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Disentangle   Listen
verb
disentangle  v. t.  (past & past part. disentangled; pres. part. disentangling)  
1.
To free from entanglement; to release from a condition of being intricately and confusedly involved or interlaced; to reduce to orderly arrangement; to straighten out; as, to disentangle a skein of yarn.
2.
To extricate from complication and perplexity; disengage from embarrassing connection or intermixture; to disembroil; to set free; to separate. "To disentangle truth from error." "To extricate and disentangle themselves out of this labyrinth." "A mind free and disentangled from all corporeal mixtures."
Synonyms: To loose; extricate; disembarrass; disembroil; clear; evolve; disengage; separate; detach.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Disentangle" Quotes from Famous Books



... prophecy. They may never have sufficiently realized that this better future, just in so far as it is better, will have to be planned and constructed rather than fulfilled of its own momentum; but at any rate, in seeking to disentangle and emphasize the ideal implications of the American national Promise, I am not wholly false to the accepted American tradition. Even if Americans have neglected these ideal implications, even if they have conceived the better ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... Follower, adherent, disciple, partisan, henchman. Fond, loving, doting, devoted, amorous, enamored. Force, strength, power, energy, vigor, might, potency, cogency, efficacy. Force, compulsion, coercion, constraint, restraint. Free, liberate, emancipate, manumit, release, disengage, disentangle, disembarrass, disencumber, extricate. Freshen, refresh, revive, renovate, renew. Friendly, amicable, companionable, hearty, cordial, neighborly, sociable, genial, complaisant, affable. Frighten, affright, alarm, terrify, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... of such variety as causes us already to foresee that the Necrophorus cannot employ fixed methods in the accomplishment of his labours. Exposed to fortuitous hazards, he must be able to modify his tactics within the limits of his modest perceptions. To saw, to break, to disentangle, to lift, to shake, to displace: these are so many methods of procedure which are indispensable to the grave-digger in a predicament. Deprived of these resources, reduced to uniformity of method, the insect would be incapable of pursuing ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... toes and our parcels of tinsel balls, what was the general cry? Was it a yell against the railroad for not adding an extra brace of cars? No, it was good-natured banter of the perspiring little officer as he struggled to disentangle himself from forests of wedged legs. "You've got a fine, big family in here," they told him: "you ought to be proud of us." And there was a sorrowing Italian who had with him a string of seven children ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... in the main, can be described as follows: The slope descending from the top-wall is a heap of rubbish with shrivelled posts of wood, impossible to disentangle without excavations. North of this debris, and 29 m.—95 ft.—from A a B, stands a knoll, or mound, covered with stones. Looking south from this, I thought I noticed that it stood in the line of the second ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier

... fruitful source of poverty, misery, and suicide. Grant that this species of gambling has arisen from the facility of obtaining the fictitious means of making the purchase, still it is not the less necessary that I beseech you not to practise it, and if engaged in it already, to disentangle yourself as soon as you can. Your life, while thus engaged, is that of a gamester—call it by what smoother name you may. It is a life of constant anxiety, desire to overreach, and general gloom; enlivened now and then, by a gleam of hope or of success. Even that success is sure to lead to farther ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott

... could not do it all herself. In her strong, high fishing-boots, her short skirts hemmed with leather, her burberry, and her dark-blue tam-o'-shanter set jauntily on her chestnut hair, she very often fished alone, and made quite respectable baskets. To wade into the burn and disentangle her line from beneath a stone was to her quite a small occurrence, for she would never let either Stewart or any of the ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux

... tempting Providence by any of these ambitious tricks. Our own stature will be found high enough for shame. The success of three simple sentences lures us into a fatal parenthesis in the fourth, from whose shut brackets we may never disentangle the thread of our discourse. A momentary flush tempts us into a quotation; and we may be left helpless in the middle of one of Pope's couplets, a white film gathering before our eyes, and our kind friends charitably ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... while regarding the rest of the world with that indulgent air they assume at musicales. Everything to my unpractised eye seemed in hopeless disorder; a frightful buzz filled the air, and a blond girl at the big piano was trying to disentangle a lot of music. Near her stood a long-haired young man who perspired incessantly. "Ah!" I gloated. "Nervous! serves him right; he should ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... setting in which the boy learns of matters sticks in the mind as a part of the matters themselves. He cannot disentangle what is conventional from what is original, because he has not yet a first-hand acquaintance with life by which ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman

... his grizzled eyebrows in courteous interrogation, and beginning delicately to disentangle the gold strings of his pince-nez from the pectoral cross to which like a penitent it clung, said, "Of course I perfectly understand how great a shock this has been to you. To me also it comes as an entire surprise: my daughter has told me nothing, and therefore—in a sense—I can say nothing ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... days—even if we confine ourselves to those given by eye-witnesses—are a mesh of contradictions which it is impossible to wholly disentangle. I shall do my best, but perhaps the most I can hope for is to ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... remained. But to get it I had to disentangle Algernon first, and I had no hand available. There was only one thing to do. I put the block of ice down on the pavement, unwrapped the lobster, put the lobster temporarily in my pocket, spread its Daily Mail out next to the ice, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various

... world. The past and the present are one and inseparable, and you cannot destroy the former without doing positive damage to the latter. The roots of our civilization lie in the soil of antiquity, and you cannot destroy and disentangle the fibers of the growing tree of civilization from the far-off centuries that are gone, without injuring the whole organism. "If we were to wipe out all the records of the past, what a series of inexplicable riddles would our ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... environment, if we may express it thus. The Eugenist who overlooks the importance of environment as a determining factor in human life, is as short-sighted as the Socialist who neglects the biological nature of man. We cannot disentangle these two forces, except in theory. To the child in the womb, said Samuel Butler, the mother is "environment." She is, of course, likewise "heredity." The age-old discussion of "Nature vs. Nurture" has been threshed out time after time, usually fruitlessly, because of a failure to recognize ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger

... with the look often seen when people are struggling, with introverted effort, to disentangle a thought which is either too high for quick discernment or ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... its fruit for good or evil, especially in the land of its disciples. It is well, therefore, sometimes to withdraw a little from the dust and smoke of the battle, which, with us at least, announces the spread of this potentate's power, and to try to disentangle the real questions at issue in the struggle from the eternal complications produced by short-sighted politicians and popular issues. Looking at the policy and tendency of the reign of King Cotton, as hitherto developed and indicated by its most confidential advisers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... followers of Raymond Berenger would willingly have fled or surrendered. But the first was impossible, so closely had they been enveloped; and in the cruel wars maintained by the Welsh upon their frontiers, quarter to the vanquished was out of question. A few of the men-at-arms were lucky enough to disentangle themselves from the tumult, and, not even attempting to enter the castle, fled in various directions, to carry their own fears among the inhabitants of the marches, by announcing the loss of the battle, and the fate of ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to believe that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every step, and feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work carefully and patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her loving heart, felt that her children were being ruined, that it was not the count's fault for he could not help being what he was—that (though he tried to hide it) he himself suffered from the consciousness of his own and his children's ruin, ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... still thought of his relation to Karen Woodruff as a paternal and unequal one; imagining a crisis in which his wisdom and knowledge of the world might serve her; a foolish love-affair, perhaps, that he would disentangle; or a disaster connected with the great woman under whose protection she lived; he could so easily imagine disasters befalling Madame von Marwitz and involving everyone around her. And now in a week's ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... advancement to the Hebraic religion to a greater extent than is generally believed. In the early Christian centuries there existed three great creeds: the Christian, Hebraic, and Mohammedan. The Christian Church was in a perplexing condition. As observed by Draper,[52] it was impossible to disentangle her from the principles which had, at the beginning, entered into her political organization. For good or evil, right or wrong, her necessity required that she should put herself forth as the possessor ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... carried on by the impetus of the pace at which we were going, all the animals tumbled down one on the top of the other in a heap. The packs got mercilessly undone, and it took us the best part of an hour to disentangle all and get ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... the rest of that afternoon, that I could not even look in my glass to see how things were going at the Mouse-trap. A young and giddy Comet had got his tail twisted round one of my mountain-peaks, and could not disentangle it, and this was a pretty piece of work, as you may imagine. He wriggled and flounced about in a truly disgraceful manner, and it was only by making Bmfkgth bite his nose very hard indeed that I was enabled to get him free, and send him off to his grandmother ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards

... secured, to be fought for, to be gained at all hazards. Maria must know where it was; by dint of questioning, Zerkow would surely get the information from her. Some day, if only he was persistent, he would hit upon the right combination of questions, the right suggestion that would disentangle Maria's confused recollections. Maria would tell him where the thing was kept, was concealed, was buried, and he would go to that place and secure it, and all that wonderful gold would be his forever and forever. This service of plate had ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... at issue were taken very seriously by a large number of persons. In the first place, there was the question of Baptismal Regeneration itself. This is by no means an easy one to disentangle; but it may be noted that the doctrine of Baptism includes: (1) God's intention, that is to say, His purpose in electing certain persons to eternal life—an abstruse and greatly controverted subject, upon which the Church of England ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... of my friend the Professor. I consider him fully as good a man as myself.—I have, you know, often referred to him and quoted him, and sometimes got so mixed up with him, that, like the Schildbuergers at their town-meeting, I was puzzled to disentangle my own legs from his, when I wanted to stand up by myself, they were got into such a snarl together.—But I don't like the position of my friend ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... glimpse served to correct the vulgarism and distortion of the mediaeval life of the fifteenth century. In the perfection of Italian painting, the union of antique and modern being consummated, it is perhaps difficult to disentangle what really is antique from what is modern; but in the earlier times, when the two elements were still separate, we can see them opposite each other and compare them in the works of the greatest artists. Wherever, in ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... persuaded himself that his guide had deserted him for the present, in order to give intelligence of a traveller to some gang of robbers with whom he was connected; and that he must of necessity fall a prey to those banditti, unless he should have the good fortune to elude their search, and disentangle himself from the mazes ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... forces that are practically irresistible, a world-wide process of social and moral deliquescence is in progress, and that a really functional social body of engineering, managing men, scientifically trained, and having common ideals and interests, is likely to segregate and disentangle itself from our present confusion of aimless and ill-directed lives. It has been pointed out that life is presenting an unprecedented and increasing variety of morals, menages, occupations and types, at present so mingled as to give a general effect of greyness, but containing ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... illogical and foolish. True, it removes any danger that the lady may be crushed between her own horse and her escort's, but who protects her from any passing car or carriage, and in case of a runaway what can her escort, his left hand occupied with his own reins, do to aid her with hers, or to disentangle her foot from the stirrup or her habit from the pommels in case she is thrown? Can he snatch her from the saddle, after the matter of one of Joaquin Miller's young men? The truth is that since the rule of the road is 'keep to the right,' the rule of the saddle should be 'sit on the ...
— In the Riding-School; Chats With Esmeralda • Theo. Stephenson Browne

... shocking spectacle to the view. The bodies of horses and men lay mingled in dreadful confusion, as they had fallen, some dead, others still alive, the men moaning, crying for water, and feebly struggling from time to time to disentangle themselves from the heaps of carcasses under which they were buried. The deadly and inextinguishable hate which the Carthaginians felt for their foes not having been appeased by the slaughter of forty ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... influence. Moreover, that by this force you were able to deal scientifically and practically with the active principle of intelligence in man, to such an extent that you could, in some miraculous way, disentangle the knots of toil and perplexity in an over-taxed brain, and restore to it its pristine vitality and vigor. Is this true? If so, exert your power upon me,—for something, I know not what, has of late frozen up the once overflowing fountain of my thoughts, and I have lost all working ability. When ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... Unintelligible for the gulls who are to enter into them. The advantages and disadvantages shall be noted promiscuously as they occur; leaving out the speculation of canals, &c. which, being an episode only in the scheme, may be omitted, to disentangle it ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... out and disentangle the clusters of fibres into even greater individualisation than existed when first picked, and to leave them in such condition that the subsequent operations can easily draw them out, and ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson

... Madame de Vaudremont's pride was perhaps more roused than her curiosity to disentangle the thread of this intrigue. In the absorption of mind to which she was a prey she was no longer mistress of herself. The Colonel, interpreting to his own advantage the embarrassment evident in the Countess' manner and speech, became more ardent and pressing. The old blase diplomates, ...
— Domestic Peace • Honore de Balzac

... by different causes; many of our visual sensations likewise lend themselves to the most varied interpretations; by the side of the efficient cause of an event we find a thousand entangled contingencies which appear so important that to disentangle them we are as much perplexed as the savage, who, unable to discriminate between causes and coincidences, returns to drink at the well which has cured him, carefully keeping to the same hour, the same gestures, and ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... together with the effort to disentangle it, resolved the Princess into an attentive auditor. The advantages in the conversation were consequently with the Sheik; and he availed himself of them to lead as ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... the heart like Cora and the Doctor, they stood there for a long while, till they heard the rumble of wheels on the bridge and knew they must disentangle. ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... different from what it ought to be, and a strong wish that it were not, — and a yet mightier leaning in another direction; — all of these, meeting and modifying each other and struggling together, seemed to run in her veins and to tell in each beat of the tiny timekeeper at her wrist. How could she disentangle one from the other, or give a quiet mind to anything, when she ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner

... to wait, without interrupting, or trying to help her disentangle her thought, of which he had in ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall

... lady's hat, which John instantly recognized as Hilda's. The long crape veil seemed to have caught in a stake which arose from the sandy beach above the water, placed there to mark some water level, and the hat floated there. Reverently, as though they were touching the dead, did those rough men disentangle the folds, and lay ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... impugned the former's character to line his own pocket with the latter's wealth. The truth of the matter was that he was tight caught in a network of financial and political intrigue, and this was the only means to disentangle himself. ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne

... approaching day. Interwoven with these figures is an allegory of Truth with mirror and sword, escaping from the sinister power of Darkness, Falsehood shrinking from its image in the mirror of Truth, and Vice struggling in the coils of a serpent. It is not easy to read either series, or to disentangle ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... the colors seem confused is because, viewing the spectacle from an elevation, we see the enormous indentations of the opposite rim in broken and disorganized perspective. Few minds are patient and orderly enough to fully disentangle the kaleidoscopic disarray, but, if we can identify the strata by form as well as color, we can at least comprehend without trouble our principal outline; and comprehension is the broad highway ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... various legends it is pleasant to be able to disentangle one clear picture of the making of Tom Jones. Before the manuscript was placed in the printers' hands Fielding submitted it to the opinion both of the elder Pitt, and of the estimable and pious Lyttelton; and the account of this memorable meeting cannot be better given than in the ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... want to talk about!" vaguely said Susan Hetth as she tried to disentangle an old-fashioned ring which had unfortunately caught a few shining hairs ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... trees; and seeing a bank within reach, I tried to creep up it. In this there would have been little difficulty had not the contents of the kist caught in my feet and held on to them, like living things afraid of being left behind. I let down my hands to disentangle my feet, but failed; and then, grown desperate, I succeeded in reaching firm ground, dragging I knew not what after me. It proved to be a pillow-slip. Green Brae still shudders when I tell him that my first impulse was to leave ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie

... be no possible answer to this but a rush from Kirk and an onslaught of hugs, from which it was long before Ken could disentangle himself. ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price

... scruple to teach the instructed believer that some of the stories that were apparently historical were really purely allegorical. Nowhere, perhaps, is it more necessary to understand this than when we are studying the story of Jesus, surnamed the Christ, for when we do not disentangle the intertwisted threads, and see where symbols have been taken as events, allegories as histories, we lose most of the instructiveness of the narrative and much of its rarest beauty. We cannot too much insist on the fact that Christianity gains, ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... how they managed to make their way at all through the dense jungle which hemmed us in on every side, or to disentangle themselves from the numerous obstacles which beset our path. If one of the bearers suddenly plunged up to his waist in a morass, someone else instantly came forward to pull him out and to raise the chair again. When huge fallen trees obstructed the ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... archives of the Exchange will always contain the minutes of Committees and other documentary material embodying the story of the past, but this dry chronicle is never likely to see the light except when unearthed by law courts or legislative committees. It seems worth while, therefore, to disentangle the essential thread of the tale of 1914 from the mass of unreadable detail in the minute books, and put it in a shape where those who are interested may ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble

... a woman of like passions with himself, I had a 'ter'ble dust' with him on the subject, and the next I heard was that he was going to make Retreat in a kind of English-church monastery somewhere in the city, where he would 'try to disentangle' himself 'from the world' and see what he 'ought to do next.' He sent me his blessing with this message, and I sent him back mine—a less holy one, but he'll ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... the Republic of the United States of America, is the most important secular event in the history of the human race. It did not disentangle the confused theory of the origin of Government, but cut through the bonds of power existing by prescription, at a blow; and thus directly and immediately affected the opinions and the actions of men in every part of the civilized world. It animated them everywhere to ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... that blemish upon her and had also more than once frustrated her designs. This time frustration was not possible. She was about to revenge the infliction of that little scar! And, at the same time the intellectual part of her was agreeably intrigued, trying to disentangle the why and wherefore of Richard's late action and utterances. While self-love was gratified to the highest height of its ambition by the knowledge that not only in his heart had she long reigned, but that he had dedicated ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... led the way into the sitting-room, and Caroline lacked the social address to disentangle herself from the situation without being actually rude. She did not want to be that, therefore followed Laura, and as they went into the room Wilson rose from a seat by the window. But his heavy figure was silhouetted ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose

... Rameau was stretched on his sick-bed, and in sharp struggle between life and death. It is difficult to disentangle, one by one, all the threads in a nature so complex as Rameau's; but if we may hazard a conjecture, the grief of disappointed love was not the immediate cause of his illness, and yet it had much to do with it. The goad of Isaura's ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... interrupted by gusts of wind, which, coming suddenly, God knows whence or why, cut his face, drove masses of snow into it, filled out his cloak-collar like a sail, or suddenly blew it over his head with supernatural force, and thus caused him constant trouble to disentangle himself. ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... was a grand one. By what means my Emily contrived to disentangle herself from that handsome-whiskered "Charles," and to entangle him fast in the chains of the other Emily, any one who wishes to know, and will take the trouble, can have all due information on the subject, and can also learn how I wooed my peerless Emily ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... passionately that her life was wrecked utterly and her brief happiness at an end. Then, with that relentless power of intellect, from which her emotions were never entirely separated, she began deliberately to disentangle the true facts from the temporary impulses of ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... to disentangle principles first from parties, and again from one another; first of all as showing how imperfectly all parties represent their own principles, and then how the principles themselves are a mingled tissue.—ARNOLD, Modern History, ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton

... they were constantly identified by the common enemies of both—that they were both parts of what we have termed in the widest sense of the term 'the Evangelical revival'—that they, in fact, crossed and interlaced one another in so many ways that it is not always easy to disentangle the one from the other—that there are several names which one is in doubt whether to place on one side of the line or the other. But still it would be a great mistake to confound the two parties. There was a different tone of mind in the typical representatives of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... which continue the family down to 1418 or 19, because it seems to me certain that all of them do more or less confound with our Polos of S. Giovanni Grisostomo, members of the other Polo Family of S. Geremia. It will help to disentangle the subject if we put down what is ascertained regarding the S. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... As these in their turn were potently influenced by the policy pursued at Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and Madrid, we must take a survey, wide but minute, sometimes to all appearance diffuse, yet in reality vitally related to the main theme. In order to simplify the narrative, I have sought to disentangle the strands of war policy and to follow them severally, connecting them, however, in the chapter entitled "Pitt as War Minister," which will sum up the results of these studies on the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... of material sentiency by which the soul's attribute of sensation feeds itself from the objective world; but they are so penetrated and percolated, through and through, by the other basic activities of the soul, that it is extremely difficult to disentangle from our impressions of sight, of sound, of touch, of taste, and of smell, those interwoven threads of reason, imagination and so forth which so profoundly modify and transmute, even in the art of ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... likely to look again upon the light of day. The leader of the band had fallen again to the earth, and was enveloped in the folds of the heavy cloak, from which he appeared to be feebly struggling to disentangle himself. The girl followed the direction of the youth's glance, and explained the matter in ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green

... cord that bound Phil Sparks, and darted from the room. Before the man could disentangle himself from its coils, the boys were safe from pursuit, quietly wending their way through the crowded thoroughfares of the ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne

... real Church of Humanity might adopt and re-create the rituals of the past in the light of a modern inspiration. Indeed the difficulty would be to limit the process, for EVERY ancient ritual, we can now see, has had a meaning and a message, and it would be a real joy to disentangle these and to expose the profound solidarity of humanity and aspiration from the very dawn of civilization down to the present day. Nor would it be necessary to imagine any Act of Uniformity or dead level of ceremonial in the matter. ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... the deck. Duncan jumped for the cabin. Weeks and the mate jumped the next second and the water sluiced down after them, put out the fire, and washed them, choking and wrestling, about on the cabin floor. Weeks was the first to disentangle himself, and he turned ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... alone is able to refuse. Other great western nations might seek to stand alone for economic life and for defence. They could not long succeed; they are too deeply implicated in one another's destinies. Even Britain with her vast extra-European territories could not hope to disentangle herself from the affairs of her near neighbors. America could do this, at any rate for some considerable time to come. True she has economic committals in Europe. She has loaned European governments and peoples ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson

... be a great deal of confusion in Matilda's thoughts at this point, and hard to disentangle; but through it all she presently felt something like little soft blows of a hammer at her heart, reminding her of a very eager wish for black satin, and disappointment at not having it; of a violent desire to be fashionable, and to escape being thought ...
— The House in Town • Susan Warner

... but he felt distressed at the moment to notice that she was twisting the tender willow leaves, albeit he saw that she only did so because, in her embarrassment, her fingers worked unconsciously. He came forward and took her hands gently, to disentangle them from the twigs. She let them lie in his, and looked up ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... the upper portion, which was wholly colored, but chiefly with pale hues. At the same time a greater distinctness was given to the scenes represented upon the sculptured slabs, the color being judiciously applied to disentangle human from animal figures, dress from flesh, or human figures from ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... webbed feet were fast in Dinah's kinky hair, and it took some time to disentangle them. Then the cook could get up, which she did with many a sigh ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Snow Lodge • Laura Lee Hope

... health and strength and courage. Nevertheless, she was panic-stricken at what Kate was taking for granted and her quick little mind was darting about like some frightened rodent from corner to corner, thinking how she was going to disentangle herself from the situation with the minimum of hurt ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... forced to write of sport, even as in India he would write of caste, as in America he would note the undue emphasis laid upon politics. In Germany, wherever he turns, whether it be to look at the army, to inquire about the navy, to study the constitution, or to disentangle the web of present-day political strife; to read the figures of commercial and industrial progress, or the results of social legislation; to look on at the Germans at play during their yachting week at Kiel, or their rowing contests ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... a lock, nor by any other such contrivance, but by a very intricate knot of gold cord. There appeared to be no end to this knot, and no beginning. Never was a knot so cunningly twisted, nor with so many ins and outs, which roguishly defied the skilfullest fingers to disentangle them. And yet, by the very difficulty that there was in it, Pandora was the more tempted to examine the knot, and just see how it was made. Two or three times, already, she had stooped over the box, and taken the knot between her thumb ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... against the current, and sails were being hoisted and anchors heaved, to an accompaniment of loud singing. The quay was so crowded with ships that it was difficult to understand how those that were ready could ever disentangle themselves, and find their way through those remaining behind; but each somehow found an outlet by which to reach the navigable stream, and ere long the river was swarming with boats, all sailing southwards, and giving it the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... spontaneous production of vitality, seems to have arisen from the misrepresentation of this doctrine, as if the larger animals had been thus produced; as Ovid supposes after the deluge of Deucalion, that lions were seen rising out of the mud of the Nile, and struggling to disentangle their hinder parts. It was not considered, that animals and vegetables have been perpetually improving by reproduction; and that spontaneous vitality was only to be looked for in the simplest organic beings, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... heathens saw and knew the glory of self- devotion; and the Greeks had two early instances so very beautiful that, though they cannot in all particulars be true, they must not be passed over. There must have been some foundation for them, though we cannot now disentangle them from the fable that has adhered to them; and, at any rate, the ancient Greeks believed them, and gathered strength and nobleness from dwelling on such examples; since, as it has been truly said, 'Every word, look or thought of sympathy with heroic action, helps to make ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... strongly attached to his children; but he had a little of the selfishness and much of the reverence for wealth of a man of the world. As he now endeavored to determine mentally on his proper course of action—to disentangle the whole case from all its mysterious intricacies—to view it, extraordinary as it was, in its proper bearings, his thoughts began gradually to assume what is called, "a practical turn." He reflected that he had another daughter, besides the twin-sisters, to provide for; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... the world at large, this idea of beneficent pleasure is true as between the sweethearts. To do good and communicate is the lover's grand intention. It is the happiness of the other that makes his own most intense gratification. It is not possible to disentangle the different emotions, the pride, humility, pity and passion, which are excited by a look of happy love or an unexpected caress. To make one's self beautiful, to dress the hair, to excel in talk, to do anything and all things that puff out the character and attributes and make them imposing in ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... uncontrollable terror. She made no sound, but simply seized him bodily. Fortunately, however, she had seen nothing, but had only heard the rushing feet, for her control returned almost at once, and he was able to disentangle himself and strike ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... the more instructed Daughters of the North, accustomed herself to that delicious Confessional, the transfusion of thought to writing. Now, suddenly, her heart felt an impulse; a new-born instinct, that bade it commune with itself, bade it disentangle its web of golden fancies,—made her wish to look upon her inmost self as in a glass. Upsprung from the embrace of Love and Soul—the Eros and the Psyche—their beautiful offspring, Genius! She blushed, she sighed, she trembled as she wrote. And from the fresh world that she ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... topics is subject matter, methods, and administration or government. We have been concerned with the two former in recent chapters. It remains to disentangle them from the context in which they have been referred to, and discuss explicitly their nature. We shall begin with the topic of method, since that lies closest to the considerations of the last chapter. Before taking it up, it may be well, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... over the Girondin Memoirs, anxious to disentangle the truth of them from the hysterics, finds these days of March, especially this Sunday the Tenth of March, play a great part. Plots, plots: a plot for murdering the Girondin Deputies; Anarchists and Secret-Royalists plotting, in hellish concert, for ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... became instantly clear to her: she must show the letter to Bessy. She ran her eyes over it again, trying to disentangle the consequences. There was the allusion to their talk in town—well, she had told Bessy of that! But the careless reference to their woodland excursions—what might not Bessy, in her present mood, make of it? Justine's ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... that you have some of my tones of voice? Do you know that you have many of my looks? I perceive all this, and believe that you were born under my star. Yes, you were born under my star! Tremble! for where that is the case with mortals, the threads of their destinies are difficult to disentangle; knottings and catchings occur—sudden breaks leave damage in the web. But these 'impressions,' as you say, with English caution. I, too, have had ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... smoothly afterwards. If the difficulty into which they had got was apprehended by Winthrop, Endicott, or any of their associates, they were wise enough to see that nothing but mischief could arise from taking notice of it; that no human ingenuity could disentangle the snarl; and that all they could do was to wait for the lapse of time to drift them through. The conduct of these two men on the occasion was truly admirable. Endicott welcomed Winthrop with all the honors due to his position as governor; opened his doors to receive him ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... the last decade of Barneveld's eventful life his personality may come more distinctly forward perhaps than in previous epochs. It will however be difficult to disentangle a single thread from the great historical tapestry of the Republic and of Europe in which his life and achievements are interwoven. He was a public man in the fullest sense of the word, and without his presence and influence the record of Holland, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Hereward has gathered round it such a mass of fiction, old and new, that it is hard to disentangle the few details of his real history. His descent and birth-place are uncertain; but he was assuredly a man of Lincolnshire, and assuredly not the son of Earl Leofric. For some unknown cause, he had been banished in the days of Edward or of Harold. He ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman

... Let us admire the hind, who, they say, throws a good way off her young fawn, into some hidden place, that the hounds may not find him out by the scent of his strain. Let us even admire the spider who with her cobwebs lays subtle snares to trap flies, and fall unawares upon them before they can disentangle themselves. Let us also admire the hern, who, they say, puts his head under his wing, in order to hide his bill under his feathers, thereby to stick the breast of the bird of prey that stoops at him. Let us allow the truth of all these wonderful instances of rationality; ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon

... Herschel fell on one of these hooks, which entered her right leg above the knee. To her brother's injunction, "Make haste!" she could answer only by a pitiful cry, "I am hooked!" He and the workmen hastened immediately to her assistance, but they could not disentangle her without leaving nearly two ounces of her flesh behind. For some weeks she was an invalid, and at one time it was feared that amputation ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous

... partook of chops. "Is this remorse," she queried, "or a convivially induced requirement for bromides? At this unearthly hour of the morning it is very often difficult to disentangle ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... who rushed into print in 1712 against Swift's Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue were so obviously moved by the spirit of faction that, apart from a few debating points and minor corrections, it is difficult to disentangle their legitimate criticisms from their political prejudices. As Professor Landa has written in his introduction to Oldmiron's Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley and Mainwaring's The British Academy ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob

... not those fellows poachers they have arrested yonder? They are. Then another important thing, Raoul: should you be wounded in a battle, and fall from your horse, if you have any strength left, disentangle yourself from the line that your regiment has formed; otherwise, it may be driven back and you will be trampled to death by the horses. At all events, should you be wounded, write to me that very instant, or get some one at once to write ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... second-best. We may want to relax an old association in order to make a newer and wider one. It is quite understandable that peoples aware of a distinctive national character and involved in some big existing political complex, should wish to disentangle themselves from one group of associations in order to enter more effectively into another, a greater, and more satisfactory one. The Finn or the Pole, who has hitherto been a rather reluctant member of the synthesis of the Russian empire, ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells

... happiest part of your life." I guess my Aunt Libby don't know much. I guess she never worked a week to make a kite, and the first time she went to fly it got the tail hitched in a tall tree, whose owner wouldn't let her climb up to disentangle it. I guess she never broke one of the runners of her sled some Saturday afternoon, when it was "prime" coasting. I guess she never had to give her biggest marbles to a great lubberly boy, because he would thrash her if she didn't. ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... will appear from the following case. A Brahmin died, and was brought to the place of burning. His wife was fastened to the pile, and the fire was kindled, but the night was dark and rainy. When the fire began to scorch the poor woman, she contrived to disentangle herself from the dead body, and creeping from under the pile, hid herself among some brushwood. In a little time it was discovered that there was but one body on the pile. The relations immediately took the alarm, and searched for the poor creature. ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder

... dead. The scene changed, and I saw hosts of men on the battle-field, rushing upon each other and falling in deadly strife. A dreary horror came over me. It was like some dreadful play, in which the stake was human life. Blood was upon the faces of the dying and the dead. In the effort to disentangle the right from the wrong—to seek out a cause for the calamity which had fallen upon us—a racking anguish tortured me, and I vainly strove to regain my scattered senses. Then, in the midst of this confused dream, I heard the booming of cannon—at first far down in the earth, but gradually ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... my feet felt numbed, and the spray wetted and chilled my face. I dared not move my arm from Dot, he leaned so heavily against it, and Flurry's head was against him. She had curled herself up like Flossy, and I had one hand free, only I could not disentangle it from the cloak. I dared not change my cramped position, for fear of waking them. I was too thankful for their brief oblivion. If I could only doze for a few moments; if I could only shut out the black waters for a minute! The tumults of my thoughts ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... loving Kala. She had seen the life crushed from her own balu in just such a fall years before. Was she to lose this one too in the same way? Tarzan was lying quite still when she found him, embedded deeply in the bush. It took Kala several minutes to disentangle him and drag him forth; but he was not killed. He was not even badly injured. The bush had broken the force of the fall. A cut upon the back of his head showed where he had struck the tough stem of the shrub and ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... lifetime, I saw a white canoe making toward me, and I knew that our shy young gentleman was coming to help me, and that we should become acquainted without an introduction. So it was, sure enough. He saw what the trouble was, managed to disentangle my feet without drowning me in the process or upsetting his little flimsy craft, and, as I was somewhat tired with my struggle, took me in tow and carried me to the landing where he kept his canoe. I can't say that there is anything odd about his manners or his way of talk. I ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... she would lay hold of the present opportunity to disentangle herself from all continental embarrassments in North America, and that not only to avoid future broils and troubles, but to save expenses. For to speak explicitly on the matter, I would not, were I an European power, have Canada, under the conditions that Britain must ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine

... as he spoke, Amyas burst through the bushes at him. There was no time to be lost; and ere the giant could disentangle himself from the boughs and shrubs, Eustace had slipped off his long cloak, thrown it over Amyas's head, and ran up ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... goods should be attributed to the wool and how much to the textile machinery? Can we make any sense of the notion of utility as applying to one of these things, taken by itself? And, if not, how can we explain the price of a thing like wool in terms of utility and cost, since we cannot disentangle its cost from that of mutton, nor its utility from that of a great ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson

... again and again while he spoke, and it seemed to her that she saw in him such great knowledge and tenderness as made her glad; and how he could understand the follies that men had done, and fathom what real meaning was in them, and disentangle all the threads. He smiled as she gazed at him, and answered ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant

... presented to you for payment, you will be in a dangerous position. You may have recourse to law to disentangle yourself. If you pay the accounts, you will soon effect a compromise in ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... one soft place. Woman hides away in her bosom, close to her loving heart, the precious scrap which assures her, visibly, tangibly, unerringly, that he is hers and hers alone. Words may deceive, scenes of bliss pass away like a dream. Though ever present to the mind it requires an effort to disentangle the realities of memory from the illusions of imagination; but a letter is proof positive; there it is in black and white. You may read it again and again; you may kiss it as often as you please; you may ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... catch some shadow of all this in his thought, in a confused way? Misfortune certainly, as we have said, does form the education of the intelligence; nevertheless, it is doubtful whether Jean Valjean was in a condition to disentangle all that we have here indicated. If these ideas occurred to him, he but caught glimpses of, rather than saw them, and they only succeeded in throwing him into an unutterable and almost painful state ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... returned. It had been forgot long since and abandoned, but now, for the first time since her childhood, something there was which admonished her that perhaps she still might stroll through lands where dreams come true. The path was not wholly clear as yet, and as in her troubled mind she tried to disentangle the past from the present the sun went down behind the castle, the crouching shadows ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus

... done now. It was twenty years ago that Roger bumped into his fate in that eddy of Broadway and I was as powerless as you are now to disentangle him and keep him for myself, which, selfishly enough, of course, I wanted terribly to do. You see, he was all I had, Roger, and I was hoping we would play the game out together. But—not to have known Margarita? Never to have watched that bending droop of ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... not conceive with what untiring vigilant care Heaven will seek to disentangle the flower from the weed?—how (let me drop inadequate metaphor)—how Heaven will select for its warning chastisements that very error which the man has so blent with his virtues that he holds it a virtue itself?—how, gradually, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... tails?' where'er we be. Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks, A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books, Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms, To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims, 95 Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray Of figures,—disentangle them who may. Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie, And some odd volumes of old chemistry. Near those a most inexplicable thing, 100 With lead in the middle—I'm conjecturing How to make Henry understand; but no— I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo, This secret in the pregnant womb ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... white! Then he experienced a feeling of intense disappointment that he himself had not been born brown. By degrees his thoughts became more confused and less decided in colour—whitey-brown, in fact,—and presented a series of complicated regrets and perplexing impossibilities, in a vain effort to disentangle which he ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne

... and the canvas of his own camp-tent. To come once more, after so long an interval, amid the old things of luxury and grace that had been so long unseen wrought curiously on him. He could not fairly disentangle past and present. For the moment, as his feet fell once more on soft carpets, and his eyes glanced over gold and silver, malachite and bronze, white silk and violet damasks, he almost thought the Algerian years were a disordered dream ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... northern flora, that I began to watch for other forms of temperate-appearing life, and for a long time my ear found nothing out of harmony with the plants. The low steady hum of abundant insects was so constant that it required conscious effort to disentangle it from silence. Every few seconds there arose the cadence of a passing bee or fly, the one low and deep, the other shrill and penetrating. And now, just as I had become wholly absorbed in this fascinating game,—the kind of game which may at any moment ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... Eames some little time to disentangle himself from the ladder, and some little time longer to disentangle himself from the Sub-Warden. But as soon as he could do so unobtrusively, he rejoined his companion in the late extraordinary scene. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... same group. We can clearly see how it is that all living and extinct forms can be grouped together in one great system; and how the several members of each class are connected together by the most complex and radiating lines of affinities. We shall never, probably, disentangle the inextricable web of affinities between the members of any one class; but when we have a distinct object in view, and do not look to some unknown plan of creation, we may hope to ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... Oriental amorousness of "The Song of Solomon" into an allegory of God's love for Israel became, in the hands of Christianity, an allegory of Christ's love for His Church. But if Reason cannot always—as Bachya imagined—confirm tradition, it can explain it historically. It can disentangle the lower strands from the higher in that motley collection of national literature which, extending over many generations of authorship, streaked with strayed fragments of Aramaic, varying from the idyll of Ruth to the apocalyptic dreams ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill

... discoveries, each of which he has rapidly developed. A highly original and extremely happy conception enters his head, suggested, probably, by some odd thing he has seen. Forthwith he sets himself to analyze it and disentangle those principles that account for its peculiar happiness. He proceeds by experiment, applying his hypothesis in the most unlikely places. The significant elements of negro sculpture are found to repeat their success in the drawing ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell

... began to say something to Buchanan, when suddenly I could not hear my own voice. The great machine, with another behind us, was working at a fabulous speed and with a fabulous clatter. All that my startled senses could clearly disentangle was that the blue arc-lights above us blinked occasionally, and that folded green papers were snowing down upon the iron table far faster than the eye could follow them. Tall lads in aprons elbowed me ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... not answer but stood, her two hands clasped together on her breast, seeking to disentangle the confused group, half in ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... full length, and I got him a stick to put over his shoulders and rest his arms on. But that stick was Bill's undoing, for coming around a sudden bend in the canal he caught the full force of the wind, which knocked him flat on his back before he could disentangle himself from the stick and lower sail. It took us some time to bring him back to consciousness, and a very scared lot of boys we were for a while. However, the lesson was a good one, for after that we were very cautious ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond

... advice to young authors, to write straight off and send the MS. to the printer without correction. But in some cases he acted in a somewhat similar manner. When a sentence got hopelessly involved, he would ask himself, "now what DO you want to say?" and his answer written down, would often disentangle ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... screen or blind near the salt lick which they frequented, and he took aim at one of the Indians and shot him. The other did not stir till McArthur broke from his covert and ran. He plunged heedlessly into the top of a fallen tree, and before he could disentangle himself, he heard the crack of the Indian's rifle, and the bullet hissed close to his ear. He freed himself and ran, followed now by several other Indians, but he managed to distance them all and reached the Ohio River ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... purposes of grace, life is so constructed, as to make man feel his own weakness, and his dependance upon Divine power. The recurrence of seasons of trouble and sorrow, makes a perpetual demand upon our faith. Reason tries in vain to disentangle the intricate dispensations of Providence, and nature sinks under the force of innumerable trials, which, like successive waves beat incessantly upon it. The only resource is faith in God; and when once we grasp the sure promise, 'all things work together ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... anything more than the echoes of mine;—and for the future I shall have less and less chance against him. What shall we ever get out of her as a married woman? What would Mark Winnington—to whom she will give herself, body and soul,—allow us to get out of her? Better break with her now, and disentangle my own life!" ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... you know my theory on that point. But if we fail in that direction, we must of course fall back upon the Judsons, who are a disgustingly complicated set of people, and will take half a lifetime to disentangle, to say nothing of other men who may be working the same business, and who are pretty sure to have pinned their faith on the female branch ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... consider the whole extent of our language than any other man from its first formation. He hopes that, by comparing the works of Shakespeare with those of writers who lived at the same time, immediately preceded, or immediately followed him, he shall be able to ascertain his ambiguities, disentangle his intricacies, and recover the meaning of words now lost in the darkness ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... tame the swell and glitter both of / thought and diction. This latter fault however had insinuated itself / into my Religious Musings with such intricacy of union, that sometimes / I have omitted to disentangle the weed from the fear of snapping the / flower. A third and heavier accusation has been brought against me, that / of obscurity; but not, I think, with equal justice. An Author is obscure / when his conceptions are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... least—were not to occur for many centuries to come; that, even if some calamity were imminent, the immediate future and the very distant future were so intermingled in his discourse, that it would require the labours of commentator after commentator, for many hundred years, to disentangle them, and that their labours would be in vain; that the coming of the Son of Man, and of the Kingdom of God, of which he had spoken, were to be referred to a time thousands of years hence; though we were told in the same breath to look to ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... memory—a woman's face. And yet as he dwelt on it the image of another woman's face rose beside it, mingling with and absorbing it until the two faces seemed strangely merged the one into the other, alike and yet wholly different. And the effort to disentangle them and keep them separate was greater than his tired brain could achieve, and made his head ache more violently. Confused, and with a sudden feeling of aversion, he stirred impatiently, and the sharp pain that shot through ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... so my original offence having been purged, I need offer no apology for referring to them. There was no sort of order in the bundle of documents; you might as well look for the quality of humour in a dromedary, or of mercy in a pianist, as that of method in Paragot. I managed however to disentangle two main sets, one a series of love letters and the other disconnected notes of travel. In both ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... humanity, but soon discovered that if he wished to make any progress at all he would have to allow himself to be carried forward by the slowly moving crowd. At the corner of Twenty-second Street he managed to disentangle himself and hurried through the block, only to find a new ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... stood engrossed in thought. The wild beast instinct in him gave him intuition of danger. Elmur was playing Germany's game, but since his aim was the Count's own, it was impossible at this stage to disentangle the ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard

... body can disentangle itself from existing conditions. Each is affected by all its influences. Some are more, some less, some are so much a part that they are not conscious. These last also suffer, but without knowing why. Vital education would show them. But the factory system pervades the school ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... the names which represent the poetry of nineteenth-century romance; four stars of varying magnitudes, and one enormous cometary apparition. There was also a via lactea, from which a well-directed glass can easily disentangle certain orbs, pallid or fiery: Sainte-Beuve, a critic and analyst of moral disease and disenchantment in the Vie, Poesies et Pensees de Joseph Delorme; a singer of spiritual reverie, modest pleasures, modest griefs, and tender memories in ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... cheeks. Miss Nettie cared just enough for Frank Van Buren to be jealous of him. She wanted all his attentions herself, and so the little blonde was in something of a pet as she followed on into the house, and twisted her hat strings into a hard knot, which Frank had to disentangle for her, just as he had to kiss away the wrinkle which had gathered on her forehead. She was a beautiful little creature, scarcely larger than a child of twelve, with a pleading, helpless look in her large, blue eyes which seemed ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes

... upon a suddenly aroused instinct, came now to interrupt his work at S. Miniato, and sent him forth into outlawry. It was upon the 21st of September that he fled from Florence, under circumstances which have given considerable difficulty to his biographers. I am obliged to disentangle the motives and to set forth the details of this escapade, so far as it is possible for criticism to connect them into a coherent narrative. With this object in view, I will begin by translating what Condivi says upon ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... take me many a day yet—if days, many or few, are given me— to disentangle in anywise the proud and practised disguises of religious creeds from the instinctive arts which, grotesquely and indecorously, yet with sincerity, strove to embody them, or to relate. But I think the reader, by help even of the imperfect indications ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... desecrate his own tomb. But from whatever causes, this furious escape from popularity has involved Shaw in some perversities and refinements which are almost mere insincerities, and which make it necessary to disentangle the good he has done from the evil in this dazzling course. I will attempt some summary by stating the three things in which his influence seems to me thoroughly good and the three in which it seems bad. But for the pleasure of ending on the finer note I ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... friend. I maintain, therefore, that no one has told you forcibly enough how the very persons who justly admire your work, constantly complain of this fragmentary style of publication, which is the despair of those who have not the leisure to place your scattered sheets where they belong and disentangle the skein.* (* Owing to the irregularity with which he received and was forced to work up his material, Agassiz was often either in advance or in arrears with certain parts of his subject, so that his plates and his text did not keep pace ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... tell me the nature of your perplexity," replied the cardinal, "for there is no anxious embarrassment of mind which Divine truth cannot disentangle and allay." ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli

... speech proceeding in argument adds belief, and authority, and corroboration to our cause. As to this part there are certain fixed rules which will be divided among each separate class of causes. But it appeals to be not an inconvenient course to disentangle what is not unlike a wood, or a vast promiscuous miss of materials all jumbled together, and after that to point out how it may be suitable to corroborate each separate kind of cause, after we have drawn all our principles of argumentation from this source. All statements ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... riddle with a vengeance. It is so easy to say "I'll cut that Gordian knot!" and then pack one's tooth-brush and start off unknotting, but it is quite another matter when one comes face to face with the problem and is met by the "buts" of those who have previously been essaying to disentangle it. ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner

... the Wondersmith. For how many days he had been shut up, bound in the terrible net, in that dark closet, he did not know; but now he felt that his last hour was come. His little strength was completely worn out in efforts to disentangle himself. Once a day a door opened, and Herr Hippe placed a crust of bread and a cup of water within his reach. On this meagre fare he had subsisted. It was a hard life; but, bad as it was, it was better than the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... I can see, always arrive before they go out, and I can never tell whether to read up the page or down. It is certainly very queer that the stupidest man that breathes, one that barely escapes idiocy, can disentangle a railway guide when the brightest woman fails. Even the boots at the inn in Wells took my book, and, rubbing his frightfully dirty finger down the row of puzzling figures, found the place in a minute, and said, 'There ye are, miss.' It is very humiliating. I suppose ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... from Amsterdam to Vienna, and out of the variety of styles set forth I endeavoured to disentangle several leading characteristics. The son of a well-known Berlin family, his father a comfortably situated manufacturer, the young Max was brought up in an atmosphere of culture and family affection. His love for art was so pronounced that his father, like the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... way a still more influential school seeks essential Christianity in the sphere of the ethical life. It also would disentangle religion from cosmology and formal philosophy. It studies the historic development of the Church, noting how element after element has been introduced into the simplicity of the gospel, and from all these it would turn back to the Bible ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... of the last-named no doubt strengthened his determination to try prose romance. He had never cared mach for his own poems, he says, Byron had outdone him in popularity, and the Muse—"the Good Demon" who once deserted Herrick—came now less eagerly to his call. It is curiously difficult to disentangle the statements about the composition of "Waverley." Our first authority, of course, is Scott's own account, given in the General Preface to the Edition of 1829. Lockhart, however, remarks on the haste with which ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... although in the revised version he indicates that it was composed by someone else. In this instance due acknowledgment may have been easy; but in many other places it may have been extraordinarily difficult for the author/editor to disentangle his own words and ideas from those of ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson

... But the Augsburg compromise, cujus regio, ejus religio, was a frank subordination of the Church to secular authority. The Tudor sovereigns adopted the doctrine with alacrity, and imposed on the Church of England a subjection to secular authority from which it has not yet been able to disentangle itself. ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various

... America. It was a fantastic thought, and he attempted to dismiss it, waiting for more secure knowledge, but it persisted. She had been killed by unfamiliar circumstances, tradition, emotions. In some manner, but how he was unable to disentangle from the pressures of mere curiosity and conjecture, Nettie Vollar—or rather Gerrit's old passing affair with Nettie—had entered into the unhappy occurrence. After an hour's vain search he gave up all effort to pierce the darkness until he had actual ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer



Words linked to "Disentangle" :   slick down, roll out, groom, order, loosen, comb, disengage, straighten out, free, slick, tease, tease apart, untangle, entangle, unsnarl, unwind, ravel



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