"Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was carried] be ready, and furnished with Match [or cotton thread, boiled in ashes-lye and powder, and kept smouldering, with a red end, when in use], and to have alwaies one lighted, and where the Cannoneer makes his Quarter to have two one above another below [this last passage is a little obscure, but we take it to mean that at night, when the gunner slept in his cabin, a lighted match was to be beside him, but that in the gun-decks below and above his cabin (which was in the half-deck) lit matches were to be kept ready for immediate use, by those who kept watch], that his Granadoes ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... solar disk between serpents, and the old Berber religion, with its sun and animal worship, has many points of resemblance with Egyptian beliefs. All this implies trade contacts far below the horizon of history, and obscure comings and goings of restless throngs across incredible distances long before the Phenicians planted their first trading posts on the north African coast about ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... admitted, however, that this purely subjective view of philosophy, with its implied demand for a precise subjective colouring of the words, leaves some part of our philosophical motive-force unsatisfied and troubled by an obscure distress. No two minds can interchange ideas without some kind of appeal, often so faint and unconscious as to be quite unrecognized, to an invisible audience of hidden attendants upon the argument, who are tacitly assumed in some mysterious way to be the ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... a great deal that is enigmatic and obscure in nature; and even in everyday life, doctor, one must often come upon phenomena which are absolutely incapable of explanation. I know, for instance, of several strange, mysterious deaths, the cause of which only spiritualists ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... either in Mr. Mill or his follower, Mr. Fawcett. Mr. Mill is capable of immense involuntary error; but his involuntary errors are usually owing to his seeing only one or two of the many sides of a thing; not to obscure sight of the side he does see. Thus his 'Essay on Liberty' only takes cognizance of facts that make for liberty, and of none that make for restraint. But in its statement of all that can be said for liberty, it is so clear and keen, that I have myself quoted it before now as the best authority ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... returned to the room to examine the contents of his flask. But even the flask was now nowhere to be seen. There was not a single forgotten object, not a single indication to give him a clue in this obscure confusion. What could have happened here?—he had ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... tall man of fifty, in spectacles, with a dark beard, and a pencil behind his ear—usually expressed his ideas vaguely in roundabout hints, while his sly smile betrayed that he attached particular significance to his words. He liked to obscure his utterances with bookish words, which he understood in his own way, and many such words he used in a wrong sense. For instance, the word "except." When he had expressed some opinion positively and did not want to be contradicted, he would stretch ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... George is having an anxious time; Edgar goes into some obscure details about crops and cattle-raising. Then he hints at some exciting adventures they have had as a result of supporting a body that's ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... my name is not entirely unknown to the commander in chief," said the major, a little proudly; "nor are you as obscure as your modesty would make you. I believe you, Frances, when you say that you pity me, and it must be my task to continue worthy of such feelings. But I waste the precious moments; we must go through the hills to-night, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Is the approaching visitation of the power more strongly felt than the power itself in presence? Chaucer says distinctly the contrary, and why with a word lose, or obscure, or hazard the appropriation of the month entire, so conspicuous a tenet in the old poetical mind? And is Eve here taken strictly—the night before May-day, like the Pervigilium Veneris? Or loosely, on the verge of May, answerably to 'ayenes May' afterwards? To the former sense, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... certainly shown some speed in adapting yourself to conditions," Carr observed facetiously. "There was a time when I didn't believe you could. Which shows that even wise men err. Material factors loom bigger and bigger on your horizon, don't they? Don't let 'em obscure everything though, Thompson. That's a blunder plenty of smart men make. Well, we've progressed since Lone Moose days, haven't we—the four of us that ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Caesar, and acted Things as memorable, had they been done in some Part of the World replenished with People and Historians, that might have given him his Due. But his Misfortune was, to fall in an obscure World, that afforded only a Female Pen to celebrate his Fame; tho' I doubt not but it had lived from others Endeavours, if the Dutch, who immediately after his Time took that Country, had not killed, banished and dispersed ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... gave birth to a baby girl, an obscure London newspaper printed, "A Malthusian Warning to the East India Company," which no doubt reflected a certain phase of public interest, but Mill continued his serene ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... the time about certain circumstances which have since made a great deal clear to me that was obscure before. ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... the keen eyes of the sergeant, who was very evidently on no new job so far as he was concerned. 'Moll' too seemed jealous of Jane's laurels, and went thoroughly into the business. She and the serjeant peeped together under beds and into closets, and she laughed brazenly at certain not very obscure hints of his as to the great services I should render to the search-party if I kept my eye on the house-place. She even said, "Master Noll, don't 'e think as 'ow th' ale be gettin' flat downstairs? It wunna be wuth ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... to Kent, until she had heard that Margery was to be home in time for the graduating exercises. As June came on and the tenth drew near, a little forlorn sense of the unfairness of things began to obscure Lydia's pride and joy in her honor. On the ninth, the last rehearsal of the speech had been made; the dress was finished and hung resplendent in the closet; Amos himself had taken Lydia into town and bought her white slippers and stockings, taking care to inform ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... set up an extensive mining plant, may come to an end which is unexpectedly abrupt. You may put your money into roller-skating rinks and find that cinemas have become the rage with the fickle public; sometimes "the market" may decline for causes which remain obscure but with consequences which are disagreeably plain. But while risk is always present in some degree, the degree varies enormously from one industry to another. Now, it is obvious enough that in an ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... for lion. Euphonic changes were very arbitrary and various, differing for the same termination; but the adverbial ending -ly was always -osh; terribly, terriblosh. A certain percentage of words were absolutely independent, or at least of obscure origin. The grammar tended to Chinese or infantine simplicity; ta represented any case of any personal pronoun. A proper name might vary in sound according to the euphonic requirements of the different Christian names by which ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... which he was presently submitted drew nothing from him that could explain all that yet remained obscure. It was from Frey Miguel, after a thousand prevarications and tergiversations, that the full truth—known to himself alone—was extracted by ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... content to collect their prey only in obscure and little-known regions, for a chance was seen to commercialize the small birds of the forests and fields. Warblers, Thrushes, Wrens, in fact all those small forms of dainty bird life which come about the home to cheer the hearts ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... Adams took his seat in Congress, the movement for the abolition of slavery was begun by a few obscure agitators. It did not at first attract much attention, but as it went on it gradually exasperated the overbearing temper of the Southern slaveholders. One fruit of this agitation was the appearance of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the House of Representatives. ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, l. ii. c. 44, p. 176-192. A critical reader will discern some inconsistencies in different parts of this account; but they are not more obscure or more stubborn than the establishment and effectives, the present and fit for duty, the rank and file and the private, of a modern return, which retain in proper hands the knowledge of these ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... finished verse will be A stroke that's like a steeple when Seen suddenly upon a plain. My soul longs for your breath again To warm it. Oh, return—come here With laugh and babble—and no fear When with your shadow you obscure The book I read, for I am sure, Oh, madcaps terrible and dear, That you were right and I was wrong. But who has ne'er with scolding tongue Blamed out of season. Pardon me! You ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... seems to call for this extended reply which I hope will be of service to you. If I have left anything obscure that you would like to know about, or if I can assist you in any other way, please ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... caution the four nobles had gradually retreated to an obscure recess, half concealed by some heavy drapery; and Bassompierre, in an attitude of easy indifference, stood leaning against the tapestried panels that divided the sumptuous apartment which they occupied from an inner closet that ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... we know it to exist. What a character would that man make for himself, of whom it was notorious that he consecrated his faculty of speech to the refuting unjust imputations against whomsoever they were directed, to the contradicting all false and malicious reports, and to the bringing forth obscure and unrecognised worth from the shades in which it lay hid! What a world should we live in, if all men were thus prompt and fearless to do justice to all the worth they knew or apprehended to exist! Justice, simple justice, if it extended no farther ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... that you thoroughly comprehend me, I have become so much a part of you that your innermost thoughts are as plain to me as though they were mine. But let me finish. I realized when I lay ill and about to die that I had permitted my theory of happiness to obscure my perception of the actual. As you know, my whole life has been given over to imagination—all save that portion of my existence, which I shall not dignify by calling life, when I was forced by circumstances to bring myself down to realities. I did not live whilst in commercial pursuits. It was ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... politicians, corruption. I, think that, by holding the subjects of your majesty in pay, he trespasses upon the royal prerogative, and cannot, if this continues so, be long in placing your majesty among the weak and the obscure." ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... theological tracts and single sermons. While at college, our author's conduct seems not to have been uniformly regular. He was subjected to slight punishment for contumacy to the vice-master,[26] and seems, according to the statement of an obscure libeller, to have been engaged in some public and notorious dispute with a nobleman's son, probably on account of the indulgence of his turn for satire.[27] He took, however, the degree of Bachelor, in January 1653-4, but neither became Master of Arts,[28] ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... doctrine of Thales, that cold and damp origin seemed doubtful to Scala in the case of a creature so fond of warmth; a fish were perhaps the better comparison, or, when the power of flying was in question, an eagle, or indeed, when the darkness was taken into consideration, a bat or an owl were a less obscure and more apposite parallel, etcetera, etcetera. Here was a great opportunity for Politian. He was not aware, he wrote, that when he had Scala's verses placed before him, there was any question of sturgeon, but rather of frogs and gudgeons: made short work with Scala's ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the furniture heights and in the wall-paper, which, if in pronounced patterns, must balance in conspicuous wall members and show the broken junctures or bad matchings in inconspicuous or obscure corners. ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... choose to let her refuse, Nor hae't in her power to say na, man: For though I be poor, unnoticed, obscure, My stomach's as ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the conduct of the Kohlhaas affair at the wish of his hard-pressed master, asked the Elector what charge he now wished to have lodged against the horse-dealer in the Supreme Court at Berlin. As they could not refer to Kohlhaas' fatal letter to Nagelschmidt because of the questionable and obscure circumstances under which it had been written, nor mention the former plundering and burning because of the edict in which the same had been pardoned, the Elector determined to lay before the Emperor's Majesty at Vienna ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... coming over from Asia into Europe to make war on the Roman people, has, during the whole length of the winter, accomplished no more memorable exploit, than the taking a wife, for passion's sake, out of a private house, and a family obscure even among its neighbours; and now as a newly married man, surfeited as it were with nuptial feasts, comes out to fight. His chief reliance and strength was in the Aetolians,—a nation of all others the most faithless and ungrateful, as you have formerly experienced, and as Antiochus ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... he could take offence. Only he had the air of a man who praises his neighbor without stint, with a calm consciousness that he himself is out of reach of comparison in the possessions or qualities which he is admiring in the other. Clement was right in his obscure perception of Mr. Bradshaw's feeling while he was making his phrases. That gentleman was, in another moment, to have the tingling delight of showing the grand creature he had just begun to tame. He was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... I shall not deal with obscure newspapers or obscure men. What a private citizen like Allen G. Thurman may have said in 1861 is ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... attack, but he never recovered consciousness, and refused to eat. Ten days afterwards he died without a complaint; to the last he had not spoken a word. Mme. Topinard nursed him, and Topinard laid him by Pons' side. It was an obscure funeral; Topinard was the only mourner who followed the son of ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... the ends of such affairs as they naturally and rather rapidly arrive. It had been a pleasure, and was no longer a pleasure; but this apparently did not dissolve it, or absolve him. He felt himself bound by an obscure but deep instinct to go on pretending that he was not tired of her, so long as she was not tired of him. And he sat there trying to remember any sign, however small, of such a consummation, quite without success. On the contrary, he had ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... come back to me after you have become acquainted with all the facts, and we will discuss the matter together. That you may call me your friend goes without saying, as you ought to know by this time; and although I am only an obscure East-End practitioner I am not wholly without friends able and willing to do me, or any friend of mine, a good turn, if necessary. So come back here when you have threshed out the matter, and we will see ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... consciousness of novelty and freedom as any boy coming to seek his fortune. Chatty's feelings were all very mild in comparison with her mother's. She was greatly pleased to see the clouds clear off, and the humid sweetness of the skies, which even the breath of the great city did not obscure. "After all, Theo will have a nice evening for his drive home," she said, unexcited. Though it was all very agreeable, Chatty did not know of anything that might await her in town. She knew more or less, she believed, what awaited her,—a few parties, a play ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... in that one just as much if that one had been the other." Mrs. Brook was sagacious, though a trifle obscure, and she pursued the next moment: "Mamma was so sincere. The fortune was nothing to her. That ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... Nello's steps, faint and obscure as it was under the new snow, went straightly along the accustomed tracks into Antwerp. It was past midnight when Patrasche traced it over the boundaries of the town and into the narrow, tortuous, gloomy streets. It ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... like to sleep over this cable—so plain seemingly; really so obscure. At face value, how splendidly it simplifies the Dardanelles problem! Had I been, all along, as this cable seems to make me, the C.-in-C. of the Eastern Mediterranean with Maxwell administering my Egyptian Base, then, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... a contenir que celle des villages ou on avait deja couru tant de perils. Monsieur, le Sous-Prefet, prenant avec lui le Lieutenant des gend'armes et six gend'armes, se mit en route vers la Calade. La nuit etait obscure, et le temps froid; cette double circonstance protegea Napoleon beaucoup mieux que n'aurait fait la plus forte escorte. Mons. le Sous-Prefet et la gend'armerie rencontrerent le cortege peu d'instants apres avoir ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... bore a pattern of dirty hands. Dozens of empty bottles clinked together in corners to the rolling of the ship. One of the doctor's medical books lay open on the table, half of the leaves gutted out, I suppose, for pipelights. In the midst of all this the lamp still cast a smoky glow, obscure and brown ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... many have raised the question, and asserted that caste had an idolatrous origin, and was the invention of an idolatrous priesthood, it may be worth while to gather together such facts as we can lay our hands on regarding this somewhat obscure subject. And it seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to clear away the rubbish which has been piled upon it in common with most Indian institutions—to ask what is evidence, and what is not. Our missionaries have asserted that caste can be clearly ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... errand, while I was out to-day, was to go and see a person who has thought proper to go out of her mind about me. She is poor and obscure, the sister of a tailor in this town; she had a little independence of her own, but lent it to the State of Pennsylvania, after the fashion of Sydney Smith, and has lost it, or at any rate the income of it, which, after all, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Dublin will, by reason of numerical majority, be analogous to Ministerialists at Westminister. DONELAN remarked that in his capacity as Nationalist Whip he intended to move issue of writ next Monday. This fully explained why O'BRIEN'S young man moved it to-day. Otherwise cause of quarrel obscure. What they fought each other for dense mind of Saxon could ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... thick-set pillars with their deep-fluted trunks, whose capitals were formed by four heads of bulls, placed forehead to forehead, and bound together by knots of serpents that seemed striving to devour them, an obscure cosmogonie symbol whereof the meaning was no longer intelligible, and had descended into the tomb with the hierophants of preceding ages. The gates were neither of a square nor rounded form. They described a sort of ogive much resembling the mitre of the Magi, and by ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... trifling question to ask the Duchess; since all the news of her shadowy world came to her ears in some swift obscure manner. ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... and led Esperance to her fiancee. At that moment anyone who had suspected the Duke of intentions to flirt with the plighted girl, must have abandoned their idea; and the motive of the duel, which was to bring one of these two perfect gentlemen to his death, became more and more obscure. ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... who am but a country gentleman in a small way—an obscure bachelor, abiding from year's end to year's end on my insignificant farm—have witnessed things in my time, which, had they been said and done nearer the tropics, would have been cited far and near in evidence of the turbulence of human passions, and that "the heart is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... [1] Certain obscure paragraphs relating to a crocodile, kept at the Museum, had been perplexing the readers of the Oxford Magazine for some time past, and had been distorted into an allegory of ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had a spice of Quixotism in it, seems to have completely lost his wits at this last reverse of fortune. Overwhelmed with shame at his own credulity, he felt himself unable to encounter the ridicule which awaited his return to Portugal, and secretly withdrew, with two or three domestics only, to an obscure village in Normandy, whence he transmitted an epistle to Prince John, his son, declaring, "that, as all earthly vanities were dead within his bosom, he resolved to lay up an imperishable crown by performing a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and devoting himself to the service of God, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... silence and solitude of his apartment he surrendered himself to his recollections and dreams. "It had been better to die young in a foreign land, while all the stars of hope were beaming above me, than to protract a miserable, obscure life here, and see all the stars fade ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... them were gone before the latter year. Lincoln was dead; Grant had had two terms; Stevens was gone; Sumner had been driven from party honor before his death; Chase had died Chief Justice, but unhappy. With these men living, lesser men had remained obscure. As they dropped out, a host of minor leaders, trained to a disproportionate view of the war and ignorant ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... the past hour she had innocently and dreamily bestowed upon the Greek caresses which might easily have been misunderstood; and that all the while, the door having been partly open, a person standing outside and concealed by the obscure gloom of the antechamber, could have covertly witnessed whatever had transpired within. But AEnone knew that whatever might be her husband's other faults, he was not capable of countenancing the self-imposed degradation ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... in hearing distance, had turned away, and was ostentatiously examining the sky and the treetops; the man who had spoken to her joined him, and they said something in a low voice. They turned again and came slowly towards her. She, from some obscure sense of imitation, stared at the treetops and the sky as the second man had done. But the first man now laid his hand kindly on her shoulder and ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... rich 145 In all abundance; many a field possess'd Of wheat, well-planted gardens, numerous flocks, And was expert in spearmanship esteem'd Past all the Grecians. I esteem'd it right That ye should hear these things, for they are true. 150 Ye will not, therefore, as I were obscure And of ignoble origin, reject What I shall well advise. Expedience bids That, wounded as we are, we join the host. We will preserve due distance from the range 155 Of spears and arrows, lest already gall'd, We suffer worse; but we will others urge To combat, who have stood too long aloof, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... an eye-witness, "slowly and deliberately arose. A slight tall figure, stern and pale, very quiet and grave, he stood before us and spoke those tremendous words. . . . He was not ashamed to have a monkey for an ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth." Another story indicates the temper of that time. Carlyle, whose writing had strongly influenced Huxley, and whom Huxley had come to know, could not forgive him for his attitude toward evolution. One day, ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... all. We are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies wisely learns, in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.' And again, 'There is another way of God's providence full of meanders and labyrinths and obscure methods: that serpentine and crooked line: that cryptic and involved method of His providence which I have ever admired. Surely there are in every man's life certain rubs, and doublings, and wrenches, which, well examined, do prove the pure hand of God. And to be true, and ...
— Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici' - an Appreciation • Alexander Whyte
... some examples of contemporary published criticism which it is now not uninteresting to glance over. In selecting these he has been aided by the kindness of Mrs. Ogilbie. From the Abbotsford manuscripts and other sources he has added notes on points which have become obscure by lapse of time. He has especially to thank, for their courteous and ready assistance, Lady Napier and Ettrick, who lent him Sir Walter's letters to her kinswoman, the Marchioness of Abercorn; Mr. David Douglas, the editor and publisher ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... is always his own style. He does not make the mistake of being relevant on one page and irrelevant on another; he is irrelevant on all of them. He does not make the mistake of being lucid in one place and obscure in another; he is obscure all the time. He does not make the mistake of slipping in a name here and there that is out of character with his work; he always uses names that exactly and fantastically fit his lunatics. In the matter of undeviating consistency he stands alone in authorship. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... poor man's cottage and to the gate of the palace; and protestantism proclaimed that all men are alike able to find the road to heaven. The discovery of America offered a thousand new paths to fortune, and placed riches and power within the reach of the adventurous and the obscure. ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... he looked back upon these winter months, Piers could distinguish nothing clearly. It was a time of confused and obscure motives, of oscillation, of dreary conflict, of dull suffering. His correspondence with Olga, his meetings with her, had no issue. He made a thousand resolves; a thousand times he lost them. But for the day's work, which kept him in an even tenor for a certain ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... what they decided should be their destination, almost at the end of the road and in a dense bit of wooded section which would obscure them from enemy observers, they brought their tractor to a stop. With pick and shovel they began building an earthen oven, in which they might cook their food, and from which they might keep reasonably ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... what it was, whether man or beast and the dusk only served to make it more obscure. Then the object scrambled up on to the trail and Jim at once recognized the dwarf Mexican with his high-crowned sombrero and his velvet suit richly slashed. With his crooked back and one eye, he was anything but a prepossessing-looking creature. Caliente, when he, too, recognized ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... had, by fair means or foul, induced an enormous number of witnesses to come forward and prove the truth of his statement, and day after day there were the most wearisome references to old diaries, to reports of meetings held in obscure places, perhaps more than a dozen years ago, or to some hashed and mangled report of a debate which, incredible though such meanness seems, had been specially constructed by some unscrupulous opponent in such ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... not apply to errors which are openly and plainly at variance with the rubrics of the Missal and Breviary. However, it may be well to revise and to recall the student days' lessons on the Church's Calendar. The study is not an easy one, and in labouring to be brief, probably, I may be obscure and incomplete. ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... agents of office-brokers, making the business of dickering about spoils as weighty to them as their duties as legislators. It introduces the patronage as an agency of corrupt influence between the Executive and the Legislature. It serves to obscure the criminal character of bribery by treating bribery with offices as a legitimate practice. It thus reconciles the popular mind to practices essentially corrupt, and thereby debauches the popular sense of right and wrong ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... performed his task in a way to deserve the warmest praise. The difficulties he has overcome are very great, consisting not merely of intricate rhyme and assonance, which he has faithfully reproduced, but a text often corrupt and meaning often obscure. He says himself in his preface that "The life-blood of rhythmical translation is this commandment—that a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one;" and this commandment, as far as we can see, he has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... said the Philosopher. "This course, however, is rarely followed by the fairy people: they do not ordinarily steal for ransom, but for love of thieving, or from some other obscure and possibly functional causes, and the victim is retained in their forts or duns until by the effluxion of time they forget their origin and become peaceable citizens of the fairy state. Kidnapping is not by any means confined to either humanity or ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... together. At present you close against men of talents that broad, that noble entrance which belongs to them, and which ought to stand wide open to them; and in exchange you open to them a bye entrance, low and narrow, always obscure, often filthy, through which, too often, they can pass only by crawling on their hands and knees, and from which they too often emerge sullied with stains never to be washed away. But take the most favourable case. Suppose that the member who ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... obscure; but it appears that Raleigh, failing to discover the mines, attacked and plundered the little town of St. Thomas, which the Spaniards had built on the territories of Guiana, which Raleigh had acquired three-and-twenty years before for the English crown, ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... found in occupation of the tap-room were by trade cutlers. Natives of some obscure town in Prussian Silesia, of which I have forgotten the name, they were wandering about through Bohemia with the intention by-and-by of proceeding into Saxony, and so round by Berlin and Potsdam to their homes. Their knapsacks, ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... cabin study with its many pleasant accommodations, and become a scribbler of all work in a London garret. Here his existence ran on for a while in an obscure and probably miserable current. It is said that Murray, the bookseller, the father of 'the' John Murray, of Albemarle Street, wished to take the poet into partnership,—upon terms of great advantage,—but that Falconer, for reasons which are not known, declined ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... flattery which the young artist's attention conveyed, and scarcely needed the entreaties of Trevethick to persuade him to throw off his native reticence. What he forgot, and had mentioned in former narrations, the landlord supplemented; and when "Sol" became technical and obscure the other performed the part of chorus or explainer. If the former had been some gifted animal, and the latter its proprietor, he could not have taken a greater pride in the exhibition of its talent than did the landlord in ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... found it difficult to get any attention paid to his compositions, Clara, from childhood, was able both to conquer their difficulties and to express their deep meanings. While Schumann was earning his living and a wide reputation by publishing the praises of other composers, by burrowing in all the obscure meaning of new geniuses, and revealing their messages to the world, his own great works were lying ignored and uncomprehended and seemingly forgotten. At this time he found a young girl of brilliant fame, honoured by Chopin, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... however, set her at rest in regard to his visits to Marian Vosburgh, and she felt that there was scarcely the slightest danger that he would compromise himself by serious attentions to the daughter of an obscure American official. ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... of any of those I saw in the list, except two or three as editors of some newspapers, magazines, or trifling and scurrilous party pamphlets. I made this observation to Fontanes, who replied that these men, though obscure, had, during the last peace, been very useful, and would be still more so after another pacification; and that Bonaparte must be satisfied with these until he could gain over men of greater talents. He granted also that men of true genius and literary eminence were, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... she wandered into the obscure corner of a church. It was evening service, and at first she was only glad to get away from the cold, biting air; but she had not been there long before a strange feeling of gladness rose up in her heart. The organ awoke from its stillness, and the tones gladdened her as the tambourine, ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... unfeigned penitence, he retired from the audacity, back foremost: Would never even in dreams have presumed, had not his Prussian Majesty authorized; would now, since HER Prussian Majesty had that feeling, withdraw silently, and live forgotten, as an obscure Royal Highness in the abstract (though fallen Widower lately) ought to do. And so at least there was an end of that matter, one might hope,—though in effect it still abortively started up now and then, on Papa's part, in his frantic humors, for ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Om. Haer." iii. 3, Sec. 3. Bunsen has justly remarked that, "with Telesphorus the most obscure period of the Roman Church terminates."—Hippolytus, iv. pp. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... insignificant remains of such rich stores. In the tombs have been found here and there fragments of popular songs. The pyramids have furnished almost intact a ritual of the dead which is distinguished by its verbosity, its numerous pious platitudes, and obscure allusions to things of the other world; but, among all this trash, are certain portions full of movement and savage vigour, in which poetic glow and religious emotion reveal their presence in a mass of mythological phraseology. In the Berlin ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... real in this world but that which lives in the heart.... My life has been wrapped up in the obscure little village where she lives.... Life is only endurable when I tell myself: 'This autumn I shall spend a month beside her.' I should die in this hell of a Paris if she did not allow me to write to her, and if from time to time I had not letters ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... called attention to a recently published article which appeared to be of a good deal of importance. By a curious coincidence, the other scientist had that very day been reading an article published twenty years before in an obscure local scientific ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... twitched and he stirred uneasily. His face was haggard, and behind his closed lids, somewhere in the center of thought and memory, a train of fiery words burned in an ever-widening circle, round and round and round, ploughing, searing their way through some obscure part of him that had heretofore been without feeling, but was now all quick and ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... marvellous beauty and strength, but their doom is upon them, and after numerous adventures they slay their fathers or some other unfortunate relative. But the most characteristic part of what seems an almost universal legend is that these children are born in the most obscure circumstances, afterward rising to a height of splendour which makes up for all they previously suffered. It is not necessary to explain nowadays that this is characteristic of nearly all sun-myths. The sun is born in obscurity, and rises to a height ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... composition in the modern spirit, and to the simplifying of planes and values, Manet owed these attacks, though at that time his colour was still sombre and entirely influenced by Hals, Goya and Courbet. From that time the artist became a chief. As his friends used to meet him at an obscure Batignolles cafe, the cafe Guerbois (still existing), public derision baptized these meetings with the name of "L'Ecole des Batignolles." Manet then exhibited the Angels at the Tomb of Christ, a souvenir of the Venetians; Lola de Valence, commented upon by Baudelaire in a quatrain which ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... GREAT MEN who will smile at seeing these observations connected with a subject so humble and obscure as the boiling of potatoes, but GOOD MEN will feel that the subject is not unworthy ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... of an account of economic development should not obscure the meaning of its details. Increased population, with its horde of incoming aliens, created a demand for standing room, necessitated westward expansion, and made the West more than ever a new country with new problems. The growth of agriculture enlarged a class ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... least regard for his own character and quiet, would venture to preach up moderation, or even advise a suspension of belief until more certain information could be received. Fresh fuel was continually thrown in by obscure authors of pamphlets and newspapers, who stigmatized and insulted with such virulent perseverance, that no one would have imagined they were actuated by personal motives, not retained by mercenary booksellers, against that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... under the superintendence of the author," evidently does no justice to the original. We have not seen the book in French, but we venture to say that M. Guizot never wrote French which could answer to this version, awkward, careless, and sometimes obscure. A certain picture of dull and ancient aspect, which had long passed for an original from the hand of Leonardo da Vinci, and, despite the raptures of sentimental people who sought to tickle their own vanity by pretending to perceive in it the marks of its high origin, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... separate himself from his alliance with Austria, and to throw her into the arms of Russia. But with regard to the Polish-Russian provinces, Napoleon declared he would see what he could do, should Providence favour the good cause. These vague and obscure expressions did not define what he intended to do for the Poles in the event of success crowning his vast enterprises. They excited the distrust of the Poles, and had no other result. On this subject, however, an observation occurs which is of some force as an apology for Napoleon. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... (render service) fari komplezon. Obliged, to be devi. Obliging servema. Oblique oblikva. Obliquity oblikveco. Obliterate surstreki. Oblivion forgeso. Oblivious forgesa. Oblong longforma. Obnoxious ofendega. Obscene malbonmora, malcxasta. Obscure mallumigi. Obscure malhela. Obscurity senlumeco, mallumeco. Obsequies enterigiro. Observance (rite) ceremonio—ado. Observant observema. Observation observo—ado. Observatory observatorio. Observe (make ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... at the telling of some actual adventure, something big with life. Her heart and good will went out to the man who won against odds. Strangely enough, soldier's daughter though she was, the pomp and glamour and cruelty of war were detestable to her. It was the obscure and unknown hero who appealed to her: such a one as this man ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... is, simply, a coquette. But he "can't tell what her look said." Certainly not any "vile cant" about giving her heart to him because she saw him sad and solitary, about lavishing all that she was on him because he was obscure, and she the queen of ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... oblivion the Platirs, the Tablantes, the Olivantes and Tirantes, the Phoebuses and Belianises, with the whole herd of famous knights-errant of days gone by, performing in these in which I live such exploits, marvels, and feats of arms as shall obscure their brightest deeds. Thou dost mark well, faithful and trusty squire, the gloom of this night, its strange silence, the dull confused murmur of those trees, the awful sound of that water in quest of which we came, that seems as though it were precipitating and dashing itself down from the lofty ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Uniformity had laid a mulct of a hundred pounds on every person who, not having received episcopal ordination, should presume to administer the Eucharist. The Five Mile Act had driven many pious and learned ministers from their houses and their friends, to live among rustics in obscure villages of which the name was not to be seen on the map. The Conventicle Act had imposed heavy fines on divines who should preach in any meeting of separatists; and, in direct opposition to the humane ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mist like fields of distant crusted snow. Castellated crags loomed from the mystic river like fortified islands. Cattle, silent, enormously aggrandized, emerged like fabled beasts of the eld, and stared upon him, their jaws dripping with dew. Bulls roared from the obscure deeps. Dead trees, with stark and sinister arms, menaced warningly. All was as unreal as the world of pain's delirium, and yet was as beautiful as the poet's vision; and the ranger, feeling that he ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... Chapter of his Works are all along quoted in the Margin; nothing being added, but some few lines here and there, to continue the Discourse, and render it more clear: Notwithstanding which precautions, some things may possibly still remain obscure, in which case the Reader must have Recourse to the whole Works of Vitruvius, where he will find all ...
— An Abridgment of the Architecture of Vitruvius - Containing a System of the Whole Works of that Author • Vitruvius
... the contents of this paper took possession of Mr. Mandeville, and in spite of the breach of good manners, and the violation of every principle of honor, he retired to an obscure corner of his garden, opened and read so much of the epistle as was intelligible to him, ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... "If I'm willing to go, why is she so exercised? Women are all alike—except Alice." He smiled as he thought of his girl, and instantly the hardness in his face lifted, as a cloud shadow lifts and leaves sunshine behind it. Then some obscure sense of fitness made him pull himself together, and put his mind on affairs that had nothing in common with Helena; affairs in which he could include his girl without offending ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... these young people the high school teacher should understand those marvelous changes—physical, mental, and moral—thru which they are passing. How else can one know how to check where checking is needed (and it usually is needed somewhere along the line); to guide where the pathway is obscure (and every adolescent is sure to pass thru valleys of darkness during the high school course); and to inspire where inspiration is lacking (and with some it is lacking a good deal of the time)—in a word, how else than thru a knowledge ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... unobserved through life like millions of other men, looked upon as possessing a good-natured and affectionate disposition, but without either elevation of mind or brightness of intellect. During many years of his life the Duke of Clarence was an obscure individual, without consideration, moving in a limited circle, and altogether forgotten by the great world. He resided at Bushey with Mrs. Jordan, and brought up his numerous children with very tender ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... said, "Turn at the grave," and he walked on till he reached the spot, and stood by the low railing enclosing a sunken grave, whether of man or woman he could not tell, the lettering on the discolored stone was so obscure. Studying it very carefully, he thought he made out "Mrs." before ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... quite true if we add a proviso to it—a proviso, to be sure, of no small importance. Hazlitt is always the same when he is not different, when his political or personal ails and angers do not obscure his critical judgment. His uniformity of principle extends only to the two subjects of literature and of art; unless a third may be added, to wit, the various good things of this life, as they are commonly called. He was not so great a metaphysician ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... say that the poet's intuitions, apparently so sudden, have really been long germinating in the obscure depths of his mind? Then it is in tune with the idea, so prevalent in English verse, that in sleep a mysterious undercurrent of imaginative power becomes accessible to ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... thought the Indian tone of feeling was not rightly appreciated—their customs not clearly stated, perhaps not fairly estimated. The red man, considered generally as a creature to be carried about and exhibited for money, was, in very truth, a being immortally endowed, though under a dispensation obscure to the more highly-favored white race. As they affirmed a belief in the traditions of their tribe, with what strength and beauty of diction they clothed their thoughts—how energetic in gesture! Alas! for the people who had no higher creed, ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... the macaroni of the trattoria, trusting that the world will some day do them justice by strewing their paths with millions. Beginners, in the first place, who, to make their start, will accept contracts in any obscure municipal theatre of the Milan district, in hopes of a paragraph in a musical weekly to send to the folks at home as evidence of promise and success; and with them, overwhelming them with the importance of their past, the veterans ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... official report the extent of the disaster in the winter battle of Mazurian Land is either concealed or an attempt is made to obscure it. It is unnecessary to go further into these denials. As evidence of the extent of the defeat, the following list of the positions held by the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... after another of them came filing in, bronzed, rugged, radiating a beauty of youth and health that no sketchy exigence of apparel could obscure, some one already seated at the table would put a foot on a chair opposite him and send it spinning out into the middle of the floor as a hint to the new-comer that that was his reserved seat. And the cow-puncher, sheep-herder, prospector, or man about "Town," ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... congress of congregationless clergymen of whom it had never heard before have crushed a famous Beecher, and reduced his audiences from fifteen hundred down to fourteen hundred and seventy-five at one fell blow! Happy, happy world, that knows at last that these obscure innocents are no longer responsible for the blemishless teachings, the power, the pathos, the logic, and the other and manifold intellectual pyrotechnics that seduce, but to damn, the Opera House assemblages every Sunday night in Elmira! And ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... from the original Hebrew and Greek, in which it was penned by the inspired writers. Hence it should not seem surprising that there are some inaccuracies connected with this translation; nor that certain words, allusion, and forms of speech, appear obscure and unintelligible. There is a plain and simple rule by which all obscure and disputed words and passages should be understood. Give them such construction as will most perfectly correspond with the attributes and character of God, as revealed in his word and works, ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... many of the maxims, axioms and precepts of THE KYBALION, accompanied by explanations and illustrations which we deem likely to render the teachings more easily comprehended by the modern student, particularly as the original text is purposely veiled in obscure terms. ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... comedy was being played at the Vatican,—a mock- solemn farce, which had the possibility of ending in serious disaster to the innocent,—and he, as a student of the wily and treacherous side of human nature, was rather interested in its development. Cardinal Felix Bonpre, a man living far away in an obscure cathedral-town of France, where he had become renowned for good works and saintly living, had now, after many years, come out of his long voluntary retirement, and had ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... the impression that an author's price would be asked, they took the alarm, and made difficulties. Finding me firm, and indisposed to yield to some threats of doing as they pleased, the matter was suspended for a few days. Just at this moment, I received through the post a single number of an obscure newspaper, whose existence, until then, was quite unknown to me. Surprised at such an attention, I was curious to know the contents. The journal contained an article on my merits and demerits as a writer, the latter being treated with a good deal of freedom. When one gets a paper in this ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... fear, and then read the Bible, they will see that the truth or falsity of the dogma of inspiration has nothing to do with the question of immortality. Certainly the Old Testament does not teach us that there is another life, and upon that question, even the New is obscure and vague. The hunger of the heart finds only a few small and scattered crumbs. There is nothing definite, solid, and satisfying. United with the idea of immortality we find the absurdity of the resurrection. A prophecy that depends for its ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener
... Her lips drew ominously down, and reprimand of some sort was plainly to be detected hovering there, but, for some obscure reason, she also ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... scientific insight into character and life." This value consists, as he indicates, in the fact that she interprets the inner personality as it is understood by the scientific student of human nature. She describes those obscure moral tendencies, nascent forces, and undertones of feeling and thought, which enter so much into life. She lays much stress on the subconscious mental life, the domain of vague ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... we shall be able to distinguish between fracture and dislocation in obscure cases. Thus Mr. Gray ("British Medical Journal," March 7, 1896), in a case of injury to an elbow, was enabled to diagnosticate and successfully to replace a very rare dislocation, which could not be made out by manipulation, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... king, who excited the jealousy of the patricians, was assassinated B.C. 578, and Servius Tullius reigned in his stead. He was the greatest of the Roman kings, and arose to his position by eminent merit, being originally obscure. He married the daughter of Tarquin, and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... vicinity of Lawrenceville, Lawrence County, in the State of Illinois, of a Negro mother by a white father. His father, lately from North Carolina, fell under Gen. Harrison fighting the Indians. Like so many other great men he was born in an obscure place—a wigwam. At the time of his father's death he was quite a young baby. He was now left to the care of a mother who, in many respects, was like her husband, bold and courageous for the truth, and yet as gentle as a child. It is peculiarly ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... ten miles farther which brought us as low down as where Collier's bridge now crosses the river. Here we imagined that the Indians were possibly as cunning as ourselves, and would doubtless take the more obscure way and endeavor to meet us on the east side. On which account we waded the stream and struck into the woods crossing the Indian path, toward a place now called Craft-town." (Priest's Collection of Stories of the Revolution, published in 1836. "McKeon's Scouts ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... compelled to dissolve. The best legal authorities believe that the new interpretation of "reasonableness" and "unreasonableness" of restraint of trade has increased rather than decreased the effectiveness of the law, inasmuch as the meaning has always been obscure. The new policy is a notification to combinations of capital that to exist without prosecution they must not resort to any unfair, oppressive, or illegal methods to control competition ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... things serve a brave soul. Combat difficulty manfully; sustain misfortune bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment courageously. The influence of the brave man is contagious and creates an epidemic of noble zeal in all about him. Every day sends to the grave obscure men who have only remained in obscurity because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort; and who, if they could have been induced to begin, would in all probability have gone great lengths in the career of usefulness and fame. "No ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... face with her hands as Philip, with no steady pace, walked up and down the small room. Again, with all the vividness of colouring, did the scenes half forgotten recur to his memory. Again did he penetrate the fatal chamber—again was it obscure. The embroidery lay at his feet, and once more he started as when the letter appeared upon ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... he obtained what he considered reliable information that they had proceeded in the direction of the Borders, to be married at Gretna Green, a village celebrated as a place where many distinguished and obscure persons have been married by a blacksmith. As the reader already knows, the offended father went ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... illuminations but even the light of the gospel, and law of God, that someway enters his soul, changeth the nature and name,—it is all but darkness and flesh in him, because the flesh hath a dominion over all that. The clouds and vapours that arise from the flesh, bemist(166) and obscure all these; the corruptions of the soul are most strengthened in this sort, and most vented here. Sin is become connatural to the flesh, and so a man, by the flesh, is ensnared and subjected to sin. Christ comprehends ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... title of "cook and steward." The story of how poor boys of the beginning and middle of the century and right up to the latter part of the 'sixties started sea-life is always romantic, often sensational, and ever pathetic. They were usually the sons of poor parents living for the most part in obscure villages or small towns bordering on the sea, which sea blazed into their minds aspirations to get aboard some one of the numerous vessels that passed their homes one way or the other all day long. The notion of becoming anything but sailors never entered their heads, and the parents ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... reader, you say it is a fabrication, I tell it to you as they told it to me.' Len Medina, "Frases literarias afortunadas," Revue hispanique, Vol. XVIII, p. 226, states that these two verses are a quotation from Juan de Castellanos, an obscure poet of the sixteenth century, author of Elegas de Varones Ilustres de Indias. (The first three parts of this work may be found in Vol. IV of the Biblioteca de Autores Espaoles; Part IV has been edited by Paz y Melia for the Coleccin de Escritores Castellanos, Vols. XLIV and XLIX. The ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... Batten as an obscure fellow, and, although unknown to the service, a good seaman, who was in 1642 made Surveyor to the Navy; in which employ he evinced great animosity against the King. The following year, while Vice-Admiral to the Earl of Warwick, he chased a Dutch man-of-war into Burlington ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... Occupation, etc.—Unfortunately for the sake of authenticity, all the instances of extreme age in this country have been from persons in the lower walks of life or from obscure parts of the country, where little else than hearsay could be procured to verify them. It must also be said that it is only among people of this class that we can expect to find parallels of the instances of extreme longevity of former times. The inhabitants of the higher ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the manner which the cause requires, when either that point which is advantageous to the opposite party is explained in a clear and elegant manner, or when that which may be of benefit to the speaker is stated in an obscure or careless way. Wherefore, in order that this fault may be avoided, everything ought to be converted by the speaker to the advantage of his own cause by passing over all things which make against it which can be passed over, by ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... the first two of a series of valuable papers on the development of the vegetable ovulum in Santalum, Loranthus, Viscum, and some other plants, the anomalous structure of which appeared calculated to throw light on this still obscure and difficult subject. These papers are entitled ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... permanent and regular system. The agitation occasioned by so many unexampled scenes is succeeded by an habitual terror, and this depressing sentiment has so pervaded all ranks, that it would be difficult to find an individual, however obscure or inoffensive, who deems his property, or even his existence, secure only for a moment. The sound of a bell or a knocker at the close of the evening is the signal of dismay. The inhabitants of the house regard each other with looks of fearful interrogation—all the precautions ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... thought of loving one so handsome. No; it is impossible that those Parisian women are so stupid as not to have seen their dreams fulfilled in you. You neglected! you unloved! I do not believe a word of all that you have written me about your lonely and obscure life, your hunger for an idol,—sought in vain until now. You have been too well loved, monsieur; your brow, white and smooth as a magnolia leaf, reveals it; and it is I who must be neglected,—for ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest The rising World of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless Infinite! Thee I revisit now with bolder wing, Escaped the Stygian Pool, though long detained In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight, Through utter and through middle Darkness borne, With other notes than to the Orphean lyre I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture down The dark descent, and up to re-ascend, Though hard and rare. Thee I revisit ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... spread of Luther's books and doctrines, the cardinals entreated the Pope to summon him to Rome. Printing had been invented, and poor as well as rich could easily be roused to inquire into the truth of the doctrines taught by Rome. Leo X had been disposed to ignore the sermons of the obscure German monk, for he had many schemes to further his own ambition. He yielded, at last, and sent the necessary summons. Luther was loth to go to Rome, where he was sure of condemnation. The Elector Frederick ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... that sent at once, by special delivery, to every physician and surgeon in town, no matter how obscure. See to it that not one is overlooked. Even those on the staffs of the different hospitals must be notified, although they are the least likely to be called upon. Above all, don't forget the old retired one, those of shady professional reputation and ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... spurs of the Feldberg, the eastern one coming down to the town of Waldshut on the Rhine, the western one to Saekkingen. It is also called Hozzenland (see note to page 15). The early history of the country is somewhat obscure until the time of the Emperor Rudolph of Hapsburg, when it acknowledged the sovereignty of Austria. In the times of the fight for the German throne between Albrecht of Austria and Adolphe of Nassau, and between Frederick the Beautiful and Ludwig of Bavaria, when Suabia was without a duke ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... would understand his mood and that he would achieve in her presence a position he had long been wanting to achieve. In the past when he had been with her and had kissed her lips he had come away filled with anger at himself. He had felt like one being used for some obscure purpose and had not enjoyed the feeling. Now he thought he had suddenly become ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... tried to walk sedately along the path. The long grass that grew beside the path wet his shoes, and his hands were wet and muddy. Farmers turned on their wagon seats to stare at him. For some obscure reason he could not himself understand, he was terribly afraid to face Hugh McVey. In the bank he had been in the presence of men who were trying to get the best of him, to make a fool of him, to have fun at his expense. He had felt that and had resented it. The knowledge ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... from the subject matter proper to poetry, while we appear to have no clear idea as to what the legitimate subject matter is? Precisely what are we looking for, that we are led to complain that the massive outlines of the poet's figure obscure ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... the Secret Treaty of 1815, whereby Austria gained a legal right to prevent any departure from absolute Government at Naples, was communicated to the British Ministry and received its sanction. This sanction explains the obscure and embarrassed language of Castlereagh in 1820, which in its turn gave rise to the belief in Italy that England was more deeply committed to Austria than it actually was, and probably occasioned the forgery of the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... sink the mighty low by Fate opprest!— 25 Perhaps, O Kettle! thou by scornful toe Rude urg'd t' ignoble place with plaintive din. May'st rust obscure midst heaps of vulgar tin;— As if no joy had ever seiz'd my breast When from thy spout the streams did arching fly,— 30 As if, infus'd, thou ne'er hadst known t' inspire All the warm raptures of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
