"Unsolved" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... backbone, or water-shed of the Rocky Mountains), whose bright waters seek both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. There, far below, links of diamonds showed where the grand river takes its rise to seek the mysterious Colorado, with its still unsolved enigma, and lose itself in the waters of the Pacific; and nearer, the snow-born Thompson bursts forth from the ice to begin its journey to the Gulf of Mexico. Nature, rioting in her grandest mood, exclaimed with ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... and to the still higher enjoyment of directing young minds to an elevating pursuit, the naturalist adds a gratification even better than all, by making known the hidden wonders of nature; and leaving to those who delight in argument, the ever unsolved question of where instinct ends and reason begins, he sets forth the love of the great Creator towards all His creatures, and the ways He takes to show ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... would come back; for he was an unsolved problem to her, and there had been very few unsolved male problems in her brief experience. She had usually found men very easy to understand, and the failure to achieve her simple purpose in this instance aroused, ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... and me," he retorted, "is that you can go to sleep over it, while I shall never get another good night's rest so long as this black mystery remains unsolved." ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... Avranches, regained his normal health, and as he grew towards manhood gave active proof of the brilliancy of his intellect. He worked with ardour at his mathematical studies, and he even sent to the Academy of Sciences solutions of several problems hitherto unsolved, which were found to be as elegant as they were accurate. Absorbed in his work, he rarely found time to write to me. His letters were affectionate, clear, and to the point, and nothing could be found in them to arouse the mistrust ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... rise in the Nile, recurring as regularly as the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, necessarily remained an unsolved mystery to the ancients, for until the discovery of the tropical regions, with their mountainous lakes and deluging rains, it was impossible to learn the occasion of this increase. It is now known that ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... Joe's questions was answered. There were other problems yet unsolved, though. What were they going to do with him? He could ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... Lord Hastings, "is a mystery that is as yet unsolved. It is assumed, however, that she has obtained sufficient food and fuel to meet her needs from captured ships. In at least one instance this is known to have been done. The captain of the British steamer Exford, captured by the Emden, informed his owners that Captain von Mueller said that before ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... height of the waves is measured from the trough to the crest, and is of course conjecture, but in a continuous storm which we realized on board the Belgic was certainly some thirty feet. One aspect was to us an unsolved problem: the storm being on our starboard quarter was so nearly aft as to give us some idea of the velocity of the waves, which was clearly much greater than that of the ship's progress, and yet they increased the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... branch. Will they keep true to the reverted character, or return to the characters of the plant which bears the retrograde branch? Will all of them do so, or only part of them, and how large a part? It is very astonishing that this question should still be unsolved where so many individual trees bear atavistic branches that remain on them through long series of years. But then many such branches do not flower at all, or if they flower and bear seed, no care is taken to prevent [183] cross-fertilization with ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... may be easy enough—in stories. But to doctor a gasoline engine so that it will run for a certain length of time and THEN break down is not so easy. Three o'clock came and the problem was still unsolved. Issy, the perspiration running down his face, stood up in the Lady May's cockpit and looked out across the bay, smooth and glassy in the ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... said Harry, when they reached New York. "The game was too hard to solve. The mystery of the murdered man in the box must remain unsolved. It can go on record as one of the many strange cases that have baffled the detectives before. It's our duty now to report the matter to our chief, drop it, and resume our attempt to locate the broker's ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... distinctive organs with certain secretions for this purpose, etc. All the different stages of development can be easily determined, but how and why life takes place under such special condition and under no other, is an unsolved mystery. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... problems are unsolved to this day; others were soon made clear. Where he got Carthew's name is still a mystery; perhaps some sailor on the Tempest, perhaps my own sea-lawyer served him for a tool; but I was actually at his elbow when he learned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... government cannot do more than he does. Here we find the reason for the silence of the former advocates of a constitutional administration. They have realized that by the formation of the republic the fundamental problem of the country has been left unsolved. In this wise it happens that the situation is something like this. Whilst the country is governed by an able president, the people enjoy peace and prosperity. But once an incapable man assumes the presidency, chaos will become the order of the day, ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... would remain unsolved until Jack's return home; and when I had a letter from him a week ago, asking me to dine with him to-night, I accepted eagerly. He was just home, he said, and I would meet an old Cambridge man. We were to dine at Jack's club, and I took the photograph ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... theft of the emerald necklace was still unsolved, the man whose picture Ned carried in his brain had not been found, Pedro had been among the missing ever since he had walked out of the Shaw residence on the morning after the robbery. When the boys landed at Colon the ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... That search was difficult and rarely was the jewel come by, if at all, so that some said there was none, save in the maker's mind. Yes, I have seen a man go crazed with seeking and die with the mystery unsolved. How much harder, then, is it to come at the diamond of Truth which lies at the core of all our nest of dreams and without which to rest upon they could not be fashioned ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... volumes, so that the praise and explanation of the greatness and importance of the representation of the character of a man who has no character form in volume a library. It is true that some of the critics timidly express the idea that there is something strange in this figure, that Hamlet is an unsolved riddle, but no one has the courage to say (as in Hans Andersen's story) that the King is naked—i.e., that it is as clear as day that Shakespeare did not succeed and did not even wish to give any character to Hamlet, did not even understand that this was necessary. ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... often; whether it was because of the strength of attraction in that particular house, or the failure of any attraction beside in all the coasts of Pattaquasset, was a problem which remained unsolved by anything in the doctor's manner. His manner was like what it had been the evening just recounted. He amused himself, after his nonchalant fashion, and amused his hearers; he did not in the mean time call upon them for any help at all. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... Teaching him how trade and commerce is carried on. Money and its uses. How it gets its value. Why it is a measure only. The trip to the north in charge of the Chief's son. Gruesome tales of the ferocity of the convicts. John still anxious to find some particular cave. His chart. The unsolved mystery of the boat. The clothing of the natives. Bracelets. Glitter to attract natives. Weaving, the only industry. The aptness of native women to adopt fancy articles of dress and ornament. John's scheme, anticipating the wedding of Sutoto ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... period of fifty years the progress of interpretation was completely arrested. The flowers remained without a champion until 1787, when Sprengel began his investigations, based upon the unsolved mysteries of color and markings of petals, fragrance, nectar, and visiting insects. The prevalent idea of the insect being a mere idle accessory to the flower found no favor with him. He chose to believe that some deep plan must lie beneath this universal association. ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... might happen to possess, and pay for it liberally with tobacco. But no one appeared to know anything about the scrap, and no one had any more fragments to offer in barter, so he had to go away with the mystery unsolved. Then a week later, when Katherine and Miles went to the encampment with a sledgeload of provisions it was to find that the whole lot had vanished, leaving the dug-outs, in which they had existed so long, deserted. There was no chance of tracing them, ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... rich in unsolved problems is not likely to be overestimated. Most well-informed adults who have little "push" are not lazy by nature; they have merely failed to fall in love with worthy aims. That is often partly ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... would have stood their ground or not is still an unsolved problem, but at that opportune moment the big school bell began to clang, and Miss Willough, the drill mistress, in her blue tunic, entered the gymnasium ready to take her next class. At sight of her, Dorrie hastily wiped the blackboard, and the juniors fled to their ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... creative manner. If we limit ourselves to a consideration of what the second instance contributes to the dream, we can never understand the dream. If we do so, all the riddles which the authors have found in the dream remain unsolved. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... hundred,—be the close of the mortal history of humanity as far distant in the future as its shadowy beginnings seem now to lie behind us,—this only we may foretell with confidence,—that the riddle of man's nature will remain unsolved. There will be that in him yet which physical laws will fail to explain,—that something, whatever it be, in himself and in the world, which science can not fathom, and which suggests the unknown possibilities of his origin ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... Pyramids, and take pleasure in staring at the Sphinx with all the impertinence common to pigmies when contemplating greatness. But more riddles than that of the Sphinx are lost in the depths of the sandy desert; and more unsolved problems lie in the recesses of the past than even the restless and inquiring spirit of modern times will ever discover;—and if it should ever chance that in days to come, the secret of the movable floor of the Great Pyramid should be found, and the lost treasures of Egypt brought to ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... a dozen hammocks could be slung in the den which the marine's lantern revealed; but how a dozen sick men could recover there, and how the surgeon could move between the hammocks to perform his ministrations, were mysteries happily left unsolved. As it was, the two invalids and their visitors crowded ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... find wanting. How rashly she had condemned this training, how effectually her experiment had cured her of radicalism, she herself now saw clearly. The problem of liberty within conventionality was still unsolved, and she had beaten her wings ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... some confusion of mind that Peter Byrne took himself off to the bedroom with the cold tiled stove and the bed that was as comfortable as a washtub. Undeniably he was relieved. Also Harmony's problem was yet unsolved. Also she had called ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the world would become like a stagnant pool breeding nothing but weeds and the slimy creatures pertaining to foulness. Even in love, the most divine of passions, there should be a wave of uncertainty and a sense of unsolved mystery ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... of the palaeozoic period the relative positions of the ancient land masses and oceans remain unsolved; but the absence of marine strata of early palaeozoic age from Central Africa points to there being land in this direction. In late Carboniferous times Africa and India were undoubtedly united to form a large continent, called by Suess Gondwana Land. In each country the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... unconcerned; And yet a curious watcher might have learned From a slight quaver in her laughter free To doubt the frankness of her flippancy. Gawayne, bewildered, looked the other way, And wondered what she meant; for in that day The ready wit of man was under muzzle, And woman's heart was still an unsolved puzzle; And Gawayne, though in valor next to none, Wished that her heart had been a tenderer one. His sword was out for any foe on earth, And yet to face death for a lady's mirth Seemed scarce worth while. ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... disciples of Iona and Scotland, derived their peculiar tonsure, their use of bells, their Eastern mode of keeping the Paschal feast, and other peculiarities, seemingly without the intervention of Rome, is a mystery still unsolved. ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... resigned his position and then sailed for Chile, whence he went to the Argentine Republic. Later, he proceeded to Europe, where he died in the middle of the century, a great man, the victim of the ingratitude of his fellow citizens, always modest and reserved, and, in many respects, an unsolved mystery. He harbored no resentment towards Bolvar. When he arrived in Callao after the interview, the papers published the ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... to foil the insurance companies when you sit in the midst of finery and wealth, protected by a self-assuring halo of moral rectitude, than under less fortunate circumstances. Too often, I'm afraid, we have good-naturedly admitted the unsolved burglary and paid the insurance claim. That has got to stop. Here's a case where we considered the moral hazard a safe one, and we are mistaken. It's the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... firebrick—a mechanical fire without vitality or variety, that never dances nor crackles nor blazes, a monotonous horror, a fire you cannot poke. That is what it will certainly come to if the problem remains unsolved. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... relatives and friends canvassed the subject morning, noon and night, and the longer the mystery remained unsolved the more uneasy they ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... kind had left behind them a trail of half-breeds—thousands of them. If his mother had been good enough for his father—— His thoughts went round and round in a puzzled, enquiring circle, and still the problem remained unsolved. For he was very young, and not as ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... condition for acceptance. In the present case the weight of disproof is small. The facts in support of the evolution hypothesis are multitudinous, and many of them of great cogency; the facts against it are few, and none of them absolute. It is simply argued that some questions remain unsolved, and that there are facts which seem inconsistent with the Darwinian theory of development, and which no supplementary hypotheses have explained. But no advocates of evolution hold that the Darwinian theory is final. Evolution ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... shall, perhaps, the number of the stars that shine in the canopy of heaven; we have not yet unveiled the dread mysteries of earth or of sea. Enough: many enigmas are resolved; we know much—we guess at still more. There remains one question unsolved—it is this: Is there more real felicity in our minds now than there was in ancient times? I will confess that if we look at the many, now-a-days, we could scarcely answer this question in the affirmative; ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... the matter. They were on the scent just then of a party of counterfeiters and were suspicious of the sounds and lights in this apparently unoccupied dwelling. But they watched and waited in vain. One of them got a scare and that was all. The mystery went unsolved and the sign "To Let" remained indefinitely ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... uncomplimentary remark at him as the rattling old kettle clanked by. Then, as the last car passed him, and rapidly grew smaller as the distance swallowed it up, he turned back to his vegetable patch with the mystery still unsolved. ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... cheeks otherwise as delicate as the petals of a rose! An interesting, if not absolutely beautiful face, it told me something I could hardly put into words; so that it was like leaving a fascinating but unsolved mystery when I finally turned from it to study the hands, each of which presented a separate problem. That offered by the right wrist you already know—the long white ribbon connecting it with the discharged ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... dangerous meaning in your riddle lurks. One knot is yet unsolved; that told, this strange And most mysterious drama ends. The name Of that ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... Factor.—With all this explanation of life processes it can not fail to be apparent that we have not really reached the centre of the problem. We have explained many secondary processes, but the primary ones are still unsolved. In studying digestion we reach an understanding of everything until we come to the active vital property of the gland-cells in secreting. In studying absorption we understand the process until we come to what we have called the vital powers of the ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... reflex principle, a man judges of his own act, taking account of the imperfection of his knowledge and the limitations of his power. Probabilism steps in, only where a case is practically insoluble to an agent upon direct principles. The probabilist thereupon leaves the direct speculative doubt unsolved. He relinquishes the attempt of determining what a man should do in the case in question, who had a thorough insight into the lie of the law. He leaves that aside, and considers what is his duty, or not ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... custom. From the moment he passed out of the door he disappeared from the sight of men as effectually as the light of an extinguished candle. He was popular and had not a known enemy in the world. But whether he was murdered and his body concealed, or whether he left the country, remained an unsolved mystery. The latter theory had few or no adherents, as he was tenderly attached to his wife and child. Be that as it may. Soon after the disappearance of the musician, a young physician, who was handsome, accomplished, and talented, made his ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... mechanics, all the discoveries made before and in Albrecht Duerer's day, in the book, the chart, the lever, the crystal, the crucible, the plane, the hammer. The intention of this picture has been disputed, but the best explanation of it is that which regards the woman as pondering on the humanly unsolved and insoluble mystery of the sin and ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... feel any better if we get the others?" Allen asked, just a little exasperated, for he liked mysteries and hated to leave them unsolved. "We can get to them in five ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... few words in explanation of the general design. A young girl, Mary Cecilia Rogers, was murdered in the vicinity of New York; and, although her death occasioned an intense and long-enduring excitement, the mystery attending it had remained unsolved at the period when the present paper was written and published (November, 1842). Herein, under pretence of relating the fate of a Parisian grisette, the author has followed in minute detail, the essential, while merely paralleling the inessential facts of the real murder of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a steam engine and belt-driven pill-mixing machinery. At least one rotary pill machine was purchased from England, from J.W. Pindar, and delivered to Comstock at a total cost (including ocean freight) of L19-10-9—about $100. One minor unsolved mystery is that a bill for a second, identical machine made out to A.J. White—with whom Comstock had not been associated for twenty years—is filed among the Comstock records; it can only be surmised that at this time Comstock and White were again on good terms, the ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... to profit by all that the second does not include. And if we allow it to sadden our heart or arrest our action, we have not sufficiently realised that the vast but precarious space it fills in the region of important truths is governed by countless problems which as yet are unsolved; while the problems whereon the second truth rests are daily resolved by real life. The first truth is still in the dangerous, feverish stage, through which all truths must pass before they can penetrate freely into our heart and our brain; ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... which we live and move Outlasts aversion, outlasts love..... Nay, and since death, which wipes out man, Finds him with many an unsolved plan,.... Still gazing on the ever full Eternal mundane spectacle, This world in which we draw our breath In some sense, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... with which, as the best that is to be had, he will in all probability rest contented. "X Y and Z," he will say, "are projected, as it were, out of the circle." This answer leaves the question as much unsolved as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... inmates did not appear to be insane. It was not a time to busy one's self about other people's affairs, it was much safer neither to gossip nor to listen to gossip; so to many persons the riddle of Monsieur Legrand's sudden prosperity remained unsolved. ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... Holyoake ascribes all the phenomena of the universe; or he leaves them utterly unaccounted for, and takes refuge in an eternal series of derived and dependent beings, without attempting to assign any reason for their existence. He undertakes to account for nothing. He leaves the great problem unsolved, and discards it as insoluble. "Mr. Harrison demanded of me, where the first man came from? I said, I did not know; I was not in the secrets of Nature." "I cannot accept, says one, the theory of progressive development, it is so intricate and ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... teacher discover to children problems or purposes which may result in thinking. The skill of the teacher depends upon his knowledge of the previous experiences of the children in the class and his skill in having them word the problem which remains unsolved in their experience in such a way as to make it attractive to them. Indeed, it may be said that children never have a worthy aim unless it is one which is intellectually stimulating. A problem exists only when we ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... to his grave with the riddle still unsolved, and it remained for the famous Dutch astronomer, Huyghens, to clear up the matter. It was, however, some little time before he hit upon the real explanation. Having noticed that there were dark spaces between the strange appendages and the body of the planet, he imagined Saturn to be a globe ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... life there was one unsolved problem. That was her food supply. Intensive culture would do wonders and the just administration of wealth and the physical efficiency of her people had eliminated the waste of supporting the non-productive, but an acre is but a small piece of land ...
— In the Clutch of the War-God • Milo Hastings
... young friend to his home to see once more his father, his mother, his sister, and to find himself, enthusiastic hunter as he was, in the midst of these superb forests of the Upper Amazon, some of whose secrets remained after so many centuries still unsolved ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... the Artisans of England' (1860), unravels, in the course of three portly volumes, the difficulties hitherto, curiously enough, unsolved—connected with such matters as Belief in God, the Plan of Creation, the Origin of Evil, the Future Life, Necessity and Free Will, Law, ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... degrading polytheism of Egypt, Assyria, and Phoenicia, passed away before the power of the cross; but Persian speculations remained. Even Origen, the greatest scholar of Christian antiquity, was tainted with them. And the mighty myths of the origin of evil, which perplexed Zoroaster, still remain unsolved; but the belief of the final triumph of good over evil is common to both Christians and the disciples of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... I thought also of what I should do when I reached the post, and that was not clear to me. I should be able to lay hold upon the staff, as I had done before, but how I was to retain my hold was the unsolved problem. And it remained so, till I had got up and seized the staff, and indeed for a ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... eternal matter, and entirely excludes every supernatural process, every prearranged and conscious action of a personal creator." Compare this last statement with the following: "I will, however," says Haeckel,[28] "not deny that Kant's grand cosmogony has some weak points." * * * "A great unsolved difficulty lies in the fact that the cosmological gas theory furnishes no starting-point at all in explanation of the first impulse which caused the rotary ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... than real; and we fancy we have explained it when we say that such arithmetical power was a peculiar endowment of his mental life. Now all of the inexplicable, inimitable reality that at any time has to be left by the baffled intellect as an unsolved wonder under the name of miracle is just that,—the natural product of an extraordinary endowment of life. More of its marvellous capability is latent in common men, in the subconscious depths of being, than has ever yet flashed forth ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... future. Only men of the profoundest culture make a deliberate study of their own natures, but those less gifted often act with an equal or even superior wisdom, because their qualities operate spontaneously, unwatched by an introverted eye. Such men may be dimly conscious of certain inconsistencies, or unsolved puzzles, in themselves, but instead of sitting down to unravel them, they seek the easiest way to pass by and leave them untouched. For them the material aspects of life are of the highest importance, and a true instinct shows them that beyond the merest superficial acquaintance with ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... carelessly, when one inch more and I would have disappeared also. Right before me I saw the long dry grass all bending toward a common center, and I knew that it was an old well, and that my comrade had fallen in it. But how to get him out was the unsolved problem. I ran back to camp to get assistance, and everybody had a great curiosity to see "the man in the well." They would get chunks of fire and shake over the well, and, peeping down, would say, "Well, he's in there," and go off, and others would come and talk about his "being in there." The ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... essay. I am not, of course, going to describe the cults and characters of the various Olympians. For that inquiry the reader will naturally go to the five learned volumes of my colleague, Dr. Farnell. I wish merely to face certain difficult and, I think, hitherto unsolved problems affecting the meaning and origin and history of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... Peninsula, as we have seen, the presence of traces of Negritos is an open question. The evidence at hand is incomplete and insufficient, and we must therefore be content to let future investigators work out these unsolved problems. ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... are two unsolved problems in connection with the roads across the Thames Valley in Roman times. The first concerns the passage of the upper Thames south of Eynsham; the second concerns the road which runs ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... with the present chance in trying to see too many moves ahead. The remoter parts of life, so long as they remained remote, would take care of themselves. And, in the same way, the problems of the after-life, its meanings, could be left unsolved, if not unstudied, until the time came when one could take them in a nearer view. Properly lived, life was too busy to admit of many questions, anyway. Always there were so many useful things to be done that scanty time remained for over much philosophizing. And, as for the man knocked ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... visitor settles upon the purple head of an iris bloom. With its vivid colouring and its quick movements the butterfly brings an atmosphere of life into the courtyard that was hitherto lacking. Its appearance too suggests the famous allegory, the unsolved riddle of human existence which so puzzled the divine Plato and the ancient philosophers of Athens and Syracuse. Here are we, the living men of to-day, watching the corpse of a departed world upon which the mystic symbol of Psyche has just alighted. Tempus breve est is ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... very unlike those of a modern man, we shall be justified in drawing the conclusion that, so far as potential mental ability is concerned, he has reached the modern standard. We must always keep in mind that accomplishments and inventions which seem so simple to us were new and unsolved problems to the pioneers who worked their way up from a simian to a ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... several months, however, the detective was not to hear more of those who had played their small parts in the unsolved mystery. He was busy enough and in some measure rehabilitated a tarnished reputation by one brilliant achievement in his finest manner. But success did not restore his self-respect; and it diminished in no degree the fever burning ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... 39. The Peace of Augsburg, 1555, had been intended to settle the differences between the Lutherans and Catholics but it had left many problems unsolved. ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... ultimate riddle, a riddle akin to that which makes each of us "indescribably himself." And as for the origin of His unique Person, we have no better explanations to substitute for those of the First Century; the mystery of our Lord's singular personality remains unsolved. ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... thing—if romance there was—has been equalled in our day by the marriages of George Eliot and Miss Burdett Coutts. Only very strong characters can afford to run such risks. The caprices of the great are among the unsolved mysteries of life. A poor, wounded, unknown young man would never have aspired to such an audacity had he not been sure of his ground; and the probability is that she, not he, is to be blamed for that folly,—if a woman ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... first—at least, their best poets have not practised them. As for the pauses, Malherbe first brought them into France within this last century, and we see how they adorn their Alexandrines. But as Virgil propounds a riddle which he leaves unsolved - ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... species as Puccinia malvacearum, which has very compact sori, has become within so short a period diffused over such a wide area, is a problem which in the present state of our knowledge must remain unsolved. It may be through ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... shaking him for being there, and why she followed up this novel performance by the unexpected gift of a big slice of bread and jelly, remained one of the problems over which Demi puzzled his small wits, and was forced to leave unsolved forever. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... his father entered the house Donald handed him the envelope and Mr. Clark quickly stripped it open; yet even though it now lay spread out before him the mystery it contained appeared to be unsolved. It was seldom that Donald asked questions, nevertheless he found himself wondering and wondering what it was that had brought that odd little wrinkle into his father's forehead. Donald understood that wrinkle; he had seen it many times and knew it never came unless some question arose to which ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... still connects me with Cuba and my dreadful past. They must now be smuggled out of England; or, by the opinion of my lawyer, I am lost beyond remedy. To-morrow, on board the Irish packet, a sure hand awaits the box; the problem still unsolved is to find some one to carry it as far as Holyhead, to see it placed on board the steamer, and instantly return to town. Will you be he? Will you leave to-morrow by the first train, punctually obey orders, bear still in mind that you are surrounded by Cuban ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the heart? Did it not rather proceed from childish disappointment at his lack of enthusiastic praise of her splendid exploit? As I say, he judged it prudent to leave the problem unsolved. Of the exploit itself, needless to remark, she talked interminably. Generous and kind-hearted, he agreed with her arguments. Of the humiliation she had wrought for him, he allowed her to ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... been levied for untold centuries, it is still one of the unsolved problems how to levy them so as to be just to all. Much progress has been made, but entirely satisfactory answers have not yet been wrought out to the questions: What are the proper things to tax? For what ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... present based upon mathematical analysis, it is hoped that it will open up a new field of investigation in which but little work has been done, and may assist in settling the as yet unsolved question of the effect of size and shape in the heat treatment ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... everything a spiritual significance, and in this sense holding that the whole law as [Greek: nomos pneumatikos] was binding. The question whether righteousness comes from the works of the law or from faith, was displaced by this conception, and therefore remained in its deepest grounds unsolved, or was decided in the sense of a spiritualised legalism. But the detachment of Christianity from the political forms of the Jewish religion, and from sacrificial worship, was also completed by this conception, although it was regarded as identical with the Old Testament ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... whole way, by Sangor, Gharispore, Bhilsa, Sanchi, Sonori, presented us with the most interesting relics of the past, and the frequent recurrence of the works of the once prevalent Buddhistic faith continually incited us to new discussions of the yet unsolved question, Why has Buddha's religion, which once had such entire possession of this people's hearts, so entirely disappeared ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... duties, yet leave this difficulty unfaced, in that they look for all the pleasure of their life outside home, and within that home allow themselves to live in an atmosphere of friction and peevishness. The girl who does that has left the riddle of home life unsolved: she was meant to wrestle with that difficulty till she wrung from it the blessing, the peace which comes only from self-conquest and acceptance of all the circumstances ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... as yet unsolved. It proved the most difficult of all. The failure of the revolution of the year 1848 had led to the wholesale migration of the more energetic and liberal elements among the German people. These young fellows ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... conditions, this minute and apparently insignificant particle of living matter becomes animated by a new and mysterious activity. The germinal vesicle and spot cease to be discernible (their precise fate being one of the yet unsolved problems of embryology), but the yelk becomes circumferentially indented, as if an invisible knife had been drawn round it, and thus appears divided into ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... the blindness seemed to be so likewise; a feverish impulse carried people away into all newfangled ways, serious or frivolous. Mesmer brought from Germany his mysterious revelations in respect of problems as yet unsolved by science, and pretended to cure all diseases around the magnetic battery; the adventurer Cagliostro, embellished with the title of count, and lavishing gold by handfuls, bewitched court and city, and induced Councillor d'Epremesnil to say, "The friendship of M. de Cagliostro does me honor." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... be regarded as the chief factor in the composition of the city, or how much of its composition the city owes to direct inheritance from the tribal system, must, as has been said, be left unsolved. Some small light may perhaps be shed upon the ...
— On The Structure of Greek Tribal Society: An Essay • Hugh E. Seebohm
... the last day but one of the 1999th year of our era, and the first day of the Long Vacation. Having amused myself till a late hour with my favourite recreation of Geometry, I had retired to rest with an unsolved problem in my mind. In the night I ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... play only in this," said Godolphin, some time afterwards; "it has no plot—all is vague, desultory, unconnected—till the curtain drops with the mystery unsolved." ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sped on her course, southwest by west; and still the mystery of her destination remained unsolved. Little was hopeful, while Ibbotson was despondent. Mr. Fluxion planked the quarter-deck as industriously as though he were walking on a wager, or had the dyspepsia, which could only be ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... impossible. It was not for him to precipitate Lady Maulevrier's end by prying into her secrets. Granted that shame and dishonour of some kind were involved in the existence of that strange old man, he, Lord Hartfield, must endure his portion in that shame—must be content to leave the dark riddle unsolved. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Cooke fails to give a clue to the song of either variety, and therefore my little problem remains unsolved, as I could not think of taking the life of a dulcet-voiced bird merely to discover whether it should have "montana" affixed to its scientific name or not. All I can say is, if this soloist was a mountain song-sparrow, he reproduced exactly the trills of his half-brothers of ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... to know that nothing could be gained by urging. During the silence that fell upon them the minds of both were working in parallel grooves, groping for a way of light to lighten the darkness of an unsolved mystery. When they reached the albacore banks and sighted the vanguard of the fishing fleet, both came back sharply, back from the maze of doubt and intangible suspicions which clouded their brains as the fog had clouded the island ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... beginning. Through the years the cry for more and better salt had gone up. The fishermen of Virginia needed salt for their fish as badly as the Hebrews in Egypt needed straw for their bricks. Although trading with foreign countries increased steadily, the question of a salt supply for Virginia remained unsolved. ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... seas unexplored can the ship shun Sunk rocks? Can man fathom life's links, Past or future, unsolved by Egyptian Or Theban, unspoken by Sphynx? The riddle remains yet, unravell'd By students consuming night oil. O earth! we have toil'd, we have travailed: How long ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... of the Lualaba remained unsolved, but Livingstone began to suspect that his theory of the Nile sources was wrong. He heard a doubtful tale of the Lualaba bending off to the west, but he still hoped that it flowed northwards, and that therefore the ultimate source ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... my fantastic superstitions had vanished. I was back once more in the world of men and women, and could only think of the inhumanity of man to man, and of the infinite pain silently endured by many hearts in that Purple Land. The only mystery still unsolved in that ruinous estancia was Don Hilario, who locked up the wine and was called master with bitter irony by Ramona, and who had thought it necessary to apologise to me for depriving me of his precious ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... analysis, Muensterberg's "Psychotherapy" is a masterpiece, but his psychic equation of causative and purposive, with all his mathesis, not only remains unsolved, but leads to confusion, from the false light shed on the unknown quantity, and his failure to indicate the gnosis; the demarcation ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... colony at Ft. Herrick, near Cleveland, Ohio, differs in many ways from the one at Hadleigh, and doubtless has been instrumental in aiding a good number of outcast and fallen men, but it has been such a burden financially, and such an unsolved problem in many ways, that it may be considered a failure. The reason for its failure is not so much bad management as lack of foresight on the part of those choosing the site. The site is in no sense suitable for a colony, the soil being unfit for intensive ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... said, the mystery behind it remains unsolved, but Foxy's reign is at an end, and with him goes the store, for which I ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... architecture, except by contact with some existing civilization of which it appropriated the spirit, the processes, and the forms. How the earliest architecture came into existence is as yet an unsolved problem. ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... mind the full significance of it. He saw in it the silent, secret weapon with which to revenge himself on the world. His great discovery, which died with him, was control over the direction and scope of the electric discharge. At the time, this was the unsolved problem of wireless telegraphy—as it still is to-day—but Emil Gluck, in his prison cell, mastered it. And, when he was released, he applied it. It was fairly simple, given the directing power that ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... easy-flowing, pointed criticisms on matters of public interest, the broad philosophy, sometimes faintly dashed with bitterness and cynicism, but always sound, he found it hard to associate him with the significant sobriquet of the ranch. Tea-time found him still wrestling with the unsolved problem. But, with the advent of Diane with the table and laden tray, he set ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... which would have done honor to the class-rooms of Berlin or the Sorbonne. In looking at such an instance of intellectual pleasure and acumen, as connected in no small degree with the study of foreign languages, one cannot avoid associating together the unsolved mystery of that discrepancy of tongues prevailing in different countries with the disagreeing floras and faunas of the same regions,—each diversity bearing alike the unmistakable marks of Omnipotent design for the happiness and improvement ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... whole tribe of nymphs and heroes and demigods—no, not quite all, for the cruelty and greed of Medea and Jason were too monstrous to be forgiven, and I used to wonder why the gods permitted them to do wrong and then punished them for their wickedness. And the mystery is still unsolved. I ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... unsolved, for just then a hearty cheer rang on the air. The boys hurried back to the mouth of the valley, reaching there just as Jerry emerged from the bushes. His eyes opened wide with amazement when he saw the dead bucks. Then he spied the body of the ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... with King Saul, and many more whom we recall, both in Bible history, and in our own experience. The unsolved difficulty stares us in the face; but it is no longer a difficulty, but everlasting harmony, when we ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... Mundas, and the Korkus. In physical characters they differ greatly from the Indo-Chinese Khasis, but the points of resemblance in their languages and in some of their institutions cannot be denied; and the exact nature of the relation between them is as yet one of the unsolved ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... all the sweeter. There is remaining only one mystery which I must admit is still unsolved in this curious affair. And that is you. Who ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... be permitted to bear in mind that evolution, though it may explain everything else, cannot explain itself. What is the origin of the movement, and by what power the order of development is prescribed, are questions yet unsolved by physical science. That the solution, if it could be supplied, would involve anything arbitrary, miraculous, or at variance with the observed order of things, need not be assumed; but it might open a new view of the universe, and dissipate for ever the merely mechanical accounts of it. In the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... of Lethe; for souls plunged in it forget all." Pierre Leroux, an enthusiastic living defender of the idea of repeated births, attempts to reply to the objection drawn from the absence of memory; but his reply is an appeal rather to authority and fancy than to reason, and leaves the doubts unsolved.12 His supposition is that in each spirit life we remember all the bygone lives, both spiritual and earthly, but in each earth life we forget all that has gone before; just as, here, every night we lose in sleep all memory of the past, but recover it each ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the scream of the cougar, like the roar of the lion, seems to come from any or every side. It is difficult to tell in what direction the animal is who utters it. Whether this illusion be produced by the terror of the listener is a question yet unsolved. ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... worth quoting, if only for the interesting allusion to Laperouse, whose fate was, at the time when Flinders sailed and wrote, an unsolved mystery of the sea. Captain Dillon's discovery of relics at Vanikoro, in 1826, twelve years after the death of Flinders, informed the world that the illustrious French navigator did not pass through Torres Strait, but was wrecked in the Santa Cruz group.* (* See the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... an address to the governments of all the German states in which it was admitted that numerous eczematous diseases, even those of an epidemic nature, were directly attributable to vaccination and that the origin and cure of smallpox were still unsolved problems. ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... of toil, And, lending life to the dead form of faith, Give human nature reverence for the sake Of One who bore it, making it divine With the ineffable tenderness of God; Let common need, the brotherhood of prayer, The heirship of an unknown destiny, The unsolved mystery round about us, make A man more precious than the gold of Ophir. Sacred, inviolate, unto whom all things Should minister, as outward types and signs Of the eternal beauty which fulfils The one great purpose of creation, Love, The sole ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... radio-activity of brass, or to traces of a radio-active impurity on its surface? Long and laborious researches have succeeded in establishing the existence of slight intrinsic radio-activity in a few metals such as potassium, and have left the wider problem still unsolved. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... in bridge-construction. But the use of iron to so limited an extent, and in such a part of the structure, was of more than questionable utility; and if Mr. Pritchard's plan had been adopted, the problem of the iron bridge would still have remained unsolved. ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... emphasizes with fiery accents the mood of storm and stress characteristic of the movement as a whole. After the fury has subsided, the dramatic motto asserts itself in the closing measures, poco sostenuto; the problem is still unsolved and the last C major chord is but a ray of light ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... States and the Ottoman Empire still remain unsolved. Complaints on behalf of our citizens are not satisfactorily adjusted. The Porte has sought to withhold from our commerce the right of favored treatment to which we are entitled by existing conventional stipulations, and the revision of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... he dismissed his cab, and with a young inquisitiveness in all that concerned the quarter, paused to look into the old curio shop, no longer closed as on the previous night, but open and inviting in its dingy suggestion of mysteries unsolved. ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... ray of hope; neither Harris nor I had disclosed our names, nor the whereabouts or quantity of the silks; and as each had been dealing with folk with whom he'd never before met, we were both as yet mysteries unsolved. Nor were we ever solved. Harris and I kept off the streets during daylight hours for a full month. We were not utterly idle; we unpleasantly employed ourselves in trimming away that tell-tale selvage. Preferring safety to profit, we put forth no efforts to realize ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... available. A capacity and taste for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so; it gives a relish and facility for successfully pursuing the unsolved ones. The rudiments of science are available, and highly available. Some knowledge of botany assists in dealing with the vegetable world—with all growing crops. Chemistry assists in the analysis of soils, selection and application of manures, ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... whether it really was an island, as the natives said, or whether it was the mainland, as he had forced his sailors to swear while on the Cuban voyage when his brain was full of fever. Again he let the problem go unsolved; the object of this fourth voyage was to find the straits leading into the Indian Ocean. Having failed to begin his search from Trinidad by following South America westward, as originally planned, ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... her rides that were taken alone were toward the reservation, as she had studiously avoided going near Talpers's place. Also she did not like to ride past the hill on the Dollar Sign road, with its hints of unsolved mystery. But she had quickly grown to love the broad, free Indian reservation, with its limitless miles of unfenced hills. She liked to turn off the road and gallop across the trackless ways, sometimes ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... Systematically and carefully the men stationed at the electelscope turned it through the region behind, but never did their watching eyes discern the bulk of the asteroid. Its disappearance, and the kindred mystery of who had been on it, remained unsolved. ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... physiological questions unsolved in my dark Protestant mind, I took occasion to speak to Father Xavier himself about it when I next met him. From him I learned that on the morning in question a party of English left the city on a hunting-excursion on the Campagna. A fox was unearthed after considerable delay, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... I did, I felt that the question of his flight was not so simple as it seemed to others, and the problem lay long unsolved before me until it was suddenly made clear by the will that he left ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy
... eels occupied the attention of Aristotle, and has been taken up by the most distinguished naturalists since his time, it is still unsolved. Lacepede, the French naturalist, asserts, in the most unqualified way, that they are viviparous; but we do not remember any facts brought forward on the subject. Sir Humphrey then goes on to say—This is certain, that there are two migrations of eels—one ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... sent Bienville to bury engraved leaden plates at the mouths of streams. They also fortified the present sites of Ogdensburg and Toronto. Even now, therefore, France's power this side the Atlantic was not visibly shaken. The continental problem remained unsolved. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews |
