"Intricacy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... buying and selling women as if they were dogs and parrots. No wonder that "to live like the Greeks" became a by-word and reproach. Beyond this, the authors throw the whole force of their genius into the construction of the plot, upon the strength and intricacy of which their success depends; and the management of the various threads of the story so as to meet together in the conclusion, shows a great improvement in art since the days of Aristophanes. Advancing time seems also to have brought a greater ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... hovering and diving birds; the bodies of the dead discolouring the rice with blood; the scuppers vomiting breadstuff; the men, frenzied by the gold hunt, toiling, slaying, and shouting aloud: over all, the lofty intricacy of rigging and the radiant heaven of the Pacific. Every man there toiled in the immediate hope of fifty dollars; and I, of fifty thousand. Small wonder if we waded ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Minos a labyrinth, a wonderful structure, that covered many acres of ground. The passages in this edifice met and crossed each other with such intricacy, that a stranger who had once entered the building, would have been starved to death before he could find his way out. In this labyrinth Minos shut up the Minotaur. Having conceived a deep resentment against the people of Athens, where his only son had been killed in ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... employed upon the best method of barring a window, or a door; and many an hour has he spent in establishing the preference of a bolt to a lock. He had at last, by the daily superaddition of new expedients, contrived a door which could never be forced; for one bar was secured by another with such intricacy of subordination, that he was himself not always able to disengage them in the proper method. He was happy in this fortification, till being asked how he would escape if he was threatened by fire, he discovered, that with all his care and expense, he had only been assisting his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... parted, she to tread that intricacy of streets round the Market, with stoppages for enquiries, till she found the office, where she presently sat in an inner room, veil at nose-tip, and before her at a grate stood ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... Egyptian way: as a thing sacred, a servant of the Mysteries; the revealer of the Soul and the other side of the sky. You may have enormous facility in playing with your medium; may be able to make your marble quite fluidic, and flow into innumerable graceful forms; you may be past master of every intricacy, multiplying your skill to the power of n;—but you will still in reality have made no progress beyond that unknown carver who shaped his syenite, or his basalt, into the "peace which passeth understanding"—"the eternity which baffles and confounds ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... bringing thought, feeling, action, home to the consciousness of the spectator from the artist's consciousness on which they have been impressed. Painting can tell a story better than sculpture, can represent more complicated feelings, can suggest thoughts of a subtler intricacy. Through colour, it can play, like music, directly on powerful but vague emotion. It is deficient in fulness and roundness of concrete reality. A statue stands before us, the soul incarnate in ideal form, fixed and frozen for eternity. The picture is a reflection cast upon a magic glass; ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... a forest, just where its intricacy had broken away into picturesque openings, leaving visible some strange old trees with knotted trunks and mysteriously twisted branches, sat a young girl sketching. She was intently engaged, but as her eyes were ever and anon raised from her ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... body! The framework is there; the muscles that hold each part in place; the nerves, like a great electrical system by which messages are conveyed from the brain to all parts of the body. He has power to reason and to plan and carry out these plans. Truly no machine can be compared to man for intricacy of construction and harmony of action. Who, then, is the Creator of this wonderful thing? We must conclude that there was a great First Cause who made and put into action all things visible in the universe, as well as things ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... conveyed by an elaborate system of camel transport. Every week the line grew, Railhead moved forward, and the strain upon the pack animals diminished. But the problem of feeding the field army without interfering with the railway construction was one of extraordinary intricacy and difficulty. The carrying capacity of the line was strictly limited. The worn-out engines frequently broke down. On many occasions only three were in working order, and the other five undergoing 'heavy repairs' which might secure ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... believe this, and especially when I think of the numerous instances in which I have seen university-scholars unable to write English, with any tolerable degree of correctness. In this book, the principles are so clearly explained, that the disgust arising from intricacy is avoided; and it is this disgust, that is the great and ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... glare, thrust in huge logs of oak, or stirred the immense brands with a long pole. Within the furnace were seen the curling and riotous flames, and the burning marble, almost molten with the intensity of heat; while without, the reflection of the fire quivered on the dark intricacy of the surrounding forest, and showed in the foreground a bright and ruddy little picture of the hut, the spring beside its door, the athletic and coal-begrimed figure of the lime-burner, and the half-frightened child, shrinking into the protection of his father's shadow. And when ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... the St. Lawrence, which are impassable by steam, and occur between Montreal and Kingston, a distance, by the St. Lawrence River, of 171 miles, and by the Rideau Canal, 267 miles. The rapids vary in rapidity, intricacy, depth and width of channel, and in extent, from half a mile to nine miles. The Cedar Rapid, twenty-four miles from La Chine, is nine miles long, very intricate, running from nine to twelve miles an hour, and in some places only from nine to ten feet water in the channel. The Coteau du ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... drumming away on his heels; but she soon pulled up, realizing that a polecat may be slow in the books, but not so slow in real life, with her to assist speed. Anyway, she seemed slower; and, in any case, she could not hope to follow him in the intricacy of holes and cover he was sure to take to, like a fish to water. Moreover, she was spitting up blood, result of friend polecat's neat and natty strangle-hold on her throat, and felt more in need of the egg—which she had won, at any ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... Addison supposes, but from a law of some other kind, to which they are subject; and this we may fairly conclude, from their apparent want of choice amongst those objects to which the barriers of their species have confined them. But man, who is a creature adapted to a greater variety and intricacy of relation, connects with the general passion the idea of some social qualities, which direct and heighten the appetite which he has in common with all other animals; and as he is not designed like them to live at large, it is fit that he should have some thing to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... regarded by them with the most watchful jealousy. Its headwaters approached those of the Canadian river Chaudiere, the mouth of which is near Quebec; and by ascending the former stream and crossing to the headwaters of the latter, through an intricacy of forests, hills, ponds, and marshes, it was possible for a small band of hardy men, unencumbered by cannon, to reach the Canadian capital,—as was done long after by the followers of Benedict Arnold. Hence it was thought a matter ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... Oswald of that ancient shrine (as already has been hinted), and might do as he liked, even on the Sabbath-day. And as one of the first things he always liked to do was to enter into everybody's business, he got into an intricacy of little knowledge too manifold even for his many-fibred brain. But some of this ran into and strengthened his main clew, leading into the story he was laboring to explore, and laying before him, as bright as a diamond, ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... unaccepted by her master, denied all reason and forced to frequent churches where she is forbidden the exercise of her common-sense, and where she is told: "Men are logical; women lack this quality, but have an intricacy of thought. There are those who think that women can be taught logic; this is a mistake. They can never, by any process of education, arrive at the same mental status as that enjoyed by man; but they have a quickness of apprehension—what is usually called leaping at conclusions—that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... united to make a perfect work. Here the simplicity of the drawing of the Virgin and Child is shown in contrast with the foreshortening of the group of angels—the strongest unity of effect with the most perfect system of intricacy. The emitting the light from the body of the child, though a supernatural illusion, is eminently successful. The matchless beauty of the Virgin and Child, the group of angels overhead, the daybreak in the sky, and the whole arrangement of light ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... this monastery was well adapted to the founder's views, and to suggest the name it originally received of La Trappe, from the intricacy of the road which descends to it, and the difficulty of access or egress, which exists even to this day, though the woods have been very much thinned since the revolution. Perhaps there never was any thing in the whole universe better calculated to inspire religious awe ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... explaining to his neighbor the arrangement and intricacy of our trenches. He has seen a military map and made some calculations. In the sector occupied by our regiment there are fifteen lines of French trenches. Some are abandoned, invaded by grass, and half leveled; the others ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... a centre, should be simple and clean. We should never believe that simplicity of life might make us unsuited to the requirements of the society of our time. It is the simplicity of the tuning-fork, which is needed all the more because of the intricacy of strings in the instrument. In the morning of our career our nature needs the pure and the perfect note of a spiritual ideal in order to fit us for the complications ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... evening of the festival, the inhabitants danced before their houses; and at one we saw the figure which is said to have been first used by the youths and virgins of Delos, at the happy return of Theseus from the expedition of the Cretan Labyrinth. It has now lost much of that intricacy which was supposed to allude to the windings of the habitation of the Minotaur," &c. &c. This is rather too much for even the inflexible gravity of our censorial muscles. When the author talks, with all the reality (if we may use the expression) ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... Human Knowledge, to sift and examine them on all sides, especially since there may be some grounds to suspect that those lets and difficulties, which stay and embarrass the mind in its search after truth, do not spring from any darkness and intricacy in the objects, or natural defect in the understanding, so much as from false Principles which have been insisted on, and might have ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... for the purpose. At every juncture Marco must be consulted, and acquainted with every step of progress; and no doubt the Biondina has some lively Moretta for her friend, to whom she confides her part of the love-affair in all its intricacy. ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... into his own hand. Mr. Blow might have married a South Sea Islander, and would have been none the worse as regarded his official duties. Mr. Blow did not want the services of a wife in discovering and reporting all the secrets of the Belgium iron trade. There was no intricacy in that, no nicety. There was much of what, in his lighter moments, Mr. Anderson called "sweat." He did not pretend to much capacity for such duties; but in his own peculiar walk he thought that he was great. But it was very fatiguing, and he was sure that a wife ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... smaller end of the egg is entirely spotless, and I have a beautiful specimen now before me in which the only markings consist of a ring of delicate lines round the large end. Some idea of the delicacy and intricacy of these lines may be formed when I mention that this zone is barely one tenth of an inch broad, and yet in a good light between twenty and thirty interlaced lines making up this zone ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... steadfastly to please his wife—he is so often piteously perplexed—this big, burly, blundering, blind-folded, blessed John of ours—that our knowledge of his disabilities enwraps him in a mantle of affectionate charity. His efforts to master the delicate intricacy of his darling's mental and spiritual organization may be like the would-be careful hold of thumb and finger upon a butterfly's wing, but the pain he causes is inconceivable by him. The suspicion of hurt to the beautiful ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... mazes that her capricious divinityship ever wove, and out of which I am even now struggling, by sleight or force, to extricate myself. I can hardly help wondering, even yet, at the odd conjunction, which has produced such an intricacy of ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... seventh century, when our earliest existing Irish MSS. were written, we find not only a style of writing (or indeed two) distinctive, national, and of a high type of excellence, but also a school of illumination which, in the combined lines of mechanical accuracy and intricacy, of fertile invention of form and figure and of striking arrangements of colour, has never been surpassed. And this is in the seventh century—the nadir ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... F. AUSTIN in the Sketch.—"His 'Paris' is certainly an admirable example of what a purely aesthetic handbook should be, for it is clearly arranged, and written with that ease and intricacy which are ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... of fantastic speculation, shaped by argument, faultlessly cast in logical moulds. Too faultlessly methought, for looking at the mere heaps of architectural rubbish, let alone the earth, the various vegetations which have accumulated upon it, I had a sense of the infinite intricacy of all reality, and of the partiality and insufficiency of the paths which our reason (or our fancy in the garb of reason) cuts into it. Rituals and laws whose meaning had become mere shibboleths two thousand ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... though good and forcible general effect is produced, the lines are thrown in by thousands without special intention, and might just as well go one way as another, so only that there be enough of them to produce all together a well-shaped effect of intricacy: and you will find that a little careless scratching about with your pen will bring you very near the same result without an effort; but that no scratching of pen, nor any fortunate chance, nor anything but downright skill and thought, will imitate so much as one ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... Complexity — N. complexity; complexness &c. adj.; complexus[obs3]; complication, implication; intricacy, intrication[obs3]; perplexity; network, labyrinth; wilderness, jungle; involution, raveling, entanglement; coil &c. (convolution) 248; sleave[obs3], tangled skein, knot, Gordian knot, wheels within wheels; kink, gnarl, knarl[obs3]; webwork[obs3]. [complexity ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... uninteresting,[31] but its interior is of surpassing beauty, and can be better described in the eloquent language of Gilbert Scott[32] than in any other: "Simple as is the primary ideal, the actual effect is one of great intricacy, and of continuous gradation of parts, from the small arcades up to the stupendous dome, which hangs with little apparent support like a vast bubble over the centre, or as Procopius, who witnessed its erection, described it, 'as if suspended ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... make Mr. Cleveland's speech the text of some examination into the ex-President's peculiarities of style. It was Clevelandesque to the core. All his protuberant characteristics are there: the leviathanic egotism, the profound and tenebrous ponderosity, the labored intricacy of the commonplace, the pedagogic moralizing, the oracular inconsequence. How absurdly obvious it all is now, and how inexplicable that the glamour of high place should ever have clothed such matter as his with the seeming of philosophy ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... of the machine—its engines—are the crux of man's mechanical wisdom and skill. Their marvelous reliability and intricacy are almost as awesome as the human anatomy. When both engines are going well, and synchronized to the same speed, the roar of the exhausts develops into one long-sustained and not inharmonious boom-m-m-m-m! It is a song of ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... a fight so snarled. The intricacy of those incidents which defy the narrator's extrication, is not illy figured in that bewildering intertanglement of all the yards and anchors of the two ships, which confounded them for the time in one chaos ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... greatest role on the economic field. Capable men therefore ceased to go into politics and instead turned their energies into the whirl of business, where they received a training that made them capable of handling affairs of the greatest intricacy ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... statement of his affairs, placed his papers in my hands, and I found myself, on inspecting them, engaged in a controversy which was likely to give me the opportunity which I desired, of appearing soon in cases of equal intricacy and interest. Kingsley had some ten thousand dollars in land, the greater part of which was involved in questions of title and pre-emption, presenting some complex features, and likely to occasion bad blood among certain trespassers whom it became our ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... to have involved the intricacy of his plot, till it fell into some contradictions. The queen he had not found difficult to manage; but after her death, when the Treasury failed in its golden source, he seems to have sat down to contrive how to make the duke the great debtor. Vanbrugh swears that "He himself looked upon ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... In studying music as a mere matter of intellectual science, all is simple; it is only an easy chapter in acoustics. But in studying it on the side of the emotions, in studying the laws of counterpoint and of musical form, which are governed by the effect upon the ear and the heart, we find intricacy and difficulties, increased beyond our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Shaw, Brieux, and Galsworthy the old expedient applied to the consideration of social perplexities and contradictions. The dialogue is indecisive in its outcome. It does not lend itself to dogmatic conclusions and systematic presentation, but exposes the intricacy of all important questions and the inevitable conflict of views, which may seem altogether irreconcilable. We much need to encourage and elaborate opportunities for profitable discussion to-day. We should revert to the dialectic ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... the river itself, it has made possible an ample roadway through the heart of a great city, the peer of which does not exist elsewhere. It is to be feared, though, that it is hardly appreciated. The London cabby appears to be fascinated with the glare and intricacy of the Strand, and mostly the drivers of brewers' drays and parcel delivery vans the same. The result is that, but for a few earnest folk who are really desirous of getting to their destination quickly, it is ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... that single cord. Moreover, it was this cord which not only held fast my supreme affections, but also first drew me into the moral concerns of life, and later afforded a clew there to which I somewhat wistfully clung in the intricacy of its mazes. ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... the king's ambassadors, and should give them such answer as comported with the dignity and interest of the Roman people. At the head of the embassy were Menippus and Hegesianax; the former of whom said, that "he could not conceive what intricacy there was in the business of their embassy, as they came simply to ask friendship, and conclude an alliance. Now, there were three kinds of treaties, by which kings and states formed friendships with each other: one, when terms ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... eye or the mind can not clearly discern or see through, whether because of its own want of transparency, its depth or intricacy, or because of mere defect of light. That which is complicated is likely to be obscure, but that may be obscure which is not at all complicated and scarcely complex, as a muddy pool. In that which is abstruse (L. abs, from, and trudo, push) as if removed from the ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... most in connection with these "extortions" was that the middleman seemed to be a nonproducer, a parasite who lived by chaining the agricultural classes of the wealth which they produced. Even those farmers who recognized the middleman as a necessity had little conception of the intricacy and value of ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... delight. His taste in French and German literature is somewhat defective: nor has he made much progress in the science of Political Economy or other abstruse studies, though he has read vast folios of controversial divinity, merely for the sake of the intricacy of style, and to save himself the pain of thinking. Mr. Lamb is a good judge of prints and pictures. His admiration of Hogarth does credit to both, particularly when it is considered that Leonardo da Vinci is his next greatest favourite, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... many manuscripts of different ages and characters induced me to consult the two great Benedictine works, the Diplomatica of Mabillon, and the Palaeographia of Montfaucon. I studied the theory without attaining the practice of the art: nor should I complain of the intricacy of Greek abbreviations and Gothic alphabets, since every day, in a familiar language, I am at a loss to decipher the hieroglyphics of a female note. In a tranquil scene, which revived the memory of my first studies, idleness would have been less pardonable: ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... don't!" said Burr, not fairly comprehending what she said. He sat down again upon the stone, and leaned his head upon his hands. In truth he felt dazed and helpless, as if he had reached suddenly the mouth of many roads and knew not which to take. The intricacy of the situation was fairly paralyzing to an order of mind like his, which was wont to grasp, though shrewdly enough, only the straight course of cause and effect. He revolved dizzily in his mind the fact that he could not tell Madelon the reason which ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Hawaiian war-club or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of carving, is as great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon. For, with but a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark's tooth, that miraculous intricacy of wooden net-work has been achieved; and it has cost steady years ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... large number of the fruits of the earth with much attention; the way in which they fortify their villages appears almost scientific. The town in which I lived was surrounded by several deep moats, or ditches, one within the other, arranged with so much intricacy, that it was at first difficult to find my way out of it; then there were several walls, and in the centre a sort of citadel on a hill surmounted by a rock. On the summit of the rock stood a flagstaff, on which was hoisted, in war-time, the ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... for the existence of this machine, for such a completed piece of mechanism as a man or a tree cannot be explained as a result of simple accident, as the existence of a rough piece of rock might be explained. Its intricacy of parts and their purposeful interrelation demands explanation, and therefore the fundamental problem is to explain how this machine came into existence. The second problem is simpler, for it is simply to explain ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... have studied anatomy will deny, that, though relatively to the variety of purposes it has to perform the apparatus is very simple, it is absolutely very complex; and that its parts play into one another with great facility indeed, but with endless intricacy. ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... stone. This gives a sort of severe metallic effect. However you are riveted to the spot wherein you command the first general survey of this unparalleled front. The delicacy, the finish, the harmonious intricacy, and faery-like lightness, of the whole—even to the summit of the spire;—which latter indeed has the appearance of filigree work, raised by enchantment, and through the interstices of which the bright blue sky appears with a lustre ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... impossible to agree, and which may therefore be reasonably supposed to be sufficiently perplexing to the rest of the world. State offences, such as treason and sedition, which are of comparatively rare occurrence, present many questions of greater intricacy than any other class of crimes. In treason especially, a well-founded jealousy of the power and prerogatives of the crown has intrenched the subject behind a line of outposts, in the shape of forms and preliminary proceedings; the accused, for his greater security against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... testimony of my grateful attachment, the following Dramatic Poem, in which I have endeavoured to detail, in an interesting form, the fall of a man, whose great bad actions have cast a disastrous lustre on his name. In the execution of the work, as intricacy of plot could not have been attempted without a gross violation of recent facts, it has been my sole aim to imitate the empassioned and highly figurative language of the French orators, and to develope the characters of the chief actors on a vast ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Clarence, though he actually anchored off its entrance. Nor did he find the Brisbane, though, ascending the Glasshouse Mountains, he saw indications of a river, which he could not enter with the Norfolk on account of the intricacy of the channel and the shortness of the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... to-day. As the industrial life of nations has become more diversified, its parts narrower, and its processes more concealed, new and more extended training has been called for to prepare young people for the work of life; to reveal to them something of the intricacy and interdependence of modern political and industrial and social groups; and to point out to them the importance of each one's part in the national political and industrial organization. With the ever-increasing subdivision and specialization of labor, the danger from ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... he had to learn. There was no trouble about anything he wanted done by others; he simply commanded, and that was the end of it. But the mass of knowledge about the Terranovans and their world before he came appalled him not only by its sheer bulk but by its intricacy, the unexplained gaps, the contradictions. For a long time after the founding of New Washington—later New Jerusalem—he was still bothered a little by doubt. He wanted to learn all that there was to learn about the Terranovans, ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... the Nile, Louis fortified Damietta, and left his queen and her ladies there, while he, with the main army, advanced on Cairo, the metropolis of Egypt, where the sultan resided. Near Mansourah, the Crusaders became perplexed by the intricacy of the canals, and a hasty dash across one of these, made by the king's brother, the Count of Artois, with 2,000 men, led to a calamitous result. Mansourah was apparently deserted, and the count's troops, who preceded their comrades at some distance, commenced pillaging the houses. The inhabitants, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... is plain that the writer was contemporary with the events he describes, and although his perfect ingenuousness ceaselessly connects his narrative with history, in no case has he been proved to be in error. The intricacy of the connexions between this record and the Pauline Letters will be best estimated from a study of Paley's Horae Paulinae. We know nothing definite as to the place where the Acts was written, nor the sources whence the information for the ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... disgrace from his abode, and to enclose it in a habitation of many divisions, and an abode full of mazes. Daedalus, a man very famed for his skill in architecture, plans the work, and confounds the marks {of distinction}, and leads the eyes into mazy wanderings, by the intricacy of its various passages. No otherwise than as the limpid Maeander sports in the Phrygian fields, and flows backwards and forwards with its varying course, and, meeting itself, beholds its waters that are to ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... confessed. "This business was never planned and carried out by a woman, I'll swear to that. There is a woman concerned in it, for at every point we come upon evidence of her voice issuing the mysterious instructions; but she is not alone in the matter. Already the intricacy of the thing points to a criminal of genius. When we know the whole truth, if we ever do, that the crime was planned by a man of amazing, if perverted, intellect, will be put ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... no sparing hand, and used my best efforts to tame the swell and glitter both of thought and diction; though in truth, these parasite plants of youthful poetry had insinuated themselves into my longer poems with such intricacy of union, that I was often obliged to omit disentangling the weed, from the fear of snapping the flower. From that period to the date of the present work I have published nothing, with my name, which could by any possibility have come before the board of anonymous criticism. Even the three or ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... preserve the holy books of the Saints and, instead of the rudely carved symbol of the early missionaries, we have such beautiful works of art as the processional cross of Cong Abbey. Beautiful this cross certainly is with its delicate intricacy of ornamentation, its grace of proportion and its marvel of mere workmanship, nor is there any doubt about its history. From the inscriptions on it, which are corroborated by the annals of Innisfallen and the book ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... circles, but ellipses, the movements of these bodies about the sky could be correctly accounted for. The extreme simplicity of such an arrangement was far more acceptable than the bewildering intricacy of movement required by the Ptolemaic theory. The Copernican system, as amended by Kepler, therefore carried the day; and was further strengthened, as we have already seen, by the telescopic observations ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... spires. We know not why it was, but in the gray old towns of Belgium and the Low Countries there existed such exuberance of imagination, such an unbounded luxuriousness of conception, as created more images of Gothic quaintness and intricacy than elsewhere can be seen. If any architecture ever expressed the average of human thought, that of these towns is especially eloquent in its indications that their inhabitants were very happy and contented. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... were donned, and from each of the Norlaminian brains there poured into the minds of the two Terrestrials a complete and minute knowledge of every possible application of the stupendous force-control banked in all its massed intricacy ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... partly metaphysical, but ever more and more subject to the inspiration and the purpose of the Brahman, alone versed in the knowledge of the gods, and alone competent to propitiate them by sacrificial rites of increasing intricacy, and by prayers of a rigid formalism that gradually assume the ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... of romance in his character, which was strongly emotional though extremely reticent. Only an artist would have recognized beauty in those scenes, for in all Ireland it would be difficult to find a landscape with less amenity; the hill shapes are featureless, without boldness or intricacy of line. Redmond, a born artist in words, possessing strongly the sense of form, was sensitive to beauty in all kinds—yet rather to the beauty that is symmetrical, graceful and well-planned. A sailor does not love the sea for its beauty, and ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... bend aside the brambles, then he crept in and took his way along a low, narrow passage. It had many windings, but was without intersections or intricacy. He heard his own steps echoed like a pursuing footfall. His labored breathing returned in sighs from the inanimate rocks. It was an uncanny place, with strange, sepulchral, solemn effects. He shivered with the cold. A draught stole in from ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... that which causes Sleeping Sickness. The life-histories and the weird ways of many important parasites have been unravelled; and here again knowledge means mastery. To a degree which has almost surpassed expectations there has been a revelation of the intricacy of the stones and mortar of the house of life, and the microscopic study of germ-cells has wonderfully supplemented the epoch-making experimental study of heredity which began with Mendel. It goes without saying ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... sufficiently absurd; here within a stone's throw of his own palace, and stretching almost to the doors of the House of Legislature whereto he went in so much state every year, lay an unknown territory which he had never thought to explore. The intricacy of back streets was quite unknown to him, and he seemed at almost every corner to be stepping into yards and cul-de-sacs, from which he had perforce to turn back again. In a short time all sense of the points of ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... aquatic engineer digs long tunnels of great intricacy in the bands of lazy rivers, and because of its paradoxical nature and appearance has caused many strange stories to originate about its habits and methods of propagation. It has the beak of a duck and waddles ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... always a hope of Peace through England; as well as contrariwise, especially till Bavaria settle itself (in April next), a hope of great assistance from the French. Here are potentialities and counter-potentialities, which make the Bavarian Intricacy very agitating to the young King, while it lasts. And indeed his world is one huge imbroglio of Potentialities and Diplomatic Intricacies, agitating to behold. Concerning which we have again to remark how these huge Spectres of Diplomacy, now filling ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... The intricacy of the next facsimile, No. 7, is an ugly but a very active piece of movement. This group of curves is equal to about a two-feet length of pen-stroke, a fact which indicates an extraordinary amount of personal energy. Dickens was then writing ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... music almost sacred in its intensity, these great composers penetrated far, far into its depths, finding their greatest enjoyment in so doing. Starting with the simpler forms of the art left by their predecessors, they deepened, they broadened and varied those forms; while, with every intricacy created, they experienced the sweetest of pleasure. And one of the most fitting tributes that can be paid to these and others of the noble masters of harmony is beautifully embodied in the ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... case, an iamb; the second, an amphibrachys; the third, a trochee; and the fourth, an amphimacer; and yet our schoolboy, with no other liberty but that of inflicting pain, had triumphantly scanned it as five iambs. Perceive, now, this fresh richness of intricacy in the web; this fourth orange, hitherto unremarked, but still kept flying with the others. What had seemed to be one thing it now appears is two; and, like some puzzle in arithmetic, the verse is made at the same time to read in fives and to read ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... interest to an Intelligent, a Sympathetic, and a Benevolent Public. He will simply allude, in conclusion, to the performances of the Mysterious Foundling, as exhibiting perfection hitherto unparalleled in the Art of Legerdemain, with wonders of untraceable intricacy on the cards, originally the result of abstruse calculations made by that renowned Algebraist, Mohammed Engedi, extending over a period of ten years, dating from the year 1215 of the Arab Chronology. More than this Mr. Jubber will not venture to mention, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... for a person to become a skilled weaver, capable of carrying out large wall hangings, is a thing very difficult of attainment—indeed it is said that it takes as long as fifteen years of constant application to acquire the necessary knowledge and skill. To carry out designs of less magnitude and intricacy is a very different matter; success in this smaller way is far more easily attained, and is well within the ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... formal tierce cut at the other, and a halt was cried. They scarcely retired and the umpire repeated the words 'To the fight! Ready! Go!' and the duel began in earnest. Both were accomplished swordsmen, and the combat promised to be a long one. They exhibited to the admiring spectators every intricacy of schlager fencing, in all its wonderful neatness and quickness of cut and parry. From time to time a halt was called, and each man retired to his original place, his right arm being caught and held in air by the 'bearing-fox,' as the novice is called whose business it is to fill ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... at the assortment of paper containers. Monstrosities of hearts, cupids, and entwining fretwork were embossed on each, but save for the intricacy of design, there was little difference between them. ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... intricacy of the interrelation between the functions of the "heart," and the "breath" is revealed in Chinese philosophy (see de Groot, op. cit. Chapter ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... half-spoken, makes an effect of overwhelming pathos. Of a different order is Siegmund's refusal to go to Valhalla: it verges on the melodramatic, and the emotion expressed justifies the means. It may be remarked that though the instrumental writing is symphonic, there is none of the contrapuntal intricacy of Tristan: the pictorial requirement warranted a freer use of chords in the accompanying parts, both—if a paradoxical phrase may be pardoned—for the abstract colour of the chords and for the instrumental tone colour which the use ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... dreams of man that took form in steel and stone and glass, yet none matched the lightness, the grace, the intricacy, the sublime simplicity of these interwoven crystalline structures where light from the noonday sun separated prismatically until it filled the air with myriads of living, darting, colored sparks of fire above him. Where the ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... The intricacy of these dialects is another peculiarity. In the Missionary College at Lahainaluna, on Mowee, one of the Sandwich Islands, I saw a tabular exhibition of a Hawiian verb, conjugated through all its moods and tenses. It covered ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues on March 15, 1649. He removed from High Holborn to Spring Gardens to be near the scene of his labours, and was soon afterwards provided with an official residence in Whitehall Palace, a huge intricacy of passages and chambers, of which but a fragment now remains. His first performance was in some measure a false start; for the epistle offering amity to the Senate of Hamburg, clothed in his best Latin, was so unamiably regarded by that body that the English envoy ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... intercalate a month, every second year, of twenty-two and twenty-three days alternately, and one day had also been added to make a fortunate number. This made the adaptation of the nominal year to the actual a matter of great intricacy, the duty being intrusted to the chief pontiffs. These officers were often corrupted, and managed to effect political ends from time to time by the addition or omission of the intercalary days and months. At this ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... any army under competent leadership could be committed to them. The same might surely be said of the route by the Nuksan Pass into the valley of Chitral and the Kunar, which joins the Khyber route not far from Jelalabad. Its length and intricacy alone, independently of the intractable nature of the tribes which border it on either side, and of the fact that the Nuksan Pass is only open for half the year, would surely place it beyond the consideration of any general who aspired to invade India after accomplishing ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... theologians of his time by a subtility in distinction resembling that of the schoolmen, and by a peculiar art of expressing himself on doctrinal points in terms so nicely balanced, and in a style of such labored intricacy, that it was scarcely possible to discover his true meaning, or pronounce to which extreme of opinion he most inclined. These dubious qualifications, by which he disgusted alternately both Calvin and the more zealous Lutherans, were however ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... that you divide the science which manages pedestrian animals into two corresponding parts, and define them; for if you try to invent names for them, you will find the intricacy too great. ...
— Statesman • Plato
... warned the reader that, in spite of the way in which the intricacy of organization inseparable from great masses and the manifold disposition of a modern army will mask the general nature of such an operation, that operation cannot be understood unless its simplest lines are clear. ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc
... Mrs. Rexford's sewing machine, which she had not yet been allowed to touch. Yet had she been shut up alone with the machine, as she was now shut up to revise her own conduct within herself, she would, by sheer force of determined intelligence, have mastered its intricacy to a large degree without asking aid. And so with this strong idea that she must learn how to act differently to this young man; dim, indeed, as was her idea of what was lacking, or what was to be gained, she strove with it in no fear ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... accounts of the experiences of each vessel, that the failure of the greater part of the fleet to pass was principally due to other circumstances than the Confederate fire. The darkness of the night, the stillness of the air, which permitted the smoke to settle undisturbed, the intricacy of the navigation, the rapidity of the current, then running at the rate of five knots, the poor speed of the ships, not over eight knots, were known beforehand, and were greater elements of danger than the simple fire of the enemy. To these is to ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... of each other's commissions, and having no instructions to communicate their respective proceedings to each other, did in effect counteract their several negotiations. That this want of concert and of simplicity, and the mystery and intricacy in the mode of conducting the negotiation on our part, was complained of by our ministers as embarrassing and disconcerting to us, while it was advantageous to the adverse party, who were thereby furnished with opportunity ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... us for teaching geography and history together. Priestley's Chart of History, though constructed with great ingenuity, does not invite the attention of young people: there is an intricacy in the detail which is not obvious at first. To remedy what appears to us a difficulty, we propose that eight and twenty, or perhaps thirty, octavo maps of the globe should be engraved; upon these should be traced, in succession, the different situations ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... interference of Germany on the one hand and Russia on the other, and to involve England in embarrassing questions. The attempt of the German democracies, triumphant in 1848, to fuse the powers of Germany into a whole, a new Germanic empire, also involved questions of great intricacy, and which, however England might desire to keep aloof, tended to affect treaties in which she was concerned. The union of all Germany as one authority would introduce a new element into European relations, disturbing the balance of power. Russia and France had ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... In the intricacy of its mechanism the pianoforte stands next to the organ. The farther removed from direct utterance we are the more difficult is it to speak the true language of music. The violin player and the singer, and in a less degree the performers upon some ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... prior claim," he answered. "As soon as she is safe he shall know the whole truth. I would tell him at this moment but that I am a little afraid of him. He would never understand, as we can, the intricacy of the situation. And now—to ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... experience of the present generation, the sum and substance of what we can claim is no more than this: that some influences of a social and political nature may be traced to their certain results, though, from the intricacy of all social facts, their vast extent in a great nation, and especially when international interests are concerned, and from our necessarily imperfect acquaintance with all these varied, multiplex, and powerful conditions, we cannot always foresee what conflicting ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... uninitiated mind it would have seemed marvelous and beautiful in its combination of simplicity and intricacy, to have noted the delicate tactics with which Bertie conducted himself between his two claimants—bending to his Countess with a reverent devotion that assuaged whatever of incensed perception of her unacknowledged rival ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... course of affairs, sooner or later the master; and that, being the master of various unconnected countries, he may keep them all in order by employing a military force which to each of them is foreign. This maxim, too, however formerly plausible, will not now hold water. This scheme is full of intricacy, and may cause him everywhere to lose the hearts of his people. These counsellors forget that a corrupted army was the very cause of the ruin of his brother-in-law, and that he is himself far from secure from ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... illumination, at folio 31, representing David playing his harp, surrounded by a musical coterie; it is probably the workmanship of a more modern, but less skilful scribe of the Saxon school. The smaller ornaments and initial letters throughout the manuscript display great intricacy of design. ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... were so frequent, and their changes for special occasions were so many, that they created some confusion and intricacy in the old Services. We may, however, recognise the beauty and worshipfulness of the plan. In the Visitation of the Sick, the words O Saviour of the world &c. as used with Psalm lxxi. are a survival of it. The verse Remember not Lord &c. was introduced at the beginning of the same Service, ...
— The Prayer Book Explained • Percival Jackson
... consists one of his great merits. His mind, fervid and impassioned, was in all his compositions, except Don Juan, eagerly fixed on the catastrophe. He ever held the goal full in view, and drove to it in the most immediate manner. By this straightforward simplicity all the interest which intricacy excites was of necessity disregarded. He is therefore not treated justly when it is supposed that he might have done better had he shown more art: the wonder is, that he should have produced such magnificent effects with so little. He could not have ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... has to console herself with the hand of the Indian Prince, who has fallen in love with her. Even this skeleton will show that the novelty and unity of design which counted for so much in 'The Beggar's Opera' are changed for intricacy of plot. There is no cohesion in the story: there is no reason why the catastrophe should be brought about in one way rather than another; what interest there is turns on an improbable story rather than on the development of character. Evidently Gay reckoned largely on the opportunities ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... rallied Condy, as Travis executed a banjo "piece" of no little intricacy. "That's just like ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... by the fire, with nothing yet decided, he could see it all from the start, with its devilish, delicate intricacy, its subtle slow enchantment spinning itself out of him, out of his own state of mind and body, rather than out of the spell cast over him, as though a sort of fatal force, long dormant, were working up again to burst into dark flower. . ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... date, and had been laid on, if not by the same hand, by one no less careful. Something more than a craftsman's pride had surely inspired the exquisite workmanship, the deft and joyous pattern that chased itself in and out as though smiling at its own intricacy. A gift for the artist's mistress, perhaps? Or a toy for some dead and gone princess?... Yet it had been played upon, and recently. One or two of its relaxed strings showed evidences of fraying; and the sender had tied ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... fully mastered the intricacy of the brain structure, he will find his difficulties removed by studying two more skilful dissections. The following engraving presents the appearances when we cut through the middle of the brain horizontally ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various
... Leslie, as she mastered the little intricacy of the work upon the experimental scrap of cambric she had drawn. "I understand it now, I think, and I shall find time, somehow, after I get home, for what I want to do." With that, she laid it in a corner of her basket, and took up ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... imaginary partner, she began to spin round on her toes. Ada's only talent lay in her feet, and, conscious of her skill, she danced before the hunchback with the lightness of a feather, revolving smoothly on one spot, reversing, advancing and retreating in a straight line, displaying every intricacy of the waltz. The sight was too much for Jonah, and, dropping the mouth-organ, he seized her ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... insignificant vessels solely with a wish for vengeance, since it was not usual for ships of the force of the Proserpine to turn aside to molest the poor fishermen and coasters. A few execrations followed, quite as a matter of course, but the intricacy of the channel and the necessity of having all his eyes about him soon drove every other thought from the mind of the dashing privateersman but such as were connected with the care and ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and invisibly dealing, as usual, through a third person, would not sell her for one and a quarter; he wanted one and a half. Besides, another Party was trying to get her; and now ensued a negotiation which for intricacy and mystery surpassed all the others. It was conducted in my friend's interest by one who had the difficult task of keeping the owner's imagination in check and his demands within bounds, for it soon appeared that he wanted even more ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... that the settlement would take up an intolerable time, and prevent crews from getting to sea in favourable weather, is sometimes fortified by the assertion that the people of Shetland are singularly defective in arithmetic. Even if we assume this statement to be correct, there is so little intricacy in a calculation of the price of 18 cwt. of fish at 6s. 6d. per cwt., and dividing the sum among five or six men, that a very low arithmetical faculty would not be severely taxed in checking it. There is little ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... graves of the dead! All white save the river, that marked its course by a winding black line across the landscape; and the leafless trees, that against the leaden sky now revealed more fully the wonderful beauty and intricacy ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... vast key system which is part of the intricacy of the very good housekeeping of Frau G——, there was no necessity to disturb the Hausmeister; but nothing could lessen the wail of the door which let them in with a groan, and closed behind them with a bang that was worthy of the occasion. It was the man's place to have ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... son of a simple esquire a match for an emperor's daughter, and the suit did not prosper. Political reasons may have interfered. Suffolk, too, is accused by the Venetian ambassador of having already had three wives.[187] This seems to be an exaggeration, but the intricacy (p. 081) of the Duke's marital relationships, and the facility with which he renounced them might well have served as a precedent to his master ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... State of New York: THE erection of a new government, whatever care or wisdom may distinguish the work, cannot fail to originate questions of intricacy and nicety; and these may, in a particular manner, be expected to flow from the establishment of a constitution founded upon the total or partial incorporation of a number of distinct sovereignties. 'T is time only that can mature and perfect so compound a system, can liquidate the meaning ...
— The Federalist Papers
... yet it wanted not method, it being mani mum artis celare artem.(109) His diction and language is easy and fluent, neat and fine, void of all affectation and bombast. His style is free from starch lusciousness and intricacy, every period has a kind of undesigned negligent elegance, which arrests the reader's attention, and makes what he says as apples of gold set in pictures of silver, so that, considering the time when he lived, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... the good of mankind and the advantage of his own fortunes, that he did not put forth this medicine in pill- boxes or bottles, and then, as it were, by some captivating title, inveigle the public into his spider's web, and suck out its gold substance, and himself wax fat as he sat in the central intricacy. ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Lopez was summoned, and Clarice followed to listen to her. And when the Lopez had soared with strong practised flight through the brilliant intricacy of the Shadow Song, Clarice became aware what real applause sounded like from the stage. It shook the stage as the old favourite of two generations, wearing her set smile, waddled back to the debutante. Scores of voices hoarsely ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... thus commenced went on for many months, with no other obstruction than the complication and intricacy which attend all matrimonial arrangements where the interests of kingdoms, as well as the personal happiness of the wedded pair, are involved in the issue. Ambassadors were sent, and contracts and treaties were drawn up, discussed, modified, ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... reception-room, the soft, fat rugs, the intricacies of banisters and alcoves and curtained cubby-holes—all reflected his personality, all corroborated the ensemble. It was his habitat, his distinctly, from the pronounced but meaningless intricacy of the architecture to the studied but unconvincing tints, like a man who suddenly starts to speak, but checks himself, realising he has nothing in ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... practical government, soldiers and local administrators, penetrated with the thought of a protesting and humanitarian age. Some, like La Fayette, had played conspicuous roles, and proved revolution in the making; others, like La Rochefoucauld, had mastered every intricacy of political and philanthropic thought; and some, like Condorcet, had proved themselves among the masters of science of their time. Counts, marquises, dukes, they were prepared to lay all aside in the overwhelming demand which suffering humanity made for release from all its troubles. ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... clearest perspective: perfect horizontals at one's feet, perfect perpendiculars opposite the eye, a constant alternation of looking up and looking down, a never-failing possibility of looking beyond, an outlet everywhere for the eye, and for the breath; and endless intricacy of projecting spur and engulfed ravine, of valley above valley, and ridge beyond ridge; and all of it, whether definitely modelled by stormy lights or windy dryness, or washed to mere outline by sunshine ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... who is the namesake and descendant of the title-hero." Stripped of these tiresome lendings (which, as has been frequently pointed out, were a mania with the eighteenth century and naturally grew to such intricacy as this), the central story, though not exactly new, is impressive: and it is told and worked out in manner more impressive, because practically novel, save for, perhaps, a little suggestion from Vathek. Melmoth has bartered his soul with the ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... been to the Cluny, the museum? There you will see Persian carpets of the most exquisite hue and of a pattern the beautiful intricacy of which delights and amazes the eye. In them you will see the mystery and the sensual beauty of the East, the roses of Hafiz and the wine-cup of Omar; but presently you will see more. You were asking just now what was the meaning of life. Go and ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... intricacy here. All is perfectly simple and obvious. I can make the case as plain to you, in three minutes, as that you have two thumbs. In the English cottons, in the first ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... thought it, and more convenient. It is a perfect model for cottages, and, I think, for palaces of magnificence,—only enlarging, not altering, its proportions, and adding ornaments, and not principles. Nothing can be more grand than its simplicity and usefulness. Simple, without intricacy, it seems to be the spontaneous expression of humanity, congenial to the wants of man. No other formed house can ever please me so well, nor shall I ever be persuaded, I believe, that it can be improved, either ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... attend to a vast intricacy of detail, and answer myriad personal questions and doubts, and keep the great institutions splendidly going, by thorough systematization of time, and by watching every minute. He has several secretaries, for special ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... example may suffice to illustrate the intricacy of the legislation passed in pursuance of this policy. It describes a change of detailed policy in support ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... Nature is not more natural to my body than God is to my soul. Every animal and plant has its own Environment. And the further one inquires into the relations of the one to the other, the more one sees the marvelous intricacy and beauty of the adjustments. These wonderful adaptations of each organism to its surroundings—of the fish to the water, of the eagle to the air, of the insect to the forest bed; and of each part of every organism—the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... the English party and the people themselves, the two lines of mounted men helped to keep back the rush of the crowd who pressed forward to see the great man of whose deeds they had just heard, and the length, the intricacy, and narrowness of the streets played their part in lessening the gathering; but it was a weary journey—one which grew slower and slower, till the city was completely traversed, and the mounted men rode off to one side, leaving the Hakim's followers to pass through the rough gateway of a high ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... overwhelmed with terror, that, for a moment, she was unable to determine what conduct to pursue. She then considered, that it would be vain to attempt an escape from Barnardine, by flight, since the length and the intricacy of the way she had passed would soon enable him to overtake her, who was unacquainted with the turnings, and whose feebleness would not suffer her to run long with swiftness. She feared equally to irritate him by a disclosure of her suspicions, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... simple proposition to say, that nature, by an instinctive sentiment, distinguishes property, yet in reality we shall find, that there are required for that purpose ten thousand different instincts, and these employed about objects of the greatest intricacy and nicest discernment. For when a definition of PROPERTY is required, that relation is found to resolve itself into any possession acquired by occupation, by industry, by prescription, by inheritance, by contract, &c. Can we think that nature, by an original instinct, instructs ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... of the Balances hang all round the girdle of Saint Michael, and of bright variegated stones, such as the agates in the Saint Anne, and in a hieratic preciseness and grace, as of a sanctuary swept and [103] garnished. Amid all the cunning and intricacy of his Lombard manner this never left him. Much of it there must have been in that lost picture of Paradise, which he prepared as a cartoon for tapestry, to be woven in the looms of Flanders. It was the perfection of the older Florentine style of miniature-painting, ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... by the grandest repose,—a repose that pervades the room and the soul,—a repose not to be mistaken for serenity, but which is power in equilibrium. No brilliancy of color, no elaboration of accessories, no intricacy of composition attracts the attention of the observer. There is no need of these. But he who is worthy of the privilege stands suddenly conscious of a presence such as the world has rarely known. He feels that the embodiment before him is the record of a great Past, as well as the reflection ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... produced. This is the sole method which we possess for the investigation of the masses of the planets; and though it may be difficult in its application—not only from the observations which are required, but also from the intricacy and the profundity of the calculations to which those observations must be submitted—yet, in the case of Jupiter at least, there is no uncertainty about ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... forget its ancient rivalry and jealousy of Austria and to coalesce with the latter power, in resisting the encroachments of Napoleon, in order to prevent the latter from attempting the overthrow of the whole fabric of the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, with the intricacy and fragility of which no prince in Germany was better acquainted than the Elector of Saxony. Prussia however was still reluctant to engage in the contest and gave no support whatever to Austria. Napoleon defeats the Austrians at Austerlitz and dictates peace. Six ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... eyebrows, and kept repeating, "This must be seen to, indeed! this shall be barred to-morrow in the morning!" In this preoccupation I believe he took leave of me without observing it; our things were handed out; we heard the window shut behind us; and became instantly lost in a horrid intricacy of blackness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... drawing, in silver-point, of an orange-tree in mingled fruit and bloom—an exquisite piece of work, of a Japanese truth, intricacy, and perfection. Fenwick looked at it in silence. These silver-point drawings of Welby's were already famous. In the preceding May there had been an exhibition of them at an artistic club. At the top of the drawing was an inscription in a minute handwriting—'Sorrento: Christmas Day,' ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... leaving no successor to take its place. Between the "me" of to-day and the "me" of yesterday lie night and sleep, abysses of unconsciousness; nor is there any bridge but memory with which to span them. Who can hope after this to disentangle the infinite intricacy of our inner life? For we can only follow its threads so far as they have strayed over within the bounds of consciousness. We might as well hope to familiarise ourselves with the world of forms that teem within the bosom of the sea by observing the few that now and again ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... fixing his eye for hours together upon a little print of Amsterdam, which hung in a black frame against the opposite wall of the council-chamber. Nay, it has even been said, that when any deliberation of extraordinary length and intricacy was on the carpet, the renowned Wouter would shut his eyes for full two hours at a time, that he might not be disturbed by external objects; and at such times the internal commotion of his mind was evinced by certain regular guttural sounds, which his admirers declared were merely the noise ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... shielded from the bald fatality of facts. An increasing dread seized him at the thought of the hurt his revelation would inflict on her. The interweaving of life in life, consequence on consequence, the unbroken intricacy of the whole fabric of existence, realized anew, filled him with bitter rebellion. The blind commitment of a vanished youth, potent after years, still hung in a dark cloud over Susan Brundon. He ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Majesty's Government, as was justly expected, have exercised their authority to prevent the departure of new hostile expeditions from British ports. The Emperor of France has by a like proceeding promptly vindicated the neutrality which he proclaimed at the beginning of the contest. Questions of great intricacy and importance have arisen out of the blockade and other belligerent operations between the Government and several of the maritime powers, but they have been discussed and, as far as was possible, accommodated in a spirit of frankness, justice, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... severally devoted their lives,' proceeded thus with regard to the youngest of the three brothers. 'The country would have had much. reason to deplore the death of Sir Frederick Bruce whenever it had happened; but his loss is an especial misfortune at a time when, negotiations of the utmost intricacy and delicacy are pending with a Government which is not always disposed to approach Great Britain in a spirit of generosity and forbearance. Seldom has a citizen of another country visited the United States who possessed so keen an insight into the political ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... connection I remember, and am not likely ever to forget, a winter wren who favored me with what I thought the most bewitching bit of vocalism to which I had ever listened. He was in the bushes close at my side, in the Franconia Notch, and delivered his whole song, with all its customary length, intricacy, and speed, in a tone—a whisper, I may almost say—that ran along the very edge of silence. The unexpected proximity of a stranger may have had something to do with his conduct, as it often appears to ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... Help Like a Woman's, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Anything for a Quiet Life, More Dissemblers besides Women. As with all the humour-comedies of the time, the incidents are not unfrequently very improbable, and the action is conducted with such intricacy and want of clearly indicated lines, that it is sometimes very difficult to follow. At the same time, Middleton has a faculty almost peculiar to himself of carrying, it might almost be said of hustling, the reader or spectator along, so that he has no time to stop and consider defects. ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... conduct of the world around him, unworthy his attention; yet, among the sons of learning, many seem to have thought of every thing rather than of themselves, and to have observed every thing but what passes before their eyes: many who toil through the intricacy of complicated systems, are insuperably embarrassed with the least perplexity in common affairs; many who compare the actions, and ascertain the characters of ancient heroes, let their own days glide away without examination, and suffer vicious habits to encroach ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... some principles, some truths clearly defined; but now I know nothing distinctly, believe nothing. The more I read and study the more obscure seem the questions I am toiling to answer. Is this increasing intricacy the reward of an earnestly inquiring mind? Is this to be the end of all my glorious aspirations? Have I come to this? 'Thus far, and no farther.' I have stumbled on these boundaries many times, and now must I rest here? Oh, is this my recompense? Can this be all? All!" Smothered ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... clanking sound, the first gallons of water were raised, to fall gushing into the cistern-like box, and then begin to flow steadily along the adit; the boys, after a glance or two down the deep shaft, now one intricacy of upright ladder and platform, hurrying off to where a series of ladders had been affixed to the face of the cliff, down which they went, to reach a strongly-built platform at the mouth of ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn |
