"Obscure" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... obscure dramatic presentation, an early and rudimentary draft of Book I. was published in 1910. It has since been entirely re-written. Book II., written 1919-22, has not been printed hitherto. Though the work was not conceived with a view to stage-production, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... in a moment's time a cloud obscure Steams from the bottom of some marshy dale, Which the sun's visage, late so bright and pure, Mantles all over with its dingy veil; So that poor damsel, sentenced to endure, Without, the pelting shower and blustering gale, Is seen to change her ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule— From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE—out ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Emmanuel followed her, and in the antechamber were visible the rough faces of seven or eight half-naked sailors. At the sight of these men the Englishman started and advanced a step; then restrained himself, and retired into the farthest and most obscure corner of the apartment. Madame Morrel sat down by her husband and took one of his hands in hers, Julie still lay with her head on his shoulder, Emmanuel stood in the centre of the chamber and seemed to form the link between Morrel's family and ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is still most noble found, Most noble still most incomplete; Sad law, which leaves King Love uncrown'd In this obscure, terrestrial seat! With bale more sweet than others' bliss, And bliss more wise than others' bale, The secrets of the world are his. And freedom without let or pale. O, zealous good, O, virtuous glee, Religious, and without alloy, O, privilege high, which none ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... adds a corollary to the argument:—'Would you punish your enemy, you should allow him to escape unpunished'—this is the true retaliation. (Compare the obscure verse of Proverbs, 'Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him,' ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... the law in his hands. No matter how gnarled, warped or obscure were the paths to its lurking-places, he would find them all out, and pluck out all its meanings, and make its soul his own. He had already learned from his brother the fallacy of the vulgar judgment of the law, and he knew enough of history to know that some of the wisest ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... was deposited. From Rev. Richard Mather, the most noted pastor of the church of that period, to the humblest contemporary of his who enjoyed the rights and priveleges of a free-holder, none was so mean or obscure that a characteristic, if not fitting, epitaph did not mark the place of his sepulture. From the many well worth perusing, the following are singled and transcribed for ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... brilliant and glorious future; let them not, then, grudge me a happy one, at least. Since I am never to be a queen, I will at least be a happy and beloved wife. If I am condemned to live in obscurity and lowliness, at the very least, I must not be prohibited from adorning this obscure and inglorious existence with flowers, which thrive not at the foot of the throne, and to illuminate it with stars more sparkling than the refulgence of the ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... me the honor of consulting me on the phenomenon in question. In France I had published a two-volume work, in quarto, entitled The Mysteries of the Great Ocean Depths. Well received in scholarly circles, this book had established me as a specialist in this pretty obscure field of natural history. My views were in demand. As long as I could deny the reality of the business, I confined myself to a flat "no comment." But soon, pinned to the wall, I had to explain myself straight out. And in this vein, "the ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... had gone to its training table at "Mother" Burke's, in the village, and the second ate its meals in the center of the school dining hall with an illy concealed sense of self-importance. And the grinds sneered at its appetites, and the obscure juniors admired reverently from afar. Joel had attended both recitations and practice with exemplary and impartial regularity, and as a result his class standing was growing better and better on one hand, and on the other his muscles were becoming stronger, his flesh ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... here seldom witnessed. In the public schools, the daughters of all, rich or poor, high or low, mingle for literary instruction. A mighty arm is thus raised to level that barrier, which in other lands, rises even between the cradles of the titled and the obscure. ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... to examine the contents of this paper took possession of Mr. Mandeville, and in spite of the breach of good manners, and the violation of every principle of honor, he retired to an obscure corner of his garden, opened and read so much of the epistle as was intelligible to him, which ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... inconsistancy in this scheme of things: Just as the train emerged from a deep valley of slag-hills and swung into a long curve, passengers on the left side had a panoramic view of the city—a frozen scene of battle between geometrical monsters, made remote and obscure by the dust of a thousand thousand merely human struggles, too small to be visible from the crusty windows of the train by the merely human eye. They had about one second in which to absorb this ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... all to whom knowledge was dear. Even among the Christians he had many friends. Among us—I mean in our library—he also obtained great respect. I owe him many a hint, much aid; I mean in referring me to rare books, and explaining obscure passages. When he no longer visited us, I missed him sorely. I am not curious; or do you think I am? I am not curious, but I could not help inquiring about him, and then I heard very bad things. Women are to blame ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... principal authors and men of letters are not unknown to me, I have never read nor heard of any of those I saw in the list, except two or three as editors of some newspapers, magazines, or trifling and scurrilous party pamphlets. I made this observation to Fontanes, who replied that these men, though obscure, had, during the last peace, been very useful, and would be still more so after another pacification; and that Bonaparte must be satisfied with these until he could gain over men of greater talents. He granted also that men of true genius and literary eminence were, in England, more careful ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... seemed to be bows and arrows. The march was a very weary one, and through a wild, mountainous country which would have been impassable for men who did not know it thoroughly. Occasionally they seemed to be following obscure paths, but as often there was no sign of a track, and the thick, tropical vegetation made progress difficult. For an hour or two they climbed up the half-dry bed of a mountain torrent, and more than once ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... suspicion is horrible to me. How stupid the world is! There are times when I feel disgusted with everything, myself included! I'm getting old. I'm a failure. I'm losing my time and wasting my life over this ridiculous paper, which will never be anything but an obscure rag. I shall have done for ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... of comparatively little importance who painted the picture. The controversy, which is not yet finished, serves for the most part merely to obscure the essential fact that here is the picture still in its own place, and that it is beautiful. Very lovely, indeed, she is, Madonna of Happiness, and still at her feet the poor may pray, and still on her dim throne she may see day come and evening fall. Far up in the obscure height ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... many more things to this purpose, but I see no need of such a trouble, since no man can rationally doubt of the goodness of my Observation. Therefore, in short, let him that writes Pastorals think brevity, if it doth not obscure his sense, to be the greatest ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... open his hands to grasp it, dazzled him for one little moment. As in a flash he saw himself Lord of Babbiano. He beheld a proud career of knightly deeds that should cause his name and that of Babbiano to ring throughout the length and breadth of Italy. From the obscure state that it was, his patriotism and his skill as a condottiero should render it one of the great Italian powers—the rival of Florence, of Venice or Milan. He had a vision of widened territories, and of neighbouring lords becoming ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... are our efforts to translate Homer. From Chapman to Avia, or Mr. William Morris, they are all eminently conscientious, and erroneous, and futile. Chapman makes Homer a fanciful, euphuistic, obscure, and garrulous Elizabethan, but Chapman has fire. Pope makes him a wit, spirited, occasionally noble, full of points, and epigrams, and queer rococo conventionalisms. Cowper makes him slow, lumbering, a Milton without the music. Maginn ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... alms of passing pilgrims. He saluted our leader as an old acquaintance, and mounting on a camel, offered to guide us on our way during the night. It is no easy matter at any time, even for the Arabs, to find the way in a direct line across the boundless Desert; and when clouds obscure the stars, it is almost impossible without a compass. The old recluse, on seeing white strangers, cast a look of disgust and disdain at us, expressing his surprise that any true believers should allow infidel Nazarenes to remain in their company. But our leader only laughed, ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... literary merit. Whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allusions, local customs, or temporary opinions, have for many years been lost; and every topick of merriment or motive of sorrow, which the modes of artificial life afforded him, now only obscure the scenes which they once illuminated. The effects of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of his friendships and his enmities has perished; his works support no opinion with arguments, nor supply any faction with invectives; ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... the man and the woman, Fear and Love as the King had called them, were waiting to weave into the warp and woof of life a pattern which would never fade; Amboise, where an end was to come—he had forgotten to ask Commines what end—an end which in some obscure way was to serve Commines and serve France. "If I lift a finger he hangs," said the King. That, no doubt, was the human slime of the gutter who had roused Commines' contempt, and yet who was his passport to the castle. A pretty passport, and one not much to his credit, ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... which Italy might not have produced if she had been united, and if the little states had loved themselves less and Italy more. Though, after all, there is the doubt whether it is not better to bless one's obscure and happy children with peace and safety, than to give to the world a score of great names at the cost to millions of ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... dark when the train arrived at Ulm, though the tourists obtained an obscure view of the Danube, on which the city is located. After supper, Professor Mapps gave a brief account of the place to the students. It is a fortress and frontier city of Wuertemberg, on the right bank of the Danube, ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... clear, from the moment he's 'amusing,' it's on the footing of a thesis as simple and superficial as that of 'A Doll's House'—while from the moment he's by apparent intention comprehensive and searching it's on the footing of an effect as confused and obscure as 'The Wild Duck.' From which you easily see ALL the conditions can't be met. The dramatist has to choose but those he's most capable of, and by ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... having many tastes and convictions in common, became fast friends. In 1653, the former returned to England, and for some time acted as tutor to Mistress Fairfax; he being an excellent scholar, and a great master of the Latin tongue. He now led a peaceful and obscure life until 1657. In that year, Milton, "laying aside," as he wrote, "those jealousies, and that emulation which mine own condition might suggest to me," introduced him to Bradshaw; soon after which he was made assistant-secretary to Milton, who was then ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... dialogue comedy (Mr. Pett Ridge); a panorama of selected landscape, a vision of the sordid street, a record of heroism, a remote tradition or some old belief vitalized by its bearing on our lives to-day, an analysis of an obscure calling, a glimpse at a forgotten quarter ... but one thing it can never be—it can never be 'a novel ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... inverted in Longfellow's case? I think not. He had lived a virtuous and industrious life, not studying for rank or honor, but because he enjoyed doing what was right and fit for a young man to do; and now the reward had come to him, like the sun breaking through the clouds which seemed to obscure his future prospects. Still, there was a hard road before him. It is very pleasant to travel rapidly through foreign countries, seeing the best that is in them and to return home with a multitude of fresh impressions; but living and working a long time in another country seems too much ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... year 1754, there was living, in an obscure workshop in Paris, on the crowded Quai des Orfevres, an engraver by the name of Gratien Phlippon. He had married a very beautiful woman, whose placid temperament and cheerful content contrasted strikingly with the ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... his poems, I believe the "Pilgrims of the Sun," had dabbled a little in metaphysics, and like his heroes, had got into the clouds. Blackwood, who began to affect criticism, argued stoutly with him as to the necessity of omitting or elucidating some obscure passage. Hogg ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... 'the grenade!' proclaiming in a breath both the danger and the cause. But an instant before, the swelling canvas, the dusky spars, and the faint lines of the cordage, were only to be traced by the glimmering light of the stars; and now the whole hamper of the ship was the more conspicuous, from the obscure back-ground against which it was drawn in distinct lines. The sight was fearfully beautiful;—beautiful, for it showed the symmetry and fine outlines of the vessel's rig, resembling the effect of a group ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... and veered and fluttered like fire-flies in the damp, dewy shadows of some moist meadow in summer. The sound of clattering hoofs and rumbling wheels, of tinkling guitars and gay roundelays, rose out of that obscure distance, seeming far off and plaintive like the dream of a life that is past. The great church seemed a vast world; the long aisles of statued pinnacles with their pure floorings of white marble appeared as if they might be the corridors ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... which the doors of the chamber, where it was deposited, were afterwards secured, had compelled her to believe, that Montoni, not daring to confide the secret of her death to any person, had suffered her remains to decay in this obscure chamber. The ceremony of the veil, however, and the circumstance of the doors having been left open, even for a moment, had occasioned her much wonder and some doubts; but these were not sufficient to overcome her suspicion of Montoni; and it was the dread of his terrible vengeance, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... man of Grimbal's calibre presently blunted the edge of his loss, and successful developments of business also served to occupy him during the visit he paid to Africa; but no interests as yet had arisen to obscure or dull his hatred of Will Blanchard. The original blaze of rage sank to a steady, abiding fire, less obviously tremendous than that first conflagration, but in reality hotter. In a nature unsubtle, revenge ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... about ten o'clock and went immediately to the corner where he had marked the vacant grave early in the morning. It was on the obscure side of the tower, screened to a great extent from the view of passers along the road—a spot which until lately had been abandoned to heaps of stones and bushes of alder, but now it was cleared and made orderly ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... I was a young man," the record began, "I devoted all my leisure and a good deal of time that ought to have been given to other studies to the investigation of curious and obscure branches of knowledge. What are commonly called the pleasures of life had never any attractions for me, and I lived alone in London, avoiding my fellow-students, and in my turn avoided by them as a man self-absorbed and unsympathetic. So ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... be examined the signification of those three very obscure lines which immediately follow the description, already ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... toward intellectual greatness as to allow to Milton, Addison, and Shakspeare modest monuments behind a door. The place is called the Poets' Corner; and so famed and celebrated is this vast edifice every where, that the phrase by which even this obscure and insignificant portion of it is known is familiar to every ear and every ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... are very obscure, and of course the poetry of the century closing in 1870 has much in common with earlier Italian poetry. Parini did not begin it, nor Alfieri; it began them, and its spirit must have been felt in the perfumed air of the soft Lorrainese despotism at Florence when Filicaja ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... of the self-made man in the abstract. It is the true spirit of Americanism which caused him to raise himself from the ranks of the poor and obscure, and educate himself, or, more likely still, grow rich without education. But is it necessary for him to have the bad taste to boast of it, and never let you forget for one moment that he is the product of man's hand and that the ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... and to the anti-christian deist, blasphemous heretic, or any who maintain doctrines, principles and opinions contrary to, and eversive of the cardinal and fundamental doctrines of Christianity, or such principles and practices as oppose, obscure or darken the church's beauty and purity, and spoil her of her power, and particularly that of the church of Scotland, in her attainments in reformation; this being evidently destructive and ruinous to truth and holiness, the only foundation and basis of external union and ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... introduce me to some of his great friends, and says he knows many great ladies who would receive me with open arms if I would go to their houses; but, seriously, I cannot see that this sort of society produces so good an effect on him as to tempt me in the least to try the same experiment, so I remain obscure. ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... has stated that he "was descended from the Douglasses of Pettendreich" (Laing's Knox, i. 286 n.) Principal Lee has said: "All the accounts of Douglas which I have ever seen in modern books abound with errors. He is represented as having been an obscure Carmelite friar whom the Earl of Argyle chose to employ as his chaplain, and for whom the Archbishop of St Andrews expressed the strongest aversion. He was quite a different man—a man of family undoubtedly, and most probably related to James Douglas the Earl of Morton, son of Sir George Douglas ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... April 30th, 1867, that an expedition left Shanghai bound for Corea. The aims of that expedition seemed rather obscure to many of the foreign residents at the port of departure, as little faith was reposed in the commander. Still, it must be said for its members that until they departed they played their role well. Corea was then practically a closed country; ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... personal modesty they deprecated it, or, on the other hand, they accepted it as a gratification to their personal vanity. In either case, they equally misapprehended their true and valid title to worship, which, while personal qualities might enhance or partially obscure it, was itself in root more than personal, and consisted in the martyr and mother sex which so peculiarly sacrificed and consecrated them to the interests of humanity as to draw to them the homage and loyalty of all men ...
— A Positive Romance - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... gaining for him the reputation of being an excellent jumper. The eclipse passed off, so also did the earthquake, but the villagers all declared that it was the jumping of the invalid that caused the phenomena of nature to cease, and after that, instead of being an obscure cripple, an object of charity to his neighbors, he arose to the dignity of being one of the greatest of "Ongootkoots." If any of the inhabitants were taken ill, the cripple's aid was solicited, and he would jump around the sick one ...
— Short Sketches from Oldest America • John Driggs
... virginity of the child of Felim foolish or unwise, for it was made solemnly by the Ultonians in obedience to the united voice of the Druids of Ulla, men who see deeply into the hidden causes of things and the obscure relations of events, of which we men of war ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... stately feathers on his head gleaming fitfully in the clare-obscure of the cavern. "That is why I came! Then the British government could demand no satisfaction for the life of the British subject—an accident—the old chief of Tennessee Town killed with him. ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... and twelve feet to the foundation of the Cave Hotel. The united thickness of the limestone beds on this part of Green River, is about two hundred and thirty feet, capped with eighty feet of sandstone. About midway of the section on this part of Green River, are limestones of an obscure oolitic structure, but no true oolite was observed. Many of these limestones are of such composition as to be acted on freely by the elements of the atmosphere, which, in the form of nitric acid, combine with the earthy and alkaline ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... let not Echo bear the mournful sounds To where old Tagus rolls his yellow sands, Or Betis, crowned with olives, pours his flood, But here, 'midst rocks and precipices deep, Or to obscure and silent vales removed, On shores by human footsteps never trod, Where the gay sun ne'er lifts his radiant orb, Or with the envenomed face of savage beasts That range the howling wilderness for food, Will I proclaim the story of my woes— Poor privilege of grief!—while echoes hoarse Catch the ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... who was carried prisoner from Alexandria to Diu in India, &c. These copies differ in several respects besides the title. That by Ramusio is altered in several places both in the substance and diction, which in many parts of that edited by Aldus is obscure. Yet that edition is of use to correct some errors of the press in Ramusio. Our translation is from the text of Aldus, but we have marked the variations in that of Ramusio, and have likewise divided the journal into sections, as done ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... which includes the wood-tick, cattle-tick, etc., and mites, are quickly told from the higher orders—true spiders and scorpions—by their rounded bodies, which appear like mere sacks, with little appearance of segmentation, and their small, obscure heads. The mites alone, of all the Arachinida, pass through a marked metamorphosis. Thus the young mite has only six legs, while the mature form has eight. The bee mite is very small, not more than one-fiftieth of an inch ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 417 • Various
... the English ferns, but the natural history of all our land species, are now well-nigh exhausted. Our home botanists and ornithologists are spending their time now, perforce, in verifying a few obscure species, and bemoaning themselves, like Alexander, that there are no more worlds left to conquer. For the geologist, indeed, and the entomologist, especially in the remoter districts, much remains to be done, but only at a heavy outlay of time, labour, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... homestead planted on its slope, I said to the dwellers in that hamlet, or in that homestead, "You see that vapor which ascends from the summit of the mountain. That vapor may become a dense, black smoke, that will obscure the sky. You see the trickling of lava from the crevices in the side of the mountain. That trickling of lava may become a river of fire. You hear that muttering in the bowels of the mountain. That muttering may become a bellowing thunder, the voice of violent convulsion, that may shake half a continent. ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... people had anglicized themselves as thoroughly into liking three-volume stories, as they have in other things, it would be a pleasure to trace the next ten years of Peter's life; for his growing reputation makes this period a far easier matter to chronicle than the more obscure beginnings already recorded. If his own life did not supply enough material we could multiply our characters, as did Dickens, or journey sideways, into little essays, as did Thackeray. His life ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... such a family—pinched and obscure, yet with its own proud record, and inherited consciousness of an unbroken loyalty to a once persecuted faith—and this modern world of ours struck me as an admirable subject for a novel. I thought about it next day, all through a long ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lost his balance in this direction, as so many have lost it in the opposite one. He has never ignored beauty, but he has neglected it in the desire for significance. He has never meant to be rugged, but he has become so, in the exercise of strength. He has never intended to be obscure, but he has become so from the condensation of style which was the excess of significance and of strength. Habit grows on us by degrees till its slight invisible links form an iron chain, till it ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... of the most curious revolutions in literary history is the sudden bull's-eye light cast by M. Longnon on the obscure existence of Francois Villon[6]. His book is not remarkable merely as a chapter of biography exhumed after four centuries. To readers of the poet it will recall, with a flavour of satire, that characteristic passage in which he bequeaths his spectacles—with a humorous reservation ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Indians. For himself, he assumed the character of a redresser of grievances and champion of the injured. He pretended to feel a patriotic indignation at the affronts heaped upon Spaniards by a family of obscure and arrogant foreigners; and professed to free the natives from tributes wrung from them by these rapacious men for their own enrichment, and contrary to the beneficent intentions of the Spanish monarchs. He connected himself closely with the Carib cacique Manicaotex, brother of the ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... subject is without question obscure and many more and very careful observations are needed before really satisfactory explanations can be given for these phenomena. That it is a reaction which is related to the primitiveness of the mental content and the intellectual deficit in stupor would seem to be a reasonable view, ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... understand the Not-Self; but either is grasped, either is thrown aside, as it serves, or fails to serve, the needs of the moment. Often the man, in whom will is predominant, does not know how he gains the object he is aiming at; it comes to his hands, but the "how" is obscure to him; he willed to have it, and nature gives it to him. This is also seen in Yoga in the man of Ahamkara, the sub-type of will in cognition. Just as in the man of Ahamkara, Buddhi and Manas are subordinate, ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... affidavit and disappeared, there is no such thing as ever finding him again! A 'copy of the complaint' is 'served' in the same way; or, the 'summons' is published once a week for a month in the smallest type of the smallest obscure weekly paper to be found. This latter device, however, is adopted only when the plaintiff (having some moral scruples about too much perjury at once) charges 'desertion,' and desires to appear quite ignorant of unnatural defendant's present place of abode. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... he must have his reasons for being in any particular place," remarked M. Dudouis, "and, in this case, his reasons seem to me obscure. The writing-desk has not been broken open nor the pocketbook stolen. There is even gold left lying on ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... call for this extended reply which I hope will be of service to you. If I have left anything obscure that you would like to know about, or if I can assist you in any other ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... from "calling things by their right names;" neither has he sought to curry favor, in any quarter, by fulsome adulation on the one side, nor undue denunciation on the other, either of the living, or of the dead. But, while tracing the history of the Great Conspiracy, from its obscure birth in the brooding brains of a few ambitious men of the earliest days of our Republic, through the subsequent years of its devolution, down to the evil days of Nullification, and to the bitter and bloody period of armed ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... the bead end of the curling-pin fasten it to the lower side of the letter; then turn it over and fasten it down in the middle, letting the point turn outward. Set the ferns on the letters in such a way as not to obscure their form, i. e., the form of the letters. If the motto is made in white wax it should be frosted ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... myself confronted with a subject which is not only highly interesting, but somewhat difficult: not that the subject is obscure; but it presupposes in the reader a certain knowledge of geometry: a strong meat too often neglected. I am not addressing geometricians, who are generally indifferent to questions of instinct, nor entomological collectors, who, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Canadian contingent. Indeed Algonquin had not waited to know, but was going to offer one herself whether the rest of Canada was loyal or not. And on the very day that Britain entered the Great War, this little obscure town, set far away north in a ring of forest and lake, was calling her sons to go over seas and help the Mother Land. And it was the sound of her drums that had penetrated to the hills of Orchard Glen and had set Gavin Grant's heart throbbing ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... The anxiety of the servants to preserve their incognito, the carriage without blazon, the obscure place where it was drawn up, and the advanced hour of the night, all inspired the chevalier with a sentiment of mistrust; but reflecting that he gave his arm to a woman, and had a sword by his side, he got in boldly. The mask sat down by him, and ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... not bright, and its lower part is not obscure. Ceaseless in its action, it yet cannot be named, and then it again returns and becomes nothing. This is called the Form of the Formless, and the Semblance of the Invisible; this is called the ...
— Tao Teh King • Lao-Tze
... immediate domain, the Austrian dukes and their officials had no notion of the rigid system maintained in Burgundy. Only here and there can little memoranda be found and these are confused and obscure. There is a dearth of accurate records like those voluminous registers of outlays kept by Burgundian receivers, registers so rich in detail that they are more valuable for the historian than ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... convinced himself alone. The tiny volume which contained their results was neglected by everybody but the author, who, to the end of his days, loved it with the love of a mother for a deformed child. It is written, to say the truth, in a painful and obscure style; it is the work of a man who has brooded over his own thoughts in solitude till he cannot appreciate the need of a clear exposition. The narrowness of his reading had left him in ignorance of the new aspects under which ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... found it was painfully sensible to his more susceptible companion, the lady-teacher. It was not merely in the cold light of her diamond eyes, but in all her movements, in her graceful postures as she sat, in her costume, and, he sometimes thought, even in her speech, that this obscure and exceptional character betrayed itself. When Helen had said, that, if they were living in times when human beings were subject to possession, she should have thought there was something not human about Elsie, it struck an unsuspected vein of thought in his own mind, which ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... gives a curious literary anecdote of the sort of imitation by which an inferior mind becomes the monkey of an original writer. At Rome, when Sallust was the fashionable writer, short sentences, uncommon words, and an obscure brevity, were affected as so many elegances. Arruntius, who wrote the history of the Punic Wars, painfully laboured to imitate Sallust. Expressions which are rare in Sallust are frequent in Arruntius, and, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the road. Now the trees did not obscure the view, and one could see the sky and the distance. As though covered with a veil all nature was hidden in a transparent, colourless haze through which her beauty peeped gaily; where the mist was thicker and whiter it lay heaped unevenly about the stones, stalks, and bushes ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... files of newspapers for the true records of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, I have caught occasional glimpses of a plot perhaps more wide in its outlines than that of either, which has lain obscure in the darkness of half a century, traceable only in the political events which dated from it, and the utter incorrectness of the scanty traditions which assumed to preserve it. And though researches ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... indeed appear formidable to a wretch like Del Ferice, dependent upon a system of daily treachery for the very bread he ate. But in those days the wheel of fortune was beginning to turn, and far-sighted men prophesied that many an obscure individual would one day be playing the part of a great personage. Years would still elapse before the change, but the change would ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... in their letters to Cromwell, must be shaken in detail, or else it must be accepted as correct. We cannot dream that Archbishop Morton was mistaken, or was misled by false information. St. Albans was no obscure priory in a remote and thinly-peopled county. The Abbot of St. Albans was a peer of the realm, taking precedence of bishops, living in the full glare of notoriety, within a few miles of London. The archbishop had ample means of ascertaining the truth; ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... up a number of informations which, considering the dignity and power of his office, may obscure this truth and give some color to his case, as he is confident that it has done—and as he has likewise done in other matters, as he has used such bold and excessive measures ever since his arrival in this country. In this manner ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... space in the kitchen of a squalid, crowded East Side tenement. It was the living-room of her poverty-stricken landlady's family; and she had to wait until they all left it, sometimes late at night, before she dragged her bed out of an obscure corner and flung it on the floor for her long-desired sleep. Supper with the landlady cost her 20 cents a night. Sadie's breakfasts and dinners depended absolutely upon her income and her other expenses. As in the weeks when she was earning $3 she had only ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... life together. Now that dream had come to an end. Ericson, of course, would naturally desire to recover his position in South America; but even if he were to succeed he could hardly expect Helena to settle down to a life in an obscure and foetid South American town. Sir Rupert took this for granted. He did not argue it out. It came to his eyes as a certain, unarguable fact. He knew that his daughter was unconventional, but he construed ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... the waves the freighted argosy Securely plunges, when the lode star's light Her path makes clear, and as, when angry clouds Obscure the guide that leads her on her way, She strikes the hidden rock and all is lost, So he of whom I sing—favoured of God, By disobedience dimmed the light divine That shone with bright effulgence like the sun, ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... Lord? Well, there are dreams and dreams, Are those of BURNS much worse than those of WEMYSS? Are WESTMINSTER's vain visions, though mature The dreamer, less absurd or more obscure Than those of some "young man" who dares to hope That he with crowded London's ills can cope? "Behold this dreamer cometh!" So of old The sons of JACOB, envious, scornful, cold, And fearful for their privilege of birth And of possession, in derisive mirth, Cried at young JOSEPH's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 12, 1892 • Various
... GREAT MEN who will smile at seeing these observations connected with a subject so humble and obscure as the boiling of potatoes, but GOOD MEN will feel that the subject is not unworthy of ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... states of Italy, her cities and communities of the Middle Ages, were those who cherished most their native painters, and the names of many of those who covered the glowing canvases of Italy with immortal work are known often from the designation of some obscure township where they were born, and where they found their first generous recognition and support Here in this great Province, full of the institutions and churches founded and built by the piety of past centuries, as well as by the men now living, there should be far more ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... objections manifest in Glad's room above. There was a small red fire in the grate, a strip of old, but gay carpet before it, two chairs and a table were covered with a harlequin patchwork made of bright odds and ends of all sizes and shapes. The fog in all its murky volume could not quite obscure the brightness of the often rubbed window and its harlequin curtain drawn across upon ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... night. My comment on Warren's folly was a dose of quinine. It's astonishing how these savants, these intellectual giants, need taking care of like babies. Woman's mission will never cease as long as there are learned men in the world. They will sit in a draught and discuss some obscure law concerning the moons of Jupiter; but when the law resulting in influenza manifests itself, then ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... who was born at Lancaster, Fairfield County, in 1820, was like his comrade and beloved friend Grant in the poverty he was born to. But his family was of historical distinction, while Grant's had always been obscure, and his father died a judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio. As he died poor, his large family of children were left to their mother, whose means were not equal to their maintenance and education. Thomas Ewing, the great man of the ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... saliferous deposits—the accumulation of salt, gypsum, and nitrate of soda. This is a problem that has excited much discussion among geologists, and which, in spite of many valuable observations, still remains to a great extent very obscure. Among the important considerations insisted upon by Darwin is that relating to the absence of marine shells in beds associated with such deposits. He justly argues that if the strata were formed in shallow ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... the non-Watt four-bar linkages appeared shortly after 1800. The origin of the grasshopper beam motion is somewhat obscure, although it came to be associated with the name of Oliver Evans, the American pioneer in the employment of high-pressure steam. A similar idea, employing an isosceles linkage, was patented in 1803 by William Freemantle, ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... picture is found to be a mosaic made up of bits gathered here and there, scattered throughout the Book. Some of the bits are of very quiet sober colors found in obscure corners. Others are bright. When brought together all blend into one with wondrous, fine beauty. The first bit is of grave hue. It comes at the very beginning. There is to be sharp enmity, then a crisis, ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... her. "And who art thou?" she said; "Why dost thou join our ghostly fleet Arrayed in living red? We are the ships of sorrow Who spend the weary night, Until the dawn of Judgment Day, Obscure and still ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... speaks respectfully of the great men she met at Weimar; but I do not think she worshipped them, since she did not fully understand them,—especially Fichte, whom she ridiculed, as well as other obscure though profound writers, who disdained style and art in writing, for which she was afterwards so distinguished. I believe nine-tenths of German literature is wasted on Europeans for lack of clearness and directness of style; although the involved obscurities which are common to German philosophers ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... obedience. If George III would not reply to their petitions until they laid down their arms, they could manage to get on without a king. If England, as Horace Walpole admitted, would not take them seriously and speakers in Parliament called them obscure ruffians and cowards, so ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... flattened place which may have been used for such sacrifices. From it runs a little crack in the boulder, which has been artificially enlarged and may have been intended to carry off the blood of the victim killed on top of the rock. It is still used for occult ceremonies of obscure origin which are quietly practiced here by the more superstitious Indian women of the valley, possibly in memory of the nusta or Inca princess for whom the shrine ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... an Indian, and a young man of obscure birth—wholly uneducated, and, generally speaking, a savage, though a harmless one," said the lady, returning to the charge. "Now, Redbud, you cannot fail to perceive that it is impossible for you to marry an Indian ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... several works. Dankovsky in his work, Die Griechen als Sprachverwandte der Slaven, Presburg 1828, contends that a knowledge of the Slavic language is of the highest importance for the Greek scholar, as the only means by which he may be enabled to clear up obscure passages and to ascertain the signification of doubtful words. Among the historical proofs, he furnishes a vocabulary containing 306 Slavic and Greek words of striking analogy. "Of three sisters," he observes, "one kept faithful to her mother tongue—the Slavic language; the second gave to ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... for Chrysophrasia. She enjoys it after her own fashion. It is a little disconnected. The relation between cause and effect is a little obscure. She is fragmentary. She is a series of unfinished sketches in various manners. She has her being in the past tense, and her future, if she could have it after her taste, would be the past made present. She has many aspirations, and few of them are realized, but all of them are sketched ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... borrow that vivacity, which we diffuse over the correlative idea. But when we have not observed a sufficient number of instances, to produce a strong habit; or when these instances are contrary to each other; or when the resemblance is not exact; or the present impression is faint and obscure; or the experience in some measure obliterated from the memory; or the connexion dependent on a long chain of objects; or the inference derived from general rules, and yet not conformable to them: In all ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... the sun of dawn was shining in the cavern, although it was at its best a somewhat obscure sun, and the dawn itself was full of chill. When he went outside he found that heavy clouds were floating above the mountains and masses of vapor hung low over the valley, almost hiding the forest, which was thickest at the northern end and ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... was unable to leave her bed. In this letter he had informed her that he had been connected with the robbery of the bank at Geneva, and that he had succeeded in eluding all pursuit, and was now hiding in some obscure place in the state ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... of the characters in the famous "Scenes de la Vie de Boheme," draws attention to the circumstance that Henri Murger's consumption of coffee was so excessive as to bring on fever and delirium. Exhaustion and nervousness followed; and finally he was attacked by an obscure disorder of the sympathetic nerves which control the veins, at times turning his whole body to the colour of purple. The doctors who treated him seem to have known nothing of the ailment, for they dosed him with sulphur and aconite. He died a horrible—and ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade
... over a year ago a small steamer swung to at a Seattle wharf, and emptied a flood of eager passengers upon the dock. It was an obscure craft, making infrequent trips round the Aleutian Islands (which form the farthest western point of the United States) to the mouth of a practically unknown river called the Yukon, which empties into the ocean near the post of St. Michaels, on the northwestern ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... of Franz was soon forgotten, but although he died obscure and penniless he left a rich legacy. For he taught the hill-people three songs, the songs he had sung at Court in honour of Princess Kunigmunde, and they never died. They spread from the hills to the plains, from ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... believe that the experiments and subtleties of human wisdom are more likely to obscure than to enlighten the revealed will of God, and that he is the most accomplished Christian scholar who has been educated at the feet of Jesus and in the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... it either. He had an obscure sense of that joyous madness which arises from poverty itself, like a dim but wonderful dream of reaching the light. And he could not understand why it failed; and yet he must always follow that impetus upward which resided in him, and scramble up once more. Yet otherwise his knowledge ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... principals; the teachers' institutes to which the poor teacher was forced to pay her scanty dollars. There were bulletins, rules, counter-rules. As she talked, Sommers caught the atmosphere of the great engine to which she had given herself. A mere isolated atom, she was set in some obscure corner of this intricate machine, and she was compelled to revolve with the rest, as the rest, in the fear of disgrace and of hunger. The terms "special teachers," "grades of pay," "constructive work," "discipline," ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... extremely witty things in it. The jokes were about bishops in gaiters, about garden-parties, about curates or lovely young ladies or rectors' wives and rustics, about Royal Academicians or esthetic poets. Their humor appealed to him as little and seemed as obscure as his had seemed ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in that than in any other church of Europe: nor from those most learned universities which constantly send forth men endued with every form of virtue. And these seminaries would produce a still greater number of inestimable scholars hereafter if sordidness did not obscure the splendid light, corruption interrupt, and certain truckling harpies and beggars envy them their usefulness. Nor can any one be so blind as not to perceive this—any so stolid as not to understand ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Testimony were entred in that Court, though these execrable Tyrants burnt many of them that there might be little or nothing prov'd as a cause of those great Devastations and Evils perpetrated by them. For the Minister of Justice who have hitherto lived in India, through their obscure and damnable blindness, were not much sollicitous about the punishment of the Crimes and Butcheries which have been and are still committed by these Tyrants, only they may say possibly because such a one, and such a one hath wickedly and barbarously dealt with the Indians, ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... to far Dodona's shrine, Being fall fain to learn what deed or word Would win him favour from the powers of heaven. But they came back repeating oracles Mystic, ambiguous, inscrutable, Till, at the last, an utterance direct, Obscure no more, was brought to Inachus— A peremptory charge to fling me forth Beyond my home and fatherland, a thing Sent loose in banishment o'er all the world; And—should he falter—Zeus should launch on him A fire-eyed bolt, to shatter and consume Himself ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... Shetland Islands, found himself on a small island of the latter group, caught in a storm of wind and hail, which had come on suddenly. It was in vain to look about for any shelter; for not only did the storm entirely obscure the landscape, but there was nothing around him ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... intercourse with others, playful and ready in conversation, he is capable of acquirements and knowledge far beyond his years, while his reason is so clear and so jealous of error, that he will not rest satisfied without a most exact solution of whatever appears to him obscure. He has passed an excellent examination just now in mathematics, exhibiting at times an illustration of that love of precise argument, which seems to ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... D. The Mongoloids had come, and were flourishing here. They were changed vastly from those ancestors of Asia whence they had sprung. An obscure story, this record of primitive America! The Mongoloids were soon so changed that one could fancy the blood of another people had mingled with them. Amerindians, we call them now. They were still ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... tell, who are better known to the outer world than Cinderella—the despised and flouted younger sister, who long sits unnoticed beside the hearth, then furtively visits the glittering halls of the great and gay, and at last is transferred from her obscure nook to the place of honor justly due to her tardily acknowledged merits. Somewhat like the fortunes of Cinderella have been those of the popular tale itself. Long did it dwell beside the hearths of the common people, utterly ignored by their superiors ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... from a long boat passage, and lay down to sleep in the home of the parish schoolmaster. But he had been seen landing. The inhabitants had identified him for a Pict, as, by some singular confusion of name, they called the dark and dwarfish aboriginal people of the land. Immediately the obscure ferment of a race-hatred, grown into a superstition, began to work in their bosoms, and they crowded about the house and the room-door with fearful whisperings. For some time the schoolmaster held them at bay, and at last despatched a messenger to call my grandfather. He came: he found the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as Dr. Murray Butler says, that the strongest man will remain alone in a depopulated world. The strongest may succumb to the inventions for destruction and the survivors may be a few of those maimed or weakened by disease whom the storm has passed over as too obscure, of too little importance even for the messengers of Death to remember and to relieve from their misery. This is not rhetorical exaggeration. The weapons of offence regularly win in their race with the weapons of defence. Fortresses ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson
... he had counseled them, in case they were beaten, to cherish no hard feelings towards their rivals. Not a shadow of envy or ill-will was to obscure the harmony of the occasion. And if they were so fortunate as to win the race they were to wear their honors with humility; and most especially, they were not to utter a word which could create a hard feeling in the minds of their competitors. Whatever the result, there was ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... were still plodding along the dark street under the trees; dull gleams came from their helmets and bayonets in the obscure ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... something much better. Genteel blinds and makeshifts were more or less observable as soon as their doors were opened; screens not half high enough, which made dining-rooms out of arched passages, and warded off obscure corners where footboys slept at nights with their heads among the knives and forks; curtains which called upon you to believe that they didn't hide anything; panes of glass which requested you not to see them; many objects of various ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... thoughts are pathetic, but not deep; he whines, but sheds no tears. He has, in his imitation of Lord Byron, reversed the great miracle; instead of turning water into wine, he has turned wine into water. Besides, he is so unpardonably obscure. He thinks, with Bacchus—(you remember, D'A—, the line in Euripides, which I will not quote), that 'there is something august in the shades;' but he has applied this thought wrongly—in his obscurity there is nothing ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Kate Croy. It was, with a sensible shock for him, the person who had last offered him a conscious face from behind the clear plate of a cafe in Venice. The great glass at Florian's was a medium less obscure, even with the window down, than the air of the London Christmas; yet at present also, none the less, between the two men, an exchange of recognitions could occur. Densher felt his own look a gaping arrest—which, he disgustedly remembered, his back as ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... clouds obscure thy sky, E ach future prospect fades; B ut there's a kind protector nigh, O n him rely for aid. R ich treasures are locked up in store, A ffliction turns the key; H ow oft when dreadful thunders roar, M ay showers bid famine flee. O sister, ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... follow my steps into this vestibule ornamented with rich tracery, which opens to the hall of Ambassadors. We will not enter the hall, however, but turn to the left, to this small door, opening in the wall. Have a care! here are steep winding steps and but scanty light. Yet, up this narrow, obscure and winding staircase the proud monarchs of Granada and their queens have often ascended to the battlements of the tower to watch the approach of Christian armies or to gaze on the battles in the Vega. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... of these games was the Olympic, though it involved many principles common to the others. Its origin is obscure; and, though it appears that during the Heroic Age some Grecian chiefs celebrated their victories in public games at Olympia, yet it was not until the time of Lycurgus, in 776 B.C., that the games at Olympia were brought under certain rules, and performed at certain periods. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... the first step only may be taken; i.e., that the procedure for the attainment of a particular assigned objective may be determined for the sole purpose of making provision against a contingency, at that particular time merely an obscure probability. Or, as may frequently be the case during peace, the procedure may terminate, for the time being, with the completion of the second step. In such cases, certain of the necessary military operations are worked out in the desired detail ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... Chenney's father was a rich but eccentric man, who had a grudge against a certain popular seaside resort for some obscure reason, and had initiated a movement to found a rival town. So he had started Lynhaven, and had built houses and villas and beautiful assembly rooms; and then, to complete the independence of Lynhaven, he had connected that town with the main traffic ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... crowded by religious personages of all kinds, the old Dowager Countess Ignatieff, in stiff black silk, came forward to receive the popular Starets as the newest star in Russia's religious firmament. With Stuermer behind him to advise and to plot, aided by an obscure civil servant named Protopopoff—who afterwards became Minister of the Interior and a spy of Germany—the "saint" never held himself cheap. That was one of the secrets of his astounding career. Though he possessed no education and could scarcely trace his own name, he possessed the most acute ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... your beings pure? Can sin, can death, your worlds obscure? Else why so swell the thoughts at your Aspect above? Ye must be heavens that make us sure Of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... of whom it had never heard before have crushed a famous Beecher, and reduced his audiences from fifteen hundred down to fourteen hundred and seventy-five at one fell blow! Happy, happy world, that knows at last that these obscure innocents are no longer responsible for the blemishless teachings, the power, the pathos, the logic, and the other and manifold intellectual pyrotechnics that seduce, but to damn, the Opera House assemblages every Sunday night in Elmira! And miserable, O thrice miserable Beecher! For the Ministerial ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... with a face bright with enthusiasm, "When I first began to work with Professor —— in the laboratory it was as if I had been traveling all my life in a desert land, and had suddenly come upon fountains of fresh water." She was as poor and obscure as my singer was rich and famous, but she was using her ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}
... it happens in the youth of day That mists obscure the sun's imperfect ray, Who, as he's mounting to the dome's extreme, Smites and dispels them with a steeper beam, So you the vapors that begirt your birth Consumed, and manifested all your worth. But still one early ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... in doubt, and so have done the best thing I know of. I have written to my old friend and master, Professor Van Helsing, of Amsterdam, who knows as much about obscure diseases as any one in the world. I have asked him to come over, and as you told me that all things were to be at your charge, I have mentioned to him who you are and your relations to Miss Westenra. This, my dear fellow, is in obedience to your wishes, for I am only too ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... the whole as the established view, until the recent cuneiform discoveries. It was, from the first, a theory full of difficulty. The mention of the Chaldaeans in Job, and even in Genesis, as a well-known people, was in contradiction to the supposed recent origin of the race. The explanation of the obscure passage in the 23d chapter of Isaiah, on which the theory was mainly based, was at variance with other clearer passages of the same prophet. Babylon is called by Isaiah the "daughter of the Chaldaeans," and is spoken of as an ancient ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... individual; the writer's own life is chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of all things. It is at once the mirror to all time of the sins and perfections of men, of the judgments and grace of God, and the record, often the only one, of the transient names, and local factions, and obscure ambitions, and forgotten crimes of the poet's own day; and in that awful company to which he leads us, in the most unearthly of his scenes, we never lose sight of himself. And when this peculiarity sends us to history, it ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... must the student of this Truth guard against what may be called spiritual pride. No thought of supremacy or greater advancement should be harbored for a moment. All such things are clouds that obscure the light as much as other ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... in agitation. The rivers began to run in a contrary course. The summits of mountains, O Bharata, began to split. Diverse animals began to pass by the left side of the Pandavas.[260] Darkness set in, the sun became obscure. Diverse kinds of carnivorous creatures began to alight on the field in joy. The gods, the Danavas, and the Gandharvas, O monarch, all became inspired with fear. Beholding that tremendous agitation (in nature), all began to ask one another loudly about its cause. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... one of defiance. In the Freethinker of May 14 I denounced the bigots as cowards for pouncing on a comparatively obscure member of the Freethought party, and I challenged them to attack its leaders before they assailed the rank and file. This challenge was cited against me on my own trial, but I do not regret it; and indeed I doubt if any man ever regretted that his sense of duty triumphed ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... inasmuch as they did not show their enmity toward him. [-15-] In their anxiety not to appear by their own action to have set Clodius on or to be pleased with his measures, they devised the following way, which suited them admirably and was obscure to their foe, for deceiving Cicero. Caesar advised him to yield, for fear he might perish if he remained where he was: and in order to have it believed the more readily that he was doing this through good will, he promised that the other should employ him as helper, ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... return to my subject, and with regard to the materials suited to the construction of buildings will consider their natural formation and in what proportions their elementary constituents were combined, making it all clear and not obscure to my readers. For there is no kind of material, no body, and no thing that can be produced or conceived of, which is not made up of elementary particles; and nature does not admit of a truthful exploration in accordance with the doctrines of the physicists without ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... now," Ato explained. "We had time on our side before. Now, if he gets away from us he can live out his days on some obscure planet. The years will pass like a whirlwind—while we go dashing this way and that, and in a surprisingly short time our willing and unwilling fugitives will have lived out their lives. They have the vagaries of time, space, and speed upon ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... of its operations he trusts implicitly. The stores of judgment and knowledge he finds in his father, prompt him to trust it. In many instances where it appeared at first obscure and enigmatical, the event has taught him to acknowledge its soundness. The mutinousness of passion will sometimes excite a child to question the decrees of his parent; it is very long before his understanding, as such, comes to set up a separate ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... anticipating our neighbor's latent talents to the highly gifted, to the great authors, scientists, statesmen, artists, and even to the moderately gifted, for their worth is, in part, already manifested in their lives. But it is not so easy to apply or justify the principle in the case of the obscure masses, whose lives are uneventful, unilluminated by talent, charm, or conspicuous service, and who, as individuals at least, it might appear, could well be spared without impairing the progress of the human race. And yet this doctrine of the worth ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... had their eye upon this meeting of delegates, and they well knew ALL that passed there; and I should not be surprised if six months of my imprisonment may be fairly placed to the account of what the editor of the Macclesfield Courier called, "my most uncompromising perseverance."—The editor of an obscure Sunday London Newspaper, in observing upon my sentence, says most exultingly, "The game its now up—with this man we have done, to the people we now turn:" and what do you think he means to do, how does he propose to relieve their distresses? In speaking ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... in Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 10, 1805. He came of very poor and obscure parentage. His father, who was a seafaring man, early abandoned the family for causes supposed to relate to his intemperance. The whole career of Garrison was a struggle against poverty. His educational advantages were limited. He became a printer's apprentice when quite a lad, and learned ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... train the mind to be logical, critical and balanced: it is good to cultivate a retentive memory and to store up useful facts. But if while you are aiming at intellectual fitness and alertness you allow these good things to obscure other and better things, if, in short, you let means become ends, you will never be healthy, because you will miss half the ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... are blindly led, and others run, And make both haste and speed to be undone; This alters not the Case in any wise, But that a Man sometimes may get a Prize, If some be wanton in obscure Nookes, And Ape the Saint, by framing modest Looks; Deceive the Husband, with her cunning Wiles, And cheat his Senses with her feigned smiles, These (I confess,) are hardships to be born, And worse to think the Fore-head tip'd with Horn, But still good Wives, ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses from Men • Various
... Kantor's—Brasses—was three steps down, so that his casement show-window, at best filmed over with the constant rain of dust ground down from the rails above, was obscure enough, but crammed with the copied loot of khedive and of czar. The seven-branch candlestick so Biblical and supplicating of arms. An urn, shaped like Rebecca's, of brass all beaten over with little poks. Things: cups, trays, knockers, ikons, gargoyles, bowls, and teapots. A symphony of bells ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... coat of the faded pattern and glossy seams to reach for something that had once been a handkerchief deep down in some obscure and cavernous pocket. As he did so I caught the shine of a cheap silver-plated watch-chain across his vest, and something dangling from it caused me to stretch forth my hand and seize it curiously. It was the half of a silver dime that had been cut in halves ...
— Options • O. Henry
... notable length—affording, as it did, an excellent opportunity for undisturbed work,—Colonel Musgrave found, with a pricking conscience, that he made astonishingly slight progress in an exhaustive monograph upon the fragmentary Orderly Book of an obscure captain in a long-forgotten regiment, which if it had not actually served in the Revolution, had at least been demonstrably granted money "for services," and so entitled hundreds of aspirants to become the Sons (or Daughters) of ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... Sieben are, in reality, much wider. It does such work in connection with the newspapers as is even too dirty for the German Foreign Office to touch, comprising everything from the launching of personal attacks in obscure blackmailing sheets against inconvenient politicians to the escorting of unpleasantly truthful foreign correspondents to the frontier. It is the obedient handmaiden of the Intelligence Department of both War Office and Admiralty in Germany, and renders faithful service to ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... forgeries that were anything but ingenious. Dr. Johnson had a narrow escape on that occasion. Had Dr. Douglas fastened upon him as the collusive abettor of Lander, as the man whose sanction had ever won even a momentary credit for the obscure libeller, and as the one beyond all others of the age whose critical occupation ought most to have secured him against such a delusion, the character of Johnson would have suffered seriously. Luckily, Dr. Douglas spared him; and Johnson, seeing the infamy of the hoax, and the precipice ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... still more obscure passage he now desires to disavow the Circular or aristocratic tendencies with which some critics have naturally credited him. While doing justice to the intellectual power with which a few Circles have for many generations maintained their supremacy over immense multitudes of their ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... this obscure announcement: so Fanny had to explain that Zoe and she had tiffed, and made it up, and Zoe had given her a brooch. Hereupon she went for it, and both ladies forgot the topic they were on, and every other, to ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... distinguished men here hold the same opinions, but their voices, even were they to venture to raise them, could not stem the tide of public indignation. The most offended are naturally the military men.... In short, Senor Gutierrez, who has been passing four years abroad, in countries where hundreds of obscure scribblers daily advocate republicanism or any wild theory that strikes their fancy, with the most perfect security, was probably hardly aware of the extraordinary ferment which such a pamphlet was likely to produce at ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... was not wanting in cleverness, replied to Rastignac's speech with an apologetic portrait of the princess, which put the whole table in good humor. As the jest was extremely obscure to d'Arthez he leaned towards his neighbor, Madame de Montcornet, and asked her, in a whisper, what ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... local university library. I find the book to be of exceptional historical interest in the insights it gives into the development of early modern entomological science. It also is of practical value as a source for terms that are obscure to modern users because they ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... opinion on many points involved in the design of reinforced concrete, and too much zeal for conviction, combined with such skill in special pleading as this paper exhibits, may possibly serve to obscure the truth, rather than to bring ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... us,—the old cuneiform syllabary of the Assyrians,—dictionaries, glossaries, and other works of a grammatical character have been preserved to the present day. Documents such as these are, of course, of material aid in regard to obscure texts, but in the case of the Egyptian writing the only surviving native word-list is the Sign Papyrus of Tanis,* which is, unfortunately, of the Roman Period, when the original meanings of the signs had been ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... when great men arise they have a mission to accomplish and do not disappear until it is fulfilled. Yet this is not always true. After all his deep study and his daring action Mr. Hampden died on an obscure field, almost before the commencement of that mighty struggle which he seemed born to direct. In the great contention between the patriotic and the cosmopolitan principle which has hardly begun, and on the issue of which the fate of this island as a powerful community depends, Lord ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli |
