Diccionario ingles.comDiccionario ingles.com
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Riddle   Listen
noun
Riddle  n.  Something proposed to be solved by guessing or conjecture; a puzzling question; an ambiguous proposition; an enigma; hence, anything ambiguous or puzzling. "To wring from me, and tell to them, my secret, That solved the riddle which I had proposed." "'T was a strange riddle of a lady."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Riddle" Quotes from Famous Books



... the Circle of the Sciences to fetch their Ideas from thence. But as the Resemblances of such Ideas to the Subject must necessarily lie very much out of the common Way, and every piece of Wit appear a Riddle to the Vulgar; This, that should have taught them the forced, quaint, unnatural Tract they were in, (and induce them to follow a more natural One,) was the very Thing that kept them attach'd to it. The ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald

... reproach me with never entered my own mind? For this reason I wish not to vanish from the scene before I finish my comprehensive novel, which I think will clear up many misunderstandings and place me where and as I belong. However, I do not wonder that Bazaroff has remained a riddle for many persons: I cannot understand clearly how I conceived him. There was—do not laugh—something more powerful than the author himself, something independent of him. I know only this,—there was no preconceived idea in me then, no "novel with a purpose" in my thought: I wrote naively, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... "freedom of will." The ridiculous imperial folly of Caligula is but a special form of man's arrogant assumption of divinity. Only when we have abandoned this untenable illusion, and taken up the correct cosmological perspective, can we hope to reach the solution of the Riddle of the Universe. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... find acceptance among the majority of the students of the subject. The problem whether a correct understanding of mediaeval economic life can be best attained by first studying the teaching or the practice is possibly no more soluble than the old riddle of the hen and the egg; but it may at least be argued that there is a good deal to be said on both sides. The supporters of the view that practice moulded theory are by no means unopposed. There is no doubt that in many respects the exigencies of everyday commercial concerns ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien

... the 26th verse—"Let us make man in our image"—gives us the only explanation of man's presence on earth. Without revelation no one has been able to explain the riddle of life. Man comes into the world without his own volition; he has no choice as to the age, nation, race, or family environment into which he shall be born. So far as he is concerned, he comes by chance; he goes he knows not when, and cannot insure himself for ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... died before she had spent her money. That seemed to him a dark and pitiable mystery; and he looked from the coins in his hand to the dead woman, and back again to the coins, shaking his head over the riddle of man's life. Henry V. of England, dying at Vincennes just after he had conquered France, and this poor jade cut off by a cold draught in a great man's doorway, before she had time to spend her couple of whites—it seemed a cruel ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... matters as these that they keep a Riddle Department at headquarters. They call it the Executive Department, but no matter—as Mark Twain would say. It is there to supply the answers to the conundrums that are always cropping up in ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot

... Cowan, Davis, Dixon, Doolittle, Guthrie, Hendricks, Johnson, McDougall, Morgan, Nesmith, Norton, Riddle, Saulsbury, Stewart, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... withheld. He was going to devote himself to some purpose he claimed to have always lain at the back of his mind. What was that purpose? Again there had been no information forthcoming. Was it good, or—bad? The man who was endeavouring to solve the riddle of it all dared not trust himself to a decision. He felt that his friend's unstable soul might drive him in almost any direction after the shock it ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... no motion in his swollen joints, no pretty retort on his lips as of old, and with a sigh we turn from the ghastly sight to the pages of French history where we again read in detail the accounts of his life and death, and then it is for us to decide upon our answer to this riddle which offers ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... died ere this!" He stopped at last, and the large dews rolled down his forehead. "Sidney!" said he, "there is a mystery here that I comprehend not. But my mind now is very confused. If she loves you—if!—is it possible for a woman to love two? Well, well, I go to solve the riddle: wait here!" ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... brilliant ambition of France and the cautious reactionary despotism of Spain, remained suspended. Students are left, face to face with the sixteenth century, to decipher an inscription that lacks its leading verb, to puzzle over a riddle whereof the solution is hidden from us by the ruin of a people. It must ever be an undecided question whether the Italians, undisturbed by foreign interference, could have passed beyond the artificial and exceptional ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... come with its sickly sweetness? Perhaps therein lay the secret of his hallucinating visions. Perhaps a drug had perverted his brain. But within the week the dangerous perfume had become dissipated, and with it vanished all hope of solving the riddle. Oh, to sense once more the enchantments of its fragrance, once more revel in the sublimated intoxication of mighty forces weaving at the loom of life! By the cadences of what infernal art had he been vouchsafed a glimpse of the profiles of the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker

... had taken off his hat before the might of death, and made a perfunctory sign of the cross. He looked up and down the lofty wall, as if it could give him the word of that riddle. Twice his spurs clashed softly, and, with one hand grasping the rope, he stooped low in the twilight ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... subtle-, knotty point; vexed question, vexata quaestio, poser, puzzle, &c. (see riddle); paradox; hard-, nut to crack; bone to pick, crux, pons asinorum, ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett

... Chankery, a case coming on with a 'very nice point.' He then explained, preserving every professional discretion, the riddle in Soames' case. Everyone, he said, to whom he had spoken, thought it a nice point. The issue was small unfortunately, 'though d——d serious for his client he believed'—Walmisley's champagne was bad but plentiful. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... and ever shall be to those for whom Time has ceased to be—which is a riddle that Ma-Rim[o]n may even now learn, since his soul has been purified and his spirit strengthened by earnest devotion through many lives to the ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... that for a man to whip himself in cold blood is a hard thing, especially if the stripes fall upon an ill-nourished and worse-fed body. Let my lady Dulcinea have patience, and when she is least expecting it, she will see me made a riddle of with whipping, and 'until death it's all life;' I mean that I have still life in me, and the desire to make good ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... is a riddle worth propounding among guests. How can one and the same animal have cast away his buckler both on land, in the sky and ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... sitting up she braided it with numb, sore fingers. She looked at her hands; they well stained with blood from many cuts. Her skirt was torn and soiled; her stockings were in strips; her knees were bruised. But as she rose to her feet and once more searched the riddle of a crag-broken world, her heart ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... right to consideration and respect. And she had entered the prison, as a nurse might have entered it, in charge of a child. I did what we all do when we are not clever enough to find the answer to a riddle—I ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins

... enigma that is no enigma—the sphinx with the answer to the riddle ever trembling on her lips! But if she were understood, she might be taken for granted. . . . So the lips may tremble, but the answer ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... noticed in many aspects of our popular education that this is not done at all. One teaches our London children to see London with abrupt and simple eyes. And London is far more difficult to see properly than any other place. London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation. The education of the Parisian child is something corresponding to the clear avenues and the exact squares of Paris. When the Parisian boy has done learning about the French reason and the Roman order he can go out and see the thing repeated in the shapes of many shining ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... has an excellent memory for riddles. She was delighted with that somewhat old conundrum about "What is more wonderful than JONAH in the whale?" to which the answer is, "Two men in a fly," and determined to puzzle her nephew with it the very next time she met him. "Such a capital riddle I've got for you, JOHN!" she exclaimed, "Let me see. Oh, yes—I remember—yes, that's it;" and then, having settled the form of the question, she put it thus—"What is more wonderful than two men in an omnibus?" And when she gave the answer, "JONAH in a fly," and correcting herself ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 28, 1893 • Various

... "in order to solve the riddle of a crime, the detective's first task is to study the scene topographically. Plans and elevations of a room or house are made. The position of each object is painstakingly noted. In addition, the all-seeing ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... enormous key suspended just beneath the cross of Strasburg Cathedral, its use, and why it was placed there, having passed away from the memory of man. If it were not to open the gates of heaven for those who built this ladder of light and those who worship in its shadow, it remains a riddle and a blank. Let us accept the interpretation, and, made mild-eyed by the lens of tender memories, we shall behold in every spire a means of grace and a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... put the students to sleep, for every thing became quite still; and at last the riddle was silent. The evening breeze stirred gently, and the stars climbed silently up into the sky one after the other, until they were shining ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri

... out reports of common things, such as balloons, airplanes, etc. Second, and more important, if we could get even one fairly accurate measurement that showed that some object was traveling through the atmosphere at high speed, and that it wasn't a meteor, the UFO riddle would be much ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... the Germans is a riddle. I have seen no convincing solution of it by any Englishman, and hardly any confident attempt at a solution which did not speak the uncontrolled language of passion. There is the same difficulty with the lower animals; our description of them ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh

... pebbles down on the heads of the guides as they passed through the door beneath. What a surprise it would be to Tony and Franz to have the stones come clattering down upon them; and what sport it would be to watch them as they tried to solve the riddle as to where the missiles ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett

... her furious because Philip told her it contained the answer to a great riddle. She thought he was making fun of her. She had drawn the knife right through it three times, it must have required some strength, and it hung now in tatters. Philip had two or three blue and white plates, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... of the Macquarie was now, to a certain extent, cleared away, but the course and final outlet of the Darling now presented another riddle, which Sturt too was destined ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... chide me not, good sir; the world to me A riddle is at best—my heart has had No tutor. From my childhood until now My thoughts have ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... prepared her morning meal. "Who am I?" had become the obsessing riddle of her life. She was no longer a young woman, being in her fifty-third year. In the eyes of the white man's law, it was required of her to give proof of her membership in the Sioux tribe. The unwritten law of heart prompted ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa

... men and women, very prudent and knowing people in consequence of what they were taught there. The biggest, and those of best capacity, received instruction in natural science and astronomy, and in poetry and in riddle-making, arts highly esteemed among the little people. John was very diligent, and soon became a most clever painter and drawer. He wrought, too, most ingeniously in gold and silver and stones, and in verse and riddle-making he had ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... of the Chesapeake reached under his pillow and produced a pistol. "Out of my cabin or I'll riddle you," ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... piece of delicate oval statuary, her steady eyes seemed fixed upon some point where the clouds and sea meet. She took no heed of, she did not even see, my gesture of farewell. I left her there inscrutable, a child with the face of a Sphinx. She had set me a riddle ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... said the earl, softly. "But yet," he added, in an altered and reflective tone, "the boy is to me a riddle. That he will be bold in battle and wise in council I foresee; but would he had more of a young man's honest follies! There is a medium between Edward's wantonness and Richard's sanctimony; and he who in the heyday of youth's blood ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... time is momentous for all nations, the future is a tangled riddle; for the Slavs this seems true in a double measure. To involved social problems is added race opposition in the breasts of neighbors, a deep, sullen historic hostility. Hence when a writer of power appears among the Slavs, whether he takes up ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... not a boy, he was a man—strong, fearless, happy-hearted. How could the plains make cowards out of such as he? They had made a man of Jondo, who had all excuse to play the coward. The mystery of the human mind is a riddle past my reading—and I had always thought of Beverly's as an open book. The only one to whom I could turn now was not Eloise, nor my uncle, nor Mat nor Rex, but Jondo, John Doe, the nameless man, with whom Esmond ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... dost think thou'st made This curst confession?—To my spouse, cried she, I saw you enter here, and came with glee, Supposing you'd a trick to raise surprise; Howe'er 'tis strange that one so very wise, The riddle should not fully comprehend:— A KNIGHT, the king created you, my friend; A GENTLEMAN, your rank was long ago; A PARSON, you have made yourself you know. Goon heav'ns! exclaimed the knight, 'tis very clear, And I a ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine

... letters referring to ones I have written about a month ago, that though I know you are answering them, I don't understand what you are talking about the least in the world. I don't want to discourage you, you know. Your letters are rather enhanced in value by their riddle-like quotations. They make me wonder what on earth I can have been writing about. I do not even remember, unless you tell me, whether they were long or short; and, except for my consciousness of never having written in a strain of trifling or levity, or otherwise than in a ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn

... asked Sir Wulfric haughtily. "Thy speech is dark, and eke scarce courteous. Unravel me this riddle!" ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... I wish it was daylight and I could get a good aim at one of them. I say, they'll riddle ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... ease in their boxes and cry all's well,—meaning thereby that it is so with them; too many seers who look into their own cozy back parlors and imagine that they are standing on a Mirza's Hill and reading the riddle of human life; too many listening enchanted to their own sweet voices and mistaking the sound for a world-wide paean of praise, or at least the drowsy hum of human content. Such are blind Neros who complacently fiddle while Rome is, if not actually ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... know of your grace by what strange and happy chance this riddle has been read?" said ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... down at the heel, his baggy clothing weirdly ready-made, as they were: there remained his air. You'd think he might amount to something, to somewhat more than a mere something, given half a chance in the right direction. Then what?... Spaulding sought from Duncan elucidation of this riddle. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance

... of this councillorship query remained, of course, a riddle to her, yet she handed him the paper without replying. It was a coarse wood-cut, representing a splendid meteor "as seen in the town of Cologne," which was to be read ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... the riddle that I could not read. Among my last actions of this day was one that had been almost my earliest, and bedtime found me staring at his letter, as I stood, half undressed, by my table. The calm moon brought back Udolpho and what had been said there, as it now shone down upon the garden ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... seem, and that the outward shows Of grade and rank are only masks that hide our joys and woes; That with the soul, the soul alone, resides the awful power, To light with sunshine or o'ergloom the solitary hour; And that the human heart is but a riddle to be read, When all the darkness round it now in other worlds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... and imitated character. But when we reach aesthetic boys, we pass out of the savage stage into hobbledehoyhood. The bigger boys at public schools are often terribly "advanced," and when they are not at work or play, they are vexing themselves with the riddle of the earth, evolution, agnosticism, and all that kind of thing. Latin verses may not be what conservatives fondly deem them, and even cricket may, it is said, become too absorbing a pursuit, but either or both are better than precocious freethinking and ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang

... faith, that spoils all the former, for these farthingales take up all the room now-a-days; 'tis not a woman, questionless. Shall I be put down with a riddle? Sirrah Heuresis, search the corners of your conceit, and find ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... things conducted on the presumption that scientific knowledge is the key to unlock the mystery and resolve the riddle of the universe. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... influence. This thesis of the relation of heterogeneous ethnic and social elements to each other, with all the consequences proceeding from it, contains within it the key to the solution of the entire riddle of the natural process of human history. We shall see this thesis illustrated ever and everywhere in the past and the present in the interrelations of heterogeneous ethnic and social elements and become convinced of its universal validity. In this latter relation it does not correspond ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... easy to see that," said the China Cat. "You are so new and shiny any one would know you were just made. Well, now what shall we do? Who has a game to suggest or a riddle to ask?" and, as she spoke, she put out her paw and began to roll a red rubber ball on the shelf near her. For, though she was very stiff in the daytime, being made of china like a dinner plate, the Cat could easily move about at night if ...
— The Story of a Nodding Donkey • Laura Lee Hope

... arms about her body, held her close. The red lips curved in a riddle of a smile. He saw dark depths in ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... (Vol. ix., p. 44.).—I cannot pretend to set up my judgment against that of MR. SQUEERS, who has in his favour the proverbial wisdom of the Schools. Riddle, however, who I believe is an authority, gives the word LEGO no such meaning as "to hearken." If Plautus uses the word in that sense, as it is an uncommon one, the passage should have been quoted, or a reference given. The meaning ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various

... betide the churches if they will not hear. Religion is necessary to mankind, but churches are not. From every quarter of Christendom a new spirit of hope and confidence is rising, born of a conviction that all that is human is the evidence of God, and that Jesus held the key to the riddle of existence. Although this comes to us as with the freshness of a new revelation, it is not really new. It is the spirit which has been the inspiration of every great religious awakening since the world began. In this country and in other parts of the English-speaking ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... best, my lord, to send back and bid fifty of the vassals to come up hither at once, with bows and arrows. They can so riddle those bushes that the defenders will be unable to occupy them ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty

... women had been to him the most delectable of riddles, and his expressed desire to marry and settle down was perhaps only another statement of the fact that he longed to solve one example of the riddle, one form in which it was presented to him. He felt now that he wished he had married years ago, that he had already become quiet and domesticated. There was a time for youth's fiery passions, its ecstatic uncontent, and there was also most assuredly a time when ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson

... Schubert and Mendelssohn. And there were also several others, who, having been dragged forward by Schwarz, from inefficient beginnings, now left him, to write their acquired skill to Schrievers' credit. Furst was the greatest riddle of all. It was he who, on subsequent concert-tours, was to have extended the fame of the Conservatorium; he was the show pupil of the institution, and, in the coming PRUFUNGEN, was to have distinguished himself, ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... a riddle to him, but you would never have guessed it from his tone. As for me, I began to have an inkling. Ben Gunn's last words came back to my mind. I began to suppose that he had paid the buccaneers a visit, while they all lay drunk ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... him—just a vague, gray shadow with edges touched softly with silver light, which whirled once over my canoe and looked down into it. Then he vanished; and from far over on the edge of the waiting woods, where the mystery was deepest, came a cry, a challenge, a riddle, the night's wild question which no man has ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long

... simple and convenient solution of the riddle if the work of analysis made it at all possible for us to trace the meaningless and intricate dreams of adults back to the infantile type, to the realization of some intensely experienced desire of the day. But there is no warrant for such an expectation. ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... me, riddle me, riddle me right, Where was I last Sat'rday night? I seed a chimp-champ champin' at his bridle, I seed an ould fox workin' hissel' idle. The trees did shever, an' I did shake, To see what a hole ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... upon it for Joyce's protection. St. Ange was impossible as a working basis—his thoughts flew to Filmer. Yes; as soon as Joyce could explain, he would go for Filmer and together they would solve this riddle for the poor, ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... The idea, the amazing, ridiculous idea which had burst upon me suddenly began to lose something of its absurdity. Somehow it began to look like the answer to my riddle. I realized that my main objection to the Campbell prescription had been that I must take it alone or ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln

... ... There's a riddle here to which I should like to know the answer. That sheet of paper, the marks of those teeth: ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... riddle of this new Sphinx, or be devoured. Though Mr. Lincoln's policy in this critical affair has not been such as to satisfy those who demand an heroic treatment for even the most trifling occasion, and who will not ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... Bane. Little is known of his boyhood. He was supposed to have been brought to the district by Highlanders who were in the habit of bringing to Crieff cartloads of split pine from Rannoch Forest, which they sold to riddle-makers to make riddle rims. During one of those visits the child is supposed to have been left. He was called Alastair, owing to his supposed Highland descent, and Bane, because of his white hair. As he grew up to manhood he showed symptoms of a wandering disposition, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... what to think of this powerful youth, who often was as gentle as a child, and then seemed possessed of that demon to which so many of the convicts fell victims. He had indeed become a riddle to himself; for how was it that he—the gardener's son, brought up in the peaceful temple of Seti—ever since that night by the house of the paraschites had had such a perpetual craving for ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... moralists and philosophers did much to help me out of the dilemma; but the riddle which history presented I found solved in the pages of Shakspeare. There the crooked appeared straight; the inaccessible, easy; the incomprehensible, plain. All I sought, I found there; his characters combine history and real life; they are complete individuals, ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson

... than had been expected, which was little enough. She kept back enough to establish herself and Mark in rooms, should she be successful in finding some unfurnished rooms sufficiently cheap to allow her to take them, although how she was going to live for more than two years on what she had was a riddle of which after a month of sleepless nights she had not found ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie

... certainly apt to become a danger to religion itself; nevertheless, rightly applied, there is probably no more potent instrument than this to help us in that reconstruction of belief which is admittedly the urgent business of our age. It is true, as Raymond Brucker said, that "the answer to the riddle of the universe is God—the answer to the riddle of God is Christ"; but it is also true, we hold, that the most effective key for the unlocking of the riddle is the idea ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... kind of fatality that concerns the disposition of matter in Nature. Oil fields and rubber trees existed, one might say, as enigmas, until the internal combustion engine and motor cars dawned on the world and explained their riddle. This was their fate. And of Mesopotamia, who shall say that it may not be concerned with a yet unborn attitude in us Europeans when we will turn wholly to the produce ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne

... apparent feeling, the burnt house of a child of his, adding,—"She perished in it, and we have all removed from our own huts and built here round her, in order to weep over her grave." From some of the people he received great kindness; others were quite different. Their character, in short, was a riddle, and would need to be studied more. But the prevalent aspect of things was both distressing and depressing. If he had thought of it continually, he would have become the victim of melancholy. It was a characteristic ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... under the skin. After some inquiries I found, from Fortin's own wife, that similar drugs had been sometimes seen in the hands of Lilihae, who had bought them of a druggist in Honolulu for the treatment of syphilis. The riddle was at once completely solved. A few days passed, and Lilihae killed himself by poison, convinced that all his attempts could not kill me. In his native superstition, he was satisfied that the gods would not forgive his indiscretion, since they withheld from ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... the causes and results of Pessimism. It can touch the practical side of the riddle of life by asking certain questions, the answers to which lie within the province of human experience. Among these ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan

... monster, as a punishment for their offences. Taking her seat on a rocky eminence near the city of Thebes, commanding a pass which the Thebans were compelled to traverse in their usual way of business, she propounded to all comers a riddle, and if they failed to solve it, ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... consciousness of his misery is evidence of his greatness; "Nature confounds the Pyrrhonist, and reason the dogmatist;" "Man is but a reed, the feeblest of created things, but a reed which thinks." How is this riddle of human nature to be explained? Only in one way—by a recognition of the truth taught by religion, that human nature is fallen from its true estate, that man is a dethroned king. And how is the dissonance ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... felt this to be an awkward question, for it would have been useless trying to make him understand my real motives (one's own relations are never sympathetic), and I was somewhat nonplussed for an answer, until the reflection occurred to me: What was he doing there? This riddle I, in my turn, propounded to him, with the result that we entered into treaty, by the terms of which it was agreed that no future reference should be made to the meeting by either of us—especially not in the presence of my aunt—and ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome

... mysterious billet than I felt that I had done wrong. I was humbled and abashed in my own eyes, and the riddle appeared as difficult of solution as ever. My uncle's voice sounded as ominously in my ears as the stroke of a death-bell, as he called me sharply by name. Hastily refolding the note, I went into his study, and ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie

... The answer to the riddle is indeed plain enough; or rather there are many superabundantly obvious answers. Had Mill defended orthodox views and Coleridge been avowedly heterodox, we should no doubt have heard more of Coleridge's opium and of Mill's blameless and energetic life. But this ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... trying to decide, the small guide continued to ply him with questions, until he came to the conclusion that the best plan would be to give a portion of the story, otherwise, in case he met the men, Jim might ask them to solve the riddle. ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis

... a penny, but I zaid five poun'. The wager was laid, but the money not down. Zinging right fol de ree, fol de riddle lee While I am ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn

... my own inclination in the matter, I think I should have elected to call this particular adventure "The Riddle of the Amazing Demi-God," but as it is set down under the above title in the private note-book of Superintendent Narkom—to which volume I am under obligation for the details regarding the life and work ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... abilities nor the auspicious fortunes of Charles were inherited with this vast dominion by Philip. It is almost a mystery the crumbling away during his reign of such wealth and such strength. To read the riddle, we must know Philip. The biography which we shall now hurriedly sketch, of one of his most eminent favourites and ministers, who was, also, one of the most remarkable men that ever lived, enables us to see further into the breast ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... called cataclysms "after the universe had thrice attained to freedom" (what nonsense!) are nothing but the short interregnums of freedom obtained by the poor Indian Aryans between the monarchies. They are 200 300 120. And I propose to you, master of the Vedas, the riddle, how do I know that the first republican interregnum (anarchy, to the barbarians) was 200 years long? The Indian traditions begin therefore with 7000, and that is the time of Zaradushta. I find many reasons for adopting your opinion on the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... looking at me very hard with her black, sparkling eyes asked Dominic familiarly what had happened to his Signorino. It was her name for me. I was Dominic's Signorino. She knew me by no other; and our connection has always been somewhat of a riddle to her. She said that I was somehow changed since she saw me last. In her rich voice she urged Dominic only to look at my eyes. I must have had some piece of luck come to me either in love or at cards, she bantered. But Dominic answered half ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... couple foresaw 1830. They knew how bitterly Louis XVIII. hated his successor, which accounts for his recklessness with regard to the younger branch, and without which his reign would be an unanswerable riddle. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... Paulinism with two Gods and without the Old Testament; and that this form of Christianity first resulted in a church which was based not only on intelligible words, but on a definite conception of the essence of Christianity as a religion, seems to be the greatest riddle which the earliest history of Christianity presents. But it only seems so. The Greek, whose mind was filled with certain fundamental features of the Pauline Gospel (law and grace), who was therefore ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... those who know nothing about it; but he could not approve of his selfishness, cold-blooded calculations, and least of all of the manner in which he forgot his "white gifts," to adopt those that were purely "red." On the other hand, Pathfinder was a riddle to Captain Sanglier. The latter could not comprehend the other's motives; he had often heard of his disinterestedness, justice, and truth; and in several instances they had led him into grave errors, on that principle ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... Frowning over the riddle that Daniel told, Down through the mist hung garden, below a feeble sun, The King of Persia walked: oh, the chilling cold! His mind was webbed ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves

... especial art, had done most of their work in cities, and when it came to matters of the fields and woods they were not to be trusted. But when David found Roger a little inclined to vaunt his superior woodcraft he set him a riddle to answer: ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... sight of honest folks; she told her the man had turned his back forever, that only the ashy road of the ruined remained for her to tread. And that was how the great news that Nature had looked upon her for a mother came to Joan Tregenza. Here was the riddle of the mysterious voice unraveled; here was the secret of her physical sorrows made clear. She looked wildly from one to the other—from the man to the woman; then she tottered a step away, clutching her money and her little picture to her breast; and ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... assumption of the Trinitarian doctrine of Christ. If Christ were indeed the Son of God, standing to God in such a relation that what He did was likewise the doing of God the Father, we can understand the apostle's meaning. On any other hypothesis his language is a riddle of which the key has been lost. A further question still remains to be answered. I said just now that if St. Paul had written, "Christ commendeth His own love towards us, in that He died for us," we could have understood Him. But here, also, something is implicit which requires ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson

... Sphinx, oh, answer me, That riddle strange unloosing! For many, many thousand years Have I on it ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... were almost a riddle to Malcolm, but his reverence for her made him lay them up deeply, as he watched her kneeling at the Mass, her upturned face beaming ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... War. Probably Queen Sophie never had a more agitated Summer than this of 1729. We are now arrived at that thrice-famous Quarrel, or almost Duel, of Friedrich Wilhelm and his Britannic Brother-in-law little George II.; and must try to riddle from those distracted Paper-masses some notice of it, not wholly unintelligible to the reader. It is loudly talked of, loudly, but alas also loosely to a degree, in all manner of dull Books; and is at once thrice-famous and extremely ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... differently these past months,—no, from his birth and from hers, too,—if every circumstance of society had not conspired to put them apart, who knows! They might have solved a riddle or two together and been happy. But it was all foolish speculation now, and it was well that their differences should be emphasized at this last chance meeting; that she should be hostile to him. He summed the matter up thus, and, as if answering ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... ridden away with Pablo at her heels, Bill Conway unburdened himself of a slightly ribald little chanson entitled: "What Makes the Wild Cat Wild?" In the constant repetition of this query it appeared that the old Californian sought the answer to a riddle not even remotely connected with the ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... and relate histories and stories, and many elegant kinds of work; so that many came out of the hills very prudent and learned. The biggest, and those of best capacity, received instruction in natural science and astronomy, and in poetry and riddle-making, arts highly esteemed by the little people. John was very diligent, and soon became a clever painter; he wrought, too, most ingeniously in gold, and silver, and stones; and in verse and riddle-making he ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)

... spotlessly gloved hand to his helmet and replied, "Yes, sir." But as yet no solution of the riddle ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... (after I had had leisure to meditate on the foregoing philosophical dialogue), "mate, I'll give you a riddle!" ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed

... escort, moved his residence from the capital to Gaeta. The modified Constitution, substituted for the first charter after the events of the 15th of May, was still nominally in force; Parliament had met during the summer, but the King solved the riddle of governing through his ministers, on purely retrograde principles, without paying more heed to the representatives of the nations than to the benches on which they sat. Prorogued on the 5th of September, Parliament ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... a most pig-headed sot! (aloud) Young man, you cannot know the risk you run. Th' alternative's in earnest—not in fun. Dame Turandot will spin you a tough riddle, That's not to be "got thro' like any fiddle." Not such as this, which any child might guess— (Though the Emperor could not, I must confess;) "What gives a cold, cures a cold, and pays the doctor's bill?" Not short enigmas ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... A riddle is it still unto me, this dream; the meaning is hidden in it and encaged, and doth not yet fly above ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche

... to say something! They even speak—but only [Oe]dipus can solve the riddle and understand their ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... fascination seems to hover about a bridge at night, especially for unhappy souls who have grappled with fate and think themselves worsted. Perhaps they find a melancholy pleasure in the company of ghosts who have escaped from similar defeats; perhaps they seek to read the riddle of the universe, as they stand, elbows on rail, studying the turbulent ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... see the Clown now," thought the Captain. "It is lonesome here. But if the Calico Clown saw me he would make up some joke or riddle about ...
— The Story of a Bold Tin Soldier • Laura Lee Hope

... consistency of your conduct, or the morality of your principles. Sir, if you can but use the tomahawk skilfully, your fortune is certain. 'Sic itur ad astra.' Read Blackwood's Noctea Ambrosiance. Take the town by surprise, folly by the ears; 'the glory, jest, and riddle of the world' is man; use your knowledge of this ancient volume rightly, and you may soon mount the car of fortune, and drive at random wherever your fancy dictates. Bear in mind the Greek proverb, 'Mega biblion, mega kakon.' In your ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... debate, ministers were defeated (June 11) by the narrow figure of thirteen in a House of six hundred and thirty-seven. Mr. Gladstone did not speak, but he answered the riddle that had for long so much harassed the wirepullers, by going into the lobby with Disraeli and his flock. The general sense of the majority was probably best expressed by Mr. Bright. Since the fall of the government of Sir ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... the strange tastes of those who desired for some reason the temporary company of these unfortunate females, so unpleasing to the eye, to the ear, to the mind, to the smell; desired it so much that they would pay money for it. Why? Against that riddle the non-comprehension of her sex beat itself, baffled. She might put it the other way round, try to imagine herself desiring, paying for, the temporary attentions of some dirty, common, vapid, and patchouli-scented ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay

... frowned with a puzzled, wistful expression, staring straight ahead like a man striving to solve a great riddle. ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... a riddle. I asked him anxiously, whether, in any part of the world, Savannah, Surat, or Archangel, he had ever a wife to think of; or children, that he carried so lengthy a phiz. Nowhere neither. Therefore, as by his own confession he had nothing to think of but himself, and there was little but honesty ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... bullet whistled by, and fell at his feet. Bending down and picking it up, his face was lighted with a smile. He quietly took his foot from the stirrup, and turning to Ammalat, "Mount!" said he, "you shall presently find with your own eyes an answer to this riddle. The Russian bullets are of lead; but this is copper[42]—an Avaretz, my dear countryman. Besides, it comes from the south, where the Russians ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... now, by the waves that pass, by the breeze that blows, by the pebble that falls, by the hour that strikes; on a certain day, man, that trembling, stumbling being, the plaything of chance and of the passing moment, rises suddenly before the riddle that is called human life, feels that there is within him something greater than this abyss,—honour! something stronger than fatality,—virtue! something more mysterious than the unknown,—faith! and alone, feeble ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... "I've an idea that that's the handsomest women I ever saw! I think you're reading the riddle all wrong. Perhaps she's the ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... is difficult to decide which most deserves the hand of the Princess. Therefore I propose to test your wit. The one who shall ask me a riddle I cannot ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum

... wife said to him, "Cassim, I know you think yourself rich, but you are much mistaken; Ali Baba is infinitely richer than you; he does not count his money but measures it." Cassim desired her to explain the riddle, which she did, by telling him the stratagem she had used to make the discovery, and shewed him the piece of money, which was so old that they could not tell in what prince's reign ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... trigger they saw—they were made to mount—in momentary apprehension that the backwoodsman, whose determined character was sufficiently seen in his face, might yet change his resolve, and with wanton hand, riddle their bodies with his bullets. It was only when they were mounted, that they drew a breath of ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... if it be not, It were a shame for modest lips to speak it, And silly doves are better mates than we? And yet our love is Jesus' due,—and all things Which share with Him divided empery Are snares and idols—'To love, to cherish, and to obey!' . . . . . O deadly riddle! Rent and twofold life! O cruel troth! To keep thee or to break thee Alike seems sin! ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... commercialism, has complicated our problem. But with these new complications have come new means for warring against the evil. Intelligence on the subject is more general. Fine minds everywhere are addressing themselves to the riddle. Thus it seems that humanity is at last coming to grips with the traffic in women. Who knows but that out of this little gathering may not be evolved some theory which, injected into the circulation of modern life, shall immunize us ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks

... neighbors urged again the shops. But 'no' again. She had not spent her strength to fit me for the yard-stick and the shop-girl's meagre living. She read the riddle of my being as only mothers can; saw the stamp upon my soul and fondly called it genius. Pinned her faith upon that slumbering curse, or blessing, as we choose ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various

... Lossing at the bridge, in which we both saw the hand of Voisin. Mrs. Camp, too, added her quota to the solution of this riddle when she recognised in Voisin the swindler of the Turkish Bazaar, and identified the hand of Voisin as the hand which had held out the Spurious bank-notes to Camp; and, finally, there came his second attempt to destroy Lossing in the Cold Storage fire, ending as it did in his own disaster ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... his two frames together and continued his life. A letter from him to his friend explaining matters crossed a letter from the friend, in which he told how he also had been aware of his presence. The incident is narrated in detail in Mr. Funk's "Psychic Riddle." ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle

... years ago and found the figure of the unending wheel to symbolize all processes and procedures: a world, a universe, without termini. Sometimes I think them right, but then again my western mind will not have it that the riddle of the Sphinx may not be solved. Our assurance meets every challenge; mystery may make us humble; we may be baffled; but we do not despair because we know we are Gods to whom all doors must open eventually. That seems to be the real underlying strength of our position. Why men go ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... smiling benignantly upon her. "You cannot annoy me this morning. I am myself again," and Dick's eyes turned sharply upon him. "All my old powers of observation have returned, my old interest in the great dark riddle of human life has re-awakened. The brain, the sedulous, active brain, resumes its work to-day asking questions, probing problems. I rose early, Margaret," he flourished his hands like one making ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason

... o'er a neighbour's fall, Till one whose cause and temper showed like mine Spake to him in my hearing this plain word: 'Man, do the dead no wrong; but, if thou dost, Be sure thou shalt have sorrow.' Thus he warned The infatuate one: ay, one whom I behold, For all may read my riddle—thou art he. ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... leading through the workaday world. Yet quite half our time was taken up in studies utterly useless to us. How I hated them, these youth-tormenting Shades. Homer! how I wished the fishermen had asked him that absurd riddle earlier. Horace! why could not that shipwreck have succeeded: it would have in the case of any one ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... said the artist. "I have passed weeks trying to catch it. The thing is too subtle, and it is not a grand type, like what we are used to in the academies. But besides the riddle, I like Miss Dudley for herself. The way she takes my brutal criticisms of her painting makes my heart bleed. I mean to go down on my knees one of these days, and confess to her that I know nothing about it; only if her style is right, ...
— Esther • Henry Adams

... man is your enemy: no man is your friend. All alike are your teachers. Your enemy becomes a mystery that must be solved, even though it take ages: for man must be understood. Your friend becomes a part of yourself, an extension of yourself, a riddle hard to read. Only one thing is more difficult to know—your own heart. Not until the bonds of personality are loosed, can that profound mystery of self begin to be seen. Not till you stand aside from it ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... help towards a satisfactory solution of the riddle propounded by Garrison: "Shall the Liberator die?" The fresh access of anti-slavery strength, both in respect of zeal and numbers, begotten by it, exerted no slight influence on the longevity of the Liberator. Poor the paper continued, and embarrassed ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... God reads the riddle right; And we who grope in constant night But serve His will; And when sometime the doubt is gone, And darkness blossoms into dawn,— "God keeps the good," we then will say: " 'Tis but the dross ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... de Nevers (if her riddle I read) Was a woman of genius: whose genius, indeed, With her life was at war. Once, but once, in that life The chance had been hers to escape from this strife In herself; finding peace in the life of another From the passionate wants she, in hers, ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... then to the princess, in the midst of a profound silence, "I hardly dare guess; and yet in this riddle I plainly perceive my own happiness. I dared to think that your questions would have no difficulty for me, while you thought the contrary; you have the goodness to believe that I am not unworthy to please you, while I have hardly the boldness to ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various

... me, rot, tot, tot, A wee, wee man in a red, red coat, A staff in his hand, and a stane in his throat, Riddle me, ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright

... enable us with less hazard to get up to the ship. Meantime we took the Sylph in tow, and carried her to within seven hundred yards of the shore, where, dropping her anchor, she got a spring on it, and began firing away at the frigate, so as to riddle her bottom and prevent the possibility of her floating off at high water. At last we once more pulled in, the tide allowing us to approach close to the beach, when Mr Harvey, in whose boat I was, went on shore with a flag of truce to tell the French seamen, who were ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston

... city—an example and gnomon of disenchanted glory—her water-color sketch called the "Fellah Woman," and the very one of which Gautier sang: "Caprice of a fantastic brush and of an imperial leisure!... Those eyes, a whole poem of languor and pleasure, resolve the riddle and say, 'Be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... Here's a ridiculous riddle for you: How many o's are there in Woolloomooloo? Two for the W, two for the m, Four for the l's, ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis

... hips, and arms: whether gouty or rheumatic, God knows; but, I believe, both, that fight without a decision in favor of either, and have absolutely reduced me to the miserable situation of the Sphinx's riddle, to walk upon three legs; that is, with the assistance of my stick, to walk, or rather hobble, very indifferently. I wish it were a declared gout, which is the distemper of a gentleman; whereas the rheumatism is the distemper of a hackney-coachman ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... hear of it: young and old, you dream and think of it. Handsome and ugly (and, faith, before fifty, I never saw such a thing as a plain woman), it's the subject next to the hearts of all of you; and I think you guess my riddle without more trouble. LOVE! sure the word is formed on purpose out of the prettiest soft vowels and consonants in the language, and he or she who does not care to read about it is not worth ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... art is seen in his youthful timid darings, his unripe fancies oscillating between earth and heaven; there where we expect truth, we see conceit; there where we want little, much is given—now a blank eyed riddle,—dark with excess of self,—now a giant thought—vast but repulsive,—and now angel visitors startling us with wisdom and touches of heavenly beauty. Every where is seen exactness; but it is the exactness ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... into her uplifted eyes. What a riddle is woman! Had he not just seen this one in sabots? Did she not certainly know, through Mrs. Riley, that he must have seen her so? Were not her skirts but just now hitched up with an under-tuck, and fastened with a string? ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable

... so conning as Kookoo, no;" and the inquisitive little man would shake his head and smile, and shake his head again, as a man has a perfect right to do under the conviction that he has been for twenty years baffled by a riddle and is learning to read it at last; he had guessed what was in 'Sieur George's head, he would by and by guess what ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable

... tired to tell her I had no father or mother. When I did speak, she indicated neither by sound nor movement that she heard or heeded what I said. She sat up above me in the dark, unpleasant, and all but unseen—a riddle which the troubled child stumbling along by her horse's side did not want solved. Had there been anything to call light, I should have run away from her. Vague doubts of witches and ogresses crossed my mind, but I said ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald

... place in the middle of the road, and Almira reentered the room with the expression of one who had penetrated the inscrutable and solved the riddle of the Sphinx. She had been vouch-safed one of those gleams of light in darkness which ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... exists in the case at all, it is a uniform one, for a law that does not possess uniformity is no law; otherwise, it would be an unintelligible revelation, and the only possible thing left for us to do would be to attempt to solve it like a riddle—guess it out. It would be as if the writer were to use words with every variety of meaning peculiarly his own attached, without informing the reader what signification to give them in a given instance. No man has a right thus to ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... guarantee of the rights of man, and should therefore be surrendered as soon as its object contradicts these rights of man. But the practice is only the exception and the theory is the rule. If, however, we regard the revolutionary practice as the correct position of the relation, the riddle still remains to be solved, why the relationship was inverted in the consciousness of the political liberators, the end appearing as the means, and the means as the end. This optical illusion ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... vital riddle of our time. I look out upon the windy Channel and think of all those millions just over there, who seem to get busier and keener every hour. I could imagine the day of reckoning coming like a swarm ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... formidable fire; the twenty-four pieces of the First Heavy Artillery are ranged in the glade skirting the road from La Moncelle to La Chapelle; the battery of the Royal Guard sets fire to the Garenne Wood; the shells and the balls riddle Suchy, Francheval, Fouro-Saint-Remy, and the valley between Heibes and Givonne; and the third and fourth rank of cannon extend without break of continuity as far as the Calvary of Illy, the extreme point of the horizon. The German soldiers, seated or lying before the batteries, ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various



Words linked to "Riddle" :   penetrate, enigma, sift, diffuse, flummox, puzzle, interpenetrate, stupefy, gravel, perforate, brain-teaser, lick, beat, bewilder, intercommunicate, puzzle out, imbue, sieve, pervade, spiritize, spiritise, solve, screen, mystify, vex, pierce



Copyright © 2024 Diccionario ingles.com