he was sarcastic and nimble-witted when he did speak. And he was not easily bullied. If he encountered ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... her a sort of enigmatic figure, supernatural and having only the form of the human. Thus, in Lamartine we find the following description: "The young girl was, they say, a sous-entendu of nature: she could be a wife, she could not be a mother. These are the two mysteries we ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... the State to make printed words criminal. Whence we are to derive metes and bounds of the state power is a subject to the confusion of which, I regret to say, I have contributed—comforted in the acknowledgment, however, by recalling that this Amendment is so enigmatic and abstruse that judges more experienced than I have had to reverse themselves as to its effect on state power. The thesis now tendered in dissent is that the 'liberty' which the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... somewhere in a dark corner of the garden or lying in bed, he conjured up before him the images of the fairy-tale princesses—they appeared with the face of Luba and of other young ladies of his acquaintance, noiselessly floating before him in the twilight and staring into his eyes with enigmatic looks. At times these visions awakened in him a mighty energy, as though intoxicating him—he would rise and, straightening his shoulders, inhale the perfumed air with a full chest; but sometimes these same visions brought to him a feeling of sadness—he felt like crying, ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... indolent as of yore, now watching her sister with an indulgent, enigmatic expression, anon permitting a scornful glance to stray toward Adonis, who, for his part, had eyes only for his companion, a distinct change from country hoidens, tavern demoiselles and dainty wenches, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... passed somehow since an enigmatic telegram from the India-rubber Man had brought Betty flying up to Scotland with hastily packed trunks and a ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... coiled in two lateral buns over her ears. In the secret tower of her deafness she sat apart, looking down at the world through sharply piercing eyes. What did she think of men and women and things? That was something that Denis had never been able to discover. In her enigmatic remoteness Jenny was a little disquieting. Even now some interior joke seemed to be amusing her, for she was smiling to herself, and her brown eyes were like very bright ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... overjoyed nor excited her. With him she could chatter away for hours together, leaning on his arm, as though he were her brother, looking affectionately into his face, and laughing with his laughter—and she rarely thought of him. In Lutchkov there was something enigmatic for the young girl; she felt that his soul was 'dark as a forest,' and strained every effort to penetrate into that mysterious gloom.... So children stare a long while into a deep well, till at last they make out at the very ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... in this story by Mr. Isaacs, who is not in all respects an imaginary personage, might remind one of Disraeli's Sidonia. He is an enigmatic character, versed in the philosophy of the East and the West, who excels on horseback and in tiger shooting, yet can discourse mystically and can bring the mysterious influences at his command to bear ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... and Mrs. Tinneray, still aloof and enigmatic, paced the deck. Mrs. Tuttle, blue feathers streaming, teetered on her high heels in their direction. Again she proffered the box. One of the cynical youths with the ivory-headed canes was following her, demanding that the parrot be fed a caramel. Once more the sky-blue ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... this morning. I prefer to leave Grace to you and Tom." Again her eyes met those of the older woman with the same enigmatic smile. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... With these enigmatic words, he dismissed the young lover, who returned to the chateau, vexed and disturbed by his ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... related. All was in order, but in alarming order for him, because each note only referred to the very essence of the business it alluded to, and related only to the exact point of its then relations with France. These laconic notes proved as enigmatic to Louis, as did the letters in cipher which covered the table. Here all was confusion. An edict of banishment and expropriation of the Huguenots of La Rochelle was mingled with treaties with Gustavus Adolphus and the Huguenots of the north against the empire. Notes ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was to wait until morning. There would surely be some message, some hint, some key to the mystery. While everything remained so maddeningly enigmatic, he raked through the tangled past in search of some casual seed of explanation for that still ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... altogether bad when even a kiss becomes suspicious and can be susceptible of "interpretation," as a complicated act of intricate and enigmatic relations! That is exactly what happened. And how many odd and nightmare-like misunderstandings were engendered by the poisonous mist in which we all wandered, both friends and foes, and in which the outlines of the plainest objects and feelings assumed the ...
— The Shield • Various
... have struck her listener as enigmatic. But I daresay he felt that he scarcely knew her well enough to press for an elucidation. And, anyhow, without pause, she ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... about that I could not help seeing some Egyptian hieroglyphics in an oval on the cover, also the title, and underneath it your own name, my friend, all of which excited my curiosity, especially the title, which was brief and enigmatic, consisting indeed of ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... accepted the Captain's suggestion of a stroll in the garden, and was relieved when the silent sister did not rise to accompany them, but remained in the candle-light with her coffee and cigarette. She found the woman's lightly mocking, watchful eyes, the enigmatic smile upon the carmined lips, increasingly hard to bear. That woman didn't like her—she had failed, somehow, to propitiate ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... enigmatic retort, and though I begged an explanation I got none. Instead, she quickened the horse's gait and ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... you. It was an accident, I say—and who should know better than I?" He was smiling in that whimsical enigmatic way of his. Smiling still he sank back into ...
— The Lion's Skin • Rafael Sabatini
... Prohack." She smiled anew; and her smile, so clever, so self-reliant, so enigmatic, a little disturbed ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... King's Road. I've always wanted an hour-glass to measure time by. What a mystery Time really is, when you think of it! See, the sands are running now while we are talking. I've got here in my hand the most potent, the most enigmatic, the most fleeting of all essences—Time, the sad cure for all our sorrows—but I say! There's your bus just starting. You'll miss it ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... and enigmatic, gazed at a spot upon the table; Lascelles, his mouth a little open, his eyes dilated, had his hands ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... one's bread. The callousness which he displayed in saying all this deeply pained his pious father. His son's secret nature was an enigma to him. In vain he endeavored to pierce the meaning of the youth's eyes, but their gaze was enigmatic and veiled. Racah had ever exhibited a certain aloofness of character, and as he grew older this trait became intensified; the riddle of his life had forced itself upon him, and he vainly wrestled with it. Music drew him as iron ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... turned about and perceived in the midst of the crowd a few steps away a little girl with reddish hair, about a dozen years old, leaning against the portal, both arms raised above her head, who was looking at them. She had the fine and somewhat archaic face of some little cathedral statue, with an enigmatic smile, graceful, shrewd and tender. Luce smiled also at her while calling Pierre's attention to her. But the little girl's gaze passed over her head and suddenly changed to fright. And hiding her face in her hands ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... he slowly and quietly announced, with those coldly narrowed eyes still intent on my face, as though very little and yet a very great deal depended on just how I was going to accept that slightly enigmatic remark. And he must have noticed the quick frown of perplexity which probably came to my face, for that right hand of his resting on the table opened and then closed again, as though it were squeezing a sponge very dry. "They've got me," he said. "They've ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... of Mount Soracte, white with shining snow, the peak whose distant cold gave zest to the blazing logs on the hearth of Horace. Within sight of his windows was practised, by men calling themselves 'wolves' (Hirpi), a rite of extreme antiquity and enigmatic character. On a peak of Soracte, now Monte di Silvestre, stood the ancient temple of Soranus, a Sabine sun-god. {148a} Virgil {148b} identifies Soranus with Apollo. At the foot of the cliff was the precinct of Feronia, a Sabine goddess. Mr. Max Muller says that Feronia ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... even the cacique-chosen Cortes unruly, and our Charles I. looked about for a Strafford who should apply a "thorough" remedy to what he called the parliamentary gachis. He found his man in Joao Franco. This somewhat enigmatic personage can not as yet be estimated with any impartiality. No one accuses him of personal corruption or of sordidly interested motives. His great private wealth enabled him the other day to find bail, at a moment's notice, to the amount of L40,000. On the other hand, his enemies diagnose him ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... signs of warmth. Her eyes were enigmatic as black diamonds; and her mouth was a red bud of scorn. Her dignity was immense for all that her braids had come down from their coronet and were hanging childishly about her shoulders; the loose strands fluttering about ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... tea mechanically, finding nothing enigmatic in his silence. The direct look of his blue eyes discomfited her strangely, but it was a sublime discomfiture—the discomfiture of the moth around the flame. She longed to meet it, but did not wholly dare. With veiled glances she yielded to the ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... excellence conceded by this acute critic. It must of course be remembered that these "Journal-letters" are by no means Swift's only proofs of his epistolary expertness. The Vanessa ones perhaps display a little of the hopelessly enigmatic character which spreads like a mist over the whole of that ill-starred relationship: but they make all the more useful contrast to the "wholeheartedness"—one may even use that word in reference to the little bit of what we may call ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... by which the Mock-king, or King of the Beggars (parallel to our Boy-bishop, and perhaps to that enigmatic churls' King of the "O. E. Chronicle", s.a. 1017, Eadwiceorla-kyning) gets allegiance paid to him, and so secures himself in his attack on the real king, is cleverly devised. The king, besides being ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Virgin, who, with Her arms crossed over Her bosom, bends Her little dove-like head, with downcast eyes and a rather long nose, under a veil. She resembles the Apostle St. John who is just behind her, and might be his daughter; and she is enigmatic; for that soft, delicate face, which in the hands of any other painter would be merely charming and trivial, breathes out the purest innocence. She is not even flesh and blood; the material that clothes Her swells softly with the breath of the fluid that shapes it. Mary ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... gave a swift glance at his friend's wife to see what effect these words might have on her, and he was startled to detect on her face the same enigmatic smile which was the chief memory he had retained of the Venetian picture. Truly, the likeness between the painting and the wife of his friend was marvellous; and Laurence tried to shake off a morbid wonder whether there might be any obscure and inscrutable survival from one generation ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... had waited—curious I'll own, and hopeful too—only to hear him shout, "No—nothing." That was all then—and there will be nothing more; there will be no message, unless such as each of us can interpret for himself from the language of facts, that are so often more enigmatic than the craftiest arrangement of words. He made, it is true, one more attempt to deliver himself; but that too failed, as you may perceive if you look at the sheet of greyish foolscap enclosed here. He had tried to write; do you notice the commonplace hand? It is headed "The Fort, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... hurrah from land—at one time from a troop of children, at another from grown-up people, but mostly from wondering peasants who gaze long at the strange-looking ship and muse over its enigmatic destination. And men and women on board sloops and ten-oared boats stand up in their red shirts that glow in the sunlight, and rest on their oars to look at us. Steamboats crowded with people came out from the towns we passed to greet us, and bid us God-speed ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... of the light gleamed in her long enigmatic eyes as if they were precious enamel in that shadowy head which in its immobility suggested a creation of a distant past: immortal art, not transient life. Her voice had a profound ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... times he went to Canada, once to the West Indies, and three times to England, everywhere drawing great crowds about him. In A Cry from the Wilderness he more than once clothed his thought in enigmatic garb, but the meaning was always ultimately clear. At this distance, when slavery and the Civil War are alike viewed in the perspective, the words of the oracle are almost uncanny: "In the rest of the Southern states the influence of these Foreigners will be ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... Trirodov. "No, I thought that you had unwillingly heard some words which might have sounded strange, enigmatic, or terrible ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... reference to her make-up, which was less offensive than he had feared; but he winced, nevertheless, at the vulgarity of her part so skilfully suggested by paint and powder. She gave him her hand with a frank gesture. "You didn't applaud my scenes to-night," she said, with a smile as enigmatic as the one she used ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... pale, black-bearded man of much force and exactness, dressed, as Cowperwood observed, in much better taste than some of the others—looked at Cowperwood shrewdly but in a gentlemanly, retiring way, with a gracious, enigmatic smile. He caught a glance in return which he could not possibly forget. The eyes of Cowperwood said more than any words ever could. Instead of jesting faintly Mr. Rambaud decided to explain some things ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser |
