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adjective
Baffling  adj.  Frustrating; discomfiting; disconcerting; as, baffling currents, winds, tasks.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Baffling" Quotes from Famous Books



... sit, Enthroned with heavenly Wit! Look where you see The greatest scorn of learned Vanity! (And then how much a nothing is mankind! Whose reason is weighed down by popular air. Who, by that, vainly talks of baffling death, And hopes to lengthen life by a transfusion of breath, Which yet whoe'er examines right will find To be an art as vain as bottling up of wind!) And when you find out these, believe true Fame is there, Far above all reward, yet to which ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... choice to choose another; by an antecedent act of will to choose a consequent act, and therein to execute his own choice. And if this be their meaning, it is nothing but shuffling with those they dispute with, and baffling their own reason. For still the question returns, wherein lies man's liberty in that antecedent act of will which chose the consequent act? The answer, according to the same principle, must be, that his liberty lies also in his willing as he would, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... These baffling winds blew upon the smouldering anxiety in his breast, as wind blows upon embers, causing them to glow. They lasted some days, and then, as if Fate had relented, up sprang on the starboard quarter a spanking breeze, making the rigging sing to a merry tune, and blowing the spindrift ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... them over as she went to her room, and there among them was a bulky envelope addressed in Mrs Quantock's great sprawling hand, which looked at first sight so large and legible, but on closer examination turned out to be so baffling. You had to hold it at some distance off to make anything out of it, and look at it in an abstracted general manner much as you would look at a view. Treated thus, scattered words began to leap into being, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... the point of the pike, in establishing a safe egress for the twelve hundred visitors, it was then first ascertained that all traces of The Masque had been lost in the smoke and subsequent confusion; and that, with his usual good fortune, he had succeeded in baffling his pursuers. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had bought so dear, and who was all her world, Hester sometimes burst into passionate tears. Then, perhaps,—for there was no foreseeing how it might ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... me Shirley (there's a dear fellow) and send it soon. We sadly want books, and this will be readable again and again, and pay itself. Tell Emma I grieve for the poor self-punishing self-baffling Lady; with all our hearts we grieve for the pain and vexation she has encounterd; but we do not swerve a pin's-thought from the propriety of your measures. God comfort her, and there's an end of a painful necessity. But I am glad she goes to see her. Let her keep up all ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... of the menagerie, which was a sly burlesque of the courtiers of Louis XIV., perhaps he might have made idolatrous partisans there as elsewhere; but it seems as if in the exposition of his theory, he posed rather as a censor than a teacher; he delighted in baffling the mind by paradoxes. By annexes superimposed and ill-blended with his system, he sometimes compromised those scientific truths whose splendor bursts forth when they are freed from heterogeneous accessories. We cannot otherwise explain the resistance ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... his records in his scrapbooks to prove his contentions. Under each clipping descriptive of a baffling murder he had written a brief outline of his solving of the case and dated it, following this with the date of the correct or incorrect ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.

... his secrets, Uncle Cassius?" she asked. "He has such an aggravating smile, just as if he were amused at baffling you." ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester

... Clay came to know about that necklet, and to appropriate two of the stones, we only discovered much later. I will not here anticipate that disclosure. One thing at a time is a good rule in life. For the moment he succeeded in baffling us altogether. ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen

... ourselves; it takes no rise From outward things, whate'er you may believe. There is an inmost centre in us all, Where truth abides in fulness; and around Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in, This perfect, clear perception—which is truth. A baffling and perverting carnal mesh Binds it, and makes all error: and, to know Rather consists in opening out a way Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape, Than in effecting entry for a light Supposed ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... of the inspired and ideal kind, and seems to have been conceived and executed in a similar state of feeling to that which produced among the ancients those perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the baffling models of succeeding generations. There is a unity and a perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. The central figure, St. Cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the painter's mind; her deep, dark, eloquent ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... organizations have been designated as "social-democratic," "socialist labor," or "labor" parties. Socialism in this sense of a party organization, or movement, is very different from a social philosophy. In its partizan phase socialism exhibits all of the baffling variability and elusiveness that it does in its other aspects. However, in its printed program the socialist party sets forth both a socialist philosophy and an ideal of active socialism ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... were clear and curt, with a certain ring of out-door freshness,—a capital voice to travel with up mountain-sides and through forests. The face, too, indicated a kind of joyous strength; for the blue eyes were merry and baffling, the laughing lips a brilliant scarlet, the nose neither Grecian nor aquiline, but slightly retrousse; a bronze moustache with long curling ends that were undeniably red, and hair a little darker, slightly curling as well. A broad-shouldered ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... sods, went at easy, measured bounds toward the open chink—toward its doom. One, two, three—clearing the prickly cedar bush, its forefeet fell on the hidden trap; clutch, a savage shriek, a flashing,—a struggle baffling the eyes to follow, and the master of the squirrels was ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... I am afraid that the borrowed handkerchief to which you applied the match really did get burnt, and you will probably have to offer the owner one of your own instead. That is the only weak spot in one of the most baffling tricks ever practised by the amateur prestidigitator (to use the word for the last time). It will make a fitting climax to your evening's entertainment—an entertainment which will ensure you another warm ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne

... set itself, or fragments of shrapnel emerge of their own accord from a man's leg even if it were possible to secure the services of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. But most doctors admit that in certain obscure and baffling maladies, classed generally as cases of shell-shock, mental and spiritual aid are at least as useful as massage or drugs. Next to religion—which is an extremely difficult thing to get or apply—music is probably the most powerful means we have of ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... From the pains Nature thus takes to sow the thistle broadcast over the land, it might be expected to be one of the most troublesome and abundant of weeds. But such is not the case; the more pernicious and baffling weeds, like snapdragon or blind nettles, being more local and restricted in their habits, and unable ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, the essence of virtue, and the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... intensely interesting and baffling, as men and women are bound to be who have come from heaven knows where to face heaven knows what. Most of them are quite innocently unaware. They do not know that they are interesting, or baffling either. They do not know, and it has not occurred to them to wonder, how they are going to affect ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair

... drawn. From the south wind that breathed a century and a half over the green wheat; from the perfume of the growing grasses waving over heavy-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the green finches, baffling the bee; from rose-lined hedge, woodbine, and cornflower, azure blue, where yellowing wheat stalks crowd up under the shadow of green firs. All the devious brooklets' sweetness where the iris stays the sunlight; all the wild woods hold of beauty; all the broad ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser

... count the cancer man's deadliest enemy. Every year this baffling disease takes large and larger toll of human life. From time to time experts come together to plan its limitation, but meanwhile the terrible disease increases. Addressing a company of experts recently, a great physician exclaimed: "Even if we can stop its growth by radium, it still ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis

... an intermediary, see? The law is very baffling, my friend. Once in its clutches a ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster

... the husband defaults. There are no laws compelling the husband to support his wife. The husband is under an assumed obligation to support his family, but there exists no means of forcing him to do his duty. Family desertion has become one of the commonest and one of the most baffling of modern social problems. Everybody is appalled by its prevalence, but nobody seems to know what to do about it. The Legal Aid Society of New York City reports about three new cases of family desertion for every day in the year. Other agencies in other ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr

... of Russian life and Russian people tell us more about that baffling problem the Russian Nation than pages ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... over the people one or other must make its prey; but whether it was to the greater advantage of the Neapolitans to be battened on by the house of Aragon and then that of Bourbon for the next six hundred years after the Angevines had retired from the banquet is problematical. History is a very baffling study, and one may be well content to know little or nothing about it. I knew so little or had forgotten so much that I scarcely deserved to be taken down into the crypt of this church and shown the skeletons of four conspirators ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... establish the same facts by another and, as he thought, a better witness, did not re-examine; but calling that other, with an air of nonchalance, succeeded in extracting from him all that the former had failed in; baffling all the attempts of the Attorney-General to affect his credit. At length, another witness being ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... course, no longer benefiting by the trade-winds, but having frequently to encounter the light and baffling breezes to be met with off the African coast, and now and then to contend with the heavy black squalls of those regions, which more than once carried away some of our spars and blew our lighter sails out ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... been in part at least the victims of their own delusions. But beside these there has always been a numerous class of men, who, with minds perfectly disengaged and free, have applied themselves to concert the means of overreaching the simplicity, or baffling the penetration, of those who were merely spectators, and uninitiated in the mystery of the arts that were practised upon them. Such was no doubt the case with the speaking heads and statues, which were sometimes ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... that half, or a part of, the three thousand that had come into Mitya's hands might really have been left somewhere hidden in the town, or even, perhaps, somewhere here, in Mokroe. This would explain the circumstance, so baffling for the prosecution, that only eight hundred roubles were to be found in Mitya's hands. This circumstance had been the one piece of evidence which, insignificant as it was, had hitherto told, to some extent, in Mitya's favor. Now this one piece of evidence in his ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... sea. Next came St. Helena, since so famous as the cage and then the tomb of that most furious and terrible of wild beasts, a great conqueror. Near the fifth degree of north latitude, the south-east trade-wind died away, and was succeeded by four days of light, variable, "baffling" winds, when the north-east trade set in strong from about east-by-north, its usual point near the equator, and they once more flew joyously on their north-west course. A few "regular built" Mudian (i. ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames

... wait the French and give them check at Ulm, That fortress-frontier-town, entrenched and walled, A place long chosen as a vantage-point Whereon to encounter them as they outwind From the blind shades and baffling green defiles Of the Black Forest, worn with wayfaring. Here Mack will intercept his agile foe Hasting to meet the Russians in Bohemia, And cripple him, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... been the first to reap. The very men who most insisted that specific difference was the accumulation of differences so minute as to be often hardly, if at all, perceptible, could not see that the striking and baffling phenomena of design in connection with organism admitted of exactly the same solution as the riddle of organic development, and should be seen not as a result reached per saltum, but as an accumulation ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... George Kelly led an assault on the | |Dallas pitchers this afternoon while Pol Perritt and| |Fred Schupp were baffling the local talent at home | |plate. The net result was a shutout for Dallas and | |five runs for ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... men are in love with her, and the description of their after relations as friends, and the feelings of Elena towards them, and her own self-communings are interwoven with unfaltering skill. All the most complex and baffling shades of the mental life, which in the hands of many latter-day novelists build up characters far too thin and too unconvincing, in the hands of Turgenev are used with deftness and certainty to bring to light that great kingdom which is always lying hidden beneath ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... life's course is traversed, I'll await Your well-timed counsel. If I have you by me I'll laugh at all the baffling strokes of Fate And lay the bogie ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various

... of Arthur Latimer with Scar Faced Charlie, making his second trip since Danvers came to Macleod, unexpectedly settled most of the problems baffling the silent and lonely Danvers. Charlie's freighting outfit pulled into Macleod when the troops were drilling, and Philip, though attentive to the commands of his superior, looked across the gully and watched the gate-framed picture of the arrival of supplies. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman

... butter, hoping to effect a sale. The steward was summoned, and bargaining began. I listened and looked on, amused and interested, and I presently suggested to the captain that it might be as well to ask this man if he too had seen the yacht whose movements appeared so baffling and inexplicable. The captain at once took ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... action was often baffling to the observer, especially in its restraint. It was only after many years that the present writer found the master-key to Dilke's actions, and it was revealed in a flash at the time of the passing of the South Africa Union Act. The question was the representation of the native population in ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... selfishness were made all the more desperate by the bewildering confusion of the political situation. The most difficult problem had been the attitude of Monk, and that was all the more baffling from the fact that Monk had no clear discernment of his own line of policy, and with all his accidental command of the situation, was too obtuse to choose his own course and follow it consistently. The ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... her counsels. We were to unite to oblige my Father to start to his feet and face the world. Alas! we might as well have attempted to rouse the summit of Yes Tor into volcanic action. To my mother's arguments, my Father—with that baffling smile of his—replied: 'I esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt!' and that this answer was indirect made it none the less conclusive. My mother wished him to give lectures, to go to London, to read papers before ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... reason for styling Fabius "Maximus," who discovered this way of preventing the lower classes, by their number, from acquiring an overwhelming superiority in the government of the state. He achieved as great a good for his country by so doing, as by baffling Hannibal after the battle of Cannae. But for that circumstance the Roman constitution would have become, after the change of Appius Claudius, a mere prototype of the American democracy; a government constantly swayed by a numerical majority of the lowest class of citizens. There can be no doubt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... those whom he had marked as men he would like to fraternise with. As often as our paths crossed, his eyes told me that he longed to stop and speak, and continue the promenade abreast. I was under the control of a demon of mischief; I took a malicious pleasure in eluding and baffling him—in passing on with a nod. It had become a kind of game; I was curious to see whether he would ever develop sufficient hardihood to take the bull by the horns. After all, from a conventional point of view, my conduct was quite justifiable. I always meant to do better by him next time, and ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... were; it having been the scene of frequent British operations in previous wars. Owing to this, "the Maria, because of her distant situation (from which the Inflexible and Carleton had chased by signal) when the rebels were first discovered, and baffling winds, could not get into close action."[13] For the same reason the Inflexible could not support the Carleton. The Americans, in the aggregate distinctly inferior, were thus permitted a concentration ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan

... and dusty in London, was like a dream of beauty at Earlescourt. The tall trees gave grateful shelter, baffling the sun's warm rays; the golden corn stood in the broad fields ready for the sickle; the hedge-rows were filled with flowers. The beech trees in the park were in full perfection. Fruit hung ripe and heavy in the orchards. It was no ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme

... third year of the Great War had been ushered in by the unprecedented sinking of Allied merchantmen by German U-boats that the value of the smoke screen as a means of baffling an under-water attack was fully realised. Convoy guards were supplied with the necessary appliances for emitting the fumes with which to cover the movements of the ships under their protection, and so successful ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife

... Another baffling story by the great detective-story writer who is already becoming world-famous for his marvellously intricate and ingenious plots. This story is a jewel of many facets in brilliant setting. Here Mr. Keeler's genius for the mystery-plot comes ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... somewhat to my uneasiness, the Klondike woman and her party. Being almost the last, it will be understood that they created no little sensation as she led them down the thronged room to her table. She was wearing an evening gown of lustrous black with the apparently simple lines that are so baffling to any but the expert maker, with a black picture hat that suited her no end. I saw more than one matron of the North Side set stiffen in her seat, while Mrs. Belknap-Jackson and Mrs. Effie turned upon her the chilling ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... baffling and intangible this new forest, and how deeply serious a business now for those who were still thoughtlessly and selfishly juggling with ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole

... escape from the real difficulties with which the subject is beset, and mouths away at immense length and width about what he calls "the secret of Chaucer's rhythm in his heroic verse, which has been the baffling subject of so much discussion among scholars, a trifling increase in the syllables occasionally introduced for variety, and founded upon the same laws of contraction by apostrophe, syncope, &c., as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... alone in the house where murder had been committed under such strange and baffling circumstances that afternoon. He was not nervous, but again he made a tour of inspection of the first floor and basement, looking into closets, and testing windows to make sure they were all locked. Everywhere there were evidences of the thoroughness ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin

... two o'clock, and beat gallantly out the Sound, in the face of an intermittent baffling wind and a heavy swell from the sea. I would fain have approached nearer the precipices of Ardnamurchan, to trace along their inaccessible fronts the strange reticulations of trap figured by Macculloch; but prudence and the skipper forbade our trusting ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... point where I stood, a straggling shrub, the only one for rods, hung over the brink. I silently sank to a seat behind it, lest I disturb the singer, and remained without movement. The baffling carol went on for some seconds, and for the only time in my life I wished I could put a spell upon brook-babble, that I ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller

... be called poetical justice has thus evolved itself from the schemes in which Randal Leslie had wasted rare intellect in baffling his own fortunes, no outward signs of adversity evince the punishment of Providence on the head of the more powerful offender, Baron Levy. No fall in the Funds has shaken the sumptuous fabric, built ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... I take down and dust the loose sheets of my coming book or polish the gilding of my former one. It is in my fidelity to these baffling hopes—hopes fed with so many withered (or at least torn and blotted) leaves—rather than in any resemblance authenticable by a looking-glass, that I show my identity with the old long-haired and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... in fact, the situation in which the squirrel was. It was evident he regarded the trees at some distance with a wistful and anxious look; for, although he had succeeded so far in baffling his enemy, he still appeared to suffer ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... Ballard these things could not be said at once. In spite of her simplicity and frankness, there was about her a baffling atmosphere. She was like a still pool with the depths as yet unsounded, an uncharted sea—with its mystery ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... undeserved: from its early elements, the comfortably broad distinctions of convincing importance, it has progressed to a stage of almost infinite differentiations and subtleties; and when machinery was called in to dispose of controversy, a new and unsuspected mass of baffling detail was revealed. ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges

... Nakanocho[u], Nakacho[u]—is it Yoshiwara, or Fukagawa, or Naito[u] Shinjuku to which the Danna goes? 'Tis but the lady at the pole who has a clear head and forces us to go this way.... Danna, never mind the fare money. Condescend to alight. It is a hard night; too hard for such a baffling task.... Here is ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... answer at once, but looked up at him, as he stood over her, with one of her strange, baffling gazes, in which there was the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the importance of secrecy, General Gage quietly got ready eight hundred picked troops, which he meant to convey under cover of night across the West Bay, and to land on the Cambridge side, thus baffling the vigilance of the townspeople, and at the same time considerably shortening the distance his troops would have to march. So much pains were taken to keep the actual destination of these troops a profound secret, that even the officer who was selected for ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford

... it all about, anyhow?" asked Jim Cranby. "I ain't heard nothing about it." He had stood in open-mouthed perplexity trying to catch a clew. Coming late, he found it baffling. ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... of thirty Socialists, and whilst the entire country was acclaiming him as its saviour, baffling the watchfulness of his six hundred detectives, he secretly took Eveline to a little house near the Northern railway station, where they remained until night. After their departure, the maid of their hotel, as she was putting their room in order, saw seven ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... tread of passing feet, Or vagrant memory calling up some sweet Snatch of old song or romance, whence or why They scarcely know or ask,—so, thou and I, Nursed in the faith that Truth alone is strong In the endurance which outwearies Wrong, With meek persistence baffling brutal force, And trusting God against the universe,— We, doomed to watch a strife we may not share With other weapons than the patriot's prayer, Yet owning, with full hearts and moistened eyes, The awful beauty of self-sacrifice, And wrung by keenest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... Still tantalized by baffling head winds and alternating calms and gales, they were, however, gradually approaching the coast. Omitting the entries of the next eleven days, I shall quote the final pages of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... 1868. That was a Government of measures and of men; but no measure of that Government could equal in importance the Old-Age Pensions Act which we have placed on the Statute-book. The settlement of the Irish Church question by Disestablishment was not a more baffling and intricate business, than the settlement of the Irish University question which Mr. Birrell has achieved. The labour legislation of the Government of 1868, although very important, shows nothing which equals in importance the Trades ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... its grey curtain rising, saw her sailing from Margate up the Thames, but so light was the baffling wind, that we could not reach Sheerness that night, and so had to anchor in five fathoms not far from Cheney Rock, with dense fog closing round, and the Nore gong ringing, while my bright little cabin glowed with comfort, and the newspapers ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... she pretended not to like Zavier? Why? Why? Susan found her thoughts trailing off into a perspective of questions that brought up against a wall of incomprehension above which Lucy's clear eyes looked at her with baffling secretiveness. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... of the currents, as they often vary within short distances and brief differences of time. This is truer in light fluctuating puffs of air than in steady breezes; though the squalls of even the latter are familiarly known to be uncertain and baffling in all mountainous regions and narrow waters. On the present occasion, Hutter himself (as he shoved the ark from her berth at the side of the platform) was at a loss to pronounce which way the wind blew. In common, ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... both aunts were laboring upon a difficult and baffling work in Helen's chamber. Patiently and earnestly, with their stiff old fingers, they were trying to forge the required note. They made failure after failure, but they improved little by little all the time. The pity of it all, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... powerful squadron under Admiral Cervera, which had assembled at the Cape Verde Islands before the outbreak of hostilities, had crossed the ocean, and by its erratic movements in the Caribbean Sea delayed our military plans while baffling the pursuit of our fleets. For a time fears were felt lest the Oregon and Marietta, then nearing home after their long voyage from San Francisco of over 15,000 miles, might be surprised by Admiral Cervera's fleet, but their fortunate arrival dispelled these apprehensions and lent much-needed reenforcement. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... suddenly into that part of his soul where he kept his finest thoughts and emotions. And people looked and saw and then usually tiptoed away in puzzled awe or a dim sympathy. And he had such a habit of turning common sense and daylight on matters which seemed so baffling ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... he'd write even though to-morrow would bring him here himself," she said; and Miss Sanford bit her lip and colored far more in indignation than in confusion; but, rallying like the little heroine she was, and bent now on baffling the schemes of the wily interloper, she quickly leaned forward and took the letter, glanced brightly at Mrs. Stannard, and exclaimed, with all the delight ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... heart and illumined her face, and she waited for the words of encouragement that she felt assured would be spoken. The artist looked over her sketches slowly, carefully, and his eye went back to her brilliant countenance as if to read there answers to ciphers which perplexed him. But yet more baffling cryptography met him in the deep, flashing, appealing eyes, on the crimson, quivering lips, on the low, full brow, with its widely separated black arches. Evidently the face possessed far more attraction ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... St. Abb's Head clear round to Annan Water, was it an easy matter to circumvent the canny Scot who went a-sailoring. He had a trick of stopping short of his destination, when homeward bound, that proved as baffling to the gangs as it was in seeming contradiction to all the traditions of a race who pride themselves on "getting there." [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 579—Admiral Pringle, Report on Rendezvous, 2 April 1795, and Captains' ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... Hammond with an independence of idealism to which I shall always think that we owe much of the cleaner political criticism of to-day; and Belloc himself was writing in it studies of what proved to be the most baffling irony. To understand how his Latin mastery, especially of historic and foreign things, made him a leader, it is necessary to appreciate something of the peculiar position of that isolated group of ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... knew the girl's real mother in New York, where Edna was born, appeared on the scene and gave us data upon which we could base some opinions of the outcome. The case in its entirety had proved very baffling to detectives because of the mass of contradictory lies told by both the ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy

... what I considered a tacit engagement to study the matter alone, I read the book. Never shall I forget the effect it produced on me. I seemed to be holding communion with Satan himself, robed as an angel of light, the transparent drapery revealing his hideous form but baffling my endeavors to rend it away. Such sophistry, such impudence of unsupported assertion, such distortion of truth and gilding of gross falsehood, I never met with. I tried in vain to find an answer to things that I saw and felt to be antiscriptural ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... was not due to any assistance he had received from the detective in the elucidation of baffling crime mysteries. It arose from an entirely different cause. Wolfe is supposed to have said that he would sooner have been remembered as the author of Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" than as the conqueror of Quebec. Mr. Cromering would sooner have been the editor ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... making an effort to escape, in spite of the remonstrances of the executioner, threw open the wicket. Blueskin therefore had nothing to stop him. Dashing through the open door, he crossed the Old Bailey, plunged into a narrow court on the opposite side of the way, and was out of sight in a minute, baffling all pursuit. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... her, as they discussed the case alone, "we're not making our usual rapid headway this time. Rather baffling, isn't it?" ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells

... to move. Even then, though she had to turn her head a little, she let him hold her gaze—as, of course, he was nothing loath to do, being intensely and increasingly stirred by the encounter with its baffling hint of mystery. Indeed, she let him hold that gaze until it was not possible for her longer to maintain her share of the exchange without twisting about in the car. As for King, he did not scruple to twist, as far as his back would let him, ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond

... granite, and the inscription is—Girls!" cried Aunt Pen, rising and clasping her knees with unexpected energy, "I expressly forbid my age being printed in the paper, or on the lid, or on the stone! I won't gratify every gossip in town, that I won't! I shall take real pleasure in baffling their curiosity. And another thing, while I am about it, don't you ask Tom Maltby to my funeral, or let him come in, if he comes himself, on any account whatever. I should rise in my shroud if he approached me. Yes, I should! Tom ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... am still in the domain of practice and administration—I should put his singular, perhaps an unrivalled, tact in the management of men, and a judgment of intuitive shrewdness as to the best outlet from perplexed and often baffling situations. He had, in its highest and best development, the genius of common sense. These rare gifts of practical efficiency were, during the whole of his Kingship, yoked to the service of a great ideal. He was animated every day of his Sovereignty by the thought that he was ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... from insular dogmatism to universal bewilderment; and a chief agent in the change has been Bradley himself, with his scornful and delicate intellect, his wit, his candour, his persistence, and the baffling futility of his conclusions. In this early book we see him coming forth like a young David against every clumsy champion of utilitarianism, hedonism, positivism, or empiricism. And how smooth and polished were the little stones in his sling! How fatally they would have lodged in ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... giving his orders, for though greatly recovered he was still in want of quiet. We laid her head for the nearest port in Spanish America, for we could not risk the voyage home without fresh hands; and as it was, what with baffling winds and a couple of fresh gales, we were all worn out ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Christian effort is paramount, and where such effort is so vital to the world, the decadence of the country church is of far-reaching significance. Home Missions is called to direct its energizing, constructive ability to the solution of this baffling and discouraging feature of its problem to a greater degree ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen

... using some of the missionary's own language. The baffling I had been treated to by Scipio melted to nothing in this. Did living men petrify, I should have changed to mineral between the sheets. The Doctor got out of bed, lighted his lamp, and found a book; and the two retired into the Virginian's room, where I could ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... adorn The living landscape, fairer than the morn. The summer clouds in shapes romantic rolled, And those they edge the fading west, like gold; The lake that sleeps in sunlight, yet impressed With shades more sweet than real on its breast; 'Mid baffling stones, beneath a partial ray, The small brook huddling its uneven way; 110 The blue far distant hills, the silvery sea, And every scene of summer speaks of me: But most I wake the sweetest wishes warm, Where the fond gaze is turned on woman's breathing ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... itself of the movement. Considering the difficulties of the work, it is wonderful that there were not more; and none of them were discreditable, none but what arose from the limitation of human powers matched against confused and baffling circumstances. ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... really the most baffling and exasperating creature," Myra told herself. "I expect he thinks he is vexing me by being so casual, the conceited fellow. I am annoyed with myself ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage

... into a chair by a card table and, baffling all attempts to engage him in conversation, reviewed his troubles in a mumbled soliloquy, the liquor gradually making him careless. But of all the jumbled words his companions' diligent ears heard they recognized and retained only the bare term "Winchester"; ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... with the circumstance as the man himself. He was polite, engaging, and handsome; the objection to his complexion, if such there were, was at least offset by a very positive faculty of entertaining; besides which, the unspeakable something in manner, always baffling disguises, always whispering of other conditions, always exciting suggestions and expectations, was ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... had been no outward change.... And this once was she! I thought, Where is she, then? Where is the soul? Where is that which loved me without understanding me? Where is that which I loved? The baffling, sad enigma of death confronted me in all its terrifying crudity. The shaft of love and the desolation of death had struck me almost in the same hour, and before these twin mysteries, supremely equal, I recoiled and quailed. ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... moonlight, there grew in their hearts, as quietly as the growing of the wheat in the fields, that strange marvel of life, that keeps the tide of humanity ceaselessly flowing onward. And it is all so simply done before our eyes, and in our ears, that we forget it is so baffling a mystery. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... have done without him I can't conceive. However, this story concerns him and has nothing to do with my extraordinary dilemma; I merely mention it as a fact which brought additional cares into his life. All the time he was doing what could be done to help me he was also going through a most baffling and miserable time among the publishers; for 'At Strife,' unlike its predecessor, was rejected by Davison and by five other houses. Think of this, you comfortable readers, as you lie back in your easy chairs and leisurely turn the pages of that popular story. ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall

... if some inquisitive gossip should ask him where he might be going, Joe would be ready with his safe answer. He can beat us in baffling inquiry," put in Sybil. ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... arena is Mr. Epstein's statue. Approached from behind, as the present writer approached it, this has very much the air of an important work of art; and that it well may be. Closer examination, however, raises some doubts. Is it, perhaps, only the imitation of one? Mr. Epstein is a baffling artist. His skill and scholarship are amazing, and he seems to have convictions; but what are they? Has he merely a brilliant gift for description, helped out and sophisticated by a subtle taste? Or has he a queer entangled sense of the ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell

... until the vessel rounded the Land's End. After that it became baffling and fickle, and it was more than three weeks after the date of her sailing from Glasgow that the vessel entered the mouth of the Thames. By this time Ronald's boyish spirits had allayed all suspicion on the part of his guards. He joked with the sailors, climbed about ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... and two dogs over the pass to the west side of the Great Divide. The mountains rose precipitously on each side; but when the trail began dropping down westward, the weather moderated, though the snow grew deeper; and in the third week of January Thompson came on the baffling current of the Columbia. He camped there for the remainder of the winter, near the entrance of the Canoe River. Why he went up the Columbia in the spring, tracing it back to its source, and thence south again into Idaho, instead ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut

... Leonardo da Vinci might have painted her, less sensual and cruel than his women, more restless and disharmonic, but physically, spiritually enticing, and, by her refusals to surrender either to her spirit or her senses, baffling ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... in, but Merriwell was light as a feather on his feet, and he danced nimbly about, tapping the other fellow now here, now there, smiling sweetly all the while, and showing a skill that was very baffling to Bascomb. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... persons left in a world of strange and terrible noises. The boyau (communication trench) began to turn and wind about in the most perplexing manner, and we entered a veritable labyrinth. This extraordinary, baffling complexity is due primarily to the fact that the trenches advance and retreat, rise and fall, in order to take advantage of the opportunities for defense afforded by every change in the topography of ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... eighteenth year. Until then I had been wholly absorbed with the terrors and the majestical inferences of the moment, the hour, and the day. I was alone with them, and they were wonderful and excessively baffling in their splendors; then, after filling my mind and soul with the legendary splendors of Friendship, and The Oversoul-Circles, and Compensation, each of these words of exciting largeness in themselves, I turned to the dramatic unrealities of Zarathustra, which, ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley

... our station near the Oratory of S. Giovanni Battista, before we can appreciate the beauty of its design, or the boldness of the group it forms with the cathedral dome and tower and the square masses of numerous out-buildings. Yet this peculiar position of the palace, though baffling to a close observer of its details, is one of singular advantage to the inhabitants. Set on the verge of Urbino's towering eminence, it fronts a wave-tossed sea of vales and mountain summits toward the rising and the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... of unacknowledged friendship. Their common love of books may have helped; for Casey—Heaven knew where or how—had picked up an education far above Gilbart's, and amazing in a common stoker. Also he wore some baffling, attractive mystery behind his reserve. Once or twice— certainly not half a dozen times—he had at a casual word pulled open for an instant the doors of his heart and given Gilbart a sensation of looking into a furnace, into white-hot depths, sudden and frightening. ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... can be pronounced, and the care of the child be legally secured to the mother. The only doubt and the only danger are there. If you are not frightened by the prospect of a desperate venture which some women would shrink from, I believe I see a way of baffling the spies." ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins

... little away from her father. In earlier times when moods of abstraction fell upon him, she had sought to rouse him; but latterly she had learned the wisdom and kindness of silence. She knew that this annual autumnal gypsying held for him the keenest delight and, in another and baffling phase, a poignancy on which, as she had grown to womanhood, it had seemed impious to allow her imagination to play. She watched him now with the pity that was woven into her love for him: his tall figure and the slightly stooped shoulders; the round felt hat that crowned his thick, close-cut ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... dignity of its purpose; it had set out to heal. St. Moritz, on the contrary, set out to avoid healing. It was haunted by crown princes and millionaire Jews, ladies with incredible ear-rings and priceless furs; sharp, little, baffling trans-atlantic children thronged its narrow streets, and passed away from it as casually as a ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome

... previously put to his disposal. He had heard it told at the newspaper office that Tisdale, whose golden statements were to furnish his little scoop, Hollis Tisdale of Alaska and the Geographical Survey, who knew more about the coal situation than any other man, was also the most silent, baffling sphinx on record when it ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... red-hot bar met him in mid-air, biting deep into the soft skin of his lips, furrowing his beautiful neck, and stinging the tip of one silken ear. The pain was terrible; the smell of his own burnt flesh and hair was maddening; the deadly implacability of the attack, coming from a man, too, was baffling beyond description. Finn howled, and sank abruptly upon his haunches, giving the Professor time for a flying glance of pride in the direction of the admiring John ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... to come back the physician sometimes found that an infection had developed; occasionally the breasts were giving trouble, or some other difficulty in the care of the mother or of the infant was baffling the nurse. It is now recognized that the medical attendant should not wait for the appearance of untoward symptoms. Although the strict observance of the various precautions which I have already emphasized should lead and usually do lead to an uneventful convalescence, it is ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons

... Columbus, surveyed and sold town lots on public account, and built two school houses with the proceeds. He then moved up the river to engage anew in the Indian trade with a partner who soon proved a drunkard. He and his wife there took a fever which after baffling the physicians was cured by his own prescription. He then moved to Cotton Gin Port to take charge of a store, but was invalided for three years by a sunstroke. Gradually recovering, he lived in the woods on light diet until the thought ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... were frightened at the bellowing of the cattle which Thorfin had brought with him in the ships. But what in the world could a Greek slave know of that affair? I wandered up and down among the streets trying to unravel the mystery, and the more I considered it, the more baffling it grew. One thing only seemed certain and that certainty took away my breath for the moment. If I came to full knowledge of anything at all, it would not be one life of the soul in Charlie Mears's body, but half a dozen—half a dozen several and ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... and baffling winds so that labor as they might, it was fully dark when the Pilgrim pinnace entered what is now Barnstable, then Cummaquid Harbor. Anchoring for safety, they lay down to get such rest as the position afforded, ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... having left the letter in the post for some years while I formed fours and saluted, I picked up a magazine in the Mess one day and began to read a detective story. It was a very baffling one, and I really didn't see how the murderer could possibly have committed his foul deed. But the detective was on to it at once. He searched the wastepaper basket, and, picking an envelope therefrom, said "Ha!" It was ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne

... sleeping. Mr. Holt liked Michael, and dreaded to see the signs of dissipation appear on that fine face. He asked Will French to make friends with him and find out if he could where he spent his evenings. Will readily agreed, and at once entered on his mission with a zeal which was beyond all baffling. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill

... highly developed and extremely intelligent; but it should not be surprising that intelligence should manifest itself in ways quite baffling to us human beings, whose minds work so differently. They ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... Duchess, with one of her quick, incisive nods, "Cleone, this Barnabas of ours is either a madman or a fool! And yet—stoop down, sir,—here where I can see you,—hum! And yet, Cleone, there are times when I think he is perhaps a little wiser than he seems,—nothing is so baffling as simplicity, my dear! If you wished to be talked about, Barnabas, you have succeeded admirably,—no wonder all London is laughing over such a preposterous bet. Forty thousand pounds! Well, it will at least buy you notoriety, and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al

... being yours, you have, in fact, a legal right to inspect the printer's books. But this is valueless. The printer would cook his books to please the publisher. You can have no conception of the villany done under all these sharing agreements. But forewarned forearmed. Think of some way of baffling this invariable fraud. Ask a knowing printer some way. Do anything ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... THE HILLS When Carol runs a tea shop for a friend, a baffling mystery comes to her ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin

... rotor, visible in Fig. 25 between the second and third barrels. As, in consequence of varying temperatures, there is an appreciable difference in the endwise expansion of the spindle and cylinder, the baffling rings in the low-pressure balance piston are so made as to allow for this difference. The high-pressure end of the spindle being held by the collar bearing, the difference in expansion manifests itself at the low-pressure end. The labyrinth packing of the high-pressure and intermediate ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins

... worked to a depth of about two thousand feet with no diminution in the quantity or quality of the diamonds. The "pipe" or plug of blue-stuff shows no signs of giving out. Nature, in her underground laboratory, works in a mysterious way, baffling the astutest students of science to find the process by which she is able to manufacture such beautiful gems as the diamond. Many theories have been propounded to explain the genesis of the diamond, the most plausible one being that ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson

... and went back to the counter, where Doris herself served him. She did not try to avoid his glance, but rather met it with a baffling serenity oddly at variance with her momentary loss ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy

... had fallen asleep she would take the key, and they were to go to her by and by for the wax impression she would take from it, and pass to them through a trap-hole in the door. Loaysa was astonished at the old man's extreme wariness, in spite of which he by no means despaired of baffling his precautions. Just then the French horn was heard: Loaysa hastened to the door, and received from his friends a pot containing the promised ointment. Bidding them wait awhile, and he would bring ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... at the table, his eyes upon the wide-spread loveliness of the landscape, but his thought elsewhere. It wandered over the years already lived through, wandering backwards even to the days when existence, opening before the child eyes, was a baffling and vaguely ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... into deeper and deeper sleep, into that eternal region where he no longer thought, but knew... Immense processions of shifting imagery absorbed him into themselves, spontaneous, unfamiliar, self-multiplying, and as exquisitely baffling as God and all ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... corner-stone "rested upon a book." It has been calculated that there was one Cambridge graduate for every two- hundred and fifty inhabitants, and within six years from the landing of John Winthrop and his party, Harvard College had begun its work of baffling "that old deluder, Sathan," whose business in part it was "to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures." To secular learning they were indifferent, but every man must be able to give reason for the faith that was in him, and the more tongues in which such ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... was no one else for him to talk to—"why is it that when a man is sure of his meals every day he has endless invitations to dine out, but that when those events are matters of uncertainty he gets not a bidding to the feast?" This question, not a new one, baffling in its mystery and chilling to the marrow, George Henry classed with another he had heard somewhere: "Who is more happy: the hungry man who can get nothing to eat, or the rich man with an overladen table who can eat nothing?" The two problems ran together in ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo

... boys! Jerry Todd and his trusty pals solve many a baffling mystery in their home town, much to the amusement of all ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... velvety as Ivan's own, were, however, of a shade indescribable, chameleon-like: one day varying between beryl and aqua-marine, anon of a light hazel, and finally, in moments of excitement, grief, or joy, of a deep, baffling black. Hitherto, Ivan had been undecided about their color; but to-night, as he saw them run their gamut from light to that tender dark, he felt a strange, quivering half-fear, half-joy, stirring his heart; and in one moment it had become impossible for him to look ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... her. When a man has been embraced by a woman, he sees her in a glamour; and at such a time, in the baffling glimmer of the stars, she will look wildly well. The hair is touched with light; the eyes are constellations; the face sketched in shadows - a sketch, you might say, by passion. Otto became consoled for his defeat; he began ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... baffling but wonderful domain I am inspired by the ambitious hope that some, at any rate, of the many unsolved problems of the Science of Life may yet give up their secrets to the demand of my persistency, exerted in the interest of the well-being ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... than it is elsewhere. Moreover, the costs which here figure as an element in the adjustment of freight charges are of a peculiar kind, which, although not unknown in other departments of production, have nowhere else so great influence and importance. The study of railroads and their charges is baffling, not because the economic forces do not here work at all, but because here they encounter a resistance which is exceptionally strong and persistent. The quasi-monopoly which elsewhere continues only briefly lasts long in this department of production; but it is subject ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... but apparently those of Catherine suggested no better expedient than fairly to betake herself to speed of foot, in hopes of baffling the page's vivacity, by getting safely lodged before he could discover where. But a youth of eighteen, in pursuit of a mistress, is not so easily outstripped. Catherine fled across a paved court, decorated ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... argument had become an agreement. Nor, I think, was the process valueless; for at least we learnt how to argue in defence of our agreement. But the retrospect is only worth a thought now, because it illustrates a duality which seemed to him, and is, very simple; but to many is baffling in its very simplicity. When I say his weapon was logic, it will be currently confused with formality or even frigidity: a silly superstition always pictures the logician as a pale-faced prig. He was a living proof, a very living proof, ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton

... round him with a feeling of keen interest and curiosity. After the weary, baffling hours of fruitless effort in which he had spent the last three days, it was more than pleasant to find himself at the ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... for the introduction of the witnesses, the court room again filled up; but he no longer looked for faces he knew. He held himself sternly aloof, as if he feared his reason might leave him if he continued to strive against those baffling eyes, who knew him and did not know that they knew him, but who looked at him as if trying to penetrate a mask when he wore no mask. Occasionally his counsel turned to him for brief consultation, in which his part ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine

... barbarians, the Poles still mistrust us, we are a dark terror for Europe, a baffling menace to her civilisation, but we do not want to be that any more, we long for purity and reason, our wretched rags burden us beyond all measure. The Jews' tragic love for Russia finds a counterpart in our love ...
— The Shield • Various

... risen from his chair. Jessie surveyed him with cool measuring eyes. His podgy figure was almost ludicrous in her eyes. His round, fleshy face became almost contemptible. But not quite. He was part of her life, and then those eyes, so strange, so baffling. So alive with an intelligence which at ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... poverty, her father had never allowed her to part with. What strange hours it had often measured for her. Age-long hours of grief, weary days of illness and pain, times of eager expectation, times of sickening anxiety, times of mental conflict, of baffling questions and perplexities. How the hands seemed to creep on this afternoon, at times ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... from the road to the school-room was not without many a struggle on Sandy's part. The new life, the new customs, and the strange language, were baffling. ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... insist on addressing itself to the angels. Being, as it were, ourselves the angels we had only a limited quarrel in each case with the event; but its inconsequent character, given the forces set in motion, was peculiarly baffling. It was like an interminable sum that wouldn't come straight; nobody had the time to handle so many figures. Limbert gathered, to make his pudding, dry bones and dead husks; how then was one to formulate the law that made the dish ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... may seem dark to thee; there may seem now to be no golden fringe, no "bright light in the clouds;" but a day of disclosures is at hand. "Take it on trust a little while." An earthly child takes on trust what his father tells him: when he reaches maturity, much that was baffling to his infant comprehension is explained. Thou art in this world in the nonage of thy being—Eternity is the soul's immortal manhood. There, every dealing will be vindicated. It will lose all its "darkness" when bathed in the floods "of the ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff

... horse, in virtue of his authority, but with advice and almost with prayers, that he would trust rather to prudence than fortune; and imitate him as a general rather than Sempronius and Flaminius; that he would not suppose that nothing had been achieved by having worn out nearly the whole summer in baffling the enemy; that physicians too sometimes gained more by rest than by motion and action. That it was no small thing to have ceased to be conquered by an enemy so often victorious, and to have taken breath after successive disasters. Having thus unavailingly admonished ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... the author's head, and only wanted writing down, never came to the birth. The first two volumes present to us a personification of Hoffmann's humoristic self, and the third was to culminate in Kreisler's insanity, a result brought about by the disappointments and baffling experiences he encountered in life—Hoffmann's own career, that is; and the whole was to conclude with the Lichte Stunden eines wahnsinnigen Musikers,—a work which had been occupying his mind ever since he was in Bamberg, and which had not yet been executed. In 1821 was ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... undercurrent of connections, as if Fate were dimly pointing all the while toward the invisible culmination. Suddenly there would be a new manifestation of Auber's faculty, and a new instance would be added, illusive, baffling, and yet forming each time new threads in the vague warp and woof of something that we called our theory. "There it is again," we would say to ourselves, as we sent the ghostly shuttle flying in our ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... conscientious in the extreme, and the laughter which followed the malicious pranks of Gangogo, the professional jester of the tourney, must, if I am to take the author's word for it, have made the glaciers ring. There is a great deal in the way of philosophy and psychology that is very baffling in this book, but of one thing I feel certain, and that is that the Elemental Spirits of the Heights, to whom frequent allusion is made, must find the winter sports of a later age a sorry substitute for the rare old frolics ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various

... coloring of this most original character, under the smoke and tarnish of antiquity. It is no less to the honor of the great triumvir, that a strength of coloring should survive in his character, capable of baffling the wrongs and ravages of time. Neither is it to be thought strange that a character should have been misunderstood and falsely appreciated for nearly two thousand years. It happens not uncommonly, especially amongst an unimaginative people like the Romans, that the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... remarks with an air of polite indifference, which was peculiarly baffling. It was evident that no lead was to be expected from him, and that Mollie would have to put her request in the plainest possible words. Her lips were pressed together in a momentary hesitation between embarrassment and ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey



Words linked to "Baffling" :   tough, problematic, difficult, problematical, knotty



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