"Oracular" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... oracular explanation Thor was forced to be content, and, as the purpose of the meeting seemed to have been accomplished, he rose to take ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... his head; but this state of mind is not among the Mafulu in any way a necessary, or indeed a usual, qualification for a sorcerer or magic man of any sort. The person appealed to will perhaps tell them who has done the deed, or will make some oracular statement which will lead to his identification. The culprit identified by him will in any case be a member of another clan, and most probably of another community. When he has been discovered, there will probably be a fight, in which the members of the victim's clan, ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... said Mr. Milburgh in his best oracular manner, "describing all the events which preceded the death of the late Thornton Lyne. Nor will I go to any length to deal with his well-known and even notorious character. He was not a good employer; he was suspicious, ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... by the shrugs of his thick shoulders and shakes of his ponderous head, he had prevented my being employed. Indeed, in the case of the public bodies, with all of which he had authority either as an official or as an honorary adviser, he had directly vetoed my appointment by the oracular announcement that, after ample inquiry among medical friends in London, he had satisfied himself that I was not a suitable person ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... is given to love once only, and all such scorn to set a second, lesser, lower idol, where formerly they bowed in worship. Even false gods hold sway long after their images are defiled, their temples overthrown, and as the Dodonian Groves still whisper of the old oracular days, to modern travellers, so a woman's idolatry leaves her no shrine, no libation, no reverence for new divinities; mutilated though she acknowledges her Hermae, no fresh image can profane their pedestal. Memory is the high priestess who survives the wreck of altars and of gods, and faithfully ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... delivered himself of an oracular phrase. No doubt he had been meditating it during the supper. Addressing ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... "that in his oracular criticism pronounced this colonnade, beautiful as it is, to be disproportioned to the building, and out of place. Whoever it was, he must have excogitated the idea at a distance, and in some splenetic humour; it never could have entered through his eyesight standing here. Had there ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... Bacon, he dreams of a great Renovation and sees that the conditions are propitious, but his faith is not secure. The astronomers of his imaginary state scrutinise the stars to discover whether the world will perish or not, and they believe in the oracular saying of Jesus that the end will come like a thief in the night. Therefore they expect a new age, and perhaps also ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... was at the bottom of all this oracular mystery, and was disposed to amuse himself with the general, whose tender approaches to the widow have attracted the notice of the wag. I was a little curious, however, to know the meaning of the dark hints which had so suddenly disconcerted Master ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... with an inscription describing the contest as "a useful lesson to British kings never to exceed the bounds of their just prerogative; and to British subjects, never to swerve from the allegiance due to their legitimate monarch." This is certainly an oracular utterance, and of its injunctions the reader ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... Buxieres;" said he, With a particularly oracular air, "Claudet is dead, and the dead, like the absent, are always in the wrong. But who is to say whether you are not mistaken concerning the nature of Reine's unhappiness? I will have that cleared up this very day. Good-night; keep quiet and ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... not been recorded. Enough that half an hour later Mr. Weaver appeared in the courtyard with traces of tears on his foolish face, a broken falsetto voice, and other evidence of mental and moral disturbance. His cordiality and oracular predisposition remained sufficiently to enable him to suggest the magical words "Blue Grass" mysteriously to Concha, with an indication of his hand to the erect figure of her pale mistress in the doorway, who waved to him a silent ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... what difference anything will make until the difference is made. That's oracular, but it means more than ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... soon. Not for two or three to come. By the third elicton though, all the Oirish populeetion will be riddy to vote, and thin we'll have our oun Oirish Prisidint. And afther that," said O'Halloran, in an oracular tone, and pausing to quaff the transparent draught— "afther that, Amirica will be simplee an Oirish republic. Then we'll cast our oys across the say. We'll cast there our arrums. We'll sind there our flates and armies. We'll take vingince out of the Saxon for the wrongs of foive cinturies. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... sees nor thinks," was Malcolm Sage's oracular retort, and he went over to the window and seated himself ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... ranging between these extremes she knew also, with a special provision for red-haired and sandy folk and those who have no complexion at all. Certain laws which she formulated were cherished by her daughter as oracular utterances—that one should match one's eyes in the house and one's hair in the street, was one; that one's hat and gloves and shoes were of vastly more importance than all the rest of one's clothing, was another; that one's hair and stockings should tone as nearly as possible, was a third. ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... Orpheus was reckoned in the number of Heroes or Demigods; and we are informed by Philostratus that his head was preserved at Lesbos, where it gave oracular responses. Orpheus is not mentioned by Homer or Hesiod. The learned scholar Lobeck, in his Aglaophamus, has entered very deeply into an investigation of the real nature of the discoveries ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... These oracular verses, pronounced by Bampfylde with all the enthusiasm of one who was inspired, had the desired effect upon our wise man; and he left the presence of the king of the gipsies with a prodigiously high opinion ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... you saucy scamp! I can't afford to feed you on diamonds from my sacred ring! Did you get your greedy nature from some sable Dodonean ancestress? If we had lived three thousand years ago, I might be superstitious, and construe your freak into an oracular protest against my engagement. Feathered augurs survive their shrines. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hilltops rising ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... all the young and ardent men of his time,—and among others, the subject of the present article. Carlyle, however, does not seem to have profited much by the spoken discourses of the master; and in his "Life of Sterling" he gives an exceedingly graphic, cynical, and amusing account of the oracular meetings at Highgate, where the philosopher sat in his great easy-chair, surrounded by his disciples and devotees, uttering, amid floods of unintelligible, mystic eloquence, those radiant thoughts and startling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... ever: O with what a round And series of rich pangs fled forth each note Oracular, that I had found, had found (Head waters of old Nile held less remote) Golden Dorado, dearest, most renowned; But when as 't were a sigh did overfloat, Shaping 'how long, not long shall this endure, Au jour le ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... The above oracular statement proceeded from the parched and puckered lips of Sandy-haired Jim—one of the many "hands" employed on the immense Tesoro Rancho, which covered miles of valley, besides extending up on to the eastern flank of the Coast Range, and taking in considerable tracts of woodland ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... their own offspring. The old lady sits in state, and daily praises her babes with the most doating loquacity. And she does this with so grave a face that it is impossible to forbear laughing, when you hear her. She is so serious, so solemn, so convinced that every thing she utters is oracular, and so irascible if she does but so much as smell a doubt concerning the beauty and perfection of her brats, that there is no scene in the world which tickles my imagination so irresistibly as to watch her maternal visage during her ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... "A moment, my dear. There is nothing, I believe," he continued, waxing a little oracular, "nothing like plain speech. We are all friends—we have a common cause—justice! It may be that justice demands our best endeavours not only as regards our deceased friend, Bassett Oliver, but in the interests of—this young ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... influence which the work of Marco Polo had over the mind of Columbus, gives it particular interest and importance. It was evidently an oracular work with him. He frequently quotes it, and on his voyages, supposing himself to be on the Asiatic coast, he is continually endeavoring to discover the islands and main-lands described in it, and to find the ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... was not intolerant, nor ask whether even intolerance may not sometimes be more tolerable than indifference. And in spite of his unpleasant irritation at finding this "average" woman not overawed by his oracular utterances, nor easily beaten in a controversy, Albert had a respect for her deeper than ever. There was something in her anger at Westcott that for a moment had seemed finer than anything he had seen in the self-possessed ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... is said to be the capital of all Ethiopia. The inhabitants worship no other gods than Jupiter and Bacchus; but these they honour with great magnificence. They have also an oracle of Jupiter; and they make war whenever that god bids them by an oracular warning, and against whatever country he bids them. Sailing from this city, you will arrive at the country of the Automoli, in a space of time equal to that which you took in coming from Elephantine to the capital of the Ethiopians. These Automoli ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... minutes there was silence in the hut, save for the oracular breathing of Prince Levis and the sparks from the fire. But the Honourable did not sleep well; he lay and watched the fire ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the delivery of this letter. Upwards of a week had gone by since the return of Mr. Sheldon and his family from Harold's Hill: and as yet Philip Sheldon knew not what the issue of events was to be. Very vague were the oracular sentences which his questioning extorted from Dr. Jedd, and he had tried in vain to obtain a tete-a-tete interview with Dr. Doddleson. The physician of Burlington Row took care that his feeble colleague ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... his assistant in full pursuit. But it quickly distanced them with its long, tireless gallop, and they were obliged to return to the forge, lost in wonder and conjecture. For the blacksmith had recognized it as a stranger to the locality, and as a man of oracular pretension had a startling theory to account for its presence. This he confided to the editor of the local paper, and the next issue contained an editorial paragraph: "Our presage of a severe winter in the higher Sierras, and consequent spring floods in the valleys, ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... these oracular words in a very solemn tone, Booth rose, and, taking one of the candles, said to me, "Would you like to look ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... schools the sort of teaching that obtains in his classes, and their schools will suffer accordingly. His sort of teaching proclaims him either more or less than a human being in the estimation of normal people. Such a teacher drones forth weary platitudes as if his utterances were oracular. The only prerequisite for a position in some schools of education seems to be a degree of a certain altitude without any reference to real ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... conversation long enough. So he seized the opportunity to exercise for our benefit the rare gift he was endowed with. He glanced patronizingly at the coal hulk, wrinkled his nose in disapprobation of her appearance, and delivered himself in an oracular voice. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... for the most part sophists or rhetoricians, beating over again the old straws of philosophies which had once possessed a living meaning and exercised a living force. Athens herself had never properly recovered from the migration of learning to Alexandria. Delphi, the great oracular seat of the Greek world, had also declined in importance, although it could still boast of an imposing array of buildings and memorials. The centre of commerce and of official life, a Roman colony in the midst ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... origin, growth, and extinguishment in blood have now been traced, has been the cause of we know not how many oracular warnings from the lips of those who have not been distinguished by any hearty attachment to the rights of the black. "See now," they say, "what is the peril of emancipating these blacks." "Behold what comes of educating this people up to the capacity of mischief." "Acknowledge now that not even the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Samuel Shattuck, where there was a sick child. He was a stranger to the inmates of the family, and evidently had come to the place to make trouble for Bridget Bishop. He pretended great pity for the child, and said, among other things, in an oracular way, "We are all born, some to one thing, and some to another." The mother asked him what he thought her poor, suffering child was born to. He replied, "He is born to be bewitched, and is bewitched: you have a neighbor, that lives not far ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... in the essay on Seeming Wise we can trace from the impatient notes put down in his Commentarius Solutus, the picture of the man who stood in his way, the Attorney-General Hobart. Some of them are memorable oracular utterances not inadequate to the subject, on Truth or Death or Unity. Others reveal an utter incapacity to come near a subject, except as a strange external phenomena, like the essay on Love. There is ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... that of the lower animals and man. In a telegraph circuit, with its clicking key at one end and its chattering sounder at the other, we have, in fact, an apish forerunner of the exquisite telephone, with its mysterious microphone and oracular plate. Nevertheless, the telephone descended from the telegraph in a very indirect manner, if at all, and certainly not through the sounder. The first practical suggestion of an electric telephone was made by M. Charles Bourseul, a French telegraphist, in 1854, but to all appearance ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... some have supposed that the style of Johnson, perhaps without conscious intent, was founded upon that of Browne. A tone of oracular authority, an academic Latinism sometimes disregarding the limitations of the unlearned reader, an elaborate balancing of antitheses in the same period,—these are qualities which the two writers have in common. But the resemblance, such as it is, is skin-deep. Johnson is a polemic ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... that eclipse total. May this also prove but a trial and a shadow of affliction! which affliction, may it prove to you, mighty incorporations, what, sometimes, it is to us, poor, frail homunculi—a process of purification, a solemn and oracular warning! And, when that cloud is overpast, then, rise, ancient powers, wiser and better—ready, like the lampudephoroi of old, to enter upon a second stadium, and to transmit the sacred torch through ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... just sat down to dinner; that there was excellent brandy at the hostler-wife's at Wolf's Hope down below; and he held out some obscure hint that the reckoning would be discharged by the Master; but this was uttered in a very dubious and oracular strain, for, like Louis XIV., Caleb Balderstone hesitated to carry finesse so far as direct falsehood, and was content to deceive, if ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... hardly correct when he says that nothing analogous to the ancient oracles was incorporated with Christianity.[1] There is the notable case of the god Sosthenion, whom Constantine identified with the archangel Michael, and whose oracular functions were continued in a precisely similar manner by the latter.[2] Oracles that were not thus absorbed and supported were recognized as existent, but under diabolic control, and to be tolerated, if not patronized, by the representatives of the dominant ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... said he, assuming an oracular tone of voice, "throwing a wine-glass, with or without wine, in a man's face is merely, as you may observe, a mark of denial and displeasure at some observation he may have made,—not in any wise intended to injure him, further than in the wound to his honor at being so insulted, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... in its death-agony, this claim to legislative power was formally confirmed by the Emperor Valentinian III (445). But for some time after the Council of Sardica the new prerogative was used with the greatest caution. The Popes of that period use every precaution to make their oracular answers inoffensive. They assure their correspondents that Rome enjoins no novelties; that she does not presume to decide any point on which tradition is silent; that she is merely executing a mandate which general councils have laid upon her. Those who evince respect for ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... This oracular discourse exasperated Byrne. "In the name of God," he cried, "tell me plainly if you think my man is reasonably ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... this all, the sanguine and impetuous mind of Olinthus beheld in the power of Apaecides the means of divulging to the deluded people the juggling mysteries of the oracular Isis. He thought Heaven had sent this instrument of his design in order to disabuse the eyes of the crowd, and prepare the way, perchance, for the conversion of a whole city. He did not hesitate then ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... the fence. He slowly turned the quid of tobacco in his cheek, and lifting up his voice spoke with an oracular drawl:— ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... that he not only possessed a fund of good, common sense, but who stated further, that he was a man of great influence not only among the soldiers in the fort, but among many of his countrymen both in town and out of it. Tom spoke very slowly and always in an oracular manner; nor were his movements behind his bar of a very demonstrative character; as no press of custom, whatever, seemed to possess the power of accelerating his motions or inducing him to exceed the steady formula that he appeared to have adopted ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... That astute and ambitious nobleman had been as impatiently biding his time as Dermid had been his coming. Knowing the jealous sovereign under whom he served, he had gone over to France to obtain Henry's sanction to the Irish enterprise, but had been answered by the monarch, in oracular phrases, which might mean anything or nothing. Determined, however, to interpret these doubtful words in his own sense, he despatched his vanguard early in the spring of the year 1170, under the ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... dark, debased souls of the people. We are tempted to pronounce that nation not only the most perverse, but the most unintelligent and stupid of all human tribes. The revealed law of God in the midst of them; the prophets and other organs of oracular communication; religious ordinances and emblems; facts, made and expressly intended to embody truths, in long and various series; the whole system of their superhuman government, constituted as a school—all these were ineffectual ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... apoplectic thunderbolt fall on that robust brain,"—it yielded at last as the old bald cliff that is riven and crashes down into the valley. I saw him before the first thunderbolt had descended: a square, solid man, with a high and full-domed head, oracular in his utterances, indifferent to those around him, sometimes, it was said, very rough with them. He spoke in low, even tones, with quiet fluency, and was listened to with that hush of rapt attention which I have hardly seen in any circle of listeners unless ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Corinth; had sailed amongst the beautiful islands of the blue AEgean; had wandered in the classic vale of Eurotas, and amongst the ruins of Sparta; had traversed Thessaly, and surveyed the famous Pass where Leonidas and his warriors stood at bay against the hosts of Persia; had mused in the oracular shades of Delphi and gazed at the haunted peak of Parnassus, and looked upon all that remains of hundred-gated Thebes. It is impossible for us to follow in all this extended circuit, and over ground so rich in tradition and association. ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... [11] The Normans are proverbial among the French for the oracular noncommittal of their responses.—Un Normand, says the proverb, a son ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... wheat or ninety-nine pounds of potatoes will produce 4,400 pounds of plantains or bananas. The cultivation of the various varieties in India, China, and the Malay Archipelago dates, says De Candolle, 'from an epoch impossible to realise.' Its diffusion, as that great but very oracular authority remarks, may go back to a period 'contemporary with or even anterior to that of the human races.' What this remarkably illogical sentence may mean I am at a loss to comprehend; perhaps M. de Candolle supposes that the banana was originally cultivated by pre-human gorillas; perhaps ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... religion of the multitude, throws open its sacred pages without restriction, and encourages their perusal as a meritorious act of devotion. The despotic ministers of Brahma affect to be versed only in arcana and mystery, and to issue their dicta from oracular authority; but the priesthood of Buddha assume no higher functions than those of teachers of ethics, and claim no loftier title than that of "the clergy ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... delight; And miserable love, that is not pain To hear of, for the glory that redounds Therefrom to human kind, and what we are. Be mine to follow with no timid step 250 Where knowledge leads me: it shall be my pride That I have dared to tread this holy ground, Speaking no dream, but things oracular; Matter not lightly to be heard by those Who to the letter of the outward promise 255 Do read the invisible soul; by men adroit In speech, and for communion with the world Accomplished; minds whose faculties are then Most active when they ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... weekly, monthly periodicals, in desperate exertion to attract public attention. They have at their head one sublime genius, whom they swear by, and they admire him the more, the more incomprehensible and oracular he appears to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... "the first Fergus" brought it "out of Ireland into Albion," B.C. 330. One important property of this stone should not be unnoticed. It is said, by the writers from whom the foregoing particulars are derived, to furnish a test of legitimate royal descent; yielding an oracular sound when a prince of the true blood is placed upon it, and remaining silent under a mere pretender to the throne. We heard various joyful acclamations on the recent "royal day;" but (perhaps from that very circumstance) could not ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... to bed, but Barney, who was better accustomed to exercise, having dined heartily in the kitchen, could not, for the soul of him, contain within his own bosom the awful and supernatural adventure which had just occurred. He assumed, as before, a very solemn and oracular air; spoke little, however, but that little was deeply abstracted and mysterious. It was evident to the whole kitchen that he was brimful of something, and that that something was of ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... some mortal, sending bird messengers to him. A sort of pagan enchantment was put upon him, and he rose up from the ferns to see an evening as fair as Nora and as fragrant. He tried to think of the colour of her eyes, which were fervid and oracular, and of her hands, which were long and curved, with fragile fingers, of her breath, which was sweet, and her white, even teeth. The evening was like her, as subtle and as persuasive, and the sensation of her presence ...
— The Lake • George Moore
... impression upon the owner of it, and had given to Quigg's ordinary observations on the weather, the state of his health, and the other familiar topics to which his remarks were principally addressed, an oracular importance in his own opinion. Such were the deceptive effects produced by his large, polished brow, and slow, imposing speech, that he always seemed to be on the point of uttering vital truths. But the listener's ear ached in vain ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... In velvet meadows, 'mid the flowers a star. They sought me for my beauty near and far; My dawn, I thought, should be for ever new. But now an all unwished-for gift I rue, A fatal ray of knowledge shed to mar My radiant star-crown grown oracular, For I must speak and give an answer true. An end of silence and of quiet days, The Lover with two words my counsel prays; And when my secret from my heart is reft, When all my silver petals scattered lie, I am the only flower neglected left, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... This oracular utterance was confidentially delivered from the leathern chair at the writing-table, in an inner recess of Rachel's sumptuous sitting-room. The chair had been wheeled aloof from the table, on which were Steel's hat and gloves, and such a sheaf ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... pictures again. When I looked his way again, a few minutes later, he held out his hand to me, and we entered into a conversation which lasted until Griffiths gave me a hint that Turner had business to transact which I must leave him to. He gave me a hearty handshake, and in his oracular way said, "Hmph—(nod) if you come to England again—hmph (nod)—hmph (nod)," and another hand-shake with more cordiality and a nod for good-by. I never saw a keener eye than his, and the way that he held himself up, so straight ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... to have been delivered one or several generations before the Conquest. Their style is extremely obscure, and many of the forms are archaic. If not genuine originals, they are unquestionably very early and faithful imitations of the oracular deliveries of the ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... Lacedaemonians, in reply to their application immediately before the war, that he would assist them whether invoked or uninvoked; and the disorder now raging was ascribed to the intervention of their irresistible ally; while the elderly men further called to mind an oracular verse sung in the time of their youth: "The Dorian war will come, and pestilence along with it." Under the distress which suggested, and was reciprocally aggravated by these gloomy ideas, prophets were consulted, and supplications ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... bombast, and find that it was never meant to be anything else. It is wiser to admit that perhaps the author was not very clear himself, or possibly enjoyed that ambiguous attitude which might be interpreted according to the taste of his readers and the development of events. A man who deals in oracular utterances acquires instinctively a mode of speech which may shift its colour with every change of light. The texture of Disraeli's writings is so ingeniously shot with irony and serious sentiment that each tint may predominate by ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... his owne genius is his intelligencer. His mint goes weekely, and he coines monie by it. Howsoeuer, the more intelligent merchants doe jeere him, the vulgar doe admire him, holding his novels oracular: and these are usually sent for tokens or intermissiue curtsies betwixt city and countrey. Hee holds most constantly one forme or method of discourse. He retaines some militarie words of art, which hee shootes at randome; ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... always a good listener. He preferred to hear what other men said, to weigh their words, rather than pour out his own ideas. Lawanne sometimes liked to talk at great length, to assume the oracular vein, to analyze actions and situations, to put his finger on a particular motive and trace its origin, its most remote causation. Mills seldom talked. It was strange to hear him speak as ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... which he refused on account of the exorbitant sum asked for them, and again refused after she had burnt three of them, and in the end paid what was originally asked for the three remaining, which he found to contain oracular utterances bearing on the worship of the gods and the policy of Rome. These, after being entrusted to keepers, were afterwards burned, and the contents replaced by a commission appointed to collect ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... through the strength of ideas, as the works of genius and religion. "A man," said Oliver Cromwell,[716] "never rises so high as when he knows not whither he is going." Dreams and drunkenness, the use of opium and alcohol are the semblance and counterfeit of this oracular genius, and hence their dangerous attraction for men. For the like reason they ask the aid of wild passions, as in the gaming and war, ape in some manner these flames and generosities ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... special victims were Keats and Hunt and Coleridge. "Mr. Coleridge," says the reviewer, "... seems to believe that every tongue is wagging in his praise—that every ear is open to imbibe the oracular breathings of his inspiration ... no sound is so sweet to him as that of his own voice ... he seems to consider the mighty universe itself as nothing better than a mirror in which, with a grinning ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... of us," resumed Vladimir, "never contradicts his own character? In Russia the duties of my position oblige me to be reserved, secret, enveloped in mystery from head to foot, a great pontiff of science, speaking but in brief sentences and in an oracular tone; but here I am not obliged to play my role, and by a natural reaction, finding myself alone in the woods with a man of sense and heart, my tongue unloosens like a magpie's. Let us see; if I tell you my history do ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... old fellow say?' asked Leonard, laughing; and as Aubrey repeated the conversation, ending with the oracular prediction, he laughed again, but said proudly, 'He'll see himself wrong then. I'll put up with ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mormons. Su-wa-nee's speech, on the other hand, clearly alluded to this place as the goal of the squatter's journey! How her information could have been obtained, or whence derived, was a mystery; and, though loth to regard it as oracular, I could not divest myself of a certain degree of conviction that her words were true. The mind, ever prone to give assent to information conveyed by hints and innuendos, too often magnifies this gipsy knowledge; and dwells not upon the means by which it may ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... who practised such tyranny and cruelty that, whilst he was once gone on a visit of pleasure to a castle at a distance from the city, his royal seat was usurped by a certain sorceress. Whereupon, having consulted a wooden statue which used to give oracular responses, it answered that he would recover his dominions when the sorceress should lose her sight. But seeing that the sorceress, besides being well guarded, knew at a glance the people whom he sent to annoy her, and did dog's justice upon them, he became ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... Pentecost come; and third and worst, a Church gone dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here meant Chapterhouses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let him,' says the oracular Professor, 'read on, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the Battle of Lobositz, and elsewhere, we have seen him brave as a lion: but perhaps in the other kind of bravery wanted here, he—Well, his case was horribly difficult; full of intricacy. And he sat, no doubt in a very wretched state, consulting the oracles, with events (which are themselves oracular) going ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... the whole, this play is exquisitely respondent to its title, and even in the fault I am about to mention, still a winter's tale; yet it seems a mere indolence of the great bard not to have provided in the oracular response (Act ii. sc. 2.) some ground for Hermione's seeming death and fifteen years' voluntary concealment. This might have been easily effected by some obscure sentence of the oracle, as ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... my wildest moments had I dreamt that he would try and get into Germany in war-time, into that land where every citizen is catalogued and pigeonholed from the cradle. But Red Tabs' oracular utterance had made everything clear to me. Why a mission to Germany would be the very thing that Francis would give his eyes to be allowed to attempt! Francis with his utter disregard of danger, his love of taking risks, his impish delight in taking a rise out ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... with this oracular saying when Croisette touched his sleeve. "Pray can you tell us if it be true," the lad said eagerly, "that the Admiral de ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... slave;" and "as to himself, learning would do him no good, but probably, a great deal of harm—making him disconsolate and unhappy." "If you learn him now to read, he'll want to know how to write; and, this accomplished, he'll be running away with himself." Such was the tenor of Master Hugh's oracular exposition of the true philosophy of training a human chattel; and it must be confessed that he very clearly comprehended the nature and the requirements of the relation of master and slave. His discourse was the first decidedly ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... the open letter. "Anybody can do it, when once they know how," so ran this oracular document. "We borrowed nought: we stole nought. We began the year with only a thousand pounds apiece: and last New-Year's-day we had sixty thousand pounds ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... could. There are a great many things possible that are not advisable," returned the oracular young man. "And I have heard the longest way round was the surest way home. We shall reach there about ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... lady who is not rich," said Allan, in an oracular manner; "and a duchess is a lady who is not poor. And that's all the difference I acknowledge between them. Miss Gwilt is older than I am—I don't deny that. What age do you guess her at, Midwinter? I say, seven or eight and ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... The oracular words "do something," and "both will be yours," made an impression on Andrew's mind. When he reflected on the expiration of the leases, the character of his master, and the surmises which he had heard, he felt convinced that the first ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... has ever read Little Dorrit, whatever else in the novel may slip the memory, fails to recall the oracular utterance of Mr. F.'s aunt that "There's milestones on the Dover road". To the opening of A Tale of Two Cities the colour and atmosphere of the time in which it is set, and of the drama which is to be developed, are given at once by the alarm of the passengers of the ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... the victim, during his lifetime. There were any number of writers, now never heard of, who were going to outlive him, according to literary prophecies then (p. 271) current, which had everything oracular in their utterance except ambiguity. Especially is this true of the notices of his stories of the sea. As I have turned over the pages of defunct criticism, I have come across the names of several authors whose tales descriptive of ocean ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... bounded by Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates, how serpents moved before they were condemned to crawl, and where Eve found thread to stitch her figleaves. To his speculations on these subjects he gave the lofty name of the Oracles of Reason; and indeed whatever he said or wrote was considered as oracular by his disciples. Of those disciples the most noted was a bad writer named Gildon, who lived to pester another generation with doggrel and slander, and whose memory is still preserved, not by his own voluminous works, but by two or three lines in which his stupidity and venality have been ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Paris, and Mainaduc is getting as much in London. There is a fortune-teller in Westminster who is making little less. Lavater's physiognomy books sell at fifteen guineas a set. The diving [divining?] rod is still considered as oracular in many places. Devils are cast out by seven ministers; and, to complete the disgraceful catalogue, slavery is vindicated in print and defended in the House of Peers! Poor human nature, when wilt thou come to years of discretion?' Mr. Walpole writes back (he has always a proper tone ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... with oracular emphasis, "that is where your business education is flawed. No man has done his business properly who has missed a single dollar he could have secured in the doing of it. I do not think a fair judge would find ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... see her simple old husband shuffling away his papers, and puzzling over cyphers and perpetually leaving the key of them lying about, and betraying again and again when he least intended it, by his mysterious becks and nods and glances and oracular sayings, that some scheme was afoot. She could have helped him considerably if he had allowed her; but he had an idea that the capacities of ladies in general went no further than their harps, their embroidery and their devotions; ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... golden crown sparkling with diamonds and rubies. The many clergy stood about him in the little temple, or beyond the door, for there was not room for all, with them some hundred monks, and the multifarious populace. The service was read in hollow, oracular tones, and every now and then a storm of glorious bass voices broke forth in response. Evidently the Ikon of the Virgin named Izbavelnitsa was being thanked for her protection of the Tsar in a storm. ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... ancient days; and they are expected to taste strong liquors as well as sweet cordials and sour light wines. Moreover, a certain haze of sanctity envelops the precincts of 'Maga,' whence the incognito 'we' thunders with oracular power; for, notwithstanding the rapid annihilation of all classic faith in modern times which permits the conversion of Virgil's Avernus into a model oyster-farm, the credulous public fondly cling to the myth that editorial sanctums alone possess the sacred ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... he was deeply in love; and that might be sufficient to account for the marriage. It is equally certain, however, upon the concurring evidence of independent writers, that this connection had an oracular sanction—not to say, suggestion; a circumstance which was long remembered, and was afterwards noticed by the Christian ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... of which was neither very popular nor well understood. What the result of the action between Copenhagen and the British fleet might ultimately have been, is therefore altogether uncertain. THE BOMBARDMENT OF COPENHAGEN BY NELSON, as it is generally styled, is therefore, like most other oracular phrases of the day, a mere combination of words, ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... old days," he said, enunciating in the oracular manner of a day gone by—"ah, I was talking with Jack London about it before he died. Dear Jack! A great soul. A marvelous spirit. We were in the south seas together. Yes, the old days were different. Erudition counted for something. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... held up against the shock, thus wasting much of the vital force which absolute repose from the beginning would have spared him. He is a very sick man, but I believe with the doctor that he will pull through. Indeed," added Batoche in that quaint oracular way which was no longer new to those who heard him, "Cary Singleton cannot, must not die. Not only is his own young life precious, but there are dear lives depending upon his. What would Zulma Sarpy do without him, she that is fretting at the very thought of his illness? And, Pauline, you, I am ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... speak to me Of the long plunge and welter of the sea; Likewise you are Oracular Of its low melody. You voice its laughing moods, Its lyric interludes, Its secrecies, its sorceries, its mysteries, Its tragic histories. Aye, all that it has breathed, may breathe, shall breathe, You unto me bequeath; Thus am I made the fair inheritor ...
— From The Lips of the Sea • Clinton Scollard
... bank of the Rhine as far as and including Mainz. Bismarck replied that "the true interest of France is not to obtain an insignificant increase of territory, but to aid Germany in constituting herself after a fashion which will be most favorable to all concerned." Delphos could not have been more oracular. But Napoleon III. could not or would not heed. A week later Benedetti was instructed to submit a regular scale of concessions—the frontiers of 1814 and the annexation of Belgium, or Luxemburg and Belgium, Benedetti received the most courteous attention and ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... or to attempt flight. As accident had thus brought him, as it might be on a visit, to the spot, he at once determined to give his arrival the character of a friendly call, and the better to support the pretension, to blend with it, if possible, a little of the oracular, or "medicine" manner, in order to impose on the imaginations of the superstitious beings into whose power he had ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... albeit, we demurred to it at the time that he propounded it in his dogmatic way, rapping poor little Teddy Allison on the head with a parallel ruler, which he held in his hand at the moment, for daring to dispute his oracular assertion on the point and making us all laugh by a capital imitation of the haughty airs of our pet aversion and his cynical mode of speech, while in the same breath he took his part, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... foreign diplomats the speedy reunion and restoration of the Union as it was, notwithstanding the Proclamation, still considered by the Secretary of State as being a waste of paper. How far the foreign diplomats believe the like oracular decisions, is another question; certain it is that they shrug ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... vague spiritual philosophy, which probably was not insincere, and which at least served to commend the mundane portion of his book to pious readers. The special attraction of the whole lies in its variety. A volume merely of maxims would have been too rigid, too oracular for such a versatile spirit as that of La Bruyere. "Different things," he says, "are thought out by different methods, and explained by diverse expressions, it may be by a sentence, an argument, a metaphor or some other figure, a parallel, a simple comparison, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... most unfavorable light before a select assembly—an obscure navigator, a member of no learned institution, destitute of all the trappings and circumstances which sometimes give oracular authority to dullness, and depending on the mere force of ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... dancing around him with a song and pinching his unresisting body black and blue. A chance visit of Cynthia and her train fortunately arouses him, but Endymion still sleeps his forty years of manhood away undisturbed. At last Eumenides returns with his oracular clue and persuades Cynthia to attempt the cure. Very graciously the queen kisses the pale forehead. At once consciousness returns, and as a white-haired old man the once handsome young courtier arises. He has two dreams to tell (shown in Dumb Show in an earlier scene) ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... of silent joy. Lord Lynedale had become Lord Ellerton, and I listened to the praises that were sung of the newly married couple—for Eleanor had become Lady Ellerton, and had entered fully into all her husband's magnificent philanthropic schemes—a helpmeet, if not an oracular guide. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... my own. "Too 'flippant'? He has made it too oracular. Mr. Bousefield says he has killed it." Then perceiving my stupefaction: "Don't you know what has happened?" she pursued; "isn't it because in his trouble, poor love, he has sent for you that you've come? You've heard nothing at all? Then you had better know before you see them. Get in here ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... arrived, and the three dined together, the two women bending meekly to his discourse, which was never more oracular and authoritative than when delivered to the gentler sex alone. Amherst's absence, in particular, seemed to loose the thin current of Mr. Tredegar's eloquence. He was never quite at ease in the presence of an independent mind, and ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... that sort of airy nonsense. When sure of his audience, he had spoken much more disrespectfully of the Parisian band of Kings in exile. But to-day his chubby cheeks refused to crease in a grin. He remained morose, oracular, heavy jowled. In fact, he had set himself a very difficult task. Now that the moment had arrived for its ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... mine dreamed the other day that she was discussing the subject of mission services with a stranger; she defended them in her dream with great warmth and rhetoric: when she had done, her companion said, "Well, to tell you the truth, I don't believe in people being inspired IN ROWS." This oracular saying has a profound truth in it—that salvation is not to be found in public meetings; and that to assemble a number of persons, and to address them on the subject of simplicity, is the surest way to miss the charm ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... I have stood in the midst of human affairs," said the chair, with a very oracular enunciation, "I have constantly observed that Justice, Truth, and Love are the chief ingredients of every ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Consider THAT gigantic absurdity! ... consider, that when we read our newspapers we are not learning the views of Europe on a certain point,—we are absorbing the ideas of the EDITOR, to whom everything must be submitted before insertion in the oracular columns we pin our faith on! Thus it is that criticism,—literary criticism, at any rate,—is a lost art,—YOU know that. A man must either be dead (or considered dead) or in a 'clique' to receive any open ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... oracular reply of the Salernitan sages to Robert, Duke of Normandy, and no one can dispute the sound common sense of the prescription given, nor doubt that it is applicable to half the patients who to-day throng the consulting rooms of fashionable ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... will of God!" This voice was repeated by the next, and in a moment it circulated through this innumerable people, which rang with the acclamation of "It is the will of God! It is the will of God!"[76] The neighboring villages caught up those oracular words, and it is incredible with what celerity they spread everywhere around into places the most distant. This circumstance, then considered as miraculous, contributed greatly to the success of the Hermit's mission. No less did the disposition of the nobility throughout Europe, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the schools attached to the Marduk cult at Babylon, the New Year's Festival—the character of which we will have occasion to explain later on—came to be regarded as the season most appropriate for approaching the oracular chamber. During this festival, Marduk was supposed to decide the fate of mankind for the whole year, and the intercession of the priests on the occasion was fraught ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... at the oracular message, written in capitals on a sheet of paper which contained nothing else. He again examined the envelope, but the post-mark in no way helped him. He glanced at his mother, and, finding her eye upon him, folded the sheet carelessly. He glanced at his father, who had just laid ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... oracular old lady, who was rapidly driving John mad, "commands a twenty-sixth part of the British army, and he says that he comes here to farm with Uncle Silas Croft. He says," she went on, with withering contempt, "that he comes here to farm when he commands a twenty-sixth part of the British army. It is ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... such that there is not the commonest subject to which he will not attach a range of suggestiveness almost limitless, nor a stone, leaf, or shadow, nor anything so small, but he will give it meaning and oracular voice. ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... about flying-machines and the possibilities of electricity, witnessing that flying-machines were "dead certain to come," and that electricity was "wonderful, wonderful"; how he went and watched the billiard playing and said, "Left 'em" several times with an oracular air; how he fell a-yawning; and how he got out his cycling map and studied it intently,—are things that find no mention here. Nor will I enlarge upon his going into the writing-room, and marking the road from London to Guildford with a fine, bright line of the reddest of red ink. In his little ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... slightest chance of that," Mrs. Gregory declared. And then she pronounced a sentence that was truly oracular: "She's coming at once to ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... and one oracular-looking old fellow spat, wiped his lips on the back of his hand, stared out to sea, ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... over that strange parting, her mother's shrivelled features, and looked close into the sunken eyes that could see into her own dark future by the light of a long and a painful experience. Again she felt herself fascinated, as of old, by her mother's exalted mood and by the oracular certainty of expression which, together with her fits of violence, had contributed not a little to the reputation for witchcraft ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... became afterwards extended, it was not then at all applied to doings as well as sayings'; and again, that 'there is no linguistic precedent for straining the expression, used at that period, to mean anything beyond a collection of sayings of Jesus which were oracular or divine [173:1].' This objection, if it has any force, must involve one or both of these two assumptions; first, that books which were regarded as Scripture could not at this early date be called oracles, ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... that time on his legs to return home. "Oh! Mr. Snodgrass," said the lady, looking slyly, as she adjusted her cloak, at him and Miss Isabella, "there will be marrying and giving in marriage till the day of judgment." And with these oracular words she took ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... third and worst, a Church gone dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to dissolution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here meant Chapterhouses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let him,' says the oracular Professor, 'read on, light ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... I have spent many a jolly hour; but being just dubbed a graduate in physic, he has gained such an entire conquest over the risible muscles, that he hardly vouchsafes at any time to smile. I have heard him harangue, with all the oracular importance of a veteran, on the possibility of Canning's subsisting for a whole month on a few bits of bread; and he is now preparing a treatise, in which he will set forth a new and infallible method to prevent the spreading ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... as much longer as he deems requisite. I believe the gentleman is delicate and threatened with consumption, which obliges him to spend the winters in a warm climate, and Ulpian first met him in Italy. My boy thinks that the opinion of this Professor Von Somebody is oracular in musical matters; and, as he has trained some of the best singers in Europe, Ulpian wishes him to have charge of your voice. Say nothing about it until we hear whether he can accept ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... that the term "Nymphe" and its derivations was used to designate young women, brides, the marriage chamber, the lotus flower, oracular temples and the labiae minores ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... or touch her, but looked deeply into her eyes for a long space of time, and took from her again an equally searching regard; then, turning to her father-in-law and the company at large, she said, "This is begun, and will be done. He is like his father before him." To that oracular utterance old King, catching probably but the last sentence, replied, "And he couldn't do better, my child." He meant no more than a testimony to his daughter-in-law. Mrs. King's observations, coupled with that, nevertheless, went far to give ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... affects to take a moderate part.-vol. ii. p. 354. At present there is something oracular in the delivery of my opinion. I speak from a recess which no human curiosity can penetrate.-vol. i. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Miss Pole, so mysteriously wrapped up, and with so many seals on it to secure secrecy, that I had to tear the paper before I could unfold it. And when I came to the writing I could hardly understand the meaning, it was so involved and oracular. I made out, however, that I was to go to Miss Pole's at eleven o'clock; the number ELEVEN being written in full length as well as in numerals, and A.M. twice dashed under, as if I were very likely to come at eleven at night, ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... too)—Ver. 5. The "cortina" or oracular shrine was surrounded with laurels; which were said to quiver while the oracles were being pronounced. This is probably the most beautiful portion of these newly-discovered poems. Still, it cannot with ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... she says. This oracular speech is accompanied by a blush, vivid as it is angry, and there are large tears in her eyes. "I should not have asked you to kiss me. That was your part, and you have taught me that I usurped it. Yet I thought only that ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... smile, I fancy that the Cloud-Compeller's style Would suit me sweetly; just the line I love; Resolute rule's the appanage of a Jove. But SHELLEY's dismal Demogorgon's self, That solemn, shadowy, stern, oracular elf, Plus obstinate Prometheus, did not play Such mischief as the parties do to-day, With Law and Order. Who would be a god When force forsakes his bolt, and fear ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... British Apollo invited and professed to answer questions upon all subjects of wit, morality, science, and even religion; and two out of its four pages are filled with queries and replies much like some of the oracular penny prints of the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... may be defined as the brooding soul of the world, cannot fail of its oracular promise as to Woman. "The mothers," "The mother of all things," are expressions of thought which lead the mind towards this side of universal growth. Whenever a mystical whisper was heard, from Behmen down to St. Simon, sprang up ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... good, who carry in my fleet the household gods I rescued from the enemy; my fame is known high in heaven. I seek Italy my country, my kin of Jove's supreme blood. With twenty sail did I climb the Phrygian sea; oracular tokens led me on; my goddess mother pointed the way; scarce seven survive the shattering of wave and wind. Myself unknown, destitute, driven from Europe and Asia, I wander over the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil |
